A Smidgeon of Personal Finance June 16, 2004January 21, 2017 Well, it turns out Reagan never did say AIDS in his State of the Union address, so he seems to have used the word exactly once in his first 6 years in office. And if you thought yesterday’s Larry Speakes transcript was bad . . . But before we start all that again (I thought yesterday was your last word!), how about at least a smidgeon of personal finance? EARN A SMIDGEON EXTRA Andy Martin: ‘ING Direct‘s 5-year CD at the moment pays 4.4%. If you don’t make it to 5 years, and decide to do something else with the money, you forfeit half the rate and so earn only 2.2%. But that’s still higher than ING’s current 2.1% rate. So why not take the CD? Worst case, you earn a little more.’ SAVE A SMIDGEON Gary Diehl: ‘I have always been quick to use generics, but after having been given a large bottle of Tide detergent sometime back [If only Charles were satisfied with gifts like this!-A.T.] I discovered something interesting. Tide was so thick and powerful compared to the watery brand I usually used, it actually made the clothes feel soapy. So each time I washed using less, until I discovered that a quarter of the recommended amount worked great. Everything comes out very clean and smelling good. Sometimes if I have a truly grimy load I will go to a third. For bad stains I will pre-treat them with a spray bottle filled with (you guessed it) Tide. I switched over a year ago, my clothes are just as clean, and I spend less money keeping them that way.’ IT MAY SEEM LIKE A SMIDGEON TO YOU, BUT . . . Harry Mark: ‘A quote I thought you might enjoy (attributed to Anonymous): If you lend a guy twenty dollars and you never see him again, it was probably worth the money.‘ ☞ I lent Mark Holman $15 in the summer of 1970, back when $15 was more – especially to me – than it is now. And I never saw him again. And, I don’t want to frighten any of you, but: I’m still looking for him. Tomorrow: Laying Blame Where’s It’s Due
Your Last Words on This Topic June 15, 2004February 25, 2017 Last week, we had some discussion of the early AIDS crisis, which now affects about 60 million people worldwide. Several of you offered additional material or perspectives, so I wanted to give the topic one more day. Thanks to the Boston Phoenix for the following. Note that at the time of this press briefing, it had been 15 months since the New York Times ran its first story on what came to be known as AIDS. THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary PRESS BRIEFING BY LARRY SPEAKES October 15, 1982 The Briefing Room 12:45pm EDT Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement – the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases? MR. SPEAKES: What’s AIDS? Q: Over a third of them have died. It’s known as “gay plague.” (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it’s a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it? MR. SPEAKES: I don’t have it. Do you? (Laughter.) Q: No, I don’t. MR. SPEAKES: You didn’t answer my question. Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President – MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.) Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke? MR. SPEAKES: No, I don’t know anything about it, Lester. Q: Does the President, does anyone in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry? MR. SPEAKES: I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s been any – Q: Nobody knows? MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester. Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping – MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he’s had no – (laughter) – no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is. Q: The President doesn’t have gay plague, is that what you’re saying or what? MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn’t say that. Q: Didn’t say that? MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn’t you stay there? (Laughter.) Q: Because I love you Larry, that’s why (Laughter.) MR. SPEAKES: Oh I see. Just don’t put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.) Q: Oh, I retract that. MR. SPEAKES: I hope so. Q: It’s too late. This transcript is taken from the prologue to Jon Cohen’s 2001 book, Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine, the full text of which can be found here. Brian Murphy: ‘With all this talk of the homosexual population and the lack of response by the CDC or Reagan’s administration, one often fails to remember those who were not gay and became infected because of a lack of policy and prevention methods. Tens of thousands of hemophiliacs around the world were supplied with infected blood. These individuals had to choose between death without an infusion or accept the risk of infection. I know this because my brother needed the transfusion when he was twelve after falling off his bike. He died from AIDS in 1997 at the age of 23.’ Name Withheld: ‘Ten years ago my brother, a heterosexual, non-drug abuser, died of AIDS dementia after four tough years. He was not one of the ‘untouchable’ groups allowed to die (for their sins, apparently). Reagan slept while all kinds of Americans died of AIDS. When my brother died in a hospice, many of the people dying there were hemophiliacs, abandoned by their government. Reagan had the ‘bully pulpit’ but did nothing. Feel free to publish this but withhold my name; I don’t want to traumatize my family any more than they have already been traumatized.’ John Bakke: ‘I want to point out something about the figures you had in your June 9 posting. Open the PDF you linked to, and go to page 6, from which the figures were taken. The figures you list include Medicaid and Medicare. For the purposes of considering whether Reagan promoted any sort of urgent response to HIV/AIDS, these figures can be ignored; it represents non-discretionary spending on futile care for people who lay dying, waiting for effective treatments that were barely being pursued. The correct figures to cite – the money that was voluntarily allocated to research – are [much smaller]. How much damage might have been avoided if the research had been more aggressive in the mid-1980s! I’d compare those early foot-dragging years to saving for retirement: starting early has a disproportionately large impact on later results.’ B Norse: ‘Reagan stood up for the LGBT community in the 1970’s when that was really tough to do [fighting California’s Briggs Amendment that would have barred gays from teaching in public schools]. He had zero political reasons to support us and many not to. But he did, because he was a good and decent human being. In that light, I don’t buy the argument that Reagan dragged his feet because it was just gays dying.’ ☞ That is a good perspective. My own assumption is that the foot-dragging was more a matter of avoiding an uncomfortable topic, and taking his cues from those around him, than any active animus toward his and Nancy’s gay friends. But to the thousands who needlessly died miserable deaths (even a six-month acceleration in the response curve would have saved huge numbers of people), the President’s friendly optimism is little consolation. And his waiting literally years and years to publicly address the crisis, or express sympathy for the suffering . . . well, if you lived through it, week after week after week after week, it is not an easy thing to forget. With thousands of his fellow Americans dying, and millions more afraid for their own health or for the health of loved ones, this was not a small oversight. Andy (not me, another Andy): ‘Like many gay men, you’ve embraced the myth, perpetuated by the left, that Reagan was indifferent to the AIDS Crisis. Even when confronted with budget figures, you dismiss the facts and hold tightly to your prejudices. Reagan’s Surgeon General was the predominant leader in the effort to fight AIDS in the 1980’s, and let’s face it – it doesn’t matter who was President back then, antiviral treatment didn’t exist and medical science wasn’t where it is today, and it wouldn’t be where it is today if it weren’t for the spending that took place during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency. ‘The 40th president spoke of AIDS no later than September 17, 1985. Responding to a question on AIDS research, the president said: [I]ncluding what we have in the budget for ’86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I’m sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it’ll be 126 million next year. So, this is a top priority with us. Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer. ‘President Reagan’s February 6, 1986 State of the Union address included this specific passage where he says the word ‘AIDS’ five times: We will continue, as a high priority, the fight against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). An unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this major epidemic public health threat. The number of AIDS cases is expected to increase. While there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against AIDS, none is immediately at hand. Consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the AIDS virus. To this end, I am asking the Surgeon General to prepare a report to the American people on AIDS. ‘Did Ronald Reagan make AIDS the #1 priority during his term in office? No, he didn’t. He was busy dealing with the economy, national defense and the cold war. But you know what? To a young man coming out of the closet during the Eighties, because of the efforts of his Surgeon General I learned that I couldn’t participate in anonymous sex without taking safety precautions. Because of that, I’m alive and healthy today. ‘The revisionist history and outright lies being spewed by the Democrats are really turning me off. If I thought the right wing commentators were annoying, I’m finding the current left wing whininess downright shrill. As an officer of the Democratic Party, you need to knock some of your people upside the head and tell them to knock it off. I’m one of those swing voters and you people are really pissing me off.’ ☞ Thanks, Andy. You’re right to set the record straight – a lot of people (including me, I think) have incorrectly asserted that President Reagan never publicly uttered the word until 1987. (That is the year he actually made a speech about it.) In fact, he never uttered the word in 1981, 1982, 1983, or 1984, but did utter it once in 1985 in response to a question and five times over the course of 30 seconds in 1986. Which is definitely better than nothing. But I don’t think the failure of Democrats and others to note those six instances is willful deception or revisionism, or that it changes the larger point very much – certainly not about 1981 or 1982 or 1983 or 1984, but even, perhaps, about 1985 and 1986. It was not until 1987 (so far as I can tell) that he spent more than a minute or so on the topic in a public address. As for the Surgeon General you credit with saving your life – and for whom I have the highest regard also – here is how the San Francisco Chronicle reported his own views: Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan’s surgeon general, has said that because of “intradepartmental politics” he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was “because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs.” The president’s advisers, Koop said, “took the stand, ‘They are only getting what they justly deserve.'” DO YOU PAY ESTIMATED TAX? IF SO, REMEMBER TO SEND IN YOUR 2ND QUARTERLY PAYMENT TODAY!
If You Own No Oil Stocks June 14, 2004January 21, 2017 Click here for thoughts on oil from a man aptly named Kevin Drum. (Kevin Kegger’s thoughts on the beer supply to follow next week.) Current demand for crude oil, he says, is about 80 million barrels per day . . . there is practically no spare producing capacity anywhere in the world . . . yet demand for oil increases by about 2 million barrels each year. On February 16, I linked to Stephen Leeb’s book, which predicts $100-a-barrel oil in the not too distant future. The little stock I suggested that day has so far gone exactly nowhere, and I don’t know whether it ever will. Worse still has been the Canadian gas producer I have suggested here for years, symbol CSPLF. I am nothing if not patient. (OK, I’m as impatient as the next guy. I am nothing if not stubborn.) But I’m looking at others, also, more mainstream – for example, I’ve just bought some Anadarko (APC) – because even though I don’t know anything about oil anyone else doesn’t know (an important caveat), and even though the stock prices of the more prominent energy companies surely already reflect much of what people do know, I would still guess that oil and gas producers may do well in the years ahead. We can ‘produce’ tremendous quantities of new energy in the U.S. over the next 10 or 20 years by more than doubling the fuel efficiency of our automotive fleet, by making our buildings more efficient, and so on. This is no doubt the single most important set of things we can do to enhance our future prosperity, health and security. But what about the Chinese? How much more fuel efficient can a bicycle get? As their economy, and the Indian economy, grow, won’t demand grow with it? So in the few decades before we succeed in powering our lives the way they do in sci-fi movies (something will glow green, is all I know), you might do worse than having an oil stock or two in your portfolio. But don’t bet too much. Markets have a way of confounding expectations. One smart friend of mine takes this view: ‘The Washington Monthly article has some facts wrong. Saudi spare capacity is greater than 1.5 million barrels a day. Spare capacity also exists in Kuwait, UAE, and elsewhere (Nigeria, Russia). Based on my experience, new wells can be completed quickly. They could increase capacity very rapidly and extensively in Saudi Arabia if they wanted. The price of oil is low compared to 1980. But without a cartel, the price would be $8 or less if easily available Saudi and Iraqi oil costing $2 came to market.’ Normally, of course, the time to buy something is when no one is thinking about it. Another reason to be wary. And still I think about all those bicycles.
The Presidential Debates – Really June 11, 2004March 25, 2012 The Presidential debates – an interesting preview.
The Presidential Debates June 10, 2004February 25, 2017 But first . . . Craig: ‘Even when the facts don’t support your claim on the Reagan Administration and AIDS, with support for research doubling every year from 82 to ’86, what did you want the President to do, look into the microscope himself? Any Poly Sci 101 student knows laws are originated in the House with lobbying help coming from special interest groups such as ACT-UP. It seems to me that government was working and responding rather well.’ ☞ I hear your frustration, Craig. What do these people want from us? But there’s frustration on the other side, too. As you know, tens of millions people, each one as real as you or me, are now infected with AIDS. As recounted in Tuesday’s San Francisco Chronicle, President Reagan did not publicly discuss AIDS in any meaningful way until late in his second term, after more than 20,000 mostly-young Americans had died and the disease had spread to 113 countries. Another President might have sounded the alarm, or expressed concern, after just five or ten thousand deaths. According to the Chronicle piece: Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan’s surgeon general, has said that because of “intradepartmental politics” he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was “because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs.” The president’s advisers, Koop said, “took the stand, ‘They are only getting what they justly deserve.'” Some people still feel this way. That’s a topic for another day. As for laws originating in the House, I was under the impression that either the House or the Senate could introduce legislation – but that not infrequently the impetus for legislation, and spending priorities and budgets, come from the White House. From June 1981 to June 1982 [recounts the cheerfully titled Encyclopedia of AIDS], the period generally considered the first twelve months of the epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spent $1 million on AIDS, compared with $9 million in response to the much smaller problem of Legionnaires’ disease. In late 1982, Congress allocated $2.6 million to be targeted for the CDC’s AIDS research, but the Reagan administration claimed that the CDC did not need the money and opposed any congressional supplemental appropriations designed to fund federal governmental AIDS policy efforts. In the absence of presidential leadership, Congress was forced to ascertain on its own how much money doctors working inside government needed to address the AIDS epidemic. The Reagan administration resisted these efforts but refused to exercise an on-the-record veto of supplementary AIDS funding efforts. In the crucial early years of the epidemic, when federal resources could have been profitably spent on basic research and prevention education, federal AIDS researchers relied on supplemental funding in the form of continuing resolutions initiated by Congress. Year after year, Congress significantly increased AIDS funding relative to the Reagan budgetary proposals. For those really interested in the early years of this plague – which could reach into the hundreds of millions of victims in the decade ahead – there is Randy Shilts’s And the Band Played On. Okay . . . tomorrow: The Presidential Debates – An Interesting Preview
Apples and Corn June 9, 2004February 25, 2017 APPLES Not to inject even the faintest note of personal finance here, but the Apple LEAPS suggested on November 25 had a little more than doubled by March 31, when I suggested you might sell half, taking your own money off the table and playing with the ‘house’s money’ from there on out. Well, if you failed to do that, now’s another good chance to do so – they have about tripled. CORN Stephen Willey: ‘Raw corn is fine, except I think you left out the part about thoroughly washing the corn to remove pesticides and, especially, e coli and other bacteria.’ Fred Whitmore: ‘OK so raw corn is good. It is even more amazing first thing in the morning, right off the stalk, and it is the Silver Queen variety.’ Mike Wallin: ‘After your nauseating corn story, and many previous equally disgusting recipes and aversion to spending money on decent clothes, I just had this question for you: ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE GAY?’ ☞ Trust me. AS CORNY AS APPLE PIE Monday I ran the ‘What Is an American’ essay. We can use a little corny patriotism every now and then. But as I tried to suggest in a general way, we may not be quite so good as that essay suggested (though we’re good!). Rajesh Jayaprakash ‘generally agrees’ with the essay except for the following points: 1. It is a bit disingenuous to think that America poured arms and supplies into Afghanisthan to help the Afghans to win their freedom. 2. The fact that people from developed countries are admitted freely into America with minimal immigration restrictions while people from third-world countries are not puts to the lie the claim that America is ready to open its arms wide to ‘your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, the tempest tossed.’ This may have been true some fifty years ago, but not today. 3. The point that is being missed is that, to the rest of the world, Americans are synonymous with the American government. The sooner Americans wake up to the fact that, as Van Halen put it, their government is right now doing things that they think only other governments do, the better for everyone. IF ONLY AN APPLE A DAY HAD BEEN ENOUGH Peter L. DeWolf: ‘When I pointed out Monday’s ‘Reagan and AIDS’ letter to somebody, they called it ‘one of those big lie’ letters and said that this report lists the following as annual Federal spending on AIDS research . . . In 1982, $8 million was spent on AIDS. In 1983, $44 million. In 1984, $103 million In 1985, $205 million In 1986, $508 million In 1987, $922 million In 1988, $1,625 million In 1989, $2,322 million. …which doesn’t look like the Reagan administration was just ignoring the problem. Not that I liked Reagan, particularly, but what am I to believe?’ ☞ One prominent AIDS activist I asked replied, ‘I wouldn’t argue with the figures. I haven’t had a chance to look them up. I do know that the big increases came from Congressional pressure, ACT UP pressure, and the sad reality that gay men were dying by the thousands (hard to ignore). But, there is NO question that the Reagan Administration ignored the AIDS crisis for years. There is NO question that he did not specifically address the crisis until 1987. Yes, he did use the “word” before that – including in a press conference where he essentially launched the abstinence-only campaign (fit in well with Nancy Reagan’s ‘just say no’ anti-drug work). The notion that the administration was responsive is complete revisionist history. I don’t have to rely on others, we lived through it. ACT UP’s Silence=Death poster came out in 1987 and it was specifically focused on Reagan’s silence and the lethargy/resistance of the CDC and FDA. Yes, funding from the Ryan White Act did start, but who can forget that it was all about Ryan and other ‘innocent victims’ – not the community being decimated? I could go on and on.’ He suggests, diplomatically, that ‘the best way to respond to the emails you received’ might be something like this: Thanks for bringing another viewpoint to the conversation. Many people I know and respect worked tirelessly during the 1980’s to fight the growing epidemic before it even had a name. They were people from both parties and worked on the inside and from the outside. With nearly one voice, they believe that the government’s response was slow and hindered by anti-gay animus within the Reagan administration. That is not to say that everyone thinks the president was anti-gay or that programs implemented toward the end of his term (e.g., the Ryan White Act) were bad. Well said.
Dollar v. Euro; Neutral v. Objective June 8, 2004February 25, 2017 This is an interesting editorial on the media (emphasis added): Published June 3, 2004 Minneapolis Star Tribune For some time, much of American journalism has suffered from a professional blind spot that caused poor service to listeners, readers and viewers. Many practitioners of the craft somehow lost the difference between being neutral and being objective. That’s beginning to change now, and it’s a very good thing for this democracy. The difference between neutrality and objectivity is this: Neutrality requires that you give equal billing to people who say the earth is flat and those who say it is round. Objectivity allows you to point out the evidence that the flat-earth folks are wrong. In political reporting, neutrality stops at saying candidate X says this and candidate Y says that, without any attempt to explain who is right and who is wrong and in what degree. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is the most prominent example of the newly rediscovered requirements of objectivity. In Sunday’s Post, Milbank and reporter Jim VandeHei had a story headlined, “From Bush, unprecedented negativity.” The two chronicled the attacks on Sen. John Kerry the week before: Vice President Dick Cheney said Kerry “has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all” and said Kerry “promised to repeal most of the Bush tax cuts within his first 100 days in office.” Bush’s campaign aired an ad “saying Kerry would scrap wiretaps that are needed to hunt terrorists.” The Bush team asserted “that Kerry wants to raise the gasoline tax by 50 cents.” Another Bush ad said that “Kerry now opposes education changes that he supported in 2001.” Then came the essential paragraph: “The charges were all tough, serious — and wrong, or at least highly misleading. Kerry did not question the war on terrorism, has proposed repealing tax cuts only for those earning more than $200,000, supports wiretaps, has not endorsed a 50-cent gasoline tax increase in 10 years and continues to support the education changes, albeit with modifications.” The two reporters went on to report that “scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts.” This kind of truth-telling has been aided by the emergence of Web sites such as the nonpartisan factcheck.org, run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It documents exaggeration and outright lies by both parties. By far the most examples, and the most egregious ones, this year have come from the Bush campaign. In pointing to the qualitative and quantitative difference, the two Washington Post reporters also avoided another problem of slipshod reporting that has bugged people for years. Democratic strategist James Carville put it this way in 1992: “We say one plus one equals three, and the Bush folks say one plus one equals three thousand, and you write, ‘both campaigns wrong.’ “ In the Milbank-VandeHei piece, one expert says the Bush campaign is so negative because it has no choice: “With low poll numbers and a volatile situation in Iraq, Bush has more hope of tarnishing Kerry’s image than promoting his own.” But this “devil made me do it” defense is far too kind. The Bush family has always campaigned this way reflexively; it’s what they do, along with smearing anyone who disagrees with them. Just consider the smears of the past year, of people like Ambassador Joe Wilson, counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, 9/11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick and ABC newsman Jeffrey Kofman (he’s Canadian and he’s gay, so don’t believe his reports about low morale in Iraq). Democracy, the old saying goes, is a contact sport. You expect vigorous give-and-take, and you allow for a certain amount of rhetorical spin. But blatant lies and smears are an attempt to undermine democracy by presenting Americans with a false choice, in this case with a false John Kerry. It will take journalism of the Milbank-VandeHei variety to ensure you understand that. © Copyright 2004 Star Tribune. All rights reserved. And this is an interesting piece on the dollar.
Two Deaths June 7, 2004February 25, 2017 I always felt that Ronald Reagan turned out to be the right man at the right time in one crucial way (though I hadn’t expected it when he was elected). Namely, in the power of his friendly optimism. ‘Don’t worry, be happy,’ was the unspoken theme of his economic policy at a time when we had lots to worry and little to be happy about. And yet – in tandem with a strong hand from Fed Chairman State Paul Volcker – it proved self-fulfilling. You’ve likely seen this already; it has been shooting around the Internet for nearly three years now. I just got it again yesterday. It’s not quite what it purports to be (see below). But it is affecting nonetheless, and perhaps fitting to the memory of President Reagan, who always chose to see America at her best. What Is an American? You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American. So an Australian dentist wrote the following to let everyone know what an American is, so they would know when they found one. (Good on ya, mate!!!!) An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, Pakistani, or Afghan. An American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as Native Americans. An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses. An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that, he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God. An American is from the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person the pursuit of happiness. An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need. When Afghanistan was overrun by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country! As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan. Americans welcome the best, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best athletes. But they also welcome the least. The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America. Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. I’ve been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 other countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists. So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did Generals Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American. Author unknown This was ‘not penned by an Australian (or a dentist),’ in point of fact, as snopes.com informs us, ‘but by Peter Ferrara, an associate professor of law at the George Mason University School of Law in Northern Virginia.’ It appeared in the issue of National Review following September 11. Even so, ignoring our imperfections and sometimes humongous missteps, it calls on us to be our best. Ronald Reagan would have liked that. I was going to leave it there, ignoring the several less than laudatory e-mails I got today on the passing of our 40th President. There is a time and a place. But having lost more than 100 friends myself to AIDS, I was particularly affected by this one. Rest in peace, Ronald Reagan – and Steven Powsner.
Nutty Stocks, Corn for Guys on the Go, Jogging in Iraq June 4, 2004February 25, 2017 BOREALIS Well, this stock that I’ve written about for so many years – that is surely going to zero, but I own a ton of it – has lately been trading just under $6, giving the entire enterprise a market cap of $30 million. (Five million shares at $6 each.) Its symbol is BOREF, and if you think it is lightly traded, you should see the stock of its ‘publicly traded’ subsidiaries. They barely ever trade at all. Each Borealis share represents ownership of approximately one share of: CHOMF (Chorus Motors, last reported trade at $6) . . . COLCF (Cool Chips, last reported trade at $10) . . . PWCHF (Power Chips, last reported trade at $6) . . . and RCHBF (Roche Bay, last reported trade at $7). So each $6 Borealis share supposedly represents about $29 worth of its subsidiaries. This is not for an instant to declare that the market prices of the subsidiaries mean a lot. Their true value is either zero (which I have to assume) or many times the current prices (which is my dream). Only time will tell whether any of this is real. But I’d rather own $29 ‘worth’ of the subsidiaries for $6 than for $29. SPEAKING OF NUTTY STOCKS Steve: ‘Actually, the price of SVNX never reached $2400, it reached $240. The quotes you’re getting are inflated by an adjustment for a 1-for-10 reverse split last year. But the 99.9% percentage loss is correct, as an unadjusted original share would now fetch only about 30 cents, down from $240.’ MY SUMMER CORN RECIPE FOR GUYS ON THE GO It has been a while since I’ve shared a recipe from my work in progress, Cooking Like a Guy™ (remember to slam your open palm on the table for manly emphasis as you say it). So, with summer in the air, here’s one: Quick Corn: 1. Buy some really nice young sweet corn. 2. Shuck. 3. Serve. I know this would seem to skip the “cook and slather in butter and salt” steps, which if you have time I would encourage you to take. But I have discovered, at considerable personal risk to myself by trying it out for you, that if you’re in a hurry, this works fine. Tasty, crunchy, with no untoward aftereffects. “Corn Aldente” I call it. “Eating Like a Rodent,” my partner calls it. To each his own. Just try to avoid the little poison pellets roommates may leave out for you around the baseboard. SPEAKING OF FRESH CORN James Redekop: “We use an online grocery delivery company up here in Toronto called Grocery Gateway. Just thinking about Karen Collins’ complaint about the waste of boxes: Grocery Gateway will take the boxes from a delivery back on the next delivery, to reuse (or recycle if they’re wearing out). Very efficient.” JOGGING AROUND THE GREEN ZONE Click here for a really interesting Iraqi-American’s account.
Smelly Bonds June 3, 2004February 25, 2017 MUNICIPAL BONDS If you expect long-term interest rates to head back up, this could be a better time to be selling long-term municipal bonds than buying them. And it is on the sale that your broker may be most tempted to take advantage of you. How do you know what they should sell for? This site gives you a sense of what the prices of thousands of the more widely traded issues should be. Your broker will count on your inertia, figuring you will not likely go to the trouble of selling the bonds elsewhere. But at least this site may give you an argument to get a better price. And here are two municipal bond specialists you could call for a competing bid: Stoever Glass and Lebenthal. You might find your broker will to match it to keep from losing a chunk of your assets. SMELLY CAT This is Phoebe’s song, most of you know, from ‘Friends.’ But what if you are a smelly cat? Or you have smelly dogs? (Feet, that is.) I was trying to have a serious conversation with you about global climate change and the hole in the ozone layer – which 25 years of global cooperation in banning chlorofluorocarbons* seems now to be mending – and all you can think of is RightGuard. Kathryn Lance: ‘With regard to CFCs and deodorants, check out nomoreodor.com, which offers a completely natural, extremely effective way to eliminate underarm and foot odor without any impact on the environment. You have to pay some trivial amount for the formula and promise never to reveal the secret. I tried this two years ago and have not had to spend a cent on deodorant since.’ ☞ I feel the need to tell you that, as your faithful correspondent, I clicked the link and even paid the $19.95 to learn the secret and make sure I wasn’t turning you on to some sort of Satanic odor-eater cult. I came to the site looking to save hundreds of dollars a year on deodorant. But what I took from the experience (because it occurred to me that a year’s supply may not cost me more than $10), is that this site would be of interest primarily to those who have a problem – as when, for example, removing their shoes at airport security the guards faint dead away. In which case, incidentally, you will learn how to fix not just your feet but also the smelly shoes they inhabit. *I can see but one way to use this word in Scrabble, and now that you have raised the issue, I think I will spend the rest of my life hoping someday to do so. Terminating flush right on the triple word score if possible, you play the word CARBONS – 92 points. Then, at some point, you or your opponent lays down FLU on the same row, the requisite number of spaces to the left. Later, to the left of that, OR. So now you have _ _ _ O R _ F L U _ _ _ C A R B O N S. Note there are seven letters left and you have seven tiles on your rack. It’s your turn. Down go those seven letters, and you’ve done it! Although actually, if you really want to take a gamble, you could lay down CARBONS to terminate one short of the triple word score. This could be 86 points, nearly as good, if you began on the top or bottom ‘center’ triple word score. Then, when you laid down your triumphant seven letters to complete the word, it would start on a triple word, for a score, I am immensely please to tell you, of . . . oh, no! The Scrabble board is only 15 spaces wide! We need a shorter molecule!