I Don’t Care. I Must Have an iPhone. July 30, 2010March 18, 2017 HAS APPLE PEAKED? Probably not, and it’s a national treasure, for sure . . . but – if you can stand some sharply off-color language from cartoon characters – here is a VERY funny video that compares my iPhone 4 with the HTC Evo I must admit I am now beginning to yearn for. MAKE YOUR OWN CLIP? As if you had time for this – you can now apparently make your own laugh-out-loud video, like the one above, with this. Free. Easy. (Is it? I haven’t tried it.) TREES/PERSON Trees take CO2 out of the air and convert it to oxygen. Today, there are roughly 400 billion trees and nearly 7 billion people – 60 trees for each of us. When I was born, there were roughly 50% more trees and 4.5 billion fewer people – so roughly vaguely 240 trees per person. Discuss. THE ANSWER? Hard to imagine it could be this simple – I haven’t a clue – but I love thinking it could work: a solar-powered process that takes CO2 out of the air and turns it into fuel. They talk of returning atmospheric CO2 levels to pre-industrial levels within a decade of ramping up. BUILDING AMERICA BONDS Bob Fyfe: “I recently heard about Build America Bonds and after a small amount of research feel that they may be a good fit for an IRA, especially in a Roth. I’d like to hear your thoughts, and on the PowerShares Build America Bond fund (BAB) in particular.” ☞ I’m all for building America but would not jump at this. As you probably know, these are federally taxable municipal bonds (so keeping them in an IRA makes sense) subsidized but not guaranteed by the United States Treasury (so you are accepting some risk). Actually, you are accepting two risks. The first is that rising interest rates could depress the values of these long-term bonds as they would depress the value of any other fixed-rate long-term bonds. (Who wants to pay full price for a bond yielding 5.7%, say, if new bonds of similar quality and maturity are yielding 8%?) You’d still get your interest, and repayment in full decades from now if you held on to maturity; but if there had been a bout of inflation along the way, the $25,000 you invested today would have greatly diminished purchasing power when the bond matured. The second, lesser but real risk is that the issuer might default. One imagines an individual issuer that got in trouble would likely be rescued by the state – lest investors demand higher rates on all future bond offerings from within that state. And one imagines that if an entire state got into trouble, the Federal government would step in for the same reason. But in a worst case scenario, where many states were looking to the Federal government for a bail-out, one can imagine some sort of grand restructuring plan where the Treasury does not simply print enough money to bail everyone out 100 cents on the dollar. So if it’s safety and peace of mind you’re after for your IRA, you might consider TIPS. The Treasury will not default. And if we have inflation, the value of your bonds will rise with it, at least in large part. (The government’s calculation of inflation may not match the inflation you experience.) I would stick with recently issued TIPS so they that don’t yet have much “inflation accretion” built into the settlement price – lest deflation deflate that accretion.
Waste Not Wal-Mart July 29, 2010March 18, 2017 TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY – INDEED It used to be owned fairly broadly. Since the Reagan revolution, ownership has shifted sharply to those at the top. Income has risen a mere 16% in those 30 years for folks in the bottom quintile and just 25% for those in the middle quintile – but by 281% for those in the top 1% (and even more for the really rich). Meanwhile, with its recent Citizens United ruling, the corporate-leaning Supreme Court gave the wealthy more sway over who gets elected . . . and the Republican minority in the Senate will not allow voters even to know who is funding the ocean of ads this new ruling will spawn. It’s all here. LIES Jim Leff: “You wrote: ‘And, yes, I know, everyone hates partisan politics, but these are just facts. When Bush promised a humble foreign policy, he was already looking for a way into Iraq. When he said that the “vast majority” of his tax cuts would go to people at the “bottom of the economic ladder,” he was simply flat-out lying. When so much money is involved and the facts are so clear, how can it be called anything else?’ Want an even bigger lie? How about ‘I’m a uniter, not a divider,’ the lie that pulled in the independents? I never heard any journalist (let alone the Kerry campaign) throw that back at him.” WARRANTS Ted Graham: “Can you update us on your current thoughts about BZ+, INHIW and ROICW?” ☞ The easy one is ROICW: it has more than four more years yet to run, and – while still entirely speculative – I actually bought a few more last week at 72 cents. There is the very real chance they will expire worthless; but there is upside as well, as most recently described here. The Boise warrants, by contrast, have less than a year to run. Here is Boise management’s latest discussion of where they are and the challenges they face. Last August, I wrote: The warrants give you the right to buy the stock at $7.50 anytime between now (when you wouldn’t want to, because it’s selling for $4.53) and June 18, 2011 (when you would, if it were selling above $7.50). Were the stock to recover to $10 by then – a “were” so subjunctive it gives new depth to the mood – the warrants would be worth $2.50 each, up a further eightfold from here. So I’m holding almost all of mine, even knowing that the stock might well never approach $7.50 between now and June 18, 2011. In the interim, I have sold a lot of them, mostly at prices ranging from 47 cents (where I sold some last week) to as high as 90-some cents. But you never know what might happen over the next 11 months, so I still have enough that, should the stock resurge, I will have ample profits to visit the newly frozen-over netherworld. And speaking of unlikely freezings . . . Infusystems warrants expire April 11 and the underlying stock would have to double for them even to start being worth anything. The company reports good progress, so I feel fine about the warrants we chose to convert to stock (as described here) – in my case, about two-thirds of them. As for the warrants I chose not to convert? Well, there’s always a chance. WAL*MART As a shareholder, I love this story. In small part: . . . With 2 million employees, 8,400 stores, $400 billion in sales, 100,000 suppliers and lots of baggage as an environmental bad guy, in 2005 Wal-Mart decided to go green. . . . Almost overnight, Wal-Mart changed the way it acquired, stored, handled, cooled, heated, sold and disposed of its products. They reached into every part of their retail operations and found savings in trucking, refrigeration, energy, lighting, and on and on. Last year, Wal-Mart used 4.8 billion fewer plastic bags. Its trucks delivered 77 million more cases while driving 100 million fewer miles. But Wal-Mart soon realized that 90 percent of the embedded energy in its products came not from its stories, but from its suppliers. So that had to change, too. Wal-Mart set three goals: 100 percent renewable energy. Zero waste. Sustainable products for customers and practices for employees. Every Wal-Mart supplier recently received a 15-part questionnaire, asking for details on energy use and renewable practices. The company intends to use this information to issue a Sustainability Index for each of its products. . . . ☞ Rolling up our sleeves to become more efficient. I love it. Because whatever your political philosophy, on one thing we can all agree: efficiency is good, waste impoverishes us all.
Good News on Multiple Fronts Here Are Just Two July 28, 2010March 18, 2017 Listen: for all our very real problems, there is so much stuff to feel great about, and so many reasons to stay engaged and upbeat. And I don’t just mean DuPont’s great earnings report yesterday (hey, maybe we won’t double-dip after all). For example: DFER Democrats for Education Reform – mostly wealthy business types, many of whom would have been moderate Republicans in an earlier era (when there were moderate Republicans), and who couldn’t abide what they perceived as the Party having been captured by the teacher’s unions – issued this assessment yesterday: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will be announcing the Round 2 Race to the Top finalists during a speech he is giving today at the National Press Club entitled “The Quiet Revolution.” Race to the Top has effected more positive change in state and local education laws and policies than any other federal education program in history. NCLB [No Child Left Behind] was akin to an IBM PC circa 1995 – uniform, powerful, but clunky. Race to the Top is a 2010 iPad – a flexible platform that provides policymakers with dynamic tools to create and adopt innovative apps and nimbly customize them to their specific needs. It has mobilized policy-makers, principals and teachers to create the conditions that are needed to help schools meet high standards of excellence, and it has unleashed waves of creativity to reach that goal. Each state has taken its own unique route, yet the objective is common. While not all states enacted the big changes we saw in states like Colorado, New York, Louisiana, and Rhode Island, the gains are nonetheless significant. Some states enacted solid reforms that are not revolutionary but take critical steps toward better teacher training and learning. Almost every state, with just a few exceptions, began to re-examine its education policies. That process is ongoing and will not end with the announcement of the Round 2 finalists today or with the announcement of Round 2 winners in September. States and districts, teachers and parents, are still learning from each other about what’s possible, from both a political and policy perspective. Our education system didn’t break overnight, and it will take more than one federal program and more than one 4-year grant cycle to fix it. What is indisputable, however, is that Race to the Top has put wind in the sails of the education reform movement and, in just a year and a half, has accelerated the pace of change more than any other past federal effort and much more than most of us dreamed possible. ☞ For another example: DODD-FRANK: GOOD FOR INVESTORS Did you know that, thanks to Dodd-Frank, the Financial Reform bill signed into law last week over all but unanimous Republican opposition, your broker now has – for the first time in history – a personal fiduciary responsibility to act in your best interest? And did you know that brokerage firms can no longer force aggrieved clients into binding arbitration? (In those, the brokerage firm has this edge: arbitrators know that to get the assignment, and thus their income, they must be approved by both parties . . . and they know that the brokerage firms will have lots of future cases come to arbitration whereas for the client this is probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing.) You can still both agree to arbitration, but that’s no longer your only recourse. Most people wind up with nothing – I’ve long quoted financial advisor Venita Van Caspel – “not because they plan to fail, but because they fail to plan.” Which is relevant here, because in updating “The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need” – ever – which I have to do for a new edition every few years (I ask you: how embarrassing is that?), I checked this weekend to see whether she is still living. Happily, she is. But oh, gosh (thanks, Google), look at this: it seems that in 1989, Ms. Van Caspel – who for a while billed herself as “The First Lady of Financial Planning” – was accused of selling properties to limited partnerships owned by her clients without telling her clients she had an interest in them. When the partnerships tanked, and the truth came out, her clients sued . . . only to have the court agree that The First Lady of Financial Planning had been acting as their stock broker, not their financial planner, and thus had no duty to disclose the conflict. Dodd-Frank now makes stock brokers fiduciaries, too. Vote Democrat.
The FT View July 27, 2010March 18, 2017 CHALLENGING FINANCIAL TIMES Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator for the Financial Times of London. “My reading of contemporary Republican thinking,” he writes, “is that there is no chance of any attempt to arrest adverse long-term fiscal trends should they return to power.” Read his analysis here, and pass it on to your friends or relatives who don’t think it matters who’s driving the car. (“Supply-side economics transformed Republicans from a minority party into a majority party. It allowed them to promise lower taxes, lower deficits and, in effect, unchanged spending. Why should people not like this combination? Who does not like a free lunch?”) (“Indeed, Greg Mankiw, no less, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, has responded to the view that broad-based tax cuts would pay for themselves, as follows: “I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don’t.” Indeed, he has referred to those who believe this as ‘charlatans and cranks.’ Those are his words, not mine, though I agree. They apply, in force, to contemporary Republicans, alas.”) Wolf concludes: “In sum, a great deal of trouble lies ahead, for the US and the world.” But only if, I would argue, we fail to rise to the occasion. Hard as the Republicans will try to rewrite history – see Paul Krugman’s latest – we really don’t have to vote for them. KRUGMAN “There’s now a concerted effort under way to rehabilitate Mr. Bush’s image on at least three fronts,” Paul Krugman wrote Friday – “the economy, the deficit and the war.” Look how they’re trying to fool us. Again. And, yes, I know, everyone hates partisan politics, but these are just facts. When Bush promised a humble foreign policy, he was already looking for a way into Iraq. When he said that the “vast majority” of his tax cuts would go to people at the “bottom of the economic ladder,” he was simply flat-out lying. When so much money is involved and the facts are so clear, how can it be called anything else? HEAR HERE Bob Fyfe: “Friday, you mentioned that only 15% of hearing aid shoppers ask for a deal. Songbird Hearing in New Jersey has developed a fantastic, low-cost hearing aid. The company is a spin-off of Sarnoff Corporation, the inventors of HDTV and much else. The price is $179.90 and there is currently a 30-day free trial where you pay only $14.95 for shipping and handling. Full disclosure: I was the salesperson that sold the custom-made integrated circuit (chip) they use. I no longer work for that company but still have a bias about how good the product is. The ‘brains’ of the hearing aid were designed by a team of top-notch audio designers from a Fortune-500 semiconductor company in conjunction with a design team from Sarnoff. It’s definitely worth a try.” DIAL A HUMAN Frank Schrader: “Here’s where to go when you want find out how to bypass voicemail for many companies: dialahuman.com.”
Exhuming Simon Bolivar July 26, 2010March 18, 2017 STAND UP Peter Snow Cao: “I am sure you are getting a mail on this, but maybe others will find it an expensive way to try standing. Cheap and easy way to try-before-you-buy in under two minutes: boxes. I use an empty book box to lift my monitor and an old computer tower box on its side for my keyboard and mouse. I also stand in my bare feet and have pair of flip-flops I will stand on part of the time for a softer gentler feel. Conversion back to a sitting height is just as fast and easy. No tools required.” SIT DOWN Bob Sakowski: “I am a poll worker here in Florida and the last election I was the Poll Deputy, making sure everyone stayed in line, was orderly, etc., which meant being on my feet from an hour before the polls opened to two hours after they closed. The next morning came and I could barely get out of bed, felt like I had broken my back. After an MRI, the doctor found that all of my disks were severely dehydrated and compressed with a number of herniated disks, much arthritic damage to the vertebrate themselves, plus in three cases adjacent vertebrates were in contact with each other and the disks were actually impinging on the cord. I was 67 at the time. The moral of the story is obviously this: Check with your doctor to see if your spine will be able to hold up to standing all day before taking the plunge.” BEEP Sally: “Love the tip about bypassing voicemail. The wonderful David Pogue originated ‘a national campaign to take back your time and money from the country’s cellular carriers.’ You can find his instructions for joining in here.” HUGO CHÁVEZ – MAN OF THE (STRAIGHT) PEOPLE After years of delay, the U.N. finally granted consultative status to IGLHRC (rhymes with GIGGLE-herk), the New York-based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission. The vote was 23-13, with the U.S. leading the way – President Obama called the vote an “important step forward for human rights” – and only Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, among South and Central American nations, voting no. (Chávez was joined in his opposition by at least two Republicans who urged other countries to reject the U.S. position.) HUGO CHÁVEZ – CREEPY AND WORSE My friend Thor Halvorssen gives a perspective in the Washington Post that should give any Chávez fan second and third thoughts: . . . After his failed coup attempt in 1992 against Venezuela’s democratically elected government, Chávez, who had named his rebel movement for [Simon] Bolívar, was imprisoned for two years and eventually received a presidential pardon. Upon running for office in 1998, Chávez dubbed his party the Bolivarian Movement, and as president he changed the name of Venezuela to include “Bolivarian Republic.” He has often left an empty chair at cabinet meetings, for Bolívar’s spirit, and even ordered the central bank to deliver Bolívar’s sword for his personal use. (He has since presented replicas to Moammar Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Alexander Lukashenko, Vladimir Putin, Raúl Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) . . . If you can imagine Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln rolled into one, you can appreciate Bolívar’s historical power in much of Latin America, and why a “Bolivarian ” revolution is infinitely more legitimizing than a “Chávez” revolution. . . . Now, as you’ll read in the Post, he has had Boliovar’s body exhumed. . . . “I had some doubts,” Chávez told his nation, paraphrasing the poet Pablo Neruda, “but after seeing his remains, my heart said, ‘Yes, it is me.’ Father, is that you, or who are you? The answer: ‘It is me, but I awaken every hundred years when the people awaken.’ ” By presidential decree, every television station in Venezuela showed images of Bolívar in historic paintings, then images of the skeleton, and then images of Chávez, with the national anthem blaring. The message of this macabre parody was unmistakable: Chávez is not a follower of Bolívar — Chávez is Bolívar, reincarnated. And anyone who opposes or criticizes him is a traitor not just to Chávez but to history. . . . And yet, beyond its creepiness, writes Thor, this is a complete perversion: . . . Bolívar would be outraged by the notion of Chávez, a socialist, as his intellectual or political heir. In his correspondence, Bolívar revealed himself as someone in the company of Thomas Jefferson much more than Karl Marx (who documented his hatred for Bolívar in great detail). He described the American form of government — so disparaged by Chávez — as “the best on Earth.” The small library that accompanied him on his military campaigns included Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” several biographies of George Washington and dozens of works on the rights of man and the tyranny of illegitimate government. . . . ☞ Cry for Venezuela.
Cooking Like a Stand-Up Guy July 23, 2010March 18, 2017 SAVE INK Who’d a thunk. According to these tips, some fonts – like Ecofont– use a lot less ink than others. (Try Century Gothic?) Using readability to print web pages will save the expensive color ink required to print ads you probably didn’t want to print anyway. THE BEEP AARP reports that only 15% of hearing-aid shoppers ask for a deal; yet because the markups are so high, most of those who do ask for a deal get one. Tell Gramps. I’m not going to say I actually receive the AARP Bulletin. But those who do tell me that this list of 99 money-saving tips includes some good ones. And most are not age-specific. For example: Did you know that – whatever your age – you can by-pass maddening voice mail instructions by dialing (in this order) 1 (which by-passes Sprint), * (which by-passes Verizon), and then # (which bypasses AT&T and T-Mobile)? Dial all three in quick succession and one of them should take you straight to the beep. CORN PUDDING Maureen Welch: ‘Sounds good. any chance you could post the recipe?’ ☞ We had it again last night – to raves: Charles’s Corn Pudding Two ears of corn per person Butter or olive oil to taste Salt Pepper Jalapeno (optional) Preheat oven to 350° Husk and thoroughly clean all the silk from the corn. Cut ears in half so they are shorter and easier to manage on the grater. Grate corn on a box grater into a large bowl. I leave a couple of ears ungrated, and, instead, cut the kernels off with a sharp knife to add some texture. Season however you like. I generally use plenty of coarse salt and black pepper and a very finely chopped fresh jalapeño but tonight I did not have the jalapeno so I substituted a small amount of finely chopped pimento and flat leaf parsley. Blend thoroughly and then pour/push the seasoned corn mixture into a baking dish, smooth out and dot the top with several small pats of butter pushed into the batter. If you don’t want to use the butter you can drizzle olive oil on the top instead. Dust the top with a bit more black pepper and course salt. Bake until done – the top should be golden and a little bubbly and the sides start to pull away from the dish. Cooking time will depend on just how much you are making; anywhere from 30 to 50 minutes. Instead of a baking dish, I usually use a greased cast iron skillet, serving family style but it works just as well and is a bit more formal in individual ramekins baked in a Bain Marie. If it hasn’t gotten as brown as I’d like, I put it under the broiler for a minute or so to crisp up. ☞ If you don’t love it, you must have missed a step. Do it again. STAND-UP GUY This all started with the news that the longer you sit, the shorter you live. (Here is corroboration, just published yesterday, from a 14-year study of 123,000 people.) So some of you suggested standing desks . . . Clark Cole bought one . . . And (if I remember his phrasing correctly) “Oh, Mamma” does his back ever hurt now. He requested your help and you, shall we say, rose to the occasion: Karen Tiede: “On what is Clark standing? My back feels much better when I have a resilient mat – look at what cashiers stand on in the grocery store.” Margie Power: “I don’t proselytize about many things in this life, but Pete Egoscue’s books, Pain Free and Pain Free at Your PC, took me from debilitating back pain to no pain back in 2002. Just 15 minutes a day of simple postures makes all the difference. If I get the slightest twinge of back pain nowadays, I do his exercises for a couple of days and all is well.” Jeff Cox: “Standing properly is fairly easy. Definitely, definitely, have a rest for one foot, a rail or a box or something to keep one foot off the floor. The next time you are in a pub, look at the rail at the bottom of the bar – serving this very purpose. Lifting one foot takes some strain off the back. Resting one’s elbows is probably also a good idea. Others: Work in the middle of the desk, not at the edge. Move around a bit. (Walking is less tiring than standing.) Consider not believing every bit of health advice that comes free from a financial advice website.” Steve Margerum: “ . . . Maybe he should just take his computer down to his neighborhood bar instead.” Tom Anthony: “It took me almost three weeks (at age 69) to get used to standing up at my computer all day, especially if I did a long hard run in the morning and was worn out before starting a six-hour computer session. I found it initially very tiring since I had never stood in one position for so long before. But your standing muscles adapt and strengthen. Now, four months later, standing in front of the computer all day long does not bother me at all. It helps to shift your weight about and stand on one leg now and then. I sometimes go through some Yoga positions, e.g Tree Pose, while reading a long article.” ☞ Like Jeff, Tom also mentioned the “bar rail” – and installed one he made from some two-inch Home Depot PVC tubing he had left over from a project. “The bar rail seems counterintuitive,” he writes, “but it is surprisingly effective.” And he goes on: “If you go barefoot around the house like I do, you might want to put a soft pad in the area where you stand because bare feet on a hard floor for long periods can be uncomfortable. My pad is an old exercise pad folded over twice so that there are four layers under me. The give of the pad may make you unconsciously keep adjusting your leg and back muscles and that may help avoid fatiguing them. Clark’s problem may be related to the table height. I noticed that his IKEA model had a maximum height of 38 5/8″. I adjusted the height of my table to 40 5/8″ so that my forearms were level with the keyboard – I’m 5′ 10″. If my table were 2″ lower like his, I might be bending forward some to accommodate the lower table height and that would strain the back muscles. He might consider putting a book or two under his monitor/keyboard to raise it and also to tilt the monitor upwards.” Tom offers these suggestions from an exercise physiologist for people who sit all day. Michael Choquette: “I don’t think there is any single proper way to stand at a stand-up desk for the same reason that an entire day of sitting is bad: a body doesn’t like to be forced into any single alignment for hours on end. I stand: at attention; at ease; on one foot (for ankle strength); and, to shake things, up occasionally I pace around while composing emails or writing code. I have been using an upright employer-provided desk at work for three years. My desk accommodates sitting as well as standing by way of an electric motor that raises and lowers the top and also displays the current height to the tenth of an inch. With that display, I always know exactly where I stand. (Sorry.) I have the desk because my orthopedist said my severe leg and low back pain from years of desk sitting would go away if I didn’t sit so much. (He was right.) I don’t think many people can afford the setup I have, and I am fortunate to have it at work. I am not tall, only 5’8”, and for full comfort and straight back while standing at my desk, I set the table height at 40 inches. This is the table height that works best for both my keyboarding and monitor viewing. Now, to Clark’s specifics: According to the Ikea web site, the maximum height of the Fredrik desk is only 38-5/8 inches. I would think this height would be good for only those who are shorter than me. This could be Clark’s problem – the Fredrik is simply not at the height he requires. Something else to consider: 8 hours of standing might be okay for some, but I find that mixing up the standing and the sitting throughout the day works best. Fredrik does not provide this flexibility.”
Let Me Know July 22, 2010March 18, 2017 Thanks for the excellent “back pain” suggestions in response to yesterday’s call for help. I’ll post them tomorrow – along with the corn pudding recipe you demanded and ways to save printer ink and skip straight to “the beep.” But I don’t want to lose focus. Today, it’s all about two Rachel Maddow clips. When I first heard the Shirley Sherrod story – an African-American USDA employee fired for what appeared to be anti-White bias – I didn’t listen very closely. Chances are, like me, you’ve now gotten the whole story. But I urge you to watch Rachel Maddow put it all in context. Her report speaks volumes about the vast – or at least the very effective – rightwing conspiracy. In the Sixties, there was a well-meaning “War on Poverty.” It helped a lot of people, but its unintended consequences were massive. Hopefully, we liberals learned important lessons – as when President Clinton signed the welfare-to-work reform. Now there seems to be an altogether different kind of “war” – almost a war on the poor themselves, especially poor people of color. Someone is working very hard to feed Fox News bad information, and Fox News is obediently feeding it to a wide audience primed to want to believe it. Watch the clip and let me know if I’m off base. Shirley Sherrod has been reinstated. But how do you reinstate ACORN, which provided so many services to the poor? And how do you reinstate the estimated 45,000 Americans who have been dying each year for lack of health insurance the Republicans fought so hard not to extend to them? And what are we to make of this second clip, in which Republicans gut the latest “jobs” bill of virtually all its job-creating provisions? When the deficits were run to lower a billionaire’s tax rate on dividends from 39.6% to 15%, or to rush to war with Iraq, deficits were okay. But now, to run them to increase funding for SBA loans? Filibuster! Watch the clips. Let me know.
There’s Hope July 21, 2010March 18, 2017 HONEST TEA MET WITH HONESTY — MOSTLY This is fun. Full disclosure: if everyone who reads this buys a million bottles of Honest Tea this month, I’ll be able to retire. STAND-UP GUY Clark Cole: “I enjoyed your range of articles on stand-up desks so much that I researched and finally bought one of Ikea’s $149 Fredrik Computer work stations to give it a try. I’m in decent shape – I walk as much as possible and bike to work roughly twice a week – but oh Mamma does my lower back hurt after standing in front of that desk for an hour! Can you see if any of your readers have suggestions on how to stand properly?” ☞ Readers? The floor is yours. MY CORRESPONDENT Judy: “Your correspondent’s attitude reminds me of all the gay politicians who are homophobes. This guy’s family came from Mexico but, by God, none of those other wetbacks deserve to be here? [Judy, Judy, Judy . . . it’s people who come here illegally he thinks should not, and that is not an unreasonable view to hold.] His mention of not voting to tax cigarettes in California speaks volumes. First he HATES smoke and HATES those who smoke but taxes are SO EVIL that even smokers shouldn’t have to pay them. Wonder how he thinks we’ll pay for the parts of government that he DOES like such as national defense and, oh yeah, border control. People like this LOVE to HATE. The right can exploit that kind of tunnel vision all day long. Remember your recent column about how people who are agitated won’t (and maybe can’t) listen to logical information that disproves to their beliefs? This is a clear case of that phenomenon.” ☞ My correspondent has some strongly held (and I obviously think wrong-headed) beliefs. But I’m happy to report that he seems genuinely interested in my point of view and seems, also, to be a very decent guy. He’s not crazy to think we should enforce our laws; or that people should be free to smoke if they want to. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, having been exposed to the notion that “if we have to tax some things, we may as well tax the things we hope to discourage,” he came around on the cigarette tax. And I’ll bet that if we could come up with comprehensive immigration reform that gives current “illegals” a path to citizenship, and rationalizes the rest of our immigration policy, you might agree with him that that law – tough as it is to turn anyone away – should be enforced. So don’t give up on my correspondent. He is a good guy. George Hamlett: “Most people, most of the time, choose to believe what they want to believe. Facts have precious little to do with opinions. It’s called belief bias. You’re never going to change a closed mind, and it’s a waste of time to try. I can be well-intentioned and still believe the earth is flat, or aliens landed at Area 51, or either Saddam or W. or both were behind the atrocity of 9/11. I can ardently believe anything I choose to believe.” ☞ True. But the readers here are not “most people.” Every so often I’ll get an email from one who says (in effect): “You’ve worn me down. I see it differently now.” Next to the satisfaction I will someday get as my flight backs out from the gate without having to start its main engines or wait for a tug (and next to Charles’s corn pudding, which I know sounds almost Dickensian, but that just means you’ve never tried it), this is perhaps the most thrilling thing I can think of. To wit, from yesterday’s mail: Steve Strunk: “I thought you might appreciate an opinion from someone who used to be on the well-intentioned right, like your correspondent. I first became aware of politics during the term of Jimmy Carter and remember all of those news casts regarding the hostages in Iran. This led to a negative opinion towards Democrats in general. I for the most part stayed conservative and mostly voted Republican through GWB’s first term. I was always a bit wary of the Republican party though because I support the rights of people to do what they want without government getting involved unless it hurts others. So I have always been pro-choice, pro gay marriage, etc. . . . I found your site via the old one at Ameritrade as I had followed you there for the financial columns. When you first started posting here on things that were not financial I was irritated and frankly disagreed with most of your points. I stayed because I appreciated your writing style and you still mostly posted on finance things. . . . Then came George W. Bush and my feelings towards the Republican party slammed right into a wall. The Republican party I used to admire for their fiscal conservatism is gone. It has been taken hostage by the radical right and the religious right (who are often the same). I took this opportunity to review my political attitude and realized that the Democratic Party really is more in line with my beliefs. I have also come to believe that government is supposed to do more than provide a military. I have found that, instead of believing that people are bad and trying to take everything from the government they can, it makes more sense to believe that people in general are doing the best they can and if some end up in bad situations it is better to try and help them than to just expect them to crawl from the muck on their own . . . I am an atheist and I find it strange that my beliefs about how people should treat each other seems more in line with the Bible than those who profess to believe in it. It seems that they believe we should not have a system to help those most in need. Given all of this, I became a devoted supporter of the Democratic Party and have given, for me, quite a bit of money to various candidates and to the Party itself. So I guess what I am trying to say in this long email is: keep posting. It very well might eventually sink in as it did with me.” ☞ There is hope yet. And wait til you try the corn pudding.
The Well-Intentioned Right July 20, 2010March 18, 2017 FINANCIAL REFORM Andrew Zachary: “I think you let Don C. off too easily yesterday. The Republican party was against Social Security and Medicare, and they are still aim to eliminate or gut both programs. They were against the minimum-wage bill, against child-labor laws, against unemployment insurance, against the SEC, against … well, the list is very long. Heavy-handed regulation is indeed onerous, but the absence of regulation is far worse. If there is one key lesson to be drawn from the last 2+ years of financial turmoil, It think it is this: Markets work best when they are transparent and efficient and all parties are following well prescribed, sensible rules. Unregulated or badly supervised markets inevitably fail, and they often fail in a spectacular fashion.” ☞ I share Andrew’s view. But one of the pleasures of this column is that I get to hear from people who disagree. I don’t often change my mind much (and only occasionally change theirs), but all views deserve a courteous hearing – and it certainly helps to understand where the other side is coming from. (If we had had a better sense that 70% of those who voted to reelect Bush believed Iraq had a hand in attacking us on 9/11, maybe there would have been some way to get the truth out to more of them?) And so I give you one member of . . . THE WELL-INTENTIONED RIGHT One of you – genuinely well-meaning but off-base, in my view – has been emailing me with the general argument that, “The Democrats are bad for the country. They are bad for society. They are killing us.” “I can’t see where any of them have done much good if any to helping our society,” he writes. “Republicans haven’t been all that helpful lately either, but they haven’t hurt us as much. We’re in a bad way in this country. We need to get back to the basics of the Constitution. We need to scale down government, not grow it.” My correspondent quotes Ronald Reagan – “the most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help” – without acknowledging that Reagan grew the size of government massively, both as governor of California and President, and that he started us on the path that ten-tupled the National Debt during Reagan/Bush/Bush. (Clinton, a Democrat, righted things in between the two Bushes, leaving Bush 43 “surpluses as far as the eye could see” and imploring the nation, as he left office, to “save Social Security first” – as in: shore up our finances rather than cut taxes for the wealthy.) My correspondent blames the 2009 budget deficit on Obama, not acknowledging that the budget is set in advance of the year (Obama was not President in 2008) or that in the face of a potential global depression massive deficits are, unfortunately, exactly what you do need to run. He decries the financial reform bill just passed as too much government – without noting that such people as Republican Hank Paulson believe the bill’s measures, had they been in place in 2005, would have spared us the meltdown. And of course he hates the health care reforms that he sees as nationalization of health care. (If only!) When challenged that Canada and so many others are able to provide good care for just 11% or less of their GDP compared to the 17% or so we spend, he says, well, perhaps, but their care is not as good as ours (yet they outrank us in longevity), and, he says, a lot of the difference is due to the “astounding” cost of providing health care to illegal immigrants, who pay no taxes and are bleeding the country dry. I asked him what “astounding” meant, and noted that even if we were spending $10,000 a year on each of 10 million illegals – and I highly doubt that we are – that $100 billion would account for considerably less than one of the six or more GDP percentage points that separate us and the rest of the industrialized nations. And so a word now about illegal aliens . . . Many illegal aliens do pay taxes – often, more than they owe. Read it here. And while I totally agree we should gain control of our borders and have a rational immigration policy, I asked my correspondent to consider whether, from an economic point of view, it makes sense to think that legal immigrants are good for the economy but illegal immigrants are not. If, for the sake of argument, all our ancestors had arrived here illegally, would they not still have gone on to build this great country? Was it their legal status that made so many of them productive citizens – or was it their drive to better their lives and the lives of their children, coupled with their gratitude for the opportunity to be here? And now back to the main thrust . . . My correspondent was gracious in recognizing there was a limit to how much time I could devote to our correspondence, but he asked me to read this 2004 article, “Rolling Back Government: Lessons from New Zealand” – without recognizing that one thing New Zealand has going for it is its efficient government health care system, the very thing my correspondent thinks we must avoid. If we had all read this article in 2004, when it appeared, and promptly rolled back coal mining regulation, would that have averted this year’s tragedy in West Virginia – or was the problem that enforcement was too lax? If we had read it in 2004 and rolled back regulation of off-shore drilling, would the Gulf Coast today be in less distress? If we had read it in 2004 and done away with FDIC insurance and the social safety net, would the financial crisis have been less severe? My correspondent’s final (so far) email is heartfelt, and instructive – but, again, in my view, wildly off base. He writes: The issue for me with illegals is not necessarily them paying taxes. It is that they are illegal. I’m a second generation American. My grandparents on both sides came over from Mexico…legally. They moved around early but ended up settling in El Paso where my parents met and married. Both my parents and myself despise illegals of all nationalities. It doesn’t matter that they pick my lettuce for cheap wages. I don’t care that they make the beds in the hotels. I want them tossed back to wherever they came from. I want my federal government to do what they are tasked to do, like secure our borders, and get out of things they aren’t allowed to be doing…nationalizing health care, regulating wages, creating red tape for private businesses. The government increases the cost of doing business…end of story. And every time government passes a law, we get a bit farther away from the intent of the US Constitution as it was written….a federal government with limited powers. Liberty for our citizens. You mention tobacco. I don’t smoke and never have. I hate smoke and being around smokers. But I voted against taxing cigarettes in California. Bad idea. [We’ve got to tax something – why not tax things we want to discourage? Good idea! – A.T.] Do you ever wonder how many of the jobs lost to other countries is a direct result of our own government imposing laws and restrictions on businesses? Minimum wage, unions, family medical leave act, unemployment insurance, corporate taxation, civil rights act, and the untold number of other taxes and rules and regulations that are strangling business here in this country. I don’t blame any of those companies a bit for leaving. As we continue down this path of the democrats, look for our national unemployment rate to continue to rise to the levels seen in Europe. After all, we are headed in their direction. [And yet our economy was pretty good in the Nineties, even with the Civil Rights Act, unemployment insurance, corporate taxation and the rest. How to explain that? — A.T.] I feel bad for my kids and grandkids. If even possible, they will be the ones suffering as we try to undo what has been done and what Obama is doing today. ☞ Down with public education! Down with Social Security! Down with civil rights! What’s important (to me, anyway) about my correspondent’s views is that he is hardly alone, and quite clearly well-intentioned. Yes, the world has changed somewhat since 1789 (electricity and 300 million more Americans spring to mind). And, yes, he might be willing to go along with letting women vote and freeing the slaves. But there’s a limit to how much change is worth tolerating. A government plan to go to the moon? To fund the Marshall Plan? To provide a social safety net? To regulate securities markets? To insure bank deposits? To cut out the middle-man in college loans? To tax tobacco? Or income? Or corporate income? To my correspondent, some of this – or anything beyond this, at least – just goes too far. A perfect example: this crazy Democratic initiative to provide everyone with affordable health care. What other society would be dumb enough to try that? (Other than all our major competitors and New Zealand.) We Democrats – and Independents and moderate Republicans – clearly have our work cut out for us to move good people like my correspondent closer to our views.
Intelligent, Mad, Crazy, Sick, Better July 19, 2010March 18, 2017 INTELLIGENT LIFE “Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.” – Bill Watterson (author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes) MAD MEN The new season starts Sunday at 10pm on AMC – set your Tivo. Here’s a perceptive review that may resonate with aficionados. (Most of it is too inside to be of interest if you haven’t been watching.) CRAZY SPECULATION The latest from Borealis subsidiary Chorus Motors subsidiary WheelTug (which is handing out this brochure at the big Farnborough Air Show this week). One more partner signs on: Farnborough, UK, 19 July 2010 — WheelTug Limited, developer of the WheelTug aircraft electric drive system, has retained Endeavor Analysis, LLC, a leading consulting firm on aircraft landing gears, to provide structural and strength analysis work for the landing gear connected to the WheelTug system. The agreement was announced today at the biennial Farnborough Air Show, now underway here. “We are delighted to add Endeavor Analysis to the team,” said WheelTug’s CEO, Isaiah Cox. “They add the pedigreed landing gear expertise to handle the development and certification of the WheelTug system for the 737 and beyond.” “EA looks forward to joining the WheelTug team and working together to bring this exciting new technology through development and into production,” said Endeavor Analysis’ Co-Owner, Scott Perkins. . . . NEED HEALTH INSURANCE? Check out healthcare.gov for help getting the most from the health care system, based on your state of residence and personal situation. FINANCIAL REFORM Don C.: “Regarding Friday’s comments on the passing of Financial Reform, did you ever think that many Republicans voted against it because it is not good legislation? It’s just another example of big government closing the barn door after the jack ass is long gone. All we can be thankful for in this bill is that it is not a lot worse . . . most of the worst provisions have been diluted/stripped out in order to get the bill passed. It will wind up adding more costly regulation and will do nothing to avoid the next financial crises.” ☞ Sadly, I think the Republicans these days actually do vote against pretty much everything regardless of merit – even the bipartisan budget commission that they themselves proposed. (Remember? It had seven Republican cosponsors, if memory serves; but once Obama said, “you’re right, we should do this,” they all dropped their sponsorship and voted against it.) Hank Paulson is a Republican who thinks the new bill will help avert future crises. And a simple reading of the provisions of the bill buttresses his argument, though – no question – a lot will depend on the quality and resolve of the regulators. My expectation is that the Administration will look to install really top quality folks, to prove this can succeed. Republicans hated the SEC, way back when, and probably the FDA and the FTC and FDIC. (Short of time to research them all; happy to stand corrected if I’ve got one wrong.) They hated regulating coal mining or offshore oil drilling; they hated crimping tobacco sales. But is government always bad? Would we have been better off without these things? Was DARPA wrong to fund development of the Internet? Was Eisenhower wrong to launch that massive infrastructure project we call the Interstate Highway system? We really need to get over this idea that “the government should keep its filthy hands off Medicare” (to shorthand it) – there is much about government that really does serve us well.