Free Money (Better Flush Than Fluish) And, of course, the latest on NTMD November 2, 2005March 2, 2017 But first . . . REID THIS As you know, Harry Reid and Senate Democrats invoked Rule 21 yesterday to force the Senate into closed session – one of just 53 such sessions since 1929. Time was, a historic speech like Harry Reid’s today would have been big news, perhaps carried in its entirety on the radio or TV. NBC made mention of it, but devoted a lot more time to a story on the controversy over cell phones in National Parks. So you see what we’re up against. But read his speech. If you think it’s worth sharing, pass it on to your friends. Minority Leader Harry Reid November 1, 2005 United States Senate This past weekend, we witnessed the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and a senior Advisor to President Bush. Libby is the first sitting White House staffer to be indicted in 135 years. This indictment raises very serious charges. It asserts this Administration engaged in actions that both harmed our national security and are morally repugnant. The decision to place U.S. soldiers in harm’s way is the most significant responsibility the Constitution invests in the Congress. The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really about: how the Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions. As a result of its improper conduct, a cloud now hangs over this Administration. This cloud is further darkened by the Administration’s mistakes in prisoner abuse scandal, Hurricane Katrina, and the cronyism and corruption in numerous agencies. And, unfortunately, it must be said that a cloud also hangs over this Republican-controlled Congress for its unwillingness to hold this Republican Administration accountable for its misdeeds on all of these issues. Let’s take a look back at how we got here with respect to Iraq Mr. President. The record will show that within hours of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, senior officials in this Administration recognized these attacks could be used as a pretext to invade Iraq. The record will also show that in the months and years after 9/11, the Administration engaged in a pattern of manipulation of the facts and retribution against anyone who got in its way as it made the case for attacking Iraq. There are numerous examples of how the Administration misstated and manipulated the facts as it made the case for war. Administration statements on Saddam’s alleged nuclear weapons capabilities and ties with Al Qaeda represent the best examples of how it consistently and repeatedly manipulated the facts. The American people were warned time and again by the President, the Vice President, and the current Secretary of State about Saddam’s nuclear weapons capabilities. The Vice President said Iraq has reconstituted its nuclear weapons. Playing upon the fears of Americans after September 11, these officials and others raised the specter that, left unchecked, Saddam could soon attack America with nuclear weapons. Obviously we know now their nuclear claims were wholly inaccurate. But more troubling is the fact that a lot of intelligence experts were telling the Administration then that its claims about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities were false. The situation was very similar with respect to Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda. The Vice President told the American people, We know he’s out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know he has a longstanding relationship with various terrorist groups including the Al Qaeda organization. The Administration’s assertions on this score have been totally discredited. But again, the Administration went ahead with these assertions in spite of the fact that the government’s top experts did not agree with these claims. What has been the response of this Republican-controlled Congress to the Administration’s manipulation of intelligence that led to this protracted war in Iraq? Basically nothing. Did the Republican-controlled Congress carry out its constitutional obligations to conduct oversight? No. Did it support our troops and their families by providing them the answers to many important questions? No. Did it even attempt to force this Administration to answer the most basic questions about its behavior? No. Unfortunately the unwillingness of the Republican-controlled Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities is not limited to just Iraq. We see it with respect to the prisoner abuse scandal. We see it with respect to Katrina. And we see it with respect to the cronyism and corruption that permeates this Administration. Time and time again, this Republican-controlled Congress has consistently chosen to put its political interests ahead of our national security. They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican Administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why. There is also another disturbing pattern here, namely about how the Administration responded to those who challenged its assertions. Time and again this Administration has actively sought to attack and undercut those who dared to raise questions about its preferred course. For example, when General Shinseki indicated several hundred thousand troops would be needed in Iraq, his military career came to an end. When then OMB Director Larry Lindsay suggested the cost of this war would approach $200 billion, his career in the Administration came to an end. When U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix challenged conclusions about Saddam’s WMD capabilities, the Administration pulled out his inspectors. When Nobel Prize winner and IAEA head Mohammed el-Baridei raised questions about the Administration’s claims of Saddam’s nuclear capabilities, the Administration attempted to remove him from his post. When Joe Wilson stated that there was no attempt by Saddam to acquire uranium from Niger, the Administration launched a vicious and coordinated campaign to demean and discredit him, going so far as to expose the fact that his wife worked as a CIA agent. Given this Administration’s pattern of squashing those who challenge its misstatements, what has been the response of this Republican-controlled Congress? Again, absolutely nothing. And with their inactions, they provide political cover for this Administration at the same time they keep the truth from our troops who continue to make large sacrifices in Iraq. This behavior is unacceptable. The toll in Iraq is as staggering as it is solemn. More than 2,000 Americans have lost their lives. Over 90 Americans have paid the ultimate sacrifice this month alone – the fourth deadliest month since the war began. More than 15,000 have been wounded. More than 150,000 remain in harm’s way. Enormous sacrifices have been and continue to be made. The troops and the American people have a right to expect answers and accountability worthy of that sacrifice. For example, 40 Senate Democrats wrote a substantive and detailed letter to the President asking four basic questions about the Administration’s Iraq policy and received a four sentence answer in response. These Senators and the American people deserve better. They also deserve a searching and comprehensive investigation about how the Bush Administration brought this country to war. Key questions that need to be answered include: * How did the Bush Administration assemble its case for war against Iraq? * Who did Bush Administration officials listen to and who did they ignore? *How did senior Administration officials manipulate or manufacture intelligence presented to the Congress and the American people? * What was the role of the White House Iraq Group or WHIG, a group of senior White House officials tasked with marketing the war and taking down its critics? * How did the Administration coordinate its efforts to attack individuals who dared to challenge the Administration’s assertions? * Why has the Administration failed to provide Congress with the documents that will shed light on their misconduct and misstatements? Unfortunately the Senate committee that should be taking the lead in providing these answers is not. Despite the fact that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly committed to examine many of these questions more than one and a half; years ago, he has chosen not to keep this commitment. Despite the fact that he restated that commitment earlier this year on national television, he has still done nothing. At this point, we can only conclude he will continue to put politics ahead of our national security. If he does anything at this point, I suspect he will play political games by producing an analysis that fails to answer any of these important questions. Instead, if history is any guide, this analysis will attempt to disperse and deflect blame away from the Administration. We demand that the Intelligence Committee and other committees in this body with jurisdiction over these matters carry out a full and complete investigation immediately as called for by Democrats in the committee’s annual intelligence authorization report. Our troops and the American people have sacrificed too much. It is time this Republican-controlled Congress put the interests of the American people ahead of their own political interests. FREE MONEY Alex Popov: ‘Zero-rate credit cards have been available for a while over here in London and I’ve benefited nicely from a succession of them. Your readers may be interest in the experience of the Brits – this site provides lots of advice on how best to use the free money and how to ensure it remains free!’ Stephen Gilbert: ‘A better choice for those not having any balances to transfer: Citibank offers a ‘Dividend’ Mastercard which pays a five percent rebate on purchases of gasoline, groceries and drugstore purchases (one percent on all else). You can order your rebate check on their website once it reaches a minimum of $25 or $50 (I don’t recall which). I use mine for gas and groceries; my last check was for $141.’ FEELING ACHY? Jeffrey Davis: ‘The good doctor you linked to yesterday is part right and part wrong. The bird flu – in its present incarnation – is almost certainly NOT going to become a pandemic of 1918 proportions. But he’s discounting the possibility of mutation that might allow it to pass easily from human to human. I’m sure, given the relative ineffectiveness of Tamiflu against the disease, that there’s a very large greed component to the hysteria, but two of my great uncles died at Great Lakes Naval Station in the 1918 outbreak. They were young and healthy with robust immune systems.’ Michael Axelrod: ‘Normally I am not an alarmist, but the flu is an exception. About 500,000 Americans died from the Spanish flu – back when U.S. population was little more than a third what it is today. We had three pandemics in the 20th century. Fortunately, the last two were mild compared to the 1918 Spanish flu. While I’m not an expert on virology, a lot of people who qualify as experts are extremely concerned. My advice: stay in good physical shape, buy face masks and latex gloves and be prepared to hunker down if a pandemic hits. I didn’t take the warnings about the swine flu seriously back in 1976 because two cases don’t make an epidemic. But today the potential does exist for a pandemic. I have done all those things myself.’ 90 PILLS, NOT 180 There are no sure things, as I remind you with insufferable regularity, but here’s the latest on Nitromed. On the one hand, as I reported last week, one of the Wall Street firms following the stock, SG Cowan, cut its 2005, 2006 and 2007 sales estimates about in half last week – yet cut its price target for the stock by just 10%, from 32 to 29 (which strikes me as pretty amazing when some stocks get creamed just for missing their earnings expectations by a penny) (and yes, it’s my column, so I can string together as many parenthetical clauses as I want) (I may have no political power, but I have parenthetical power). And I think Merrill Lynch downgraded the stock from ‘buy’ to ‘neutral’ last week. On the other hand, the daily IMS prescription data, as released by UBS Securities, another of the Wall Street firms that follows the company, have picked up to well over 150 a day – still nowhere near enough, in my guru’s view, for the company ever to become profitable, but encouragement for the bulls nonetheless. But get this: Day after day, UBS releases its note with the latest figures, never changing its $32 price target for the stock. But yesterday it noted that the sales numbers it’s been estimating have rested on the assumption of 180 pills per prescription . . . but that now they’ve learned it’s 90 pills. Oops. On the one hand (again), that’s actually not as significant as it may sound, because whether patients are buying 90 pills at a time or 180, if they do become daily users of BiDil, in the course of the year, they’ll buy a year’s worth, no matter how you slice it. (Needless to say, UBS has not lowered its $32 price target for the stock by even a dime on this new information.) But on the other hand (again), this means that patients have on average been getting prescriptions for just 30 days at a time (at most), because they are supposed to start with 3 tablets a day and, if they can tolerate it, work up to 6. So . . . how come so few of the patients who started on BiDil in July and August and September seem to be getting their prescriptions refilled? As of Sunday, the 7-day rolling average of total prescriptions per day was 163, of which 127 were new patients, and thus only 36 were refills. How come not more refills? That’s genuinely a question – I don’t know the answer. But whatever the answer is, it’s probably not a plus for NTMD. The stock could rally (or tank) after Thursday’s conference call. There are no sure things. But if you bought them with money you can truly afford to lose . . . don’t sell your puts.
If Al Franken Had a Machine Gun in Diebold’s Executive Suite November 1, 2005March 2, 2017 FOR YOUR HOLIDAY GIFT LIST The Truth (with jokes) by Al Franken. A sample from Janet Maslin’s review yesterday: In describing the role of Ahmad Chalabi in American plans to invade Iraq: “He and his associates had explained that we would be greeted with sweets and flowers, leaving out the crucial modifier, ‘exploding.’ “ FOR YOUR SUPREME CONSIDERATION Because President Bush is a uniter, not a divider, here is the conservative white man he has nominated to fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s moderate shoes. It’s a 24-page report, so I’m not suggesting you read it all. But for those who like to dig deep, there’s plenty to review. (You’ve probably heard, for example, that he voted to strike down a federal ban of machine gun possession.) I do suggest you read all this, though: FOR THE FUTURE OF YOUR DEMOCRACY Here is a summary of a GAO report that should perhaps be getting wider play. Even if you don’t reach the same conclusions that authors have, the GAO Report is at the least deeply troubling. Powerful Government Accountability Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman October 26, 2005 As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling. The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the Government Accountability Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage. The government’s lead investigative agency is known for its general incorruptibility and its thorough, in-depth analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as “conspiracy theories” adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White House. Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The request came amidst widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often shocking irregularities defined their performance. According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee received “more than 57,000 complaints” following Bush’s alleged re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized under oath in a series of sworn statements and affidavits in public hearings and investigations conducted in Ohio by the Free Press and other election protection organizations. The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, “some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.” The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted that “public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines.” The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren O’Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush. Bush’s official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election protection advocates argue that O’Dell’s statement still stands as a clear sign of an effort, apparently successful, to steal the White House. Among other things, the GAO confirms that: 1. Some electronic voting machines “did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected.” In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush’s official margin of victory. 2. “It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate.” Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004. 3. “Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.” Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO. 4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a “widespread conspiracy” but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer. 5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies. 6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter. 7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided. 8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system. In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank, grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate its business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election turned. The GAO findings are particularly damning when set in the context of an election run in Ohio by a Secretary of State simultaneously working as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Far from what election theft skeptics have long asserted, the GAO findings confirm that the electronic network on which 800,000 Ohio votes were cast was vulnerable enough to allow a tiny handful of operatives — or less — to turn the whole vote count using personal computers operating on relatively simple software. The GAO documentation flows alongside other crucial realities surrounding the 2004 vote count. For example: The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush. Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility. A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former ES&S voting machine company employee, was caught on the ballot-making machine in Auglaize County Election officials in Mahoning County now concede that at least 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to Bush. Voters who pushed Kerry’s name saw Bush’s name light up, again and again, all day long. Officials claim the problems were quickly solved, but sworn statements and affidavits say otherwise. They confirm similar problems in Franklin County (Columbus). Kerry’s margins in both counties were suspiciously low. A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25 million votes for Kerry. The problem was allegedly fixed. In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, a so-called “electronic transfer glitch” gave Bush nearly 4000 extra votes when only 638 people voted at that polling place. The tally was allegedly corrected, but remains infamous as the “loaves and fishes” vote count. In Franklin County, dozens of voters swore under oath that their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without a paper trail. In Miami County, at 1:43am after Election Day, with the county’s central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote – 19,000 more votes mysteriously arrived; 13,000 were for Bush at the same percentage as prior to the additional votes, a virtual statistical impossibility. In Cleveland, large, entirely implausible vote totals turned up for obscure third party candidates in traditional Democratic African-American wards. Vote counts in neighboring wards showed virtually no votes for those candidates, with 90% going instead for Kerry. Prior to one of Blackwell’s illegitimate “show recounts,” technicians from Triad voting machine company showed up unannounced at the Hocking County Board of Elections and removed the computer hard drive. In response to official information requests, Shelby and other counties admit to having discarded key records and equipment before any recount could take place. In a conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others, John Kerry confirmed that he lost every precinct in New Mexico that had a touchscreen voting machine. The losses had no correlation with ethnicity, social class or traditional party affiliation—only with the fact that touchscreen machines were used. In a public letter, Rep. Conyers has stated that “by and large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average voter is getting a lemon – the Ford Pinto of voting technology. We must demand better.” But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting machines as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly engineered to allow a very small number of partisans with minimal computer skills and equipment to shift enough votes to put George W. Bush back in the White House. Given the growing body of evidence, it appears increasingly clear that’s exactly what happened. GAO Report Revised 10/27/05 Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available via http://freepress.org and http://harveywasserman.com. Their WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO, with Steve Rosenfeld, will be published in Spring, 2006, by New Press. Tomorrow: More Free Money
Boo! (Which Is All I Have to Say About Halloween) October 31, 2005March 2, 2017 FREE MONEY A zero-percent loan for a year. Just be sure you make the small monthly payments on time and then pay back the balance in full at the end of 12 months, before interest starts to accrue. Thanks, Citibank. Click here. FREE ENTERTAINMENT Ken Ritz: ‘For some terrific, and inexpensive (free, if you don’t count real estate taxes) entertainment, use the public library. Our libraries here in Rockford, Illinois (like everywhere else, I guess) have a Web site where you can reserve a book, CD, DVR . . . and they e-mail you as to when your selection comes in.’ FLU Del Rickel offers this link to an argument that the avian flu threat is purposely overblown for the benefit of some drug companies (including one Donald Rumsfeld chaired before returning to the Pentagon). The author says that if we don’t make our living working with birds, it’s unlikely we have much to worry about. And that even if he’s wrong, billions spent on Tamiflu will do nothing to save us. Instead, he says, we should eat right, exercise, and stay clean. I don’t know whether he’s right, but don’t be offended if I rush to wash my hands after meeting you. TEN MORE PUNS Noel Serrano responded to the Patty Whack and Gandhi puns with a list of ten additional puns, hoping that one or more of them would make me laugh. But (stealing shamelessly from the list he sent), no pun in ten did. SHORT SQUEEZE Jonathan Walter: ‘I notice on Bloomberg that the short interest in NTMD is currently close to 50% of the float. I was wondering what your view is of the potential threat of a short squeeze, and of the future trigger point people might be waiting for to unravel this already reasonably chunky bearish position?’ ☞ The Nitromed pie is divided into about 30 million slices, about a third of which are held by insiders and not traded freely, leaving a ‘float’ of about 20 million. Of these, shortsellers have borrowed about half to sell short. A short squeeze would occur if the stock starts going up and, scared by this (or forced by their brokers to cover their shorts lest they lose more than 100% of their account and cost the broker money), they buy shares to cover their shorts, driving the price still higher and squeezing more shortsellers to cover. There is always this risk, which is why I suggested buying puts rather than shorting the stock directly. With puts, you can lose only what you bet – not more. (There is also the risk that the owners of the shares short-sellers have borrowed will find ways to move those shares from their margin accounts, where the broker is free to lend them to short-sellers, to their cash accounts, where the broker is not . . . or even to demand physical delivery of the stock certificates. In other words, that they will be able to force a short-squeeze. But this doesn’t seem to happen a whole lot. And with about 65% of the stock held by institutions, which get paid to lend out their shares, it’s not clear it will happen with NTMD.) Consider, also, that those who’ve shorted the stock think they have a pretty good reason. As companies go, Nitromed is not enormously complicated to analyze. It has one product. That product is the combination of two widely prescribed, readily available-at-one-sixth-the-price generics. Either it will sell well or it won’t. So far, it is not selling terribly well. And consider, finally, that because they are sitting with profits as the stock has fallen from a high of 27.99 in February to $15.78 at Friday’s close, the shortsellers are in no rush to close out their positions and incur income tax on their gain. Nor may some of them ever have to cover their shorts. One can theoretically stay short a stock forever. Only once the stock becomes officially worthless is the jig up. You then have to report your profit as a taxable event, in effect ‘buying back’ for $0 the shares you shorted for $20 or $25 each. So the shorts have a tax disincentive to cover their shorts before the end of the year . . . while some of those who own the stock, by contrast, may decide to sell their shares before year-end for the tax loss. The company is scheduled to webcast a conference call Thursday at 9am. Bulls on the stock hope management will present good news that will drive the stock back up. Bears are betting the company will report the kind of sales results that do not justify a $500 million market cap. Don’t sell your puts.
FDR and Gandhi October 28, 2005January 16, 2017 Some of you may be wondering what I think of today’s momentous developments. But because I wrote this column last night, I don’t know what they are – or even if there were any. In the meantime: TIVO ‘WARM SPRINGS’ MONDAY I hope to write at more length about this, but for now, I commend to you an HBO movie called ‘Warm Springs‘ that at least some HBO subscribers can see this coming Monday at 4pm – check ‘your local listings’ to see whether you get it. It’s about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Eleanor, and it is wonderful. It is a story, ultimately, that calls us to (stealing a line from the movie) ‘come together as a family and do what we do best: lift each other up.’ Coming from a man stricken by polio at the age of 39 – who would be unable to walk for the rest of his life, yet go on to be four times elected President to lead us through the Depression and World War II – it carries particular poignancy. Seriously: try to tape it. Failing that (or in addition) read an interview with the author. Don’t get HBO? Have no TiVo? Well, I admire your frugality (and by sharing it in my early years am able to afford HBO and a TiVo). Go find some old guy with HBO and TiVo and have him invite you over to watch it. PLAN B Lorraine: ‘What is Plan B? Did I miss a column? It sounds very important.’ ☞ Sorry, I meant to include the link. It’s a pill to prevent pregnancy after sex that would help to make abortion rare. It’s currently sold by prescription. The FDA staff recommended making it available over-the-counter (because it’s not always easy to get a prescription at 2am on a Saturday night). But then forces from the right flexed their muscles and the Administration blocked it. TAMIFLU Jeffrey Davis: ‘Tamiflu may be ineffective against H5N1.’ ☞ So I guess we may have been wise – or lucky – not to order enough. Monday, I linked to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story about bird flu so scary that I was advised by my advertisers not to excerpt more than a few lines. They want you in a happy, shopping mood this holiday season. But then I realized, wait, I have no advertisers. These must be the voices of my imaginary advertisers, and they must have somehow gotten past my imaginary secretary. So at the risk of turning you into an obsessive handwasher this winter, here’s a good chunk of the article, reminding us yet again to have in the stock market only cash we won’t actually need (for things like rent and food) for several years – not because the market will go down sharply, but because it might. (A joke follows.) “We are betting the nation that this may not happen soon,” said Dr. Tara O’Toole, chief executive officer and director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity. “There is still no strategy; there is still no one in charge.” The imminent release of the HHS pandemic flu plan will do little to change that perception, the experts said, pointing out that a version leaked to The New York Times two weeks ago is short on practical details. . . . Whether and how to prepare for a flu pandemic is not a new discussion. The federal government developed its first plan in 1978 and began revising it in 1993. HHS released a 50-page draft in August 2004. Academics and government workers who have been part of the process say rewriting – particularly of the plan’s quarantine provisions – continued through last week. The long process has put the United States behind other industrialized nations such as Britain and Canada that published their plans months or years ago. The lag has provoked impatience: The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office called for a final plan six times in the past five years. The Trust for America’s Health warned in June that the delay left the country vulnerable to wide social and economic disruption if a flu pandemic strikes. Health authorities, including the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, predict that a pandemic will occur at some near-future point. There have been 10 in the past 300 years; the last was in 1968, and the next is considered overdue. . . . The economic impact of a pandemic could rival the Depression, according to an August analysis by the Canadian investment house BMO Nesbitt Burns. Oil prices and commodity markets would crash; transportation would collapse as countries close their borders; and just-in-time supply chains of food, goods, manufacturing components and medical supplies would be cut, the firm said. Businesses should expect to lose one-fourth of their employees for up to four months, the Trust for America’s Health said in June. Planners are also concerned that the flu’s impact would fall hardest on institutions and governments that are already struggling. Hospitals and emergency rooms are already overcrowded, and state health care is stressed because of budget cuts. Some planners are urging states and the federal government to engage the public and the business community in frank conversations about a pandemic’s likely realities. “We need to assure the food supply, drinking water, heat in northern climates,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, founder of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who has consulted with HHS on the federal plan. “We need to be make sure we have pharmaceuticals for conditions other than influenza. And we need the capability to process, respectfully and with dignity, the bodies of up to 1.9 million people who might die over the course of a year.” GANDHI David Summers: ‘I enjoyed Patty Whack. My favorite of that type is: The great spiritual leader Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, causing his feet to be quite sore and calloused. His unusual and spare diet made him physically weak and gave him bad breath [at least for the purposes of this riff]. Thus, it is said of Gandhi, that he was a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed with halitosis.’
Go Back and Read Mon-Tues-Weds There Will Be a Quiz October 27, 2005March 2, 2017 You’re not going to tell me you read the last three days’ columns in their entirety – they were much too long, and much of that time the web site was down anyway. So go read ’em now. Especially the item about comparative oinkiness. Today, let me just note that one of the firms that has been recommending Nitromed stock, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., yesterday reduced its forecasts for sales of BiDil, the company’s (only) product, from $17 million in 2005 to $7 million – 58% lower than previously. From $134 million in 2006 to $59.5 million – 55% lower. And from $232 million in 2007 to $134 million – 42% lower. And since sales are not all profit (the pills themselves cost almost nothing to produce, but there is a projected $120 million or so a year in other expenses), the reduction in expected profit in those years is presumably even steeper. So by how much has this firm reduced its ‘target price’ for the stock, given that they think sales will be only half what they thought before? By 10%, from $32 to $29. (They now think 2008 will be the year big profits start to flow.) NTMD closed at $16.32 last night, down from just over $22 when we first started talking about it July 6. Anything is possible, of course. But presuming you went into this with money you could truly afford to lose (as you still could): don’t sell your puts. Oink, oink.
The Latest Borowitz Shocker October 26, 2005January 16, 2017 Verio got its backup system working for six hours yesterday, then went down until this morning. I am sorry if you missed yesterday‘s column or Monday‘s (and glad I am not a hospital or an air traffic controller). Here is today’s: WANT TO REDUCE ABORTIONS? I do. Click here. Plan B is NOT the same as RU-486 (the ‘abortion pill’) . . . it works BEFORE conception. If you care at all about reducing abortion, as most of us do, please add your voice to the call for over-the-counter purchase of Plan B. (I believe RU-486 should be legal, also. But the availability of Plan B should make the need for it all the more rare. Plan B is something both sides should be able to agree on.) PORK Kevin Clark: ‘You’re absolutely right about the need to set priorities. But I’m not sure Democrats are any better at it than Republicans. Would you be willing to report in your column which senators voted in favor of Senator Coburn’s proposal to redirect some pork to hurricane relief? It was defeated something like 85-15. It’s a bipartisan problem and a big one.’ ☞ True. But the number of pork projects has increased dramatically since the Republicans have controlled Congress and, especially, since the Republicans have controlled everything – 13,997 pork projects this year, up from fewer than 2,000 when the ‘Gingrich revolution’ swept the Republicans into Congress in 1994. (The number of Senators and Representatives, meanwhile, remains unchanged at 535. They’ve just gotten 7 times as oinky under Republican leadership.) THOUGHTS ON OUR FOREIGN POLICY Meanwhile, have you seen this (worth reading in its entirety) from Larry Wilkerson, former director of the Marine Corps War College and former chief of staff at the State Department? “If you’re unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you’re declaring the Geneva Conventions not operative, if you’re doing a host of things that the world doesn’t agree with you on and you’re doing it blatantly and in their face, without grace, then you’ve got to pay the consequences.” I do not look for a bull market any time soon. THOUGHTS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES Thanks to Granny Bee from makethemccountable.com for drawing my attention to a piece by University of Michigan historian Juan Cole that helps explain how the New York Times went the Judy Miller route and blew it on Iraq. In key part: Rupert Murdoch, and Richard Mellon Scaife, and other far rightwing billionaires have deeply corrupted our information environment. They are in part responsible for what happened at the NYT. Miller attempts to excuse her shoddy reporting on Iraq’s imaginary weapons of mass destruction by saying that “everyone” got that story wrong. But the State Department Intelligence and Research Division did not get it wrong. . . . Elbaradei of the International Atomic Energy Commission was not wrong. Imad Khadduri, former Iraqi nuclear scientist, was not wrong. “Everybody” got it wrong only in the sense that “everybody” had been brainwashed by Rupert Murdoch. . . . In essence, Murdoch, Scaife and other far rightwing super-rich propagandists succeeded in maligning the NYT and in pushing it off its liberal perch even further to the Right. In trying to defend themselves from the charge of treason, Raines and Keller fell into the trap of using Miller’s shoddy reporting as a rampart. In the end, it was revealed to be not a rampart but a Trojan Horse for the Right. BOROWITZ SHOCKER This just in from my pal Andy Borowitz of the Borowitz Report: DEMOCRATS SEEKING WAYS TO SQUANDER HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY ‘We Will Manage to Screw This Up,’ Vows Dean Given a Republican president with plummeting approval ratings and a Republican congressional leadership that is being investigated, indicted, and in at least one case fingerprinted, Democratic party leaders said today that they are “actively seeking” ways to squander their historic opportunity. At a press conference in Washington, D.C. today, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean reassured the party faithful that the Democrats would stick to tradition and find some way to blow this golden opportunity. “People look at the mess the Republicans find themselves in and ask, ‘How could the Democrats possibly screw this up?'” Gov. Dean said. “I am here to say, don’t worry, we will find a way.” The DNC chief said that the Democrats have already convened a top-level brainstorming session of strategists from the Dukakis, Mondale, and Kerry campaigns to formulate a plan for squandering the opportunity the Republicans have handed them on a silver platter. According to those familiar with the strategy session, the Democrats have already settled on a new slogan for the 2006 midterm elections, “Read our lips – tons of new taxes,” and that most of that new tax revenue would be used to promote the legalization of crystal meth. While it is still early to be planning how to lose the 2008 election, Gov. Dean said that most preliminary discussions have revolved around nominating the Rev. Al Sharpton for President. “We’re only going for Sharpton because our first choice, Jacques Chirac, was unavailable,” Gov. Dean said. ☞ Actually, I am pleased to report, Democrats, with strong leadership from Governor Dean, are hard at work attempting not to squander this opportunity. Recall that it was just SIX WEEKS before the 1994 mid-term election that Newt Gingrich unveiled his ‘Contract with America’ – not 54 weeks before. And that, even now, the latest poll I saw showed voters, by a margin of 48% to 39%, wanting to return Congress to the Democrats. If you’re beginning to think the Republican leadership does not represent your interests all that well . . . that ‘compassionate conservatism’ has somehow morphed into a culture of corruption, incompetence, and cronyism (‘U.S. FACING CRONY SHORTAGE,’ reads another Borowitz shocker: ‘Not Enough Cronies to Fill Government Positions, President Warns’) . . . that even on issues like reducing abortion they may be getting it backwards (see Plan B, above) . . . visit democrats.org and sign up. We need you.
Tamiflu – Now There’s a Drug with Legs October 25, 2005January 17, 2017 Verio, which hosts this web site, lost power at its Boca Raton data center as Wilma swept through. Our home lost power, too, but, unlike theirs, our back-up emergency generator worked. Sorry if you missed yesterday. Here’s today: THAT NEW CAR SMELL ‘That new car smell,’ I’ve long held, ‘is the most expensive fragrance in the world.’ Now we learn that ‘recent research links it to a toxic cocktail of harmful chemicals’ as well (thanks, Thor). The smell, it seems, ’emanates largely from chemicals that leach from glues, paints, vinyls and plastics in the passenger compartment.’ Japanese auto makers are hard at work on the problem. But in the meantime, you have two reasons to buy your cars used. GOLD I’ve long held, also, that digging for gold is a waste. After all, gold’s value lies largely in its scarcity. Digging more only makes it less scarce. (We have more than enough already for our industrial needs.) But now, as readers of yesterday’s New York Times front page know, it turns out there is another reason not to dig for it – the environmental cost. ‘Consider a ring,’ write the authors of the Times piece. ‘For that one-ounce of gold, miners dig up and haul away 30 tons of rock and sprinkle it with diluted cyanide, which separates the gold from the rock. . . . [Some] gold mines, have become the near-equivalent of nuclear waste dumps that must be tended in perpetuity.’ Through dumb luck, Charles and I went with platinum. (Well, first I went with silver, bought off a sidewalk card table, ten bucks each, but that went only so far.) Now one of you can write in and let me know that to produce an ounce of platinum, entire ecospheres must be destroyed. NTMD Last week 595 BiDil prescriptions were written. That sounds like a lot – nearly 12 prescriptions in each of the 50 states. But if each prescription is for 180 pills and the company gets its full $1.80 price per pill, that would be sales just shy of $200,000 for the week. The problem is that the company has projected expenses of around $2 million a week . . . and that Wall Street analysts have projected sales of $10 million for the quarter just ended and $20 million for the quarter we’re in now. Twelve weeks at $200,000 a week falls well shy of $10 million, let alone $20 million. Of course, none of this matters if BiDil sales begin to rocket. But while they are likely to rise a good bit, as more new patients begin taking BiDil and those already taking it go to the pharmacy for refills, it’s not at all clear they will rise anywhere near enough. At the end of the day, BiDil is comprised of two widely prescribed generics readily available at about one-sixth the price. And while it’s one thing to pay $8 for a bottle of genuine Bayer-brand aspirin versus $1.29 for the generic – who cares?* – it’s another to spend $2,500 a year on BiDil instead of $400 on its two components. Especially when, if you’re taking BiDil, you’re probably on five or ten other drugs as well. One of the firms that follow Nitromed, SG Cowen, recently opined: ‘IMS Health data suggest Q3 BiDil end-user sales will fall far short of Street estimates, while the drug’s ability to meet longer-term consensus numbers remains uncertain.’ With the stock closing last night at $17.80, the company has sales of around $200,000 a week, expenses projected at around $2 million a week, and a market capitalization of about $540 million. Don’t sell your puts. *I do. THE FLU One drug that is selling like crazy is Tamiflu. ‘Despite warnings from disease experts, nonprofit organizations and its own consultants, ‘reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ‘the United States has lowballed its orders for Tamiflu, the only antiviral drug believed to be effective against bird flu, choosing to stockpile enough to protect 2 percent of its population rather than the 25 percent chosen by other countries and recommended by the World Health Organization.’ Yes, but we cut taxes dramatically for the rich and appropriated $223 million for a bridge to an island with 50 people on it – you can’t do everything. It’s a matter of priorities. That’s what Democrats just don’t understand. Tomorrow: More Stuff to Read
Remembering the Risks October 24, 2005March 2, 2017 Gasoline prices and home heating prices are going up, adjustable-rate mortgage payments may as well . . . how is the average Jane or Joe going to make ends meet? Home equity has stopped going up, limiting their ability to go borrow further against it. A hike in the minimum wage has been quashed by the Republicans yet again – there has been no cost-of-living adjustment in eight years. The economic near term for most Americans, and for many of the businesses that depend on their custom, looks dodgy. (One bright spot: the rich, especially in Houston, are doing great.) Meanwhile, the markets wait for special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The S.E.C. investigation of the Senate majority leader and the indictment of the House majority leader are footnotes compared with what we may see in the next few days concerning the White House. It’s possible, of course, that Fitzgerald will just wrap up the investigation and say he couldn’t find out who blew Valerie Plame’s cover, or anything else worth indicting. But as James Moore writes in the Huffington Post: We know . . . based upon what we have read and seen and heard that someone created fake documents related to Niger and Iraq and used them as a false pretense to launch America into an invasion of Iraq. And when a former diplomat made an honest effort to find out the facts, a plan was hatched to both discredit and punish him by revealing the identity of his undercover CIA agent wife. Patrick Fitzgerald has before him the most important criminal case in American history. Watergate, by comparison, was a random burglary in an age of innocence. The investigator’s prosecutorial authority in this present case is not constrained by any regulation. If he finds a thread connecting the leak to something greater, Fitzgerald has the legal power to follow it to the web in search of the spider. It seems unlikely, then, that he would simply go after the leakers and the people who sought to cover up the leak when it was merely a secondary consequence of the much greater crime of forging evidence to foment war. Fitzgerald did not earn his reputation as an Irish alligator by going after the little guy. . . . We may stand witness to a definitive American moment of democracy. The son of a New York doorman probably has in his hands, in many ways, the fate of the republic. . . . How will the markets react if things become uncertain here for a while? Markets don’t like uncertainty. Then again, markets anticipate, and so may already have discounted the uncertainty. (‘Buy on the rumor, sell on the news’ – or, in this case, sell on the rumor, buy on the news.) But my guess is that confidence has not yet bottomed out. The markets want intelligent, sure leadership. The prospect of having to get through more than three more years of the Bush Administration, with its appointments like ‘Brownie’ at FEMA and Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, and its disastrous mishandling of the war, cannot breed much confidence. (Over the weekend someone sug-jested that, to succeed Alan Greenspan, the President would nominate his personal accountant.) Meanwhile, the alternative prospect, of a period of possible leadership turmoil – if it turns out the President knew all along who leaked Valerie Plame’s cover, and that there was a conspiracy to ‘fix the facts around the policy’ to mislead the nation into war – cannot breed much confidence either. Timing the market is famously difficult. If you are truly in it for the long-term, don’t try. Especially if you are young, in the excellent habit of directing $300 a month into your index funds (say) – don’t break that habit. But if you have ignored advice only to risk in the market money you won’t need for many years, now would be a good time to remember that advice. Not because the market necessarily will go down, but because it might.
Wilma! October 21, 2005March 25, 2012 I could lie and say there’s no column today because I’m moving to higher ground . . . but I’m actually up North already. So I could use the excuse that Amtrak was late getting in tonight . . . but it was only 15 minutes late and there was, after all, power at my seat, had I chosen to plug in my laptop. I could have returned to the Trojan.Vundo virus excuse . . . but Norton finally fixed it (what a mess THEIR customer interface is). So the only thing for it is to tell you the truth: the dog ate my column. Bad dog. On the bright side, this should leave you more time to go out and play.
Our Lack of Preparedness Could Make You Pull Out Your Hair October 20, 2005March 2, 2017 Sorry, no time for anything serious . . . still quaking from listening to former Counter-Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke at a DNC conference today. He notes that in four years, our parents’ generation was able to defeat the Nazis and Japan simultaneously, whereas in four years since 9/11, we haven’t even gotten our first-responder communications systems talking to each other, let alone made any significant progress in securing our chemical and nuclear facilities. (There are about 100 chemical plants in America whose lethal plumes could cover population areas of 1 million or more, he notes.) His presentation was beyond gripping. I hope to be able to link you to the audio next week. I just ordered his forthcoming novel, The Scorpion’s Gate, which I expect will be #1 on the best-seller lists in short order. Read it and regift it. POTENTIAL BOREALIS COMPETITOR BITES DUST (Thanks, Paul O’Donnell.) Malaysian Who Pulled Jet With Hair Dies Oct 19 10:38 AM US/Eastern KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia Letchemanah Ramasamy, known to Malaysians as “Mighty Man” for feats that included pulling planes and buses with his hair, has died of heart complications, his family said Wednesday. He was 55. Ramasamy succumbed to a heart valve infection at a hospital in a Kuala Lumpur suburb Tuesday, about two years after he underwent a heart transplant, his son, Thiyagarajan Ramasamy, told the national news agency, Bernama. Ramasamy achieved national fame in 1990 when he used his hair to drag a Boeing 737 aircraft over a distance of nearly 56 feet at a Malaysian airport. In 1999, he towed a double-decker bus over a distance of 98 feet in Leicestershire, Britain. BOB LOBLAW, ESQ. Ed Miske: ‘Of course, I didn’t get it . . . until a split second after I took a mouthful of coffee, which I’ve just cleaned off of the screen and keyboard.’ ☞ It’s even funnier when you hear them say it with straight faces. FRONTAL LOBOTOMIES Jeff: ‘The ‘bottle in front of me . . . frontal lobotomy’ is a classic Tom Waits quote. Another great one: ‘I knew him when he was nothing and he hasn’t changed a bit.” Daisy: ‘I heard it as, ‘I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy.’ A little funnier that way, doncha think?’ ☞ Yep.