Tyson – Enough to Make an Investor Chicken February 28, 2003February 22, 2017 I am still in computer hell, just a different circle. Not that life isn’t very good — e.g., I got to sit next to Paul Volcker on the Delta Shuttle yesterday. Dr. Volcker was the Fed Chairman pre-Greenspan who, I believe, was hugely important in keeping our economy from spinning off the tracks. He is a great American hero and the best kind of public servant. I had spent a day with him in August, 1982, under the aegis of the New York Times, when the Dow was 777 and our economic problems, intractable. I came away feeling that maybe the world would not end, after all. Wish I felt as optimistic today, but I think we have some more tough times to go through first. (I left Dr. Volcker alone for most of the flight, but did get the sense that he thinks a good bit of the current game plan — e.g., getting rid of the estate tax — is nuts.) I’ve been more or less gloomy about stocks since the first of these columns (this is the 1,746th, so it’s been quite some time now) . . . and have for the last year or so been worried about real estate prices . . . and long-term bonds are a scary bet these days, with massive budget deficits and a war that will be financed with tax CUTS (???), suggesting possibly higher interest rates ahead (which hurt long-term bonds) . . . so it’s hard to know where to put your money these days. I’ve made some suggestions in the past, some of which have worked out, some of which have tanked, and with several of which the jury is out. I owe you an update, and if I ever ascend from computer hell, you might get one. But for now, lest you assume we have for sure hit bottom, I offer you this sobering piece by Dr. Laura D’Andrea Tyson, former key Clinton economics advisor, currently dean of London Business School, in the February 24 Financial Times. (I would just link to it, were I not in the twice aforementioned very, very hot place.) Imagine it nicely indented, and in a different color. Dr. Tyson writes: “The Bush administration is poised to unleash war in Iraq as the first demonstration of its muscular new foreign policy. According to the “Bush doctrine”, military force can be used pre- emptively to attack nations judged to pose significant future threats; and to replace despots with freedom-loving democrats who espouse those moral values George W. Bush assures us are “the same in every culture, in every time and in every place”. His bold agenda is made possible by America’s overwhelming military power. But it also reflects a moral certitude where none should exist and lacks a financial strategy where one is essential. “Predictably, Mr Bush’s most recent budget calls for another huge increase in military expenditure. But initially it did not include money to honour his commitment to help rebuild Afghanistan. Only when this omission was exposed was $300m added for this purpose. Nor does the budget cover the costs of war in Iraq or of occupation, humanitarian aid and reconstruction. According to William Nordhaus of Yale University such postwar costs could reach $100bn-$600bn over the next decade. No wonder some officials are already claiming Iraq must pay for its own reconstruction. And no wonder Turkey is sceptical that Washington will honour its offer of a $26bn aid package in exchange for its support for the war. After all, that package is also missing from the Bush budget. “What is in the budget is another round of massive tax cuts worth $1,500bn over the next decade. Even excluding long-term Social Security and Medicare liabilities, the budget projects a large deficit that will persist long after a war in Iraq is over and the economy has recovered. Based on the administration’s own questionable assumptions about economic growth and lower real per capital spending on almost everything other than defence and homeland security, this budgetary imbalance is likely to reach $2,000bn over 10 years. This is exactly when the federal government should be building surpluses to cover its promises to future pensioners. A more responsible set of assumptions would make the shortfall substantially larger. “How does the administration plan to finance these mammoth deficits? Notwithstanding its unilateralist claims that America’s destiny should not depend on decisions made by an “illusory international community”, the White House is implicitly assuming that the rest of the world will foot a sizeable share of the bill. The US already absorbs about 5 per cent of the world’s savings. It borrows about $200m from the rest of the world each day to cover its savings gap. The Bush budget will increase that gap to as much as 9 per cent of gross domestic product by the end of the decade. Will the rest of the world be willing to cover a gap of this size and, if so, on what terms? There is no reason to think the US will find itself in a buyer’s market. “Indeed, there are already worrying signs that foreigners are beginning to reduce their massive holdings of dollars and dollar-denominated assets. As this adjustment takes hold, the dollar is beginning to weaken. It declined briefly during the last Gulf war and rallied when the war was over. But at that time, the US current account deficit was less than 2 per cent of GDP. President George Bush Snr had already been forced to break his promise not to raise taxes so as to reassure global capital markets that the US was acting to reduce its structural budget deficit. “Now, with the US much more reliant on foreign savings, his son clearly intends to increase these deficits. Meanwhile, the president’s economic advisers are trying to convince the markets that deficits do not really matter. However, this time the costs of war, together with the Bush budget and foreign policy agenda, may well trigger a sustained decline in the dollar and a reduction in America’s ability to borrow from the rest of the world. “Americans face painful choices. Structural deficits will mean more expensive imports and higher interest rates. These will depress private sector spending to make room for financing Mr Bush’s budgetary priorities. The result will be lower national investment and living standards. Or, confronted with the deleterious effects of structural deficits on the dollar’s value, on interest rates and on growth, the US might face deep cuts in education, healthcare and retirement benefits. “Such cuts may be the only way to fund Mr Bush’s imperial ambitions and his munificent tax relief for the wealthy. Indeed, many in Mr Bush’s inner circle are ideologically committed to reducing the government’s involvement in such social programmes. But because the programmes are popular with voters, it is politically advantageous to undermine them in an indirect manner. The administration has already signalled its desire to privatise Social Security and, more recently, Medicare. The prospect of looming structural budget deficits can be adduced as a justification for doing so, even though those deficits are self-inflicted and avoidable. “The US is the world’s only military superpower. It may indeed have the might to pursue a pre-emptive foreign policy that is breathtaking in its audacity and arrogance. But the US is also the world’s largest debtor nation. It will need a sound financial plan to convince the rest of the world that helping to finance its global ambitions is a good idea. Right now, none exists.” Life will of course go on. We will muddle through. But it certainly has — and in barely two years — become quite a muddle. Time, I guess, to propose another tax cut for the best off.
Having To Pay $40 Million In Tax On $100 Million In Income February 26, 2003March 25, 2012 Greetings from computer hell – but that’s another story. A recent Molly Ivins column I referred you to knocked guys for trying to avoid tax on their $100 million stock option windfalls. What’s so wrong with having to pay $40 million in tax on a $100 million in income, it asked. Answered Gennady S, with some heat: ‘The guy who made $100 million took a lot more chances than the guy who did not, and if his risks are not rewarded, capitalism would not work. Period.’ –> Yet I would argue that somehow capitalism worked in the 1950s, when the top federal income tax bracket was (a ridiculous) 90%. And worked rather well in the 60s and 70s when it was (a still ridiculous) 70%. And from 1980 through 1986 when it was 50%. (Still too high, in my view). Lowering the top rate all the way to 28% in 1986 did not lead to any kind of boom in the Reagan/Bush years, only to an explosion of debt for future generations to service. Indeed, the economy was in a pretty bad rut by 1991-92. Did notching the top rate back up to 39.6% in 1993 kill the economy? Did it shut off access to capital and discourage risk taking? Quite the contrary; over the next eight years we added 22 million new jobs, capital was plentiful, and risk takers were going wild. The evidence would seem to suggest that taxing $100 million windfalls at 39.6% does not kill capitalism (or lottery ticket sales). Neither does taxing $100 million estates. Neither, even, does taxing dividends and capital gains. We would all love to live in a world where, per Leona Helmsley, only the little people paid taxes. But our need for revenue is too great. For the foreseeable future, sadly, the super-rich will have to pay taxes, too. At least that is the Democratic view.
Oy – Such a Film Trove! February 25, 2003March 25, 2012 Those of you interested in things Jewish might want to click here. Indeed, those with no interest may want to take a quick click, just to see how well Spielberg has done this web site. Others may actually want to watch one of the 112 free films.
Relax – It’s Just Plague February 24, 2003February 22, 2017 LONG URLs Marc Fest: ‘Perhaps the best of the programs to help you keep from breaking extra-long URLs is . . . snipurl.com.’ WHERE DO E-MAILS GO TO HANG OUT WHEN THEY’RE GOOFING OFF? John Kasley: ‘I occasionally send myself an e-mail with a URL in it, as a reference to something I may want to investigate later. I just sent myself such a note, and it took 9 minutes to get back here. I’m on a cable connection. Where did the message go and what did it do? I hope it had a good time. Your readers seem to know everything in the world. One of them will surely know this.’ RELAX – IT ONLY SEEMS REALLY SCARY Did you see Gregg Easterbrook’s piece in the New York Times a couple of Sundays ago? It is filled with more-or-less reassuring facts about the chemical, biological, and even nuclear, terrorist attacks we might face. ‘In 1989,’ it notes, for example, ‘workers at an American government laboratory near Washington were accidentally exposed to Ebola, and it was several days before the mistake was discovered; [yet] no one died. A coordinated anthrax attack in the fall of 2001 killed five people, a tiny fraction of the number who died of influenza during the time the nation was terrified by the anthrax letters.’ ‘Your risk of dying in a car accident while driving to buy duct tape likely exceeds your risk of dying because you lacked duct tape,’ the piece concludes. (I doubt there’s any connection, but it’s interesting to note that 46% of the duct tape sold in America is reportedly manufactured by an Avon, Ohio, outfit whose founder, Jack Kahl, gave more than $100,000 to the GOP in the 2000 election cycle.) Then again, Easterbrook tells us, the Japanese effectively used fleas to spread Bubonic plague among the Chinese, so I am not ready to let my anxiety go altogether. Our missile shield, when it is completed, will surely not have the accuracy to knock plague-ridden fleas out of the air – at least not without doing a lot of collateral damage around the house.
Corrections and Amplifications February 21, 2003January 22, 2017 MASSIVE URLs If you ever have massive URL’s that you need to put in an email . . . but worry the email program will break the URL thus rendering it useless . . . sorry about the link yesterday. Try this one: makeashorterlink.com. NINETY-NINE Bob Fyfe: ‘The one two-digit number divisible by 9 that doesn’t add up to 9 is 99 (adds to 18). To be 100% correct, the digits of all numbers divisible by 9 sum to a number also divisible by 9 (not necessarily 9 itself). Same is true for divisibility by 3.’ Jim Kozma: ‘I think it’s even neater that the reverse is true: All numbers whose digits (recursively) add up to 9 are divisible by 9. So 111111111 must be divisible by 9, and voila, it is: 12345679*9=111111111. Or how about 123456789? 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9=45 and 4+5=9, so 123456789 is also divisible by 9.’ ☞ Why do I start these threads?! NOISEBUSTERS Michael Burns: ‘The ‘Jensen Noisebusters’ part of the quote you have for me yesterday is incorrect. The Jensen headphones are different from the Noisebusters headphones. Two different companies, although both go for about $40.’ TAX PREPARERS ON PARADE Le Moore: ‘You talked about two things in your February 16 PARADE article [unfortunately not linkable] that I felt needed to be addressed: First, you said ‘many tax preparers type your information into the very same software packages you could type it into yourself.’ Do you realize that most tax professionals don’t just use TurboTax or other off-the-shelf software to prepare tax returns? My husband is a CPA and we purchase the professional version of TurboTax (it is called ProSeries) made by Intuit. This program usually costs several thousand dollars EACH YEAR, and it is MUCH more than TurboTax. Many times the tax programs people buy off the shelf have an ‘interview’ process. If a person has something unusual going on with their tax situation, or if a they have heard of some ‘new’ tax law that they think applies to them, then many times they end up guessing during the interview process, or just putting information where they ‘think’ it needs to go. Some of these self-prepared returns we have seen are done so poorly it is no wonder that these people end up coming to us when the IRS sends them a letter with questions about the return. The software ‘interview’ process does NOT take the place of an experienced tax professional asking probing questions that might result in additional deductions the client overlooked because he opted to go the cheaper route, or suggestions very specific to the taxpayer to consider for their next year’s return (i.e., doubling up real estate taxes in order to itemize every other year). Many times it is the people with the less complicated returns that need to ask us questions while we are preparing their taxes about things they might be considering and wanting to know how it will affect their taxes next year (i.e. buying a house, going back to college, looking for another job, unreimbursed employee business expenses, office in the home, etc.). ‘Also, the software programs that people purchase to do their own returns seem to be lacking tremendously when a problem is encountered (i.e., e-filing and the return is rejected – the standard answer given by the IRS in many cases can be misleading and confusing [surprise] and it has taken us many years of ‘fixing’ problems in order to QUICKLY help when a problem occurs.) There are many situations we have had to correct and prepare amended tax returns when the client decides to ‘do it themselves.’ Granted there are many returns that are the same each year and perhaps those people could do their returns with no difficulty. But, they need to remember that in general, they are going to get what they pay for. It is important that they remember that they have just forfeited the right to have a professional looking out for their best interests. ‘Additionally, I would like to point out that there are a lot of people who think that everyone who prepares taxes is a CPA. Our office is in Texas, and anyone who decides to prepare taxes can do so with no training, or supervision, or having to answer to anyone regarding their ability to prepare taxes. We end up helping a lot of people with tax problems after their tax preparer drops out of sight and there is absolutely no recourse that these people have against the missing tax preparer.’ ☞ So maybe my admonition in PARADE to ‘beware professional tax preparers’ was not entirely unjustified, but what I was aiming at with that caveat was the tendency to push Refund Anticipation Loans . . . and, in some H&R Block offices, then charging an additional $50 or $75 to cash H&R Block’s own Refund Anticipation Loan check. I.e., you are a low-income person who comes in with a simple return. Of your, say, $900 refund, H&R Block takes a tax preparation fee, a fee for getting you that $900 a couple of weeks early, and a fee for cashing its own check. It adds up. Le continues: ‘The second thing I wanted to bring up is the other side to the expensive Refund Anticipation Loans (RAL) situation. When my husband and I started our tax office over 10 years ago we offered RALs only because the competition was doing so and clients were asking for them. However, we made every effort to discourage people from doing these because of the extremely high interest rate, and we continue to do so. We have also discovered over the years that most of the people who do these RALs are claiming the Earned Income Credit (EIC) as you mentioned in your article. What seems to happen in almost every case is that these people consider the EIC as ‘free’ money since they are getting back so much more then they had paid in federal withholding. I can’t tell you the number of times we have tried to talk these people into waiting for their money by explaining to them about the high short term interest rate, only to hear them say something like: ‘Well, it’s only about $100 or so – that’s not so much, and I really want my money tomorrow.’ ‘We feel that we are here to help people from being ripped off by trying to keep our prices reasonable. There have been many times we have had people tell us of very outrageous prices being charged for these RALs. In light of these facts, we have begun to feel that we should CONTINUE to offer these products to provide a reasonable alternative to the companies out there who continue to push these products for unreasonable. I don’t think that the RAL program is going to go away anytime in the near future, so perhaps you should attempt to direct your thoughts on what people should be looking out for if they are absolutely determined to get a RAL. It is important for them to call around and check prices, or ask someone they know to refer them to a reputable company before just walking into a tax office. Please consider both sides of this issue and not just the fact that the fees are so high. Sometimes these people are really desperate and unfortunately they are really counting on getting this money in 24 hours or so.’
Trizonality Or . . . Wrestling With the Marriage Wrecker February 20, 2003February 22, 2017 The truth is, I got to playing Scrabble with my computer and managed one of my best scores ever, 501 to its 301, with only one questionable word. (OK, I lucked out with both blanks, which makes it almost impossible to lose, but still – for me, 501 is really good.) I assume you have no problem with WRECKER, MARRIAGE, or WRESTLER, each of which brought me the 50-point bonus. TRIZONAL I admit was a stretch; but the computer allows BIZONAL so, I ask you, why not TRIZONAL? Gallia in tres partes divisa est, after all. Not to mention the three zones we may wind up with in Iraq. So the dog came nowhere near my home work – they probably don’t even allow dogs here at the Hyatt (sadly, I am paying the ‘discounted convention rate,’ which is about double what I could have gotten an equally good room for via Priceline.com, but I have to be where everybody else is) – but I just blew off my responsibilities for Scrabble. Yes, well, even so, at this late hour, as I towel off from the Scrabble, I suppose I can find time to pass on a link or two. RACY CALCULATIONS Responding to the set of calculators linked to yesterday, one of you suggested this on-line calculator. DO NOT GO THERE IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 OR EASILY OFFENDED. But leave the sound on your computer if you are not. Or, if YOU are cool with this but your better half is more upright, listen through your earphones. EARPHONES Richard: ‘The best headphones for airplane use appear to be the Etymotic ER-4P‘s. They are in the ear canal phones, like the Sony’s you mention, but much better sound. Reportedly isolate well enough that you don’t hear anything other than the music. About $270. I don’t own a pair, but spend more time than I should browsing.’ Michael J. Burns: ‘A friend and I did a side-by-side comparison between his Bose (about $300) and my Jensen Noisebusters that I paid $39.95 for last Fall. The Bose were cushier, but from a noise reduction standpoint they sounded indistinguishable. The Noisebusters had a greater noise reduction spec in its noise reduction band, while the Bose had a larger noise reduction bandwidth. But the impression of everyone who tried them was that the overall noise reduction was pretty much the same. This review compares the $300 Bose to the $40 Noisebusters. This one compares the $100 Brookstone to the $300 Bose and $40 Noisebusters. The Jensen ones are $39.95. Also, Sennheiser makes anti-noise reduction (ANR) headphones for $97.95. Brookstone‘s offering goes for $99. ‘ MASSIVE URLs ‘Also,’ writes Michael on a completely unrelated note, ‘if you ever have massive URL’s that you need to put in an email . . . but worry the email program will break the URL thus rendering it useless . . . this free service is worth knowing about.” NINE Richard Stubbe: ‘You write: ‘Spookier still, all 2-digit numbers divisible by 9 add up to 9 – the 2 + 7 in 27 = 9.’ Actually, the digits of all numbers divisible by 9 add up to 9, not just the two-digit numbers. One of the many cool things about numbers.’ I’VE CHANGED MY E-MAIL ADDRESS As noted yesterday . . . I have change the Me-Mail address this site links to. So if some of you have captured the old e-mail address (andytobias@aol.com), please delete it – I will not be checking it. Instead, please just click Me-Mail, at top right, as before. Thanks.
Handy On-Line Financial Calculators February 19, 2003February 22, 2017 DINKYTOWN.NET Paul Lowry: ‘Here’s a helpful site for doing calculations for lots of financial decision making.’ ☞ I think some of you may want to play with, and bookmark, this one. PCG – ‘NEVER MIND’ A little while back, I wrote that one of the very smartest guys I know, who really does his homework, thinks PCG – then $13.75, now about $1 less – expects it to be $21 or $22 in a couple of years. He could very well be right. But I ran into one of the other very smartest guys I know, mentioned this stock symbol, and was told he had read a very thoughtful bearish analysis of the stock and was considering shorting it. Ain’t that annoying. So, with apologies, I now withdraw my suggestion, as I no longer feel as confident as before. I’VE CHANGED MY E-MAIL ADDRESS Spammed silly, I have change the Me-Mail address this site links to. So if some of you have captured the old e-mail address (andytobias@aol.com), please delete it – I will not be checking it. Instead, please just click Me-Mail, at top right, as before. Thanks. OUR DEFT DIPLOMATIC TOUCH Molly’s take.
Insane, But in a Good Way February 18, 2003January 22, 2017 IT’S A . . . MIRACLE! Cheryl Crumley: ‘How does this work??? It’s impossible!!!’ ☞ Hardly. (See below if you don’t figure it out.) ILLEGAL TO SELL YOUR CD’S IF YOU’VE KEPT COPIES Chris McMahon: ‘He has 750 cd’s?! Good grief, that’s a lot. That reminds me of your column on the kings of old and how our lifestyles today are better for even the most common man. An ancient king would be able to command a live production every evening if he wished, but it would only be one type of music. Here you have access to 750 different kinds, day or night, and you can fit it in the palm of your hand and listen to it without bothering the person next to you [the queen].’ Dan Pritts: ‘Re: the Nomad Jukebox 3 post: (1) Anyone shopping for such a gadget MUST check the Apple iPod. (2) MP3 files are not ‘perfect digital copies’ of the original CDs. They use what is known as ‘lossy’ compression to squeeze the size of the files – this lowers the overall quality. It is a tradeoff between quality and size.’ Andrew Krieg: ‘A lossless compression requires approximately 10 Mb of storage per minute of music. If an average CD were just 40 minutes in length, only 100 ‘perfect’ copies would fit on 40 Gb hard drive. MP3s are great for travel or listening to at work, but I would never replace my CDs (or LPs) with lossy MP3s.’ Andrea Marcucci (and many others): ‘Your reader wrote: ‘When I finish my CD-ripping project, I will have a perfect digital copy of my entire music collection on my hard drive. Upon completion, I plan to sell the original CDs (probably to the local used CD store) for $3-4 each.’ Good plan, except that it’s illegal. You can’t copy copyrighted material and sell it, regardless of whether you sell the copy or the original. I believe current law allows you to make a copy of a video, lp, cd, or tape for personal use or to give away, but you may not profit from it.’ ☞ I should have thought to point that out. Thanks to the many of you who wrote to arouse me from my stupor. AND SPEAKING OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT I still owe you a column with your good feedback. But if I don’t get to it, here’s at least one point of agreement with those of you who disagree with my support of the copyright extension: After a less-than-interminable period of time, copyrights should expire unless they are actively renewed. Maybe there would be a small renewal fee. But even without it, just requiring that some paperwork be filled out would likely return the great bulk of copyrighted material back to the public domain. INSANE – BUT IN A GOOD WAY Wayne Arczynski: ‘I know you are somewhat of an aficionado of Frequent Flyer programs and wanted to point you to this site: flyertalk.com. These folks are insane, but in a good way. The forums show ways to creatively generate all sorts of miles, including mileage runs. I had never heard of this before, but it appears some folks travel with five or so connections to maximize their miles on discounted fares. Here is one example: DCA-MSP-LAX-AMS-LIS . . . LIS-AMS-LAX-DTW-MSP. Fare: $362. Total miles: 19,000 before bonuses.’ ☞ Pavlov was right. BUT DOES IT HAVE AN AIRPORT? Turner Jones: ‘I always liked Scarce Grease, Alabama – especially when I am on a diet. It’s listed on mapquest.com.’ IT’S A . . . MIRACLE! Cheryl Crumley: ‘How does this work??? It’s impossible!!!’ ☞ OK, it’s not a miracle. All two-digit numbers, when you do this little operation (adding the digits together and then subtracting that from the number you started with) work out to a multiple of nine. Take 31: 3 + 1 = 4, and 4 subtracted from 31 = 27, and 27 is divisible by 9. (Spookier still, all 2-digit numbers divisible by 9 add up to 9 – the 2 + 7 in 27 = 9.) Notice that both the crystal ball AND the symbols beside the numbers divisible by 9 change in lockstep together each time you click. The crystal ball knows that any number you choose will work out to a multiple of 9. So the site is programmed to have multiples of nine and the ball always in synch. The first time you use 31, it might produce a smiley face – as does the crystal ball. But click again and it rotates to a different symbol – as does the crystal ball.
Taxation Without Representation (And Scupidity) February 14, 2003February 22, 2017 Columnist Bob Herbert in yesterday’s New York Times: ‘Everywhere you turn, support programs for the poor, the ill, the disabled and the elderly are under attack. Children’s services are being battered. As Mr. Bush smiles and talks about compassion, funding for programs large and small is being squeezed, cut back, eliminated.’ Like cutting out after-school programs for 500,000 kids. ‘Mr. Bush has proposed cuts in juvenile delinquency programs, public housing assistance, children’s health insurance and on and on. He’s even undermined the funding for his own highly touted school reform program, the No Child Left Behind Act,’ writes Herbert. We are entering a period of massive budget deficits – the kind that used to worry Eisenhower and Rockefeller Republicans, but that are seen by today’s Republican leadership as a way to ease undue burdens on the rich and shrink government services for everyone else. Reader Mike Broderick: ‘We are taking Social Security taxes (paid overwhelmingly by lower and middle-class working people) and using them to finance our deficit spree. It’s a good bet that the upper class beneficiaries of this raid on the Social Security Trust Fund won’t be willing to pay taxes to make Social Security payments when the money is needed starting in 2025 or so. The deficits caused by Bush’s current and proposed tax cuts will definitely impact most of us then.’ That’s an interesting way of looking at it: We are taking Social Security taxes (paid overwhelmingly by lower and middle-class working people) and using them to finance our deficit spree. That Social Security ‘lock box’ candidate Bush pledged to protect? He is instead raiding it to slash taxes for the best off. According to estimates by the Bloomberg News Service, President Bush himself will save $44,500 a year if his current tax proposal is enacted. Vice President Cheney will save $327,000 a year. The Clinton/Gore slogan, was: Save Social Security First. Don’t squander the surplus. The unspoken Bush/Cheney slogan is: Save the Rich from Their Crushing Tax Burden. Candidate Bush promised over and over we could do it all: Protect Social Security, provide prescription drug benefits, build up the military, slash taxes for those who were already doing best. A near plurality of the voters took him at his word, and a Republican Supreme Court put him over the top. Yet now we face what could easily be half-trillion dollar annual budget deficits. The justification is that by ‘letting people keep more of their own money,’ the economy will get a boost that will create jobs. Dick Cheney will hire 10 more butlers and maids. Or he’ll buy 10 new American-made cars each year, or 500 refrigerators. Or he’ll start a new business from an undisclosed location. Whatever he does with the money, runs the reasoning, will be better than employing people to run after-school programs for at-risk kids. (It’s less clear what the five principal heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune will do with the estimated $197 million in tax savings they would reap each year if the tax on dividends is eliminated. To make up the revenue, we could always just cancel more programs for kids, or go that much deeper into debt.) The Bush plan is to rack up huge deficits now and let future generations worry about shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare, and the consequences of under-funding care for millions of at-risk kids. James Carville calls this taxation without representation. The people who will bear the cost are too young to vote or not yet alive. Spread the word. [And speaking of words, here’s one: SCUPIDITY – Forgetting to wish your loved one a Happy Valentine. Don’t be scupid!]
Molly’s Bose Earphones in Lizard Lick, Iraq February 13, 2003February 22, 2017 TYSON CHICKEN QUESTION Duane Sheets: ‘So anything that feels pain we shouldn’t eat? There are whackos who think plants feel pain. Why don’t all the humans just die and leave the planet alone?’ ☞ That would be one extreme. The opposite extreme would be to say torturing animals is completely acceptable. Is there perhaps a sensible, moral middle ground? PLACES, EVERYONE Dan Albro: ‘I always liked “Lizard Lick, NC.” BOSE HEADPHONES (again) Joshua Stevens: ‘I fly over 100,000 miles per year and I swear by Bose. I’ve been one of the first to invest in their noise-canceling headphones about four years ago. The sound is both quiet and excellent. Their customer service is also outstanding. Twice I’ve had an issue involving the foam around the ear pieces coming unglued, each time I returned to the local Bose store and they simply exchanged the phones for a brand new pair! ‘Recently, I invested another $350 in my other ultimate travel gadget, the Nomad Jukebox 3 MP3 player from Creative Labs. It features a 40GB hard drive that will hold over 15,000 songs! (Memory chip based MP3 players are so passé.) I am now 75% through the process of ripping the 750 CDs in my collection into MP3 format (2-3 minutes per CD with a Pentium 4 and a 48x CD-ROM drive). The Nomad 3 is the exact same size as a portable CD Player Walkman, weighing in at 11 ounces and has rechargeable batteries good for 22 hours of play time. It also fits perfectly in the Bose headphone case. More importantly, when I finish my CD-ripping project, I will have a perfect digital copy of my entire music collection on my hard drive. Upon completion, I plan to sell the original CDs (probably to the local used CD store) for $3-4 each. This should raise $2,500… more than enough to pay for the Bose headphones, the MP3 player and my Pentium 4 computer! If I had invested my $350 in risky stocks 4 years ago it might be worth only $100 today.’ [Well, maybe, but selling CD’s once you’ve copied them and kept the copies is illegal.] ATTACK IRAQ? Michael Axelrod: ‘For a carefully reasoned case for invading Iraq, see The Threatening Storm by Kenneth Pollack. After considering a number of options, the author reluctantly concludes that the least dangerous course of action is to invade Iraq without further delay. Pollack was a CIA analyst specializing in Iraq. He explains why ‘containment’ won’t work. Adlai E. Stevenson III presents more or less the standard left-of-center case for not invading Iraq. Some of his assertions are just flat-out wrong, such as: ‘Even top officials at the Central Intelligence Agency have acknowledged that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction are only a threat if Iraq is attacked.’ Pollack discusses this very point at length, and in depth. It’s a very dangerous assumption.’ MOLLY ON BEATING TAXES She writes (in part): ‘What is it with rich people that 60 percent of a $100 million is not enough? What kind of sickness is that? You make $100 million on stock options, do you honestly think you earned it? Did you work 10,000 times harder than a guy who gets $10,000 a year for digging ditches? Even a thousand times harder? A hundred? Ten? It is no secret that the ultimate goal of the conservative movement in this country is to get rid of the IRS and the progressive income tax entirely. The right-wing foundations have been talking about it for years. It is genuinely difficult to understand the level of greed and venality that would make someone think everyone else should pay taxes on what they make, but that he doesn’t have to . . . ‘ ☞ It is a grand time to be rich and powerful in America.