A Responsible Way Forward And a DCTH Surprise April 14, 2011March 24, 2017 OUR ECONOMIC FUTURE Music to my ears. Read it below, or watch it here. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Please have a seat. Please have a seat, everyone. It is wonderful to be back at GW. . . . I’m grateful for all of you taking the time to attend. What we’ve been debating here in Washington over the last few weeks will affect the lives of the students here and families all across America in potentially profound ways. This debate over budgets and deficits is about more than just numbers on a page; it’s about more than just cutting and spending. It’s about the kind of future that we want. It’s about the kind of country that we believe in. And that’s what I want to spend some time talking about today. From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America’s wealth and prosperity. More than citizens of any other country, we are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government. But there’s always been another thread running through our history -– a belief that we’re all connected, and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation. We believe, in the words of our first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves. And so we’ve built a strong military to keep us secure, and public schools and universities to educate our citizens. We’ve laid down railroads and highways to facilitate travel and commerce. We’ve supported the work of scientists and researchers whose discoveries have saved lives, unleashed repeated technological revolutions, and led to countless new jobs and entire new industries. Each of us has benefitted from these investments, and we’re a more prosperous country as a result. Part of this American belief that we’re all connected also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security and dignity. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff may strike any one of us. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we say to ourselves. And so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, those with disabilities. We’re a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further. We would not be a great country without those commitments. Now, for much of the last century, our nation found a way to afford these investments and priorities with the taxes paid by its citizens. As a country that values fairness, wealthier individuals have traditionally borne a greater share of this burden than the middle class or those less fortunate. Everybody pays, but the wealthier have borne a little more. This is not because we begrudge those who’ve done well -– we rightly celebrate their success. Instead, it’s a basic reflection of our belief that those who’ve benefited most from our way of life can afford to give back a little bit more. Moreover, this belief hasn’t hindered the success of those at the top of the income scale. They continue to do better and better with each passing year. Now, at certain times -– particularly during war or recession -– our nation has had to borrow money to pay for some of our priorities. And as most families understand, a little credit card debt isn’t going to hurt if it’s temporary. But as far back as the 1980s, America started amassing debt at more alarming levels, and our leaders began to realize that a larger challenge was on the horizon. They knew that eventually, the Baby Boom generation would retire, which meant a much bigger portion of our citizens would be relying on programs like Medicare, Social Security, and possibly Medicaid. Like parents with young children who know they have to start saving for the college years, America had to start borrowing less and saving more to prepare for the retirement of an entire generation. To meet this challenge, our leaders came together three times during the 1990s to reduce our nation’s deficit — three times. They forged historic agreements that required tough decisions made by the first President Bush, then made by President Clinton, by Democratic Congresses and by a Republican Congress. All three agreements asked for shared responsibility and shared sacrifice. But they largely protected the middle class; they largely protected our commitment to seniors; they protected our key investments in our future. As a result of these bipartisan efforts, America’s finances were in great shape by the year 2000. We went from deficit to surplus. America was actually on track to becoming completely debt free, and we were prepared for the retirement of the Baby Boomers. But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program -– but we didn’t pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts -– tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade. To give you an idea of how much damage this caused to our nation’s checkbook, consider this: In the last decade, if we had simply found a way to pay for the tax cuts and the prescription drug benefit, our deficit would currently be at low historical levels in the coming years. But that’s not what happened. And so, by the time I took office, we once again found ourselves deeply in debt and unprepared for a Baby Boom retirement that is now starting to take place. When I took office, our projected deficit, annually, was more than $1 trillion. On top of that, we faced a terrible financial crisis and a recession that, like most recessions, led us to temporarily borrow even more. In this case, we took a series of emergency steps that saved millions of jobs, kept credit flowing, and provided working families extra money in their pocket. It was absolutely the right thing to do, but these steps were expensive, and added to our deficits in the short term. So that’s how our fiscal challenge was created. That’s how we got here. And now that our economic recovery is gaining strength, Democrats and Republicans must come together and restore the fiscal responsibility that served us so well in the 1990s. We have to live within our means. We have to reduce our deficit, and we have to get back on a path that will allow us to pay down our debt. And we have to do it in a way that protects the recovery, protects the investments we need to grow, create jobs, and helps us win the future. Now, before I get into how we can achieve this goal, some of you, particularly the younger people here — you don’t qualify, Joe. (Laughter.) Some of you might be wondering, “Why is this so important? Why does this matter to me?” Well, here’s why. Even after our economy recovers, our government will still be on track to spend more money than it takes in throughout this decade and beyond. That means we’ll have to keep borrowing more from countries like China. That means more of your tax dollars each year will go towards paying off the interest on all the loans that we keep taking out. By the end of this decade, the interest that we owe on our debt could rise to nearly $1 trillion. Think about that. That’s the interest — just the interest payments. Then, as the Baby Boomers start to retire in greater numbers and health care costs continue to rise, the situation will get even worse. By 2025, the amount of taxes we currently pay will only be enough to finance our health care programs — Medicare and Medicaid — Social Security, and the interest we owe on our debt. That’s it. Every other national priority -– education, transportation, even our national security -– will have to be paid for with borrowed money. Now, ultimately, all this rising debt will cost us jobs and damage our economy. It will prevent us from making the investments we need to win the future. We won’t be able to afford good schools, new research, or the repair of roads -– all the things that create new jobs and businesses here in America. Businesses will be less likely to invest and open shop in a country that seems unwilling or unable to balance its books. And if our creditors start worrying that we may be unable to pay back our debts, that could drive up interest rates for everybody who borrows money -– making it harder for businesses to expand and hire, or families to take out a mortgage. Here’s the good news: That doesn’t have to be our future. That doesn’t have to be the country that we leave our children. We can solve this problem. We came together as Democrats and Republicans to meet this challenge before; we can do it again. But that starts by being honest about what’s causing our deficit. You see, most Americans tend to dislike government spending in the abstract, but like the stuff that it buys. Most of us, regardless of party affiliation, believe that we should have a strong military and a strong defense. Most Americans believe we should invest in education and medical research. Most Americans think we should protect commitments like Social Security and Medicare. And without even looking at a poll, my finely honed political instincts tell me that almost nobody believes they should be paying higher taxes. (Laughter.) So because all this spending is popular with both Republicans and Democrats alike, and because nobody wants to pay higher taxes, politicians are often eager to feed the impression that solving the problem is just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse. You’ll hear that phrase a lot. “We just need to eliminate waste and abuse.” The implication is that tackling the deficit issue won’t require tough choices. Or politicians suggest that we can somehow close our entire deficit by eliminating things like foreign aid, even though foreign aid makes up about 1 percent of our entire federal budget. So here’s the truth. Around two-thirds of our budget — two-thirds — is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security. Two-thirds. Programs like unemployment insurance, student loans, veterans’ benefits, and tax credits for working families take up another 20 percent. What’s left, after interest on the debt, is just 12 percent for everything else. That’s 12 percent for all of our national priorities — education, clean energy, medical research, transportation, our national parks, food safety, keeping our air and water clean — you name it — all of that accounts for 12 percent of our budget. Now, up till now, the debate here in Washington, the cuts proposed by a lot of folks in Washington, have focused exclusively on that 12 percent. But cuts to that 12 percent alone won’t solve the problem. So any serious plan to tackle our deficit will require us to put everything on the table, and take on excess spending wherever it exists in the budget. A serious plan doesn’t require us to balance our budget overnight –- in fact, economists think that with the economy just starting to grow again, we need a phased-in approach –- but it does require tough decisions and support from our leaders in both parties now. Above all, it will require us to choose a vision of the America we want to see five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road. Now, to their credit, one vision has been presented and championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives and embraced by several of their party’s presidential candidates. It’s a plan that aims to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years, and one that addresses the challenge of Medicare and Medicaid in the years after that. These are both worthy goals. They’re worthy goals for us to achieve. But the way this plan achieves those goals would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known certainly in my lifetime. In fact, I think it would be fundamentally different than what we’ve known throughout our history. A 70 percent cut in clean energy. A 25 percent cut in education. A 30 percent cut in transportation. Cuts in college Pell Grants that will grow to more than $1,000 per year. That’s the proposal. These aren’t the kind of cuts you make when you’re trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings in the budget. These aren’t the kinds of cuts that the Fiscal Commission proposed. These are the kinds of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America that I believe in and I think you believe in. I believe it paints a vision of our future that is deeply pessimistic. It’s a vision that says if our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can’t afford to fix them. If there are bright young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go to college, we can’t afford to send them. Go to China and you’ll see businesses opening research labs and solar facilities. South Korean children are outpacing our kids in math and science. They’re scrambling to figure out how they put more money into education. Brazil is investing billions in new infrastructure and can run half their cars not on high-priced gasoline, but on biofuels. And yet, we are presented with a vision that says the American people, the United States of America -– the greatest nation on Earth -– can’t afford any of this. It’s a vision that says America can’t afford to keep the promise we’ve made to care for our seniors. It says that 10 years from now, if you’re a 65-year-old who’s eligible for Medicare, you should have to pay nearly $6,400 more than you would today. It says instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. And if that voucher isn’t worth enough to buy the insurance that’s available in the open marketplace, well, tough luck -– you’re on your own. Put simply, it ends Medicare as we know it. It’s a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. Who are these 50 million Americans? Many are somebody’s grandparents — may be one of yours — who wouldn’t be able to afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some of these kids with disabilities are — the disabilities are so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves. And worst of all, this is a vision that says even though Americans can’t afford to invest in education at current levels, or clean energy, even though we can’t afford to maintain our commitment on Medicare and Medicaid, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy. Think about that. In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of all working Americans actually declined. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. That’s who needs to pay less taxes? They want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay $6,000 more in health costs. That’s not right. And it’s not going to happen as long as I’m President. (Applause.) This vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America. Ronald Reagan’s own budget director said, there’s nothing “serious” or “courageous” about this plan. There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. That’s not a vision of the America I know. The America I know is generous and compassionate. It’s a land of opportunity and optimism. Yes, we take responsibility for ourselves, but we also take responsibility for each other; for the country we want and the future that we share. We’re a nation that built a railroad across a continent and brought light to communities shrouded in darkness. We sent a generation to college on the GI Bill and we saved millions of seniors from poverty with Social Security and Medicare. We have led the world in scientific research and technological breakthroughs that have transformed millions of lives. That’s who we are. This is the America that I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit our investment in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m President, we won’t. So today, I’m proposing a more balanced approach to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 12 years. It’s an approach that borrows from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission that I appointed last year, and it builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction I already proposed in my 2012 budget. It’s an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table — but one that protects the middle class, our promise to seniors, and our investments in the future. The first step in our approach is to keep annual domestic spending low by building on the savings that both parties agreed to last week. That step alone will save us about $750 billion over 12 years. We will make the tough cuts necessary to achieve these savings, including in programs that I care deeply about, but I will not sacrifice the core investments that we need to grow and create jobs. We will invest in medical research. We will invest in clean energy technology. We will invest in new roads and airports and broadband access. We will invest in education. We will invest in job training. We will do what we need to do to compete, and we will win the future. The second step in our approach is to find additional savings in our defense budget. Now, as Commander-in-Chief, I have no greater responsibility than protecting our national security, and I will never accept cuts that compromise our ability to defend our homeland or America’s interests around the world. But as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen, has said, the greatest long-term threat to America’s national security is America’s debt. So just as we must find more savings in domestic programs, we must do the same in defense. And we can do that while still keeping ourselves safe. Over the last two years, Secretary Bob Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again. We need to not only eliminate waste and improve efficiency and effectiveness, but we’re going to have to conduct a fundamental review of America’s missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world. I intend to work with Secretary Gates and the Joint Chiefs on this review, and I will make specific decisions about spending after it’s complete. The third step in our approach is to further reduce health care spending in our budget. Now, here, the difference with the House Republican plan could not be clearer. Their plan essentially lowers the government’s health care bills by asking seniors and poor families to pay them instead. Our approach lowers the government’s health care bills by reducing the cost of health care itself. Already, the reforms we passed in the health care law will reduce our deficit by $1 trillion. My approach would build on these reforms. We will reduce wasteful subsidies and erroneous payments. We will cut spending on prescription drugs by using Medicare’s purchasing power to drive greater efficiency and speed generic brands of medicine onto the market. We will work with governors of both parties to demand more efficiency and accountability from Medicaid. We will change the way we pay for health care -– not by the procedure or the number of days spent in a hospital, but with new incentives for doctors and hospitals to prevent injuries and improve results. And we will slow the growth of Medicare costs by strengthening an independent commission of doctors, nurses, medical experts and consumers who will look at all the evidence and recommend the best ways to reduce unnecessary spending while protecting access to the services that seniors need. Now, we believe the reforms we’ve proposed to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid will enable us to keep these commitments to our citizens while saving us $500 billion by 2023, and an additional $1 trillion in the decade after that. But if we’re wrong, and Medicare costs rise faster than we expect, then this approach will give the independent commission the authority to make additional savings by further improving Medicare. But let me be absolutely clear: I will preserve these health care programs as a promise we make to each other in this society. I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs. I will not tell families with children who have disabilities that they have to fend for themselves. We will reform these programs, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations. That includes, by the way, our commitment to Social Security. While Social Security is not the cause of our deficit, it faces real long-term challenges in a country that’s growing older. As I said in the State of the Union, both parties should work together now to strengthen Social Security for future generations. But we have to do it without putting at risk current retirees, or the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market. And it can be done. The fourth step in our approach is to reduce spending in the tax code, so-called tax expenditures. In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew them again. Beyond that, the tax code is also loaded up with spending on things like itemized deductions. And while I agree with the goals of many of these deductions, from homeownership to charitable giving, we can’t ignore the fact that they provide millionaires an average tax break of $75,000 but do nothing for the typical middle-class family that doesn’t itemize. So my budget calls for limiting itemized deductions for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans — a reform that would reduce the deficit by $320 billion over 10 years. But to reduce the deficit, I believe we should go further. And that’s why I’m calling on Congress to reform our individual tax code so that it is fair and simple — so that the amount of taxes you pay isn’t determined by what kind of accountant you can afford. I believe reform should protect the middle class, promote economic growth, and build on the fiscal commission’s model of reducing tax expenditures so that there’s enough savings to both lower rates and lower the deficit. And as I called for in the State of the Union, we should reform our corporate tax code as well, to make our businesses and our economy more competitive. So this is my approach to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years. It’s an approach that achieves about $2 trillion in spending cuts across the budget. It will lower our interest payments on the debt by $1 trillion. It calls for tax reform to cut about $1 trillion in tax expenditures — spending in the tax code. And it achieves these goals while protecting the middle class, protecting our commitment to seniors, and protecting our investments in the future. Now, in the coming years, if the recovery speeds up and our economy grows faster than our current projections, we can make even greater progress than I’ve pledged here. But just to hold Washington — and to hold me — accountable and make sure that the debt burden continues to decline, my plan includes a debt failsafe. If, by 2014, our debt is not projected to fall as a share of the economy -– if we haven’t hit our targets, if Congress has failed to act -– then my plan will require us to come together and make up the additional savings with more spending cuts and more spending reductions in the tax code. That should be an incentive for us to act boldly now, instead of kicking our problems further down the road. So this is our vision for America -– this is my vision for America — a vision where we live within our means while still investing in our future; where everyone makes sacrifices but no one bears all the burden; where we provide a basic measure of security for our citizens and we provide rising opportunity for our children. There will be those who vigorously disagree with my approach. I can guarantee that as well. (Laughter.) Some will argue we should not even consider ever — ever — raising taxes, even if only on the wealthiest Americans. It’s just an article of faith to them. I say that at a time when the tax burden on the wealthy is at its lowest level in half a century, the most fortunate among us can afford to pay a little more. I don’t need another tax cut. Warren Buffett doesn’t need another tax cut. Not if we have to pay for it by making seniors pay more for Medicare. Or by cutting kids from Head Start. Or by taking away college scholarships that I wouldn’t be here without and that some of you would not be here without. And here’s the thing: I believe that most wealthy Americans would agree with me. They want to give back to their country, a country that’s done so much for them. It’s just Washington hasn’t asked them to. Others will say that we shouldn’t even talk about cutting spending until the economy is fully recovered. These are mostly folks in my party. I’m sympathetic to this view — which is one of the reasons I supported the payroll tax cuts we passed in December. It’s also why we have to use a scalpel and not a machete to reduce the deficit, so that we can keep making the investments that create jobs. But doing nothing on the deficit is just not an option. Our debt has grown so large that we could do real damage to the economy if we don’t begin a process now to get our fiscal house in order. Finally, there are those who believe we shouldn’t make any reforms to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, out of fear that any talk of change to these programs will immediately usher in the sort of steps that the House Republicans have proposed. And I understand those fears. But I guarantee that if we don’t make any changes at all, we won’t be able to keep our commitment to a retiring generation that will live longer and will face higher health care costs than those who came before. Indeed, to those in my own party, I say that if we truly believe in a progressive vision of our society, we have an obligation to prove that we can afford our commitments. If we believe the government can make a difference in people’s lives, we have the obligation to prove that it works -– by making government smarter, and leaner and more effective. Of course, there are those who simply say there’s no way we can come together at all and agree on a solution to this challenge. They’ll say the politics of this city are just too broken; the choices are just too hard; the parties are just too far apart. And after a few years on this job, I have some sympathy for this view. (Laughter.) But I also know that we’ve come together before and met big challenges. Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill came together to save Social Security for future generations. The first President Bush and a Democratic Congress came together to reduce the deficit. President Clinton and a Republican Congress battled each other ferociously, disagreed on just about everything, but they still found a way to balance the budget. And in the last few months, both parties have come together to pass historic tax relief and spending cuts. And I know there are Republicans and Democrats in Congress who want to see a balanced approach to deficit reduction. And even those Republicans I disagree with most strongly I believe are sincere about wanting to do right by their country. We may disagree on our visions, but I truly believe they want to do the right thing. So I believe we can, and must, come together again. This morning, I met with Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress to discuss the approach that I laid out today. And in early May, the Vice President will begin regular meetings with leaders in both parties with the aim of reaching a final agreement on a plan to reduce the deficit and get it done by the end of June. I don’t expect the details in any final agreement to look exactly like the approach I laid out today. This a democracy; that’s not how things work. I’m eager to hear other ideas from all ends of the political spectrum. And though I’m sure the criticism of what I’ve said here today will be fierce in some quarters, and my critique of the House Republican approach has been strong, Americans deserve and will demand that we all make an effort to bridge our differences and find common ground. This larger debate that we’re having — this larger debate about the size and the role of government — it has been with us since our founding days. And during moments of great challenge and change, like the one that we’re living through now, the debate gets sharper and it gets more vigorous. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing. As a country that prizes both our individual freedom and our obligations to one another, this is one of the most important debates that we can have. But no matter what we argue, no matter where we stand, we’ve always held certain beliefs as Americans. We believe that in order to preserve our own freedoms and pursue our own happiness, we can’t just think about ourselves. We have to think about the country that made these liberties possible. We have to think about our fellow citizens with whom we share a community. And we have to think about what’s required to preserve the American Dream for future generations. This sense of responsibility — to each other and to our country — this isn’t a partisan feeling. It isn’t a Democratic or a Republican idea. It’s patriotism. The other day I received a letter from a man in Florida. He started off by telling me he didn’t vote for me and he hasn’t always agreed with me. But even though he’s worried about our economy and the state of our politics — here’s what he said — he said, “I still believe. I believe in that great country that my grandfather told me about. I believe that somewhere lost in this quagmire of petty bickering on every news station, the ‘American Dream’ is still alive…We need to use our dollars here rebuilding, refurbishing and restoring all that our ancestors struggled to create and maintain… We as a people must do this together, no matter the color of the state one comes from or the side of the aisle one might sit on.” “I still believe.” I still believe as well. And I know that if we can come together and uphold our responsibilities to one another and to this larger enterprise that is America, we will keep the dream of our founding alive — in our time; and we will pass it on to our children. We will pass on to our children a country that we believe in. Thank you. God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America. DCTH I’m hoping you missed yesterday’s column or failed to see it early. Because if – like me – you sold most of your DCTH on the weakness of Tuesday’s conference call, you would have missed the stock’s big jump at half past noon yesterday when European approval was announced. Frustrating! But we have to remember Guru has no inside information. He will not always be right. Which is why we must make these bets with money we can truly afford to lose. First suggested here 15 months ago at $5.37, it opened yesterday at $7.16 but closed at $8.80 in afterhours trading.
Dicey DCTH Uh, oh. April 13, 2011March 24, 2017 ROW ROW ROW HER BOAT Susie Slanina: “In about 15 minutes [Susie wrote me last night], Roz Savage will start her row across the Indian Ocean. You can watch her travels live here.” ☞ Long-time readers may remember her last solo row, chronicled here exactly a year ago. Amazing. DELCATH Well, the real world is a lot messier than my fantasy world, where everything turns out right. Guru writes: “I’m afraid this one looks dicier and dicier. They had a conference call Monday night to discuss the FDA’s refuse-to-file letter. The issue is that the company appears to have understated the safety concerns with the procedure – a lot. The FDA is asking for a thorough analysis of every patient who has been in a trial of the product – 186 in total for Phase I, II, III – to get a comprehensive understanding of the risk/benefit. In the presentation at ASCO in 2010, there was efficacy data on 44/44 treated patients, but safety on only 40/44 treated patients. Meanwhile, there was no safety data reported for 27 placebo patients who crossed over. I hadn’t really noticed this ‘missing’ safety data, but it certainly appears the FDA HAS noticed it. . . . A review of earlier trials shows that the procedure often could result in complications because of where the catheters were placed (especially if not done correctly). The big problem for the company is that the design of the trial did not allow them to show a survival benefit, leaving them only with a claim for a delay in progression, while at the same time, the FDA is clearly seeing that there are lots of potentially serious safety issues with the procedure. . . . In February, DCTH said they would file their response at the end of the 3Q. Now they are saying at the end of the 4Q. DCTH continues to insist they will get CE Mark clearance to market the product in Europe. I’m having a conference call with a consultant on Wednesday, but it doesn’t make intuitive sense that the Europeans would overlook these issues. . . . Finally, the FDA approval of Yervoy, a therapy that has shown improvement in survival in melanoma, from Bristol Myers, will impact the potential market size for DCTH. . . . At this point, I’m not really sure if DCTH will get an FDA approval. I’m afraid I was much too bullish on this one last year. Very sorry about that.” ☞ So what to do? The stock was actually up yesterday, in a falling market, so not everyone on that conference call saw the nuances Guru did. But who knows? The risk is now greater than we thought – so I cut way back on my position yesterday. But if DCTH can find ways to satisfy the FDA, and perhaps improve training procedures for its technique, there could still be great potential. So I kept a little. THAT REPUBLICAN Fred Karger, the Republican presidential candidate I told you about Monday was interviewed on MSNBC yesterday morning and gave Mitt Romney a bit of a hard time. But that was nothing compared with what he wrote about Mike Huckabee: Does the name Willie Horton ring a bell? Sure, the murderer of a 16-year-old boy who then Governor Michael Dukakis let out of prison on a weekend furlough. While furloughed, Horton left Massachusetts and went to Maryland where he brutally attacked an innocent young couple in their home. Rape and torture went on 12 hours until Cliff Barnes, who was stabbed 22 times, managed to escape and called police. Horton was captured, went back to prison and two more lives were forever changed. I am very familiar with the case. I ran Committee for the Presidency on behalf of George HW Bush in 1988. We helped the victims of Willie Horton tell their stories. Now, 23 years later, former Governor Mike Huckabee finds himself in a similar situation, only worse. While governor of Arkansas, 11 years ago, Huckabee commuted the 108-year prison sentence of Maurice Clemmons. Clemmons then went on a crime spree and ended up in Seattle, Washington, where on 19 November 2010, he casually walked into a coffee shop early one morning and shot and killed four police officers while they were eating breakfast. He fired at point blank range, killing all four instantly. . . . ☞ Obviously, Fred Karger is not going to win the Republican nomination. But he could sure shake up the debates.
Tom Tommorow and the Spread of Terrible Ideas April 12, 2011March 24, 2017 PROCESSING YOUR GRANDMOTHER INTO A SNACK CRACKER Exaggerated for effect, but this really is how it works. (Click the cartoon to make it bigger.) It’s a Tom Tomorrow “occasional look at the ways in which really terrible ideas infect mainstream political discourse.” (I’ve got an idea! Why don’t we break the unions, cut taxes for the rich even MORE, end the minimum wage, and bring back child labor!) JOB CREATORS How is it conceivable that Apple and Fed Ex and Starbucks were founded – and created all those jobs – when tax rates were high? Why did Steve Jobs and the others even bother? Why would anyone start a new business, or hire a new worker, knowing that a slice of every additional $1 million in profits will get taxed away? What’s the point? Why even get up in the morning? It defies everything the Republicans insist is true. Did anyone work or start a new business or hire anyone in the Fifties, when the top tax bracket was 90%? In the Sixties and Seventies when it was 70%? How is it conceivable that 22 million jobs were added even as Bill Clinton was raising taxes on the wealthy? Not a single Republican voted for those tax hikes, because, they told us, taxing the wealthy would kill the economy and cause unemployment. They were spectacularly wrong; the Bush years totally sucked; the Clinton years brought unprecedented prosperity at all income levels. And yet the Republicans just keep coming. The way to cut our deficit, they say, is to tax the wealthy even more lightly than Bush did – Bush, who racked up trillions of dollars in new debt and handed Obama a baked-in $1.5 trillion budget deficit. Let me tell you what will happen if Congressman Paul Ryan succeeds in cutting my taxes $50,000: I will pay $50,000 less in taxes. (It’s not rocket science.) So a further $50,000 will be added to our National Debt. (Alternatively, $50,000 in benefits to the worst off will be cut, so I can grow richer while they struggle even more desperately; or $50,000 will be cut from our budget to secure loose nukes or our budget to keep our bridges from collapsing or our budget to keep our food supply safe.) I will not be hiring a new worker with that $50,000. What I might do with it is buy U.S. Treasury bonds – namely, the U.S. debt that giving-me-my-tax-cut created. (Well, somebody’s got to finance it.) So my balance sheet will be yet $50,000 more happily in the black, and Uncle Sam’s will be yet $50,000 more miserably in the red. Why would anyone listen to the Republicans when it comes to cutting taxes for the wealthy? It was a good idea when the top rate was 90% or 70% or even 50%, but they have long since overshot the mark, jumped the shark, shrunk the middle class, crippled our nation. Hello? See Tom Tomorrow’s cartoon, referenced above.
The Republican and the Penny Stock April 11, 2011March 24, 2017 THE FIRST DECLARED REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE If I were going to vote Republican in 2012 (I am so not going to), my candidate would be Fred Karger, a long-time Republican strategist who last month became the first challenger to file with the F.E.C. What’s cool about his candidacy is that he may well be included in the debates – and he would be the first openly gay candidate ever to attract that kind of national attention. It might make it harder for Republicans to continue to oppose his equal rights once he can respectfully challenge their rationale on national TV. THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL DEBT Joel Grow: “Another way to look at [your comment last Tuesday] . . . In just 20 years of Supply-Side under Reagan/Bush/Bush, they ran up 75% of the debt for our entire 233-year history. George W. ran up over 50% of our 233-year debt all on his own, and with a GOP Congress for 6 of his 8 years. Where were the deficit hawks then?*” ☞ Where indeed. The general notion of cutting taxes for the wealthy – even now! when we’re so deep in the hole! and when they’ve already been cut so far! – at the same time as they push to reduce home heating aid to the poor, defund environmental regulation, and cut funds for securing loose nukes . . . well, the Republicans have a strange set of priorities. *“Further,” Joel writes, “though very slowly raising the age for full Social Security benefits, and also very slowly raising the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes, are not outrageous ideas, the notion of including Social Security in the deficit reduction discussion is absurd. Social Security, an entity totally separate from all other government agencies, has run in the black and not contributed to the national debt. It has only very recently had to dip into its own huge surpluses because of the economic downturn. The US government has borrowed more from Social Security than from China (nearly twice as much, in fact) and the debt owed to Social Security is just as real as the debt owed to China, or to Wall Street bond investors.” MYLGF Guru told me about this one a few days ago, at 25 cents, but asked me not to tell you until he had established his fund’s full position, which he did at the end of last week. (Somehow, he feels his investors need to come before my readers – where does he get off?) By Friday, it had climbed to 37 cents. Needless to say, I would have preferred to tell you about it at 25 cents. Still, it’s worth passing on Guru’s view: “Target is $1 to $2 based on data at ASCO (abstracts out early May; full data in June) in lung and gastric cancer and an update in prostate cancer perhaps by the end of June. They have the same kind of molecule as EXEL, but the side-effect profile looks much better. About 360 million shares outstanding and a piggybank of $35 million in cash, so not as cheap as before but still a bargain.” ☞ As an MYLGF owner myself, I hope so. (Remember, if you buy penny stocks like, this to do so at a broker like Ameritrade or Fidelity, that will charge $8 to fill the order – even if you buy 100,000 shares – not some broker that charges 2 cents a share. And remember this, too: only speculate with money you can truly afford to lose.)
They Chose WHO to Look Out for the Water Your Children Drink and the Air They Breathe? Really??? April 8, 2011March 24, 2017 This clip is less than three minutes. In the specific, it tells the story of a 27-year-old college drop-out with two DUIs who beat out two other candidates to head up ‘environmental and regulatory affairs’ for an entire state – despite the fact that one of the other candidates for the $81,500 job has a doctorate, two masters degrees and 8 years’ direct relevant experience, while the other is a chemical engineer who has actually been doing the job for the last 8 years. But there is a much larger and crucially relevant point made in this elegant video essay – so I urge you to find two minutes and forty-one seconds to watch. Perhaps even right now. Indeed, I am so eager not to divert attention from this elegant video essay that I will put off to Monday telling you who my favored Republican candidate for President is . . . and some other stuff that will just have to wait. Have a great weekend. (And, yes, I know it should be ‘whom.’ But doesn’t knowing make it okay to flout the rules?)
I’m In April 7, 2011March 24, 2017 CBRX Two months ago: “Guru thinks it could be $5 within a year, so I bought a bunch yesterday at $2.55. Guru is often but not always right. So only with money you can truly afford to lose.” Last night, with CBRX closing at $4.10 in after-hours trading, Guru writes: “The data they presented look great.” PROCHIEVE, he thinks, will cut health care costs for some premature births. And it “reduced the incidence of respiratory distress syndrome by 60% – a huge finding, as this is a major source of morbidity and mortality among pre-term babies.” So despite the allure of a 60% two-month gain, I’m in no rush to sell. HE’S IN — RELUCTANTLY Ralph M.: “I’ll vote for Obama in 2012. What choice do I have? Yes, the GOP deserves all the bashing we can deliver. Especially, the new flim flam man, Paul Ryan. But good God, that doesn’t mean Alan Simpson and Erksine Bowles are a happy compromise. And you can’t bash Reagan and then ignore what Obama himself said during the campaign: I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing. “Is there an implied criticism of Reagan in there somewhere that I missed?” ☞ I think his analysis of Reagan is accurate. I don’t think Senator Obama was saying he voted for Reagan himself or that he thought the path Reagan put us on has led us to a good place. And I also think it was not a bad idea, running for President, to show folks who did vote for Reagan (perhaps they thought the 70% top tax bracket was too high?) that you understand why they did and have some level of respect for their concerns. I think the President has been incredibly effective, given the necessity for 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate and the reality of an opposition party truly – and openly – dedicated to his failure. Which is why I’m in – 110%. HE’S NOT Abe: “Faced with grasping Republicans and scavenging Democrats, it matters little to the oligarchs that control them and hold them in thrall. I was taught to renounce evil and fight it in all of its forms. I will not now and never have voted for the ‘lesser’ of two evils. I will write myself in before I follow these folks into the pit of despair they offer. Go out and look up the song ‘Mercy Now’ on you tube and listen carefully.” ☞ Love the song, but (it won’t surprise you to know) I don’t see Obama as evil, I see him as a hero. A leader of exceptional intelligence, level-headedness, dignity, and determination. Fighting to provide health insurance to everyone in that song (for example), not to take it away. (Under the new Paul Ryan plan to privatize Medicare, “A typical 65-year-old with a private health-insurance plan covering standard Medicare benefits,” Time quotes the CBO, “could be liable for 61% of his or her total health care costs in 2022.”) I don’t think of Abraham Lincoln as having been evil, either, even though he took three years to free the slaves, and then only some of them. By requiring the perfect rather than the possible, we squander the opportunity to do good. The perfect is the enemy of the good. And, as it’s often said, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men – like Abe – to do nothing. Which is why, I say again, I’m in – 110%. RALPH AGAIN Ralph M.: “Look, I’m not a fire-breathing Chomskyite out on the left fringe, I am just a liberal. And I have to say that many of us liberals are very suspicious of President Obama, not because he isn’t up against the craziest party of modern times, but because it’s never clear just what it is he would want to see happen if he weren’t up against recalcitrant wingnuts.” ☞ If so, we need to communicate better. (And, yes, I do think we need to communicate better.) But to a lot of us, it IS pretty clear what he would like to see happen. For example, he said that, if we were starting from scratch, he would want a single-payer health insurance system. That’s a clear statement. (Equally clear is that we were not starting from scratch.) He also clearly favored the public option. But, again, you really, really, really need 60 Senate votes to pass laws – and the other party would not allow a public option. He wanted to see the wealthy pay more tax on their investment income in order to provide health insurance to 30+ million uninsured without adding to the deficit – and got that. He wanted to see Guantanamo closed – but on that one, he couldn’t get more than 6 Senate votes. He wanted to save the American auto industry – and did, at what may ultimately be a profit to the American taxpayer. He wanted to avert a Depression, and did. He wants innovation and infrastructure and an educational race to the top – an emphasis on smart investments to rejuvenate our economy for the challenges ahead. He wanted a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and wanted Elizabeth Warren to shape it – and got them. And credit card reform. And more affordable college loans, cutting out the financial intermediary. And got them. He wanted the victims of the BP oil spill to get compensated without having to wait years and incur legal fees. He wanted to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law. And to end combat operations in Iraq. And only to go into Libya with the support of virtually the entire world. And got all that done. He wanted to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell – and did. He wanted two more women on the Supreme Court – Justices likely to vote against corporate-skewed decisions like Citizens United, that he openly (and clearly) deplored. And on and on. If the President could do anything he wanted, I think he’d do almost all the things you’d like to see done. Starting with campaign finance reform. think it’s actually not all that hard to know what the President would like to get done if he didn’t face an opposition party openly dedicated to assuring his failure. To my mind, he’s doing a phenomenal job and deserves our enthusiastic support. If only we had known how high the stakes were when (with all due respect to those who believe George W. Bush gave us peace and prosperity and raised our stature in the world) we didn’t fight quite hard enough for Al Gore. We can’t let that happen again, which is why I’m in – 110%.
Are You In? April 6, 2011March 24, 2017 The Republicans have offered a plan to weaken our social safety net while slashing taxes on the last few million dollars that you earn (from 35% to 25%) – even lower than Reagan’s top rate. When Reagan took office, our National Debt had, over 35 years of fiscal discipline, been whittled down from the 121% of GDP it had been following World War II to just 30%. Largely through reckless tax policy, Reagan and the two Bushes allowed it to ramp back up to 100% of GDP – and soaring – by the time they handed the reins to Obama. This despite the fact that Clinton put the brakes on the Debt, restored prosperity, and handed Bush 43 “surpluses as far as the eye could see.” Abandon the poor, squeeze the middle class, oppose the minimum wage, break the unions, bring back child labor, help the rich. If those are your priorities – along with crumbling infrastructure and unrestricted gun-show machine-gun sales – the G.O.P. has your name on it. My jaw drops at your world view, but all the best to you. My view is that Democrats have a better, more balanced vision . . . and that our President has shown himself to be a heroically steady, thoughtful leader who – against intractable opposition from across the aisle (and no shortage of challenges abroad) – has set the country on a dramatically better course than the one he inherited. I am unabashedly enthusiastic about his newly-announced candidacy for 2012. In short . . . I’m in. Are you? Click the link and pass it on.
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert And Climate Change Deniers April 5, 2011March 24, 2017 WHEN PUSH COMES TO GLEE Ralph Sierra: “I admit to having a less sunny outlook on the future of mankind than you, but we both watch ‘60 Minutes’ (which is a good thing), so I assume you saw “Gospel for Teens” Parts 1 and 2 Sunday night. I thought you might comment on them because they were the most uplifting shows I have seen in a long time.” ☞ Uplifting indeed. Push (later made into the movie “Precious”) meets “Glee.” GREEN IT. MEAN IT. That “Glee” hyperlink led me to Glee Earth Day Tips. (Did you know that 90% of washing-machine energy consumption goes to heating the water? Using the WARM or even the COLD setting when appropriate can save most of that.) And that link led me to Fox’s Green It, Mean It video. Can you believe it? Fox? It is downright bizarre for Newscorp to be working so hard simultaneously to save and destroy the environment. (Here’s Paul Krugman on the climate-change deniers. In tiny part: “. . . Just a few weeks ago Anthony Watts, who runs a prominent climate denialist Web site, praised the Berkeley project and piously declared himself ‘prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.’ But never mind: once he knew that [their result did prove his premise wrong], Mr. Watts dismissed the hearing as ‘post normal science political theater.’ . . . [I]t’s worth stepping back for a moment and thinking not just about the science here, but about the morality . . .”) GLEE NOT GAY ENOUGH FOR YOU? They’ve turned “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” into a Broadway musical of the same name so over the top I decided to just get over my masculinity issues and cheer for the drag queens along with everybody else. “Performed with GLEAMING VERVE! Every conceivable surface has been decked with SEQUINS, spattered with COLORED LIGHTS, or trimmed in FEATHERS and FRINGE.” – So said the New York Times . . . or so the show’s producers were able to excerpt a generally downbeat review. But let’s face it: the Times has a higher brow than I do. There should be a little footnote with each Times review: “inexplicably, the audience was hugely entertained” or (in the case of one masterpiece I saw on the strength of the Times’ rave years ago): “inexplicably, its genius seemed entirely lost on the audience.” (When I found out that the play was not over after the second excruciating act – that this was merely an intermission before what was to be a third act – I got the first and only migraine of my life.) Variety (which knows a little about Broadway, too): Priscilla, a tricked-up tour bus with a shoe on the roof, rolls onto the stage of the Palace Theater to roars from the audience, and proceeds to turn, twist and light up pink and purple. And then does it again (and again and again). So goes the brashly good-natured Aussie musical to which the bus lends its name, ‘Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,’ which, born from Stephan Elliott’s 1994 film, seems destined to follow the path of ‘Mamma Mia!’ Inartful here, crass there, this rollicking crowd pleaser in sequins nonetheless packs enough heart to leave the masses enthralled. . . . Show arrives as an international hit, following stints in Australia, New Zealand, London and Toronto; one can easily anticipate “Priscilla” rolling into major capitals across the world as quickly as they can procure enough feathers. For all the glitz, though — and there is a lot of glitz — there’s a heart ticking true beneath it all, and that should earn “Priscilla” a long and profitable run at the Palace, with the merchandise stand doing big business in purple boas. ☞ Full disclosure: I have no stake in the merchandise stand but a friend is one of the producers.
User Friendly Technology April 4, 2011March 24, 2017 “SOURCE CODE” It’s not “The King’s Speech” – but this is one good movie! ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER So I got the HTC Thunderbolt, as previously boasted, and that meant I needed to sync it with my Outlook contacts, which is not a particularly easy thing to find out how to do (why?), which meant having to buy CompanionLink for Outlook, which told me that – because I have more than 5,000 contacts to sync – it could corrupt the data on my PC so I should definitely make a fresh backup of my .pst file (which of course I do try regularly to do), but Outlook is not easy to back up if your .pst file has grown over 4GB because – although the error message doesn’t tell you this (and certainly doesn’t tell you how to solve it) – you can’t copy files over 4GB to hard drives that come in FAT32 format (as all do) until you reformat them in NTFS format (which is easy to do once you know that you need to and someone tells you how, but which also means wiping out all your other data on that drive so you may as well blow $50 on a new 16GB flash drive, because if you have more than 5,000 Outlook contacts you probably also have more than $50 – guilty as charged). Are you with me so far? So now, having reformatted the 16GB flash drive to NTFS, you actually can back up your over-large .pst file, but it would never have grown to exceed 4GB if you had compacted your file from time to time, which Outlook never urges you to do (even when it knows you are nearing the 4GB limit), let alone does for you automatically (as in, why on earth would you not want to compact your data?). I could swear I’ve written about this before but Googling my own web site produces no results, so let me tell you again: when you delete stuff in Outlook – spam, for example – it does not shrink your file. Indeed, even when you go to the “Deleted Items” folder and delete them there, permanently, for real, it doesn’t shrink the file. The file has holes where all these thousands of items used to be, but unless you compact the file, it will not shrink in size. So the thousands of emails I had deleted since the last time I remembered to compact my Outlook file? Still taking up space. But it seems you can’t compact a file once it gets above 4GB – or at least it wouldn’t let me do that – so I Googled this question: “How do I shrink a .pst file over 4GB?” and was presented with an answer – but was told that to actually get that answer I would have to join Experts Exchange for $12.95 a month, although I could cancel without obligation within 30 days. So I signed up (the user testimonials are glowing, and its structure is interesting) and my expert suggested I get this software for $79 – do you hear the patter of light rain on your roof? it’s actually the sound of hundreds of fingers tapping their keyboards: Get a Mac! – and even that was not so easy, because first it downloads a demo and then when you pay the $79 it tells you need to completely uninstall the demo before downloading the real version (they couldn’t figure out a way to do that for you?), and then the real version asks for your PayPal transaction number – which it will reject if, in cutting and pasting it, a blank space gets appended – and then it promises to send you the authentication code without which you can’t proceed (and which Outlook will probably divert to your spam folder, so keep an eye out for it). So you run that program and it strips the “attachments” from your zillion emails and puts them in a separate file – the software, it turns out, doesn’t actually compact your file by filling the holes, only Outlook can do that – and that attachment-stripping shrinks your 4.06GB .pst file by more than 90%, so you are finally ready to make your back up (which you actually already did with the reformatted flash drive, but it’s easy to lose track) and to sync your contacts with your HTC Thunderbolt (bet you had forgotten all about that!) . . . which you decide to do in the morning, because you’ve had enough for one night, and when you return in the morning you discover that Outlook has gone and downloaded (from where?) more than 50,000 messages you had previously dealt with over the past year or two, and they are now all marked “unread” (so you can’t tell the recent ones you need to deal with from the ones you already had dealt with) and your .pst file had now grown to be more than five gigabytes. And that, my friends, is why there will be no column today.
Child Labor You Gotta Love Those Republican Governors April 1, 2011March 24, 2017 I was going to give us the day off (in honor of fools everywhere), but then I saw this Rachel Maddow clip. One way to increase investor wealth is to bring back child labor. Another forward-looking Republican initiative. Watch.