Pudding June 30, 2009March 15, 2017 WEB SIDE STORY Surprisingly good clean fun. (Thank, Hubert!) NOW THIS IS UNLIKELY Surprisingly kinky Muslims – and from the New York Times, no less. DRIVEWAYS Just to be clear: Richard has not painted his driveway white, and Charles and I have no driveway. Furthermore, the white-clad chap I had out “wandering in the dessert” was not wandering in pudding, it was just late at night when I posted that column. I meant “desert.” Jeremy Cherfas: “You might be surprised to learn that white clothes are not always cooler. There are various explanations, which hinge on both the chimney effect – a nice breeze created within loose black clothes – and the fact that white clothes reflect the body heat back to the body. Here, here, and here.” Judy Lawrence: “If Richard refuses to paint his driveway and climate continues apace, he won’t have to worry about the snow. It will be nice and warm in his part of the country. (‘Spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food, but all that is changing.’ – Buckminster Fuller)” LET’S HEAR IT FOR BALD SPOTS Jarett Chaiken: “If Richard Factor is correct, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, then we should all be driving white cars. Also I certainly haven’t seen the tops of every 18-wheel truck, but the one’s I’ve seen are all white already, as are UPS and Fedex trucks. Can auto manufacturers count that towards carbon credits?” ☞ The more reflective, the better. Let’s hear it for the folically challenged. But if you’re uncomfortable being bald, or shaving your head for the environment, you can wear a beanie windmill. (Am I being too flip? I refer you back to Earth 2100 for the underlying gravity of the discussion.) CRTX Chris Brown: “I sold the remainder of our CRTX today for an average price of $11.89. I still think it is a $16 stock in 2 yrs based on earnings, but discounting that back at 15%/yr gives a target close to $12. It’s not overvalued here, but it’s not compellingly undervalued either. Feel free to share with readers if you think it would be of value.” ☞ So I was too early selling last week for $10. But up from $3.80 in two months, there is a limit to how loudly I can oink. Thanks, Chris.
“Listen,” Mr. Mixner said . . . June 29, 2009March 15, 2017 TWO SENATORS It has recently come to my attention that Wyoming (pop. 532,000) has the same number of U.S. Senators – 2 – as California (pop. 36,756,000) or New York (pop. 19,490,000). Did you know this? This is crazy! But it explains how something can enjoy wide popular support – even 70% or 80% – and still lack the 60 votes required for “cloture” to get a measure through the Senate. Perhaps the solution is to require literal, physical, old-fashioned filibusters – the kind that tucker a fella out, even if he’s from Wyoming. There would be quite a few. And a lot of stuff might not, in fact, achieve “cloture” so as to allow an actual majority vote. But the minority might decide to pick its battles carefully, and not, say, go to the wall to prevent people like Lieutenant Dan Choi and Lieutenant Colonel Victor Fehrenbach from serving their country. HOW FAST TO MOVE The Washington Post argues here that the President should not act unilaterally to halt military discharges under “Don’t Ask / Don’t Tell” but should, rather, lean on Congress to repeal the ban, as he already has called upon Congress to do. With leaders like Colin Powell and General Shalikashvili – and the newly named Secretary of the Army, former Republican Congressman John McHugh – calling “Don’t Ask / Don’t Tell” out of step with the times, we ought to be able to get those 60 votes. Not only is it a matter of equality, it is a matter of national security. Why on earth are we separating war heroes and Arab linguists who want to serve their country? (Dan Choi speaks Arabic. Carl Fehrenbach has won so many medals in his 18 years with the Air Force he was handpicked to help defend the Washington, DC airspace in the aftermath of 9/11.) STONEWALLING Colbert on our slow progress. It’s unfair (it would have been illegal for him to extend health and retirement benefits, which is why he’s called for legislation to fix that), but it’s funny. AND A QUICK EXORCISM Colbert on loosing gay demons. HOW ANGRY TO BE My friend Tobias Barrington Wolff – no relation – teaches law at the University of Pennsylvania. He writes, on a list serve of LGBT donors and leaders: Subj: Tired of Fighting with Friends The 16 months that I spent as the chief policy advisor on LGBT issues for the Obama campaign represented the first time that I had participated in national politics in any significant fashion. In the 10 years prior, most of my advocacy work had been in the legal world, as it now continues to be. One of the hard lessons that I had to learn during those 16 months was that, sometimes, politics leads people who should be friends and allies to attack each other. I had long since developed the skills necessary to deal with the vicious attacks that our true adversaries turn against us. But I was unprepared when the debates within our own party over differences in approach and policy turned into such ugly fights. It was a kind of internecine strife that I had never encountered among my colleagues in the legal advocacy world. I learned quickly. Two of the lessons that I took from that experience seem pertinent here. The first involves the distinctive responsibilities of those in positions of power and influence. When dealing with an issue like LGBT equality — one that involves not just abstract claims of justice but real pain, experienced over a lifetime by real people — there is a high duty of respect borne by those who occupy positions of influence. It is a duty to think actively about how to make people feel respected and included, even when disagreements arise, and even when those people become angry with you. That is one of the obligations of power. If anything, that responsibility is heightened when it comes to LGBT equality. The official second-class status of our community under federal law and the law of most states is a singular affront in the current legal landscape of America, and it translates into real people suffering, from pre-teens to seniors. The President and his administration understand this responsibility. They really do. I did not agree with every decision that the Obama campaign made in its interactions with the LGBT community, nor have I agreed with every decision that the Obama White House has made. But I saw in the campaign first hand, and have seen in this administration from a step removed, a genuine commitment to learn how to deal respectfully with the 12,000,000 LGBT Americans that they now represent. Our President and the people who work for him care about achieving full equality. Even on the issue of marriage — where our President’s current position is simply wrong — the President used the occasion of his first Oval Office statement on LGBT issues to reiterate his commitment to repealing DOMA, which he correctly said is discriminatory and interferes with the prerogatives of states (contra the indefensible suggestion to the contrary in the brief filed by DOJ). That was not just an important moment politically. It was also a gesture of respect. I do not think that anything is gained by willfully refusing to recognize it as such. The second lesson that I learned during the campaign is that people in positions of power and influence are still people. They are human beings with feelings, egos that sometimes become fragile, and sensibilities that sometimes get offended. When good people in positions of power are working actively to do the right thing and disagreements over priorities or tactics lead people to respond not just with a firm hand of resistance but with insults, denigration and accusations of betrayal and evil motives, then the working relationships that are necessary in order to achieve progress will suffer. I know a lot of the people in this administration, both from my work on the campaign and from my ten years as a law professor and civil rights lawyer. They are friends, colleagues, and former students, and they are good people who care about doing the right thing. Sometimes, they need to be educated about an issue or prodded to make the issue more of a priority, and sometimes they make mistakes, even serious ones. But they do not deserve the kind of denigration that they have been receiving from some in our community. The President has frequently said that it is the responsibility of communities to elect leaders who are prepared to do the right thing, and then to make them do it. We should push hard to advance our equality in the administration and in Congress, point out their mistakes, criticize when criticism is warranted and celebrate progress when it happens. But if we expect the administration always to recognize and respect our humanity — as of course they should — then we, in turn, should not fail to recognize and respect theirs. STONEWALL Yesterday marked the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. (One more Colbert video describes what happened that night.) For all the frustration and justifiable impatience – how would you feel if YOU were a second-class citizen under the law? – the progress since 1969 has been astounding. The Times concluded one political overview by quoting David Mixner, a longtime advocate for equality: “‘Listen,’ Mr. Mixner said, ‘in 1992, what we were begging Bill Clinton about – literally – was whether he was going to say the word ‘gay’ in his convention speech. Even say it. We had to threaten a walkout to get it in.” And this afternoon the President and First Lady will be welcoming a couple of hundred LGBT leaders and families into the White House for a reception marking what the President has proclaimed “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.” Is this a great country, or what?
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow June 26, 2009March 25, 2012 Yesterday’s column was so long, I’m giving us all today to recover and will post today’s column tonight for tomorrow.
Arousing My Albedo June 25, 2009March 15, 2017 YAY, BUSH Peg: ‘It WOULD be nice to give GWB a plug for something he did quite well. I’m talking about his home that is conservation in action. Here is a link to the snopes post about it.’ ☞ Kudos to him for his energy-efficient Crawford house. The reader may supply his or her own devastatingly caustic follow-on line. TRIANA’S MEDS Clare D.: ‘Triana mentions Procrit and Advair. There is a generic for Advair. There is not one for Procrit, but it’s a relatively new drug which has to be injected. I’d be curious if appeals could not be made to the manufacturer for mercy dosage. I would hope that any med bill would include some way for people to easily check for themselves, the generics and the efficacy of various new drugs. Relying on doctors to do so is foolish in this day and age; doctors are encouraged to prescribe expensive drugs. Even doctors at Kaiser Permanente, I’m sure. Drug companies try to fool you: Caduet is the (more expensive, in-patent) version of Lipitor plus Norvasc. Norvasc has a generic equivalent and Lipitor has a similar generic, non-equivalent. Arthrotec is two generics combined into a non-generic one, the better to charge you more. With age, I’ve gone from essentially no pills to many for me and equally as many for my demented husband. Since I’m NOT demented, I have to keep track of them for both of us and stay as far short of the donut hole as possible. I have to be constantly on guard. Not all doctors are interested in saving money for their patients and frequently they just don’t KNOW the costs! I’ve learned that a lot of times the people who want to keep their aged parents on expensive drugs, at the expense of anyone BUT themselves, are people who have trouble with the idea of parents dying.’ ☞ Leaving aside that most people have trouble with the idea of their parents’ dying, there’s a lot to what Clare says. WHITE DRIVEWAYS Worried about your carbon footprint? Instead of buying a new, more fuel efficient car for $30,000, you might consider buying a case of ‘striping spray paint‘ for $56. In the first place, you save the cost to the environment of MAKING a new car (you think energy and chemicals and carbon emissions don’t go into THAT?). And in the second, by my calculations, in this example, you save $29,944. I got this idea from my old pal Richard Factor, who got it from thinking about the carbon footprint of his Prius. Even a Prius sends CO2 into the air. He says you should paint your driveway white. ‘Making roads and roofs a paler color could have the equivalent effect of taking every car in the world off the road for 11 years,’ Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said. And really, that pretty well sums up the concept, for us laymen. White stuff reflects radiation, black stuff absorbs it. Whether you’re a guy out in the desert or a little planet called Earth, white is the cooler of choice. You could stop reading there, but Richard summarizes his lengthier, calculation-ridden article here: If you like to drive, or, for that matter, breathe, you may find it difficult to reduce your CO2 output. I cut mine in half, at least as far as driving is concerned, by buying a Prius hybrid. But still it’s only in half. What if I’m a serious believer in the threat, and want to reduce it to zero? No problem! There are organizations that sell ‘offsets.’ While most human activities create more carbon dioxide, some reduce it. Planting trees, increasing energy efficiency, ‘sequestering’ CO2 underground – all reduce its atmospheric burden. These organizations accomplish it in various ways. You accomplish it by – surprise! – sending them money. Why Did The Chicken Cross the Road? The road, in this case, is the kind of road you are likely to find in front of your house. It’s two lanes, separated by a yellow or double-yellow line down the center and two white “fog lines” demarking its edges. It’s paved with asphalt, often called “black top” because — let’s not always see the same hands — it’s black. The chicken crossed because once he stepped on it his feet got very hot, and, even with a brief respite gained by pausing at the yellow lines, he wanted to get to the other side and cool them off. Clever chicken! I made the same discovery one day when the shoe police were unaccountably preoccupied and thought to myself “If they made roads like this in ‘inverse video’ there would be a lot less heat absorbed by the planet.” A quick Google search located a carbon footprint calculator, which in turn yielded the amount of money I would have to spend to compensate for the CO2 spewing forth from my Prius every year. It was about $45. I would have sent them a check right away, but that would mean they’d have 45 of my dollars and I wouldn’t. Instead I thought of an experiment. The global warming problem is (allegedly) occurring because CO2, a major culprit in the greenhouse effect, is causing solar radiation that would otherwise escape back into space to remain here and warm the planet. How about if I were to keep the $45, and instead put a mirror someplace where it would send that nasty radiation back to the sun? Although I don’t have a mirror, and may not have any good place to put it without complaints about the glare, I can at least think about it, right? How much CO2 does my Prius emit on an annual basis? Easy! I know I used 425.2 gallons of gas during calendar 2006, thanks to my trusty spreadsheet. At 19.4 pounds per gallon, that’s 4.12 tons of carbon dioxide. How much energy have I gotten from this gas? Each gallon contains 121MJ (Megajoule or million watt-seconds) which is the equivalent of 121,000,000/(3600*1000) = 33.6 kilowatt hours. (Although I haven’t “gotten” all this energy to move my car, one way or the other it has been added to the environment.) Thus, to make my car “energy neutral,” I have to somehow compensate for those tons of carbon dioxideand, although it is rarely mentioned as a problem, the energy I have added to the environment as well. I was about to perform a long calculation here about how much energy the sun deposits on the earth, but I was saved the trouble. Quoting from the source: Solar power per m2 on U.S. surface … this seems a little low … it’s 1342 watts per m2 outside the atmosphere, about 1000 watts per m2 at high noon on the ground, and on average (day and night) about 240 watts per meter2 absorbed at the ground. This is the average over the Earth too. I’m going to assume that “absorbed at the ground” implies an albedo (reflectance) of zero. I’m also going to assume that 240 watt figure is correct for my location: At the equator it would be higher, at the poles it would be lower. At mid-latitude, it’s probably close enough. If I want to get rid of the energy I have added to the earth’s environment, all I have to do is radiate 452.2*33.6kWh of energy back into space. This is 15,194kWh and there are 8,760 hours in a year. Although I can’t redo the roads in inverse video, I can dump 240 watt-hours per hour per square meter back into space by putting a mirror over a black spot on my own driveway. I calculate that a mirror of about 20.6 square metres, or 14.7 feet on a side would be sufficient. Mirrors and Albedo After estimating the mirror size I realize that it’s not entirely practical. Not that I can’t find a 14.7 foot square spot to put it, but rather that I would have to send money to somebody else to get the mirror. But all is not lost! A clean mirror will have an albedo as close to 1 as matters. “Worn asphalt” as is present on my driveway and many others, has an albedo of .12. It seems entirely possible to achieve the albedo of “fresh snow” (.8-.9) artificially. Striping paint should do the job, and on a driveway it will get little wear and so stay clean and reflective. Re-estimating how much area would need to be raised from an albedo of .12 to .8 instead of the hypothetical effectiveness of the mirror (from 0 to 1), I come up with about 30 square meters instead of 20. I took a quick look at eBay (pay list for striping paint? Are you nuts?) and found that at least one seller had spray cans available, six for $15. These would be enough to cover almost 40 square meters, so if one has the space, clearly the cost isn’t prohibitive. So far so good. But this isn’t the whole story. Striping the 30 square meters “remediates” the energy used driving the car. What about the accumulation of carbon dioxide? The CO2 Question Unlike the heat created by burning gasoline, CO2 doesn’t create heat at all. Rather, it can be viewed as amplifying sunlight. Instead of warming the earth directly, it allows the sun to warm the earth more than it otherwise would by preventing infrared radiation from escaping into space. Where does this infrared radiation come from? The sun emits radiation, both infrared and visible. Much of this energy is contained in the visible range. The visible light is converted to infrared when it is absorbed. In principle, therefore, painting more of the driveway white, which will reflect the visible light and hence energy into space, will reduce the amount of infrared that is available to be absorbed. There is a conceptual problem with this, however. Painting a fixed portion of the driveway compensates for the annual component of the car’s energy use. As long as I continue to commute, that white patch I hypothetically painted a few paragraphs ago will remediate my heating the planet. However, the CO2 production is cumulative. Every year I add more to the atmosphere. While there are various (complicated) processes of equilibration, they typically exceed the life of the car and perhaps the life of the human driving it. Therefore, I would have to add more white paint every year to compensate for the cumulative addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Will I run out of driveway before I die? Energy Balance Unlike the energy-reflection calculation which is theoretically simple, calculating how much energy I have to reflect to compensate for that added by my 4.12 annual tons of CO2 is fraught with uncertainty. There are already a number of IR-absorbing gases in the atmosphere, including water vapor, methane, and all the CO2 that’s already there. All these gases absorb IR at different altitudes and at different frequencies, some of which overlap. Wikipedia says that the present concentration of CO2 has a radiative forcing of 1.5W/m2. Right now the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is 380ppm. Back in 1980 it was 340ppm. Although the forcing isn’t a linear function of concentration, it’s probably close to linear over a small interval, so it should be fair to say that the annual increase in forcing in a given year is [(2006-1980)/(380-340)]*(1.5/380). That equals .0026W/m2 per year. Assuming that’s a day and night average, and using 5.2*1014m2 for the surface area, we get 1.35*1012 (1.35 terawatt) increase (per year) of excess power added by CO2. For every year that I drive, I have to reflect my share of that 1.35TW back to space, along with all the 1.35TW fractional shares from previous years as well, or 1.9MWh the first year, 3.8 the next, etc. Two conclusions: First, if I decide to remediate the CO2 I may eventually run out of driveway and perhaps I will have to move. Second, one shouldn’t ignore the annual contribution of energy from fuel burning since it is the equivalent of several years of CO2 emission, even if it’s far less than the CO2 cumulative contribution. If anything, this would seem to be a splendid argument for being less profligate regardless of our energy source. My Tom Sawyer Moment If you have read this far, you may well have come to the conclusion that I’m a climate nut, übergreenie, environmentalist, or someone who embodies great and perhaps excessive angst over the environment, global warming, and, for all I know, beryllium dust from nuclear fission weapons. I am none of the above. In fact, this article, with its interesting and, I hope, arithmetically-reasonable conclusion, was engendered only by the question first posed: “How big a mirror?” But if you wonder why there is so much argument and conflict on the issue of global warming, just take a close look at the error bars in the enlarged “Radiative Forcing Components” chart. As far as painting the driveway is concerned, I’m not going to do it. And there’s a simple, practical reason: If the driveway is black, the snow melts faster. I’m hoping that by showing how cheap white striping paint can be, somebody elsewill paint his own driveway. Preferably someone in the South, where even more energy will be reflected, and where he won’t have to deal with snow that refuses to melt as a consequence. Any volunteers? (Subsequent to my three-part blog on this subject, of which this is a diagram-free and (mostly) calculation-free summary, a paper “White Roofs Cool the World, Offset CO2, and Delay Global Warming,” came to similar conclusions, although they considered roofs rather than driveways. The authors are real scientists. If you don’t believe me and are too busy to read their summary, just note the following: Their address for further inquiry is “One Cyclotron Road.”) © 2009 Richard Factor ☞ “But Richard,” I asked, my albedo strangely aroused by his analysis, “once the snow is on the driveway, the driveway is WHITE. No?” No! [he responded] I can tell you’ve never tended a driveway during a northern winter. Of course you are correct if a major snow has JUST fallen. But you don’t leave it there, you shovel away (or person the snowblower) until the top layer is off to the side. At this point, depending on any number of pre- and post-snowfall weather conditions, you can be left with anything from an almost dry and completely usable driveway to an impenetrable layer of ice. In turn, the ice may be verging on transparent with the blacktop tantalizingly visible beneath, or it may be mottled and chunky. In any case, the ice is difficult to remove. If transparent, the black driveway underneath will absorb enough sunlight to make a thin liquid layer under the ice, which turns shoveling from a frustrating experience to a pleasant session with the MP3 player. If the ice is less cooperative, you can still make enormous progress by chipping away a few areas and letting the sunlight melt the margins. This requires numerous trips to the driveway, but progress is much more rapid. Given the variability of the wind, insolation, temperature, humidity, etc., it’s difficult to know in advance when the sun will help or be irrelevant. But – “trust me” – it’s a big help often enough that I’m willing to sacrifice a nanodegree of warming (or not-cooling) to have that advantage. If my driveway were flat, I might feel otherwise, but I live in hill country and the driveway with its few degrees of tilt occasionally traps even the 4WD Ford Escape (hybrid, of course). The Prius? Forget it!
On Health Care, Windmills and Marriage CRTX Up 264% June 24, 2009March 15, 2017 ANOTHER HOME WINDMILL Hubert Heller: “Is affordable, practical home wind power generation becoming a reality? The EarthTronics Honeywell wind turbine works in ‘low wind’ areas, can be installed on a house or business rooftop and pays for itself in less than 2 years.” ☞ Well, at $6,000 installed – less huge subsidies and rebates, but those are still costs to somebody – each one apparently saves in the ball park of maybe $600 a year on a home’s electric bill. Which is a good 10% return if they last forever with no maintenance, but a 0% return if they last “just” 10 years. Still, very cool and worth watching the video. OR NOT Dan Nachbar: “I hate to play the nay-sayer but . . . Be very careful about mounting any wind power system on the roof of your home. Unlike solar panels, turbines have moving parts. Moving parts inevitably lead to vibrations. So, if you put any wind turbine on a your roof, the turbine will almost certainly act like the vibrating strings of a guitar and your house will act like the sound-box. A couple of nights laying in bed listening to the thrumming of the turbine on the roof and you’ll want to rip it off with your bare hands. . . . Don’t get me wrong, I’m a great fan of wind power in general. But residential roofs are simply the wrong place to install it. . . . Also . . . vertical-axis wind turbines (such as the one mentioned Monday) are lovely in theory. But they haven’t worked well in real life because they have always had a great many ‘harmonic modes.’ In other words, they tend to shake themselves to pieces over a fairly short period of time. (Think the famous collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge in 1940.) Smart people are working very hard on this problem but it is a seriously tough nut to crack. The good news is that horizontal-axis turbines work just fine today. That’s why every major wind power company world-wide uses them.” TRIANA ON HEALTH CARE The Republican line in opposing a public health care option (like the Medicare program seniors wish they didn’t have?) is, “do you want a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor?” Well, Triana – who’s apparently just seen her parents both cut off from needed medication by their private insurance company – ain’t buying it. SENATOR DODD ON MARRIAGE From The Meriden Record-Journal this past Sunday, by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut: Public officials aren’t supposed to change their minds. But I firmly believe that it’s important to keep learning. Last week, while I was in Connecticut meeting with members of the gay and lesbian community from across the state, I had the opportunity to tell them what I’ve learned about marriage, and about equality. While I’ve long been for extending every benefit of marriage to same-sex couples, I have in the past drawn a distinction between a marriage-like status (“civil unions”) and full marriage rights. The reason was simple: I was raised to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. And as many other Americans have realized as they’ve struggled to reconcile the principle of fairness with the lessons they learned early in life, that’s not an easy thing to overcome. But the fact that I was raised a certain way just isn’t a good enough reason to stand in the way of fairness anymore. The Connecticut Supreme Court, of course, has ruled that such a distinction holds no merit under the law. And the Court is right. I believe that effective leaders must be able and willing to grow and change over their service. I certainly have during mine – and so has the world. Thirty-five years ago, who could have imagined that we’d have an African-American President of the United States? My young daughters are growing up in a different reality than I did. Our family knows many same-sex couples – our neighbors in Connecticut, members of my staff, parents of their schoolmates. Some are now married because the Connecticut Supreme Court and our state legislature have made same-sex marriage legal in our state. But to my daughters, these couples are married simply because they love each other and want to build a life together. That’s what we’ve taught them. The things that make those families different from their own pale in comparison to the commitments that bind those couples together. And, really, that’s what marriage should be. It’s about rights and responsibilities and, most of all, love. I believe that, when my daughters grow up, barriers to marriage equality for same-sex couples will seem as archaic, and as unfair, as the laws we once had against inter-racial marriage. And I want them to know that, even if he was a little late, their dad came down on the right side of history. I have always been proud of my long record fighting for the civil rights of the LGBT community. I’ve co-sponsored legislation to strengthen hate crime laws and end discrimination in the workplace. I’ve spoken out against “don’t ask, don’t tell” and always supported equal rights for domestic partnerships. I am proud to now count myself among the many elected officials, advocates, and ordinary citizens who support full marriage equality for same-sex couples. I understand that even those who oppose discrimination might continue to find it hard to re-think the definition of marriage they grew up with. I know it was for me. But many of the things we must do to make our union more perfect – whether it’s fighting for decades to reform our health care system or struggling with a difficult moral question – are hard. They take time. And they require that, when you come to realize that something is right, you be unafraid to stand up and say it. That’s the only way our history will progress along that long arc towards justice. CRTX Suggested here by Chris Brown of fledgling Aristides Capital at $3.80 in April, CRTX closed last night at $10.06. That’s good enough for me. It may well go higher, but a 264% gain in two months in this environment? I’m out. Back to painting the driveway. Stay tuned.
Me and My Zamboni June 23, 2009March 15, 2017 PAPER BALLOTS Democracy can’t function without elections people trust. (Who won in Iran?) (Who won in Florida?) Hence Rush Holt’s bill, reintroduced, and endorsed here by the New York Times. This time we really need to pass it. ITTY BITTY WINDMILLS Stephen Gilbert: “Picking up on yesterday’s ‘cool link,’ how about everyone wearing one of those beanies with a spinner on top? You could charge your iPhone and look very cool in the bargain.” ☞ Proof yet again that the truly great ideas don’t always come from IBM, Intel, or Bell Labs. Thanks, Stephen! And speaking of great ideas . . . You don’t want to miss Richard Factor’s disquisition on telephone poles. (It begins: “Q: Who was Alexander Graham Kowalski? A: The first telephone Pole.” But gets better from there.) In that charming post you will in fact find a link to his disquisition on driveways, but don’t click it. You will be sucked into a vortex of calculation that will leave you dizzy and unable to operate heavy machinery. Every time I try to write this up, I crash my Zamboni®. Come back tomorrow. Saving democracy and putting windmills on all our heads is enough for one day.
Strike the Band Up June 22, 2009March 15, 2017 IT REALLY WAS A HOLIDAY Thanks for the day off. Bill A.: ‘Here in California, Governor Scwharzenegger proclaimed June 19 ‘Juneteenth” Andy Krauss: ‘In the Nordic countries, it is called ‘Midsommar,’ and it is their favorite holiday because it comes at the time of the summer solstice. After all the darkness of winter, they revel in the long hours of daylight. If you participate in true Scandinavian fashion, you really will need the entire weekend to recover . . .’ Jay Glynn: ‘It is National Martini Day. Enjoy. It is also Independence Day in Kuwait and in Laos.’ ☞ Ah, but it is Independence Day in Kuwait and Laos only once a year. According to this, it’s always National Martini Day. Which reminds me of a story. Once upon a time, I got to go to a fundraiser at Jerry Herman’s house on Fire Island. Jerry Herman wrote Hello, Dolly! and Mame and the wonderful Mack & Mabel, among others. And seated at his piano he told us how he came home from school one day to find his mother throwing a party. And he was confused. What’s going on, he asked – is it somebody’s birthday? A holiday they don’t give off from school for? And his mother apparently grabbed him by the shoulders (I may be embellishing this a little) and beamed at him, with her trademark enthusiasm: ‘No, Jerry – it’s TODAY!’ Music, please . . . strike the band up . . . we have hot water! . . . it’s TODAY! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. (I was out imagining what it would be like to paint our driveway white. If we had a driveway. Stay tuned.) HEALTH CARE Ralph Sierra: ‘Please note this message from Robert Reich.’ Memo to the President: What You Must Do To Save Universal Health Care June 19, 2009, 6:39PM Mr. President: Momentum for universal health care is slowing dramatically on Capitol Hill. Moderates are worried, Republicans are digging in, and the medical-industrial complex is firing up its lobbying and propaganda machine. But, as you know, the worst news came days ago when the Congressional Budget Office weighed in with awful projections about how much the leading healthcare plans would cost and how many Americans would still be left out in the cold. Yet these projections didn’t include the savings that a public option would generate by negotiating lower drug prices, doctor fees, and hospital costs, and forcing private insurers to be more competitive. Projecting the future costs of universal health care without including the public option is like predicting the number of people who will get sunburns this summer if nobody is allowed to buy sun lotion. Of course the costs of universal health care will be huge if the most important way of controlling them is left out of the calculation. If you want to save universal health care, you must do several things, and soon: 1. Go to the nation. You must build public support by forcefully making the case for universal health care everywhere around the country. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows that three out of four Americans want universal health care. But the vast majority don’t know what’s happening on the Hill, don’t know how much money the medical-industrial lobbies are spending to defeat it, and have no idea how much demagoguery they’re about to be exposed to. You must tell them. And don’t be reluctant to take on those vested interests directly. Name names. They’ve decided to fight you. You must fight them. 2. Be LBJ. So far, Lyndon Johnson has been the only president to defeat American Medical Association and the rest of the medical-industrial complex. He got Medicare and Medicaid enacted despite their cries of “socialized medicine” because he knocked heads on the Hill. He told Congress exactly what he wanted, cajoled and threatened those who resisted, and counted noses every hour until he had the votes he needed. When you’re not on the road, you need to be twisting congressional arms and drawing a line in the sand. Be tough. 3. Forget the Republicans. Forget bipartisanship. Universal health care can pass with 51 votes. You can get 51 votes if you give up on trying to persuade a handful of Republicans to cross over. Eight year ago George W. Bush passed his huge tax cut, mostly for the wealthy, by wrapping it in an all-or-nothing reconciliation measure and daring Democrats to vote against it. You should do the same with health care. 4. Insist on a real public option. It’s the lynchpin of universal health care. Don’t accept Kent Conrad’s ersatz public option masquerading as a “healthcare cooperative.” Cooperatives won’t have the authority, scale, or leverage to negotiate low prices and keep private insurers honest. 5. Demand that taxes be raised on the wealthy to ensure that all Americans get affordable health care. At the rate healthcare costs are rising, not even a real public option will hold down costs enough to make health care affordable to most American families in years to come. So you’ll need to tax the wealthy. Don’t back down on your original proposal to limit their deductions. And support a cap on how much employee-provided health care can be provided tax free. (Yes, you opposed this during your campaign. But you have no choice but to reverse yourself on this.) These are the only two big pots of money. 6. Put everything else on hold. As important as they are, your other agenda items — financial reform, home mortgage mitigation, cap-and-trade legislation — pale in significance relative to universal health care. By pushing everything at once, you take the public’s mind off the biggest goal, diffuse your energies, blur your public message, and fuel the demagogues who say you’re trying to take over the private sector. You have to win this. Your obedient servant, RBR COOL LINK Chris McMahon: ‘Have you seen these? I just read about them in Popular Science. I hope they turn out to be viable, I want one on my house right now. It would be great to have one on top of every light pole in the world.’ ☞ Your own itty-bitty windmill (not yet on the market) for, eventually, $199. Well, maybe. But it’s not so itty-bitty, and I’d guess the cost to install it firmly without causing the roof to rip off or leak, could be quite a bit more. And maybe it’s as simple as a ceiling fan, but this would be an outdoor ceiling fan, in rain and snow and extreme temperatures, so it might not have as long and trouble free a life as the one out on your screen porch. But what do I know? It’s fun to contemplate.
Roses Are Red, Daisies Are Cheap June 19, 2009March 25, 2012 I’m going to bed and going to sleep. Enjoy the long weekend. (Someplace in the world it’s a holiday, and I’m celebrating it.) If you’re really bored, paint your driveway white. I hope finally to get to tell you why this coming week.
Frank Kameny And Tax-Free (If Rueful) Capital Gains June 18, 2009March 15, 2017 AND SO IT BEGINS The President signed a memorandum yesterday extending certain benefits to LGBT Federal employees. It was the first time he’s addressed gay issues since taking office. If this is something you follow, the 4-minute video is worth watching. Acknowledging this was just a start, he concluded . . . We’ve got more work to do to insure that government treats all of its citizens equally, to fight injustice and intolerance in all its forms, and to bring about that more perfect union. I’m committed to these efforts, and I pledge to work tirelessly on behalf of these issues in the months and years to come. At which point he handed the pen, with an arm clasp, a smile, and a handshake, to Frank Kameny. “The arc of the moral universe is long,” asserted the abolitionist Reverend Theodore Parker in 1853, “but it bends toward justice.” For those unfamiliar with Frank Kameny’s story, click that link. Talk about courage. The mind – at least if it is as timid as mine – boggles. BUT . . . BUT . . . Michelle D. in Kansas City: “Federal benefits but no health insurance for employee spouses? What a crock! THAT’s what they give us, after insulting our marriages in that heinous Department of Justice brief?” ☞ The DOJ brief was inexcusable – not least because it so flew in the face of the President’s vision. His Administration was ill-served by whoever at DOJ allowed it to go through in the form it did. The lack of health benefits is mandated by the law – that same “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA) Justice was defending – which Obama wants repealed. DOMA was a brilliant Republican wedge. The Republicans’ first choice was that President Clinton veto it. They thought they could win back the White House in 1996, if he did – a pro-gay marriage president in 1996 – as they had just won back Congress in 1994. Their second choice, though, was that he sign it. Signing it would lessen gay support for the Democratic Party for decades. And has. BETTER TAX FILING? Emerson Schwartzkopf: “Re Monday’s note on estimated tax, you might want to streamline the delivery and use the IRS Electronic Federal Tax Payment System instead. I started doing this after the U.S. Postal Service managed to lose both my federal and state quarterly tax payments, which I’d sent via regular mail. The sign-up process is a bit cumbersome and takes a few weeks to get all the documentation in the mail (yes, it seems counterintuitive, but we’re dealing with the government), but it’s quick and easy. California is one of several states that also offers electronic transfers.” ☞ I love it: “cumbersome, quick, and easy.” (I trust you see me grinning. Thanks, Emerson!) NEW TAX-COGNIZANT STRATEGY? Jim Batterson: “A few weeks ago I asked for some advice on how the fact that I now have enough capital losses from 2008 to offset my capital gains for the rest of my life should influence my investment strategy. You thought it was an interesting question and said you would respond in you daily column. Well? In particular, why should I ever put another penny into an IRA account? And what can I do to make my investments produce (for me, tax-free) capital gains instead of dividends or interest? Does it change the balance between what I buy for my IRA versus my taxable account? If you don’t answer this I will demand my money back.” ☞ I’ve almost always suffered when I’ve let the tax tail wag the investment dog. My reasoning always goes this way: such-and-such stock is as likely to go further up as down over the next few weeks (what do I know?), so the tax code gives me a strong incentive to wait til it goes long-term, to be taxed at 20% instead of 40% (or whatever, with the local tax). So I wait, and . . . you know the rest. In hindsight, I would almost always have been far better off selling when all that really kept me from doing so was the higher tax. Maybe the reason is simply yin and yang. After stuff goes up dramatically enough to produce a tempting gain, it often comes back down. (Can you say, “oil stocks?”) In any event, a silver lining of all your tax losses (can you say, “FMD?”*) is not having to worry about this. So that’s the first and most obvious thing. You are now free to take a gain – “tax free!” – any time you think it may be a good time to do so. As for the rest of your question . . . if it were truly true your losses are so large and/or your life expectancy so short that you’d never again have capital gains tax to pay, I obviously wouldn’t bother putting any low dividend stocks in an IRA. (But if you do put new money into in an IRA, I’d recommend a Roth, not a traditional IRA.) Further, it sounds as though you should put your higher-interest and higher-dividend securities into the IRA and, as is probably always the case, keep your riskier, growth oriented and/or speculative securities in a (for you, tax-free) personal account. You probably deserve a longer answer, better thought out – but the beauty of your subscription is that includes all the helpful reader feedback a query like yours is likely to generate. *I can say, “I’m sorry,” but I know it won’t do anyone any good.
Not Sistine – But Pretty Cool June 17, 2009March 15, 2017 SISTINE CHAPEL John Kasley: “This is pretty remarkable, especially zooming in on details. It helps if you can picture Yourself in a long red robes with a cape, perhaps a gold chain around the neck or waist, and satin slippers. The room really needs the sound of taffeta or watered silk.” ☞ Not sure what watered silk is, but we are advised, “Click the right side end button to enlarge the image to full screen. Go slowly with the mouse, the computer takes awhile to keep up with your commands. Click on the displayed arrow keys to move around the chapel. Don’t forget to look at the ceiling.” John Kasley: “Correction. That’s not the Sistine Chapel after all. It’s Marian Kirche in Vienna. Still pretty, though.” HIT BY A BUS? NO PROBLEM! This new service – legacylocker.com – promises to send your loved ones pre-written letters or videos and see that your various passwords get passed on to those you want to have them. Might be easier just to leave a big envelope in your top desk drawer; but still something some may want to consider. UNIVERSAL LIFE I have long been a voice in the chorus that warns against investing via life insurance. If you need life insurance, sings that chorus, buy inexpensive term insurance – which is easy to comparison shop for based on price – and “invest the difference” (i.e., what you save by going the plain vanilla low-cost route) . . . in an IRA, perhaps, or some other way. Insurance salesfolk have long sung a different tune . . . with good intentions, it should be said, but under the spell of the much larger commissions they get if they sell you Whole Life or one of its fancier cousins. One reason to avoid the Whole family is the possibility that you will, for whatever reason, let your policy lapse in the first year or two, as a significant proportion of whole-life buyers always have . . . thereby forfeiting all that extra money you paid in sales commissions. But even if you do pay faithfully, guess what? It turns out that the footnotes sales people rarely emphasize (“these are illustrations only; things may not go so well”) can come back to bite you. To wit (or perhaps to woe): Mary E. Cease: “When my husband retired 12 years ago, we were advised to take his pension on his life expectancy only and to buy an insurance policy to cover me. This we did; in fact, we were sold two policies: a Whole Life Policy and a Universal Life Policy. We have paid our premiums on time ever since. Thus, I was totally surprised to receive a ‘Notice of Insufficient Cash Value and Pending Lapse’ this month on the Universal policy. I had noticed the decline in cash value over the last few years, attributable to the low interest rates, but I had not been concerned as we did not intend to cash it in. Now we are told that to reinstate the policy for another 10 years at my husband’s current age (75) will cost more than 4 times what we have been paying! Yikes! Seems this Universal Life has morphed into a Term Life Policy! We need your help to make this known to other unsuspecting people!” SIMPLE WISDOM “If you’re against gay marriage, don’t marry a gay person.” – Whoopi Goldberg