A Little Light Music And, For Money You Can Truly Afford To Lose . . . February 26, 2010March 17, 2017 One of the best things about this column is that, for the most part, you write it for me. I toss out something – as yesterday, on Haiti, etc. – and you take it from there. I should be paying you. George Mokray: “I’ve been participating in some of the discussions at MIT around Haiti and spent last Saturday night at a Pecha-Kucha, a series of short presentations on the problems and solutions consisting of 20 slides for 20 seconds each, as part of a world-wide effort by the design and tech community to address the situation. There is a real feeling that the recovery is going to have to be different this time, that Haiti can be a model for disaster response for the long-term, and that people are not going to forget. I hope it is true. One thing that gives me hope is that such groups as Architecture for Humanity, which was a co-sponsor of the Saturday night event that occurred at 150 places around the world, has climbed the learning curve, applying what it learned in New Orleans and during the 2004 tsunami to Haiti. They have timelines of participation that go out for years because it is going to take years. . . . The Berkeley-Darfur stove you cited is one useful tool, although it might need some modification in order to work with the materials and cooking customs of Haiti. Solar cookers are another, also being distributed in Darfuri refugee camps by such organizations as German CARE and Jewish World Watch. Here’s a short video of a construction workshop on the solar cookers. . . . I think you’ve also covered LightHaiti.org, which is sending solar LED lights to Haiti. . . . and here’s a Kirk Franklin gospel song about Haiti. . . . PS: My efforts start from survival solar, refugee camp solar and work on up from there. It is part of my sarvodaya orientation, a term from Gandhian economics which means plan for the poorest first. It can be expressed as Solar IS Civil Defense in the developed world and that same access to technology – flashlight, radio, cell phone, extra set of batteries – becomes a significant rise in the standard of living for the 2 billion at the bottom of the human pyramid.” Philip Lopez: “The New Yorker recently published a fascinating article (‘Hearth Surgery’) about the possibilities – and the difficulties – of producing stoves for people in poor countries. They’ve gotta be really cheap, like $8 per stove, but they’d pay for themselves many times over by reducing or nearly eliminating chronic respiratory illnesses. Saving trees is an obvious advantage, and I vaguely remember that a few grams of carbon black (you and I would call it ‘soot’) which is produced in large quantities by inefficient stoves is as bad for the environment as a couple of months of driving a HumVee. ‘Cleaning up these emissions,’ the article says, ‘may be the fastest, cheapest way to cool the planet.’” Mark Bent (founder of LightHaiti.org): “We got an order yesterday for a case of BoGo lights from St. Joachim / St. John the Evangelist, in Beacon, New York, on-line, for $2000 – Father Nolan ordered direct. He was surprised, and pleased, when we called to tell him that for his $2000, we can provide two cases – 50% off for non-profits.” ☞ Perhaps you belong to a nonprofit, or your kids go to a school, that would like to follow Father Nolan’s lead? “Providing trained medical care,” Mark writes, “is a 24 hour necessity that does not fade away with the sunset. Every medical professional in Haiti should have access to solar-powered lighting devices so well suited to this sun-drenched country. . . . Partners in Health, which has been operating in Haiti for over twenty years, has long championed the concept of traveling medics, with over 2,000 of these traveling community health workers, locally known as ‘accompagnateurs’ visiting patients wherever they are living. These mobile individuals walk, take local transport and carry everything they need in their backpacks – including lighting. In the darkness of a Haitian night, having a scene illuminated at accident injury or lighting a patient during an operation that cannot wait until daybreak, or by assisting in the birth of a child or treating the victim of sexual violence, rape or other trauma, lighting is an essential direct support tool. PIH estimates that 50,000 of these $10 lights would significantly improve their ability to reach 1.7 million Haitians. And the lights are designed to operate for well over a decade – every night, making this both an immediate and a long-term impact.” ☞ Enjoy your weekend – and the music video linked to above. PS – I added a highly speculative little drug company, symbol NBIX, to our evolving three-stock (was DEPO, DYAX, INCY; profit taken on INCY and replaced with DCTH) – now four-stock – basket. Closing at $2.60 yesterday, guru thinks a year from now it could be significantly higher. To be bought (have I ever thought to mention this before?) only with money you can truly afford to lose.
Cooking Like a (Third World) Guy February 25, 2010March 17, 2017 Haiti is so “last month.” But of course, it is anything but. WE ARE THE WORLD – NON-CELEB EDITION This music will make you feel connected and hopeful for the future. If you don’t have time to watch, just listen in the background. THE CHARCOAL PROJECT Haiti is 98% deforested. It’s sort of like what happened on Easter Island, whose population (not having C-130 transport planes to fly in supplies) went extinct. The estimable James Musters draws our attention to two inspiring links, each with an approach to cooking that would seem to go a long way to solving Third World problems. First, consider this remarkable 2006 TED Conference presentation by Amy Smith, and visit her Charcoal Project to see where things stand now. Next, check out the Darfur Stoves Project, which could presumably work just as well in Haiti. (“The Berkeley-Darfur Stove® is an innovative appropriate technology that requires only one quarter the amount of firewood needed to cook using traditional three-stone fires. Because of its fuel efficiency, use of the Berkeley-Darfur Stove® limits the amount of time women in Darfur need to spend outside the safety of the displaced persons camps to gather fuel for cooking. This decreases exposures to violence for Darfuri women while also limiting deforestation and the release of toxic indoor smoke.”) VANCOUVER Steve Jewett: “Philip Steenkamp is the president and CEO of The 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Secretariat, a B.C. Government agency, within the Ministry of Healthy Living, responsible for overseeing the government’s financial commitment to the 2010 Olympics, and as such has no direct input in the actual running of the 2010 Olympics here in British Columbia.” ☞ Oops. I misunderstood his title. Sorry.
Vancouver V. Virginia February 24, 2010March 17, 2017 NOT A BIG DEAL BUT . . . Turns out the President and CEO of the 2010 Olympics is gay. (We’re good at running things – hotels, weddings, cities, Olympics.) And he threw us a party. Asked later why he felt it was important to hold a party specially for the LGBT community, he replied: “We’re wanting to showcase Vancouver and British Columbia and Canada, and the LGBT community’s a vibrant part of our society here. Really we want to celebrate our diversity and the tolerance of our culture and also showcase ourselves to the world. There’s also kind of a business imperative here. Gay tourism is worth 60 billion dollars in the U.S., so there’s some good business networking that can occur. But aside from that, it’s just a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate those Canadian values of tolerance and diversity and what creates such strength in our culture here.” ☞ Our good neighbors to the North. What must they think of the new Governor of Virginia, who last month specifically rescinded his predecessor’s anti-discrimination order? It’s now okay again in Virginia to fire a government employee – however good his or her job performance, however long he or she has been on the job – simply because of his or her sexual orientation. And they use, as their slogan, Virginia Is For Lovers? I prefer this slogan: Boycott Virginia. And while I have your attention . . . SOME GOOD NEWS OUT OF CPAC (NO – SERIOUSLY!) True conservatives favor government that doesn’t intrude on the rights and freedom of the individual. (Barry Goldwater famously only cared whether a soldier shot straight, not whether he was straight.) Here a young conservative makes that point in two-minutes at CPAC. (Most of the booing comes from one guy near a microphone.) There follow two minutes by a “natural law” advocate. (Most of the booing comes from . . . everybody.) And if I still have your attention . . . “GLARRIAGE” Roberto: “I believe strongly in equal rights for all. I do not like the use of the word marriage as it relates to a same-sex wedding. The word marriage means the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law. Couldn’t we have the same exact thing for people of the same sex but just use another word to describe it?” ☞ Yes! Just pass a Constitutional Amendment requiring that – for the purposes of the tens of thousands of federal, state, and local laws and hundreds of millions of private contracts that refer to “marriage” – the word you choose will be deemed equivalent. But Constitutional Amendments are hard to pass. (The last one, in 1992, though completely trivial, took 202 years.) Also, “separate but equal” is un-American – in contrast to “the separation of church and state,” which many consider bedrock American. So I prefer this solution: Let’s set in stone that the government will NEVER tell a religious institution whom it must or may not marry. But that government will also never discriminate in issuing civil marriage licenses (or driver’s licenses, hunting licenses, liquor licenses) based on race, religion, disability, fertility, sexual orientation, intent to have children, inability to have children, prior divorce, prior multiple divorce, near-certain incompatibility, or pretty much anything else. If there is an age requirement, it should apply to everyone, equally. If a sobriety test is required – likewise. The good news: more and more people are deciding, What’s it to us if we allow gays equal rights? Here, indeed, is last Friday’s Salt Lake Tribune – no less – advocating much the same approach: “Religion should be kept out of what is essentially a government-sanctioned legal partnership. And government should not be involved in religious marriage rites.” Amen. GLDD The stock dropped as low as $4.36 yesterday on disappointing quarterly earnings. Here’s the press release. I still like it for the long haul and bought more.
The Latest Debt Clock I'm on a Horse February 23, 2010March 17, 2017 NOT ANNOYING LINKS John Seiffer is the reader who pointed out that a pound of gold weighs less than a pound of feathers. (Because precious metals are traditionally measured in Troy ounces, of which there are only 12 to the pound.) Well, just for the record, I weigh MY gold on the same bathroom scale I weigh my feathers, and a pound is a pound is a pound. Except that the feathers tend to fall off the scale – it’s hard to keep them all on there at once – but that doesn’t mean a pound of them doesn’t weigh a pound. So John, I noted, was just being annoying. “To redeem myself,” he now writes, “I offer a couple of links you might enjoy. One serious – about a breakthrough in lighting. (The video is more understandable than the text.) One not – did you see the Old Spice SuperBowl ad? ‘I’m on a horse!’ This shows how it was made.” ☞ Now I’m annoyed that I just spent 19 minutes watching the making of an Old Spice ad! Well, not really. As the son of a 1950s/1960s-era Mad Man* . . . how could I not love it? *You know “Man, Oh, Manischewitz”? – my dad wrote that . . . “Man, oh, Manischewitz, what a wine!” . . . and an astronaut actually spoke it, spontaneously, on the moon – “Man, oh, Manischewitz – will you get a load of that crater!”** **Or words to that effect. Can you imagine Mr. Manischewitz, whose real name I forget, an old man home in Brooklyn with his wife, watching the moon walk live, with two billion other people, and suddenly he hears his slogan, free, from the moon?*** ***I actually know people – personally – who are certain no one ever did walk on the moon; that the whole thing was faked in a TV studio. Perhaps Manischewitz was one of the sponsors, and this was the original “product placement.” But if so, Dad never let on. DEBT CLOCK Sites like this one just get more and more comprehensive – and nerve-wracking. The average savings per U.S. citizen is only $1,042? It’s the lone number on this array that’s small. MYM-DOS MAC Dan Critchett: “Did you know you can run MYM-DOS on a Mac? All you have to do, as I did, is load DOS Box and off you go.”
Huge Good News A "60 Minutes" Segment Not to Be Missed February 22, 2010March 17, 2017 PET OWNERS, TAKE NOTE . . . This site promises to have a pet-loving atheist rescue your pet if you ascend in the Rapture – for $110 (first pet, $15 each pet thereafter), a business model I can only envy. Don’t miss the terms and conditions. The service is real (‘Rescuers must sign an affidavit to affirm their disbelief in God – and they must also clear a criminal background check’). Twenty-six atheists have been recruited. Here‘s the back story. Meanwhile, for those who follow such things, it should be noted that the Rapture Index currently stands at 167, not far off its all-time high. It should be further noted that the Rapture dog tags advertised have nothing to do with tagging or rescuing your dogs; they are guidance for those humans – suddenly less skeptical – who find themselves left behind. (‘I never believed this stuff, Marge, but I was talking to Mary at the grocery store and suddenly she – and the guy spraying the fruit – disappeared. All that was left were their clothes and this dog tag!’) BASICLAND . . . SORROWLAND Charlie Munger, in case you didn’t know, is Warren Buffett’s long-time partner in Berkshire Hathaway. Crusty, acerbic, and not easily fooled, he writes this brief history of America from 1700 through 2012. In short: if we don’t enact serious financial reform, kiss it all good-bye. But before you get all bummed, bear in mind that with any luck we will enact serious financial reform – the House already has. And for every reason to be gloomy about the future, there are reasons to be excited. To wit . . . HUGE GOOD NEWS: THE ENERGY SOLUTION If you missed “60 Minutes” last night, you’ve got to watch this (or at least read it). The Bloom Box fuel cell is already working at places like Google, eBay, FedEx, and Wal*Mart and the inventor thinks it may be powering your home, independent of the electric grid, within the decade. Which would be phenomenal for our economic well-being, security, and the environment. DEPO I bought more Friday at $2.36. The company has plenty of cash and, by at least one analyst’s estimate, is worth $3.60 a share even without its gabapentin-based drug being approved. But that drug will be approved, my guru feels sure; so, he says, ‘it’s a chip shot to $3’ (a 27% gain from $2.36) and could at some point climb back to $4. There’s always some risk of disaster; but not a bad place to stash some money you can truly afford to lose.
Can Two Lieutenants with Restless Leg Syndrome Get FDA Approval to Marry? In French? February 19, 2010March 17, 2017 DEPO – RATS! If you took a flier with the basket of three speculative stocks suggested here recently . . . DEPO (then at $3.02), DYAX (then at $3.17), INCY (then at $5.62) . . . and if you took some or all your profit in INCY as suggested here (at $10.81) and replaced it with DCTH (at $5.37 or a few days later at $4.61) . . . then you may have noticed that DEPO got clobbered yesterday. It dropped 20% to $2.47. (DYAX and DCTH remain largely unchanged at $3.48 and $5.31.) Guru writes: DEPO dropped because XNPT was rejected by the FDA for its gabapentin-based restless-leg-syndrome drug. Gabapentin produces pancreas tumors in rats. Gabapentin is the basis of the drug DEPO hopes FDA will approve. It has been on the market for 15 years and has produced no evidence of increased pancreas tumors in humans, but the FDA said the risk/reward for an approval in restless leg was not worth it. Gabapentin has previously been approved for post-herpes pain – DEPO’s intended use. The FDA deemed that post-herpes pain was sufficiently important to allow the risk of pancreas tumors in rats. Thus DEPO should be able to get approval for the same thing. (DEPO’s delivery allows better efficacy and fewer side effects and more convenient dosing than the already-approved generics.) However, it appears that Jason Napodano didn’t know this when he made a comment to a reporter that if XNPT went down, DEPO should go down. The DEPO Phase III data are now in the hands of Solvay, which is being bought by Abbott. Abbott will likely file for approval as soon as they complete the Solvay merger. The fundamentals say all should go through as planned. What I don’t know is whether the stock market will wait until ABT/DEPO version of gabapentin actually gets approval in order to give them credit. If the market does wait for this, then DEPO could be dead in the water for most of this year. ☞ So far, not so great. But I’m holding mine. BRUSHING UP ON YOUR LANGUAGE SKILLS If you don’t already have Google’s toolbar on your browser, you can get it with a few clicks here. One of its many helpful features is a ‘translate’ option I recently turned on. Now, occasionally, I’ll click ‘translate,’ and the entire page I’m reading – even this one – appears, a moment later, in Russian. Being able to go back and forth this way with material whose meaning you already know and have an interest in could be an amusing way to awaken high school language skills. (Or just a way to learn how to say ‘restless leg syndrome’ in French, Slovak, or Simplified Chinese.) MARRIAGE IN BARELY A MINUTE She was denied a license to marry her life partner but offered one to marry a passer-by of the opposite sex. (If, after watching the clip, you think the government should allow same-sex couples civil marriage licenses – quite apart from whatever their church, mosque, or temple might choose to bless – sign here.) ASK, TELL – AND GET TO WORK Brent: ‘You may not appreciate this editorial quite as much if you are not familiar with the extent that this North Carolina newspaper, the Hickory Daily Record, in the past has promoted anti-gay sentiment. But here it is anyway.’ It’s Time to End ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ By Lee Barnes When I was in the Air Force, one of the guys in my barracks was gay. I knew Richard was gay because he liked to wear a little bit of eyeliner when he wasn’t on duty. I also knew he was gay because every time he got a few beers in him at the Airman’s Club, he’d flirt with me. I handled this great threatening menace to my manhood by telling him to go away. Which he always did. That was quite some time ago — 1970. Those were different times for gay men and women, but not so much as you might imagine. Richard and I were medics, assigned to a hospital in Mississippi. With the Vietnam War going on, business in military hospitals was, unfortunately, very good. Richard was a great medic, far better than I was. And people in military hospitals always like working with someone who is good at what he does. It’s especially the case when you’re shorthanded, which we always were. With Richard’s many mannerisms, his sexual preference was no secret to anyone, including the officers. It wasn’t a matter of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” It was more a matter of “We have work to do.” We accepted Richard because there wasn’t time to do anything else. That’s the way it seems to work best for the military. Consider, for example, the end of segregated troops in the armed forces during the Korean War. You can look it up. The need for troops in Korea exceeded the means to house the black soldiers separately from the white soldiers. Thus we got integrated armed forces, out of necessity. So, back to gays in the military. We’re at a time in our problems in Iraq and Afghanistan where we can no longer exclude qualified volunteers just because they’re openly gay. President Clinton’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was, and is, political cowardice. It hasn’t worked — thousands of gay soldiers have been dismissed from the military since the policy’s adoption in 1993. Retired Gen. John Shalikashvili was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Clinton came up with the policy. He opposed it, because he opposed gays in the military, period. Now, Shalikashvili says he was wrong. He says he has met with gay servicemen and drawn some new conclusions. “These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers,” he wrote. Well, maybe the military has changed, but the people in it haven’t. We were capable of accepting gays within our ranks decades ago. That’s exactly the situation today, as today’s soldiers overwhelmingly say it’s a non-issue to them. If I need the help of the medic or marksman working next to me, his sexual orientation won’t be high on my list of priorities. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Tuesday that he will begin looking for ways to eliminate the policy and begin integrating gay and straight soldiers. It’s about time. Today’s all-volunteer military in this time of war needs all the good people it can get — including those good people who happen to be gay. LEE BARNES is editor of the Hickory Daily Record.
The Nuclear Option February 18, 2010March 17, 2017 Correction: John Seiffer: “I’m sure I’m not the first to point this out, but a pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold.” ☞ Do you know how there’s always one person in a group who’s really annoying? I am ordinarily that person. Today – and I say this with the kind of broad grin that almost requires an emoticon – it’s John Seiffer. Addition: I’ve told you how Fujitsu’s scanner changed my life (and you’ve told me how it’s changed yours). Well, it only gets better. I finally got around to trying it with business cards. And it’s a freakin’ miracle. Instead of entering the info by hand, which I never get around to doing, you just put a stack of cards in the feeder and press a button. Yes, you occasionally have to unclog a jam (a completely trivial task); and, yes, you always have to read each card to correct the inevitable errors (not at all trivial, but kinda fun). But once you’ve done that, one more click and they all wind up in Outlook. Meanwhile, this new model, the S1300, just hitting the streets, is cheaper, smaller, and compatible with both PC and Mac (in case you’re a dual platform household). I love my S1500, which can handle a thicker stack of documents. But the S1300 may be the better choice for many. THE BIG PICTURE Yesterday’s T.E.D. crib notes spared you from cancer. (Eat berries!) Today, thanks to reader Richard Anhalt (who writes, “when Bill Gates talks about using nuclear energy, people listen”), there’s this completely fascinating – and ultimately encouraging – T.E.D. digest. It will take you no more than a minute or two to read. UNDERWEAR I actually snuck in something about money yesterday – specifically, about the INHI warrants some of us own. And a money-saving tip – if you can call $8.95 for a pound of shrimp “money-saving.” But more often than not of late, I’ve been lobbing Rachel Maddow clips. Why? Because the Republican strategy of “blocking everything in order to win back power” threatens our prosperity. Which brings us to Rachel’s clip from Tuesday where she shows Republican after Republican attacking the Obama team for Mirandizing the “underwear bomber” – even though this is exactly what the Bush Administration did every time it arrested terrorists on American soil. And she makes the larger point: yet again, the Republican leadership opposes anything Obama does – even if they were for it until he came their way. (Like the bipartisan deficit reduction panel Republicans co-sponsored but then voted against once the President signed on.) You’ve got to watch Cheney, Giuliani, and the rest pounding away – all in almost identical language – even though every suspected terrorist arrested on American soil under the Bush Administration was treated the same way. Including “the shoe bomber.” Having “also failed when he also tried to detonate PETN when he was also aboard a U.S.-bound airliner after also being trained and directed by Al-Qaeda,” Maddow notes, “Richard Reed was also arrested in the U.S. as a civilian criminal and he was also – yes! – read his Miranda rights. Four times.” See the difference? Same with “the twentieth hijacker” and scores of others. So why are the Republicans orchestrating their scathing criticism when the only thing that’s changed is the occupant of the White House? If you have any doubt who’s trying to govern responsibly and who’s trying to see that effort fail, watch the clip.
Frugal Shrimp, Fruity Anti-angiogens And The Little INHI Speculation That Refuses to Die February 17, 2010March 17, 2017 AVOIDING CANCER The latest TED Conference videos are not yet up, but here’s a recap of one of the presentations – on “angiogenesis” and the anti-angiogens, like berries, that seem to keep microcancers from growing, and the antiangiogenesis drugs that caused tumors in a dog, a dolphin, and a horse, to disappear. I’m telling you, kids: Floss, and fund those Roth IRAs. With luck, we could be around a long time. THE FRUGAL HEIRESS: SHRIMP The frugal heiress made her debut last November with an outstanding submission on an inexpensive New York City hotel. I keep hoping she’ll come up with another, but in the meantime, to keep the concept alive – albeit with a very manly, Cooking Like a Guy™ slant – I want to tell you about colossal shrimp. There is a tremendous premium placed on colossal shrimp. A pound of colossal shrimp weighs only a little more than a pound of “medium” shrimp, just as a pound of gold weighs just a little more than a pound of feathers*, but there is a big difference. In the case of the gold, it’s worth vastly more than the feathers (unless they are dodo feathers). But in the case of the shrimp, I would argue that the colossals are worth little or no more than the pound of mediums – yet cost $19.95 (cooked, shelled, deveined, frozen) versus $8.95 for the mediums. Yet at the end of the day, it’s all shrimp. And – now here comes the frugal tip – if you grab two or three medium tails at once, dipping the duo or trio into the cocktail sauce together, you virtually have one colossal shrimp. I mean . . . what difference does it make? Answer: a difference of $11 a pound. Once a week for a lifetime, compounding after tax at 12%** and beginning at age 21, when the first tranche of your trust funds come under your control, and you’ll have an extra $2,287,704 at age 75 – just by eating smaller shrimp two at a time. Think about it. * Just kidding. ** Fat chance. INHI I last wrote about our Infusystems warrants a few months ago, suggesting that they would likely expire worthless – even though I was keeping mine. If you own some, please take a minute to re-read that item, and then come back here for the news yesterday (much more fully laid out in the SEC filing), that we may now exchange our warrants for stock. We are faced with three choices: Make the exchange at a ratio of 35 warrants per share (so, say, 3,500 warrants for each 100 shares). Make it at 25 warrants per share (so, say, 2,500 warrants for each 100 shares) so long as you agree not to sell for six months – clearly the better choice, in my mind, since I’m in no rush to sell. Do nothing and take your chances the warrants will be “in the money” before they expire April 11, 2011. Hmmm. It’s an interesting situation. For starters, I’m glad to see that the warrants needn’t expire worthless after all. If you bought some and choose to convert (which you must do by March 17), you’ll have what is currently about 9 cents a share worth of stock for each warrant. (The stock closed at $2.25 yesterday.) And if the stock were to hit $4.50 by April 11, 2011, you’d be well on your way to a nice profit . . . whereas, had you not converted, your warrants would have expired worthless. But there’s a little element of “the prisoner’s dilemma” here, because if everyone converts – except you – it might make sense not to convert. That’s because the company would at that point have about 20 million shares outstanding . . . so if the company valuation reached $120 million (say) – not easy, but not impossible – it would be $6 a share and your warrants would be worth a cool dollar each! Yet if, like you, who decided not to accept the offer, no one did, the company would have more like 55 million shares potentially outstanding (the 35 million warrants plus the existing stock), and so would need to be valued at $330 million to be selling at $6 a share – not impossible, but nearly so. My guess is that most people will convert most or all their warrants. I plan to convert most or all of mine. As a shareholder (I own some of the stock as well as a preposterous load of the warrants), I don’t much care either way: If no one accepts the offer, the warrants will all most likely just disappear, valueless, when they expire. Which is great, because then that 35 million share potential dilution just disappears. (Anticipating that, as expiration draws near, the stock might rise at least a little above $5, triggering some conversions after all. And that would be okay, too – with each conversion comes $5 in cash into the company treasury.) And if everyone accepts the offer, that’s fine, too. Given the 25-to-1 ratio, it would dilute my shares only modestly to get rid of this 35 million warrant option overhang.
Governors February 16, 2010March 17, 2017 KEEP YOUR SHOES ON AT THE AIRPORT Not soon enough of course, but dare we hope the “MagShoe” is coming? HOW WE’RE DOING ON THE BAIL-OUT ProPublica – a non-profit force for “journalism in the public interest” run by former long-time and widely admired Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger – keeps this running tally of the bail-out money we taxpayers have pushed put the door ($500.7 billion) and the portion that has come back ($194.7 billion thus far). GOVERNORS: RED VERSUS BLUE Nathan Daschle certainly has a horse in this race. Dozens of them, in fact. He heads the Democratic Governor’s Association. But, as he argues on Politico.com, fact are facts: . . . Republican governors, as a whole, vastly underperform their Democratic counterparts on virtually every economic or fiscal score. In addition to high unemployment numbers, states with Republican governors are far less likely to be on the Forbes list of “Best States for Business” (only one of the Top 5 has a Republican governor), score a AAA rating from the major credit rating agencies (only two of the seven have GOP governors) or make a real investment in clean technology (only two of the Top 10 clean-tech states have Republican governors). Perhaps most telling, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, is that throughout the past decade, the size of state governments actually grew more under Republican governors than under Democratic ones. This is true for both traditional ways of measuring the size of government: spending growth and the number of state employees. These are the facts. And they are undisputed. . . . ☞ I’m sure I can count on some of you to dispute them – and will post your comments when you do. But the larger point here, while not original to me, is that this is more than coincidence. Republicans generally don’t believe in government; Democrats do. Bush’s first Energy Secretary had, as a Senator, actually called for abolishing the Energy Department; Obama’s is a Nobel-prize winning physicist consumed – as are his deputies – with the importance and potential of rejuvenating the U.S. energy industry and helping to achieve energy independence. See the difference? Obviously, not everything R’s do is bad or lackluster; not everything D’s do is good or exemplary. Clearly. Definitely. I get that. But if your basic philosophy is that government can’t do things well – well, as the saying goes, “argue for your limitations and they are yours.” And I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “If you think you can’t do something, you’re right.”
Up 58% February 14, 2010March 17, 2017 HOW THE HEALTH INSURERS ARE DOING Thanks in part to those who won’t allow single-payer or a public option or anything except tort reform (which, done sensibly, I, too, favor), top health insurers saw profits jump 58% last year even as 2.7 million more Americans lost coverage. FILIBUSTER I’m mad as hell, and I hope Congress is getting ready not to take it anymore. It’s time for the nuclear option – and for another must-watch Rachel Maddow clip showing the inconsistency of the Republican position. But here is Harry Reid saying the votes aren’t there to change Senate rules. (It took 15 years to modify the filibuster the last time – here’s the history.) And here, from Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen, is an assessment of the current situation . . . Senate Republicans are well aware of the fact that they’re breaking the American legislative process, and making it impossible for the majority to govern, which suits them fine. . . . and of how reform just might be possible . . . [P]rocedural changes happen when there’s a credible threat. A quarter-century ago, the threat of eliminating the filibuster altogether led to reform. Five years ago, the Gang of 14 got together when the “nuclear option” appeared likely to happen. Just a couple of days ago, President Obama threatened a slew of recess appointments, prompting the Senate GOP to quickly approve 27 pending administration nominees. To be sure, it’s naive to think Republicans would simply stop filibustering to prevent a Democratic “nuclear option” from coming to fruition. But a credible threat is far more likely to have an effect than the alternative – which is to simply tolerate the GOP’s unprecedented abuse. If Harry Reid were to make clear, with varying degrees of subtlety, that the status quo is simply untenable, and that he feels like he has no choice but to make it possible for a majority to govern again, it would possibly change the nature of the existing dynamic. At this point, he has nothing to lose. ABE James Gleick: “You write: ‘You know one person who would be appalled by what the Republican Party has become? Abe Lincoln.’ It reminds me of how the historian William Lee Miller (President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman, p. 142) paraphrases Lincoln’s view of what the Civil War was really about: ‘Republican government – democracy, we say now – requires a tacit understanding between majorities and minorities. Majorities rightly prevail, but they respect the liberty of minorities to agitate to try to replace them; minorities have the right to express and organize in behalf of their view, but when the votes are counted, they must acquiesce.’”