I’m Back June 25, 2007March 6, 2017 DINNER Dave Neal: ‘You wrote: ‘We have 250 people coming for dinner.’ So what’s so hard about opening 250 cans? You do have a Swing-A-Way, no?’ ☞ The dinner was good. The theme was COME WRITE HISTORY – AGAIN (let’s repeat in 2008 our success of 2006), so we had some best-selling writers join Governor Dean, and I brought a six-foot pencil I acquired in the Seventies from a store that specialized in Very Large Things. We began with salad ‘as green as WALT WHITMAN’S LEAVES OF GRASS,’ followed by an entree ‘as historic as GREAT-PLAINS-ROAMING PIT-ROASTED BUFFALO STEAK’ (but we had filet of beef, with vegetarian available on request), followed by dessert ‘as American as APPLE PIE with STEPHEN COLBERT’S AMERICONE DREAM.’ (‘A decadent melting pot of vanilla ice cream with fudge-covered waffle cone pieces and a caramel swirl. It’s the sweet taste of liberty in your mouth.’) All this served by the light of a minimum of 270 electoral votive candles. Cooking Like a Guy™ this was not. (We even served wine, which is why I forgot to post a comment Friday.) SEATING PLANS Karen: “This tool is too late for your dinner – but next time.” ☞ Hmmm. The beauty of Excel is that I already have it and know how to use it (more or less). But I can see how this could be useful. HIDDEN TALENT Mark Lutton: “That British amateur tenor is great, but take a look at these amateur pianists at the Boston International Piano Competition for Exceptional Amateurs – Christopher Shih, a doctor, and Rupert Egerton-Smith, a management consultant.” MORE HIDDEN TALENT Watch this video if painting rather than piano turns you on, and if you have five minutes for a nice little surprise. (Thanks, Sid and Diane.) WAIT! STOP! DON’T DO THIS! Kevin Clark: “I have a large short term gain on the GLDD warrants and, as you point out, no way to wait for it to go long term without ponying up more money. But if I donate them to my Fidelity Gift Trust account don’t I get to deduct the full value? Seems like a better option than donating appreciated assets that are long term.” ☞ No! If you have not held the appreciated securities for a year and a day when you donate them, you get to deduct only the cost of your gift, not the market value – in this case, perhaps one-seventh as much. “Also, if I have a short term gain on GLDDW and a long term loss on some other position, how would those interact on my tax return?” ☞ If you had no other gains or losses, your short-term gain would be reduced by your long-term loss. Click here for more. REMINDER: DO NOT CALL Suddenly, the unsolicited sales calls seem to be exploding. If this is happening to you – or even if it isn’t – take a minute here to register, or re-register, your numbers . . . not least because it was probably four years ago that you last did this, and the repellent lasts only five. So it’s just about time to spray yourself again anyway.
Isn’t Life Wonderful? June 21, 2007March 6, 2017 We have 250 people coming for dinner tonight (cook, Charles, cook!), so I’m writing a seating chart instead of a column. But never fear . . . this clip is better than anything I could have written anyway. TALENT CONTEST VIDEO Peter: ‘Click here. Isn’t the world (still) wonderful?’ ☞ Indeed it is. As is the follow-up. (Oh, okay, I cannot tell I lie. Charles is a great cook but he’s not crazy. The ‘we’ here is the DNC. But I still have to do the seating chart.)
Alison – At Last June 20, 2007January 6, 2017 ALISON GOES GREEN; YOU GO PURPLE Dennis: ‘I am so glad that Alison and her bottom-line admiring husband are able to save all of that money becoming environmentalists. I would like to be well-off as much as the next person but my God, I hope I don’t become such a sanctimonious hypocrite. Please spare us. If you want to help do something nice for the environment, why not cut down to just one 3500 square foot home for your family of 3.7 people.’ Dennis a Minute Later: ‘Sorry about the previous e-mail regarding Alison’s energy saving techniques. [Well, I did think it was a little harsh.] That first e-mail does not even begin to display my absolute disgust over such self-aggrandizement with regards to their conspicuous consumption. [Oops.] There are many ways for you to entertain your readers with energy saving hints and cost saving measures which are both economical and helpful to the environment. Publishing Alison’s e-mail or letter was not one of them. [Oops, oops.] I just know you are going to write back and say well at least she is making an effort and if you do I will vote for The Republican candidate (whichever idiot it might be) as sure as I am sitting here. You are supposed to be a Democrat for God’s sake.’ ☞ Well at least Alison is making an effort. (But just because I’m a bad Democrat is no reason for you to be one – vote Democrat!) Karen: ‘Good for Alison. What did she do with the old water heater and the old washing machine? What’s the payoff on the improvements, at a $200 reduction over three months? Those in-line water heaters are $$$, and troublesome. And what would she have saved if she strung some washlines across the deck and quit using her dryer completely? Or learned to live without air conditioning or raised the thermostat to 80? (Does it GET as high as 80 in Connecticut?) Sorry; just not that impressed when people who have tons of money (weekend house in CT = QED) spend it to save it.’ ☞ Still, if everyone cut his or her energy consumption by 45%, however wasteful the baseline – indeed, if only energy hogs cut their consumption by 45% – it would be a good start. The good news is that for many people, it would entail little inconvenience, let alone sacrifice. What’s the real sacrifice in driving a car that gets 35 mpg instead of 24mpg – a 46% saving? (Or, soon, one that gets 60 or 80 mpg?) Kevin: ‘You may want to re-think putting out messages like Alison’s. I know your goal is to change hearts and minds, and you’re usually good at it, but it’s much less effective when you use a lightning rod to do it. Alison has TWO houses and professes to be an environmentalist? A true environmentalist would solve the energy problem and the carbon footprint by simply selling one house. Or donating it to the Sierra Club.’ Carl: ‘Conservation . . . agree that it’s necessary and inevitable, but the changes made are subject to diminishing marginal returns; meanwhile, total electrical use continues to increase exponentially (see here). We live on a sphere, with finite resources. Eventually, our growth-based system will have to stop. Every day we don’t honestly address this will lead to a harder crash some time in the future. For an excellent book which addresses these concerns and much more, try The Upside of Down, Thomas Homer-Dixon.’ ☞ Don’t rule out technological advances that lead to abundant clean energy . . . that in turn makes possible unheard of sustainable prosperity. It’s just that ‘getting from here to there,’ in the meantime, could be a bit of a problem. As to diminishing marginal returns, I think the average family or business has a long way to go before it runs out of ways to become substantially more energy efficient. Charles McChensey: ‘Quite an interesting [account by Alison] re: saving energy. It would be interesting to do a calculation showing the economic value of the savings. I.e., assuming some rate of return for the capital to be invested, what is the payback period for the dollars of energy savings vs. the dollars of invested capital. Front loader washers are in the $1000-1500 range, on demand hot water heaters around $1000 with installation. (CFLs and power strips are probably a negligible investment.) It seems to me that unless one of the major expense appliances fails, replacing a good working appliance for energy efficiency alone is a ‘feel good,’ but not a sound economic decision. Perhaps you can post your thoughts.’ ☞ To fully analyze this, you’d have to know how long the replaced appliance might have lasted; whether it will be junked or find a new home; what it will cost, in cash and ‘externalities,’ to junk it; how energy prices will rise in the future . . . and a few other things. But if Alison is saving $200 a quarter, $800 a year, and it cost her $2,400 to do it (say), payback is in three years. Over the ten-year (say) life of the appliances, especially with likely rising energy prices, the saving could work out to an internal rate of return exceeding 50% a year. Tax-free, because Uncle Sam doesn’t tax you on your energy savings. Plus whatever good you’re doing the environment. Plus the psychic benefits and the economic signals it sends to the makers and installers of more efficient appliances. (Signals that say: we demand energy efficiency.) Anonymous: ‘Now I’m feeling bad about yelling at my spouse for leaving lights on in the house, especially the bathroom. Our electric bill for March – May is only $75.’ ☞ That’s astoundingly low – but keep yelling at him. If you could cut your bill by $10 a quarter, you could lower your carbon footprint and buy 4 mosquito nets a year . . . It’s one thing to go without instant-on TV, which entails a (small) level of sacrifice. But what sacrifice is there in not having the bathroom lit when you’re not in it? Or having the TV off (well, mostly off) when you’re not watching it? Or the instant-on feature shut off if you go away for the summer? Bob Fyfe: ‘Alison and her husband have done an outstanding job in cutting both their electric bill and electric usage and are to be commended. If Alison wants to take the next step, she can sign up to receive all of her electricity from renewable sources (wind and low-impact hydro). Simply click here. This company sells, at a small premium (1.1 cents/kWh), electricity from renewable sources. I estimate that Alison would spend an additional $20 per three month period to purchase 100% renewable energy. This turns out to be less than 10% of the savings that she has seen by reducing her usage. By saving 40% instead of 45%, Alison would completely eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions from her electric usage at her weekend home. (Note: I estimated 600kWH of electric usage per month. Multiplied by 1.1 cents/kWh, this gives $6.60 per month or roughly $20 every three months. The actual amount will vary but this is certainly in the right ballpark.) Stephen Gilbert: ‘Power Saving Hints for Yuppies.’ ☞ Fascinating! E.g., ‘The Department of Energy estimates that in the average home, 40 percent of all electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off.’ And: ‘Tweaking can pay off. Annually, my desktop PC is now using 73 percent less energy – saving me $119 a year and depriving the earth of 1,405 more pounds of CO2.’
People’s Stories About Their Health Insurance June 19, 2007January 6, 2017 SiCKO! I got to see Michael Moore’s new movie, SiCKO, last night, which opens a week from Friday. Run don’t walk. This movie is going to be huge – and have a huge impact. At the screening I attended, 1500 people were on their feet cheering through the entire credits. GLDD WARRANT REDEMPTION This one has worked out well. If you paid 70 cents for ALBA (now GLDD) warrants at the end of April, 2006, you are sitting on a nearly 7-fold long-term capital gain. It’s probably time to sell much or all of it in the next few weeks (read on). If you bought more August 4, at 36 cents, the gain is 13-fold – but still short term. Should you wait until it goes long-term in August? Well, you can’t. The company has announced it is redeeming the warrants no later than July 19. That gives you two basic choices: sell between now and then (even after ordinary income tax at the top bracket, it’s close to a 9-fold gain); or pony up $5 a share to exercise the warrants (and start the year-and-day long-term holding period ticking all over again). If you happen to be rich, especially if the alternative would be to pay short-term capital gains, I’d pony up the $5 a share, exercise the warrants, and wait a year or two or three, hoping to sell at $12 or $15 or something like that. If things go badly – well, you’re rich. Who cares? But if the plot plays out as it may, with dredging appropriations restored to historic levels, leading to more work at higher margins, then you will have paid $5.36 (the 36 cents you paid for the warrant plus the $5 you kicked in to exercise it) for what might be a $12 or $15 stock. No ‘nine-fold gain, that,’ of course; but still not bad. Indeed, if the stock stayed where it is for a year a day from the time you acquired it by exercising your warrant, you would have ‘made’ the same absolute gain ($4.32, based on last night’s close), but by paying 15% long-term capital gains instead of 35% short-term, say, you would have made about a 10% after tax return by tying up the extra $5 along with the $3.17 after-tax bird in the hand you left in the bush. If you’re not rich, just grab most or all the gain, maybe exercising a little just to keep enjoying your association with this lovely little investment. (I’m a little rich, so I plan to sell what remains of the warrants I have that have gone long-term, as well as some of the warrants that will still be short-term, exercising the rest. How many? Well, not so many I’d be too overweighted in this one stock.) Hugh: ‘I’m just a truck driver but right now I’m sitting on over $80,000 gain on GLDDW.’ ☞ Music to my ears. BOREALIS From an Advanced Explorations press release: TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – June 14, 2007) – Advanced Explorations Inc. (the “Company” or “AEI”) (TSX VENTURE: AXI) is pleased to announce that the Company has completed establishment of a 40 man exploration camp on the Roche Bay, Nunavut iron ore project. The Company has mobilized two drills to site and the contractor (Boart Longyear) is expected to have the first drill coring by the end of this week and the second drill early next week. The Company objective is to complete a minimum of 15,000 meters of drilling before the end of the exploration season. ☞ Who knows? This is a whole lot riskier than owning shares in the nation’s largest dredging company. But if we’re lucky, a few years from now we’ll have the last laugh. And if we’re not, we won’t care, really, because we only invested money in this one that we could truly afford to lose. ALISON GOES GREEN; YOU GO PURPLE Okay. I promised it for today, so here it is – tomorrow.
People’s Stories June 18, 2007March 6, 2017 Well, I’m sorry, but June is ‘Gay Pride Month’ and there’s just too much progress to ignore. BOSTON MARRIAGES ‘Boston Marriages’ had this meaning, at least for women, even before they were legal. But here we are 100 years later and the Massachusetts legislature voted 151 to 45 to uphold marriage equality. And why? As reported by the Boston Globe: Personal stories changed minds By Lisa Wangsness and Andrea Estes, Globe Staff | June 15, 2007 Representative Richard J. Ross, a Republican from Wrentham, had a revelation Wednesday afternoon after meeting with a gay Republican who presented him with this challenge: As director of his family’s funeral home, Ross had surely treated every family the same, no matter what their race, religion, or sexual orientation. So why would he do anything else in his other job, as a lawmaker? For Senator Gale Candaras, it was the 6,800 phone calls, letters, e-mails, even faxes, from her district that left no question in her mind what her constituents wanted her to do. One letter came from an 82-year-old woman who worried that one of her young grandchildren might grow up to be gay and might not be able to marry the person he loved. Senator Michael W. Morrissey, a Democrat from Quincy, said he ignored the lobbyists and the power brokers who wanted to talk to him and sought counsel from his wife, his family, his oldest friends, and a few constituents. He made up his mind moments before walking into the House chamber yesterday. “People’s ability to be happy is fundamental,” he said. “To pass judgment on that, in the end, I found hard to do.” The nine lawmakers who switched sides on gay marriage yesterday came from both parties, different parts of the state, and they traveled different ideological paths to their decisions. But in interviews yesterday, they seemed to share something in common: a desire to listen to all sides and a concern about hurting gay couples and families who they believed in many cases had experienced discrimination. The lawmakers spent hours, even days at a time during the last five months, meeting gay couples and their friends and relatives. Their personal stories made the difference more than anything else, the lawmakers said. “I listened and I listened and I listened,” said Representative Robert J. Nyman, a Democrat from Hanover who switched his vote after spending all day Tuesday meeting with constituents on the issue. “I just felt at this point, I was not comfortable putting people’s human rights on the ballot.” Arline Isaacson, cochairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Caucus, said gay rights advocates working to defeat the amendment had put out urgent calls asking the gay community across the state to communicate directly with their lawmakers, and they did. “It made a big difference,” she said. “They were telling the story of their own lives, a story that a lot of these legislators didn’t really know.” Amendment opponents also benefited from a new freshman class that proved far more receptive to gay marriage than the lawmakers they replaced. Retirements, defeats, and resignations eliminated nine of 62 lawmakers who supported the amendment in January. At least four of the newcomers were thought to be supporters of the amendment, but only two of them voted for it yesterday. Representative Geraldo Alicea, a Democrat from Charlton, is a freshman who once promised to vote in favor of the amendment. But after he was elected, he said, “I thought it was best to be open-minded.” He spent many nights over the past five months meeting with gay and straight constituents. They included a couple who had been together for 28 years, and who, before they were married, had not been able to see each other at the hospital when one of them was seriously ill. He also spoke to a young lesbian couple who had adopted 4-year-old twins, and he said he found it difficult to imagine casting a vote that could hurt that growing family. Representative Paul Kujawski, a Catholic Polish-American who represents a conservative district in southern Worcester County, switched his vote after months of soul-searching. What changed his mind, he said, was meeting a lesbian couple from his district who helped him understand what it meant to them to get married after more than two decades together. “It was nothing more than that — wanting people to live happily,” he said. The couple came to the State House yesterday for the vote and found Kujawski in the crowd after it was over. “There were really no words,” Kujawski said. “Just hugs and tears.” Candaras had voted for the amendment when she was a House member representing a relatively conservative district with a large number of elderly people in Hampden County; now that she is a senator, she said, her new, much larger constituency made its sentiment clear to her. Some constituents wrote saying that they had changed their minds, like the elderly woman who said she previously asked Candaras to support the ban. “But since then, Gale,” the woman wrote, as Candaras told it, “this lovely couple, these two men, moved in next door to me, and they have a couple of children and they’re married, and they help me with my lawn. And if they can’t be married in Massachusetts, they’re going to leave — and then who would help me with my lawn?” Candaras said that after living with gay marriage for three years, many Massachusetts residents have grown accustomed to it, even those who once had reservations. “It’s a cultural change, and for older people, it is a difficult cultural change,” she said. “But I think people are coming to understand the issue and coming to appreciate the fact that the world is changing — and that these people deserve to enjoy . . . the same rights of marriage.” STEVEN BENJAMIN ON STEPHEN COLBERT Click here. It’s funny. Tomorrow (really): Alison Goes Green; You Go Purple
Four DON’Ts and a Bomb June 15, 2007January 6, 2017 DON’T SELL YOUR FMD If Tom Brown of bankstocks.com is right (big if, click here), it should be selling for about triple the current price. DON’T SELL YOUR HAPNW Fred: ‘Could you make some additional comments about the HAPN warrants? The warrants are at 36 cents and the underlying security is at $5.87. So aren’t we paying 36 cents to buy a security with an immediate 87 cent gain? This is like shooting fish in a barrel! Or is there some concern that the deal will not go through?’ ☞ Let me tell you how to shoot fish in a barrel: Buy a barrel, fill it with water and fish – or at least fish – aim and fire. Even that’s not so great, because you will surely destroy the barrel and, likely, the floor. (Best to do this outside.) But my point is: you will not find barrels of fish on Wall Street. A simple piece of grilled Dover sole, by the time you’ve had a glass of wine, some berries, tax and tip, will set you back $50 easy. (Guys, I need hardly mention, do not eat this way. Guys have Whoppers.) There is no free lunch on Wall Street. Am I straying from the metaphor? In the first place, yes, no deal may get done. Second, once a deal is done, you have to wait four months before you can exercise the warrants. And, third, who knows what a terrible deal this may turn out to be and how low the stock will drop? So ‘tails’ (we’ll get to heads in a second) you lose every penny of the $3,000 (say) you paid to buy 8,000 warrants. Fortunately, you knew to place this bet only with money you absolutely could afford to lose, so you’re philosophical about it – and you get to lower your taxable income by $3,000, making your after-tax loss only $2,000. (For the sake of this example, you are in the 33% marginal tax bracket.) Heads, on the other hand, the deal gets done, the stock does nicely over the four years the warrants have to run, and, when it hits $11, you exercise (buying the stock at $5 and selling it at $11), turning each 36-cent warrant into a $5.64 lightly-taxed long-term capital gain -$38,000 or so after tax. Unlike a heads-or-tails coin toss, there are more than two outcomes. (Here’s a third: the deal gets done but the stock is just $5.36 when you go to exercise your warrants -you break even.) And unlike a coin toss, the odds are not easily quantifiable. My gut tells me the odds of the stock hitting $11 in four years are better than 1 in 19. And yet, using this example (which I picked out of the air; there is no special significance to $11), you do 19 times better, after tax, if the coin comes up heads than if it comes up tails. So I’m in – but only with money I can truly afford to lose. DON’T GO TO GIBRALTAR David Plumb: ‘So, are you going to the Borealis Annual meeting in Gibraltar on June 27, or voting your proxies?’ ☞ You’re joking, right? (But, sure, it’s fine to send in the proxies and vote with management.) Apparently, they plan to webcast the meeting. Just head over to the Borealis site a day or two beforehand for details. DON’T SPEND A LOT OF TIME WANDERING AROUND VANCOUVER LOOKING FOR THE STOCK EXCHANGE Steve Baker: ‘For your information the Toronto Stock Exchange bought the Vancouver Stock Exchange about 5 to 6 years ago and promptly changed its name to the TSE VENTURE Exchange. [Which accounts for your confusion over the ‘V’ in the AXI-V symbol.] While there have always been more than some problems with the exchange, especially in the junior mining area, it should also be noted that it has always acted as a true junior exchange and usually in any given year 10-15+ companies graduate from the Venture exchange to full blown listings on the TSE. In some years more than 30 companies have migrated to other exchanges (either Montreal or Toronto).’ GAYS IN – THE ENEMY’S – MILITARY I suppose you saw this about preliminary interest in building a gay bomb. The ultimate ‘make love, not war’ tactic, I guess. I don’t imagine anyone actually took it seriously, but apparently it did get run up the flagpole. Monday: Alison Goes Green; You Go Purple
Bob Barr and Jon Stewart Agree But Not One Republican Presidential Candidate June 14, 2007March 6, 2017 REMINDER: QUARTERLY TAXES DUE TOMORROW If you file estimated quarterly tax – either because you always do, or because you just made a killing in GLDD warrants and suddenly realize you’re supposed to – tomorrow’s the deadline for the second quarter payment. Here‘s the form, and instructions. As a general rule (cribbing now verbatim from the IRS) ‘You must pay estimated tax for 2007 if both of the following apply. (1) You expect to owe at least $1000 in tax for 2007 after subtracting your withholding and credits. (2) You expect your withholding and credits to be less than the smaller of (a) 90% of the tax to be shown on your 2007 tax return, or (b) 100% of the tax shown on your 2006 tax return.’ Hint: I wouldn’t tie myself in knots with this, if I were you. It’s an estimate. You made an unexpected $10,000 short-term gain on which the marginal tax, because you’re in the top bracket, is likely to be $3,500? And you don’t ordinarily get a tax refund? OK, so send in $1,200 now and September 15 and January 15. End of story. Realize a big loss later in the year? Skip those last two estimated payments. Make another $20,000 later in the year? Increase the last two payments There is obviously no penalty for estimating too high (you just lose the use of that extra money between now and when it would otherwise be due in future quarterly estimated filings and ultimately on April 15, 2008); and the penalty for estimating too low falls far short of waterboarding. The penalty calculation is explained here, but I strongly advise against clicking that link. Far better to have TaxCut or TurboTax find, when you do your taxes next year, that you owe a $79 penalty than to have your head explode trying to make sense of the calculation. People’s heads have literally exploded reading IRS Pub. 505. WHAT JON STEWART REALLY SAID Joe Devney: ‘In Tuesday’s column you paraphrased Jon Stewart regarding the Republican candidates and gays in the military. The actual quote is more pungent: ‘The only thing worse for these candidates than another terrorist attack would be a gay hero stopping it.’ ‘ A CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN’S VIEW Oh, sure, Jon Stewart. And Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter – and General Shalikashvili – and the New York Times. But how about this, on the conservative op-ed page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal? Don’t Ask, Who Cares By BOB BARR Wall Street Journal June 13, 2007; Page A18 Last week’s forum of 10 Republican presidential hopefuls offered the country some troubling insight into the thinking of leading GOP candidates. In particular, the five who responded to questions about the Clinton-era “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy governing military service by gays and lesbians showed a disturbing move away from conservative principles, in favor of what smells strongly of political expediency or timidity. As a conservative Republican member of Congress from 1995 to 2003, I was hardly a card-carrying member of the gay-rights lobby. I opposed then, and continue to oppose, same-sex marriage, or the designation of gays as a constitutionally protected minority class. Service in the armed forces is another matter. The bottom line here is that, with nearly a decade and a half of the hybrid “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to guide us, I have become deeply impressed with the growing weight of credible military opinion which concludes that allowing gays to serve openly in the military does not pose insurmountable problems for the good order and discipline of the services. Asked about reconsideration of the don’t ask, don’t tell policy in favor of a more open and honest approach, the simplistic responses by several Republican presidential candidates left me — and I suspect many others — questioning whether those candidates really even understood the issue, or were simply pandering to the perceived “conservative base.” The fact is, equal treatment of gay and lesbian service members is about as conservative a position as one cares to articulate. Why? First, true conservative political philosophy respects the principles of individual freedom and personal privacy, particularly when it comes to what people do in private. The invasive investigations required to discharge a service member are an unconscionable intrusion into the private lives of American citizens. Worse, while supporters of don’t ask, don’t tell claim the policy only regulates behavior and not identity, the distinction is disingenuous. A service member could be discharged for being overheard remarking that, “I can stay later today since my partner will be taking the dog for a walk.” Second, and on a more practical level, the ban on gays openly serving in our armed forces is hurting a military that is stretched thin, putting further strain on an institution conservatives claim to love. The U.S. has fired over 11,000 people under the current policy, and in the process has lost over 1,000 service members with “mission-critical skills,” including 58 Arabic linguists. Researchers at the UCLA School of Law have found that lifting the ban could increase the number of active-duty personnel by over 40,000. Because the military can’t fill its slots, it has lowered its standards, extended tours of duty and increased rotations, further hurting morale and readiness. Conservatives are supposed to favor meritocracy — rewarding ability — especially in the armed forces. Instead, the military is firing badly needed, capable troops simply because they’re gay, and replacing them with a hodge podge that includes ex-cons, drug abusers and high-school dropouts. Third, the gay ban wastes money. According to a Blue Ribbon Commission made up of academics and prominent defense leaders including former Defense Secretary William Perry, the gay ban has cost taxpayers over $360 million, and even this figure did not include many of the actual costs of rounding up gays and lesbians, firing them and training their replacements. The training of an Arabic linguist alone costs some $120,000; that of medical or aviation specialists can cost up to a quarter million dollars. For all these reasons, many conservatives and other former supporters of the policy have concluded it’s time to change. In March, former Republican senator and Army veteran Alan Simpson announced he no longer supported policy of don’t ask, don’t tell, and believed it was crucial to lift the ban, which in his view has become “a serious detriment to the readiness of America’s forces.” A handful of other Republicans have signed onto the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would repeal the current ban on openly gay troops. In January, Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, became the highest ranking military official to call for repeal, joining a growing chorus of (mostly retired) military brass to oppose the policy. Attitudes both within and outside the military have shifted greatly since 1993 when the current policy was formulated. Three-quarters of returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets said in a December 2006 Zogby poll that they are “personally comfortable” interacting with gay people. A majority of those who knew someone gay in their unit said the person’s presence had no negative impact on unit morale. Among the public at large, polls show consistently that roughly two- thirds of Americans favor letting gays serve, including majorities of Republicans, regular churchgoers and even people with negative attitudes toward gays. These reasons, and the credibility of many experts making the arguments, have convinced me that there is little reason left to believe gays openly serving would break the armed forces. Americans want strong, moral leadership, and they are quick to sniff out pandering and expediency. It sure would be nice if the presidential wannabes were as quick to realize this. Mr. Barr is a former Republican congressman from Georgia. One day, Mr. Barr will come around on the other issues, too: If we have hate crimes laws to protect all the other victims of hate crimes (and we do, including white victims and Catholic victims and Pakistani victims), Mr. Barr will one day conclude it is deeply offensive to exclude only one class of victim: those assaulted or murdered because of gender identity. (A bill fixing this has passed the House; remains to be acted on by the Senate.) If we want to encourage stable relationships, discourage promiscuity, facilitate ‘liberty and the pursuit of happiness – or simply give all our citizens equal rights under the law – Mr. Barr will one day conclude gay couples who apply for marriage licenses should be granted them just as straight couples are. But one step at a time. Mr. Barr is now prepared to allow gays and lesbians to fight and die for their country, and his voice on this issue is an important one. In a few years, he might conclude it is time to extend equal treatment to gays and lesbians in civilian life as well. If he does, his evolving view will be warmly welcomed.
Save 45% Even If You’re Not Speaking to Each Other June 13, 2007March 6, 2017 ALISON GOES GREEN I consider myself an environmentalist, which can be a challenge given our very comfortable lifestyle. My husband is a contrarian but also an engineer (so he loves to try new technology) and a Wall Street guy with an eye on the bottom line. Our interests finally converged around cutting electric use in our weekend house in Connecticut. So here’s the story. Our electric use peaks in the summer when we use air conditioning and electrically-heated hot water, but the bills were high year-round, averaging about $200 a month and topping out at over $400 in midsummer. We were tired of the bills. We started by swapping out the lightbulbs for CFLs; easy, the state subsidized the prices, and it did seem to help. We put power strips all over the place to foil the energy “vampires” (like TV’s) that use power even when they’re off. It made it easy to switch off the power when we went away, back on when we returned. Then we replaced the washing machine with a front-loader – I’d fought that for years, thinking I’d hate bending that much, but now I love it – can’t get over how dry things are when they come out of the washer, so MUCH less drying is required. (And it does lots of fun things like light up and make cute beep noises and, most usefully, count down the time til it’s done). Then my husband decided it was silly to heat water when we weren’t there, so we replaced the old electric water heater (used only in the summer months when the furnace is off) with an on-demand one that heats water only as we use it. And here’s what happened. Comparing the three month period since we made all the changes to the previous years: March-May 2003: $428.56 March-May 2004: $413.94 March-May 2005: $468.32 March-May 2006: $447.51 March-May 2007: $242.94 So, we’re already saving an average of 45% with some simple changes, and without compromising anything about our quality of life. Imagine, if everyone did this, how many power plants we wouldn’t have to build? FROM ROGER WHO GET THEM FROM ALAN, WHO GOT THEM . . . The Silent Treatment A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment. Suddenly, the man realized that the next day, he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper, ‘Please wake me at 5:00 AM.’ He left it where he knew she would find it. The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight. Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn’t wakened him, when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed. The paper said, ‘It is 5:00 AM. Wake up.’ Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests. Wife Vs. Husband A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word. An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position. As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the husband asked sarcastically, ‘Relatives of yours?’ ‘Yep,’ the wife replied, ‘in-laws.’ ROLL YOUR MOUSE OVER THE SCANDAL Kevin: ‘Check out see this brilliant visual in Slate.’ Having a hard time keeping track of all 10,000 GOP scandals? Between fired U.S. attorneys, deleted RNC e-mails, sexually harassed pages, outed CIA agents, and tortured Iraqi prisoners-not to mention the warrantless wiretapping, plum defense contracts, and golf junkets to Scotland-you could be forgiven for losing track of which congressman or Bush administration flunky did which shady thing. Renzi – now, was that the guy with the sleazy land deal? Or the woman Paul Wolfowitz promoted? We’re not saying that Democrats never do anything shady. (Cash-stuffed freezers come to mind.) But as the saying goes, with great power come great opportunities to screw up royally. And if your memory is as hazy as ours, you could probably use a handy refresher.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Translate June 12, 2007March 6, 2017 You saw every hand go up when the Democratic presidential candidates were asked whether gays should be allowed to serve openly – and every Republican hand stay down a couple of nights later. As Jon Stewart summed it up on ‘The Daily Show,’ the Republicans will do anything to defeat our enemies – some even talk of using first-strike nuclear weapons. But there are limits. Using nukes is one thing; torture may be okay – but using gay soldiers (as our allies mostly all do)? No way. From Friday’s New York Times: June 8, 2007 Op-Ed Contributor Don’t Ask, Don’t Translate By STEPHEN BENJAMIN IMAGINE for a moment an American soldier deep in the Iraqi desert. His unit is about to head out when he receives a cable detailing an insurgent ambush right in his convoy’s path. With this information, he and his soldiers are now prepared for the danger that lies ahead. Reports like these are regularly sent from military translators’ desks, providing critical, often life-saving intelligence to troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the military has a desperate shortage of linguists trained to translate such invaluable information and convey it to the war zone. The lack of qualified translators has been a pressing issue for some time – the Army had filled only half its authorized positions for Arabic translators in 2001. Cables went untranslated on Sept. 10 that might have prevented the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Today, the American Embassy in Baghdad has nearly 1,000 personnel, but only a handful of fluent Arabic speakers. I was an Arabic translator. After joining the Navy in 2003, I attended the Defense Language Institute, graduated in the top 10 percent of my class and then spent two years giving our troops the critical translation services they desperately needed. I was ready to serve in Iraq. But I never got to. In March, I was ousted from the Navy under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which mandates dismissal if a service member is found to be gay. My story begins almost a year ago when my roommate, who is also gay, was deployed to Falluja. We communicated the only way we could: using the military’s instant-messaging system on monitored government computers. These electronic conversations are lifelines, keeping soldiers sane while mortars land meters away. Then, last October the annual inspection of my base, Fort Gordon, Ga., included a perusal of the government computer chat system; inspectors identified 70 service members whose use violated policy. The range of violations was broad: people were flagged for everything from profanity to outright discussions of explicit sexual activity. Among those charged were my former roommate and me. Our messages had included references to our social lives – comments that were otherwise unremarkable, except that they indicated we were both gay. I could have written a statement denying that I was homosexual, but lying did not seem like the right thing to do. My roommate made the same decision, though he was allowed to remain in Iraq until the scheduled end of his tour. The result was the termination of our careers, and the loss to the military of two more Arabic translators. The 68 other, heterosexual service members remained on active duty, despite many having committed violations far more egregious than ours; the Pentagon apparently doesn’t consider hate speech, derogatory comments about women or sexual misconduct grounds for dismissal. My supervisors did not want to lose me. Most of my peers knew I was gay, and that didn’t bother them. I was always accepted as a member of the team. And my experience was not anomalous: polls of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan show an overwhelming majority are comfortable with gays. Many were aware of at least one gay person in their unit and had no problem with it. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” does nothing but deprive the military of talent it needs and invade the privacy of gay service members just trying to do their jobs and live their lives. Political and military leaders who support the current law may believe that homosexual soldiers threaten unit cohesion and military readiness, but the real damage is caused by denying enlistment to patriotic Americans and wrenching qualified individuals out of effective military units. This does not serve the military or the nation well. Consider: more than 58 Arabic linguists have been kicked out since “don’t ask, don’t tell” was instituted. How much valuable intelligence could those men and women be providing today to troops in harm’s way? In addition to those translators, 11,000 other service members have been ousted since the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was passed by Congress in 1993. Many held critical jobs in intelligence, medicine and counterterrorism. An untold number of closeted gay military members don’t re-enlist because of the pressure the law puts on them. This is the real cost of the ban – and, with our military so overcommitted and undermanned, it’s too high to pay. In response to difficult recruiting prospects, the Army has already taken a number of steps, lengthening soldiers’ deployments to 15 months from 12, enlisting felons and extending the age limit to 42. Why then won’t Congress pass a bill like the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell”? The bipartisan bill, by some analysts – estimates, could add more than 41,000 soldiers – all gay, of course. As the friends I once served with head off to 15-month deployments, I regret I am not there to lessen their burden and to serve my country. I’m trained to fight, I speak Arabic and I’m willing to serve. No recruiter needs to make a persuasive argument to sign me up. I’m ready, and I’m waiting. Stephen Benjamin is a former petty officer second class in the Navy. ☞ An increasing number of generals, admirals, and – yes – conservative Republicans are coming around to the late Barry Goldwater’s view: that ‘you don’t have to be straight to shoot straight,’ let alone translate Arabic. We are one president away from getting rid of this policy.
The Iniquity of Inequity June 11, 2007January 6, 2017 BOREALIS CORRECTIONS I fixed Friday’s column for a couple of mistakes: AXI was not ‘suspended’ from trading – it voluntarily had trading in its stock halted while they worked out the Roche Bay deal. The V doesn’t stand for Vancouver; it trades on Toronto’s TSX Venture exchange – half a million shares Friday up 42 cents at $1.97 Canadian. Finally, what I described as “large orders in hand if we can produce the ore” are large “off-take agreements,” which are still promising, but not firm commitments. ESCAPA Jim Skinnell: “Sorry, had to brag: 28.234! Very cool game though. They speed up as you go further along, so it gets more a more difficult.” A GRAND TIME TO BE RICH AND POWERFUL Matt Miller’s latest Fortune column: June 25, 2007 issue FORTUNE Magazine How To Run A Budget Like An Idiot by Matt Miller New census data show that the top 1% of U.S. earners now take home a greater share of national income than at any time since the height of the go-go 1920s. The top 300,000 earners together receive almost as much income as the bottom 150 million. Democrats inhale these facts and breathe out fire. Republicans say, “Hey, this is no time to be complacent. With a little effort we can push this closer to Louis XVI levels of inequality!” At least that’s what GOP presidential wannabes are sounding like as they genuflect before the altar of tax reduction, despite that creed’s growing fiscal, moral, and mathematical indefensibility. Mitt Romney wants more marginal and corporate rate cuts. Rudy Giuliani touts the endorsement of Steve “Flat Tax” Forbes. Even John McCain, the “straight talker” who opposed Bush’s original tax cuts, now insists on their extension. Before every red-blooded tax loather spits on this page in disgust, consider the context. Over the past six years we’ve borrowed nearly $2 trillion to cut taxes for the wealthiest during a time of war, meaning we’ve slipped the bill for our war and our tax cuts to our kids. How do the candidates-who also claim to be “fiscally conservative” (not to mention devotees of “family values”)-square all this? Their stock answer is that we can cut taxes further if only we “get tough on spending.” Sounds marvelous, but when Republicans controlled every corner of Washington, they balked at trimming a teensy few million from the next trillion in planned Medicaid expenses. Bottom line: The outer limits of Republican spending-cut zeal won’t get us anywhere close to balancing the books. And that’s before you toss in our $39 trillion in unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities. I once asked budget gurus at two conservative think tanks what federal spending and taxes should be as a percentage of GDP a decade from now (it’s 20% today). They casually replied 12% or 13%-meaning they think we’ll slice government by more than a third as 77 million baby-boomers hit their rocking chairs. This evidences either (a) deep disingenuousness or (b) deeper delusions. Neither speaks well for the state of conservative thinking. Truth is, the only way GOP math adds up is if Giuliani, Romney, and company adopt the incentives for voluntary transitions” (read suicides) for 65-year-olds featured in Chris Buckley’s new comic novel, Boomsday. The most disappointing feature of the GOP case on taxes is a sin of omission. Tax-cut cheerleaders, like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, focus exclusively on the income tax. And it’s true, the top 5% of earners do pay about 58% of federal income taxes. But the income tax is only 47% of federal revenue today-something Republicans never want to discuss. When you throw other federal taxes into the mix (especially the regressive payroll tax disproportionately borne by average earners), you find that “all in,” the top-earning 5% make about 30% of the income and pay about 40% of overall federal taxes. In other words, we have a modestly progressive system. Of course, if you had an Ayn Rand infatuation in high school that you never outgrew, you may think those top 300,000 supermen are dragging the 150 million proles around like a ball and chain, and the proles should shut up and be grateful. So let me appeal to your scientific side instead, with what I call the Plutocrat Insulation Index (or PII). Take the percentage of tax cuts going to the top 1% of earners and divide that by the percentage of men and women serving in Iraq who are from the families of that same top 1%. Miller’s Social Decadence Theorem posits that as the PII approaches infinity (which it does today), we’re deep in Marie Antoinette territory. With a push from those shiny new GOP tax plans, we’ll be telling them to eat cake in no time. Matt Miller is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and host of public radio’s “Left, Right & Center.” BILL GATES FINALLY GETS A HARVARD DEGREE As you know, he dropped out. Here is the Commencement address he delivered Thursday. It ties in with the article above – it’s about the world’s inequities. Which somehow escaped Gates’ gaze while an undergraduate.