Joan’s Dad November 30, 2005March 2, 2017 After that huge long column yesterday, you want more? You couldn’t possibly. BOREF ‘Up’ 29% yesterday on 1,100 shares. I just want to reiterate that this is all silly and meaningless and absolutely nothing happened. It’s either worth zero, eventually, or lots and lots. Pay no attention to the rest of it. The spread between ‘bid’ and ‘asked’ is much, much too wide to trade in and out. BUS SAFETY Oops. Before you grab one of yesterday’s low fares, be sure you are comfortable with the risk. Overall – Greyhound’s accident yesterday notwithstanding – ‘bus travel is relatively safe,’ reports the Washington Post, ‘with about half the fatality rate of automobile travel.’ But the low-cost carriers I linked to yesterday may pose more of a hazard. Some have fared poorly in federal safety inspections, as the Post details. (Even so, ‘Some budget travelers like the buses just fine. ‘They’re really clean, they show movies, they have bathrooms,’ said Margot Zengotita, in town doing research at the Library of Congress, as she waited for the day’s Dragon Coach bus to New York.”) CORRUPTION Our guy dissembles over a sexual affair; their guy lies about trillions of dollars in tax cuts he said would go mainly to those ‘at the bottom end of the economic ladder.’ Our veep says there’s ‘no controlling legal authority’ on where he makes (perfectly legal) campaign calls; their veep lies about war and peace. Our disgraced Congressman misappropriates $27,000 in vouchers from the House Post Office; their disgraced Congressman takes $2.4 million in bribes to influence the awarding of Pentagon contracts that involve billions of taxpayer dollars. I’m not saying it’s all this cut and dried. But c’mon. FINALLY, A CONTEST WORTH ENTERING Did you see this in yesterday’s column? Click here and win $100,000 – or not, but this one is useful. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a call for great ideas. If yours is selected, not only do you win the hundred large – the SEIU will start pushing your idea. (Thanks, Move-On.) Yes? You already submitted your entry? No? Don’t need the $100,000? Richard Factor: ‘I posted my PriUPS idea. I’ll let you know when they send me the $100,000. We had a power failure on Thanksgiving and I ate my turkey by PriUPSLight.’ ☞ Richard has hooked his house up to his hybrid. Click here. And now . . . JOAN’S DAD This Thanksgiving Day column from the San Francisco Chronicle speaks volumes: Thursday, November 24, 2005 A lifelong Republican’s long winter Joan Ryan As those who follow this column know, my father and I inhabit opposite ends of the political spectrum. I have found my geographic and ideological home in the liberal Bay Area. He is a lifelong Republican who loved Spiro Agnew and was not among the early waves of supporters for civil rights and women’s rights (he came around). He is one of those hardscrabble men from the Irish parishes of the Bronx who served in Korea, supported a wife and six children on his own sweat, never got a handout and never sought one. To him, Democrats were the ivory-tower elites who took increasing chunks of his paycheck to support the lazy and the irresponsible. I wrote two columns last year about his views of President Bush. My father has been something of a political touchstone for me, providing a glimpse of the country beyond the rainbow flags and peace marches of San Francisco, or at least of those parts populated by churchgoing, middle-class conservatives. In the summer of 2004, to my great surprise, he was so disillusioned with how Bush had run up the federal debt and mismanaged the Iraq war that he said he would not be voting Republican for the first time in his life. Three months later, I wrote a follow-up. He had decided to vote for Bush after all. “It’s terrible that in this country of so many good people,” my father had explained, “how an election can come down to the lesser of two evils. You have to vote this time for who will do the least harm. Not the most good, but the least harm.” I won’t be with my family in Florida for Thanksgiving this year. I will miss my father serving up his political views along with the turkey and creamed onions. So I caught up with him by phone the other day as he was heading out to Mass. I asked what he was thinking about Bush now, a year after his re-election. He regrets changing his mind about voting for him, he said. “The guy’s stupid,” he said. “Such a disappointment. The worst administration I’ve ever seen. He just sounds confused. He doesn’t sound like he knows what the hell he’s doing.” As we spoke, his voice rose in volume and intensity in that way it did whenever one of us kids did something particularly moronic. Like, for example, when my sister and I wanted to find out if kitchen scissors could cut a pearl in half and sent the entire strand bouncing like tiny rubber balls across my parents’ bedroom floor. “I don’t think people, myself included, were clear on how good Clinton was with the money,” he said. “Why wouldn’t the Republicans keep going with that? Instead we got tax cuts and the war in Iraq. Who’s going to pay for all that? It’s just irresponsible. I never thought (Bush) was the brightest guy in the world, but to go from a $300 billion surplus to a $500 billion deficit, or whatever it is, that’s just stupid.” He doesn’t blame Bush for believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but he says the mismanagement in the aftermath of the invasion is mind-boggling. Almost 2,100 Americans have been killed and more than 15,000 seriously wounded in Iraq. And now my father and the rest of the family have a personal stake in the war: His grandson, my sister Barbara’s son, is a Marine serving near Fallujah. “If something happens to him, what will it be for?” my father asked. “(Bush) thought we’d go in and — voila! — we’d get democracy. If he just read a book about the United States trying to get its democracy, he’d know it just doesn’t happen overnight.” Hurricane Katrina sealed the deal for my father.As someone who has weathered many hurricanes in Florida, he watched the president’s response to the devastation with increasing horror and bafflement. “This guy’s slow, and he’s dimwitted,” he said. “He said, ‘I’m going to let Louisiana take care of itself.’ You got that woman governor who doesn’t know her ass from third base. You got his friend at the head of FEMA and the mayor of New Orleans who didn’t know anything. You had Larry, Moe and Curly in there, and he’s just waiting. “And then he goes with that woman for the Supreme Court (Harriet Miers). ‘I know in my heart she’s a good person’ — what the hell does that got to do with it? That’s just stupid. That’s just plain dumb. It seems like with Bush lately, whatever he touches turns to crap. And now we’re saddled with this guy for three more years. The only thing you can do is to get the Republicans out of Congress next year.” I wanted to make sure I had heard him correctly. “I never thought I’d say this, but I wouldn’t vote for any Republican, even from Florida,” he said. “We got to get the Republicans out and the Democrats in. We got to make sure they control Congress so Bush can’t do whatever the hell he wants. You got to get the Democrats in there to knock his brains out so he’ll just be a token figurehead.” He said that in retrospect he should have thought about last year’s election in a different way. He said he should have considered that a vote for John Kerry, whom he strongly disliked, was a vote not for an individual but for a Democratic administration. We needed a Democratic administration, he said, to keep in check a Republican Congress. He said he had to hang up. He was going to be late for Mass. I asked if he would be offering up prayers for Bush’s wisdom. “I believe in the power of prayer,” he said. “But it can only do so much.” E-mail Joan Ryan at joanryan@sfchronicle.com.
Good Deals and Turkey Drippings November 29, 2005March 2, 2017 [Good deals . . . ] YOU WON’T BELIEVE THESE FARES How about $35 from New York to Washington? How about $30 from Boston to New York How about $35 from L.A. to Las Vegas? Falling out of your chair? Well, these fares are readily available . . . and they are round trip. THUD. (That was the sound of you falling out of your chair.) Yes, there is a catch, but not such a bad one, really. They are bus fares. I heard about them from a friend who owns a $3 million apartment. ‘Where are you,’ I asked. I had reached him on his cell phone. ‘On the Chinatown Bus from New York to Washington,’ he said. ‘The what?’ ‘The Chinatown Bus from New York to Washington. Twenty bucks.’ (And this was the day before Thanksgiving, the heaviest travel day of the year.) OK, so it’s not the lap of luxury, and if you’re traveling solo who knows whose lap you’ll be sitting next to. (Probably the lap of someone smart enough not to blow $275 on one-way plane/cab fare to DC, or $158 on one-way train fare, or even whatever Greyhound charges.) And, no, if you are an investment banker, you probably can’t afford the extra hour and a half or two versus the train or plane. But the departures are frequent, the seats are guaranteed, and if you have an MP3 player and audible.com, just take your seat, close your eyes, and listen to a good book. You’ll be there even before the butler did it. Click here for cities, schedules and fares. Or pass this on to your kids or grandkids or junior staff. FREE 411 Robert: ‘Try 1-800-FREE-411 . . . great for cell phones and when you run out of your ten free at home.’ FINALLY, A CONTEST WORTH ENTERING Click here and win $100,000 – or not, but this one is useful. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a call for great ideas. If yours is selected, not only do you win the hundred large – the SEIU will start pushing your idea. (Thanks, Move-On.) [Stocks . . . ] BOREF Down from $13.50 to $11.50 on 160 shares – the cab driver apparently sold half his position to buy a fancy washer-dryer. Seriously: Boeing says this company’s little electric motor drove a fully loaded jumbo jet around the tarmac like a golf cart. My theory is that if it can move a jumbo jet, it may be able to power a real golf cart – and elevators, fork lifts, cars. If you have money you can truly afford to lose, this is quite a lottery ticket: Heads, you lose your money; tails, it puts your kids through college. Hang in there if you own some. NTMD Prescriptions up a little after being down a little – averaging 133 a day. At 133 a day times 365 days times 90 pills per prescription times $1.80 per pill, sales are annualizing at about $8 million; last I saw, Nitromed was projecting expenses of $120 million next year. Don’t sell your puts. AXP Suggested six months ago at $52.50, American Express closed last night at $52.84. Ah, but in the meantime, for each 5 shares of AXP we got 1 of AMP, which closed at $43.90, so we’re up 17% . . . unless we bought the LEAPS, in which case we’re up a good deal more. I’m worried about the economy, but I’m holding on. (Oink, oink.) DD, GE, CBH Up about 10% each, give or take, since suggested September 30. I’m holding them. APC Oil stocks – suggested here early last year – have pulled back some in recent weeks, and who knows what could happen; but I’m holding mine. APC, suggested here last year at $56.50, closed at $95, up 68%. It had gotten as high as $117. Yes, if we’re smart we’ll wean ourselves off oil in a decade or two or three. But in the meantime, there’s an awful lot of demand coming from populations much larger than our own – and just when it appears world oil production may finally have peaked. It makes me crazy to buy things that have risen so high, so I’m not buying more oil stocks. But for the most part, I’m holding on. SYM Suggested early last year just under $8, it closed yesterday at $14. I hold on in stoic hope that the company’s real estate value will one day be realized. Not that the company touts its real estate value – it touts its suits. But I have this friend who thinks that someday . . . ARC This one has been a dog, and you might consider selling for a tax loss – except I figure others are doing that, which may be one reason for its low price (the company’s awful performance would be another), so I haven’t sold the balance of my shares. But I’ve lost my guru on this one, so have no informed opinion. LEA If you are looking for downtrodden, contrarian stocks that might be a good bit higher a couple years from now, you might add a few shares of LEA. I have. [Thanksgiving loose ends . . .] PASS THE GRAVY Suzanne Cole: ‘That quote about ‘pass the gravy to a homosexual’ is from comedian Bob Smith [the first openly gay comedian ever to play the Tonight Show], interviewed here.’ I’M NOT LEESTENING! Bob Neinast: ‘It was Billy Crystal. But it’s from ‘The Princess Bride‘ where he played ‘Miracle Max’ with Carol Kane as his wife.’ ☞ A screen gem right up there with ‘Moonstruck.’ GIVING THANKS e uprichard: ‘One time when I was going on about winning the lottery, my partner said ‘you’ve already WON the lottery.’ It’s true.’ R.I.P., ERIK STEN Andy Frank: ‘Regarding your Thanksgiving column, I can’t tell you anything about the Erik Sten who wrote to you back in 1996, but I can tell you that his son, also Erik Sten, is still on the Portland, Oregon City Council and is generally considered to be doing an excellent job.’ ☞ Like son, like father, apparently. I’m truly sorry to have lost his readership.
Dow 11,000 and Your House November 28, 2005March 2, 2017 But first . . . THE SENATE HAD THE EXACT SAME INTELLIGENCE AS THE PRESIDENT AND V.P. – NOT It doesn’t rise to the level of lying about sex – they only started a disastrous war – but according to this from the National Journal (thanks, Ralph Sierra) . . . Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks . . . The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the [Presidential Daily Briefing] of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents. Indeed, the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004, according to congressional sources. Both Republicans and Democrats requested then that it be turned over. The administration has refused to provide it, even on a classified basis, and won’t say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists. . . . “What the President was told on September 21,” said one former high-level official, “was consistent with everything he has been told since – that the evidence was just not there.” . . . . . . [and yet] in the days just before a congressional vote authorizing war, they professed to have been given information from U.S. intelligence assessments showing evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link. “You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,” President Bush said on September 25, 2002. The next day, Rumsfeld said, “We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.” The most explosive of allegations came from Cheney, who said that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, the pilot of the first plane to crash into the WorldTrade Center, had met in Prague, in the Czech Republic, with a senior Iraqi intelligence agent . . . Cheney continued to make the charge, even after he was briefed, according to government records and officials, that both the CIA and the FBI discounted the possibility of such a meeting. Credit card and phone records appear to demonstrate that Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time of the alleged meeting . . . ☞ It sure seems as if “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” to quote the British Intelligence service. And now . . . REASONS THE DOW, NEARING 11,000, COULD RISE EVEN FURTHER (But Maybe Not Much) The market senses we’re on our way out of Iraq. (But look at how our standing in the world, and our balance sheet, have eroded in the process.) Housing appears to have peaked as the hot place to invest, which could send more cash toward stocks. (But how badly could a housing slump hurt the economy and household balance sheets?) There are only three more years of the current, some-would-say incompetent, Administration. (But, well, there are three more years – three years and 53 days, actually.) THE BUBBLE Click here for an argument that there could actually be a nationwide slump in housing prices, even though it would be the first time since the Depression. I don’t know if he’s right, but he makes a well-reasoned case that . . . The housing mania, like all manias that have preceded it, is finally coming to a long overdue end. Time tested principles of prudent mortgage lending will inevitability return, and houses will once again be regarded merely as places to live. However, the country will be a lot poorer as a result of the unprecedented dissipation of wealth and accumulation of consumer and mortgage debt which occurred during the bubble years. Before real estate prices can return to normal levels, they will first have to get dirt cheep. It has been a wild party, but in the end all that will remain is a giant hang-over. ☞ The implications for our economy – and for that condo you were about to buy – make this well worth reading. (Thanks, Stephen Willey.) Tomorrow: You Won’t Believe These Fares!
Thanksgiving Reruns November 23, 2005March 2, 2017 You can easily have all you want by not wanting much [I wrote in this space in 1996]. You can’t possibly have all you want by making more money. And isn’t ‘want’ the most intriguing word? It means lack (‘For want of a nail the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost’ – George Herbert, 1651) and it means wish for – which are so often one in the same. But we don’t want (wish for) the things we don’t know we want (lack) – hence the importance of advertising and the scary power of ‘Dallas’ reruns in the Third World. And ‘want’ is only sometimes synonymous with ‘need.’ Sure, for lack of a nail – but how about for lack of a Sea-Doo? The miraculous thing about this country is that almost everybody has food, clothing, shelter, and extraordinary devices undreamed of until a moment ago in human history: radios, telephones, color televisions, cars, radios in their cars – even enough dough to fly across the country once a year, if they plan ahead and stay over a Saturday. I speak here not just of the great middle class. This list pertains to most (sadly not all) lower-income Americans as well. I consider myself blessed that, in material terms, I don’t want (lack) anything, and don’t even really want much. (My friends will tell you this is just a lack of taste. They marvel at my satisfaction with mid-priced cars and mail-order clothes.) How might you become similarly blessed? Well, maybe you already are. Or maybe you will decide that not having to strive for stuff you don’t need is the greatest luxury of all. Happy Thanksgiving. That’s the Thanksgiving comment I ran in 1996. (Surely you remember it?) One of you, Erik Sten, responded with a message I saved and ran the following year: I just forwarded your Thanksgiving comment to a friend who has been amazed that I’ve gotten along just fine without having a real job for about ten years. He and others have suggested that I do a book on living within one’s means. My response is that I know how to do it and anyone else can do the same but he or she must want, more accurately, desire, to do it. That I do not have a clue how to teach. I’m a graduate of Yale Law School and spent many years in public service doing consumer protection work. I was effective enough to get myself fired from two positions because my bosses felt I was too aggressive for their political tastes. My philosophy was there is simply no justification for any degree of deception in the promotion of sales. It’s not fair to either the consumer or the honest competitor. Shortly after I left my last professional position, I got my kids through college. I was divorced and realized I had nobody to please, satisfy or impress other than myself. I maintain myself through a few modest investments and the odd project, and I am satisfied or I’d be living differently. I am blessed. My younger son teaches in an alternative high school and is doing a marvelous job. He’s attended the funerals of several of his students who have died by guns. I couldn’t do it and am amazed anybody can do what he can. I couldn’t be prouder. My other son was just elected to the Portland City Council. It’s only a five-person council so it’s quite an achievement for a 29-year-old. He won by better than a 3 to 2 margin after running a positive campaign that was noted for the large number of enthusiastic volunteer workers. He is a Generation Xer who will make an impact; you’ll be hearing more about him. I am fearful for the long-term impact of political pressures on his ideals, but I know that if we cannot encourage our best and brightest to be our leaders, then we’re in big trouble. Maybe Erik is still reading and will give us an update. In 2000, I discovered color: Happy Thanksgiving! [I wrote.] And I see now, in looking back on these, that I made a note to myself to include the following for 2001 – but never did: ‘It wasn’t easy telling my parents that I’m gay. I told them at Thanksgiving. I said, ‘Mom, would you please pass the gravy to a homosexual?’ She passed it to my father. A terrible scene followed.’ — Bob Smith (I’m pretty sure I got that from a book or magazine, but mislaid the citation. Sorry, Bob.) In most of the past few years I just went back to: 2002 – Happy Thanksgiving! 2003 – Happy Thanksgiving! 2004 – Happy Thanksgiving! This year, I feel as grateful as ever, even if the world seems darker than it did in 1996. Indeed, the rougher things get – tsunami victims, hurricane victims, earthquake victims, terror victims, genocide victims; and, on a totally different plane, but still distressing, lay-off victims, tougher-bankruptcy-law victims, higher-home-heating-cost victims, and all the rest – the more grateful for (and, yes, vaguely embarrassed by) my good fortune I feel (that odd liberal guilt over a tax cut on investment income I did not need). Writing about any of this (at least the way I do it) quickly gets maudlin or preachy (or icky or just boring), so suffice it to say that one of the things I give thanks for is my terrific readership. (Oh my God, you’re blushing!) 2005 – Happy Thanksgiving! See you Monday.
NTMD, BOREF, LUX November 22, 2005March 2, 2017 LUX ET VERITAS Mike Myler: ‘I took Latin 40 years and thousands of beers ago. With the amount of reading you assign it is not fair to add Latin homework. ☞ Light is truth? At least it wasn’t French! That drives me crazy when I am reading a book and all of a sudden there is a phrase in, usually, the French language and I have no idea what it means.’Light and Truth. It’s Yale’s motto. W. is Yale ’68. He tells you we don’t torture, you can take it to the bank. He tells you ‘by far the vast majority’ of his tax cut’s going to people ‘at the bottom end of the economic ladder,’ you can be darn sure that’s where it’s going. He tells you he did not trade his Harken Oil stock with the benefit of inside information, you need not give it another thought. Yellow cake from Niger? The kind of solid deal you can put straight into the State of the Union. (‘The Iraqi informant’s German handlers say they had told U.S. officials that his information was ‘not proven,’ and were shocked when President Bush and Colin L. Powell used it in key prewar speeches.’ – yet one more story on how the war was sold.) I’M NOT LEEESTENING Who was that on Saturday Night Live who used to stick his fingers in his ears, close his eyes, tilt his head down, and say that? ‘I’m not leeestening!’ Was it Billy Crystal? Mary Mapes’ Truth and Duty is her account of the ’60 Minutes’ story she and Dan Rather did on President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. The one that got her fired even though, well, actually, it was true. It gets only 2.5 stars on Amazon, in part because of reviews like this one Sunday: Arthur F. McVarish (Houston, TX USA) I had/have no intention of more than scanning Mary Mapes’ whining, self-serving pile of dreck. The title of her less than Augustinian ‘Confession’ is offensive in continued pretense that she … Dan Rather& Co … does not comprise part of a Media cabal that hates President Bush and will resort to any means to destroy him … Mr. McVarish hasn’t read it, but take his word for it (he’s an Amazon Top 500 Reviewer, after all) – it’s terrible. NTMD For the week ended November 4, Wall Street reports that 818 BiDil prescriptions were written, up from 672 the week before. This number has been steadily building since August. By now, the prescriptions that were written in August and September are presumably being refilled, adding to the total. It’s like a snowball! So let’s say it keeps building and building and eventually gets to 2,500 scrips a week. At $1.80 a pill and 90 pills per scrip, times 52 weeks, that would be annual sales of $21 million – versus projected expenses of $120 million. Or triple that, and say the weekly scrips climb to 7,500! That’s $63 million in sales versus $120 million in expenses. But what indication is there that sales are taking off and ever would get to 7,500 a week (thereby for the company to lose only $50 million or $60 million)? The long-term proposition – that you can sell a pill made up of two generic components for six times the cost of the generics purchased separately – seems unpersuasive. I know BiDil is not like a movie opening, where half the gross is expected in the first weekend. But if this is a must-have, life-saving drug for vast numbers of people, with 200 professionals out selling it every day, wouldn’t the upward slope in prescriptions be steeper? Especially when you consider (forgive my ‘burying the lead,’ but it was for dramatic effect) that prescriptions for the week ended November 11 fell to 751. Even with the snowballing effect of refills. Sales are thus now ‘quarterizing’ (to borrow one of the Wall Street analysts’ verbs) at around $1.5 million, against quarterized expenses of around $30 million, for a quarterized loss of about $28.5 million. The stock closed at $17.57, giving the company a market cap just north of $500 million. When Jim Cramer told his viewers to buy NTMD, he based it in part on prescriptions having jumped from ’50 to 70′ a day to more like ‘300 to 400’ a day. Well, last week’s sales averaged 107 prescriptions a day, not 300 or 400.* And he based his buy recommendation in part on an estimate of $637 million in 2008 revenues, way higher than the $200 million to $250 million he said Wall Street was expecting. But as noted here a few days back, it’s likely the math in that $637 million estimate he cited was off by 80%. It was based on the full universe of African Americans with congestive heart failure, not the 20% whose condition had progressed to the point that the same firm, in an earlier report, had estimated BiDil would potentially be prescribed. So that would be $127 million, not $637 million. In which case sales, if they ever somehow did get that high in 2008, would be significantly below Wall Street expectations. Don’t sell your puts. At some point, the mutual funds and others who own this stock may decide that the risk here outweighs the potential reward. BOREF Borealis stock jumped 10% or so yesterday – on a volume of 355 shares. I know cabdrivers who could have accounted for that entire volume. (Not a fleet of cabdrivers, mind you – one cabdriver.) Point being: nothing happened. And nothing much will, except maybe the stock will drift down as people lose patience, until something does happen – if something ever does – at which point the stock could shoot up to the next plateau. No one seems as excited about this company’s prospects as I am (well, maybe this one putative cabdriver). But unlike Nitromed, that has a pill comprised of two generic components widely available at one-sixth the price – yet commands a $500 million market cap – this crazy speculation has an electric motor the size of a watermelon that managed to drive a jumbojet around the tarmac as if it were a golf cart. (And thus, as I have noted, ought to be able to power golf carts someday, too – and maybe even cars, trucks, forklifts, and elevators.) Yet this speculation sells at a market cap of around $75 million. Paintings have sold for more.
Confusing Drug Plans, Confusing War Plans November 21, 2005March 2, 2017 MAKING SENSE OF THE PRESCRIPTION DRUG PLAN Seniors are completely confused. From the San Jose Mercury News (thanks, Peter): Bill Wilson worked at an accounting company for 15 years. Marge Thompson was married to an accountant. Marion Block spent more than 30 years managing a family business. But decades of close attention to figures and finance didn’t help these Santa Clara County seniors make sense of Medicare’s new prescription drug benefit, which opened for enrollment Tuesday. ‘We just couldn’t make heads or tails of it,’ said Block, 79, who asked her son, a 44-year-old housing developer, for help. He couldn’t figure it out, either. . . . What they lack is a secret weapon. Ours is the estimable Less Less Antman. He writes: ‘I’ve done analyses for two clients looking to sign up for the new Medicare Prescription Drug Plan option. The web site at medicare.gov has a terrific service called Formulary Finder allowing you to enter all your prescriptions to see what is covered and what might be subject to quantity limits or other restrictions for every available plan. While each person is different, I think it more than coincidence that, for both clients, I found that the CIGNATURE Rx Complete Plan was the best ($42.63 per month with no deductible and 96 of the 100 most popular drugs covered, with participation by virtually all major pharmacies). There are also less expensive plans for those seniors not currently using any medications but wanting catastrophic protection. For those looking for a combination of a Medicare HMO/PPO and drug plan, I thought the Aetna Golden Medicare Premier plan looked pretty good. Needless to say, absent a personal analysis, this is only a general suggestion for those paralyzed by all the choices, and not all plans are available in all areas. What is most important to note is that anyone who doesn’t sign up when eligible (or by May 15, 2006 if already eligible) will pay 1% more for every month they delay in enrolling, and the increased premium will apply for the rest of their life. The only exception is if they already have equivalent or better coverage through another group plan (this is called ‘creditable coverage’), and their group can and should tell them if that is the case. By the way, the Medicare site also allows you to enroll in your chosen plan online.’ LUX ET VERITAS One thing we know for sure: we don’t torture. That comes straight from the President’s mouth. To those who believe we are being lied to from time to time, here’s the thing you need to understand: it’s okay. From the current issue of Rolling Stone: . . . According to a secret Pentagon report personally approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003 and obtained by Rolling Stone, the Strategic Command is authorized to engage in “military deception” – defined as “presenting false information, images or statements.” The seventy-four-page document, titled “Information Operations Roadmap,” also calls for psychological operations to be launched over radio, television, cell phones and “emerging technologies” such as the Internet. In addition to being classified secret, the road map is also stamped noforn, meaning it cannot be shared even with our allies. It’s a story you’ve got to read. In small part: . . . Strapped to the [CIA] polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam’s men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad. . . . There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa. The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn’t true didn’t mean it couldn’t be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation — part espionage, part PR campaign — that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. . . . It seems that before long, Judith Miller had the story and it was on the front page of the New York Times: AN IRAQI DEFECTOR TELLS OF WORK ON AT LEAST 20 HIDDEN WEAPONS SITES. Read the whole story and see whether you believe the Republican Administration shared all this with the Democratic senators who voted to give the President authority to go to war as a last resort . . . and whether it was being truthful with the public as it led the nation to war.
George Abbott Was Still WORKING at 107 November 18, 2005March 2, 2017 LIVE LONG AND PROSPER Anne Speck: ‘My mom sent me this link from the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network. It’s called the Longevity Game and it’s an interactive way to check your life expectancy and the changes you can make to improve it.’ ☞ It has my mother living to 104, which seriously underestimates her resolve, and me living long enough to write ten thousand more of these columns, the thought of which is enough to take five years off my life – and perhaps yours – right there. (Charles, it says, should eat more fruit and vegetables; but he’s Irish so it ain’t gonna happen.) Having constructed one of these interactive life expectancy calculators for Managing Your Money 20 years ago – yes, we wrote your checks and kept track of your portfolios, but we also maintained your address book, reminded you of appointments and birthdays, estimated your taxes, provided a word processor, made rude comments about your net worth and estimated your life expectancy – I have some sense of the limitations. But Northwest did a pretty good job, and it can never hurt to get people thinking about walking more, smoking less, and eating broccoli florets. One key variable Northwest chose not to include: ‘Are you single or coupled?’ Single people live longer, because the stress of a relationship is murder. (Kidding! Kidding! Actually, loneliness is the killer . . . but my guess is that the love and companionship of a worthy pet may be nearly as life-extending, if less help doing the Sunday crossword or helping you pick out the right tie.) Whatever it takes, I’m counting on you to live a long time. HOW OVERPRICED IS YOUR HOME? Lois Mitchell: ‘The Private Mortgage Insurance people rate metropolitan areas for the risk of a housing price decline in the next two years. Who knows how accurate their model is, but it is interesting nonetheless. Here is the link to the fall ratings.’
Stocks and Real Estate November 17, 2005March 2, 2017 Oops: yesterday’s Sweeney Todd link now corrected. (The other link, to his life story and the London of his day, was OK.) But first . . . WE’RE PUTTING A CAMERA OVER YOUR BED Some of us believe masturbation should not be subject to government regulation. Abominated by religion, perhaps, but not controlled by Big Brother. Apparently, though, the right to privacy is in some dispute – even when it comes to what you do in bed alone. You may have seen Dan Savage’s op-ed in yesterday’s Times. Liberals . . . love the right to privacy because we believe adults should have access to birth control, abortion services and pornography as well as the right to engage in gay sex. Social conservatives hate the right to privacy for the very same reason, as they seek to regulate private behaviors from access to birth control to masturbation. (Think I’m kidding about masturbation? In Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, he wrote that the majority’s decision called into question the legality of state laws against “masturbation, adultery, fornication.”) Well, Savage has a great idea: [I]f the right to privacy is so difficult for some people to locate in the Constitution, why don’t we just stick it in there? Wouldn’t that make it easier to find? He proposes a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing the right to privacy that Democrats, Independents and true Conservatives would be inclined to support, but that the Scalia wing of the Republican Party would oppose. AND THEN WE’RE GOING TO FORCE YOU TO GET PREGNANT Meanwhile, Tuesday’s Times carried this story detailing the way in which the Republican leadership overruled a scientific advisory panel and the FDA professional staff in forbidding over-the-counter sale of Plan B, the ‘morning after pill’ that prevents unwanted pregnancies. Top federal drug officials decided to reject an application to allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill months before a government scientific review of the application was completed, according to accounts given to Congressional investigators. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, concluded in a report released Monday that the Food and Drug Administration’s May 2004 rejection of the morning-after pill, or emergency contraceptive, application was unusual in several respects. Top agency officials were deeply involved in the decision, which was “very, very rare,” a top F.D.A. review official told investigators. The officials’ decision to ignore the recommendation of an independent advisory committee as well as the agency’s own scientific review staff was unprecedented, the report found. And a top official’s “novel” rationale for rejecting the application contradicted past agency practices, it concluded. . . . You might think that women should be free to prevent unwanted pregnancies on three grounds: (1) It would reduce abortions. (2) It would allow women to have wanted children, when they’re more likely to be able to love and raise them well. (3) ‘It’s a free country.’ But that’s not the view of the folks currently running the show. And now . . . STOCKS Prasanth: ‘I’ve been using FOLIOfn for five years now and I wouldn’t know how to invest without it. I use the S&P Outlook master list in one folio and a bunch of mostly foreign exchange traded funds in another. The interface with MS Money is poor, but otherwise it is extremely easy to dollar-cost average every month. Each December I sell all my losses, which is again very easy to do in FOLIOfn. The tax advantage is huge and has more than paid the yearly fee for using FOLIOfn in the first place. In short, I love it.’ ☞ You can select one or more of FOLIOfn’s pre-packaged folios, but you might do even better building your own based on Joel Greenblatt’s book and web site. REAL ESTATE Housing Market Shows Further Signs of Cooling By JAMES R. HAGERTY and RUTH SIMON Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 15, 2005; Page A1 The pace of U.S. home sales is showing further signs of slowing, amid a widening gap between sellers’ asking prices and the amount skittish buyers are prepared to offer, according to an industry survey, real-estate brokerage firms and housing economists. Rising mortgage rates, higher energy costs, widespread talk about the risk of a “bubble” in housing and a surge in the number of homes on the market are among the factors behind the apparent slowdown. They have combined to make home shoppers more cautious, economists and real-estate brokers say. Buyers are taking their time to look for bargains, while many sellers have put unrealistically high price tags on their homes. That leads to a standoff, causing the number of sales to drop — a classic ending to a period of unusually rapid house-price increases. . . .
Three Great Broadway Shows You Don't Even Have to Go to New York to Enjoy November 16, 2005March 2, 2017 1. Run don’t walk (well, or at least walk like a man) to see Jersey Boys – the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The web site sells itself. In fact, even if you can’t make it to New York or afford the crazy Broadway ticket prices, just enjoy the web site (speakers on, please) and then go nuts and blow $11.99 on the album. (With iTunes, you can be listening five minutes from now, as I am.) Unlike a lot of ‘jukebox’ musicals, the story and acting are really good, most of which you can follow from the album if you use your imagination. (The night Charles and I went, the lead was sick and we had to see it with the understudy – grumble, grumble, we paid $12 million a ticket for THIS?, grumble, grumble – and guess what? A star was born. It was most cool.) Huge fun. 2. Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd – the story of the demon barber of Fleet Street. No, really! I didn’t think he was real, either, but apparently he was. Born in 1748. Even if you can’t make it to New York to see this astonishing new production (the actors are also the musicians – they fairly drip talent [when they’re not dripping blood]), try to find time to read this account of his life and, especially, of Eighteenth Century London. Hanging 14-year-olds for snatching a handkerchief? Ah, the things we take for granted just minutes later. It wasn’t quite the way it appears in the trailer for Pride and Prejudice. 3. And finally, before you leave New York, be sure to pick up a souvenir; specifically, two tickets to Souvenir – the story of Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy New York socialite of the Thirties and Forties with a passion for singing. She sang terribly, but none of her friends could bring themselves to tell her (what harm could a little insincere encouragement do, they must have thought?) and, well, she was completely tone deaf so she was the only one unaware of it. And she ultimately played Carnegie Hall. If you think it’s hard to sing well, wait til you hear how hard it is to sing terribly well. This one is a labor of love, with a terrific ending that will be our wonderful little secret.
Party! November 15, 2005March 2, 2017 IT’S YOUR PLANET, TOO Hurricane Gamma seems pretty likely to form over the next few days – when have we ever gotten three tropical depressions into the Greek alphabet before? – which may be as good a reason as any to direct your attention to Al Gore, here, in Rolling Stone: It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly and wisely. ‘Global warming’ is the name it was given a long time ago. But it should be understood for what it is: a planetary emergency that now threatens human civilization on multiple fronts. Stronger hurricanes and typhoons represent only one of many new dangers . . . The new extremes of wind and rain are part of a larger pattern that also includes rapidly melting glaciers worldwide, increasing desertification, a global extinction crisis, the ravaging of ocean fisheries and a growing range for disease “vectors” like mosquitoes, ticks and many other carriers of viruses and bacteria harmful to people. The Republican response is to scoff, give tax incentives for the purchase of Hummers, and push for more drilling in Alaska. The Democratic response is to encourage conservation and fund alternative energy research. What can one citizen do about any of this? Well, you could build an ark. But you could also start by going to a party. GO TO A PARTY TONIGHT Progressive environmental policies are just the start of what distinguishes the Democratic Party. We also ‘believe in’ evolution . . . in stem cell research . . . in affordable health care . . . in a social safety net . . . in privacy . . . in diversity . . . in thinking things through before starting a war – and more. Would you like to be in on the ground floor of the effort to organize the progressive grassroots? Click here to find a party to begin the conversation and see what role you might play. I know it’s short notice, but heck . . . drop by on your way home from work. There are a thousand to choose from, some with just a couple of folks sitting over coffee, some larger. But first read Al’s essay. It will put you in the mood to get involved.