Venture Capital September 16, 2010March 18, 2017 DEMOCRATS.ORG Check out the revamped democrats.org, launched yesterday. There’s a lot there, including links to articles like this encouraging report from Time on the stimulus: . . . Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more. But in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, Obama’s effusive Recovery Act point man, “Now the fun stuff starts!” The “fun stuff,” about one-sixth of the total cost, is an all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries; computerize a pen-and-paper health system; promote data-driven school reforms; and ramp up the research of the future. “This is a chance to do something big, man!” Biden said during a 90-minute interview with TIME. For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world’s largest venture-capital fund. It’s pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet. . . . ☞ And speaking of the government-seeded Internet, democrats.org has a link to the iPhone app I’ve been mentioning that lets you join our army of door-to-door canvassers, tells you which doors to knock on, and receives your report on the results of your door-knocks to enhance our database (and keep people from having their doors knocked on too much). Pretty amazing grassroots tools, neighbor to neighbor. All in an effort to keep the country moving forward toward a brighter future. RANDOM COOKING TIPS Just because ketchup turns brown and is a couple of years past its expiration date doesn’t mean it’s not basically fine. It just means you have been unaccountably restraining your ketchup consumption. (Why? Ketchup makes almost anything better! Try it on salmon! Try it with peanut butter and bacon! Try it on tomato slices!) Or else it means you bought several cases at once, on sale, as an investment. Nicely done. You could shuck an ear of corn, spend a whole lot of time waiting for a pot of water to boil, drop in the corn and wait a few minutes more. Or you could just zap it for two minutes, shuck and eat. (If God did not intend corn to be cooked this way, why would He have invented microwaves?) Tomorrow: Shucking Like a Guy
Be Happy September 15, 2010March 18, 2017 …(third estimated tax payment due today)… here’s the form and instructions NBIX Suggested here at $2.60 half a year ago (and partly sold at $6.45 here in August), we had hoped NBIX might report good data on a depression application. Guru thought the stock would go to 8 or more if it did – or drop to 4 on bad news. Yesterday, we got that bad news and the stock dropped to $5.65 in after-hours trading. Guru doesn’t expect more news of any kind for a couple of years, but – for the reasons Guru outlined here – I plan to hold what I had not already sold in August. (And if it drops back under $4, perhaps buy a bit more.) As always: only with money you can truly afford to lose. PRIMARY ELECTION RESULTS Wow. BANK BY MAGIC Donald Stewart: “Like the Chase Quick Deposit app you wrote up, USAA Federal Savings Bank has an iPhone app which allows you to deposit checks by taking a picture. It works VERY well, and they have a $10,000 daily deposit limit.” ☞ Better still. Hurry up, Citibank. David D’Antonio: “My credit union has had this type of app for a while (with a limit of $5000 I think, not that I get checks in any amount close to that) and it’s pretty fabulous. This is living in the 21st century; I can deposit checks with my phone!” ☞ Which is the perfect segue to . . . A HEARTENING OUTLOOK From Monday’s Huffington Post: Buffett, Ballmer Predict Bright Economic Future BUTTE, Mont. — Some of the biggest names in business said Monday that they see a bright future for the economy, with famed investor Warren Buffett declaring the country and world will not fall back into the grips of the recession. “I am a huge bull on this country. We are not going to have a double-dip recession at all,” said Buffett, chairman of Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. “I see our businesses coming back across the board.” Buffett said the same things that worked for the country through a century of two world wars, a depression and more – all while increasing the standard of living – will work again. He said banks are lending money again, businesses are hiring employees and he expects the economy to come back stronger than ever. “This country works,” Buffett said during a question-and-answer session via video at the Montana Economic Development Summit. “The best is yet to come.” The likes of Buffett, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer and General Electric Co. Chairman Jeff Immelt told the nearly 2,000 business leaders, government officials, aspiring entrepreneurs and others at the summit that things are getting better. They also offered some ideas for what needs to be done. Ballmer said there soon will be more technological advancement and invention than there was during the Internet era. That will help drive business growth, he said. “I am very enthusiastic what the future holds for our industry and what our industry will mean for growth in other industries,” said Ballmer, whose company is based in Seattle. He envisions new technologies that move beyond the Internet to tie together computers, phones, televisions and data centers to create amazing new products. And the pace of innovation will increase as technology makes workers more productive. “All areas of science today are moving forward more quickly,” Ballmer said. “The speed of scientific breakthrough is accelerating.” The conference was organized by U.S. Sen. Max Baucus. The Montana Democrat said it leaves “bickering and name-calling” back in Washington, D.C., so leaders can find good ideas. Immelt said angry political rhetoric is not helpful and headlines are too focused on finding negative indicators. He said business at GE, one of the world’s largest companies, is improving. Immelt said the country is going to need to adjust, though. The economy since the 1970s has been driven by consumer credit and a misguided notion in building a “lazy” service economy, he said, and manufacturing, with an aim to reduce the trade deficit, is the key. “It was just wrong. It was stupid. It was insane,” Immelt said of the push for a service-based economy. “The future of the economy has to be as an exporter.” He said Fairfield, Conn.-based GE is now finding it profitable to build manufacturing and service centers in the United States rather than overseas, because it is more competitive to do so. More investment is needed in technology innovation, exports need to be rejuvenated, and clean energy and affordable health care need to be given top billing for policymakers, Immelt said. But the corporate leader said he recognizes a polarizing environment in Washington makes it unlikely a national energy policy and other helpful guidance will ever take hold. Instead, he urged local business leaders and government officials in the audience to come up with their own local solutions. “Anger is not a strategy. Anger does not create growth. Only optimism creates growth,” he said. “Be the contrarian. Everyone is mad today. Be happy.”
House Rules "Forayed" Is Definitely a Word September 14, 2010March 18, 2017 THE PARTY OF NO … JUDICIAL CONFIRMATIONS A smaller percentage of President Obama’s nominees has been confirmed at this point in his presidency than in any other presidency in American history. (And yet, with some exceptions, his nominees have been less ideological than those of his predecessors.) So finds the Alliance for Justice. There is a striking contrast between how the Democratic minority worked with President Bush after he “won” in 2000 – with fewer votes than Gore – and how the Republican minority has chosen to work with President Obama after he won – with 10 million more votes than McCain – in 2008. This is just one example. IPHONE SCRABBLE I’d just like to note that FORAYED is a word, and that the iPhone Scrabble app – which was not free – surely should have buttons that allow you to: Override its ignorance of words like FORAYED. Hear definitions of any of its preposterous words (you’d touch an icon to hear the definition and shake the phone violently to reject it). PECTIZES? CALLANT? ACNODES? Really? Allow a “back” function in case you accidentally touch “play” before completing your word (easy to do, especially if the vehicle you’re riding in hits a bump). You were going to make ANAGRAM for 72 points (with the 50-point bonus) but accidentally touched “play” after just AN and got 4 points instead. Allow a “back” function for when you see that the computer had the Q and an I, and you opened up a double triple letter score by placing an unexposed I just below the triple, so it could make QI in both directions for 62 points (it’s no reflection on your IQ if you are unfamiliar with QI) – and, well, you could just as easily have started your word one letter back so the I would not have fallen below the triple. Not to say you should be proud of using the “back” button in this circumstance, but what golfer is not allowed the occasional mulligan? And for heaven’s sake, you’re competing against more computing power than all of NASA had when it put a man on the moon, so give . . . me . . . a . . . break! For $2.99, can’t we expect these four? And what’s the deal with CPU – as the computer calls itself – always allowing its opponent to go first? It’s condescending. Shouldn’t it randomly generate who gets to go first? And how about a $4.99 super platinum deluxe version that gives you the option of selecting one or more of my house rules? Here are my house rules: If you have three of the same letter, which is a total drag, you may – at any time, without waiting your turn, announce that you are going to throw in one, two, or three of them, show them (not that I don’t trust you) . . . and then do so without penalty. Computer Scrable already has an “exchange” icon. If you selected this house rule, it would know not to penalize you if you did indeed have three of the same letter and chose to exchange one, two, or three of them. And of course your opponent would have the same option, so neither of you is disadvantaged. If a blank has been played, whoever has or later picks up the letter it represents may – at any time, without waiting his turn – swap the real letter for the blank. This is rule is almost Solomonic, and without having to dismember the baby. Consider: in regular Scrabble, half the time one player gets both blanks. Well, c’mon! The blank, properly utilized, is huge! How can the blankless player hope to win? But if the blank can come back and forth multiple times, there may wind up being, in effect, three or four or five or six blanks, decreasing the chance that one player will be shut out (and adding an interesting twist of strategy to the game). Feel free to add your own. CHASE QUICK DEPOSIT OMG. JPMorgan Chase now allows you to deposit checks without ever going to the bank. With Quick Deposit, you just use your iPhone’s camera to send Chase a photo of the check, front and back, confirm a few things – and you’re done. I can’t wait for Citi to offer this. (Chase limits this to checks under $1,000; I hope Citi won’t.) THE OFA IPHONE APP And, if you were too busy to try it yesterday, how cool is this? Watch the demo, download the app, hang on to Congress. TINNY I assumed all iPhone 4’s had unpleasant metallic sound quality. Turns out, only mine (and some others) do. My friend Chad had the same issue, brought it in, and got it swapped out at no charge.
Organizing for Your iPhone Liertarians on Breadlines September 13, 2010March 18, 2017 THE CHOICE Forward or back. See how you can help. THE OFA IPHONE APP How cool is this? Watch the demo, download the app, hang on to Congress. AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION Too much government spending – on what? There’s a distinction between running to deficits to grow the federal payroll and running deficits to let contracts to private industry that will hire workers to fulfill those contracts. Consider some of the possibilities: If I spend money it to invade a country I don’t have to . . . or even just spend it to build war planes the Pentagon doesn’t want . . . almost all would agree that’s “bad” spending, not worth borrowing to do. If I spend it to expand the size of the government payroll, almost all would agree that requires a hard case-by-case look. Do we need the additional employees? Are we paying more than necessary to attract them? Can we afford the borrowing it will take to sustain them? If I spend it (through tax cuts or any other way) in an effort to get people back to their pre-recession spending on things they don’t really need and, in the scheme of things, can’t really afford, most people would agree I am not fundamentally shifting the economy in a healthier direction. But! If I spend it to contract with private industry to build 100,000 windmills (where once we built 100,000 tanks), or to modernize infrastructure, weatherize homes, dredge waterways, seed innovation and rejuvenate our manufacturing sector – well, to me, at least, that’s a very different thing. Either way, the federal budget – and the deficit – are huge. But where the Republican solution is: tax cuts! . . . which means borrowing to fuel consumption we can’t afford . . . the Democratic solution is (broadly speaking): infrastructure! . . . which means borrowing for investments we can’t afford not to make. See . . . THE CHOICE, above. TAXES AND UNCERTAINTY Daniel Stone, MD: “Warren [in his comment Friday] points out is that he’s Libertarian. That’s what people call themselves when they can afford their own healthcare, food, a roof over their head and don’t want to pay for anyone else’s. There are no Libertarians in the bread lines.” ☞ Many of the smartest, most successful (generous!) people I know – for many of whom I have affection and admiration – are libertarians. So I hesitate to post Dr. Stone’s comment. But I think he’s right. Not to start our whole thread again (he says, as he starts his whole thread again), but if this topic interests you, and you unaccountably missed my May 24 post, you’ll find my main argument here. GLDD There’s new management at our dredging company. This analyst is not thrilled with the cost of the severance packages we shareholders are paying for. But my sense is that this is good news, the costs notwithstanding, and the stock is a much better buy or hold here at $4.76 than it is a sell. Tomorrow: The House Rules
Confidence and Taxes And TTTs and AFOPD September 10, 2010March 18, 2017 Yesterday, I suggested DFZ as a company with earnings, a good chunk of cash, and no appreciable debt. Today, two more suggestions – these, compliments of Aristides’ Chris Brown, whose nose for value has served us well. All the usual caveats apply, of course. You could certainly, definitely, absolutely lose money on them in the short run, or even the long run. But these are not swing-for-the-fences all-or-nothing speculations. They are not as reckless as, oh, say, some tiny company based in Gibraltar that has no sales or customers that I’ve been touting for 11 years now. (I won’t embarrass you, B – – – – – – s, but you know who you are.) AFOPD This one, says Chris, “has roughly $4.75 in cash and liquid investments per share, no long-term debt, and a FY11 eps estimate of $0.75 from the one analyst who follows the company, so they are basically trading at 4x forward earnings when you back out the cash.” Meaning that if you subtract its $4.75 in cash from its $8 stock price, it is basically selling around $3, which is not much to pay for 75 cents in earnings. “They just had a 1:5 reverse split, which I think scared some people, [me! me! reverse splits are almost invariably the beginning of the end] but basically I think it was a first step in trying to realize shareholder value, and management seems to be willing to pursue further steps as needed. Last quarter was great, and this quarter figures to be at least as good. The entire fiber optic/optical networking industry seems to be doing really well right now in terms of revenues and earnings, so I guess the biggest potential danger is that you are catching some sort of cyclical peak. But the price is sure right.” I bought some. TTT Chris: “Basically trading at 2x their annual royalty from CLF when you back out the cash they have and their ownership of roughly half of KHDHF. TTT is our largest position. It’s not the best company in the world, but at these prices, I think you’ll be well rewarded once it gets its administrative expenses in order and announces a regular dividend policy. The caveat here is that management is pretty opaque and has not done a good job in the last couple of quarters; but if you read their last quarterly press release, you can see that at least there is some good self-assessment happening.” I bought some of this, too. Indeed, you might think of the three of these – DFZ, TTT, and AFOPD – as a trio of small value stocks that might make sense to own but only with money you can truly afford to lose, or at least not touch, if the going gets rocky, for several years (and even then, you could lose money). TAXES Warren S: “Your paragraph on taxes yesterday truly summarizes the different viewpoints on taxes between the major parties. I am no fan of the Republicans (I re-registered as a Libertarian after years of reading your columns and my disgust with their spending) but have not been swayed to the Democrats due to the tax issue – your column is symptomatic of our different viewpoints. I don’t know whether you have owned a small business. Taxes and uncertainty are major drivers for those of us who do. And both taxes and uncertainty are going up, not down. To minimize this shows either a lack of experience as a business owner or a lack of appreciation for how others may think. Some people do react to these things. For example, my income will go down even if my business were to stay the same (tough in this recession) due to an increase in taxes (capital gains increase, income tax increase, dividend tax increase, and Medicare tax extension/increase in the future). Meanwhile, my expenses will be going up – the insurance carrier for our employee health benefits just told me our premiums will be going up about 20% next year. This combination of events doesn’t give me the confidence to take risks and expand. And I can give you specific examples of projects we have declined (that would have meant increased jobs!) due to this combination of factors and our unwillingness to take the commensurate risk. It is just safer to save/hoard the money. I will grant you that all actions are not driven by taxes. However, to simply disregard the effect that taxes have, particularly combined with the current economic environment and the litany of changes that are creating uncertainty for businesses, does not show an appreciation for the effect they have on many others.” ☞ Helpful perspective. If this is how Warren feels, I can’t argue that he doesn’t. Or that he is alone in feeling this way. Still, I wonder whether the 35% small business health insurance tax credit will help some business owners defray the 20% rate hikes they, too, may face (Warren’s business has too many employees to qualify). And whether some of the other measures the President is asking Congress to pass would help. I’m all for targeted breaks for small business. Even for big business. For example, I think saving GM was a good idea; and it may wind up not having cost the taxpayers a dime. But why retain the tax cuts for income above $250,000 for the hedge fund manager who makes $7 million, or the heiress who receives $700,000 a year in investment income, or the law partner who makes $400,000 or the ballplayer who makes $900,000 or the CEO who makes $4.5 million? Ideally, no one would have to pay any taxes, ever. But were the Clinton/Gore rates really that onerous on the best off? (Or an anyone else, for that matter?) They were pretty good years. I think the uncertainty – which is a real problem just as Warren says – relates less to resetting tax rates for the best off . . . (isn’t it actually pretty certain that sooner or later we can’t afford not to?) . . . than to whether, in fact, the economy will ever recover. And to have confidence in that, it seems to me, you have to believe that, over a decade or two, we really will responsibly tackle the systemic problems we’ve avoided too long, like health care, energy, and education; scaling back to a somewhat more affordable military; renewing our infrastructure; and adjusting entitlements – modestly! – in ways I hope the bipartisan budget deficit commission will recommend. (This is the commission that Republican senators co-sponsored until the President agreed it was a good idea and then voted to kill. He wound up having to establish it by executive order.) I think the Obama Administration is working hard, and with considerable success, to begin bending those curves in the right direction. It has taken an economy in truly frightening free fall and persuaded most people that – as rough as things are – the world won’t end. My own view is that, for all the uncertainty Warren rightly feels, it would be a lot worse if we just went back to the “tax cuts and deregulation will solve all our problems” worldview that got us into this ditch in the first place. Who could have confidence in that?
Plouffe Lays It Out September 9, 2010March 18, 2017 DFZ On the theory that all many families will be able to buy each other for the holidays this year is a nice pair of slippers, I bought some DFZ yesterday. The stock was ‘on sale’ at $10 a share – off 12% – on news of a down quarter. The downdraft may not be over; but a smart friend who follows it thinks that, even in a tough environment, it could be $13 a year or two from now, with a smallish (2.8%) but potentially rising dividend along the way. About $4 a share in cash, virtually no debt; selling under 11 times earnings and 1 times sales. DRYERS GT: ‘When I learned that dryer sheets, or the lint they produce, are one of the best fire-starters available (because they’re saturated with petroleum byproducts), and that some may be carcinogenic, I stopped using them. From there it was a small step toward avoiding the dryer entirely in favor of clotheslines. Sure, as you noted, the towels are a little stiff, but on the other hand, a lot of clothes come out looking almost professionally pressed.’ Stewart Dean: ‘Time back, I would buy gorgeous true Scotch tartan plaid shirts from Lands’ End . . . and after washing and drying them 4-5 times, the colors would be dull and lifeless. I called Lands’ End to complain and got a wise older lady who said the colors were dying from the heat. Huh! So I got a 10-foot length of 1-inch diameter EMT (electrical metallic tubing) from Home Depot for maybe $3, ran some nylon line through it and hung it from a rafter in our attached garage. I washed my shirts in cold water and drip dried them in the garage. Eight years later, all my flannel plaid and Hawaiian aloha shirts are nearly as bright and colorful as ever. I have a little oscillating fan on a 6 hour timer to speed things up and the 10-foot length accommodates up to 20 shirts.’ TAXES Would you give me a break? If you make $250,000 ($200,000 single or married-but-gay), your tax won’t go up, and if you make $350,000, it won’t go up on all $350,000, just on the portion above $250,000. And not by a whole lot, either. So we’re not asking you to leave your family to fight for your country in the jungles of Vietnam (and thank you if you already did that), just – because the nation is in a bit of a crisis – to go back to paying taxes more or less as you did under the wonderfully prosperous Clinton/Gore years. And this notion that, as a result, you, the small businessman earning $350,000, or $800,000, or $2.4 million, won’t hire people for your small business because your tax rate goes back to what it used to be is just nuts. If you need people, because business is good, you’ll hire them to make even more money. If you don’t need them, because business sucks, you wouldn’t hire them even if the tax rate were zero. HOW WE WIN / HOW YOU HELP For those of us who don’t relish handing control of Congress to John Boehner or Mitch McConnell – and by extension to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin – David Plouffe lays out in this quick video how we confound the pundits. We can watch the impending train wreck – or, with a whole lot of others, help avert it.
Maine and Indiana September 8, 2010March 18, 2017 AVNR If you still have any, I should let you know I have now sold all mine. Guru thinks bad news could be imminent. YOW – WILDCATS! As you almost surely know, this summer marked the 100th anniversary of the founding of Camp Wigwam. So where would I possibly have been last weekend but South Watuhfud – population six in the wintuh, hundred fawtee in the summah – for the celebration? I’m not going to take you through every last lobster roll, but let me start with this observation: Mainers are such nice people. The trip began in frugal comfort on JetBlue to Portland, continuing with Hertz NeverLost (or I would be always lost) to the Vinalhaven Ferry, about 77 miles up the coast, then 15 miles across Prescott Sound on a boat with six or eight other pedestrians and a dozen vehicles. To say that the character of the Vinalhaven Haven ferry experience is a bit different from the Fire Island Pines ferry experience would be to strain understatement. But both are great. Vinalhaven (population 1,250 or so) and its sister island North Haven (350) have nothing to do with Camp Wigwam; but a friend had been inviting me for years, so I decided to take the detour. ‘Vinalhaven,’ he said as he met me at the ferry, ‘produces more lobster meat than anywhere else in the world.’ ‘Oh! Can we get a lobster roll?’ We walked off in the direction of the Gawker, which places both a menu and rules on each table (this is an establishment that serves an amazing lobster roll but doesn’t suffer fools gladly). On the way, my friend pointed out the home of the island’s most famous, if most reclusive, resident, artist Robert Indiana, whose ‘LOVE’ sculpture you have surely seen. I stopped to snap a photo of the house for Charles – and as I was turning to rejoin my host up ahead, observed an elderly gentleman hurrying across the street from the Post Office and opening the door. ‘Joey!’ I stage whispered, ‘could that be Mr. Indiana?’ Joey turned, spotted, and – just before the man had vanished – shouted, ‘Bob! Bob!’ Robert Indiana turned to see who was invading his privacy, and – when he recognized Joey – invited us inside for what wound up being an astonishing private tour . . . not entirely unlike this one a New York Times reporter was treated to in 2003 (absent the cigar, thankfully, and the ponytail). If we had been 30 seconds earlier or a minute later, we’d have missed him entirely. How cool was that? My trip to Maine was ‘made’ and had hardly even started. The Gawker’s lobster role was perfect . . . The three 400-foot Vinalhaven windmills mentioned here Friday rocked . . . Dinner at Joey’s with half the Maine Congressional delegation* and her beau made me prouder than ever to be a Democrat . . . * Maine has two Congressional districts. And then, in the morning, it was into the dinghy for the stone’s throw over to the North Haven ferry dock and a store where, in the owner’s absence, you take what you want and toss the cash into a large jar on the honor system – I purchased a $35 sweatshirt and a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup this way. A brilliantly gorgeous 70-minute ferry ride back . . . Two lobster rolls from the shack by the parking lot on the Rockland side (the proprietors wanted to knock $1 off each for my having helped them take down their awning in preparation for the hurricane, but against all my frugal instincts I wouldn’t let them) . . . Then NeverLost to (just hum along if you don’t know the words) . . . . . . Wig-wam, your braves will love you While the moon shines o’er Bear Lake. We’ll keep your campfires burn-ing, For each fleet-ing’s mem-ry’s sake . . . Oh, sure, you laugh. But do you know who wrote those words? Richard Rodgers, that’s who (as in Oklahoma? and South Pacific? and The King and I? – that Richard Rodgers). A Wigwammer. Another? J.D. Salinger (voted the camp’s ‘most popular actor” 1930). A third? My dad – best camper, 1933. Einstein came and visited for a week. So I’ll have no chortling, please. There’s no time for chortling anyway, because the camp owner/director – a preternaturally upbeat and energetic man whose first year as a camper was 1965, and whose first counselor was . . . well, me – had a full schedule of activities for the nearly 200 Wigwammers, aged 21 to 84, who had returned. For the occasion, the old nature shack had been turned into the camp museum. I went up and found a photo of my Dad as a counselor, and, from a few years earlier, his 1933 activity report. He played baseball six days in July – perhaps even July 6, 1933, coinciding with the first ever All-Star Game (the American League defeated the National League 4-2 in Chicago’s Comiskey Park) and nine days in August; was out on the lake in boats and canoes 29 days, swam 48 days, played tennis 40 days, football, 16, was down on the riflery range five times – perhaps including July 14, 1933, the day Germany banned all but the Nazi party – went on 3 golf outings and a canoe trip – perhaps even as Will Rogers’ pal Wiley Post was completing the first ever solo flight around the world. Not to mention basketball, handball, and horseback riding (or that this was also the summer Congress passed the nation’s first minimum wage – 33 cents an hour). He arrived at camp weighing 131 pounds, left at 132.5, ‘did all his work without having to be asked, and what is more did it well . . . an excellent sportsman in every sense of the word.’ I’m not sure a single eye had perused that loose leaf page from the day it was typed, but it sure meant a lot to me. And perhaps a good stopping point for an already overlong report. (I may or may not inflict the tale of Saturday’s mini-color war on you. Gray won but Red was robbed on the cheer. Which is where the ‘Yow – Wildcats’ comes in.) I hope your summer was equally wonderful.
Joe Biden Makes the Case September 7, 2010March 18, 2017 SNAKE OIL You may have heard radio ads for a $248 ‘platinum gas saver’ guaranteed to make your car engine at least 22% more fuel efficient – all but government certified. Rightwing radio talk show host Michael Savage (Michael Weiner) endorses it, saying that ‘it increases the percentage of fuel that burns inside your engine from the standard 68% of each gallon’ to 90%.* Go to their website or call their 800-number and you’ll be sold. The only problem (and, in context, a considerable one): it doesn’t work. Or so says Consumer Reports. (If it did work, wouldn’t most manufacturers build it into their cars to get the higher fuel rating?) The FTC has issued a warning about such claims, followed by a listing of the things, mostly free, that do work. *Never mind that this would be a 32% improvement, not 22% – to increase something from 68 to 90 is to increase it by 32%. Perhaps either he or the sponsor is purposely underselling the benefits? ST. LOUIS Last week I suggested that we either continue move forward November 2 or slide back. I had just come back from the DNC summer meeting in St. Louis, where the Vice President made the same case, and with a lot more charm. ‘Don’t compare me with the Almighty,’ he quoted former Boston Mayor Kevin White – ‘compare me with the alternative.’ Watch the whole speech, if you can (and Secretary Sebelius’s as well), here. Tomorrow: Maine and Indiana
The Perfect Energy Source September 3, 2010March 18, 2017 DCTH This bullish analysis came out Tuesday calling DCTH “a great buy at these prices.” If you own the stock, you’ll enjoy it. The bearish case, from a month ago, is here. (The bearish analyst see the stock as worth about what it’s selling for now – around the same $5.37 we initially paid for it – so at least he’s not saying he thinks it’s greatly overpriced here.) Guru summarizes: “At the moment, Wall Street believes in the bear case. I think over the long run the consensus will move closer to the bull side, but will probably take more time than I thought.” And there’s always the chance it will not work out at all – so, as always: only with money you can truly afford to lose. DRYING TOWELS Linda Tam: “Re the horror of your dryer’s electricity consumption (‘Turn it ff! Turn it off!’) – I’ve been trying to cut back on dryer use for a few years now. We don’t like how the clothes/towels feel if they 100% line dry, so I hang things up until they’re about 80% dry (I just use a couple little racks indoors near the laundry room, no trouble at all), then finish ’em off in the dryer. We still get that soft fluffy feeling and the dryer-sheet benefits, but we definitely saw a difference in the electric bill when we started this habit. So, as you say, you don’t have to go all the way to get some good results. (Doing this, I noticed that our nice, heavy, all-cotton t-shirts stay wet on the rack even longer than the towels do. I would never have guessed this, but those puppies must suck up a lot of dryer power. You’d think 100% cotton is a good thing, but the blends dry a lot faster. So, maybe polyester is good for the planet?)” ☞ But polyester is petroleum-based and blends are an abomination. Nothing is easy. Which leads me to . . . NATURAL GAS Coal is dangerous for the miners and bad for their lungs, causes acid rain and contributes massively to climate change. Nuclear entails potential catastrophic threats, however remote, along with the waste-disposal problem. Corn-based ethanol (the bi-product of corn kernels and Iowa’s lead-off position in the Presidential primary schedule) is inefficient and leads to Third World starvation. Offshore drilling has its much-noted downside. Imported oil impoverishes us. Wind is terrific, but I was just up listening to the three 400-foot-tall General Electric windmills on Vinalhaven that 12 residents are complaining about. “Let’s wait until the plane passes,” I said to my guide as we approached (you could hear a distant plane in the background), “so we can hear them on their own.” Ah, but there was no plane. And solar panels, my Vinalhaven guide told me, are made with Chinese slave labor (not sure of his source on that one) – but my point is, there seems to be only one source of energy that doesn’t have some potential downside . . . . . . and it’s not natural gas. Indeed, extracting natural gas may contaminate your drinking water. No, the one source of energy with no downside is using less of it. Like hypermiling or Linda Tam’s laundry drying technique. Meanwhile, speaking of noise pollution and energy generation: MICRO-PIEZO – “E”-GAD Judy Lawrence: “After years of sitting in a cube listening to the constant keyboard clicking going on all around me, my idea was to install a tiny friction device on every keyboard key to capture that energy. It would add to the cost of the keyboard, so maybe we only put it on the most frequently struck keys [maybe just the “e” key]. While it certainly would be a tiny amount of energy captured, just think how many gazillions of times it would occur every day! It’s no crazier than the people who want to harvest the energy of our body movements, right?” ☞ Egad.
Forward or Backward September 2, 2010March 18, 2017 Yesterday, I aired our clean laundry. Or at least our towels. Today, this page that calculates the impact of running a single 100-watt light bulb for a year (for starters: it requires the mining of 714 pounds of coal). And, this interactive one that lets you estimate out what your various appliances are costing you, based on your own utility rates and estimated usage. Charles Revson (whose biography you can read here free) had a 252-foot yacht that got 1 mile to the 5-gallon fuel efficiency and ran the air conditioning so strong on his February Caribbean cruises that they slept with electric blankets. (Well, if you subtract the yacht, the Caribbean, and the a/c, the February electric blankets were a good idea.) THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECH Slow but steady, in a deeply thoughtful way that is too slow for some and too fast for others, we are winding down the war the President never would have started in the first place and making the effort to fix the war we could have pursued so much more effectively if we had not focused on Iraq instead. Predictably, the President’s speech Tuesday was spot on. You can say – fairly – “Oh, sure – you thought all Clinton’s speeches were spot on, too.” Indeed I did. I would suggest there was a direct correlation between the thoughtful leadership we got from President Clinton and the prosperity we enjoyed. His war (in the religiously and ethnically diverse powder keg that was Yugoslavia) went so well that we barely remember it. Not, of course, that there weren’t mistakes (to name just two: not interceding in Rwanda; not putting even more resources into killing Bin Laden before handing off the operation to his successors, who shut it down). So, yes, just as I believed then that we had a terrifically smart, wise, well-motivated President (personal demons aside) who was, for the most part, making the prudent decisions (e.g., don’t blow the surplus with tax cuts, shore up our national balance sheet and “Save Social Security First”) . . . so I believe now we have a terrifically smart, wise, well-motivated President (who seems wonderfully devoid of demons) facing the toughest challenges in generations. To the extent progressives like me are hugely frustrated by the compromises . . . the wars are on a trajectory for phase down, but have not ended; the health care reform will prove to have been an amazing step in the right direction; the Wall Street reform and credit card reform and education reform and alternative-energy and Supreme Court appointments are constructive in a major way (as are, sorry, point of personal privilege, the list of things, both symbolic and concrete, the Administration has done to advance equality) – SO much has been accomplished in 19 months! . . . but to the extent progressives like me are hugely frustrated by the compromises and delays, I have just two simple things to say. But I think they are really important things: 1. You think YOU’RE frustrated? Imagine how frustrated the President and his team must be. 2. The way to get more done is NOT to give up and allow the Republicans to take back Congress. If you really care about this stuff, as so many of us do, you have to recognize that – just as Nader’s well-intentioned idealism wound up sending our country off the rails on every issue he and his voters cared about – we now have to decide whether, once again, to play into the hands of the well-meaning Republicans (this time: John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, and the rest, who honestly believe they have a better direction for the country) . . . basically, to “punish” the Democrats, which is to say ourselves, for not being able to do overcome Senate Republican opposition to important things we wanted . . . or whether the thing to do is work like mad to effect a surprisingly good outcome nine weeks from now. I vote for the latter. And I think that as people really begin to focus on the choice – forward or backward – they will prove the dire pre-Labor Day polls wrong. Thrillingly, the outcome is actually up to us. Volunteer, contribute – and raise your vote.