Year: 2009

THE $30,000 LAMB CHOPS

There was nearly balloon-boy-level coverage of a $30,400-a-couple DNC fundraiser that was to be held in New York last night headlined by the President (followed by a much larger, less reported-on $100-and-up fundraiser / health-reform rally). Both went off beautifully, with thousands in attendance overall, and I can’t wait for the transcript of the President’s remarks to be released – and I hope the video – so I can post them here (probably tomorrow) for you to make your own judgment. Boy, are we ever fortunate to have this guy. I know we’re out of practice, but it’s really okay not to be cynical.

TEST YOUR GLOBAL IQ

It’s a pitch for the Clinton Global Initiative – but why not see how many of these 10 quick questions you get right?

HOW HAPPY ARE YOU?

Behold the Happy Planet Index. No need to identify yourself as you answer the questions. I’m happier than average, it says. But how can I not be? I have you!

ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLE

At $12,000, you may want to wait until Best Buy begins discounting the Enertia. But you can watch a coupla dudes driving these silent hogs* from Detroit to the White House and follow their progress here.

*Do I sound convincing as a biker?

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE DEPT.

James Musters: “Brilliant! Roof Tiles Change Color to Save Energy.” They turn white when it’s hot, black when it’s cold. Time will tell whether they can be made sufficiently rugged and cheap.

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE DEPT. – II

Could we be just half a decade from a treatment for cancer – even cancer that’s metastasized? In case you missed it Sunday, Lesley Stahl’s “60 Minutes” report gives real hope.

SOCCER BALLS FOR KIDS DEPT.

If you like kids – or photography – or Sting – check out this clip from The Power of the Invisible Sun. If you wind up buying it as a holiday gift for someone, you’ll also be providing an indestructible soccer ball to a youngster via the Hope Is a Game-Changer Project.

AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY GONE GROTESQUELY WRONG DEPT.

So a bunch of evangelical U.S. senators and congressmen have helped lead Uganda to legislation that would crack down on same-sex intimacy, already punishable by life in prison. If it passes, Wayne Besen reports, just making a pass could buy you seven years in prison, while failure to snitch on someone within 24 hours would be punishable by up to three years in prison. What version of the New Testament do these fundamentalist senators and congressmen read?

I prefer this Saint’s point of view:

“Jesus Christ to me, is probably the most compassionate and revolutionary thinker of all time. Look at his teachings. Look at what he preached. He would not endorse any type of inequality, this type of inhumanity. He would not be on board with that. . . . By and large in this country the issue of gay rights and equality should be past the point of debate. Really, there should be no debate anymore. . . . ” – New Orleans Saints linebacker Scott Fujita

And this from retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong:

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the “Flat Earth Society” either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church’s participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.

‘CAPITALISM’

I finally saw Michael Moore’s ‘Capitalism: A Love Story,’ and you should too. There is much in it that’s simplistic or manipulative, but it is at the very least three things: rivetingly interesting, moving, and thought-provoking.* And as you watch you can do the same two things I did: try to find the flaws in his argument; try to figure out how things should be (unless you think they’re perfect now).

*Note to Michael Moore: please don’t quote the last part of that sentence without also including the first part.

An example of a flaw, it seems to me, is the section on Dead Peasants Insurance. The section is introduced with a tearful family in financial crisis because the husband has died young. They have discovered that his employer had taken out a policy on his life naming itself as the beneficiary. So the guy dies, the company gets a fat check, shares none of it with the family, and you are meant to feel outrage.

Indeed, a great many big-name companies have done the same thing, taking out policies on tens of thousands of their employees. The younger and faster the employees die, the more money the companies make. A memo is shown expressing concern that death rates are below projection.

This is offered as an example of how greedy and heartless capitalism is.

Yet it’s actually an example of how nutty our tax system is and of how many of our brightest minds are wasted finding ways to outwit it. If you insure tens of thousands of employees, the insurance company can take a little bit for its trouble and still, after the tax advantages, you, the employer, can expect to come out ahead.

Which is an example of our system at its least productive – absolutely no productive benefit comes from this – but that’s not the point the movie makes. The movie makes it seem as though the companies hope you’ll die young. That they’ve done all this not as a reprehensible tax dodge, but as a way to make money from your death. Yet that’s nonsense. Insurers are not in business to lose money. So unless employers are actually finding ways to speed the death of its employees (committing murder in order to defraud the insurance companies) – which Michael Moore nowhere alleges – this is just a tax avoidance ploy.

Dead Peasants Insurance has nothing to do with the point Moore uses it to make.

So that’s a flaw.

And it’s not the only section of the movie you will find simplistic or misleading or manipulative.

Then again, you can’t possibly watch ‘Capitalism’ without empathy for its victims. The suffering across the land is real, and brutal, and takes on an extra dimension when you see some of it, not just read about it.

You can’t possibly watch ‘Capitalism’ without being concerned for the viability of our system. How do we get out of the hole that years of over-borrowing, over-consumption, over-extension (e.g., Iraq) and under-taxation have dug us into?

Michael Moore is talking revolution. He shows 1944 footage of FDR calling for a second bill of rights – the right to a job at a living wage, to health care, and more – and saying that we need to set to work attaining these rights as soon as we win the war. Well, we won the war and, as Moore points out, Japan, Germany, and Italy, all now enjoy the rights FDR was talking about (we sent folks over to write their constitutions) but we don’t. He thinks we should.

How much longer will people feel the financial vise tighten before they greet the news of $140 billion in Wall Street pay and bonuses with real anger?

The left wants to channel anger at the corporations and the banks. The right wants to channel anger at illegal aliens, welfare moms, unions, elitists, and ‘government.’ Both sets of targets are wrong. (Not to say any of those targets are perfect actors.) But the anger is real and the problems are real and this movie will surely get you thinking about both.

From where I sit, the President is spot on in trying to reform health care (Moore’s ‘Sicko‘ shows how much room we have for improvement) . . . in calling for a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency . . . in looking to direct more resources to infrastructure and science and education . . . in planning, sooner or later, to restore Clintonian tax rates on those at the top of the economic ladder* . . . and more.

*I say: sooner. Even as we speak, hedge fund managers who earn $100 million in ‘carried interest’ on money they themselves do not have at risk are taxed at a 15% capital gains rate . . . something that everyone from Warren Buffett to some hedge fund managers themselves finds outrageous – yet, so far, Congress, even with its large Democratic majority, has not acted to fix this.

Michael Moore is Woody Guthrie with a camera, Ralph Nader with a sense of humor, a truly good and brilliant man who loves his country even more, arguably, than those who blindly defend everything about it.* Of course, on balance, Ralph Nader wound up doing more harm than just about anyone who ever lived; and capitalism, skillfully regulated, is a terrific force for good. But don’t miss this movie.

*Note to Michael Moore: please don’t quote that sentence without also including the next one.

DNDN

If we’re lucky, Dendreon’s prostate cancer drug will be proven effective and I’ll lose money. Fine with me, if it meaningfully extends lives. That would be terrific. But my guru thinks it is not effective and will be turned down for FDA approval next year. So here’s a bet that will make sense for some people to make:

Buy (say) six January, 2011, DNDN 20 puts for around $500 each. Total cost: $3,000. Each put gives you the right to sell (‘put’) 100 shares of DNDN to someone at $20 each. The stock is near $30, so the puts have no current intrinsic value – they are ‘out of the money.’

If the drug is approved, sell your puts for next to nothing and you will have a $3,000 short-term capital loss to lower your 2010 taxable income. If you are in the 35% tax bracket, that saves you about $1,000, so you’re really out $2,000.

If the drug is not approved, the stock could easily drop below $5, and the right to sell it at $20 (‘let me put it to you this way’) becomes worth $15 or more a share – 600 times over in this case (each put represents 100 shares) – so you could well realize $9,000 on your $3,000 investment for a $6,000 gain . . . and if you waited a year and a day from the time you bought them, that would be a lightly-taxed long-term capital gain, leaving you with perhaps $5,000 after tax.

My guru is generally – but certainly not always – right. If we assign odds of 50/50 to his being right this time, the bet is $5,000 you win, $2,000 you lose.

You really, really, really, really could lose. Indeed, in this scenario, you’re as likely to lose as not. So this is under no circumstances a bet to make with money you can’t truly afford to lose. But for some, it may be a good bet to take.

THE MARCH IN TWO MINUTES AND 53 SECONDS

My friend Eric made this. You’ll feel as though you were there. I’ve watched it five times (and I was there). I particularly love the sign one marcher carried – “I can’t believe we still have to protest this crap.” This is America, after all – no? Pass it on.

AND HOW ABOUT THESE VIOLINS?

They are from a town with a 12% unemployment rate. Their school is seriously underfunded and their music program is being cut back. Yet Ohio’s Newark High School Sinfonia tied for first runner-up at the National Orchestra Cup this past April. Just listen to them play.*

*It’s okay to make breakfast while you do; no fancy close-ups or anything – just the music.

I have lots of other stuff to write about today, but these two are just too good to dilute with anything else. Have a great weekend.

PRGX

In July, Aristides’s Chris Brown suggested that PRGX might double. Now that it more than has, he writes: “I’ve sold most of our PRGX. The move from $3.10 to $6.66 was justified, and I don’t hate the stock here at 10 times forward earnings, but the shares have gone from very very undervalued to just somewhat undervalued, and that is a good reason to take some profits.”

You want another reason to take some profits? On anything? Dow 10,000. Yes, I know “a bull market climbs a wall of worry,” so maybe my worries bode well. But I’d be very cautious here, my occasional nutty speculative suggestions notwithstanding.

RETHINK AFGHANISTAN

“Greenwald and his team ask Afghans themselves if American troops are making them safer. The answers are no, no, no, a thousand times no,” writes Gail Sheehy in her review of “Rethink Afghanistan.” I’ve not yet watched it, but I am reassured that the President and his team are so carefully and deliberately rethinking Afghanistan, whatever they conclude.

BOGO AFGHANISTAN

The film’s basic pitch: “Congress should begin debate on civilian alternatives to a failed military-based approach to bringing peace and security to the region.”

With that in mind . . .

Remember the guy I wrote about last week? The irrepressible Mark Bent, whose solar-powered “BoGo Lights” have a special significance for the millions of families around the world with no electricity? (“Their Lives Stop When The Sun Sets. Imagine! For $10, you can give a family several hours of light each night for a child to study by.”)

Well, now Mark has another idea.

Ninety percent of Afghans have no electricity and the Number One thing they want, he says, is light at night. What if our troops could clip half a dozen of Bogo Lights to their belts each morning and hand them, personally, to families that need them.

On one side is the solar panel. On the other, in Afghan, could be a message: “Please help us leave your country and get home to our families. We miss them terribly. But we can’t leave until you are more safe. In the meantime, and long after were gone, we hope this gift from the American people helps light up your life.”

With 50,000 troops handing out half a dozen lights each day it would take just weeks to touch the hearts and minds of millions. And maybe even demonstrate the potential of modern technology, versus the appeal of Seventh Century fundamentalism.

At less than $10 in such quantity, we could cover the whole country for $50 million. Nothing, in the scheme of things.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT

Finally, there’s this thoughtful analysis presented as an open letter to the President. We learn about the Afghans, the Pakistanis, the Kashmiris, the Pashtuns . . . and the the Afghan code of Pashtunwali that keeps Bin Laden alive (but under which, even so, he could be rendered harmless). If you want an overview of what’s really going on, take 5 minutes to read it. “We are courting long-term strategic defeat,” Polk writes. But he offers solutions.

BZ WARRANTS

Boise Paper seems to be doing pretty well, announcing preliminary third quarter results yesterday that Lazard Capital Markets termed “strong.” (“Overall, the results confirm our belief that Boise is able to generate significant cash flow in the current environment and is well positioned to outperform in a recovery.”)

With the warrants now up 45-fold from last October’s mention, I’ve sold more than half. These warrants could still double or triple – or they could expire worthless. (You will recall that they give you the right to buy the underlying stock, BZ, at $7.50 any time until June 18, 2011. With the stock currently around $6, the right to buy it at $7.50 right now is worthless. But imagine if the shares hit $10 again before June 18, 2011.* In that glorious if somewhat unlikely event, the right to pay just $7.50 for them would be worth $2.50. And if the stock hit $14.50, the ceiling at which the company can force you to take your gains – stranger things have happened** – then the warrants, about 90 cents today, would be worth $7.00. So I’m not selling all of them here.)

*For a little rueful perspective, here’s how the world looked to at least one BZ observer the last time it hit $10.

**Although I can’t think of one.

ACT ON PRINCIPLES

If you happen to be a reader consumed with LGBT equality – not a requirement of your subscription – check out actonprinciples.org. A “Public Whip Count” at lower left lets you see the current Congressional tally on passage of various bills. Other features let you help move those tallies toward equality.

If you do visit the site, don’t miss the video in the center of the page. I love that song: “What have you done today to make you feel proud?”

PUPPETS

Stephanie Hill: “If you hate puppets as you claim, then this would be terrifying, don’t you think?

☞ Too scared to look.

But first . . .

DEP-oh-nO!

Suggested here around $4.50 a few days ago (with the excuse, ‘boy’s gotta have a little fun), DEPO’s first drug trial results came in well and the stock closed last week at $6.36 – but sank to $3.82 yesterday morning after release of results on a trial of the drug for a different use. ‘Technically,’ writes my guru, ‘that trial worked, too.’ But it was complicated, and not as successful as would have been ideal – and the company didn’t do a great job of explaining all this on the conference call he audited yesterday morning. ‘I would buy the stock here and hold,’ he says, so I have.

SPACE STATION

Gray Chang: ‘You can see the actual International Space Station yourself [not just simulate building it, as per yesterday]. It looks like a very bright star or planet moving rapidly across the sky, like an airplane, but without any flashing or colored lights. To find out when and where to look, go to heavens-above.com and enter your location. Under Satellites, click ISS. You get an exact list of viewing times. Click on the date, and you get a star map showing the exact path across the sky. If you are lucky enough to have a viewing opportunity when the Space Shuttle is nearby, you can see both the space station and the shuttle at the same time.’

☞ Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No – it’s . . . THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION! (Younger readers will have to forgive me. Superman – and the Lone Ranger – pretty much defined my childhood.)

And now . . .

THE MARCH

Charles and I got to hear the President speak at the Human Rights Campaign dinner Saturday night – he was terrific, emphasizing the rightness of our cause and his commitment to it – and then got to attend the march Sunday, which emphasized the need to turn commitment into legislation at the soonest possible moment.

Having inherited the happy gene and tending to see the best in any situation – an annoying trait, I know – I thought the march was pretty terrific, too, and certainly much better attended than I had expected. (If God truly hates us, as some of our antagonists insist, how do they explain the magnificent weather He provided?) I heard estimates ranging from 30,000 to 200,000, but whatever the true figure, it was definitely one heck of a lot of people, revved up for equality.

A lot of them were quoting Bill Maher’s latest ‘new rule’ – ‘Everyone deserves equal rights. That’s why they’re called ‘equal.”

. . . Some of the folks at the HRC dinner were unsure of the value of the march – would it really help to pass the legislation we need? (Answer: well, not directly, but if it energized thousands of folks to go back home and lobby their Senators and Congressperson, it could certainly help. And any time national attention is focused on inequality, as it was Sunday, it helps, because fairness is a bedrock American value.)

From a friend on the steering committee: ‘The march was impressive but not historic. The weather was gorgeous and spirits were high. The lawn in front of the Capitol steps was full but not packed. The rally was fine, but only fine. The speeches weren’t interminable, which we had feared. I think Barney Frank got it right when he said that all the march would put pressure on is the lawn. My lingering concern is Maine. If we lose Maine, it will be said, with justification, that the march diverted resources and energy. That would be tragic. We’ll be sending some money to Maine shortly! We did have a great time in DC visiting wonderful friends.’

☞ Most of the steering committee members were far more enthusiastic, I’m sure. And the whole thing was done significantly under budget, for about $185,000, which when it comes to running large events like this is pretty extraordinary.

. . . And a fair proportion of the marchers were more than a little skeptical of the President’s speech – would it really keep another soldier from being discharged or give a gay couple legally married in Massachusetts rights equal to those of a straight couple? (Answer: well, not directly, but week by week LGBT Americans and the rightness of equality are being woven into the national fabric by the President and the actions of his Administration, and not just when he speaks to predominantly LGBT groups – which in this case was a group that extended to the entire CNN and C-SPAN viewerships.)

From a 20-year old friend: ‘He’s got the House and 60 seats in the Senate. If he can’t get anything done for us under these conditions, when is he going to?’

☞ After he passes health care? In the meantime, leaving aside all the other good and historic stuff he’s done on LGBT issues, next week, with any luck, Congress will give him the opportunity to sign the first federal LGBT legislation in our nation’s history, extending the definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation and gender identity. A small start in some ways, but finally a start.

So I think it will all happen, and that old folks like me (I have to change that photo!) can marvel happily as it does, while others, both young and old, can be outraged that it took too long.

Which of course it has – every American deserves full equal rights under the law from the day he or she was born. But it took women 144 years to get the vote and mixed-race couples 191 years to get the right to wed (or 102, if you start the clock at the end of the Civil War), so if we’re truly just months, not years, away from much of the equality we deserve, as I think we are . . . and possibly not much further than that from the big kahuna (if Bush v. Gore combatants Ted Olson and David Boies are successful in their joint effort to persuade the Supreme Court to rule marriage-bans unConstitutional) . . . then I think there’s reason to see the glass half full, even as we continue to press for full equality.

JOE ROCHA

There were so many amazing people at the march, most of whom did not get to speak. Watch Joe Rocha’s story. You will find it hard to believe. It includes the suicide of a presumably straight woman, even as the officer responsible for all this got . . . promoted.

And speaking of insanity . . . is this a great country or what? Namely:

LEGAL TO BUY AN UZI BUT NOT A VIBRATOR IN ALABAMA

Click here. (Thanks, Jim!)

24 WATTS FOR $160

Marty Rosen: “I just splurged for four of the six watt bulbs. We’ll see. But I thought you should know that according to their web site (and my invoice), the seller is having a ‘sale’ until the end of the year, and you can now get their $50 bulbs for $40.”

☞ Better still! If you make $463 in savings from each bulb over 15 years, as described Friday, that would be $1,852 on a $160 four-bulb investment. Normally, you’d discount that back to “today’s dollars” (counting the out years’ savings as worth much less than a dollar you save now). But if the cost of electricity rises over time . . . and at a rate equal to or greater than the “discount rate” you’d use in making this calculation . . . then this could conceivably be $1,852 in savings in “today’s dollars.” Of course, there a zillion variables here, and my guess is that our savings will be less. But still more than enough to make this a great gamble. (And tax free! The IRS doesn’t tax us on the money we “earn” by being more energy efficient.)

The trick will be to have our electric bills fall even as rates rise – because we use less of it. (Same with gasoline.)

THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

This is cool: watch the international space station take shape, stage by stage. A decade’s progress in about a minute’s video. (Thanks, Roger!)

AND . . . SO WE DON’T ALL HAVE TO LIVE ON IT . . .

Save October 24 and click here to be part of an international demonstration. As described in an email from Al Gore:

On the melting slopes of Mt. Everest, Pemba Dorje Sherpa, who holds the record for the fastest ascent of the world’s highest peak, will be spreading banners and signs.

On the dying coral reefs of the Maldives, the government’s entire cabinet will don scuba gear and hold an official underwater meeting to pass a 350 resolution to send to the Copenhagen summit.

On the shores of the fast-drying Dead Sea, Israeli activists will form a giant human “3” on their beach, Palestinians a “5” on theirs, and Jordanians a “0” – reminding us we need to unite on this vital issue.

☞ We’ve come a long way since Columbus discovered America. We now have the power to make the entire world uninhabitable! Vice President Gore’s new book comes out November 3 – with solutions to this inconvenient truth.

MY BULBS CAME!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about these $35 third-generation 5-watt LED lightbulbs and the even more expensive $50 6-watt dimmable variety. Well, six of each arrived today, and I’ve rarely been so happy. A kitchen that had four 100-watt floods in the ceiling now has four 6-watt dimmables, which even Charles – who is truly sensitive to shades of light – finds satisfactory. That is a 94% energy saving. The saving is less dramatic where I’m replacing 23-watt CFLs. And of course the saving is trivial with lights that rarely get used.

Yes, they’re expensive; and, no, I can’t be certain they’ll last as long as advertised (my dimmable CFLs sure didn’t – though the nondimmable ones have done fine). But they do come with a 3-year warranty. And these are the kinds of risks I’m willing to take to be part of the green wave we all hope to see wash over the planet.

If electricity runs you 15 cents a kilowatt hour – and I expect over time it will run even more – then going from 100 watts to 6 for (say) 6 hours a day saves you 94/1000ths of a kilowatt x 6 hours a day x 365 days a year x 15 cents per kwh = $30 and change per year. Not a bad return on a $50 investment. If they really last the claimed 35,000 hours, you would go more than 15 years in the example above before having to swap them out, having saved $463 in the meantime. More if the price of electricity rises further. A bit more still if you factor in the several incandescents you would have otherwise had to buy, and the value of your time in buying and replacing them.

Better still in a warm climate, where you have little need of heat but pay lots for air conditioning, in part to counteract heat from your lights. My LED bulbs run so cool, you can comfortably unscrew them even while the light is on.

Yes, it could pay to wait for the price to come down. (But really? Will the price of a $50 bulb come down by more than the $30 a year it’s saving you?) And, yes, the light from the cheaper, non-dimmable 5-watt bulb is pretty weak – I prefer the 6-watt. The former feels to my untrained eye like a 40-watt incandescent, while the latter (which can, of course, be used in a non-dimmable lamp) feels more to me like a 60-watt bulb.

But this holiday season, why not give everyone a lightbulb or two?

THEIR LIVES STOP WHEN THE SUN SETS

One of the attendees at the Clinton Global Initiative last month, the irrepressible Mark Bent, founded the company that makes ‘bogo lights.’ These are solar-powered LED flashlights that can be handy to have around the house, currently on sale at $25.99, but that have a special significance for the millions of families around the world with no electricity. For them, nothing much is possible once the sun sets. One of Mark’s current projects is lighthaiti.org. Imagine: for $10, you can give a family several hours of light each night for a child to study by.

AND WHAT IF IT’S ALWAYS DARK?

Another Clinton Global Initiative participant, Britain’s Standard Chartered Bank, showed a video of Africans blinded by cataracts undergoing a 6-minute $33 operation that restores their sight. Imagine the impact on that blind person – and his or her family. Standard Charter committed to match the first $10 million in donations toward this end. Check out the seeingisbelieving.org website; and if you are a U.S. donor moved by the thought of restoring someone’s sight for $33 (or, in a sense, two people’s sight for $33, becase of the match) . . . and who wants the U.S. tax deduction . . . click here.

DON’T SELL YOUR TKF?

Suggested here at $5.47 six months ago, the Turkish Fund closed yesterday at $12.83. But it’s not necessarily time to sell. Tuesday, Heckman Global Advisors told clients: “For the third month in a row, Turkey stands at the top of [our] emerging markets ranking table. The market is attractive according to a broad array of investment indicators. Its 8.9x forecast 2010 price-to-earnings ratio is well below the 11.7x emerging market average. In addition, the market continues to receive support from a favorable terms-of-trade trend, relatively strong domestic price momentum, and strong institutional investor sentiment.”

So maybe sell enough to take your original investment off the table and consider the rest “free” money to be held for the long term? Or, if you can afford the risk of a second global financial meltdown, hang on to the whole thing? Relatively speaking, in Heckman’s view, Turkey is still cheap. And TKF still sells at a modest 7% discount to its Net Asset Value, which helps at least in part to counter the drag of its 1.1% management fee.

MEDICARE ADVANTAGE

The program health reform opponents are so keen on protecting? Turns out, it’s an advantage mainly for insurers, with just 14 cents of each taxpayer dollar actually going to health care.

ACORN

Bill Press puts it in perspective. (As does Rachel Maddow, with this devastating review of the “Defund ACORN Act” – and how it may wind up defunding Lockheed, Northrup, and Blackwater.) One snippet:

Recently, several ACORN staffers were caught in a right-wing sting video offering advice on how to convince the IRS that their pimp and prostitution operation was a legitimate business. Stupid! But most news organizations never followed up to report that those employees were immediately fired, that two ACORN offices actually reported the phony clients to the police, and that ACORN has since hired the former attorney general of Massachusetts to conduct a full in-house investigation.

. . . ACORN’s monumental good work over the last 39 years far, far outweighs its few mistakes.

☞ They screwed up, got a wake-up call, need to tighten ship – but a death sentence? Only if Lockheed and Northrup and Blackwater get death sentences, too.