Tips and Dips March 5, 2008March 10, 2017 TIPS Prasanth Manthena: ‘I’ve been actively buying TIPS for over six months because the housing market and threat of inflation had/has me worried. I tried to balance my fears out as well with the dollar and inflation by also buying T. Rowe Price’s International Bond Fund. Holding cash as some have suggested seems really scary with the prospect of inflation so bad that TIPS yield less than zero now, as you pointed out yesterday. Both funds have done well but now maybe both of them are not safe bets either. This is a scary time as nothing really seems safe even after the financial shocks should have created areas where value should be found. I wasn’t able to glean from your post yesterday what you would do with TIPS – i.e., if you had them in a fund like Vanguard’s?’ ☞ When I first suggested them, the long-term TIPS yielded about 4% above inflation (more than twice what they yield now). To me, it was a pretty easy call, at least as a core holding in a retirement plan. And I made the case for buying the longest term TIPS (which at the time was nearly 30 years). By now, with the ample appreciation they’ve enjoyed (both from the inflation adjustment and the rising price of the bond), they represent about half my mom’s IRA. Would I buy more now? No. Would I sell? I’m torn. In my own retirement plan, I did sell, hoping to sit on cash until some irresistible opportunities come along. Whether with hindsight that will have proved smart remains to be seen. So far, I’d have been smarter holding onto the TIPS. Short-term TIPS, meanwhile, may not yield much, but they do rank high in terms of safety. I think you can sleep pretty well with your Vanguard fund. DIPS George Hamlett: ‘If you haven’t seen this from the London Telegraph [‘The Federal Reserve’s rescue has failed’], you really should consider it. The bottom is not yet in sight, and maybe not even close. Evans-Pritchard may be something of an alarmist, but he’s not a fringe voice.’ ☞ George is right; the link is worth clicking. Getting out of this box will not be easy. Gloom! Doom! We need something to lighten things up. How about an original limerick? There once was a trader from Bristol Losing money by hand over fistful He said with a moan As the bank called his loan ‘Watch me blow out my brains with this pistol!’ No, wait. That’s not good. How about: Roses are red, Forsythia, whitish; The future will really be brightish! That’s the ticket. This too shall pass.
Less Than Zero And, Eventually, the Good News March 4, 2008March 10, 2017 Let’s start with these two data points . . . Item: INFLATION FEARS – As my great friend Joe Cherner pointed out to me yesterday, the 5-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) are now yielding less than zero. (Click the link and scroll down.) That is, they promise to pay 2% a year interest . . . but so concerned are folks about inflation that they were yesterday willing to shell out $1,084 for each $1,000 bond. On April 15, 2012, when the bonds mature, yesterday’s buyers will have lost a hair more on each bond – $84 – than they will have received in interest payments from it. That’s why the yield works out to less than zero. Except that the face value of these bonds is inflation adjusted. And that’s why people are paying so much for them. The math is a little complicated, but it all boils down to a return of ‘three-hundredths of one percent below inflation.’ And to some, being protected against ‘all but three-hundredths of one percent of inflation’ seems pretty attractive these days. With the Fed flooding the financial system with money, and with the US dollar sinking against foreign currencies, rising inflation is likely. Not good. Item: CREDIT FEARS – As another great friend pointed out to me yesterday, S&P and Moody’s last week both reaffirmed their triple-A ratings of the bonds of a company called MBIA, an insurer of those ‘collateralized mortgage obligations’ that have everyone so spooked. And yet (here was my friend’s punch line), MBIA’s bonds yield 14%. See? The rating agencies are saying, ‘Not to worry – MBIA is a top quality credit. Triple-A. Highest rating there is.’ The market, demanding 14%, is saying, ‘You have got to be kidding.’ This is important, because if MBIA is a triple-A credit, then the bonds it insures are triple-A. If MBIA is dropped down a few notches, so too many of the bonds it insures. (How did S&P and Moody’s come to reaffirm MBIA’s triple-A rating? I have no idea. But I am reminded of Roger Lowenstein’s wonderful Sunday Times Magazine piece recently in which he describes how, to get then Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin to lower interest rates, LBJ allegedly slammed him against a wall and physically beat him.) With home prices falling, foreclosures rising, and a recession looming, there is the fear of a vicious cycle: more foreclosures leading to further home-price declines leading to worsening consumer confidence, a deeper recession, and . . . Not good. What are we to draw from these data points? First, that this is an even better time than usual to live beneath your means . . . to save for a rainy day . . . to diversify . . . to keep your transaction costs low . . . to take risk seriously . . . to expect lower interest rates but higher inflation which leads to higher interest rates which leads to more business failures, deeper recession, and lower interest rates . . . in short, a roller coaster ride. The world rarely ends, so this will ultimately be a column of good news, but first it does appear that the chickens, as they had to, are indeed coming home to roost. We laughed at Europeans in their funny little cars as we drove ever bigger and bigger SUVs . . . but guess who’s going broke? We looked the other way when homes and condos were rising to crazy heights and mortgage lenders were making ‘no doc’ loans and ‘liars loans’ – loans the Fed and other regulators could easily have tamped down but didn’t. We borrowed massively to cut taxes on the rich and then to finance an ill-conceived war, taking our National Debt up from under $1 trillion (about 30% of GDP) at the start of Reagan’s first term to $10 trillion (nearly 70% of GDP) by the end of George W. Bush’s. We allowed the gap between the rich and everyone else – and the ranks of the uninsured – to chasm. (Did you see this past Sunday’s ’60 Minutes’ piece on the group of volunteers who have begun offering free weekend health care clinics in America as they do in the jungles of the Amazon? It will leave you shaking your head in sad disbelief.) We watched – or, rather, didn’t watch – as Wall Street paid itself gigantic bonuses for creating securities and taking risks whose magnitude we do not yet know. (But we do know that when the CEO exited a hemorrhaging Merrill Lynch, he left with $161 million in cash and benefits.) And as long ago as 1974, we stamped our foot at the notion of increasing the gas tax by a dime a year, forever (and using that flood of revenue to lower the income tax, so we would be taxing the thing we wanted to discourage while reducing the tax on work and investment that we wanted to encourage). Yes, this would have sent the price per gallon to $4 by 2008 . . . but it got there anyway. The difference is, had we launched this in 1974, spurred on by OPEC’s quadrupling the price of oil, our vehicles would today get 80 miles to the gallon (so the cost of driving a mile would actually be lower in real terms than it was), Detroit would lead the automotive world, our trade deficit would be far lower, our dollar stronger, our air cleaner, our families more prosperous, our military less entangled, and more.* *I blame Detroit, specifically its top executives. I blame the oil companies and their lobbyists. I blame our political system. I blame the woman I saw on TV screaming hysterically when Clinton raised the gasoline tax 4.3 cents a gallon – it was gonna kill her, she wailed. I blame the TV reporter on that story for not immediately pointing out she was being an idiot . . . that this tax hike would cost her just $36 over the course of a year . . . and that she could easily avoid it altogether just be making sure her tires were properly inflated. I blame myself for not advocating for the dime-per-year-per-gallon tax even more strongly. So here we are . . . and here, now, the good news . . . Begin with this delightful perspective from the New Yorker: . . . A few minutes later, it was Arthur Gray on the line, from the Virgin Islands. Gray, who is eighty-five and a money manager at a firm called Carret, has been in the game since 1945. Age and experience incline him to the long view. ‘As Herman Kahn pointed out, two hundred years ago almost everyone was poor,’ he said. ‘Today, somebody on welfare in our country lives better than a maharaja did two hundred years ago. The maharaja had two hundred slaves fanning him; today, you push a button and have air-conditioning. So, as Kahn said, two hundred years from now everybody will be affluent. I think it’s a wonderful world. I can’t call this thing more than a hiccup.’ We have, I think, at least four macro forces going for us. First, of course, we are a hard-working, ingenious people. Our political and economic system is flawed, but it’s still about the best there is for adapting to changed circumstances. Second, the dollar has sunk so low, with no end necessarily in sight, that America is on sale – 40% off! There should be increasing demand for our goods and services (good for employment) and a market for a lot of our assets. (Sell your condo to a foreign investor and then rent it back from him?) It won’t be fun seeing some of our premier companies and real estate being bought up by overseas investors. But we insisted on trading our dollars for gasoline and VCRs, and now the gasoline has been burned up and the VCRs dumped in landfills, but those dollars – I.O.U.’s – are still out there. They may be redeemed by buying stuff. As a practical matter, this may help put a floor on some real estate; may help keep our stock market from falling as far as it otherwise might. Third, we will have a new President soon who may be able to sweep into office much as Reagan did, when things were also precarious (nearly unprecedented inflation married to nearly unprecedented unemployment, with no way out) and infuse us, and our neighbors around the world, with confidence and hope. Psychology can be self-fulfilling (all we have to fear is fear itself), and markets have as much to do with psychology as with economics. (But economics matters, too, so the next President will, I hope, make the kinds of smart decisions Bill Clinton did, not repeat the disastrous ones of the past seven years.) Fourth, there is technology. Faithful readers may recall Ray Kurzweil’s prediction that technological progress will be 32 times as rapid over the next half century as over the last. There are all sorts of perils in this; but also the potential for a tremendous wave of prosperity that will lift billions of boats, and overwhelm (in a good way) today’s seemingly intractable economic problems. The sun will come out tomorrow. But maybe not literally tomorrow.
The WB March 3, 2008January 5, 2017 WARREN BUFFETT I first wrote about Warren Buffett’s famous annual shareholder letters about 30 years ago, for Fortune, when Berkshire Hathaway stock was $300. (I said he was obviously amazing, and that I might well buy a few shares when they pulled back a little. They closed Friday at $140,000. In hindsight it might have been wiser to ‘pay up for quality’ than wait for a pullback.) You can read this year’s letter here. (Or, in my case, having never bought the stock: read it and weep.) WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. Jesse: ‘Re your comment Thursday, I have a hard time mourning anyone who could think, much less write, that AIDS sufferers should be ‘tattooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent contamination’ to other homosexuals.’ ☞ That, naturally, was one of the many places I didn’t see it his way. But what seems to have struck so many people – and what certainly struck me in my glancing acquaintanceship with him (he even took me and another guy out on his little boat for a sleepover sail one night, one of the odder nights of my life) – was how warmly he embraced his liberal friends, even as he hotly disagreed with them. Here is one such remembrance of Buckley (‘Why William F. Buckley Was My Role Model’) by Rick Perlstein. And here is another by Bill Curry: Buckley loved debate. Unlike today’s cowardly conservatives, he debated the best minds he could entice on to a stage. He never used his opponents as props or punch lines for fixed fights. He liked them. Loving his own ideas, not just hating theirs, left room for liking them. What a long sad fall from Bill Buckley to Bill O’ Reilly. I’m not part of the crowd that says if we can just get along everything will be alright. But I am part of the crowd that thinks learning to get along better will help . . . ☞ So I say again, rest in peace, Bill Buckley. WENDY BRANDES Half their age and prettier, Wendy might not normally figure in a column with these guys, but I just had dinner with her and her husband tonight, and that’s when I realized: it’s all about the WB! You can read her blog, and see the jewelry she designs, here.
It’s Leap Year — Take the Day Off February 29, 2008January 5, 2017 NEW SYMBOLS Dave Nelson: ‘Hey, has the symbol for Aldabra II warrants changed? It hasn’t showed up for a couple of days.’ ☞ Aldabra 2 is now Boise, Inc. – BZ – with the symbol for the warrants, BZ_t or BZ+ or who knows what else, depending on the service you’re using to get a quote. SYMS, meanwhile, after its aborted self-delistation*, has gone back to being SYMS. *I know ‘infinity’ is a very long time, but the idea that an infinite number of monkeys typing for infinity would eventually produce one of Shakespeare’s plays – or even one of his sonnets – is silly. Since the dawn of time, with more than 6 billion people on the planet, not one of them has ever previously typed ‘aborted self-delistation.’ Think about that.. NAQ This Special Purpose Acquisition Company has not changed its symbol, sits on about $400 million in cash looking for an attractively-priced acquisition, and sold yesterday for $9.30 a share. The warrants, first written up here three months ago, give you the right to buy the stock at $7.50 (if an acquisition is completed) yet sold yesterday for just 69 cents. All the usual caveats apply (truly, truly, truly), but if you have money you can truly afford to lose, it’s a speculation to consider. DO YOU STILL BUY BOTTLED WATER? James Musters suggests this comic strip. THE CREATIONIST’S DILEMMA And speaking of strips . . . Garry Trudeau strikes again. LEAP FRIDAY Have a good weekend. A beagle – quite possible the one that won Best in Show recently – ate the rest of this column. Shouldn’t Leap Year be a holiday anyway?
TXCO, ACAI, CZAR, WFBJ February 28, 2008March 10, 2017 TXCO We first bought this tiny domestic oil and gas exploration company at $4.50 four years ago. It closed last night at $14.72 (having touched $15.30 mid-day). I’m holding mine, but I want you to sell a third of yours so that from now on ‘you’re playing with house money.’ If only I had had the sense to suggest the same with FMD ($13.26 last night) when it hit $56. ACAI Not a stock, a berry. I don’t own any Bolthouse Farms (a private company?) but I sure drink a lot of their juice. The ‘vedge’ variety is great – a cross between tomato and V8. The two new acai varieties, one with pomegranate and one with mangosteen, are terrific. I don’t see those two on the Bolthouse website, so maybe they’re still in test markets only. But if you find them, try them. (Like a guy: straight out of the container.) CZAR PUTIN How sad to see democracy snuffed out in Russia. Frontline tells the story. If you have 21 minutes, take a look. If nothing else, it reminds us never to take our freedom of speech, or of the press, for granted. And to be fearful of the decline in hard-hitting journalism. Where was our press these past seven years? WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. There was so much I thought he was wrong about; but what a man he was. Frighteningly intellectual, prolific, consequential, mischievous – and gracious. Father to a wonderful son. And a eulogist at the funeral a quarter century ago of Al Lowenstein, who was as brilliantly liberal as Buckley was brilliantly conservative . . . a eulogy that spoke well of them both. May he rest in peace.
Why You Have to Be 18 to Vote February 27, 2008January 5, 2017 NADER Bob Perlman: ‘I’ve always been struck by the similarity between Nader’s inability to realize exactly how much power he held in the days leading up to that election – and how to use it – and George W. Bush’s inability to grasp the opportunity he had to unite the country to good purpose in the days following September 11th. In Nader’s case it was most likely ego, in Bush’s either ignorance or witlessness, but the result was the same: disaster for our country. Sometimes great leadership is seeing a path that no one else can discern, but at other times it’s just the ability to set aside pride and preconceptions, and see what’s right in front of you.’ Aaron Long: ‘Everything you say about Ralph makes sense and yet it bugs me nonetheless. Imagine you are an elementary school teacher and your class is studying about how our system of government works, how any kid could grow up to be president. Maybe you run a mock election in your class. How much fun is it going to be to explain to the kid – who has read about Nader and decided he is her man and she is going to vote for him – that her vote for Nader is not just misguided, but probably a morally reprehensible act, that she cannot vote for the person she prefers, but has to vote for this other person she doesn’t especially care for, whose beliefs don’t particularly match her own, just in order to prevent an even bigger jerk from winning? This is your birthright, your franchise. Enjoy.’ ☞ I hear you. That’s why we need Instant Run-Off voting. But there’s another lesson for our elementary school class . . . which is: sometimes in life we need to compromise to get a good result. If we insist on getting a perfect result, we could wind up really hurting ourselves and our classmates. ‘The perfect is the enemy of the good,’ we might tell our fourth graders. And, when they look perplexed: ‘You’ll understand when you’re older. That’s why you have to be 18 years old to vote.’ Meanwhile, enjoy this video. Seriously, dude: too much fun to miss. STEAMING CUP OF COFFEE And how about this video? Yet more fun. And you’ve got to admit, it’s a good idea. GOVERNOR SIEGELMAN If this story has captured your attention, here‘s a lot more background on it. Is it possible this could have happened in America?
Acquitted in Under Two Hours Including Time for Lunch February 26, 2008March 10, 2017 KARL ROVE SHOULD GO TO JAIL You probably didn’t have time to watch this yesterday, so here it is again: the ’60 Minutes’ report about our wonderful Justice Department finding a pretext to send the Democratic governor of Alabama to prison for seven years (where he resides today, whisked straight from the courthouse in shackles). Even Republicans are stunned. Rove is the one who needs to be in jail, and Bush needs to pardon Siegelman yesterday. BUT THEY DIDN’T SHOW IT IN ALABAMA Morrie Hartman: ‘As you might know, the local CBS affiliate in Huntsville, Alabama, WHNT, did not air the Siegelman story as scheduled during ’60 Minutes’ last night, claiming ‘technical difficulties’ just as the Siegelman story was about to air. The station does say that they did air the story later last night. I emailed WHNT today to complain about the apparent censoring of the Siegelman story, and they did respond. More precisely, their weatherman, James Dice, responded. (‘Take it from the weather guy here – we had a satellite receiver fail. It broke. We scrambled engineers to the receiver site to get a backup receiver in place. We rebroadcast the piece and it’s available on whnt.com for people to watch as often as they wish. My gosh – I hope nothing ever breaks here at the station again because the public is not forgiving of anything. We’re accused of being the liberal media by the Republicans and the Democrats accuse us of covering things up. My friends in the news department are taking a very undeserved beating over this. We try to do things right, but I can assure you equipment will break again. I’ve had radar fail during severe weather and I didn’t receive as many e-mails as this.’) A moment ago the station added a banner to the top of their home page linking to the story and enabling people to watch it online.’ ☞ It’s hard to believe their equipment failed at the precise moment that the most important broadcast segment of the year (for Alabama) was about to air. But it’s good to know wiser/more-decent minds prevailed and they’ve tried to make amends. Robert Haugland: ‘Congress is too busy investigating whether baseball players used steroids to investigate something like this, which affects us all and is one reason for Congress being there in the first place (checks and balances). Congress also convened a special session a few years back to cover the Terry Schiavo case but this case in Alabama, I guess, is just not really important!’ AND HOW ABOUT NEW JERSEY? Jeff Schwarz: ‘Siegelman is not an isolated incident. In NJ, they tried that with the guy who is now our senator, Bob Menendez. And statistically, according to this Paul Krugman column, the Bush Justice Department prosecuted hundreds of Dems, but almost no Republicans.’ From that March 9, 2007, column: Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny. How can this have been happening without a national uproar? The authors explain: ‘We believe that this tremendous disparity is politically motivated and it occurs because the local (non-statewide and non-Congressional) investigations occur under the radar of a diligent national press. Each instance is treated by a local beat reporter as an isolated case that is only of local interest.’ And let’s not forget that Karl Rove’s candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed federal investigations. Last year Molly Ivins reminded her readers of a curious pattern during Mr. Rove’s time in Texas: ‘In election years, there always seemed to be an F.B.I. investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press. After the election was over, the allegations often vanished.’ ☞ Seems as though they’ve managed to do for the Justice Department what they did for FEMA. AND HOW ABOUT IOWA? Erich Riesenberg: ‘There must be dozens of cases of politically biased charges from the Justice Department. My neighbor, the first ‘out’ gay Iowa state senator, was acquitted after less than two hours . . . . . . A federal jury in Des Moines took less than two hours Thursday, including time for lunch, to reject charges that state Sen. Matt McCoy used his political power to pry $2,000 from two former associates in a business deal gone wrong. McCoy’s relatives sobbed with relief when jurors announced their verdict in court. The smiling senator, who faced up to 20 years in federal prison, repeatedly hugged his lawyers. . . . Here is some info on the US Attorney . . . . . . How partisan is Whitaker? Well, he’s quite the Republican. He’s a social conservative and supportive of the Iowa Christian Alliance (formerly the Iowa Christian Coalition . . . Bias at the Justice Department seems as common as closeted gay Republican legislators.’ ☞ Ouch. But you know what? Politicizing the Justice Department deserves some stinging criticism. And Karl Rove really should go to jail.
Nader, McCain, and Rove February 25, 2008March 10, 2017 RALPH My history with Ralph Nader goes back a long way – my dad wrote his first ads, pro bono, for Public Citizen and Congress Watch, which made me very proud; I wrote a cover story about his almost single-handed deep-sixing of meaningful automobile insurance reform (‘Ralph Nader Is a Big Fat Idiot’), which has likely cost you thousands of dollars in too-high premiums over the years (and God forbid you should be badly injured in a car crash not caused by a wealthy driver whose fault you can prove); and then of course there was ‘the election.’ So it was with some interest I watched his announcement on Meet the Press yesterday. And the truth is, I think much of what he has to say makes sense. Under Bush, especially, it’s all been about skewing the equation ever further toward corporate interests and the rich. I favor Instant Runoff Voting, which would let folks vote for a third-party candidate like Nader as their first choice – but specify a second-choice candidate (like Gore or Bush), in the event their first choice failed to win. With that system, you’d encourage more points of view, more vigorous discussion – all good, in a democracy – and, especially, encourage more people to remain engaged in the process. Failing that system, Nader could still have run as he did in 2000 (and is doing again now). But what he can’t do is what he tried to do on Meet the Press, and has been trying to do ever since the disastrous outcome of 2000: escape blame for what happened. He said on MTP – how come people blame me? Why don’t they blame Gore for not winning his home state of Tennessee? Why don’t they blame Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush and the Supreme Court? And there’s a simple answer: On a planet with 6 billion people at the time, there was only one person – Ralph Nader – who could with half an hour’s effort been reasonably expected to keep this disaster from happening. All he would have had to do was issue a statement three days out saying, in effect: ‘Listen, if you live in Texas or Massachusetts, vote for me. But if you live in a swing state like Florida or Ohio, vote for Gore.’ Gore would have won; Nader’s stature and ability to make progress on the causes he cared about would have been enhanced; there would be no war in Iraq; Bin Laden would have been dead by now, if 9/11 had even occurred at all; we would lead the world in stem cell research and in the development of alternative energy. Sure, Gore would have won if he had carried Tennessee – but how, in half an hour’s effort, could he have done so? Does Nader think he didn’t try? Sure, George W. Bush could have had an epiphany and dropped out of the race, or Katherine Harris could have asked to be indicted for crimes against democracy. But those are not reasonable scenarios. The Nader scenario was not only reasonable, it was urged on him, in some form, by thousands of people, including many of his closest lifelong allies. It’s hard to imagine anyone in all of human history who could so easily have made such a positive difference with so little effort. So go ahead and run, Ralph. But when the time comes, you’d better beg your supporters in swing states to vote for the progressive in the race, which will be the Democrat. And, boy, did you ever blow your chance to be a hero, in 2000 – and perhaps to extract a promise from Al Gore to support Instant Run-off Voting. STRAIGHT TALK FROM 59 LOBBYISTS ‘I’m the only one the special interests don’t give any money to,’ says John McCain – there’s no way they’re going to gain access to him. This short video tells a different story. And this one shows him telling us Iraq would be easy . . . and then, years later, telling us he always knew it would be hard. This is not to vilify John McCain; but once you tell everyone you’re the straight talker, you’re the guy the lobbyists can’t reach, you more or less invite scrutiny. Five minutes well spent, and perhaps shared with your Uncle Art. KARL ROVE SHOULD GO TO JAIL I don’t get this angry easily, but the gist of the ’60 Minutes’ report last night – about our wonderful Justice Department basically finding a pretext to send the Democratic governor of Alabama to prison for seven years (where he resides today, whisked straight from the courthouse in shackles) – is so outrageous that enough is enough. Even Republicans are stunned. Rove is the one who needs to be in jail, and Bush needs to pardon Siegelman yesterday.
Three Good Ideas February 22, 2008January 5, 2017 TURN OFF STOVE, CHECK; TURN OFF LIGHTS, CHECK; WALLET? KEYS? iPHONE? CHECK, CHECK, CHECK Rick Anhalt: ‘As a former airline instructor pilot, I can assure you everyday use of checklists is increasing, and for good reason. Whether it be a routine item or emergency there is a better way to do things, and that way is researched, documented, printed, and followed. As always, not all situations can be covered (UAL DC-10 in Iowa years ago, superior airmanship on the crew’s part) but most can and the traveling public is safer for it. I have no doubt the medical industry will follow, even if it takes the insurance industry to force the checklist practice with higher premiums for those who resist.’ ANOTHER GOOD IDEA The Democratic Leadership Council has been coming up with lots of good ideas this primary season (and for many years past). Here’s the latest – ‘a 21st Century G.I. Bill that would deposit $5,000 in the name of every child born in a 529-type college education fund. But to receive the government’s contribution with interest, a child would have to commit one year to military or civilian service. This type of program could help rebuild the middle class and dramatically increase the chances for ordinary Americans to prosper in the global economy.’ It would encourage parents and kids who otherwise might never even consider college to do so, and from a very early age. It would encourage national service. It would encourage further saving, aspiration, responsibility, opportunity, and community. AND A THIRD So I really didn’t know who Fran Drescher was when I was invited to go to some kind of cocktail party for her at a fancy-schmancy address (she’s an actress, no?). But I went anyway because a quick check of her political giving showed that she was a Democrat, and it sounded like the kind of party that might be attended by wealthy progressives – which is to say, potential DNC donors. I donned my best mail-order shirt and slacks, and when she opened her mouth, I instantly knew who she was. Not that I had ever seen ‘The Nanny,’ but – that voice! I almost laughed out loud. She’s not acting: that’s her real voice. I don’t know where I had heard it before, but it’s not a voice you forget. And it’s not a voice I had ever associated with any great intelligence, let alone gravitas. But guess what? This woman turns out to be a force. After being misdiagnosed seven times over a period of two years, but refusing to believe the doctors, she was finally found to have Stage 1 uterine cancer – she had a way of making this story funny and compelling, even to a man not ordinarily at ease wandering around the gynecologia – and, once she recovered, she founded Cancer Schmancer (yes, really) because had she just accepted any of those first seven expert opinions, her cancer would have progressed to a more dangerous stage. At Stage Four, only 17% of women reach the 5-year survival mark; at Stage One, over 95%. So the ‘cure’ for cancer, it turns out, is ‘Stage One,’ she decided – detecting it early makes all the difference. Yet women and their doctors are not nearly aggressive enough in striving for early detection. There was a great deal more to what she had to say . . . and the tests she advises women (and men) to go for . . . and the laws she is trying to get passed (one already signed) . . . but she tells it much better than I ever could, on her website and in her book. I raised nothing for the DNC from this outing, but I met a young woman who said Fran Drescher is her absolute number #1 hero – she ‘wrote papers on her in high school and college,’ she said – and I got Fran Drescher’s autograph for the partner of a DNC employee who, when he heard I might be meeting her, said it would be the greatest thing ever. See? And I had not even known who she was. Like the checklist, her efforts could one day save your life.
18 Years Shacked Up with the Birds and the Bees February 21, 2008March 10, 2017 WHY EQUALITY MATTERS “… Pond, Langbehn’s partner for nearly 18 years, was stricken in Miami with a brain aneurysm and died. Langbehn, a social worker, said officials at the University of Miami Jackson Memorial Hospital did not recognize her or their jointly adopted children as part of Pond’s family… Langbehn said she was informed that they were in an ‘anti-gay state’ and that they needed legal paperwork before Langbehn could see Pond.” — The Olympian, of Olympia, Washington, June 17, 2007 SEX ED – THE WINNING VIDEO Click here. And then show your kid this previously mentioned site (after assuring yourself you’re okay with it). SHACK UP Will Galway: ‘You and Charles are already doing your part. This is from the December 4 Quote of the Day that appeared in the online Wall Street Journal‘s Morning Brief:’ “Turning on the light uses the same energy whether there are two people or four people in the room. If you don’t want to get remarried, maybe move in with somebody you like,” Jianguo Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State University and author of a study finding that divorce hurts the environment, tells the Los Angeles Times. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, found that the resource inefficiency of divorced households resulted in an extra 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity use in the U.S. in 2005 – about 7% of total home use – in turn spewing more carbon dioxide into the air and exacerbating global warming. Other potential solutions, the Times reports, include polygamy, communal living or roommates. “I’m just a scientist trying to present the facts,” said Mr. Liu. “I’m not promoting one way or another.”