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Andrew Tobias
Andrew Tobias

Money and Other Subjects

Year: 2012

BOREF & Beer, Romney & Romney

July 11, 2012July 11, 2012

WHEELTUG SIGNS AIRLINE #5

Turkey’s “largest privately owned airline,” Onur Air, follows El Al, Alitalia, Jet Airways, and Israir in signing a letter of intent to lease the WheelTug system. Borealis closed at $13.70 yesterday.   People seem to be allowing for the possibility that WheelTug is real.  Which would mean that at least some of the other claimed (and patented) Borealis technologies might be real.  The current $68.5 million market cap begins to approach the $110 million some guy paid for a spectacular New York City penthouse recently.  The difference being that the penthouse, though it has a better view, costs God knows how much in taxes and common charges to maintain each year, where just this one Borealis subsidiary, if it worked out, might generate $100 million in annual profits. (E.g., 2,000 systems leased to power 2,000 planes at a net of $50,000 each).  Or $500 million in annual profits (10,000 planes).  This is anything but a sure thing; but as each new airline signs on, and now that we’ve seen video of the system inside actual nose wheels driving actual planes, it seems less and less far-fetched.  Summer fun, anyway.  (We can be cavalier about this because we bought these shares only with money we can truly afford to lose.)

BEN FRANKLIN – II

Joel Grow:  “Another very important Ben Franklin quote: ‘Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.’ OK, so it’s a tad off-topic….but still.”

Well it is off-topic (here was the topic).  But it raises an important point:  Can you imagine how more certain of God’s intentions he would have been if Franklin had had cold beer?  If warm beer pleased him, what transport of joy would a lightning strike that electrified a kite string attached to one of these have brought him?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY

Paul Krugman nails it for the New York Times — as usual:

Once upon a time a rich man named Romney ran for president. He could claim, with considerable justice, that his wealth was well-earned, that he had in fact done a lot to create good jobs for American workers. Nonetheless, the public understandably wanted to know both how he had grown so rich and what he had done with his wealth; he obliged by releasing extensive information about his financial history.

But that was 44 years ago. And the contrast between George Romney and his son Mitt — a contrast both in their business careers and in their willingness to come clean about their financial affairs — dramatically illustrates how America has changed.

Right now there’s a lot of buzz about an investigative report in the magazine Vanity Fair highlighting the “gray areas” in the younger Romney’s finances. More about that in a minute. First, however, let’s talk about what it meant to get rich in George Romney’s America, and how it compares with the situation today.

What did George Romney do for a living? The answer was straightforward: he ran an auto company, American Motors. And he ran it very well indeed: at a time when the Big Three were still fixated on big cars and ignoring the rising tide of imports, Romney shifted to a highly successful focus on compacts that restored the company’s fortunes, not to mention that it saved the jobs of many American workers.

It also made him personally rich. We know this because during his run for president, he released not one, not two, but 12 years’ worth of tax returns, explaining that any one year might just be a fluke. From those returns we learn that in his best year, 1960, he made more than $660,000 — the equivalent, adjusted for inflation, of around $5 million today.

Those returns also reveal that he paid a lot of taxes — 36 percent of his income in 1960, 37 percent over the whole period. This was in part because, as one report at the time put it, he “seldom took advantage of loopholes to escape his tax obligations.” But it was also because taxes on the rich were much higher in the ’50s and ’60s than they are now. In fact, once you include the indirect effects of taxes on corporate profits, taxes on the very rich were about twice current levels.

Now fast-forward to Romney the Younger, who made even more money during his business career at Bain Capital. Unlike his father, however, Mr. Romney didn’t get rich by producing things people wanted to buy; he made his fortune through financial engineering that seems in many cases to have left workers worse off, and in some cases driven companies into bankruptcy.

And there’s another contrast: George Romney was open and forthcoming about what he did with his wealth, but Mitt Romney has largely kept his finances secret. He did, grudgingly, release one year’s tax return plus an estimate for the next year, showing that he paid a startlingly low tax rate. But as the Vanity Fair report points out, we’re still very much in the dark about his investments, some of which seem very mysterious.

Put it this way: Has there ever before been a major presidential candidate who had a multimillion-dollar Swiss bank account, plus tens of millions invested in the Cayman Islands, famed as a tax haven?

And then there’s his Individual Retirement Account. I.R.A.’s are supposed to be a tax-advantaged vehicle for middle-class savers, with annual contributions limited to a few thousand dollars a year. Yet somehow Mr. Romney ended up with an account worth between $20 million and $101 million.

There are legitimate ways that could have happened, just as there are potentially legitimate reasons for parking large sums of money in overseas tax havens. But we don’t know which if any of those legitimate reasons apply in Mr. Romney’s case — because he has refused to release any details about his finances. This refusal to come clean suggests that he and his advisers believe that voters would be less likely to support him if they knew the truth about his investments.

And that is precisely why voters have a right to know that truth. Elections are, after all, in part about the perceived character of the candidates — and what a man does with his money is surely a major clue to his character.

One more thing: To the extent that Mr. Romney has a coherent policy agenda, it involves cutting tax rates on the very rich — which are already, as I said, down by about half since his father’s time. Surely a man advocating such policies has a special obligation to level with voters about the extent to which he would personally benefit from the policies he advocates.

Yet obviously that’s something Mr. Romney doesn’t want to do. And unless he does reveal the truth about his investments, we can only assume that he’s hiding something seriously damaging.

Of course, none of this matters to — or even gets considered by — the large chunk of the country who “know” Iraq played a role in attacking us on on 9/11 and that climate change is a hoax and that our Muslim President is plotting to confiscate our guns. Who nod when Rush Limbaugh, red faced and bursting with outrage, labels “the four pillars of deceit” — “academia, government, science, and the media.”

Down this anti-science, anti-tax path lies the Romney/Ryan austerity budget.  By throwing so many out of work just when we should be hiring them to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, it out-Hoovers Hoover and presages the kind of dark times that the last great depression led to: wars and fascism (look at the nascent Nazi party in Greece).

None of this is going to happen, because — in a cliffhanger victory your support is crucial to assuring — Barack Obama is going to be reelected and we will continue to make slow, but more or less steady, progress out of the incredible mess Mitt Romney’s Harvard Business School classmate, George W. Bush, left behind.

That progress will be faster if we also hold the Senate and take back the House.  Which we will do if our drive to turn out the vote trumps their drive to suppress it.

 

Ben Franklin and Thos Jefferson v. Grover Norquist and Joe the Plumber

July 9, 2012July 10, 2012

If we hire Mitt Romney to run the world, the world will likely have a depression — which will make our deficit worse,  by the way.  Even if he knows better (and I have to think he does), Mr. Romney is by now so wedded to the Tea Party’s opposition to taxes and to the devastating Paul Ryan “austerity” budget that he will find himself out-Hoovering Hoover.  He will be slamming on the brakes exactly when a teetering economy needs him to invest massively in infrastructure: employing millions to make our country more efficient, prosperous, and secure.  FDR invested massively, of necessity, to win the War.  We need to do it — building solar panels instead of bombs, rebuilding bridges instead of storming beaches — to move people off unemployment back into the middle class.

A world depression would likely lead to wars, new brands of fascism (look at Greece), and who knows what else?  But we can avoid one if we don’t do crazy self-destructive things like manufacturing a debt ceiling crisis or throwing ourselves into reverse when we should be moving forward.

All because we’ve decided that taxes are a horribe, tyrannical, communist thing.

And it is in that broad context that I offer today’s two items:

WHAT DOES THE TEA PARTY MAKE OF BEN FRANKLIN?

It was Ben who wrote:

All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.

Benjamin Franklin, letter to Robert Morris, December 25, 1783

And what does the Tea Party make of Thomas Jefferson?  He wrote:

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

“Bunch of commies,” concludes David Atkins wryly, after quoting Thomas Paine and James Madison as well.

Thursday, I posted Mike Martin’s comment (which I like so much, I’m posting it again):

Mike Martin: “You should not have stopped your quote from the Declaration of Independence where you did; the very next clause reads: ‘That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ The Declaration of Independence was not just a fundamental statement of human rights, but a statement that democratic government is fundamental to those rights. The importance of this seems lost on Republicans, who preach that government is the impediment to freedom. One of the major leaders of the Republican party has repeatedly stated his goal is to drown the United States government in a bathtub. The Republicans trumpet their anti-tax message cloaked in ‘Tea Party’ garb as if the Boston Tea Party was a tax protest. Read the history: the British government had just LOWERED the tax on tea when the protest occurred. The issue was not the tax requirement, it was that only licensed tea merchants could sell tea, which undercut both John Hancock’s commercial empire and the widespread smuggling of tea. But perhaps more importantly, after the American Revolution they formed a government without a strong power to tax. After the Shay anti-tax rebellion, George Washington and others held the Constitutional Congress with the Shay’s rebellion as the clarion call for a stronger central government. In other words, the United States of America, the government formed under the U.S. Constitution, was formed precisely to COUNTER an anti-tax rebellion. So the existing Republican Party forms its foundation on opposition to the United States of America and its Constitution: they regularly claim that government is the enemy of the people … ”

I then invited others of you to correct Mike’s history if he got it wrong, but so far none of you has.

Perhaps thinking some of you might try, Mike followed up over the weekend with this:

Mike Martin:  “There were calls to create a constitution before Shays’ anti-tax rebellion, but the rebellion played a crucial role in overcoming inertia. In particular, Shays’ rebellion was cited as the reason George Washington came out of retirement and supported the Constitutional Convention, which obviously played a crucial role in legitimizing the convention as well as giving his imprimatur against a tax revolt: (see: here and here).  And here:

Shays’ Rebellion became a recurring example in the debates among framers of the Constitution, encouraging some to favor the ‘Virginia plan’ (which called for an unprecedented and powerful central government) over the alternative ‘New Jersey plan’ (which seemed too favorable to state sovereignty). ‘The rebellion in Massachusetts is a warning, gentlemen,’ cautioned James Madison, proponent of the Virginia plan.

“Thus the creation of the United States as it is today, with a strong central government, was precisely because the Shays’ anti-tax rebellion influenced the Constitutional Convention away from the weak New Jersey plan in favor of the stronger Virginia plan which Madison specifically advocated using the Shays’ rebellion as ‘a warning, gentlemen’ of the need for a strong central government.”

HERBERT HOOVER, LIKE MITT, WAS A GREAT BUSINESSMAN

Thankfully, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is back from vacation:

Off and Out With Mitt Romney

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 5, 2012

In a better America, Mitt Romney would be running for president on the strength of his major achievement as governor of Massachusetts: a health reform that was identical in all important respects to the health reform enacted by President Obama. By the way, the Massachusetts reform is working pretty well and has overwhelming popular support.

In reality, however, Mr. Romney is doing no such thing, bitterly denouncing the Supreme Court for upholding the constitutionality of his own health care plan. His case for becoming president relies, instead, on his claim that, having been a successful businessman, he knows how to create jobs.

This, in turn, means that however much the Romney campaign may wish otherwise, the nature of that business career is fair game. How did Mr. Romney make all that money? Was it in ways suggesting that what was good for Bain Capital, the private equity firm that made him rich, would also be good for America?

And the answer is no.

The truth is that even if Mr. Romney had been a classic captain of industry, a present-day Andrew Carnegie, his career wouldn’t have prepared him to manage the economy. A country is not a company (despite globalization, America still sells 86 percent of what it makes to itself), and the tools of macroeconomic policy — interest rates, tax rates, spending programs — have no counterparts on a corporate organization chart. Did I mention that Herbert Hoover actually was a great businessman in the classic mold?

In any case, however, Mr. Romney wasn’t that kind of businessman. Bain didn’t build businesses; it bought and sold them. Sometimes its takeovers led to new hiring; often they led to layoffs, wage cuts and lost benefits. On some occasions, Bain made a profit even as its takeover target was driven out of business. None of this sounds like the kind of record that should reassure American workers looking for an economic savior.

And then there’s the business about outsourcing.

Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported that Bain had invested in companies whose specialty was helping other companies move jobs overseas. The Romney campaign went ballistic, demanding — unsuccessfully — that The Post retract the report on the basis of an unconvincing “fact sheet” consisting largely of executive testimonials.

What was more interesting was the campaign’s insistence that The Post had misled readers by failing to distinguish between “offshoring” — moving jobs abroad — and “outsourcing,” which simply means having an external contractor perform services that could have been performed in-house.

Now, if the Romney campaign really believed in its own alleged free-market principles, it would have defended the right of corporations to do whatever maximizes their profits, even if that means shipping jobs overseas. Instead, however, the campaign effectively conceded that offshoring is bad but insisted that outsourcing is O.K. as long as the contractor is another American firm.

That is, however, a very dubious assertion.

Consider one of Mr. Romney’s most famous remarks: “Corporations are people, my friend.” When the audience jeered, he elaborated: “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets.” This is undoubtedly true, once you take into account the pockets of, say, partners at Bain Capital (who, I hasten to add, are, indeed, people). But one of the main points of outsourcing is to ensure that as little as possible of what corporations earn goes into the pockets of the people who actually work for those corporations.

Why, for example, do many large companies now outsource cleaning and security to outside contractors? Surely the answer is, in large part, that outside contractors can hire cheap labor that isn’t represented by the union and can’t participate in the company health and retirement plans. And, sure enough, recent academic research finds that outsourced janitors and guards receive substantially lower wages and worse benefits than their in-house counterparts.

Just to be clear, outsourcing is only one source of the huge disconnect between a tiny elite and ordinary American workers, a disconnect that has been growing for more than 30 years. And Bain, in turn, was only one player in the growth of outsourcing. So Mitt Romney didn’t personally, single-handedly, destroy the middle-class society we used to have. He was, however, an enthusiastic and very well remunerated participant in the process of destruction; if Bain got involved with your company, one way or another, the odds were pretty good that even if your job survived you ended up with lower pay and diminished benefits.

In short, what was good for Bain Capital definitely wasn’t good for America. And, as I said at the beginning, the Obama campaign has every right to point that out.

Barney and BOREF

July 9, 2012July 9, 2012

BARNEY FRANK WEDS JIM READY

Barney Frank entered the lobby of the Newton Marriott in time for Friday’s wedding rehearsal dinner looking disheveled even for him.  I don’t know where he was coming from — he couldn’t possibly have become so unglued just walking from the parking lot — but in a larger sense I know exactly where he was coming from.  He was coming from a place of hopeless loneliness, first as one of the resident tutors in my college dorm 46 years ago, then in the Massachusetts legislature and beyond.

It has been an amazing journey for him, who thought he could never find love, let alone express it openly (did I mention that the ceremony was performed by the Governor of Massachusetts?) and an amazing journey for the country — a national journey that, to make this past weekend’s events all the more meaningful, Barney has done so much to guide.

Read the New York Times account here.

Not mentioned: that the groomsmen were wearing Joseph Abboud suits and Baruch Shemtov ties or that the wedding gift bags contained campaign buttons that read: “Barney & Jim for Congress” — but with “Congress” overwritten with “ever” (get it?) — or that the staff of the Marriott did a surprisingly great job or that the happy couple did a traditional “chair dance” (like this one, only with Barney and Jim in the chairs) or that the seat at Table 45 reserved for Barney’s counterpart on the House Financial Services Committee was empty.  The Alabama Republican had said he was coming and it’s a shame he did not, one of Barney’s staffers told me, because “he’s a nice guy.”

I loved that my fellow groomsmen ranged from the photo editor emeritus of Eastern Surf Magazine (Jim is an avid surfer, even in the winter in Maine) to a transgender friend to a very large, obviously straight older guy from Fall River who Barney says ran the best anti-poverty program in the nation to his equally large, equally obviously straight pal the chief of the South Boston branch of the Postal Police (who it turns out is gay) to the youngest man ever legally to serve in Congress (some younger, he explained, had long ago served in violation of the Constitutional requirement that they be 25) to a multi-centi-millionaire hedge fund manager to a high school buddy of Jimmy in a motorized wheelchair to a niche entrepreneur whose last name you would know.

It was a pretty wonderful night.

BOREALIS IN ITS OWN BOOTH

Today is the first day of the Farnborough Air Show.  Sure enough, if you click on Exhibitors and go to the ‘W’s, there we are: WheelTug.  It will be interesting to see how the industry reacts to the video posted last week.

The company asserts: “A recent study sponsored by the Wall Street Journal in conjunction with Oliver Wyman and US Airways showed industry net profit of less than $164 per flight. Thus, WheelTug’s projected net savings to airlines of over $200 per flight has the potential to dramatically increase airline profitability.”

This is of course not true.  The airline business being the worst business in the world, the airlines will soon compete away their savings.  (It’s a wonderful industry, flying millions of people literally through the air while serving them soda; but it’s a dreadful business, because with enormous fixed costs and tiny variable costs (a little more soda and a little more fuel for each additional passenger) — and with an inventory that evaporates the moment a plane takes off with empty seats — competition drives prices down to a level above variable cost (so what airline can resist the revenue?) but below true, fully-allocated cost (so what airline can afford to replace its aging equipment without first going bankrupt a couple of times?).

But that’s not a problem for WheelTug — indeed, the competitiveness of the industry makes it all the more imperative for airlines to sign up.  What short-haul carrier would want to be competing without this $200-a-flight advantage?

Here’s a rendering of WheelTug’s Farnborough booth:

The WheelTug booth at the Farnborough International Airshow July 9 - 15

As always: risky, to be speculated on only with money one can truly afford to lose.  But somewhat less risky now that we know it seems to work and that four airlines have signed letters of intent to use it.

Tomorrow: What Would Today’s Tea Party Make of Ben Franklin?

 

Wise Words

July 6, 2012March 27, 2017

MORE BOREF VIDEO

You saw the 51-second trailer; behold the feature-length (5-minute) version that shows a bit more of how all this works — even on a wet, rain-driven tarmac.  Why would any airline not want this capability?

THE ECONOMY

David Wise:  “It really irks me that after turning the US from the largest creditor to the largest debtor nation in the 1980s, destroying the economy in the ’00s and then playing chicken with the fiscal health of the US in the debt ceiling debacle, a recent poll showed that the American public trusted the Republicans more on the economy.   I thought you might find this article I recently published of interest.”

Tackling Republican myths

By David W. Wise | Jun 29, 2012 5:00 am

At one of the whistle-stop campaign appearances during the epic 1948 presidential campaign while President Truman was delivering a blistering oration about the Republican Congress one of the people in the audience shouted out, “give ‘em Hell, Harry.”  The president responded, “I don’t give them hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s hell.”

Well for three years now the present day Republicans have been attacking the economy under President Obama and the truth is that a lot of it sounds like hell.  The Republicans ought to know, that hell is largely a consequence of their policies.

The U.S. government is experiencing huge budget deficits resulting in ever increasing national debt.  But, how did that come about?

In January 2001, George W. Bush inherited a $128 billion budget surplus and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a report projecting annual budget surpluses of $800 billion for each of the years 2009-12.  In fact, the estimates at that time projected the entire U.S. government debt being paid down.

Fast forward to January 2009, two weeks before President Obama assumed office and the CBO was projecting a $1.2 trillion budget deficit for FY 2009 (with federal spending at 24.9% of GDP) – a fiscal year that was already almost halfway in the books by Inauguration Day.  Bush and the Republican policies had not only squandered the sound financial footings that they had been handed, they ran eight consecutive years of budget deficits and brought the United States to its current level of trillion dollar deficits.  Given their efforts to avoid responsibility for their handiwork by trying to pin the 2009 budget on Obama, it would not be that surprising if they tried next to blame him for 2008 since the election just happened to have occurred at the end of that year.

The explosion in total national debt began in the fall of 2008 at a time when Senators McCain and Obama were fighting a tightly contested election campaign and the Bush team was still holding the reins. In just less than three months between August 8 and October 22, 2008 the total obligations of the Federal Reserve more than doubled in an effort to prop up the financial sector which was perilously close to collapse.

That was the point in time at which the avalanche of debt began. It was in 2008 when the year-over-year increase in total national debt first increased by double digits (11.29%). Yes, federal spending under President Obama is clearly at an unsustainable level as a percentage of GDP, but that situation is due in no small measure to the combination of increased safety net spending and lower GDP brought about by the Bush Recession.

President Obama did increase spending for a stimulus package necessitated by the Recession, but even when allocating the stimulus to Obama the Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch concluded that President Obama had increased Federal spending 1.4% over the course of the first four budgets which he submitted (2010-2013) compared with 7.3% for the first four budgets under Bush (2002-2005) – the lowest level of any administration in decades.

Now, it is also quite fair to criticize President Obama for not embracing the recommendations of his own bipartisan deficit reduction panel. Yet, several points can be made.

First, claims that the President stayed hands off because he feared that in the current highly polarized political environment his outright endorsement might have meant the kiss of death ring somewhat true.

Second, last summer the President tried to work out a compromise with Speaker John Boehner that would have put both entitlement cuts and revenue enhancement on the table, but the Republicans refused to consider even one additional dollar towards funding the fiscal obligations of the nation. Although President Obama clearly needs to do more about the deficits and to move beyond aggressive monetary stimulus at least he is talking balance: revenue and spending cuts, deficit reduction balanced against not choking off the recovery.

The Republicans now also decry the persistent high unemployment. Yet, that unemployment is the result of the Great Recession which began during – and was a direct result of the policies of – the last Bush administration. It wasn’t President Obama who appeared on TV in the fall of 2008 warning of the impending collapse of the financial system and it wasn’t President Obama’s Treasury Secretary who presented Congress with an extraordinary three page request for virtually unlimited power that he claimed was necessary to deal with the dire crisis.

No, that was President Bush and his Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson appearing in those roles. In the final quarter of the Bush administration GDP declined 8.9% and the month President Obama assumed office the U.S. economy lost 800,000 jobs. The unemployment rate surged during 2009 as a consequence of Bush’s economic mismanagement and the collapsing economy which Obama had been handed.

The following graph shows each preceding president as being primarily responsible for the economy in the year of transition as each new administration inherits an economy from its predecessor. It takes time to get a new team in place and to have its policies affect the workings of the economy. At $14 trillion the U.S. economy is like a very large ship – it takes time to turn.

What is known, however, is that since President Obama has taken office 3.9 million private sector jobs have been created, bringing the unemployment rate down to a still too high 8.2%. Unfortunately, the horrible fiscal position of state and local governments is producing a huge drag on the economy and massive offsetting job losses in the public sector. The effects of the stimulus bill put in place by President Obama will be debated by economists for years, but a consensus seems to be that it helped prevent the Great Recession from turning into a another Depression and the reversal in the unemployment rate is clear.

While the Republicans allow that the recession started under Bush, they claim that the actions of the Obama administration have made it worse. Now besides asking how it gets worse than the eve of the second Great Depression in September 2008 or whether those responsible for that state of affairs should not be estopped from criticizing the clean-up effort, the facts indicate that the long-term effects of the Bush policies are still impeding the recovery and a return to sound economics.

The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were promised to create a new era of prosperity. But, in addition to the fiscal calamity extending far out into the future by reducing government revenue below what is necessary to run the government (according to the CBO they account to $5.4 trillion of the deficits projected over the rest of the decade) the Bush years recorded the most anemic job and economic growth up until that time in the postwar era and that is true even if you are charitable and stop the analysis at 2007 before the financial collapse.

The Bush tax cuts were supposed to unleash the energy of upper income taxpayers or “job creators” as they are sometimes called. Yet, gross domestic private investment as a percentage of GDP was down 9.5 through 2007 and 22.3% through the year he left office.

These same vaunted conservative prognosticators had warned of a disaster when President Clinton raised taxes in 1993, although gross domestic private investment under Clinton more than doubled (114.9%) – the only administration out of the last four when investment increased. In eight years under Clinton following the tax increase 23 million jobs were created. In eight years under Bush the number was 2.5 million jobs. Apparently the faith in tax cuts, like all faith, is not subject to empirical evidence.

One area of significant investment growth during the Bush years was foreign direct investment which grew by 166.5%. So, it is not fair to say that jobs were not created during the Bush years; they were, just in places like China and India as U.S. investors and corporations moved their investment capital offshore.

One of the results of the decline in private investment in the United States, however, was a decline in employment in important sectors such as manufacturing. Although one Republican economist is famous for saying that it does not matter whether the United States makes potato chips or computer chips the manufacturing sector has the greatest multiplier effect for creating jobs in other sectors, creates well-paying jobs, is linked to scientific and technological innovation which is usually performed in close proximity to manufacturing locations and creates national wealth and intellectual capital.

Manufacturing employment which had been steady for two decades collapsed during the Bush years and the want of employment in this sector acts as a significant drag on the recovery today. Now even President Bush came to this realization at the end of his term and began the government support for the U.S. auto industry during the financial crisis in the fall of 2008, a policy embraced and carried through by President Obama.

The problem, however, is that all of this year’s Republican candidates for president say that they would have let GM and Chrysler collapse, erasing millions of jobs and allowing a signature industry to evaporate as there were no private investors at that time willing to invest in a restructuring. Today GM and Chrysler are profitable, GM has regained its position as the world’s largest automaker and auto sector employment is up. The Republicans somehow insist that these actions by President Obama made the recovery worse and feel that their playing the fiddle while Detroit burned would somehow have been preferable.

One area where there was an outburst of domestic economic activity and innovation during the Bush years was the tremendous overinvestment in the housing sector and in the dangerous risk taking through new financial products that set the financial system up for possible collapse in the autumn of 2008 and which lead to the Great Recession both here and around the world. Now, while it is true that some of the seeds for this state of affairs were planted under Reagan and Clinton, the explosion of overinvestment and the virtual abandonment of prudential regulation were taken to new heights during the Bush years while warning signs mounted.

Not only does housing have a much lower national return on investment than investing in new plant and equipment, but the overhang of vacant houses for sale which mushroomed during the Bush years constitutes one of the strongest anchors still hanging around the neck of the recovery which President Obama and his advisors must contend. They can’t blink their eyes and wish that overhang of empty houses morph instead into new domestic plant and equipment employing American workers.

The Republicans having set the house on fire as they handed Obama the keys have the temerity to stand on the sidewalk complaining that the house is ablaze. Having brought the financial system to its knees by weak oversight that permitted wholesale irresponsibility, they promise that if elected they’ll do it all over again. Having ruined the fiscal position of the country by lowering tax receipts to their lowest level in sixty years (14.9% of GDP compared to an average of 18.2% under Ronald Reagan) the Republicans declare that if they are elected they will cut taxes even more which, as history shows, will increase the deficit and national debt even further.

In looking at our fiscal situation in comparison to historic averages and with other advanced industrial economies Bruce Bartlett, one of the authors of the Reagan tax policy has written, “The truth of the matter is that federal taxes are very low and there is no reason to believe that by reducing them further will do anything to raise growth or reduce unemployment.” There is not much to debate. Go back and look at the state to which the country was brought by the end of the Bush administration. Why would we want to go back and do more of the same or, as President Bush once famously tried to say, “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” Why would the American electorate ever allow itself to be fooled again?

Click here to access other columns by David Wise.

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That To Secure These Rights, Governments Are Instituted Among Men

July 5, 2012July 4, 2012

Mike Martin:  “You should not have stopped your quote from the Declaration of Independence where you did; the very next clause reads: ‘That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ The Declaration of Independence was not just a fundamental statement of human rights, but a statement that democratic government is fundamental to those rights.  The importance of this seems lost on Republicans, who preach that government is the impediment to freedom.  One of the major leaders of the Republican party has repeatedly stated his goal is to drown the United States government in a bathtub.  The Republicans trumpet their anti-tax message cloaked in ‘Tea Party’ garb as if the Boston Tea Party was a tax protest.  Read the history: the British government had just LOWERED the tax on tea when the protest occurred.  The issue was not the tax requirement, it was that only licensed tea merchants could sell tea, which undercut both John Hancock’s commercial empire and the widespread smuggling of tea.  But perhaps more importantly, after the American Revolution they formed a government without a strong power to tax.  After the Shay anti-tax rebellion, George Washington and others held the Constitutional Congress with the Shay’s rebellion as the clarion call for a stronger central government.  In other words, the United States of America, the government formed under the U.S. Constitution, was formed precisely to COUNTER an anti-tax rebellion.   So the existing Republican Party forms its foundation on opposition to the United States of America and its Constitution: they regularly claim that government is the enemy of the people and that opposition to taxation is fundamental to their beliefs.  Just when you could have proclaimed that in your blog, you stopped and omitted the most important part of the Declaration of Independence where Thomas Jefferson et al clearly proclaimed that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were essentially impossible without democratic government.”

☞ Because my Tea Party and Shay’s Rebellion history are shaky at best, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of Mike’s post (readers will surely chime in if he’s got any of this substantially wrong); but just on the basis of common sense, he’s nailed it.  How on Earth could you have a successful, prosperous, peaceful, productive modern society without lots of government and taxes?  Name one that doesn’t.  If you want sewage systems and bridges, how do they get built and maintained without taxes?  If you want your child to get home safely, why wouldn’t you want a system of drivers’ licenses, speed limits, air bags, and laws about driving under the influence?  Were Americans in the 1890’s — free from Social Security and Medicare, unburdened by the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, the FTC and the FDA — really better off than we are now?  Would the good people of New Orleans have fared better if only the Army Corps of Engineers had been less well funded?  Joe the Plumber is an idiot, and not even a plumber.  Mike Martin is my hero.

BOREF

Tom Martel:  “Great article from Aerospace & Defense News!”

. . . While independent ground maneuverability by aircraft has long been an industry dream, WheelTug’s innovative engines-off taxi technology is becoming a widespread industry expectation in the near future, far sooner than government-devised industry roadmaps projected.

A new European Union agenda for the aeronautics industry, called Flightpath 2050 and set by the European Commission on Mobility and Transport, calls for aircraft to be emissions-free during taxi by 2050. WheelTug, which first demonstrated proof of concept hardware allowing taxiing without engines in 2005, expects to conduct on-aircraft tests within 6 months and to introduce the system into service in 2013.

“WheelTug will deliver in 2013 what the E.U. has set as a target for 2050,” said Isaiah Cox, the company’s CEO. “We are pleased to have successfully guided the industry here, first by demonstrating that the technology is viable and then by showing that the system’s overall operating cost savings well exceed $500,000 per year on a typical narrowbody aircraft.”

Now that WheelTug has proven both the concept and its potential value to the industry, several competitors have emerged. Taxibot is a pilot-driven tug system primarily for use on larger aircraft. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Raumfahrt; DLR) have shown an in-wheel design for use on the A320. And just this week, Safran and Honeywell announced a joint venture to offer an engines-off taxi solution in 2016. . . .

Of course, it should be noted that the “article” is basically by WheelTug.  There remain lots of skeptics — or else why would WheelTug grandparent Borealis have a market cap of only $50 million?  (In a near ideal scenario, where 10,000 jets were leasing WheelTug systems at a $50,000 annual net to WheelTug, earnings would be $500 million a year.)  But without discounting continued risks — we still could lose all our money in this, so don’t invest any money you can’t truly afford to lose — I can’t resist asking, perhaps injudiciously, who you gonna trust — the skeptics, or your lyin’ eyes?

 

Love Is All You Need

July 3, 2012December 27, 2016

When . . . in the course of human events . . . it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another — and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them — a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.  We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Sorry.  I couldn’t refift editing the punctuation a little and more explicitly including Martha Jefferson and Sally Hemings in the declaration by adding “and women” — which I think Jefferson would be delighted to see is now how we roll.

Because hard as some have fought to keep from expanding the circle of brotherhood . . . Irish need not apply . . . I can’t imagine Thomas Jefferson —  or George Washington or Ben Franklin or John Hancock or John Adams or James Madison — being among them.

Antisemitism is by now largely a non-issue in America.  Thomas Jefferson’s role as our first Secretary of State is by now routinely filled by a woman.  And, most dramatically, Barack Obama is not counted as three-fifths of a person — he has George Washington’s job.

And there’s more.  Last Saturday saw a wedding reception for one of the Facebook founders and his husband attended with great good feeling by (among hundreds of others) two big foundation heads and their wives, a senator and her husband, another senator (didn’t see his wife), the House majority leader and her daughter, another newly married Facebook founder and his wife.  And this coming Saturday I’ll be in the wedding of the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee and his soon-to-be husband, who are scheduled to be married by the Governor of Massachusetts.  (This is why I opposed gay marriage: precious summer weekends spent in suits and ties?  Really?)

In parts of the country — and the world — we’re nowhere near “there” yet.  But increasingly, we are.  When Laura Bush and Dick Cheney favor marriage equality, it’s not just for Democrats anymore. (The Cheneys recently celebrated the marriage of their daughter Mary to her partner of 20 years Heather.)

“Major opponent of gay marriage switches sides,” reads a recent headline.  “‘Whatever one’s definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness,’ says founder of Institute for American Values.”

So Anderson Cooper is gay and Ellen DeGeneris is gay and, basically, who cares?

Here’s what I wrote in this space six years ago:

Experience thus far suggests that allowing GLBT Americans and their children equal rights and first-class citizenship does not wind up diminishing the rights – or breaking up the marriages – of everybody else.   It’s important to respect the discomfort many people still feel with these topics . . . and to allow Kansas and Mississippi more time to chew this over than California and Massachusetts.  But, increasingly, people see Rosie on “The View” or Ellen on “Ellen” or Barney Frank on Bill Maher, and simply welcome them as part of the American family.

I got this email from a reader tonight, and it left me wondering what proportion of America, in 2006, would still find it repugnant:  “In 1962 after having just arrived in Los Angeles at 20, I met a young fellow, 21, who knocked my socks off.We stayed up all night in my tiny furnished apartment in Hollywood and talked until we both fell asleep.  When I woke up, he was gone and I was disappointed.  He showed up at my door two hours later with his bags packed and asked if he could move in.  We’ve just celebrated the 44th anniversary of that night and his very presence still brightens any dark corners in my world.  We’ve never been apart one night since then.  For two guys with minimum education, we’ve managed to build a really good life together, and at 65 and 66 we are co-parenting two children, a boy aged 7 and a girl 2 1/2.  They live three days a week with us and four days a week with their two moms.  We have created a great family and when another boy asked our son how he had two moms and two dads, his reply was ‘I guess I’m just lucky.’”  No question, some will find that repugnant or threatening.  But I think by now a large proportion of the citizenry would actually find themselves rooting for these characters.  Love and happiness are precious wherever they are found.  Would Jesus really disagree?

It’s a beautiful thing to see America lurching ever closer toward the ideal of liberty and justice for all.  Thanks, Mr. Jefferson.

Have a terrific Fourth of July.

 

How We Win

July 2, 2012July 2, 2012

I’m late with today’s column, having dithered so long yesterday trying to figure out how to watch” CBS Sunday Morning” and “UP/With Chris Hayes” at the same time.  The solution, of course: dual DVR capability.  But on a sandbar (where better to spend the week?) even rudimentary conveniences are unavailable.

SPECTACULARLY COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE THINKING

Susan O.:  “I just watched the Russian flash mob you linked to last week, and seeing those exuberant young people (yes, I know it was a paid-for-by-Putin stunt), I realized how old and Republican Barack Obama has become, which is another way of saying how Corporate.  I’m old myself.  Old and angry.  I’m mostly angry that Obama has betrayed the hopeful youth who put him in power. Yes, I will go to the polls. But I certainly won’t pull the lever for Barack Obama. If I’d wanted a Republican, I’d have voted for one.”

I admire Susan’s ideals, just as I admired Ralph Nader’s.  But Nader caused spectacular harm; and if enough folks adopt Susan’s attitude, they will, too.  Yes it took time to get the troops home from Iraq, and tripling the female representation on the Court still leaves it too low. Yes covering 30 million uninsured folks with health care and forcing group health insurers to pay out at least 85% of their premiums in benefits is not as good as simply adopting a single-payer system, and the 74 things I count that the Administration has done to further LGBT equality still leave us unequal.  Yes sextupling the number of stem lines available for research is not GUARANTEED to someday save our lives, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be even better if the President had been able to get Elizabeth Warren confirmed to head it, and taking the banks out of the student loan loop didn’t solve all our higher-ed problems, and giving FDA authority to regulate tobacco still leaves people smoking, and doubling the CAFE mileage standards is not as good as tripling them . . .

. . . but I would ask Susan how many of these things (and so many more) the Republicans would have done.  And whether she doesn’t agree that the REASON the President has accomplished less than you or I – or surely he – would have liked is the reality of unprecedented Republican obstruction.  Does she really want to punish Obama and reward the Republicans for this by not inspiring everyone she knows to reelect our amazing president?

I like to think Susan was just venting – hey, we all need to do that from time to time — but that she is actually working her heart out most of the time to keep Rush Limbaugh / Karl Rove / Joe the Plumber, et al, from securing control of all three branches of our government.

THEIR FOUR ADVANTAGES

Joe Scarborough makes me so mad.  He scoffs at concern over the Republican billion-dollar money advantage, noting that “you didn’t hear Democrats complain in 2008” when they outraised John McCain.  Because don’t you see?  The two things are the same!  One way (our way), we had millions of average citizens giving $20 here, $100 there — and anyone giving more than $200 doing so openly with public disclosure . . . and how could that possibly be different from a few dozen really rich guys giving half a billion or a billion as secretly as they want to?  That Democrats draw a distinction here is lost on Morning Joe.

Robert Miller: “Did you see Sen. Sherrod Brown explaining (at Talking Points Memo) why the GOP is going to out-raise the Democrats this year?”

“Part of it is if George Soros wanted to give $50 million to our side, and we won, he wouldn’t get any material gain. When [Harold] Simmons from Texas, and the Koch brothers, and Adelson and these guys, they give their 10 or 20 or 50 million each, they get great benefit if their side wins. They get tax cuts, they get weaker environmental laws, they get anti-labor rules,” Brown said. “There is so much more incentive for them to do it.”

But it’s not just about Republican means and motives. As Brown put it, “A number of wealthy Democrats just think it’s unseemly to put this kind of money into these political campaigns. They really don’t like — morally, they have some moral objections. I mean, we hear that frequently. Their side doesn’t seem to have any of those. Because for them it’s an investment, like investing in a new company — only this is one with really big payoffs.”

The Republicans have four advantages: the sluggish economy they’ve worked hard to retard; the obstacles to voting they’ve worked hard to erect; this billion-dollar Citizens United advantage their Supreme Court just this past week reaffirmed; the breathtaking distortion to which they are willing to sink (just one set of examples I recently linked to, courtesy of Jon Stewart).

Our very good chance of overcoming those advantages: our ground game.  A million volunteers registering millions of new voters and helping to turn out tens of millions more – for President, yes, but also to hold the Senate, take back the House, and flip state legislative chambers from red to blue.

We do have other advantages: we’re right on the issues and we have a spectacular candidate (I can’t wait for the debates).  Not to mention the bumper stickers.  GM LIVES; BIN LADEN DIES – all that.

But this is the sweet spot: registering millions of new voters and organizing to be sure our 2008 voters aren’t blocked from voting.

And the time to help is NOW, while there’s time for the seeds we’re planting to take root and grow.

Every week one of your friends or relatives or colleagues waits to contribute just serves to stunt the crop.  Get them engaged!  Convey what’s at stake, in case they don’t fully appreciate its enormity.  (Start with this: the Republican austerity vision out-Hoovers Hoover and would trigger a global depression.)  Convey to them the urgency of helping NOW.

Ask them to click here.  (You too, if you can.  I’ll see your contribution to say thanks.)  And ask them to get everyone they know to visit barackobama.com and click the top menu tab to VOLUNTEER. What more patriotic way to celebrate the Fourth of July?

 

News

June 29, 2012June 28, 2012

NEWSROOM

Show of hands: how many of you have now seen the premiere episode of Aaron Sorkin’s “Newsroom,” debuting on HBO this week?  (That’s “The West Wing” Aaron Sorkin.)  No?  You don’t get HBO?  Well, now you have to.  You don’t have a TV?  Oh, for God’s sake — do you have a refrigerator?  Get a TV!  You’re not free when it’s on?  Watch it anytime on your iPhone with HBOGO.

Don’t fight me on this.

BIG NEWS

As reported a couple of days ago, 19 of 21 Constitutional scholars Bloomberg News contacted believed the Affordable Care Act is indeed Constitutional.  Fortunately the Court narrowly agreed.

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
June 28, 2012

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON THE SUPREME COURT RULING ON THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

East Room 12:15 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Earlier today, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act — the name of the health care reform we passed two years ago. In doing so, they’ve reaffirmed a fundamental principle that here in America — in the wealthiest nation on Earth — no illness or accident should lead to any family’s financial ruin.

I know there will be a lot of discussion today about the politics of all this, about who won and who lost. That’s how these things tend to be viewed here in Washington. But that discussion completely misses the point. Whatever the politics, today’s decision was a victory for people all over this country whose lives will be more secure because of this law and the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold it.

And because this law has a direct impact on so many Americans, I want to take this opportunity to talk about exactly what it means for you.

First, if you’re one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance — this law will only make it more secure and more affordable. Insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime limits on the amount of care you receive.  They can no longer discriminate against children with preexisting conditions. They can no longer drop your coverage if you get sick. They can no longer jack up your premiums without reason. They are required to provide free preventive care like check-ups and mammograms — a provision that’s already helped 54 million Americans with private insurance. And by this August, nearly 13 million of you will receive a rebate from your insurance company because it spent too much on things like administrative costs and CEO bonuses, and not enough on your  health care.

There’s more. Because of the Affordable Care Act, young adults under the age of 26 are able to stay on their parent’s health care plans — a provision that’s already helped 6 million young Americans. And because of the Affordable Care Act, seniors receive a discount on their prescription drugs — a discount that’s already saved more than 5 million seniors on Medicare about $600 each.

All of this is happening because of the Affordable Care Act. These provisions provide common-sense protections for middle class families, and they enjoy broad popular support. And thanks to today’s decision, all of these benefits and protections will continue for Americans who already have health insurance.

Now, if you’re one of the 30 million Americans who don’t yet have health insurance, starting in 2014 this law will offer you an array of quality, affordable, private health insurance plans to choose from. Each state will take the lead in designing their own menu of options, and if states can  come up with even better ways of covering more people at the same quality and cost, this law allows them to do that, too. And I’ve asked Congress to help speed up that process, and give states this flexibility in year one.

Once states set up these health insurance marketplaces, known as exchanges, insurance companies will no longer be able to discriminate against any American with a preexisting health condition. They won’t be able to charge you more just because you’re a woman. They won’t be able to bill you into bankruptcy. If you’re sick, you’ll finally have the same chance to get quality, affordable health care as everyone else. And if you can’t afford the premiums, you’ll receive a credit that helps pay for it.

Today, the Supreme Court also upheld the principle that people who can afford health insurance should take the responsibility to buy health insurance. This is important for two reasons.

First, when uninsured people who can afford coverage get sick, and show up at the emergency room for care, the rest of us end up paying for their care in the form of higher premiums.

And second, if you ask insurance companies to cover people with preexisting conditions, but don’t require people who can afford it to buy their own insurance, some folks might wait until they’re sick to buy the care they need — which would also drive up everybody else’s premiums.

That’s why, even though I knew it wouldn’t be politically popular, and resisted the idea when I ran for this office, we ultimately included a provision in the Affordable Care Act that people who can afford to buy health insurance should take the responsibility to do so. In fact, this idea has enjoyed support from members of both parties, including the

current Republican nominee for President.

Still, I know the debate over this law has been divisive. I respect the very real concerns that millions of Americans have shared. And I know a lot of coverage through this health care debate has focused on what it means politically.

Well, it should be pretty clear by now that I didn’t do this because itwas good politics. I did it because I believed it was good for the country. I did it because I believed it was good for the American people.

There’s a framed letter that hangs in my office right now. It was sent to me during the health care debate by a woman named Natoma Canfield. For years and years, Natoma did everything right. She bought health insurance. She paid her premiums on time. But 18 years ago, Natoma was diagnosed with cancer. And even though she’d been cancer-free for moe than a decade, her insurance company kept jacking up her rates, year after year. And despite her desire to keep her coverage — despite her fears that she would get sick again — she had to surrender her health insurance, and was forced to hang her fortunes on chance.

I carried Natoma’s story with me every day of the fight to pass this law. It reminded me of all the Americans, all across the country, who have had to worry not only about getting sick, but about the cost of getting well. Natoma is well today. And because of this law, there are other  Americans — other sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers — who will not have to hang their fortunes on chance. These are the Americans for whom we passed this law.

The highest Court in the land has now spoken. We will continue to implement this law. And we’ll work together to improve on it where we can. But what we won’t do — what the country can’t afford to do — is refight the political battles of two years ago, or go back to the way things were.

With today’s announcement, it’s time for us to move forward — to implement and, where necessary, improve on this law. And now is the time to keep our focus on the most urgent challenge of our time: putting people back to work, paying down our debt, and building an economy where people can have confidence that if they work hard, they can get ahead.

But today, I’m as confident as ever that when we look back five years from now, or 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, we’ll be better off because we had the courage to pass this law and keep moving forward.

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America.

Pete S.: “I’m not sure yet how exactly the new healthcare act will benefit me.  I’ve got extremely good coverage provided by my employer.  But this law wasn’t about me.  It was about us.  Most of my siblings are self-employed, or work for employers with little or no medical coverage.  My brother with HIV (and a cancer survivor) now has hope for affordable meds and treatments in the coming years.  My self-employed sister may be able to get basic coverage for herself and her chronically ill husband.  My other siblings will have an insurance exchange of some sort where they can go to obtain basic coverage.  It’s more than most of them have ever had.  They all work hard and pay their taxes.  Now they face a future where proper, affordable medical treatment is a reality instead of a taunt. Thank you for providing a pragmatic, intelligent, mature presidential candidate four years ago.  We could all benefit from more leaders who behave like adults instead of petulant children.  To that end, I’m not sure if you read this article.  Folks like these give me new hope for a return to civility and cooperation at the national level.  It’s ok to be different, and to have relationships with people of different backgrounds.  It’s ok to be driven by love rather than fear.  We need to encourage these candidates at the local and state levels, so that we have them ready to assume national leadership positions.  It really is up to us.”

 

 

Must-See TV

June 28, 2012

HONOR GRADES

So you can buy a second-hand copy of my first book — a thin paperback called Honor Grades on 15 Hours a Week — for $74.98 plus $3.99 shipping and handling, here (you would have to be insane to do that); or the brand new e-book edition for $3.99, here (frugally insane).

As touted on Amazon:

. . . dashed off one summer when Tobias was 21, [this slight tome] might just help today’s homework-obsessed high school senior get the most out of his or her college years and take the leap toward real life.

Now that I’ve figured out how to do this, expect the rest of my out-of-print oeuvre to follow.

THUGGISH

We are losing our democracy to a flood of secretly-funded attack ads purporting, preposterously, not to be attack ads.  Wait til you see them — and Karl Rove’s response: impassioned, irrelevant, and completely untrue.  Must-see TV.  Seven minutes.

MONTANA

Six more must-see minutes — showing how the Supreme Court overturned a century old Montana ban on corporate campaign contributions and what effect that is having.  We are losing our democracy.

JUH-BORTION

And I don’t know where you could possibly find another seven minutes, but try: a graphic depiction of what Maddow calls “juh-bortion” — the Republicans’ saying that their singular focus is “jobs” when in fact all they work on is returning abortion to the back alleys.

 

 

Nora

June 27, 2012June 27, 2012

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD

Sing along with David Attenborough for two minutes.  You won’t be disappointed.  (Thanks, Alan!)

BUT SAD

He will live in our hearts and our closets — and at the soon-to-open Charles Nolan Reading Room at the High School of Fashion Industries and through the soon-to-be fully-endowed Charles Nolan Scholarship at F.I.T., and on the soon-to-be-rejuvenated website with links to all of his work . . .

. . . but his wonderful shop at 30 Gansevoort Street in New York closes the last week of July and everything is for sale – -including the couches and chairs he designed, his signed prints, all those amazing books, and, while they last, his entire inventory of clothing, accessories, nicks and nacks. Come to the shop seven days a week from 11:30 AM to 7 PM for a last good-bye, and perhaps even a last good buy.

SAD SAD SAD

Nora Ephron died yesterday.  You knew her work: “Sleepless in Seattle,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Julie and Julia” (Nora loved to cook), “Silkwood.”  Maybe you read her classic Esquire piece, “A Few Words About Breasts,” as part of a college course.  Like so many of us, I loved Nora, was a little afraid of Nora, and craved her approval.  And she knew we did.  I was hardly “inner circle” but she tolerated me sweetly for 40 years, once had me review her investments, had Charles and me over for a famous czarist recipe she recreated, called me to counsel her 15-year-old gay son after he came out to his high school class (a successful writer now himself, fielding calls as she neared the end). Her last book, I Remember Nothing, I read out loud to both Charles and to my mom.  Here is her obituary.

I will be chipper tomorrow, the more so for having known Nora.

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"Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself."

Mark Twain | The Washington Post, June 11, 1881

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