Boiling Eggs in Your Pool (While in Debilitating Pain) July 31, 2007March 8, 2017 SiCKO V SiMPSONS The Simpsons movie has slipped from 9 stars to 8.7, while SiCKO remains firm – and out-starring anything else – at 8.5. I think you’ll enjoy them both. (And don’t miss Hairspray. Lots of fun.) HONEST TEA So, you can’t drink diet soda any more if you care about your health (according to this) and you can’t drink bottled water any more if you care about your planet (according to this) . . . so all that’s really left is Honest Tea. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried Peach Oo-La-Long.* (And it may even be good for you.) *As long-time readers know, I get a millionth of a cent for every sip you take. Drink up. HEATING YOUR POOL (SOME MORE) Rob Biniaz: ‘We may have to wait some time for the practical application of Richard Factor’s ‘nuclear option‘ for heating pools, but here‘s a method I stumbled across that also converts an unwanted heat source into warmer swimming water.’ ☞ Well, it sounds kinda silly and kinda brilliant at the same time: run the pool water through your attic. Heats the pool, cools the attic. Hmmm. Beth: ‘Solar covers also (1) minimize evaporation, saving gallons of water and (2) keep leaves and other debris out of the pool.’ ☞ And it’s not either/or. You could have an $89 pool cover and a SolarAttic pool heater and boil eggs in your pool. SiCKO SOME MORE Charles went to his back surgeon in debilitating pain last month and his back surgeon told him to go for an MRI so they could see what was happening and Charles’s assistant called his health insurer to get prior approval for the MRI but the health insurer said it would take three days to get approval so (did I mention Charles was in debilitating pain?) Charles got it anyway, at a cost of $2,480, which the health insurer will not pay because it was unapproved. It’s a good system. H: ‘Why is PNHP not mentioned on your site or by Michael Moore? They are physicians for a single-payer system.’ ☞ Because the current system is so good? Doug Jones: ‘One of your old columns has only a little to do with healthcare, but I think it is relevant. I’m talking about the November 15, 2000, column entitled ‘Views from Abroad.’ It got me thinking so much seven years ago that I printed it out and STILL know where it is today.’ ☞ Please note: Like all the best stuff in this space, the column was written by one of you, not me.
Purple America July 30, 2007March 8, 2017 BOREF In Paris, too, they’re intrigued by the potential for WheelTug. Of course, that and $972 will get you a small room at the Ritz. But for what it’s worth, ‘cliquez ici, s’il vous plait.’ ALDABRA 2 At Ameritrade, the on-line symbol for the warrants is AII+. But remember (in case last week didn’t make it obvious): the stock market is risky. And these warrants, even if a good speculation, are riskier still. I have high hopes. THE MARKET The best things the market has going for it are that (a) it’s cheaper than it was a week ago; (b) it’s denominated in dollars, which makes it cheaper still to Europeans who’ve watched the value of our currency sink by about a third since 2001; (c) a change in national direction looms, 18 months hence; (d) China, India, Eastern Europe, Russia – for so long stunted – are fast adding to the power of the global economy; (e) technology races on, enhancing productivity that, in turn, enhances prosperity. On the other hand, we have an awful lot of chickens potentially coming home to roost. Our National Debt – not quite $1 trillion when Ronald Reagan took over – will hit $9 trillion in a few weeks. (Where it was equivalent to around 32.5% of our Gross Domestic Economy back then, it is equivalent to around 65% now. Double.) The projected costs of Medicare and Medicaid, and the structural problems our health care system generally, are a huge drain on our future. Many of our kids are not leaving school equipped to compete with their counterparts abroad. The housing bust, and a general credit tightening, may feed on itself and lead to really widespread pain. I don’t profess to know where the market is headed. If it’s making you really nervous, I’d suggest selling enough shares to make you less so – for three reasons. First, being nervous is not good for your health. Second, if you’re nervous now, you might get really nuts if things got worse, which could lead you to bail out at the bottom (wherever that will be), as so many investors do. Third, it might turn out you were nervous for good reason. PURPLE AMERICA This is long . . . but if you follow politics, I think you’ll find it interesting – and if you’re a Democrat, I think you’ll find it heartening. It’s from the August 13 issue of THE NATION. It begins: Purple America Bob Moser North Wilkesboro, North Carolina What on God’s green earth has gotten into the Wilkes County Democrats? Here it is, the first pretty April Saturday of a snowy, blowy spring. There’s yards to mow, balls to toss, plants to plant, Blue Ridge Mountains to hike – all of which you’d think would be mighty tempting on Democratic convention day in a place where Republicans have a damn near two-to-one edge. ‘Welcome to red-hot Republican territory,’ says Dick Sloop, a career-military retiree turned antiwar protester who’s the new county Democratic chair. ‘We’ve been like the homeless around here: silent and invisible. The best we ever did in my lifetime, we had two Democrats once on a five-seat county commission.’ Even here in western North Carolina, where Republicans have proliferated since the Civil War (when the woods were full of Union sympathizers rather than pro-lifers), Wilkes County – Bible-thumping, economically slumping – has stood out for its fire-and-brimstone conservatism. It’s been a stiff challenge to find folks willing to run against the Republicans. Hell, it’s been rare to hear anybody publicly admit to being a Democrat. ‘You’ve got a lot of people in this county who probably couldn’t tell you if they’ve ever met one,’ Sloop says. But in a scene playing out this year all across ‘red America,’ from these lush hills to the craggy outcroppings of the Mountain West, previously unfathomable crowds of Democrats are streaming up the steps of the old county courthouse, past bobbing blue balloons and Welcome Democrats! signs. They’re hopping mad about the national state of things but simultaneously giddy with a new-found hope – finally! – for their party . . . The single oddest thing about [Howard Dean’s] fifty-state strategy is surely the adjective often attached to it: “controversial.” . . .
Lots to See and Read This Weekend July 27, 2007March 8, 2017 HOW TO DEFLECT AN ASTEROID – AND OTHER HOPEFUL THOUGHTS Freeman Dyson is one of those intellectual giants you’ve either heard about – like Buckminster Fuller or Robert Oppenheimer – or, well, you now have. His remarkable daughter, Esther, grew up in Princeton and would occasionally run into family friend Albert Einstein. You may know her from her newsletter, books, or Huffington Post posts. This Fall, for reasons she explained in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, you will be able to access her medical records – and her genome – on the Internet. And I haven’t mentioned Freeman Dyson’s father, who was a composer, or the son who is a historian of technology, or his ideas for colonizing space. Michael Axelrod was kind enough to send along this interview, which he calls ‘a must read for every curious person about the way the universe works’ (which could be you, but The Simpsons opens today, and I know it’s hard to read while standing in line.) If you do read the Dyson interview, you’ll find at the very end the right way to deflect an asteroid. (And here you were thinking we’d just nuke it.) And then – if The Simpsons is sold out, or after you do see it – you might want to read Professor Dyson’s ‘Our Biotech Future,’ in last week’s New York Review of Books. (‘I predict that the domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next fifty years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the previous fifty years.’) ONE OTHER THING TO DO THIS WEEKEND Have you seen SiCKO? In early voting (what, were these all the production crew of the movie plus the studio employees?), The Simpson eclipses it with nine stars. But SiCKO still beats out everything else – and, unlike, The Simpsons, is subversive in a more practical way. (If it led to a more rational health care system, it could ultimately, for example, save your life, or save a loved one from bankruptcy.)
Young At Heart? July 26, 2007March 8, 2017 ALDABRA 2 Jim Skinnell: ‘Oh, how wrong you were! Godfather 1 and 2 were both masterpieces – 3 was the weak link. In fact, 2 has been touted by some as the single best sequel ever, and others as being better than the 1st.’ Mike Wallin: ‘They both won best picture Oscars.’ ☞ You’re right! I was confused! This can only bode well for Aldabra 2 warrants. (Several of you asked me for the symbol. The underlying stock is AII; on Yahoo Finance, the warrants are AII-WT. But on Ameritrade, et al, you may need to place your order with a human – this new security does not seem to be up on every quote system.) CALIFORNIA ENERGY CRISIS Jayson Smith: ‘As a Californian, the most upsetting part of the state’s energy crisis was the pooh-poohing of the conservation efforts we undertook to try to undercut the insane rate hikes. As consumers, that was the only thing we could do – try to use less and beg the government to help us. Governor Gray Davis did what he could (and paid for it with his political career – the $10 billion budget hole was almost exclusively due to measures taken to save us from the energy crisis), but Bush and Cheney told us to ‘go Cheney ourselves’. So it appears at the same time that Cheney was saying it’s all our fault for not building enough supply, he’s suppressing evidence that companies are artificially removing supply (Cheney Suppressed Evidence in California Energy Crisis). Here‘s an old CNN archive article detailing Davis’s reaction to Cheney’s comments.’ WHAT THE DEMS SHOULD DO? We need to take the gloves off, says this Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed. WHY THE DEMS MAY WIN Kids are coming our way, says this report on the Millennial Generation. The sleeper development that was widely overlooked in the 2006 election was the 22-percentage-point margin of support given to Democrats by 18-29 year-olds, almost all of them members of the up-and-coming Millennial Generation. This was just the latest piece of evidence about a generation that has been trending progressive and increasingly voting Democratic in large numbers. But a comprehensive review of available data from a range of polls and surveys in recent years shows just how fortuitous this generation is for progressives. Millennials are emerging as an enormous asset for progressives going forward – as enormous as the sheer size of this, the largest American generation ever. . . . ☞ Young at heart? Vote Democrat.
Airplane 2 July 25, 2007March 8, 2017 FLIGHT INFO – GREAT TIP! Bob Fyfe: ‘Simply send a text message or e-mail to info@ezflt.com with the airline code and flight number and you receive back the status of the flight. It’s a great help when you are picking someone up at the airport . . .’ ☞ . . . or when you’re going to the airport yourself. I just sent ezflt an email with AA 1197 in the subject line – nothing more – and moments later got back: From: ATL Sch: Jul 24 8:10am Act: Jul 24 8:07am Gt: T9 To: DFW Sch: Jul 24 9:20am Act: Jul 24 9:16am Gt: C27/C Bag Clm: C26 They say it works with all U.S. carriers except Jet Blue and Southwest (‘coming soon’) and major overseas carriers. As you know, American = AA, Delta = DL, Continental = CO, United = UA, Northwest = NW, and so on. ANOTHER SPAC Regular readers of this column know about SPACs – Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (also known as ‘blank check companies’) – formed to make an acquisition even before the company has identified a target. Aldabra was such a SPAC. It went on to acquire Great Lakes Dredge & Dock, and the Aldabra warrants, which became Great Lakes warrants, did well for us (the drop in GLDD stock over the last couple of days to $7.79 notwithstanding) (well, withstanding a little, but this much drop I can withstand). Some of us have bought warrants in another SPAC, as well – symbol HAPNW – which, like the first bet, is a complete speculation. I remain hopeful. Better odds, I hope, than a lottery ticket. And now the Aldabra folks are back with Aldabra 2 – literally, that’s its name – which leads immediately to your thoughts about Godfather 2 (wasn’t it only #1 and #3 that were masterpieces?), but which seemed worth my mentioning anyway. I bought a bunch last week at $1.43. Yesterday, the warrant closed at $1.47. The structure with this one is similar to the original, except that each ‘unit‘ carries with it one warrant instead of two (which may be why the warrants cost about double what they did the first time) . . . that allows you to buy the stock at $7.50 (instead of $5) . . . and that can be the subject of a forced conversion if the underlying stock trades at $14.50 (instead $8.50). So if it doesn’t work out, you lose $1.43 (or whatever you paid for the warrants), and if it does, the warrants go to about $7 (because with the stock at $14.50, if it ever gets there, the right to buy it at $7.50 is worth about $7). As before, you can’t exercise the warrants right away. But, as before, you have years before the warrants expire. (About four years in this case.) So basically, this is a bet that the same folks who did okay the first time will find a way to do okay the second time. If they don’t, you lose everything. If they do, you roughly quintuple your money (before long-term capital gains tax if held more than a year and a day).
Falling Behind the French July 24, 2007March 8, 2017 WHY YOUR INTERNET IS SLOW If you subscribed to Times Select, you’d already have seen Paul Krugman’s column and know the answer. The French are more connected than we – at three times the speed. The Japanese – at twelve times the speed. (Guess what: enlightened regulation matters. We were doing fine until about six years ago.) In small part: The numbers are startling. As recently as 2001, the percentage of the population with high-speed access in Japan and Germany was only half that in the United States. In France it was less than a quarter. By the end of 2006, however, all three countries had more broadband subscribers per 100 people than we did. Even more striking is the fact that our ‘high speed’ connections are painfully slow by other countries’ standards. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, French broadband connections are, on average, more than three times as fast as ours. Japanese connections are a dozen times faster. Oh, and access is much cheaper in both countries than it is here. FARECAST Predicting the whether to buy your airline ticket now or later. Anyone tried this? Interesting, powerful, potentially money-saving site. (Thanks, Juan!) A GOOD IDEA Mark Lefler: ‘A Malaysian teenager I read about [in a Yahoo news clip that has expired] used text messaging on her cell phone to warn her mother there was an intruder, and was saved. How come you cannot just text right to emergency services? Calling is too noisy and could capture the attention of a bad guy. And what if you are wounded and cannot talk? Think of the Virginia Tech massacre. You could at least text ‘help’ and your address. A smart company might just set up a web service where you can register, and anything forwarded to that site gets sent to your local emergency services.’ BOREALIS Stephen: ‘Finally, good coming from Borealis – just not yours. But this Borealis says its lighting makes compact fluorescents obsolete.’
If We Don’t Nuke Iran, We Could Nuke Your Pool And Other Thoughts on Impeachment July 23, 2007March 8, 2017 YOU SAW MAUREEN DOWD LAST WEEK? She begins her column: Oh, as it turns out, they’re not on the run. And, oh yeah, they can fight us here even if we fight them there. And oh, one more thing, after spending hundreds of billions and losing all those lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re more vulnerable to terrorists than ever. And, um, you know that Dead-or-Alive stuff? We may be the ones who end up dead. Squirming White House officials had to confront the fact yesterday that everything President Bush has been spouting the last six years about Al Qaeda being on the run, disrupted and weakened was just guff. Last year, W. called his ‘personal friend’ Gen. Pervez Musharraf ‘a strong defender of freedom.’ Unfortunately, it turned out to be Al Qaeda’s freedom. The White House is pinning the blame on Pervez. . . . IMPEACHMENT . . . Mary Schroeder: ‘The Moyers transcript was well worth reading – thanks. The line that really stood out to me was Nichols: ‘You are seeing impeachment as a constitutional crisis. Impeachment is the cure for a constitutional crisis.’ I must admit, as appalled and outraged as I am by this administration, impeachment seemed a hopeless approach to dealing with it. This discussion changed my mind.’ Eileen Bartlett: ‘If any of the elderly died in California from the heat, as so many did in France a couple of years ago, and it was directly related to the manipulation of electricity, then I think Cheney should definitely be impeached.’ Elliot Raphaelson: ‘I was very impressed by Moyers’ interview with Fein. I wrote letters to my local paper, Tom Friedman, Lou Dobbs and Nancy Pelosi trying to raise awareness re: the need and justification for impeachment of Bush and Cheney. I hope your readers will take similar action.’ Michael Joblin: ‘The Moyers program was spellbinding. There is no question in my mind that impeachment of both Bush and Cheney is of supreme importance to the future of the republic. Nancy Pelosi is absolutely wrong to oppose impeachment. Is there no one in the House who is able and willing to seize this opportunity for greatness?’ Paul deLespinasse, Ph.D.: ‘The points I made about the requirements for a successful removal of Bush-Cheney, in last week’s Corvallis, Oregon Gazette-Times [included this one:]’ [The] impeachment process must be started by Republicans in the House of Representatives, not by Democrats – and least of all by Pelosi, whose legitimacy as third in line for the presidency after Bush and Cheney must be protected at all costs. GLDD Andy Frank: ‘You said: ‘Even with all the selling pressure one imagines there must have been from warrant holders exercising – and then immediately selling the stock to take their profit rather than put up an additional $5 and start the capital gains holding period all over again – even with all that, the stock closed at $8.80.’ If a warrant holder wanted to sell, why wouldn’t they just have sold their warrants, rather than first exercise the warrants and then sell the stock?’ ☞ Right. They could have sold. But then whoever bought them would face the same choice – exercise or sell. So whoever owned this hot potato at the last possible moment last week, when they were about to expire, could either watch them go worthless or else put up $5 to exercise them. (They would do the latter.) And then, having put up $50,000 in cash, say, to exercise the 10,000 warrants they had bought for $4,000, they would either holding the stock or else selling it to get their $50,000 back (plus a further $38,000 or so). My guess is that a lot of people would have wanted to take the money and run. And yet with all that running, the stock held up pretty well. PLUTOCRATS HEATING POOLS Richard Factor: ‘I am one of those plutocrats who heats his pool. However I think you’ll find my solution is more than a little unusual.’ WHAT ARE YOU DOING TONIGHT? The Harry Potter movie has slipped to 7.8 audience-bestowed stars out of 10. SiCKO still tops the charts at 8.5. Try it. You’ll like it.
Did He Shoot California in the Face, Too? July 20, 2007March 8, 2017 GLDD So yesterday was, I think, the last day to exercise your warrants. I can’t imagine they really go from being worth $3.75 or so yesterday to zero today if you failed to exercise them – surely some mercy might be shown? (or your broker exercised them for you, as many automatically exercise expiring options if they’re in the money) – but that is not the point. The point is that the relatively short but wonderfully profitable life of these warrants is now officially over . . . and the much less dramatic, but still possibly profitable, next phase of the common stock begins. Even with all the selling pressure one imagines there must have been from warrant holders exercising – and then immediately selling the stock to take their profit rather than put up an additional $5 and start the capital gains holding period all over again – even with all that, the stock closed at $8.80. (So if you paid 50 cents for the warrant a few months ago and did put up the $5 to exercise, you have a basis of $5.50 and a stock worth $8.80.) Anything is possible . . . including another round of selling pressure in a year or so from folks like me who exercised warrants on which their gain was short-term, planning to wait a year and a day to take what would then be a lightly taxed long-term capital gain instead. But I think the wind could be at this company’s back, so I plan to hold on, perhaps even more than a year and a day. What could be sexier than dredging? MAD MEN A new series on AMC. Maybe because my dad was himself an ad man (Mad Men – Madison Avenue men), and maybe because anything set in the Sixties grabs me, I’m hooked. I liked last night’s first episode, repeated frequently in the coming days; Tivo takes care of the rest. IRAQ If you subscribed to Times Select, you’d already have seen Tom Friedman’s column from Wednesday: July 18, 2007 Help Wanted: Peacemaker By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I were the parent of a soldier in Iraq and I had just read that the Iraqi Parliament had decided to go on vacation for August, because, as the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, explained, it’s really hot in Baghdad then – ‘130 degrees.’ I’ve been in Baghdad in the summer and it is really hot. But you know what? It is a lot hotter when you’re in a U.S. military uniform, carrying a rifle and a backpack, sweltering under a steel helmet and worrying that a bomb can be thrown at you from any direction. One soldier told me he lost six pounds in one day. I’m sure the Iraqi Parliament is air-conditioned. So let’s get this straight: Iraqi parliamentarians, at least those not already boycotting the Parliament, will be on vacation in August so they can be cool, while young American men and women, and Iraqi Army soldiers, will be fighting in the heat in order to create a proper security environment in which Iraqi politicians can come back in September and continue squabbling while their country burns. Here is what I think of that: I think it’s a travesty – and for the Bush White House to excuse it with a Baghdad weather report shows just how much it has become a hostage to Iraq. The administration constantly says the surge is necessary, but not sufficient. That’s right. There has to be a political deal. And the latest report card on Iraq showed that a deal is nowhere near completion. So where is the diplomatic surge? What are we waiting for? A cool day in December? When you read stories in the newspapers every day about Americans who are going to Iraq for their third or even fourth tours and you think that this administration has never sent its best diplomats for even one tour yet – never made one, not one, single serious, big-time, big-tent diplomatic push to resolve this conflict, but instead has put everything on the military, it makes you sick. Yes, yes, I know, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is going to make one of her quick-in-and-out trips to the Middle East next month to try to enlist support for an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in the fall. I’m all for Arab-Israeli negotiations, but the place that really needs a peace conference right now is Iraq, and it won’t happen with drive-by diplomacy. President Bush baffles me. If your whole legacy was riding on Iraq, what would you do? I’d draft the country’s best negotiators – Henry Kissinger, Jim Baker, George Shultz, George Mitchell, Dennis Ross or Richard Holbrooke – and ask one or all of them to go to Baghdad, under a U.N. mandate, with the following orders: ‘I want you to move to the Green Zone, meet with the Iraqi factions and do not come home until you’ve reached one of three conclusions: 1) You have resolved the power- and oil-sharing issues holding up political reconciliation; 2) you have concluded that those obstacles are insurmountable and have sold the Iraqis on a partition plan that could be presented to the U.N. and supervised by an international force; 3) you have concluded that Iraqis are incapable of agreeing on either political reconciliation or a partition plan and told them that, as a result, the U.S. has no choice but to re-deploy its troops to the border and let Iraqis sort this out on their own.’ The last point is crucial. Any lawyer will tell you, if you’re negotiating a contract and the other side thinks you’ll never walk away, you’ve got no leverage. And in Iraq, we’ve never had any leverage. The Iraqis believe that Mr. Bush will never walk away, so they have no incentive to make painful compromises. That’s why the Iraqi Parliament is on vacation in August and our soldiers are fighting in the heat. Something is wrong with this picture. First, Mr. Bush spends three years denying the reality that we need a surge of more troops to establish security and then, with Iraq spinning totally out of control and militias taking root everywhere, he announces a surge and criticizes others for being impatient. At the same time, Mr. Bush announces a peace conference for Israelis and Palestinians – but not for Iraqis. He’s like a man trapped in a burning house who calls 911 to put out the brush fire down the street. Hello? Quitting Iraq would be morally and strategically devastating. But to just drag out the surge, with no road map for a political endgame, with Iraqi lawmakers going on vacation, with no consequences for dithering, would be just as morally and strategically irresponsible. We owe Iraqis our best military – and diplomatic effort – to avoid the disaster of walking away. But if they won’t take advantage of that, we owe our soldiers a ticket home. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company AND ON THE HOME FRONT . . . Cheney Suppressed Evidence in California Energy Crisis By Jason Leopold t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report Thursday 19 July 2007 In-depth investigation shows how Vice President Dick Cheney pressured federal energy regulators to conceal evidence of widespread market manipulation by energy companies during the California electricity crisis in 2001. In March 2001, while California’s two largest utilities were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and the state’s electricity crisis was spiraling out of control, Vice President Dick Cheney summoned Curt Hebert, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to his office next to the White House for a hastily arranged meeting. Cheney had just been informed by his longtime friend Thomas Cruikshank, the man who handpicked the vice president to succeed him at Halliburton in the mid-1990s, that federal energy regulators were close to completing an investigation into allegations that Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Williams Companies and AES Corporation of Arlington, Virginia had created an artificial power shortage in California in April and May of 2000 by shutting down a power plant for more than two weeks. Cruikshank was a member of Williams’s board of directors, and perhaps more importantly, had been one of many energy industry insiders advising Cheney’s energy task force on a wide-range of policy issues, including deregulation of the nation’s electricity sector, that would benefit Williams financially. Cruikshank informed the vice president he had learned about the preliminary findings of FERC’s investigation during a Williams board meeting earlier in March 2001. FERC, Cruikshank told Cheney, was in possession of incriminating audio tapes in which a Williams official and an AES power plant operator discussed keeping a Southern California power plant offline so Williams could continue to receive the $750 per megawatt hour premium for emergency power California’s grid operator was forced to procure to keep the lights on in Southern California. AES was the operator of two power plants in Los Alamitos and Williams marketed the electricity. The power plants were designated by the California Independent System Operator (ISO), the agency that manages the state’s power grid, as crucial in order to ensure a reliable flow of electricity in the Southern part of the state. To stave off the potential for blackouts, the ISO was given the authority to pay top dollar for power if the power plants operated by AES, as well as power plants operated by other companies, were not in operation. California’s electricity crisis wreaked havoc on consumers in the state between 2000 and 2001. The crisis resulted in widespread rolling blackouts and forced the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, into bankruptcy. California was the first state in the nation to deregulate its power market in an effort to provide consumers with cheaper electricity and the opportunity to choose their own power provider. The results have since proved disastrous. The experiment has cost the state more than $30 billion. According to a copy of the March 2001 Williams transcript, Rhonda Morgan, a Williams official, told an AES power plant operator “it wouldn’t hurt Williams’s feelings” if the power plant that was down for repairs was kept offline for an extended period of time so the company could continue to be paid the “premium” for its emergency energy supplies from the ISO. In a separate conversation with Eric Pendergraft, a senior AES official, Morgan said, “I don’t wanna do something underhanded, but if there’s work you can continue to do …” Pendergraft responded to Morgan, saying, “I understand. You don’t have to talk anymore.” The collusion between Williams and AES allowed Williams to earn an extra $10 million over a period of 15 days and set in motion a series of events that resulted in the California power crisis between 2000 and 2001, a crisis that was based almost entirely on manipulative practices by energy companies. This story is based on a two-month investigation into Cheney’s energy task force; how the vice president pressured cabinet officials to conceal clear-cut evidence of market manipulation during California’s energy crisis, and how that subsequently led Cheney to exert executive privilege when lawmakers called on him to turn over documents related to his meetings with energy industry officials who helped draft the National Energy Policy and also gamed California’s power market. Truthout spoke with more than a dozen former officials from the Energy Department and FERC as well as current and former energy industry executives all of whom were involved in personal discussions with Cheney relating to the National Energy Policy. . . . Which, as so much else, brings us back to . . . IMPEACHMENT More of your thoughts on this topic Monday. In the meantime: have you seen SiCKO? It’s playing at a theater near you. Harry Potter has slipped in the audience ratings from 8.1 stars out of 10 to 7.9 . . . but SiCKO remains firm at 8.5, better than anything else out there. Enjoy!
Roosevelt, Vitter, & Bartlet July 19, 2007March 8, 2017 PAYING FOR THE WAR I was reading the 1941 budget the other day (more particularly, FDR’s transmittal message, submitted January 3, 1940) – talk about being behind in your reading! – and came across this paragraph, headed National Defense Taxes: I am convinced that specific tax legislation should be enacted to finance the emergency national defense expenditures. Although these expenditures appear unavoidable, they will not increase the permanent wealth-producing capacity of our citizens. I believe it is the general sense of the country that this type of emergency expenditure be met by a special tax or taxes. Moreover, this course will make for greater assurance that such expenditures will cease when the emergency has passed. He continues: . . . I hope that the Congress will follow the accepted principle of good taxation of taxing according to ability to pay and will avoid taxes which decrease consumer buying power. (On the very same page, he speaks of the $50 million the government spends annually on dredging. You see? Dredging is fundamental to a free and prosperous society! Don’t sell your GLDD – but I am easily distracted and digress.) He concludes with the thought that the national debt he had racked up over the prior eight years was not a cause for alarm, because it had been used to build the nation’s infrastructure and its productive capacity (along with its morale). He did not go on to say – but one can hardly read this today without thinking – that, obviously, you would never suffer an increase in the national debt for the purpose of lowering taxes for the rich or starting a war of choice. On the final page of his message, he hand signs it . . . followed by 1,079 pages of ledgers and small type. I don’t know how many such copies he signed, but I could not resist buying this one.* HYPOCRISY Bill Press on Senator Vitter. Here: Republican Family Values by Bill Press Republicans routinely paint themselves as the party of “family values,” without spelling out exactly what values they’re talking about. Well, now we know. Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, one of the leading “family values” Republicans and Rudy Giuliani’s Southern regional campaign chairman, is caught keeping company with prostitutes – and fellow Republicans rush to his defense. Vitter’s is the first politician’s name to appear in the not-so-little black book of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called “D.C. Madam.” Charged with running a high-priced prostitution ring in Washington, Palfrey at first offered to sell her phone records to the media but later, unfortunately for Vitter, published her entire list of clients – all 15,000 names and 46 pounds of it – on her Web site. As we soon learned, this wasn’t Vitter’s first walk on the wild side. Jeanette Maier, known as New Orleans’ “Canal Street Madam,” revealed that Vitter had been one of her regular customers too, beginning in the mid-1990s, paying $300 an hour for services received. And that’s not all. Details also resurfaced, as first reported by The Louisiana Weekly, of Vitter’s twice-weekly visits to a prostitute in the French Quarter in the late 1990s. Running successfully for Congress in 1999, and again for Senate in 2004, Vitter got away with dismissing allegations of sexual misconduct as nothing but dirty politics. When his name showed up on Palfrey’s client list, however, Vitter had to fess up – and did, sort of. In a written statement, he admitted having committed “a very serious sin,” but he also insisted that was the end of the story. “Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling,” he boldly asserted. “Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there – with God and them.” Wait a minute. That’s not what Vitter said about Bill Clinton in the fall of 1998. When Clinton made the identical argument about consulting God and wife, after details of his affair with Monica Lewinsky became public, Vitter – then still a state legislator – condemned Clinton as “morally unfit to govern.” If no action were taken against Clinton, Vitter wrote in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “his leadership will only further drain any sense of values left to our political culture.” By his own standards, then, Vitter should be tossed out of office. Indeed, his offense is worse than Clinton’s, because Vitter also broke the law. Last time I checked, prostitution is not only considered immoral, it’s illegal. Yes, believe it or not, prostitution’s a crime even in New Orleans and Washington, D.C. As it turns out, Vitter’s not the only one who has a double standard when it comes to sexual hijinks. So does his wife. “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News Service in 2000, speaking of the Clinton scandal. “If (my husband) does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.” Ouch! If you think David Vitter’s wife is more forgiving of her husband than of Bill Clinton, hear what his fellow Republican senators had to say. Utah’s Orrin Hatch, who helped lead the charge against Bill Clinton, said of Vitter: “I’ve never judged a human being on those type of issues.” (Does he think our memory’s so short?) North Carolina’s Richard Burr saw no problem: “David has already resolved this with his family and taken responsibility for it.” And South Carolina’s Jim DeMint seemed to suggest he could be next: “We all think that we’re not vulnerable to something like that happening, but the fact is this can be a very lonely and isolating place.” So why does all this matter? It shouldn’t matter, frankly. Who cares what two consenting adults do behind closed doors, even for a fee? And it wouldn’t matter at all if Vitter weren’t such a hypocrite. But here’s a man who posed as “Mr. Family Values” in public, condemning his political opponents as immoral, while leading his own immoral and illegal life in private. He’s a hypocrite, and so are all those self-righteous Republicans who make excuses for him. At least a prostitute is honest about who she is. JED BARTLET ON THE BIBLE And while we’re bashing the right-wing moralizers, this West Wing clip never gets old. * More than a Swatch, less than a Rolex. Listen; I never said I was without vices.
Everyone Into the (Impeachment) Pool July 18, 2007March 8, 2017 DO YOU HAVE A POOL? At least on an operating basis, if not at resale, you’d be wise – and environmentally correct – to fill it in and grow vegetables or bamboo in it. This is triply true if you’re one of those plutocrats who heats his pool. But you like your pool and you’re not going to turn it into a cabbage patch (I let Charles turn our hot tub into a planter, but drew the line at the pool), so I want to remind you of the virtues of a solar pool blanket. Basically, a big sheet of bubble wrap that lets the sun’s rays in during the day and keeps heat from escaping at night. It costs less than $100 delivered to your door (especially if you buy now, while on sale) . . . should last two or three seasons with reasonable care (after which you’ll have an endless supply of shreds to pack your outgoing eBay shipments) . . . and raises the temperature of the pool ten degrees – which means not having to heat it and/or extends the swimmable season by two or three weeks at each end. NEXT UP FOR ATTACK: IRAN According to this report in the Guardian, Cheney seems to be gaining ground. IMPEACHMENT Oh, not that again. But before you rule it in or rule it out, you’ll want to watch* or read the transcript of Bill Moyers’ interview with conservative constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who wrote the first article of impeachment against President Clinton. Everybody’s talking about it. In a society more horrified by sex than violence (you don’t see X ratings for explicit violence), it may make sense that lying about sex is impeachable where lying to start a war is not. But read the transcript and let me know what you think. *Only the (excellent) Intro shows up from that link. Then click here for Part 1 of the discussion and here for Part 2.