Some Mora Borealis August 31, 2004February 27, 2017 But first . . . ‘I am a friend of John Kerry’s. I think he would be a good president. … I think he is resolute, yes. … I think he is strong enough to be President.’ [John McCain on ABC Nightly News yesterday] If we are so much safer . . . where is Osama Bin Laden? How does having so much of the world hate us make us safer? Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t feel safer. And now . . . Each share of Borealis (BOREF) represents roughly one share in each of its four semi-public subsidiaries, Chorus Motors (CHOMF), Cool Chips (COLCF), Power chips (PWCHF), and Roche Bay (RCHBF). I say semi-public, because these stocks trade rarely, in tiny quantities, and are relegated to the Pink Sheets. At recent prices, it would cost you about $30 to buy one share in each of the four . . . or $7 if you simply bought a share of Borealis, which owns a share in each of the four. This is not to say that the subsidiaries are worth a collective $30. They may be worth zero. But better to lose $7 than $30, in that case. And if one of these companies did prove to be worth something – a big if, to be sure – that might suggest that the others aren’t scams or pipedreams either. With that as background – and the full disclosure to newcomers to this column that I own a ton of this wacky speculation – I offer a recent communication to the shareholders of one of the majority-owned subsidiaries. Note that with 5 million shares outstanding, selling at $7 or so each, Borealis is valued overall at $35 million – the cost of a nice corporate jet. Chorus Motors plc Letter to Shareholders 10 August, 2004 *Fellow Members:* We now have product and we are tendering bids for specialty Chorus® Meshcon™ and Chorus® Star™ systems for major customers. Please look at http://www.chorusmotors.gi/press/pr_040803.shtml for our most recent press release, relating to the new test data on our Chorus Meshcon motor system. These are very heady times for Chorus Motors plc. We have completed the basic development of the Chorus Meshcon and Chorus Star technology. We demonstrated in June 2003 a 1.5 horsepower motor and in June 2004 we completed development of a plug- and-play 20-hp Chorus Meshcon motor system. We are now in a position to be a substantial virtual producer of these motor systems that transform the engineering envelope for electric motors. Test results, posted recently on the Chorus Motors Website, show that a Chorus Meshcon system can produce at least five times more startup torque than a comparable conventional drive system, using strict criteria for a true apples to apples comparison. This new capability means that motors (Chorus, of course) can now be used in many applications where previously no motor could offer the combination of high torque, small size and light weight required. The market for Chorus systems will thus be broader than the current market for electric motors as Chorus replaces not only conventional motors, but also hydraulic and pneumatic systems and even internal-combustion engines for many purposes. Indeed, we have spent much of the past year designing Chorus systems for highly-demanding (and in some cases novel) applications for major corporations. While it takes significant time for us to design and customers to evaluate these new systems, we expect that some of these designs will lead to large and multi-year supply contracts. Let us give a little background on what has happened here from our viewpoint and perspective. With our working plug-and-play 20-hp Chorus Meshcon motor, we have in hand the culmination of decades of work by many research teams in the United States. For almost as long as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has existed, it has been funding programs looking for a “better”, “more efficient” and higher-torque electric motor. In our opinion, motor R&D has been very weak for decades. The main textbooks were written in the 1950s, and the really seminal work was done around a century ago and published from 1915 to 1917. Motor companies learned the hard way since the early days of spectacular advances in understanding and the ability to build motors that spending money on research was a waste – because for so many years it was. In the late 1950s the advent of power silicon, and its capability to synthesize variable frequency power was the first serious advance in over 50 years. Initially silicon-controlled rectifiers (SCRs) came on-line in the 1960s, but they could not do a proper sine wave because they could not switch fast enough. The transistor had a faster switching speed, allowing pulse-width-modulation (pwm), but there was a problem: making variable frequency drives requires a microprocessor. So while inverters were available for motors in the 1960s, they did not become a major part of the supply chain and normal corporate offerings until the 1990s. Partially this slow adoption was a result of the technology not being available. Motor companies were also slow to adopt electronic drives because they saw little competitive advantage in doing so. In this, they were basically correct: it took from the 1960s to today to make electronic drives relatively common. Nobody in the business today currently selling product into the market has a truly superior technology solution which gives them proprietary pricing, margins are thin, and strong profits are not to be found in this commodity industry. Chorus started working in this business for three reasons: We saw that the industry did not aggressively research breakthrough technologies. We saw that the market size, at more than $100 billion yearly, meant that if something really special did come along there would be a superb opportunity to profit. Most important of all, we had a researcher who convinced us early on that he really understood AC electric motors at a level that perhaps no one since their inventor, Nikola Tesla, has even approached. The few researchers left in the field are primarily academics, and they have done an excellent job of furthering the incremental advances still possible with standard brushless and AC induction technologies. These advances include better ways to control a given drive, better ways to make high-speed machines, and still-better ways to crowd out harmonics by simulating more perfect sine waves. When we started making Chorus machines back in the mid-1990s, we set out to try to go back to the basics. So instead of working in an area which already had researchers (such as vector-field control), we went in an entirely new direction with high phase order machines and concentrated windings. Instead of minimizing harmonics, as everyone else was doing, we explicitly embraced them. There is no surprise that nobody else went in this direction. Academics were not doing basic research any more, and nobody would have funded such work. Motor companies had learned not to invest in research anyway – and certainly not in something which would take time to pan out. The best candidates might have been companies making inverters (certainly we have found that drives engineers have been the quickest to understand Chorus Meshcon), but their direct focus on immediate products meant that they would not invest in or invent a strategic shift such as Chorus. So the field was left wide open, and we drove right in. This is why our patent coverage is so strong: nobody had previously understood what could be achieved with high-phase-order drives and concentrated windings. In terms of basic concepts, Chorus Meshcon could not have been demonstrated 20 or perhaps even 10 years ago. The computing hardware was not there, and it is still not there in the digital signal processors used by most drive companies and researchers. We are using processors that are now inexpensive and common. But they had no equal just five years ago. Our progress has certainly not been smooth. It has been painfully slow with many false hopes and starts. Now, over ten years later, we have developed Chorus Meshcon and Chorus Star. We have shown that our technology is superior to any other motor/drive in the world capable of the same torque-speed profile. And Chorus Motors owns 100% of this proprietary patented technology. Instead of trying to work with new materials or a new control paradigm, we have cheerfully adopted all of the excellent incremental work done in the three-phase world. We use standard materials, standard bearings, and standard control modules. This is why it is possible for Semikron® Limited to make our drives, and a normal motor manufacturer can wind a Chorus machine. Our building blocks are the same – we just think about the way those blocks should be assembled differently from anyone else. And what makes it all so much fun is that our motors and drives outperform any other system and we provide a huge increase in the size of the available engineering envelope. We are currently bidding on several large orders. We are increasingly confident that the adoption of our science will be quick, as our technology allows companies to increase their engineering envelope and thus opens new and huge markets for electric motors. Again, we are initially going after the high-value sales. Chorus Motors is becoming a spectacular business. *Our Organizational Structure* Chorus Motors plc is a public quoted company trading under the symbol CHOMF. Chorus Motors is a majority-owned subsidiary of Borealis Exploration Limited. Our immediate parent is Borealis’ 98%-owned subsidiary, Borealis Technical Limited, which owns all patents on the Chorus Star and Meshcon technologies and has licensed them exclusively to Chorus Motors plc. Chorus Motors plc has 10,000,000 shares authorized and, at fiscal year-end, had 6,396,467 shares outstanding, of which Borealis owned 5,222,672 shares, or 82% of the total. Both Borealis and Chorus Motors plc are incorporated in Gibraltar. Our headquarters and legal domicile are in Gibraltar, Chorus Motors operates as a virtual company, and the Internet plays a dominant role in our day-to-day work. It is the means by which we manage our businesses, discuss new ideas, and promote ourselves to the outside world. Modern communications technology has allowed us to circumvent the traditional problems associated with working on four continents and twenty time zones. Because of this, we have access to facilities and personnel about which a company of our size would normally only be able to dream. Chorus has consultants around the world, all of whom work over e-mail. Management and technical discussions take place over the Internet. Chorus Motors runs a continual Board of Directors meeting 24 x 365, with an annual traffic of well over 3,000 messages to each board member. Chorus has intense direct participatory management, and many consultants to the Company sit in on the board meetings and provide input even while they are not voting members. Our Website, www.chorusmotors.gi, makes information about our technology available, and informs shareholders, other companies, and the general public about Chorus Motors. The Website is frequently updated, and our major disclosed technologies are described on the site in detail. Additionally, Borealis sends out a weekly update (as well as daily share trades with its prices) to shareholders and to all the major news organizations and other interested parties, detailing Chorus’ ongoing work and progress (please e-mail pr@chorusmotors.gi if you would like to receive these updates). Through this wide distribution, we are able to keep people better informed than through traditional channels. Your management uses this technology to maintain a close relationship with our shareholders. This virtual company structure is great to work with and allows us to have many people directly involved in the decision-making processes at Chorus. This approach may not be conventional, but the results to date have validated the business structure. *Patents and Intellectual Property* Borealis Technical Limited so far has been granted a number of patents for its Chorus Motor and Meshcon technologies, and we are applying for additional patents as our continuing research warrants. In fiscal 2004 we were granted three new patents related to Chorus’ technologies. We have recently, for example, received patents covering the winding of electric motors and the Meshcon and Chorus technologies; we believe these are among the most significant patents granted for electric motor technology in almost a century. We are confident that some of our patents will be judged by the courts as “pioneer” patents, reflecting the fact that they represent a technical revolution in the motor field. Pioneer patents are those to which most later patents in a field make reference, or on which later patents build by adding new improvements to the field. Because pioneer patents represent the result of groundbreaking scientific discoveries or development, the courts have found that they merit a wide breadth of protection in construing their claims and specifications. Because our scientific discoveries and technical advances are the core of our business, we are very careful about protecting these assets. Patenting and otherwise protecting our technologies is an important activity at Chorus and consumes a considerable portion of our resources. We have developed a valuable library of intellectual property and we intend to protect it vigorously. Chorus Motors plc also owns 100% of a technology, which we have not previously disclosed, and to which we refer internally as “DeepG”. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has approved this patent for issue and we are awaiting its formal issue. This patent is very long, and it covers the basic control technology of generator systems known in the trade as “gensets”. We expect that the technology covered by this patent will enable motors operated as generators to operate with radically improved efficiency and sharply reduced energy consumption. If properly managed and marketed, this technology will generate significant revenues for a very long time with virtually no capital investment in plant or equipment. We have worked on this technology for about 10 years, and we are now considering alternative business models for capitalizing on the technology. One option under consideration is to give the product away in return for 18% of the user’s monthly fuel savings. The profitability will be very much a collection issue but, like Microsoft Corporation, we believe that we can manage a product that has basically no manufacturing cost but generates substantial licensing revenue. We initially expect to get paid through license fees by the large companies using the technology and hopefully we can get paid by most users of this technology worldwide. It should be noted that this is another stand-alone business with huge revenue and profit potential coming from our long-standing on-going research efforts worldwide. *Financial Report* Chorus Motors plc has all its bills paid by Borealis Technical Limited and as such has noliabilities of any kind. In return Borealis Technical Limited will receive 50% of the sublicense revenue and 8% of all other revenue generated by Chorus Motors plc. All proceeds from private sales of Chorus shares are due back to Chorus Motors plc and these totaled $9,504,030 at fiscal 2004 year-end, compared with $7,038,069 for fiscal 2003. Stated another way, Chorus Motors plc has accounts receivable of $9,504,030 and no accounts payable, and no long-term or short-term debt. Borealis Technical Limited collects $64,800 in annual management fees and the cumulative loss to date for your Company is $324,000. The fiscal year ended 31 March 2004 was very active, with continual major on-going advances in our technologies. What is very unusual is that our pace of scientific advance is, if anything, speeding up. The fiscal year-end 2004 showed 6,396,467 shares outstanding compared with 6,044,289 shares outstanding for fiscal 2003. As Chorus Motors plc has no debt or other obligations, the Company is in an excellent position to pursue its business in an industry that has long been very immune to any change. The technical advances have continued year in and year out and are now really picking up. With the business model we are using of the Chorus Club, we expect a very long life for our continued scientific advances. We now have products to sell and are working intensely to do so. It is difficult to make any sales in such a stable industry. That said, because of our financial structure and position, we can continue our scientific advances and development work for many years until this industry finally adopts our technology. We thank everybody for their help and for their support. This has been a long tough road to run down, where we have made many mistakes, gone down numerous technological dead ends and have finally arrived at the other end vastly enlarging the engineering envelope for electric motors. Changing basic industries is not easy. The motor industry will only change as we go directly to the industry’s customers and provide them with vastly improved product at competitive pricing. When and if we are allowed to talk of the business we are generating all of our shareholders will be very pleased with our customers and our partners. Chorus Motors plc owns the proprietary and patented technology that will be the dominant technology in electric motors for generations to come. In the long run, we will dominate this industry. We want the long run to begin in as short a time period as possible. Thanks again for your support, your help, your brilliance and perseverance in the face of many obstacles in getting this family of technologies from a gleam in our chief scientist’s eye to market reality. Chorus Motors plc Rodney T. Cox, Chairman and CEO Isaiah W. Cox, President and COO ☞ My guess is that at least THEY believe all this stuff – and that’s something. But as always: only for money you can truly afford to lose.
Welcome, Republicans August 30, 2004February 27, 2017 There’s a lot here today, so just skim through the lines I’ve bolded. The very last item, about Bush-supporter Kid Rock, is X-Rated. Do NOT read his lyrics if you are easily offended. THE WIND SHIFTS From Friday’s Seattle Times: Four years ago, this page endorsed George W. Bush for president. We cannot do so again – because of an ill-conceived war and its aftermath, undisciplined spending, a shrinkage of constitutional rights and an intrusive social agenda. The Bush presidency is not what we had in mind. Our endorsement of John Kerry is not without reservations, but he is head and shoulders above the incumbent. From retired Rear Admiral John Hutson (as per this story on Republicans for Kerry): I’m a Republican and I’ve never voted for a Democrat for national office in my life. I supported George Bush four years ago, but this year I’m supporting John Kerry. Senator Kerry will take America in a positive direction. He has the vision, intellect, determination, and courage to right the ship of state. I believe that under his strong leadership, our country will regain integrity and respect both domestically and internationally. From Sue Mackenzie of Boulder, Colorado (same source): I was a life-long Republican, my family members are all Republicans, but this year I reregistered as a Democrat because I can’t stand what the Republicans are doing to our country. SOME REPUBLICANS GOT TO NEW YORK EARLY (AND I DON’T MEAN ARNOLD OR RUDY) In case you missed Saturday’s New York Times: August 28, 2004 Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Three times a year for 23 years, a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country have met behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference, the Council for National Policy, to strategize about how to turn the country to the right. Details are closely guarded. “The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before of after a meeting,” a list of rules obtained by The New York Times advises the attendees. The membership list is “strictly confidential.” Guests may attend “only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee.” In e-mail messages to one another, members are instructed not to refer to the organization by name, to protect against leaks. This week, before the Republican convention, the members quietly convened in New York, holding their latest meeting almost in plain sight, at the Plaza Hotel, for what a participant called “a pep rally” to re-elect President Bush. Mr. Bush addressed the group in fall 1999 to solicit support for his campaign, stirring a dispute when news of his speech leaked and Democrats demanded he release a tape recording. He did not. Not long after the Iraq invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld attended a council meeting. This week, as the Bush campaign seeks to rally Christian conservative leaders to send Republican voters to the polls, several Bush administration and campaign officials were on hand, according to an agenda obtained by The New York Times. “The destiny of our nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement,” the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, told the gathering as he accepted its Thomas Jefferson award on Thursday, according to an attendee’s notes. The secrecy that surrounds the meeting and attendees like the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly and the head of the National Rifle Association, among others, makes it a subject of suspicion, at least in the minds of the few liberals aware of it. “The real crux of this is that these are the genuine leaders of the Republican Party, but they certainly aren’t going to be visible on television next week,” Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said. Mr. Lynn was referring to the list of moderate speakers like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York who are scheduled to speak at the convention. “The C.N.P. members are not going to be visible next week,” he said. “But they are very much on the minds of George W. Bush and Karl Rove every week of the year, because these are the real powers in the party.” A spokesman for the White House, Trent Duffy, said: “The American people are quite clear and know what the president’s agenda is. He talks about it every day in public forums, not to any secret group of conservatives or liberals. And he will be talking about his agenda on national television in less than a week.” The administration and re-election effort were major focuses of the group’s meeting on Thursday and yesterday. Under Secretary of State John Bolton spoke about plans for Iran, a spokesman for the State Department said. Likewise, a spokesman for Assistant Attorney General R. Alexander Acosta confirmed that Mr. Acosta had addressed efforts to stop “human trafficking,” a major issue among Christian conservatives. Dr. Frist spoke about supporting Mr. Bush and limiting embryonic stem cell research, two attendees said. Dan Senor, who recently returned from Iraq after working as a spokesman for L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator, was scheduled to provide an update on the situation there. Among presentations on the elections, an adviser to Mr. Bush’s campaign, Ralph Reed, spoke on “The 2004 Elections: Who Will Win in November?,” attendees said. The council was founded in 1981, just as the modern conservative movement began its ascendance. The Rev. Tim LaHaye, an early Christian conservative organizer and the best-selling author of the “Left Behind” novels about an apocalyptic Second Coming, was a founder. His partners included Paul Weyrich, another Christian conservative political organizer who also helped found the Heritage Foundation. They said at the time that they were seeking to create a Christian conservative alternative to what they believed was the liberalism of the Council on Foreign Relations. A statement of its mission distributed this week said the council’s purposes included “to acquaint our membership with those in positions of leadership in our nation in order that mutual respect be fostered” and “to encourage the exchange of information concerning the methodology of working within the system to promote the values and ends sought by individual members.” Membership costs several thousand dollars a year, a participant said. Its executive director, Steve Baldwin, did not return a phone call. Over the years, the council has become a staging ground for conservative efforts to make the Republican Party more socially conservative. Ms. Schlafly, who helped build a grass-roots network to fight for socially conservative positions in the party, is a longstanding member. At times, the council has also seen the party as part of the problem. In 1998, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family spoke at the council to argue that Republicans were taking conservatives for granted. He said he voted for a third-party candidate in 1996. Opposition to same-sex marriage was a major conference theme. Although conservatives and Bush campaign officials have denied seeking to use state ballot initiatives that oppose same-sex marriage as a tool to bring out conservative voters, the agenda includes a speech on “Using Conservative Issues in Swing States,” said Phil Burress, leader of an initiative drive in Ohio, a battleground state. The membership list this year was a who’s who of evangelical Protestant conservatives and their allies, including Dr. Dobson, Mr. Weyrich, Holland H. Coors of the beer dynasty; Wayne LaPierre of the National Riffle Association, Richard A. Viguerie of American Target Advertising, Mark Mix of the National Right to Work Committee and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Not everyone present was a Bush supporter, however. This year, the council included speeches by Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party and Michael A. Peroutka of the ultraconservative Constitution Party. About a quarter of the members attended their speeches, an attendee said. Nor was the gathering all business. On Wednesday, members had a dinner in the Rainbow Room, where William F. Buckley Jr. of the National Review was a special guest. At 10 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, members had “prayer sessions” in the Rose Room at the hotel. FAVORED SON The President made it clear in 1994, running for governor, that he got no preferential treatment in avoiding the draft. Certainly this was untrue, as evidenced by this statement you may have seen this weekend on the news . . . My name’s Ben Barnes. I was Speaker of the Texas House when George W. Bush went into the National Guard. He got preferential treatment. I know. I gave it to him. His family sent a representative to my office and asked me to move their son up on the waiting list. And I did. It was wrong. He was jumped over hundreds of others in line. Some of them went off to Vietnam and died. I made a mistake supporting that war. And as other, less-privileged kids were going off to be killed, I helped the son of a congressman avoid combat. I wish I had not. But I think it’s time people know. And it’s time for George W. Bush to stop attacking the people who did serve. . . . but was it a lie? That would be the case only if President Bush knew he got preferential treatment. This piece suggests that he did: STILL UNREPORTED: THE PAY-OFF IN BUSH AIR GUARD FIX Saturday, August 28, 2004 by Greg Palast In 1968, former Congressman George Herbert Walker Bush of Texas, fresh from voting to send other men’s sons to Vietnam, enlisted his own son in a very special affirmative action program, the ‘champagne’ unit of the Texas Air National Guard… This week, former Lt. Governor Ben Barnes of Texas ‘fessed up to pulling the strings to keep Little George out of the jungle. “I got a young man named George W. Bush into the Texas Air Guard – and I’m ashamed.” That’s far from the end of the story. In 1994, George W. Bush was elected governor of Texas by a whisker. By that time, Barnes had left office to become a big time corporate lobbyist. To an influence peddler like Barnes, having damning information on a sitting governor is worth its weight in gold – or, more precisely, there’s a value in keeping the info secret. Barnes appears to have made lucrative use of his knowledge of our President’s slithering out of the draft as a lever to protect a multi-billion dollar contract for a client. That’s the information in a confidential letter buried deep in the files of the US Justice Department that fell into my hands at BBC television. Here’s what happened. Just after Bush’s election, Barnes’ client GTech Corp., due to allegations of corruption, was about to lose its license to print money: its contract to run the Texas state lottery. Barnes, says the Justice Department document, made a call to the newly elected governor’s office and saved GTech’s state contract. The letter said, “Governor Bush … made a deal with Ben Barnes not to rebid [the GTech lottery contract] because Barnes could confirm that Bush had lied during the ’94 campaign.” In that close race, Bush denied the fix was in to keep him out of ‘Nam, and the US media stopped asking questions. What did the victorious Governor Bush’s office do for Barnes? According to the tipster, “Barnes agreed never to confirm the story [of the draft dodging] and the governor talked to the chair of the lottery two days later and she then agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid.” And so it came to pass that the governor’s commission reversed itself and gave GTech the billion dollar deal without a bid. The happy client paid Barnes, the keeper of Governor Bush’s secret, a fee of over $23 million. Barnes, not surprisingly, denies that Bush took care of his client in return for Barnes’ silence. However, confronted with the evidence, the former Lt. Governor now admits to helping the young George stay out of Vietnam. Take a look at the letter yourself – with information we confirmed with other sources – at http://www.gregpalast.com/ulf/documents/draftdodgeblanked.jpg . . . By the way: I first reported this story in 1999, including the evidence of payback, in The Observer of London. US media closed its eyes. Then I put the story on British television last year in the one-hour report, “Bush Family Fortunes.” American networks turned down BBC’s offer to run it in the USA. “Wonderful film,” one executive told me, “but Time Warner is not going to let us put this on the air.” However, US networks will take cash for advertisements calling Kerry a Vietnam coward. The good news is, until Patriot Act 3 kicks in, they can’t stop us selling the film to you directly. The updated version of “Bush Family Fortunes,” with the full story you still can’t see on your boob tube, will be released next month in DVD. See a preview at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm. For more on our president’s war years and the $23 million payment, read this excerpt from the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. WELCOME, REPUBLICANS! From a friend of a friend, in New York: Wednesday, August 18, 2004 4:15 PM Subject: knock knock I just answered a knock at my door. I should say that the buzzer system in my building is such that you can hear anyone being buzzed in and as I hadn’t heard a buzzer I assumed it was a neighbor. I opened the door to a fresh faced young blond man and an equally polished young black woman. Coming from the Northwest I assumed they were Mormon missionaries – although they are in my experience very very seldom black. I was about to ask how they got into my building without buzzing when they showed me ID and identified themselves as FBI. As some of you know I live on Ninth Ave about four blocks north of Madison Square Garden. I had put a “Dump Bush” sign in my window – as I am on the third floor front it was clearly visible to Ninth Avetraffic – but had taken it down this weekend because it blocked too much light and my plants were beginning to complain. Seems Dick & Jane (as I affectionately call them) were offended by my sign which I pointed out wasn’t even there at the moment. They suggested that I not put it back up as it presented a traffic hazard and that I could be arrested for public endangerment. I suggested to them – federal agents – that they should arrest me for a traffic nuisance and that after I would buy a drink for one of them to celebrate the vast sum I would be awarded from my lawsuit. ☞ And this from Steve Weissman: . . . Last week, the New York Times reported that local FBI field offices have spent months canvassing their communities for potential “troublemakers.” The G-men claim to have developed a list of people who might be planning – or have information about the possibility of – violent and disruptive acts at the Republican National Convention and other coming political events. The Feds – and local police with whom they work – call these lists of likely suspects “intelligence.” In Denver, four FBI agents and two local police use such lists to visit a local Quaker group that protests the war. Quakers are historically non-violent. It’s part of their religious faith. So why had the six investigators taken so much time away from chasing real terrorists? . . . The G-Men and local police, it turns out, were acting as part of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which shows us how Team Bush fights the War on Terror. Having used intelligence to drag the country into a preemptive war, they now want to preempt opposition to it. . . . If the FBI and police lack a warrant and have no reason to suspect that a crime is underway, they have absolutely no legal right to enter [your home] without your permission. Why give it? No matter how friendly they seem, you have nothing to gain by letting them in. Be polite, sure. But leave it at that. Step outside to talk to them. Ask each of them for their identification. Take it in your hand – they hate that – and jot down all the information on it. . . . Then, tell them you would love to talk to them, but only with your lawyer present. Would they care to make an appointment? ☞ Call me naïve, but I would always talk to an FBI agent who came knocking and be as helpful as I could. We all want the FBI and other agencies to be hugely successful in fighting terrorism. But why are they intimidating Quakers? Next thing you know, the “freedom and liberty” folks will be handcuffing and ejecting people for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts at Fourth of July rallies! (Click here.) Or prosecuting them with federal funds for holding up a NO WAR FOR OIL sign! (Here.) KID ROCK FOR BUSH [WARNING: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE] I don’t know who white rapper Kid Rock voted for last time, but this time he is voting for Bush. Reports the New York Observer: Recently Mark McKinnon, the media director for the Bush campaign, in response to the news that Bruce Springsteen and other rock musicians would be touring to raise money for Democrats, told The New York Times that George W. Bush had his own supporters in the entertainment world. Mr. McKinnon cited in particular Lee Ann Womack, Kid Rock, and Jessica Simpson. As a service to readers who may not be familiar with Kid Rock, the following are excerpts from his lyrics: from “Classic Rock”: Well guess who’s back, with a big fat cock It’s the kid motherfucker with the classic rock Like wax that booty, yodeleyeho, punk Slappin you hoes with dick when I get drunk. From Alabama to Texarkana Bend over bitch and let me slam her .. Playin shows, fuckin hoes Got the dope in my veins and up my nose. [AND IT ACTUALLY GETS WORSE FROM THERE, SO I’M CENSORING THE REST, BUT YOU CAN CHECK OUT THE OBSERVER STORY TO SEE WHAT ELSE THIS PRIZED BUSH SUPPORTER HAS TO SAY.]
Your BCCI Account Has Been Closed August 27, 2004February 27, 2017 GOOD QUESTION Joe Cherner: ‘Can you please explain to me why the people buying Google at 110 weren’t interested a few days earlier at 85?’ ☞ The Google IPO was done so quietly, with so little fanfare, they just didn’t know about it? THE CONSUMER Prices are up 3% or so in the last year, while wages are up just under 2%. The Associated Press reported yesterday that ‘the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million.’ We are now about 7 million jobs shy of the number President Bush predicted in the 2002 Economic Report of the President, submitted months after the 9/11 attack. (He predicted a gain of 6 million new jobs, versus a loss of more than 1 million.) One sign consumers are stretched is the car loan. You, dear reader, wouldn’t know about this, because you know ‘that new car smell is the most expensive fragrance in the world’ and that it is far wiser to buy a used car – for cash – than to borrow to buy a new one. Or if you do buy a new one, to take the ‘$1,500 cash back’ rather than to finance. But there are actually people who do borrow to buy cars – well, in truth, most people do – and what was the standard three-year auto loan when I bought my first one . . . a brand new $2,411 Acapulco blue 1968 Mustang hard top with an 8-track player and yellow blinker lights in the hood winking back at me (the toodela-toodela-toodela horn I would install later) . . . I am told has now become a standard SEVEN-year car loan, with, frequently, if I have heard this right, a mere 4% downpayment. (As the car loses 20% or 25% in value the minute you drive it off the lot, the car loan is already significantly under water from day one.) So I worry about the economy. More and more tax cuts for the richest among us don’t seem to have lifted children out of poverty after all. Just the reverse. President Bush told us that ‘By far the vast majority’ – which is surely more than half – of the benefit from his tax cuts would go to ‘people at the bottom end of the economic ladder.’ This was wildly, factually, patently – knowingly – untrue. Amazingly, the press let him get away with it and almost half the country fell for it. WATERMELON Paulo: ‘Yellow watermelon is not a new fancy creation, as you imagine; just something new to Americans. I’ve been eating it for nearly 24 years – since I first had it in Taiwan and then elsewhere in a long stay in Asia.’ Brian: ‘In Vietnam, yellow watermelon was traditionally reserved for the emperor.’ ☞ But enough of Vietnam for a few minutes. Let’s talk about the Senate. This article will appear in the September issue of the Washington Monthly. Follow the Money: How John Kerry busted the terrorists’ favorite bank by David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, with attractive branch offices, a traveler’s check business, and a solid reputation for financing international trade. It had high-powered allies in Washington and boasted relationships with respected figures around the world. All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed. By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing. As Kerry’s investigation revealed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, BCCI was interested in more than just enriching its clients–it had a fundamentally anti-Western mission. Among the stated goals of its Pakistani founder were to “fight the evil influence of the West,” and finance Muslim terrorist organizations. In retrospect, Kerry’s investigation had uncovered an institution at the fulcrum of America’s first great post-Cold War security challenge. More than a decade later, Kerry is his party’s nominee for president, and terrorist financing is anything but a back-burner issue. The Bush campaign has settled on a new strategy for attacking Kerry: Portray him as a do-nothing senator who’s weak on fighting terrorism. “After 19 years in the Senate, he’s had thousands of votes, but few signature achievements,” President Bush charged recently at a campaign rally in Pittsburgh; spin that’s been echoed by Bush’s surrogates, conservative pundits, and mainstream reporters alike, and by a steady barrage of campaign ads suggesting that the one thing Kerry did do in Congress was prove he knew nothing about terrorism. Ridiculing the senator for not mentioning al Qaeda in his 1997 book on terrorism, one ad asks: “How can John Kerry win a war [on terror] if he doesn’t know the enemy?” If that line of attack has been effective, it’s partly because Kerry does not have a record like the chamber’s dealmakers such as Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) or Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Though Kerry has been a key backer of bills on housing reform, immigration, and the environment, there are indeed few pieces of landmark legislation that owe their passage to Kerry. But legislation is only one facet of a senator’s record. As the BCCI investigation shows, Kerry developed a very different record of accomplishment–one often as vital, if not more so, than passage of bills. Kerry’s probe didn’t create any popular new governmental programs, reform the tax code, or eliminate bureaucratic waste and fraud. Instead, he shrewdly used the Senate’s oversight powers to address the threat of terrorism well before it was in vogue, and dismantled a key terrorist weapon. In the process, observers saw a senator with tremendous fortitude, and a willingness to put the public good ahead of his own career. Those qualities might be hard to communicate to voters via one-line sound bites, but they would surely aid Kerry as president in his attempts to battle the threat of terrorism. From drug lords to lobbyists Despite having helmed the initial probe which led to the Iran-Contra investigation, Kerry was left off the elite Iran-Contra committee in 1987. As a consolation prize, the Democratic leadership in Congress made Kerry the chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations and told him to dig into the Contra-drug connection. Kerry turned to BCCI early in the second year of the probe when his investigators learned that Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was laundering drug profits through the bank on behalf of the Medellin cartel. By March 1988, Kerry’s subcommittee had obtained permission from the Foreign Relations Committee to seek subpoenas for both BCCI and individuals at the bank involved in handling Noriega’s assets, as well as those handling the accounts of others in Panama and Colombia. Very quickly, though, Kerry faced a roadblock. Citing concerns that the senator’s requests would interfere with an ongoing sting operation in Tampa, the Justice Department delayed the subpoenas until the end of the year, at which point the subcommittee’s mandate was running out. BCCI, meanwhile, had its own connections. Prominent figures with ties to the bank included former president Jimmy Carter’s budget director, Bert Lance, and a bevy of powerful Washington lobbyists with close ties to President George H.W. Bush, a web of influence that may have helped the bank evade previous investigations. In 1985 and 1986, for instance, the Reagan administration launched no investigation even after the CIA had sent reports to the Treasury, Commerce, and State Departments bluntly describing the bank’s role in drug-money laundering and other illegal activities. In the spring of 1989, Kerry hit another obstacle. Foreign Relations Committee chairman Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), under pressure from both parties, formally asked Kerry to end his probe. Worried the information he had collected would languish, Kerry quickly dispatched investigator Jack Blum to present the information his committee had found about BCCI’s money-laundering operations to the Justice Department. But according to Blum, the Justice Department failed to follow up. The young senator from Massachusetts, thus, faced a difficult choice. Kerry could play ball with the establishment and back away from BCCI, or he could stay focused on the public interest and gamble his political reputation by pushing forward. BCCI and the bluebloods Kerry opted in 1989 to take the same information that had been coldly received at the Justice Department and bring it to New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who agreed to begin a criminal investigation of BCCI, based on Kerry’s leads. Kerry also continued to keep up the public pressure. In 1990, when the Bush administration gave the bank a minor slap on the wrist for its money laundering practices, Kerry went on national television to slam the decision. “We send drug people to jail for the rest of their life,” he said, “and these guys who are bankers in the corporate world seem to just walk away, and it’s business as usual… When banks engage knowingly in the laundering of money, they should be shut down. It’s that simple, it really is.” He would soon have a chance to turn his declarations into action. In early 1991, the Justice Department concluded its Tampa probe with a plea deal allowing BCCI officials to stay out of court. At the same time, news reports indicated that Washington elder statesman Clark Clifford might be indicted for defrauding bank regulators and helping BCCI maintain a shell in the United States. Kerry pounced, demanding (and winning) authorization from the Foreign Relations Committee to open a broad investigation into the bank in May 1991. Almost immediately, the senator faced a new round of pressure to relent. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Democratic doyenne Pamela Harriman personally called Kerry to object, as did his fellow senators. “What are you doing to my friend Clark Clifford?,” staffers recalled them asking, according to The Washington Post. BCCI itself hired an army of lawyers, PR specialists, and lobbyists, including former members of Congress, to thwart the investigation. But Kerry refused to back off, and his hearings began to expose the ways in which international terrorism was financed. As Kerry’s subcommittee discovered, BCCI catered to many of the most notorious tyrants and thugs of the late 20th century, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the heads of the Medellin cocaine cartel, and Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist. According to the CIA, it also did business with those who went on to lead al Qaeda. And BCCI went beyond merely offering financial assistance to dictators and terrorists: According to Time, the operation itself was an elaborate fraud, replete with a “global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad.” By July 1991, Kerry’s work paid off. That month, British and U.S. regulators finally responded to the evidence provided by Kerry, Morgenthau, and a concurrent investigation by the Federal Reserve. BCCI was shut down in seven countries, restricted in dozens more, and served indictments for grand larceny, bribery, and money laundering. The actions effectively put it out of business what Morgenthau called, “one of the biggest criminal enterprises in world history.” Bin Laden’s bankers Kerry’s record in the BCCI affair, of course, contrasts sharply with Bush’s. The current president’s career as an oilman was always marked by the kind of insider cronyism that Kerry resisted. Even more startling, as a director of Texas-based Harken Energy, Bush himself did business with BCCI-connected institutions almost at the same time Kerry was fighting the bank. As The Wall Street Journal reported in 1991, there was a “mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding [Harken] since George W. Bush came on board.” In 1987, Bush secured a critical $25 million-loan from a bank the Kerry Commission would later reveal to be a BCCI joint venture. Certainly, Bush did not suspect BCCI had such questionable connections at the time. But still, the president’s history suggests his attacks on Kerry’s national-security credentials come from a position of little authority. As the presidential campaign enters its final stretch, Kerry’s BCCI experience is important for two reasons. First, it reveals Kerry’s foresight in fighting terrorism that is critical for any president in this age of asymmetrical threats. As The Washington Post noted, “years before money laundering became a centerpiece of antiterrorist efforts…Kerry crusaded for controls on global money laundering in the name of national security.” Make no mistake about it, BCCI would have been a player. A decade after Kerry helped shut the bank down, the CIA discovered Osama bin Laden was among those with accounts at the bank. A French intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post in 2002 identified dozens of companies and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank collapsed, and that the financial network operated by bin Laden today “is similar to the network put in place in the 1980s by BCCI.” As one senior U.S. investigator said in 2002, “BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist financing operations.” Second, the BCCI affair showed Kerry to be a politician driven by a sense of mission, rather than expediency–even when it meant ruffling feathers. Perhaps Sen. Hank Brown, the ranking Republican on Kerry’s subcommittee, put it best. “John Kerry was willing to spearhead this difficult investigation,” Brown said. “Because many important members of his own party were involved in this scandal, it was a distasteful subject for other committee and subcommittee chairmen to investigate. They did not. John Kerry did.” One could do an equally long story on what George W. Bush was doing during those same years. The contrast would not be flattering to the President. Have a great weekend.
Oh, Heck – Let’s Hear from Someone Who Was Actually There August 26, 2004February 27, 2017 But first . . . JUST BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T THERE DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T SWEAR TO WHAT HAPPENED From the KATU website: August 23, 2004 Local Veterans Call For Attorney’s Resignation OREGON CITY, Ore. – Clackamas County veterans are calling for the resignation of an assistant district attorney who appeared in television ads attacking Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s military record. In the ad, and a sworn affidavit, Al French says he served with Kerry and that the Purple Heart medals Kerry received were obtained under false pretenses. However, French admitted later that he did not witness the events mentioned in the affidavit and was relying on what his friends told him. Veteran Don Stewart says he believes it was outrageous that French would try to smear Kerry’s military record. “Mr. French signed an affidavit defaming John Kerry’s military service and then he admitted that he had no first-hand knowledge of what he swore to,” Stewart said on Monday. “Someone who the community trusts to carry out the law cannot be lying in sworn, legal affidavits.” On Monday, French would neither confirm nor deny the reports that he did not witness the events mentioned in the affidavit. The Oregon State Bar says they have received enough complaints to look into the matter, with the main question being whether French violated ethics. ☞ Oh, the French. Steve: My brother-in-law wrote the attached letter. After college he served in Vietnam and then became a Secret Service agent on presidential protection. He now is director of corporate security for a Fortune 500 company. He is not politically affiliated: August 24, 2004 I was a Navy lieutenant serving on a river patrol boat in Vietnam two months after John Kerry was a Navy lieutenant serving on a swift boat in Vietnam. I am very disappointed in the recent controversy surrounding Kerry’s service. Those of us who patrolled the rivers and canals in Vietnam knew the risks. For every Navy Seal killed there, five river patrol crewmen died. The casualty rate in the river patrol forces averaged nearly 60 percent. No one volunteered for this duty in order to fill in his political resume or to obtain a photo-op. No one volunteered for this duty to serve less than honorably. It is very difficult to reconstruct a firefight immediately afterward. Now we are trying to analyze one that took place 35 years ago. I find it ironic our last two presidents deliberately avoided military service in Vietnam. Now we have a presidential candidate who did serve in combat and we are debating how honorably. John Kerry served ”on the river.” That alone has earned my respect. The Vietnam War was divisive enough. Thirty-five years later, those of us who served there should not continue this divisiveness. Many Americans at the time did not salute the war or those who fought it. Maybe now it is time to salute one who was there. Joseph T. Petro Ralph Sierra: ‘A friend has been following news reports about the Swift Boat controversy pretty closely, and says that most of them leave the impression that Kerry was only in Vietnam for four months – got wounded, and then got sent home. This feeds the Republican line that he ‘cut and run.’ She hopes the Kerry people starting talking more about the fact that he had ALREADY served a 12 month tour, prior to the one in which he got wounded.’ And now . . . OH, WHAT THE HECK – LET’S HEAR FROM SOMEONE WHO WAS THERE An account you may have missed: Aug. 21, 2004, 4:46PM Rood: Anti-Kerry vets not there that day By WILLIAM B. ROOD Chicago Tribune There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago — three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969. One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other. For years, no one asked about those events. But now they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election with a group of swift boat veterans and others contending that Kerry didn’t deserve the Silver Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other actions. Many of us wanted to put it all behind us — the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry’s service — even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work. But Kerry’s critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they’re not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It’s gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there. Even though Kerry’s own crew members have backed him, the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry has called me and others who were with him in those days, asking that we go public with our accounts. I can’t pretend those calls had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it. I was part of the operation that led to Kerry’s Silver Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star. But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three swift boats — including Kerry’s PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz’s PCF-43 — that carried Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area. The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret. Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception. The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical command of that particular operation, had talked to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush. We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats’ twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan. The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops got there. The first time we took fire — the usual rockets and automatic weapons — Kerry ordered a “turn 90” and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC, wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes. Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz’s boat at the first site. It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn’t fired as two men jumped up from their spider holes. We called Droz’s boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch — a thatched hut — maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat’s leading petty officer with whom I’ve checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ. With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby. Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation. John O’Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry’s Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a “teenager” in a “loincloth.” I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore. The man Kerry chased was not the “lone” attacker at that site, as O’Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker. Our initial reports of the day’s action caused an immediate response from our task force headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay. Known over radio circuits by the call sign “Latch,” then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a “shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy” and that it “may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers.” Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry’s and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry’s inclination to be impulsive to a fault. Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers. It was also well within the aggressive tradition that was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique, who speaks French fluently, had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the mouth of the river that a VC tax collector was operating upstream. Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and killing several. Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and Zumwalt ordered other swifts, which had largely patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers. The decision sent a clear message, underscored repeatedly by Hoffmann’s congratulatory messages, that aggressive patrolling was expected and that well-timed, if unconventional, tactics like Bernique’s were encouraged. What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the tone set by our top commanders. Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation medals on the rest of us. My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were “caught completely off guard.” There’s at least one mistake in that citation. It incorrectly identifies the river where the main action occurred, a reminder that such documents were often done in haste and sometimes authored for their signers by staffers. It’s a cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There’s no final authority on something that happened so long ago — not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there. But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they’re saying impugns others who are not in the public eye. . . William B. Rood is an editor at the Chicago Tribune. ☞ I’d give a nickel to know what George W. Bush was doing on February 28, 1969? But leaving that aside, does it actually matter what the truth is? Not to talk show hosts like Sean Hannity: Doug Jones: ‘While driving home from a long trip last Thursday (Aug 19), about the only thing I could hear on the radio was Sean Hannity. Please note that the 19th is well after Senator McCain denounced the anti-Kerry swift boat attack ads. Hannity was going on and on ad nauseum about how Kerry is scared to talk about his war record because Kerry’s war record is a pack of lies as demonstrated by those ads. No mention was made anywhere about Senator McCain’s statement [or any of the other things that had come out]. I know several otherwise sane and rational people who listen to Hannity on a daily basis, and who believe that he is more truthful than the newspaper or television news.’ SO . . . HAS THE PRESIDENT NO SHAME? From the blog of David Weinberger: August 21, 2004 This Swift boat attack is a predictable Karl Rove smear. Here’s what I want Kerry to say, not that anyone asked: At long last, we have to ask: Mr. President, have you no shame? You said you looked forward to a campaign on the issues, one based on mutual respect. And yet some of your largest supporters are sponsoring an unrelenting campaign of mudslinging, attacking my record in the service. The connections between your campaign and these outrageous attacks are close and documented. So, stop your flip-flopping. Don’t say you want a clean campaign and then turn your back as mud is thrown in your name. The other day, a man at one of your carefully controlled town hall events said, “We’ve got a candidate for President out here with two self-inflicted scratches, and I take that as an insult.” And how did you reply? Did you do the decent thing? Did you try to quiet the applause? Did you tell him that you’d have no part in such accusations against a man who put on a uniform and put himself in harm’s way to serve his country, like millions of other veterans? No, here’s what you said: “Well, I appreciate that. Thank you.” Thank you? Mr. President, where is your common decency? These trumped up, false attacks on my war record and my character are distractions from the real issues that face America. You did this to [John McCain and to] my friend and great patriot, Max Cleland, who left three limbs in Vietnam. Now you are doing it to me. Your pattern is clear: You can’t campaign on the issues so you attack veterans, people who when they were needed showed up and did their duty. In the name of respect for those of us who did our service and in the name of the American people who face issues that will shape our destiny, I call on you to make good on your word and denounce these attacks. David Weinberger
Of Index Funds and Politics August 25, 2004January 20, 2017 DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS I bobbled yesterday’s link to the 2004 Texas Republican Party Platform (which affirms that the United States is a Christian nation and calls for, among other things, abolishing the separation of church and state). This is important, because if a 100-year religious war is what you want – rather than a focused, effective, collaborative, international war on terror – you probably want an evangelical Christian from Texas who suspects he may be God’s messenger leading the charge. INDEX FUNDS (AND POLITICS) Parks Stewart: ‘You turned me into an index fund disciple, but I saw something a little rattling recently. I read a small story in the Saturday paper referring to a National Bureau of Economic Research paper that says the average mutual fund does show some stock picking skill. Can our crack research team debunk this? On a political note, your two guys scare me to death. I’m a conservative, but I’m not totally thrilled with the way we’ve conducted ourselves (not necessarily the decisions themselves but how we’ve arrived at them) and some of the money decisions we’ve made. Heck, we’re blowing money the way you guys normally do.‘ ☞ Well, actually you’re blowing money the way Reagan and Bush did . . . only now, with the advantage of an all-Republican Congress, you’re blowing it worse. And worse still, when you consider what you’re blowing it for. Not only have the routine pork projects skyrocketed; much of our budget deficit was incurred for the least urgent need imaginable – huge tax breaks for (very nice) people making millions of dollars a year. Not to mention the gross mismanagement of the war on terror, which could have been far less costly yet far more effective. (Tell me again why we didn’t send troops in to get Bin Laden at Tora Bora? Why we rushed into war in Iraq without the widespread support we would have had if we had acted more deliberately. Why we went in without a plan to win the peace?) Don’t be scared of our two guys. They have the advantage of being much more thoughtful than President Bush – and they don’t imagine that God is speaking through them. THAT’S scary. Meanwhile, with advisors – and endorsers – like Bob Rubin and Warren Buffett, what scares you about John Kerry? Rubin and Buffett know a bit about the world, too. But now back to your question: <<the average mutual fund does show some stock picking skill>> Versus whom? The average bank trust fund? The average pension fund manager? The average broker? I suppose it’s possible that, as a class, mutual funds might slightly outperform some other brand of money manager, or the do-it-yourself general public (who mostly don’t do it by themselves) – but can they do it by enough, over time, to make up for the extra fees and tax exposure they incur versus index funds? I haven’t read the analysis you linked to, but one way mutual fund performance numbers often get skewed is by looking only at existing funds, excluding the underperformers that were folded or merged out of existence. Even if that wasn’t a flaw in the paper you cite, I did notice in the précis that the best-performing funds tended to trade actively, which means a tax disadvantage if you hold them in a taxable account. I’d stick with index funds, and take a few prudent plunges, if you can afford the risk, on the side. Tomorrow: Oh, Heck – Let’s Hear From Someone Who Was There
Don’t Mess With Texas (REALLY Really) August 24, 2004February 27, 2017 Okay. Grant our Republican friends in Texas this much: they don’t mince words and they believe what they believe (as they are entitled to). Still, wait until you read this. And remember that one of the two guys running for President actually is a Republican from Texas. But first . . . I had this slated to run last week and it got bumped and now you all know it – but I want to run it anyway. From Thursday’s Washington Post, by staff writer Michael Dobbs: Newly obtained military records of one of Sen. John F. Kerry’s most vocal critics, who has accused the Democratic presidential candidate of lying about his wartime record to win medals, contradict his own version of events. In newspaper interviews and a best-selling book, Larry Thurlow, who commanded a Navy Swift boat alongside Kerry in Vietnam, has strongly disputed Kerry’s claim that the Massachusetts Democrat’s boat came under fire during a mission in Viet Cong-controlled territory on March 13, 1969. Kerry won a Bronze Star for his actions that day. But Thurlow’s military records, portions of which were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to “enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire” directed at “all units” of the five-boat flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the citation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat “despite enemy bullets flying about him.” ☞ So all the guys who actually served on the boat with him vouch for John Kerry . . . and the guy whose life he saved remembers it vividly (as how could he not?) . . . but we are to believe Larry Thurlow, that actually no one was being fired on that day and nothing heroic happened? Or that the Viet Cong had chosen to fire at all the boats except John Kerry’s? Where have we come to in this country when people would not just look at the facts and conclude, as Senator John McCain has, that these charges are ‘dishonest and dishonorable’ and just move on from there? Where have we come to when a guy who did all he could to avoid service in Vietnam, and seems to have skipped a good chunk of his service altogether refuses to disavow a campaign to assassinate the character of a man who volunteered for the front lines? Or maybe Andy Borowitz has it right. Maybe – if John Kerry actually went to Vietnam at all – he only did so to avoid serving in the Alabama Nation Guard . . . August 12, 2004 GOP: KERRY WENT TO VIETNAM TO AVOID SERVING IN ALABAMA NATIONAL GUARD Guard-Dodging Charges Haunt Campaign A new Republican-financed negative ad is accusing Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry of fleeing to Vietnam to avoid serving in the Alabama National Guard. The ad, airing in most of the so-called battleground states, attempts to contrast Sen. Kerry’s alleged guard-dodging with the storied Alabama National Guard heroism of the Republican nominee, President George W. Bush. In the ad, a narrator asks, ‘When the Alabama National Guard called young Americans to serve, where was John Kerry? Thousands of miles away, in Vietnam.’ Okay . . . at last . . . finally . . . DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS These are excerpts from the 2004 Texas Republican Party Platform: The Republican Party of Texas affirms that the United States of America is a Christian nation, and the public acknowledgement of God is undeniable in our history. Our nation was founded on fundamental Judeo-Christian principles based on the Holy Bible. The Party affirms freedom of religion, and rejects efforts of courts and secular activists who seek to remove and deny such a rich heritage from our public lives. Early Childhood Development -The Party believes that parents are best suited to train their children in their early development years (ages 0 through 5) and opposes mandatory pre-school and Kindergarten. The Party urges Congress to repeal government-sponsored programs that deal with early childhood development, and phase them out as soon as possible. Classroom Discipline – We urge the Texas Legislature, Governor, Commissioner of Education and State Board of Education to remind administrators and school boards that corporal punishment is effective and legal in Texas. Party believes theories of life origins and environmental theories should be taught only as theories not fact; that social studies and other curriculum should not be based on any one theory. We call on the Legislature to end all state funding of higher educations grants and scholarships. The Party believes it is in the best interest of the citizens of the United States that we immediately rescind our membership in, as well as all financial and military contributions to, the United Nations. We believe that human life is sacred, created in the image of God. Life begins at the moment of fertilization and ends at the point of natural death. All innocent human life must be protected. We oppose the Endangered Species Act. The Party calls for restoration of the plaques honoring the Confederate Widow’s Pension Fund contribution that were illegally removed from the Texas Supreme Court and other state buildings. The Party calls upon the Texas Legislature and the United States Congress to repeal any and all laws that infringe upon the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution; and to reject the establishment of any mechanism to process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns. Our Party pledges to exert its influence to restore the original intent of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and dispel the myth of the separation of Church and State. We also deplore forced sensitivity training and urge the repeal of laws and mandates requiring such training. We believe the Hate Crimes Law is unnecessary, and that it unconstitutionally creates a special class of victims. We urge that it be repealed immediately. We oppose the recognition of and granting of benefits to people who represent themselves as domestic partners without being legally married. No fault divorce laws have caused untold hardships on American families, by reducing their standard of living, and by harming the emotional and physical well-being of children. It has contributed to an increase in government assistance of all kinds. We call upon the Texas Legislature to rescind no-fault divorce laws. Homosexuality – The Party believes that the practice of sodomy tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We are opposed to any granting of special legal entitlements, recognition, or privileges including, but not limited to, marriage between persons of the same sex, custody of children by homosexuals, homosexual partner insurance or retirement benefits. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values. The Party supports legislation prohibiting experimentation with human fetal tissue and prohibiting the use of human fetal tissue or organs for experimentation or commercial sale. Until such time that fetal tissue harvesting is illegal, any product containing fetal tissue shall be so labeled. Stem Cell Research – We commend the President for banning the government funding of human embryo stem cell harvesting and call upon the US Congress to pass legislation supporting the President. The Party opposes any legislation that would allow for the destruction of human embryos for medical research. The Party believes that commercial surrogacy is a legal and ethical free-fall and the rental of a woman’s womb makes child bearing a mere commodity to the highest bidder. Behavior has personal and social consequences. We call upon the United States Public Health Service and all states to declare HIV a “dangerous, yet preventable, infectious, communicable disease.” The Party supports amendment of the Americans with Disabilities Act to exclude from its definition those persons with infectious diseases, substance addiction, learning disabilities, behavior disorders, homosexual practices and mental stress, thereby reducing abuse of the Act. On a lighter note . . . here’s a great column that explains Instant Messaging, Text Messaging, and Skype (I had never even heard of Skype).
Don’t Mess With Texas (Really) August 23, 2004January 20, 2017 But first . . . POLLING Some of you asked where Thursday’s poll numbers about ‘unusually excited’ voters came from. The short answer: Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. If I get more details, I’ll share them. In the meantime, I found a less dramatic but still hopeful poll here. This one shows the proportion of Republicans who think the upcoming election ‘really matters’ up 14 points, from 56% in 2000 to 70% in 2004 . . . but the proportion of Democrats who think it ‘really matters’ up 21 points, from 46% to 67%. I prefer Mellman’s more dramatic numbers, of course. But I’d still rather be up by 21 than by 14. Because (not to belabor the point) even with a largely complacent Democratic electorate in 2000 we got 537,000 more votes than the other side. So we have a pretty good base to build on. YUKOY? A key reason the rich get richer is that they can afford to take risks. If I offered a family with young kids and nothing but $6,000 in emergency savings ‘four-to-three odds on the flip of a coin’ – heads they win $8,000, tails they lose $6,000 – I hope they would have the good sense to decline. But a wealthy family would rightly grab it. That said, one of the best ways to do well in the stock market, if you can afford the risk, is to bet on something that could be fundamentally sound over the long run, but that is in the midst of dreadful, but perhaps survivable, difficulties. This insight is hardly original with me. The knack comes in figuring out which bets fall into this category. Martha Stewart’s company? Perhaps. Maybe. But the one I like these days is Yukos, the Russian oil firm (whose American Depository Receipts represent four Russian shares each and trade under the symbol YUKOY). You can read all about its giant tax woes and the power struggle that has landed its oligarch in jailski (I majored in Slavic Languages and Literatures at an expensive Eastern college and can do no better than ‘jailski’?) . . . but to me it boils down to this: Oil could remain very valuable over the next decade or two . . . YUKOY is awash in it . . . its $10 billion tax bill and other uncertainties have kept many investors out of the stock . . . the value of the company’s assets, in the view of a friend much savvier than I, greatly exceeds the tax liability (he owns a million shares) . . . and, at the end of the day, Putin will not want a resolution so severe that it deters investors from investing in Russia. At $16 or so per ADR, I like the odds. BOREF? YUKOY, of course, is all but a sure thing compared with my long-running favorite speculation, Borealis, of which (full disclosure) I own enough to make an amusing chapter in a book, if it goes to zero, or to buy the book publisher, if it turns out to be real. Those of you who have bought a few shares over the years will probably lose your money as I will probably lose mine. But let’s say there is an 80% chance of total loss . . . but a 20% chance of a 20-fold gain – a five-sided coin that swallows your entire $700 (say) four times out of five but pays you $14,000 every fifth time. I like those odds, too. Of course (as with anything), it all comes down to the numbers you choose. When I first started writing about Borealis, I would have used 95% or 99% as the chance of total loss. This company has so many red flags it looks like Stalin’s army! But with each passing year, and each passing press release – for example, Friday’s – I’ve allowed myself to become a little more hopeful. So maybe now there’s only an 80% chance of total loss. Or – dare I dream it? – a two-thirds chance. The flip side is that if Borealis did turn out to be real, it could appreciate even more than 20 fold. At today’s $6.50 or so (up from the $3.50 at which it sat for many of the years I’ve been poking fun at it), the entire company is valued at just over $30 million. And it claims to have technologies that could change the world. Martha Stewart’s company, by point of comparison, even after its difficulties, is valued at $560 million, nearly 20 times as much – and it claims to be able to show you how to do remarkable things with grapefruit. Not to minimize Martha Stewart. I have friends who swear by her advice, and we all marvel at her energy and talents. Grapefruit, in truth, is the least of it. Still, if Borealis has found a way to make strikingly more efficient electric motors, let alone all the other things it claims to have invented, the company could be worth just as much as Martha Stewart. More, even. You can go back and read my many caveats over the years. Also, the many reader comments deriding the science. These are readers far more knowledgeable than me. I don’t know what a cam shift is, let alone how to juice up its torque. And I am deeply skeptical of anything too small to see, which pretty well puts the kibosh on the entire field of nanotechnology in which Borealis claims to toil. So I figure I will probably lose all my money. But I like the odds. I am so sure tomorrow will be Don’t Mess With Texas, you can click here and read it today.
What Matt Miller Has Learned from Charley August 20, 2004January 20, 2017 I just think this says it so well: 8/18/04 Matt Miller’s latest column . . . COMPASSION BEYOND CHARLEY It may seem odd to look for the silver lining in a cloud as dark as Hurricane Charley. But if you listen closely, the reaction to the storm that has inflicted more than $10 billion in damage and upended countless lives offers a clue about our collective possibilities. Why? Because when a natural disaster like Charley strikes, the proper role of government is unambiguous. “We are here to help you,” runs Governor Jeb Bush’s refrain as he tours the devastation. “There will be ramifications for many families … and we are prepared to provide support.” “This is God’s way of telling us that he’s almighty and we’re mortal,” Bush remarked at another stop. “You can’t plan for the unforeseen,” Bush added. “And these are powerful storms that don’t behave in any kind of way that you can say with certainty where they’re going to go.” Over and over, as Governor Bush and other officials struggle to cope, two related elements are cited to justify our communal response – things so obvious they hardly need to be articulated. First, the forces at work are beyond anyone’s control. Second, the people who have suffered from the storm are blameless victims of some very bad luck. When these two conditions are present, even conservative Republicans stand instinctively ready to redistribute money (and help) to those who have been hurt by the storm. See where I’m headed? Oh, I can hear conservatives grumbling already. Isn’t it just like a liberal to take a disaster like Charley and try to convert it into some fable about redistribution! Are you so sick and twisted, my mail will soon read, that you have to politicize this tragedy? Well, that certainly doesn’t sound like a question one should answer in the affirmative, but I suppose I’m guilty. You have to seize your teachable moments where you find them. If we don’t pause to parse our empathy in the wake of Charley, and ask ourselves, “If we’re prepared to act here, where else does that mean we should be prepared to act,” we’re not doing right by our best instincts. To take one example, poor children are about as blameless as you can get. Yet millions of these kids lack health coverage and decent schools. Why can we agree to help Charley victims and let these kids languish? It turns out that asking such questions isn’t just grist for policy wonks like me. According to Michele Landis Dauber of the Stanford Law School, the analogy to “disaster relief” has driven key advances in social policy throughout American history. In a smart book due out next year, “The Sympathetic State,” Dauber debunks the “false narrative” according to which America remained a nation of “rugged individualists” right up until the New Deal. Instead, Dauber’s research shows that from the late 18th century onward, the federal government consistently stepped in to redistribute wealth, often via the politically popular vehicle of “disaster relief.” Such relief was legislated for the usual earthquakes, floods and fire. It also eased the pain of collateral damage in armed conflict, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the War of 1812 to the Civil War. It was this tradition and this metaphor that FDR’s shrewd lawyers called on during the Depression to make their case for bold efforts to help the unemployed, and eventually to craft Social Security. “They expanded the definition of what could count as a ‘disaster’ and who could be eligible for relief as a ‘blameless victim,'” Dauber explains. Unemployment, for example, had never been seen as an external “disaster” before; you were jobless because of something wrong with your character. The Depression let unemployment be recast as a macroeconomic version of Jeb Bush’s “powerful storms that don’t behave in any kind of way that you can say with certainty where they’re going to go.” Seen this way, the task for progressives in every era may be to push America’s compassion toward a new consensus that broadens the meaning of unmerited “disaster” and appropriate “relief.” Charley and this history of social progress offer hope by reminding us that deep down, many conservatives are merely liberals waiting to be awakened. They just need a little help connecting the dots when the accident of birth or hand of Fate is less dramatically (but no less truly) a “disaster.” Matthew Miller, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, is the author of ‘The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America‘s Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love.’ Reach him at http://www.mattmilleronline.com. Monday (or soon): Don’t Mess With Texas
Why We’re Gonna Win August 19, 2004February 27, 2017 But first . . . YELLOW WATERMELON Let me say this about yellow watermelon: there are improvements we need to make in the world before we start changing the color of watermelon. LASER-GUIDED IRIDIUM-PLATED FERMAT-THEORIZED NANOROBOTIC TRIPLE-BLADE MACH 3 GILLETTE RAZORS Gerard: ‘I saw your post on buying Sensor Blades cheap on eBay. I just thought that I should point out that expensive drugstore commodities are popular items for organized theft rings to steal and re-sell. I’m not saying that the eBay sellers are thieves, but the provenance of the goods is something to think about, as with all on-line sales.’ FREE SPEECH ZONES The President tells us he doesn’t read the newspaper. And we know that protestors are kept far from his sight. One wonders whether he’s getting the full picture. Steve Holmes offers this snippet from a CNN transcript: PRESIDENT BUSH: ‘When I travel the country, and I’ve been traveling a lot, there are thousands of people who come out and wave, and they are — you know, they respect the presidency. Sometimes they like the president, but I have this — I don’t have a sense that there’s a lot of anger.’ THE MEDIA Doug Jones: ‘Thanks for [yesterday’s Paul Krugman] column [about how the media reports on hairstyles but not giant health care proposals]. Disgustingly, this is the FIRST I’ve really heard about Kerry’s health care plan here in conservative Spokane. He had my vote anyhow, but now I can start saying useful things to the doubters.’ ☞ So Krugman is right. Bright people like Doug who are open-minded and keep up with the news can be unaware of really important things. I don’t think this was quite as much the case when I was growing up. Be that as it may, everyone should subscribe to the New York Times. Or read it for free, on-line. And now . . . Kathryn Lance: ‘You say, It’s going to work out. We’re going to win. Really? Do you truly think so? I’m so depressed at all the negativity and lies about Kerry, and all the scary stuff about untraceable ballots, that I feel sure that they will steal the election again. And if they do, I truly wonder if this country, or indeed the world, will survive another four years. Why do you think we will win?’ ☞ Because of turnout. In October of 2000, voters were asked whether they were ‘unusually excited’ about the upcoming election. And now, in 2004, they’ve been asked again: Are they unusually excited about THIS upcoming election? Among Republicans, the number is up – 51% are ‘unusually excited’ versus 48% last time. Among Democrats, the number is up from 36% to 68%. That is not a typo. When we were complacent and unexcited last time, we won by 537,000 votes. Now we are wide awake, fighting mad, and determined to win. You can see the energy in the massive primary turnout this past winter. You can see it in the huge crowds Kerry and Edwards attract. You can see it in the jaw-dropping response to our tens of millions of pieces of direct mail – like nothing direct mail marketers have ever seen before. People recognize this is not business as usual. But if the rank and file on the other side is only marginally more energized than before, up from 48% to 51% (could some of them, in their heart of hearts, be disappointed that we’ve turned massive surpluses into massive deficits? had a net job loss for the first time since Herbert Hoover? advantaged the rich at the expense of everyone else? turned much of the world, which was so ready to be with us after September 11, against us?) . . . the leadership of their party – the guys orchestrating the campaign – are hugely motivated to keep, indeed to extend, their control over all three branches of government (and, increasingly, the press). So we’re going to win, but it’s going to be a very, very tough fight. And speaking to those of you who want to see it happen (and I know not all of you do, and am particularly grateful and impressed that you come to listen anyway) – please spend the next 76 days making sure that it does. Visit JohnKerry.com for ways to help. Why are going to win? Here’s the blah-blah-blah answer – and I completely believe it: We’re going to win because John Kerry’s domestic policies favor the vast majority of voters, who are not rich and powerful. And because people sense we need to rejoin the world if we are to succeed in our war on terror, as we unquestionably must. Help is on the way.
Krugman on the News August 18, 2004January 20, 2017 Yesterday‘s overlong column recounted techniques of African American voter suppression and asked why so few people know about things like this (and so much else). The answer, I maintained, is the press. Rather than make that case myself, I turned it over to Paul Krugman and a column he wrote for the New York Times. Some of you took the day off from work or canceled your travel plans to read it all. Others of you have come back today to read it now. For that second, sensible group, here (again) is Krugman’s July 30 column in the New York Times: Under the headline “Voters Want Specifics From Kerry,” The Washington Post recently quoted a voter demanding that John Kerry and John Edwards talk about “what they plan on doing about health care for middle-income or lower-income people. I have to face the fact that I will never be able to have health insurance, the way things are now. And these millionaires don’t seem to address that.” Mr. Kerry proposes spending $650 billion extending health insurance to lower- and middle-income families. Whether you approve or not, you can’t say he hasn’t addressed the issue. Why hasn’t this voter heard about it? Well, I’ve been reading 60 days’ worth of transcripts from the places four out of five Americans cite as where they usually get their news: the major cable and broadcast TV networks. Never mind the details – I couldn’t even find a clear statement that Mr. Kerry wants to roll back recent high-income tax cuts and use the money to cover most of the uninsured. When reports mentioned the Kerry plan at all, it was usually horse race analysis – how it’s playing, not what’s in it. On the other hand, everyone knows that Teresa Heinz Kerry told someone to “shove it,” though even there, the context was missing. Except for a brief reference on MSNBC, none of the transcripts I’ve read mention that the target of her ire works for Richard Mellon Scaife, a billionaire who financed smear campaigns against the Clintons – including accusations of murder. (CNN did mention Mr. Scaife on its Web site, but described him only as a donor to “conservative causes.”) And viewers learned nothing about Mr. Scaife’s long vendetta against Mrs. Heinz Kerry herself. There are two issues here, trivialization and bias, but they’re related. Somewhere along the line, TV news stopped reporting on candidates’ policies, and turned instead to trivia that supposedly reveal their personalities. We hear about Mr. Kerry’s haircuts, not his health care proposals. We hear about George Bush’s brush-cutting, not his environmental policies. Even on its own terms, such reporting often gets it wrong, because journalists aren’t especially good at judging character. (“He is, above all, a moralist,” wrote George Will about Jack Ryan, the Illinois Senate candidate who dropped out after embarrassing sex-club questions.) And the character issues that dominate today’s reporting have historically had no bearing on leadership qualities. While planning D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower had a close, though possibly platonic, relationship with his female driver. Should that have barred him from the White House? And since campaign coverage as celebrity profiling has no rules, it offers ample scope for biased reporting. Notice the voter’s reference to “these millionaires.” A Columbia Journalism Review Web site called campaigndesk.org, says its analysis “reveals a press prone to needlessly introduce Senators Kerry and Edwards and Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, as millionaires or billionaires, without similar labels for President Bush or Vice President Cheney.” As the site points out, the Bush campaign has been “hammering away with talking points casting Kerry as out of the mainstream because of his wealth, hoping to influence press coverage.” The campaign isn’t claiming that Mr. Kerry’s policies favor the rich – they manifestly don’t, while Mr. Bush’s manifestly do. Instead, we’re supposed to dislike Mr. Kerry simply because he’s wealthy (and not notice that his opponent is, too). Republicans, of all people, are practicing the politics of envy, and the media obediently go along. In short, the triumph of the trivial is not a trivial matter. The failure of TV news to inform the public about the policy proposals of this year’s presidential candidates is, in its own way, as serious a journalistic betrayal as the failure to raise questions about the rush to invade Iraq. © The New York Times The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page – which archives Krugman’s past columns and media appearances – posted a noteworthy reaction to this column, along with Paul Krugman’s response: JIM MURPHY, executive producer, “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather”: The entire staff of the “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather” was pretty miffed after reading Paul Krugman’s column today that claimed not a SINGLE issues piece has aired on the big newscasts in the past two months. He must have missed the SIXTEEN different “issues” pieces we did over a four week period during that time, part of a series that will continue until the election. With the resources of the New York Times you would think that would be kind of difficult to miss. The Washington Post‘s media critic found the series so intriguing amid all the debate over campaign coverage he actually wrote an article about it. How can anyone take an editorialist’s arguments seriously when he ignores some FACTS completely? PAUL KRUGMAN: In response to Jim Murphy’s comment regarding my July 30 column on the absence of issue coverage in this election, and the “miffed” staff at CBS Evening News . . . Mr. Murphy apparently misread what I said. I did not say that there has been no issue reporting at all over the past two months; I said that issue coverage is very thin, and that there has in particular been no clear explanation of even the most basic elements of the Kerry health care plan. That statement is, alas, true. The CBS evening news report from June 29 was the best coverage of the competing health care plans I could find. But did it explain that the Kerry plan would cover most of those now uninsured? No. Did it explain that the plan would, according to the Kerry campaign, be financed by a tax-cut rollback? No. In fact, by giving time to Bush claims that “the Kerry plan would break the bank,” without mentioning Kerry’s plan to pay for it with a tax-cut rollback, the CBS report conveyed the false impression that the plan is unfunded pie in the sky. Bear in mind that this is not one among many issues: health care-cum-tax cut rollback is Kerry’s signature domestic policy proposal. Yet a voter who gets his or her news from TV, even CBS with its “issues” series, would have little or no idea of what Kerry is offering, or how it differs from Bush. But I’ll bet not two Americans in ten (I concluded yesterday) will miss the reference if you mention ‘the blue dress.’ So, to sum up, two problems (at least) imperil a healthy democracy going into this election: African Americans being discouraged from voting, and voters being discouraged from thinking. It’s going to work out, I believe – we’re going to win. But we would win bigger if more people knew what was going on.