Printing Cupcakes January 17, 2012March 26, 2017 Yes, there was a column yesterday. I just couldn’t wait another day to say something about Joe Scarborough, he made me so angry. (Before the last election, he promulgated the nonsense about job creators, flying in the face of both 70 years of real-world experience and common sense. Friday, he was misleading his viewers about private equity.) There is much to recommend Scarborough and “Morning Joe,” but boy can he get it wrong. A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT: IT COULD HAPPEN When socialist Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont and disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff agree on something, it must have broad political appeal. Add in former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a Nixon appointee, who scoffed at the notion that corporations are “people” – and foresaw the dangerous consequences that the current Court has so destructively amplified with Citizens United – and I think there just might be room here for this thing to catch on. Namely, a Constitutional amendment that overturns Citizens United. “If you are concerned about the collapse of the middle class,” begins Senator Bernie Sanders in this really important appearance on “UP, with Chris Hayes” . . . “if you are wondering why the United States is the only country in the industrialized world not to have a national health care program, if you’re asking yourself why we pay the highest price in the world for prescription drugs or why we spend more money on the military than all the rest of the word combined, you are talking about campaign finance . . .” And he goes on from there. In the same show, a related point is made: so long as there are SuperPACs, a corporate lobbyist can go into a Representative’s or Senator’s office, shut the door, and say: “Listen, Senator. If you vote against us, we will throw $10 million into negative ads kicking you out of office.” Not a dime has changed hands. Not a dime has to be reported. And yet, because Citizens United has made the threat credible, the money is just as corrupting as if it had been paid. So much is at stake with this. Watch. PRINTING CUPCAKES Really! Not that they will necessarily ever taste better printed than baked, but I’m telling you: the future is awfully bright if we can all just find a way to get along. MARRIAGE EQUALITY Bill Spencer: “That Jerusalem Post link Friday was right on the mark, although your earlier quote from Dave Barry said it more succinctly (‘I was against gay marriage until I realized I didn’t have to get one.’) But in my estimation, most of the anxiety and anger over this topic stem from the fact that the two sides are talking in cross-purposes about two different notions of marriage. Civil marriage is not necessarily the same thing as Holy Matrimony as the Catholic and other churches define it. They have different rules and are administered by different authorities. It would be so much easier on everyone if these two concepts could be discussed using unique terms to describe them. I know about the problem with legalese in thousands of laws, but couldn’t we find a way to get around that?” ☞ I think the best we can do is have these two unique terms: CIVIL MARRIAGE – open to everyone. SACRED MARRIAGE – closed to anyone a religion wants to discriminate against.
Joe, Jeff, Mitt, and Matt January 16, 2012March 26, 2017 MORNING JOE ENTIRELY MISSES THE POINT Friday, Joe Scarborough announced that private equity guys like Mitt Romney can’t possibly make money hurting employees and investors; they make money only by making companies a success, not bankrupting them. What could be more obvious? He asserted this over and over and none of his colleagues challenged him. But of course, there IS a way for this to happen: the private equity guys come in, fire people, load the company with debt, pay themselves huge dividends from that debt . . . and then, staggering under the weight of that debt when the next downturn comes, the company can’t make it, shuts its doors putting the rest of its employees out of work, and leaves the lenders with worthless paper. As noted Friday (thanks to Andrew Sullivan), none other than the right-leaning New York Post gave several specific Bain Capital examples (see the yellow highlights). JEFF ANSWERED THE DOOR . . . Jeff Cox: “Your repeated message that most working people would be better represented by Democrats is merely stating the obvious.” ☞ What I love about Jeff’s message is his email “signature.” (You know: that line you can have automatically appended to all your messages. One of you – Mark Lefler – makes me smile every time I see his: “I am nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore, I am perfect!” And Fred Stanback has long used a striking Thomas Edison quote: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”) Here’s Jeff’s signature appendage: I answered the door to see a woman garbed in campaign paraphernalia for the incumbent, Republican, U.S. representative. I was not intending to be rude, but just giving an opening for conversation. “Ok, why should a working man vote Republican?” I asked. I caught her by surprise. “I don’t know,” she said. “Well, I don’t know either.” She took back the pamphlet she had offered, and I shut the door. “I LIKE TO FIRE PEOPLE” – TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT Tom Mathies: “One of your recent columns criticized Romney’s campaign for quoting President Obama out of context. This DNC blog and video quote Romney out of context. There are so many solid reasons to reelect President Obama, I fear out-of-context quotes could actually weaken our case.” ☞ Fair point. Romney did it first and a lot more blatantly, but I’m not comfortable with anything being taken out of context. That said, Matt Miller has an interesting take on this incident here in the Washington Post: A fairminded citizen might feel a pang of sympathy for a politician [Romney] who has to watch every word, lest it be taken out of context and turned against him. That’s why we get such robotic candidates and officials, after all. But such sympathy dries up when it turns out that Romney’s actual meaning involves the Big Republican Lie on health care. . . . Romney’s dishonesty here is breathtaking. I used to think Republicans had taken chutzpah to unsurpassable new heights when they refused on principle to lift the debt ceiling last summer – despite having passed the Paul Ryan budget, which added more than $5 trillion in debt over the next decade. But Romney may have topped that . . . It’s worth reading the whole thing to see why.
Maybe Mitt Won’t Be the Nominee After All January 13, 2012March 26, 2017 ANDREW SULLIVAN REVIEWS GINGRICH SUPERPAC AD On the Daily Beast – here: I just watched the Bain documentary [When Mitt Romney Came to Town] being broadcast throughout South Carolina by Newt Gingrich’s SuperPac in full. It’s loaded with out-of-context quotes and heavily biased; it focuses on the specific human suffering of the necessary “creative destruction” of capitalism not its general benefits to the economy. It does so through the voices and stories of ordinary Americans. And, as an emotional bludgeon, it’s devastating. But what makes it so dangerous to Romney, it seems to me, is that the Bain Brahmin didn’t just fire thousands of working class people in restructuring and in closing companies. He made a[n] unimaginable fortune doing it. That’s the issue. Other Republicans can speak about the need for free markets in a sluggish economy. But with Romney, we have a singular example of someone who made a quarter of a billion dollars by firing the white middle and working class in droves in ways that do not seem designed to promote growth or efficiency, but merely to enrich Bain. Here’s the New York Post, for Pete’s sake, making the case last year against the shifty Wall Street games of Bain: Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, bought companies and often increased short-term earnings so those businesses could then borrow enormous amounts of money. That borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends. Then those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts… * Bain in 1988 put $5 million down to buy Stage Stores, and in the mid-’90s took it public, collecting $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000. * Bain in 1992 bought American Pad & Paper (AMPAD), investing $5 million, and collected $100 million from dividends. The business filed for bankruptcy in 2000. * Bain in 1993 invested $60 million when buying GS Industries, and received $65 million from dividends. GS filed for bankruptcy in 2001. * Bain in 1997 invested $46 million when buying Details, and made $93 million from stock offerings. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2003. Romney’s Bain invested 22 percent of the money it raised from 1987-95 in these five businesses, making a $578 million profit. Some of the associations in the ad are unfair – but they will resonate emotionally. Many, many people in, say, South Carolina, have lost jobs. That’s rough enough. But if Romney comes across as the man who made a fortune off this kind of Wall Street maneuvering, he becomes a symbol and a focus for all the roiling populist discontent out there. When he is responsible for someone losing her house, the contrast with his multiple mansions and private beach gets a little de trop. One ad with one victim could be poison. Of all the jobs he liquidated, moreover, many are in the American heartland. And his response to the people in this documentary – white working class heartland Americans, the GOP base – is that they are merely envious of his achievements. They don’t come off that way in the ad. They come off as bewildered, betrayed and sure that Romney’s goal in all this was merely, solely to make money for himself – the kind of money that most Americans cannot even compute. I simply cannot imagine a worse narrative for a candidate in this climate; or a politician whose skills are singularly incapable of responding to the story in any persuasive way. This ad is powerful. Romney has already seen a drop in South Carolina. I suspect he’ll drop some more. And I suspect once the potency of this line of attack is absorbed by the GOP establishment, there will be some full, if concealed, panic. ☞ I’ve watched it, too. Devastating is exactly right. JEWS SHOULD SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE As argued here in the Jerusalem Post. THE LAST WORD ON DIET PEACH CITRUS FRESCA Chris Brown: “Re Bill Spencer’s remark Wednesday, grapefruit juice contains compounds which inhibit one of the liver enzymes, CYP3A4, that helps metabolize certain drugs. This is a dose-dependent inhibition, meaning that if one were on a high dose of an affected drug, and then drank a significant quantity of grapefruit juice (say, 32 ounces), one would risk having a blood level of drug that is too high, and one could potentially have the same side effects from that as if they were taking too large a dose of said drug. For most commonly-involved drugs (cholesterol drug Zocor, for example), drinking an occasional glass of grapefruit juice will not have enough of an effect to cause any adverse side effects. Only in the case of drugs that are highly toxic and have a narrow therapeutic window (for example, cyclosporine, taken by a kidney transplant patient), do people truly need to avoid even an eight ounce glass of grapefruit juice. In the case of Fresca, the dose of grapefruit juice (and therefore the amount of enzyme inhibition) is so low that there is essentially no meaningful potential for drug interactions. One would have adverse effects from drinking too much water (also an ingredient in Fresca), long before the amount of CYP3A4 inhibition became clinically meaningful. For your readers who still want to worry about something food-related, they can worry about selenium toxicity from eating too many brazil nuts. That really does happen.”
Math Geek Gold; Glaciation Postponed; Evil Reanimated (Sorry: Busy Day) January 12, 2012March 26, 2017 WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN NEW HAMPSHIRE Every so often, you get a brow-raising mathematical or numerical occurrence – as we recently did at 11 minutes past 11 on the morning of 11/11/11. Or when someone flips heads a dozen times in a row. Meaningless, but fun. Well, what happened in NH turns out to have been just such a thing. Each of the top four vote getters got fewer votes than the next two finishers combined. If you are not vibrating with excitement at that news, then, like me, you were not a math major. So let me explain. It’s no big deal when the TOP vote getter gets fewer votes than his two closest rivals combined. Happens all the time. (I win with 38% of the votes, say, and my next two closest competitors, at 30% each get 60%. So what? Who cares? Hurray for me.) And it’s apparently no big deal, albeit a good bit less likely, for this to apply, as well, to the SECOND highest vote getter, who ALSO gets fewer votes than HER (or in the case of the NH primary, HIS) two closest rivals combined. But for it to hold true for number three – and for number four?!?! There are (apparently) not enough expletives in the world to delete in expressing the —-ing incredibleness of this having occurred. Yet, in fact, #1 Romney DID get fewer votes than #2 Paul and #3 Huntsman combined; #2 Paul DID get fewer votes than #3 Huntsman and #4 Gingrich combined; #3 Huntsman DID get fewer votes than #4 Gingrich and #5 Santorum combined; #4 Gingrich DID get fewer votes than #5 Santorum and #6 Perry combined. (And Santorum? Well, if only Herman Cain had stayed in the race.) As the estimable Peter Kaczowka explained all this to me – all of this comes from him, unless I got part of it wrong – ‘You really should post this in your column. The math geeks will go nuts over it. It’s suitable for a PhD dissertation: given ‘N,’ the vote percent of the winner, what is the maximum n-tuple, and what is its order? [Already I’m lost. Who’s N – Nixon?] My brother already pointed it out. It’s related to the triangle theorem. I’m telling you, this is math geek gold. Like most set theory, it probably has non-obvious practical applications – may be the foundation of electoral science! LOL.’ AVERTING THE NEXT ICE AGE Well, there’s one thing we don’t have to worry about for a while. According to this, the heat-trapping gasses we’ve been spewing into the atmosphere – even if we stopped abruptly – will take so long to be reabsorbed that the next Ice Age – which might normally have begun within the next 1,500 years – has been postponed. But as relieved as I know you will be to learn this – because fear of glaciation has been nagging at you, in that dull recess of the primal brain where you also worry, on some level, about the approaching undetected comet, killer bees, and that exam you’re suddenly subjected to in a course you forgot you were taking (see: set theory, above) – it turns out it’s not such good news after all. The article concludes: “It’s an interesting philosophical discussion – ‘would we better off in a warm [interglacial-type] world rather than a glaciation?’ and probably we would,” [Cambridge Professor Luke Skinner] said. “But it’s missing the point, because where we’re going is not maintaining our currently warm climate but heating it much further, and adding CO2 to a warm climate is very different from adding it to a cold climate. “The rate of change with CO2 is basically unprecedented, and there are huge consequences if we can’t cope with that.” BOROWITZ SHOCKER Romney Vows to Undo Everything Obama Has Done: ‘I Will Make Bin Laden Alive Again’ Calls Slain al-Qaeda Leader a Job Creator MANCHESTER, NH – Jan 11 (The Borowitz Report) – In a rousing victory speech in New Hampshire last night, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney vowed to undo everything Barack Obama has done as President, promising his supporters, ‘I will make Osama bin Laden alive again.’ Mr. Romney called the assassination of bin Laden ‘just one of the many mistakes this President has made,’ adding, ‘Say what you will about Osama bin Laden, the man was a job creator.’ The presumptive GOP nominee said that on his first day in office, ‘I will get a hold of the DNA of Osama bin Laden and breathe the life-force of capitalism back into it.’ The reanimation of the slain al-Qaeda leader is just the first of many steps Mr. Romney plans to take in his effort to get the USA ‘back to exactly how it was’ before Mr. Obama took office. ‘As President, I will immediately close down GM and Chrysler and put thousands of Americans out on the street,’ he said. ‘And then I will try to get a hold of the DNA of Qaddafi.’ At another point in his victory speech, Mr. Romney complained that his controversial remark about ‘liking to fire people’ had been taken out of context: ‘The full quote was, ‘I like to fire people – and then laugh at them.” Get the Borowitz Report delivered to your inbox for free here. Tomorrow: The Last Word On Diet Peach Citrus Fresca (I Promise)
He Won’t January 11, 2012March 26, 2017 NOAH’S EARTHWORM PROBLEM Bible meets biology in under three minutes – here – by Isabella Rossellini. WHAT IF OBAMA LOSES? He won’t, thanks to you (see below). But the new Washington Monthly devotes an entire issue to imagining the future if he did – here. Executive summary: If you liked the Bush years, you’ll love a rightwing House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court. (If we fail to fund the massive effort required to register millions of new voters . . . and re-register millions of existing voters the Republicans are working systematically to disenfranchise . . . we won’t get the turn-out to hold the White House or to hold the Senate.) HE WON’T Pick the state you want to help win and see – roughly – what your contribution will pay for. Yes, it’s a little gimmicky; but the effort itself, and the outcome that hangs in the balance, are dead serious. See, for example: Not What You Would Expect Me To Say About Golden Retrievers.) PEACH FRESCA Mark Centuori: “I went to two Safeways today to find that peach Fresca, and is it ever very good! And a lovely bouquet as well. It’s been around since 2005?! I need to get out of the Grocery Outlet more.” Virginia Downs: “Fresca contains brominated vegetable oil, which is patented as a flame retardant and banned in food in Europe and Japan.” ☞ Great with jalapenos and fiery Mexican food. But thanks to Virginia – and a little Googling on the subject – I’ll not go overboard. Bill Spencer: “According to the diet drink review you linked to, diet Fresca Peach Citrus contains concentrated grapefruit juice. And according to this from the Mayo Clinic, grapefruit juice can cause an interaction with several common medications, possibly with serious consequences. Statins, for example, which many people take for high cholesterol, have a strong interaction. I’m not a medical professional (nor do I play one on TV), but I take medicines on the interaction list, and I do not eat grapefruit. I thought you might want to know.” ☞ Who can live without grapefruit? (Communists, that’s who.) I have to think a diet Fresca contains just a tiny nibble of grapefruit. Still, I eat a lot of grapefruit and will have to check this out. The second best medical advice of all time, I guess, is simply, “everything in moderation.” (The best medical advice of all time I read half a century ago in an early edition of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. It seems that a book was put up for auction promising “the secret to good health” and – for obvious reasons – bidders were not allowed to inspect its contents prior to bidding. Well, the bidding got spirited, according to Ripley – you have nothing if you don’t have your health – and the book, if memory serves, ultimately went for 1,000 pounds. For a book! In the Nineteenth Century! I can hardly believe it. And when the winning bidder grabbed his prize and opened it, he found all the pages blank save the first, on which was written, simply: “Keep your feet warm and your head cool and you shall” something or other on the order of “live a long and healthy life.” Words to live by when shopping for socks.)
Best App Ever January 10, 2012March 26, 2017 Yesterday, a surprisingly good soft drink. Today, the best app ever. But first, a follow-up to yesterday’s item on JOBS. (Part I: Governor Romney’s claims of creating them – and of the President’s failure to do so – would make a used car salesman blush. Part II: our manufacturing woes stem more from our own structural problems than from low Chinese wages.) That second part is the opinion of an American manufacturer who lists these problems: “a deliberate lack of investment, a lack of an education system geared towards creating high end manufacturing workforce, the absence of a rational industrial policy, [and] a shortsighted focus on the near term bottom line.” Note that his list does not include “over-regulation.” Which brings me to . . . REGULATION AND JOBS If you watched the Republican debates over the weekend, you may have come away thinking that Democratic administrations kill jobs with over-regulation. Leaving aside 16 years of recent real-world experience that would seem – at the very least – to cast this theory into doubt (under the Democratic Clinton Administration, 23 million net new jobs were created; under the Republican Bush Administration, with all its efforts to accommodate business by weakening regulation, almost no jobs were created), what about the Obama Administration? The following references were offered Sunday morning by the DNC Rapid Response team. I’ve bold-faced a few of them: REALITY: PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS CHANGED THE REGULATORY CULTURE IN WASHINGTON TO REDUCE REGULATORY COSTS AND BURDENS The Bush Administration Imposed More Regulatory Costs In Its Final Two Years Than The Obama Administration Imposed In First Two Years. [The Hill, 8/26/11] President Obama Signed A Landmark Executive Order Requiring Agencies To Develop Tools To Eliminate Regulations That Are Ineffective Or Burdensome. [GPO.gov, 1/21/11] President Obama Issued A Memorandum Directing Agencies To Ensure They Do Not Place Unjustified Burdens On Small Business Owners. [WhiteHouse.gov, 1/18/11] The Obama Administration Issued A Memorandum Directing Agencies To Provide Taxpayers With Easier And More Comprehensive Access To Regulatory Information. [EOP Memorandum, 4/7/10] The Obama Administration Has, For The First Time Ever, Required Agencies To Engage With Members Of The Public Affected By A Potential Regulation Before They Issue A Notice Of Proposal. [Senate Hearing On Federal Regulation, 6/23/11] Bloomberg Found That The Obama Administration Had Approved Fewer Regulations Than The Second Bush Administration Through The First 33 Months Of Each Administration’s Tenure. [Bloomberg, 10/26/11] President Obama Initiated An Overhaul Of The Regulatory System Which Will Roll Back Hundreds Of Burdensome Regulations, Saving Businesses More Than $10 Billion In The Next Five Years. [Politico, 8/23/11] During The Obama Administration, Tens Of Millions Of Hours In Paperwork Related To Regulations Have Been Eliminated, Saving Businesses Hundreds Of Millions In Related Costs. [Senate Hearing On Federal Regulation, 6/23/11] Under President Obama, The IRS Has Made Changes That Will Save Taxpayers 55 Million Annual Hours In Tax Reporting And Paperwork Burdens. [Senate Hearing On Federal Regulation, 6/23/11] The Obama Administration Removed An EPA Regulation Defining Milk As An “Oil” Which Will Save The Dairy Industry $1.4 Billion In The Next Decade. [ORIA Speech, 5/26/11] The Obama Administration Removed Over 1.9 Million Annual Hours Of Redundant Reporting Burdens On Employers, Which Will Save Businesses $40 Million In Annual Costs. [Senate Hearing On Federal Regulation, 6/23/11] ☞ It is nonsense to think that Republicans are more eager than Democrats to eliminate stupid or over-reaching regulation. It is not nonsense to think that without sensible regulation of the kind Republicans generally oppose – especially as regards the air and water we share, but also as regards everything from tobacco and food safety to financial regulation – there would be a race to the bottom that would harm our collective health and well-being. THE BEST APP EVER I searched my iPhone app store for TED. It installed free in seconds and from now on, when walking or waiting, I can listen to one astounding short lecture after another. I started with this wonderfully hopeful 16-minute talk on surgery by Quyen Nguyen, herself a surgeon. And followed it with this fascinating if sobering 18-minute analysis of the “the global power shift” by Paddy Ashdown. I have dozens more in queue for later. This is amazing stuff, free, crystal clear, in your pocket. DNDN A sore subject to many of us – see here – but the stock was $11.91 on August 12, when I told you guru believed it would outperform, and last night it closed at $13.31. Guru: “They announced much better than expected revenue for December. The long arm of the hockey stick has begun.” If you own some, he’d hold on. Needless to say (especially with this one), only with money you can truly afford to lose.
Peach Citrus Diet Fresca January 9, 2012March 26, 2017 But first . . . JOBS It’s good to see continued progress, albeit modest, on the jobs front. Every 200,000 net new jobs in a month helps. That progress would have been much stronger if the opposition had allowed us to throw ourselves into the enormous job of modernizing our infrastructure. In the meantime, though, anyone who actually credits what Governor Romney has been saying about jobs – the ones he claims to have created and the ones he faults President Obama for having failed to create – should read this. Paul Krugman sets the record straight. If you judge Obama not from the day he took office, before he had done anything – let alone January 1, twenty days before he took office, as Romney’s team initially did – but rather from the point his stimulus program actually took effect, then the story is not at all what Romney hopes to mislead you to believe. And Romney’s own claims? Well, they’re kind of ludicrous. He says “we created more jobs in Massachusetts than this president’s created in the entire country.” First, by any sensible analysis, it’s not true (see above). Second, and ironically, those were mostly government jobs. For every one private sector job that was created in Massachusetts, there were 6 government jobs created. Third, under Romney’s leadership, the state ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation, with manufacturing jobs falling by more than double the national average. He says that, at Bain, he created 100,000 jobs. See Krugman on that. Ouch. And add to Krugman’s analysis this additional observation: the jobs Governor Romney did help to create were primarily at two retailers and one pizza chain. Nothing against shopping or pizza; but these are not the industries of tomorrow. Kids do not grow up hoping to be sales clerks and pizza delivery drivers. We will not thrive as a nation by expanding our pizza output and building more stores to sell foreign-made office supplies and sporting goods. And, by the way? It’s likely that, with the rise of Staples, the Sports Authority, and Dominos, loads of people lost jobs at competing stationery and sporting goods shops and pizza parlors. Which is fine – I have no problem with the rough and tumble of competition. But in choosing our next president, the focus needs to be on macroeconomic policies: Governor Romney’s plan would cut taxes further on the top 1% (like that’s really worked) and shows no enthusiasm for the kind of domestic Marshall Plan needed to modernize our infrastructure and get the economy booming again. That’s the bottom line. His is the wrong vision for the job. JOBS II Thanks to Dean Reinemann for forwarding this interesting comment (from Ron Russell in Seattle), buried deep in the responses to recent column by David Pogue about the “tear down” analyses – where someone takes apart an iPhone (say) and tots up the cost of all its components: Ron Russell: As someone who designs and manufactures specialized instrumentation [I can tell you that the] value added in final assembly is fairly trivial – estimates I’ve seen for an iPhone are $14-17. In our own product (which IS assembled in the US) the tiny price advantage of going to overseas assembly is just not worth it. Even though our products are assembled in the US, NONE of the high value components that go into them (representing most of the value added) are manufactured in the US – but they come from Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Denmark, and Korea – i.e. mostly from high wage countries with full health care and good worker protections, strong unions, and stricter environmental regulations than the US has – AND a strong manufacturing base. Cheap Chinese labor is not why the US has lost this sort of manufacturing. It’s the result of a deliberate lack of investment, a lack of an education system geared towards creating high end manufacturing workforce, the absence of a rational industrial policy, [and] a shortsighted focus on the near term bottom line. ☞ The sort of shortsighted focus that made centi-millionaires of many a smart B-School grad, like Mitt Romney, but that has ultimately been a mixed blessing, at best, to our common weal. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT? Peach citrus diet Fresca. I know: it surprised me, too. Tomorrow: Regulation and Jobs
UnAmerican Activities January 6, 2012March 26, 2017 YOU’RE WELCOME Ralph S.: “Yesterday’s check list is alone worth the annual subscription to your site. Much appreciated.” ☞ Don’t thank me, thank Rob Shook. As with so much here, the best stuff comes from you all. SANTORUM: UNAMERICAN Sarah J.: “Did you see this?: ‘Criticizing President Obama for “absolutely un-American activities,” [Santorum] said he was running to ensure he left the country in better shape for his children.’ Really? Un-American how? I come from a family which has members that have had that epithet thrown at them. Shades of Senator Joe McCarthy. Great. This is where the Republicans have sunk to.” ☞ The most unAmerican of activities, it seems to me, is intolerance of others’ ideas. You can call them wrong-headed – maybe it was wrong-headed of Obama to want to save the American auto industry or take that chance killing bin Laden or ramping up the stem-cell research that could one day save your child’s life . . . maybe it was wrong-headed to cut taxes on small business 18 ways or to raise taxes on the investment income of the best off* to extend health coverage to the uninsured without adding to the deficit – but un-American? In fairness to Santorum, I think he would be quick to say he doesn’t believe the President is personally un-American. (Leave that to the large swath of Republicans who do question his citizenship or patriotism.) Just that he has engaged in “absolutely un-American activities.” But I join Sarah in asking: what un-American activities? Tearing down discrimination against people like me, to allow us to fight and die for our country? Is that unAmerican? Seeking to rebuild the country’s infrastructure? Or to catalyze a clean and independent energy future? Or to provide consumer protections? Or to launch an educational race to the top? Does he consider these to be un-American activities? As the campaign continues, perhaps we will find out. *To 18.8% from 15% . . . compared to Reagan’s 28%. ROMNEY: GRITTING HIS TEETH I disagree with most of Governor Romney’s views. For example, according to this report, he would cut taxes for the top 1% yet another $82,000 a year, on average, while raising them $157 a year for those in the bottom quintile. But it’s hard not to feel a little sympathy for someone no one seems to like. From the Washington Post: Mitt Romney out of control By Dana Milbank MANCHESTER, N.H. — If this is Mitt Romney’s idea of a victory rally, one shudders to think what would have happened if he had lost the Iowa caucuses. The day after his impossibly thin eight-vote victory, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination flew here for a town hall meeting at Manchester Central High School, where he was to bask in the endorsement of his 2008 arch rival, John McCain. [“If the candidate is a phony, we’ll know it,” opined an editorial McCain approved for an ad in 2008. “Mitt Romney is such a candidate.”] But the senator grimaced when he was introduced, and as Romney delivered his own stump speech, an increasingly impatient McCain pulled up his sleeve and checked his watch. McCain gave his endorsement address without mentioning Romney’s Iowa win until the end. “By the way, we forgot to congratulate him on his landslide victory last night,” he said, laughing. Romney ignored him. Then came the questions: First, one from an Occupy Wall Street infiltrator needling the candidate about his belief that “corporations are people.” A second questioner wanted to know why Romney flip-flopped on universal health care when he was governor of Massachusetts and why he would not increase health-care costs. Later, a Chinese American woman accused Romney of saying “degrading” things about China, and she complained that “after 20 years of Reagan trickle-down economics, it didn’t help me. My tin can is still empty.” Romney sat through most of the ambush with a tight grin and raised eyebrows. At length he attempted to challenge the woman to name a place where income is higher than it is in the United States. The Occupy Wall Street guy began heckling. “The U.S. has the highest income inequality in the entire developed world!” Romney tried to regain control. “Excuse me,” he said. “You’ve had your chance.” McCain walked toward the Occupy guy. “Be quiet,” he said, menacingly. The woman, no longer in possession of a working microphone, began hollering. “For those who didn’t hear,” Romney offered, “she says she loves this country and don’t put any Asians down. I hope I haven’t put any Asians down.” The woman’s muffled shouting continued. Romney tried to answer. A baby started to cry. When the end mercifully came, the candidate gave a final rallying call to “get the White House back.” All but a few rose and put on their coats without applauding. This undoubtedly was not the victory lap the campaign had in mind. Everything about Romney is controlled, precise and disciplined. Flying from Des Moines to Manchester on Wednesday, he went to his seat right when the pilot turned on the seat-belt sign; many other politicians on charters have been known to remain standing right through landing. His staff applauded dutifully when he got on his plane (a Miami Air 737 named “Diane” on the fuselage but labeled Hair Force One by others), and he went up and down the row congratulating each staff member with a “nice work” and a “thank you.” The grin he wore when he boarded remained throughout the flight — even when he entered and exited the lavatory. When he went to the back of the plane to visit the press corps, he made a labored attempt to demonstrate that he was at ease. He noticed an aide’s manifest for the media and pretended that was funny. “Is that right? A seating chart? Ha, ha, ha.” “What do you think of your eight-vote landslide?” the Associated Press’s Glenn Johnson asked. “No interviews yet,” the candidate said. “We’ll be back later,” he said, repeating this three times. (He did not come back later.) In need of a new subject, Romney looked at the staffer sitting in the row ahead of the press corps. “Is this the referee?” he asked. It wasn’t clear why he regarded this staffer as a referee, but he continued to joke about the demarcation between staff seats and media seats. “The line? The DMZ? Is that it? No, I know what it is: It’s the emergency exit! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah. Ahh.” The candidate fielded a couple of questions about his activities on caucus night, and then tried to answer a question about his margin of victory. “Ha, ha. Uh. I think landslides are terrific,” he said. “I just didn’t, uh, see that in last night’s figures. I’m not sure about you. Ha, ha, ha, ha.” Maybe he should have gotten more sleep. Driven to Manchester on a bus he dubbed “Landslide Lounge,” Romney continued to wrestle with words when he took the stage at the high school. “What a, uh, big night we had last night, or what a big morning we had, uh, last morning, this morning, in, uh, Iowa,” he began. Not long after that, he vowed that he would help to promote “businesses big and large.” McCain, finally granted the microphone, told many of the same jokes he used on the campaign trail in 2008. Romney smiled politely. It was then time for the disastrous question-and-answer session, beginning with the Occupy activists hectoring Romney about corporations-as-people. “Hold on!” the candidate volleyed. “You had your turn. Now it’s my turn.” After Romney’s win in Iowa, it is his turn. But he doesn’t seem to be enjoying it.
MYLGF January 5, 2012March 26, 2017 CHECKLIST FOR SMART LIVING Rob Shook: “Every year I prepare a list of things I think folks should do, get done, consider, or proactively decide not to do – not just let fall by the wayside. Here’s this year’s.” ☞ It’s in sections, well worth a look, and begins: Finances and Identity 1. Get a copy of your credit reports from each of the three credit reporting agencies. You get one for free each year from each of them: know precisely where you stand. Don’t fall for their ploys to get you to subscribe to a (pretty worthless) “credit watch” service … although you may want to purchase a copy of your Fair, Isaac (FICO) score for a nominal fee from one of the agencies. If you opt for one of the “consolidated” reports (which you often must pay for), you’ll have to fight any inaccuracies only in writing. By getting the report directly from each of the agencies, you can dispute and resolve most problems on-line. While you’re at the reporting agency’s site, take time to opt-out from pre-approved credit offers (so a pre-approved application doesn’t land in your mailbox, waiting for someone to steal it … and your identity …). THE GAYS APOLOGIZE From the Twin Cities City Pages. Speaks for itself: Gay community apologizes to Amy Koch for ruining her marriage By Kevin Hoffman The gay and lesbian community of Minnesota has issued a letter of apology to recently resigned Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch for ruining the institution of marriage and causing her to stray from her husband and engage in an “inappropriate relationship.” . . . “We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love have cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry.” The letter comes on the heels of Koch’s own apology, released yesterday, in which she expressed her deep regret for “engaging in a relationship with a Senate staffer.” . . . Koch [and her] fellow Republicans campaigned this year to put a constitutional amendment on next year’s ballot to define marriage as the union between a man and a woman, thus forbidding gay marriage. Sadly, the amendment comes too late to prevent Koch from straying from her own marriage. . . . MYLGF Guru: “They hired Rachel Humphrey today as chief medical officer. She came from Bristol Myers, the leading cancer company in the world (based on sales), where she worked on developing through FDA approval their immune therapy for melanoma called Yervoy. Before Bristol, she worked at Bayer on Nexavar, an approved drug for kidney and liver cancer with sales almost $1 billion, a drug with a mechanism that overlaps with MYG’s lead compound. Prior to Bristol, she was at the National Cancer Institute of the NIH. All in all, a very impressive hire. Of note, MYG has been running unblinded trials since last summer in prostate, lung, and gastric cancer. It is likely that Dr. Humphrey saw this data before agreeing to join MYG. I expect the rest of us will see the data later this year.” ☞ This is 30 cents, about where it was when first mentioned last April. It remains very thinly traded, so be sure to use limits if you buy any – and only with money you can truly afford to lose. I dream of a quintuple.
Of Taxes and Sewage January 4, 2012March 26, 2017 INFRASTRUCTURE Ralph Sierra: “Another issue to add to our list of infrastructure projects: water and sewer lines.” . . . if the nation’s water and sewer systems begin to fail, life as we know it will too. Without an ample supply of water, people don’t drink, toilets don’t flush, factories don’t operate, offices shut down and fires go unchecked. When sewage systems fail, cities can’t function and epidemics break out. . . . the vast majority of the country’s water systems are in urgent need of repair and replacement. At a Senate hearing last month, it was estimated that . . . it will take $335 billion to resurrect water systems and $300 billion to fix sewer systems. . . . ☞ If only we had people looking for work who could get on this. Oh, wait – we do! And putting them to work would not only get the job done, it would get the economy moving, tax revenues rising, unemployment checks, food stamps, foreclosures, and the deficit falling – a virtuous cycle. How do we persuade Republicans that tax cuts don’t finance public works, taxes do. We need a decade or two skewed toward public expenditure. As between living with taxes or living with sewage, I’d choose taxes. You? (And please don’t tell me we should just slash expenses elsewhere in order to pay for infrastructure. Leaving aside the fact that the presumed Republican nominee says he would not cut the one place where meaningful cuts are possible and sensible – the military budget – slashing government spending now would only prolong or deepen our economic woes, which would only prolong or deepen our deficits.) President Eisenhower understood this when, despite the nation’s sky-high national debt coming out of World War II, he launched construction of the Interstate Highway System. ROMNEY ON JOBS Bush told everyone, over and over, that “by far the vast majority” of his proposed tax cuts would go to “people at the bottom of the economic ladder.” It was a multi-trillion-dollar lie – which even as big lies go is a very big one – but it worked. Now comes Romney to portray Obama as “a president who lost more jobs during his tenure than any president since Hoover.” But the facts – and the two graphs in Paul Krugman’s response – tell a very different story. Bookmark it, because if that line tested well, I expect we’ll hear it again and again. RICK SANTORUM Nice guy, no doubt – but to hold the most important job on the planet? Really? And what about his positions? If your daughter is raped, Rick Santorum would have the government require her to bear the rapist’s child rather than abort a day-old blastocyst. If your sibling happens to be gay, and married, Rick Santorum would have the government annul that marriage via Constitutional Amendment. He sees no Constitutional “right of privacy.” Has declared global warming “a hoax.” Would de-fund the United Nations. Require the teaching of “intelligent design” in science classes. There’s more, no doubt; but as he’s unlikely to be the nominee, I’ll stop there. Tomorrow: Rob Shook’s Checklist for Smart Living