I Won! November 30, 2012November 30, 2012 I got two of the five red numbers and NAILED the white one. The odds of this, I calculate: one in 5000. (One in 35 for the white number; one in 12 for each red number; so, rounding slightly, 1 in 35 x 12 x 12 = 5,000.) So how come my $2 ticket paid off just $7? What the heck kind of racket is this? Rob Brown: “I always liked this Dilbert.” Chris Brown: “The lottery is bad, but not 1% as insidious as advertising directed at children. We should ban all ads directed at children, period. Even if it takes a Constitutional amendment to do it. This is such a destructive force in our culture.” Tom M.: “In my humble opinion, it surely is not fair that almost half the Country pays zero Federal Income Tax. The Lottery gives this group a chance to participate in society in another way. Using the statistics Zac provided, the vast majority of those buying a chance for wealth are the same paying zero Fed Tax.” ☞ Yes! Those bagging our groceries or cleaning our bedpans have a sweet deal. Finally: a way to make the world a little more equitable for the rest of us, who carry most of society’s burden. Mike Martin: “Your friend Zac is amazingly short-sighted. He notes that lottery ticket sales disproportionately affect the very poor, particularly poor Black males. He then implies that the government should not participate in a program that disadvantages the poor this way. But lottery tickets long preceded the government lottery. They were sold by the mob and became a major source of funding for organized crime. But with organized crime, the payoffs were not necessarily legitimate. And people were allowed to bet with credit that then got ‘enforced’ by collectors. Numbers runners often competed with other numbers runners in petty violence. You had a system of gambling that was riddled with corruption, crime and violence. Society paid a high price that extended far beyond the poor. So government stepped in and offered an alternative system of lottery tickets that was open, transparent, and sanitized. “The key point is that ALL free markets have to be regulated by government, otherwise they are regulated by organized crime. In some cases, such as prostitution and narcotic drugs, government decides not to regulate the market and the result is a shadow government like the drug cartels or human traffickers. So you do not actually have unregulated markets; you have markets regulated either by corruption or by government.” [And sometimes, sadly, both.] . . . “Republicans prefer ideological blinders that ignore reality and implicitly empower corruption; Democrats accept reality and the responsibility for keeping society safe and orderly. You can employ that framework on nearly every issue. Environmentalism, for example, is a Democratic effort to protect society through government regulation. In each case you find Republicans reaping financial kickbacks from those who profit from the lack of regulation — e.g., John Boehner handing out tobacco industry checks on the floor of the House of Representatives. “When I look at the election results I see one overwhelmingly telling statistic. Where there are lots of people trying to live together in peace and harmony, the Democrats won handily. In areas with low population density, the Republicans won handily. Lottery tickets are just one example of government fulfilling a role that otherwise would enrich corrupt actors. Prohibition was an example of doing the opposite and trying to prevent, rather than regulate, social problems. The choice with lottery tickets is: whom do you want making the market: government or the mob?” ☞ Lots of food for thought. But why, Zac asks, do state governments need to promote the lottery? They don’t promote the joys of methadone. “Why do they advertise Powerball if all they’re doing is filling demand that is already there? Why do they aggressively distribute lottery tickets through liquor stores which, by the way, have a reputation for catering to people who struggle with addiction? Why did the Ohio lottery produce a media plan designed to time ad buys to coincide with Social Security payments?” ET TU, CITIZENS UNITED? REDUX Since talk has turned to the corrupting influence of money, I thought I’d again offer James Musters‘ link from yesterday, How Political Campaign Spending Brought Down the Roman Republic. Commenting on which, Allen Brand adds: “From a high school textbook, the ring of familiarity can be found. It seems that we should be some 2000 years smarter by now. But the money, myths and propaganda of the Republican party are still with us and contributing to those ideas and policies that destroy people and countries.” The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Without tax money . . . roads and other public structures fell into disrepair. . . . Nobles and people in the cities cared more about pleasing themselves than about the well-being of other people. The idea of citizenship was being destroyed. Many Romans no longer felt a sense of duty to the empire. Many chose to get rich in business rather than serve the government. The cost of education increased, so poor Romans found it harder to become educated. People grew less informed about civic matters. Inequality of wealth, the gap between rich and poor, led to a breakdown of society, a decline of patriotism and loyalty, and indifferent citizens. People failed to participate in the government. — World History, McDougal Littell REPUBLICAN CHAIR-MEN On the off-chance you didn’t know: Of the 19 House committee chairs the Republicans have now appointed, all 19 are men. (One, apparently, identifies not as “white” but as “Lebanese.”) And of the two slots remaining to be filled, Rachel Maddow notes that neither of those committees has a Republican woman member, so the final tally may be 21 men, zero women. FRESH DIRECT COMES TO PHILLY If you live in New York — or now in Philadelphia — you should really try Fresh Direct. Click here. Yes, I will get a $15 credit if you set up an account. But you will thank me for years as if I were a god in your home. Without Fresh Direct, I would actually have to walk outside and shop. And wait in lines. And carry things.
Powerball! November 29, 2012 “MY NAME IS ASHER LEV“ Opened off-Broadway last night upstairs from Old Jews Telling Jokes On Stage. I remember liking the book in high school — vaguely — but the play is extraordinary. Powerful, brilliant, and brilliantly acted. Lincoln is also powerful, brilliant, and brilliantly acted — and just twelve bucks and you don’t have to fly to New York to see it. But if you can, see both. BOREALIS Michael Joblin: “Looks to me from this and this as though WheelTug has pretty heavyweight competition — Honeywell and Safran joint venture for electric motors in the main wheels.” Well, but theirs is expected to weigh three times as much — 600 pounds is not a trivial amount on an aircraft — and seems to be about two years further from fruition. But, yes: you never know. I MAY HAVE WON $550 MILLION LAST NIGHT A friend put up the money and let me pick the numbers — RED: 5.11.23.33.35, WHITE: 6. I’m not sure where they post the results. Would one of you please check and let me know if I won? BUT THERE’S A LOT NOT TO LIKE ABOUT THE LOTTERY For one thing, that’s $550 million pre-tax. (Someone named William Wolfrum tweets drily: “I see no reason to even bother with Powerball if the top tax rate goes up 3%.”) But there’s more. As my friend Zac Bissonnette writes: It’s only a couple dollars and it’s fun to dream, blah blah blah blah blah. But here’s what you’re supporting when you buy a lottery ticket: You’re supporting a system in which the government uses extremely aggressive mass marketing targeted at society’s most vulnerable citizens to extract money they can’t afford in exchange for false hope. According to a study from the University of Georgia: “An individual without a high school degree or GED is more than four times as likely to be an active lottery player as an individual who has an education above the high school level.” “Black males are more than 10 times as likely as white females with the same levels of education to be active lottery players. This effect is especially pronounced for less-educated black males. The model predicts that the incidence of active lottery play for that group is nearly 43 percent, which is more than 30 times the rate of play among nonblack females who have an education above the high school level.” The fact that states are financing education with something as slimy as this — a get-rich-quick scheme targeted almost exclusively at disadvantaged minorities — is truly government at its most irresponsible. When you buy a lottery ticket, you’re voting for that. I really, really wish the Christian right would get off the gay marriage issue and start to educate people about the evil that is the state lottery. Kids should be able to do their homework without the knowledge that their textbooks were purchased with funds raised by exploiting low-income minorities who’ve been deprived of access to education. Shameful and unconscionable. And speaking of unconscionable, what if I won the $550 million and put it all into trying to buy elections? ET TU, CITIZENS UNITED? James Musters: “I think you will enjoy this historical perspective from Slate: ‘How Political Campaign Spending Brought Down the Roman Republic.'” . . . The authors of the Federalist Papers cited the [Roman] republic as an influence on the American Constitution 14 separate times. In early America, Rome before Caesar served as the quintessential republic of virtue; its collapse was the ultimate cautionary tale of political corruption. . . .
Not Politics November 28, 2012December 29, 2016 Sam B.: “Re: ‘How We Won‘ — please remove me from email list. Not interested in this political crap.” Kathryn Lance: “GREAT piece about ‘How We Won.’ I am sharing widely. Inspirational is an understatement.” Fred C.: “OK, we won. I’m glad. Can we please get back to finance occasionally? Such as, why did Bank of Utica pop $45 last week or is Delcath still a reasonable speculation or time to dump? Your column is worth the price but the election was 3 weeks ago.” >> It’s over? You mean I didn’t just dream it? Guru thinks DCTH may fall even further under pressure from year-end tax selling and announcement of another capital raise . . . but he thinks approval for treating ocular melanoma will come by June if not before and that the stock would then go to $3 or $4. This is clearly not what we had once hoped — imagine if we had sold it all at $14 instead of watching it drop to today’s $1.35 — but I’m not inclined to sell it here. BKUTK “popped” $45 a share on, I think, 500 shares. If someone now rushed to sell 500 shares, it could pop right back down. But Chris Brown of Aristides says its liquidation value is north of $600 (and doesn’t seeing it liquidating), so at $385 he holds on with enthusiasm. BOREALIS Air Navigation Services of the Czech Republic has signed on as WheelTug’s “air traffic services partner for European operations.” Read it here. So we have airlines signed on to lease WheelTug if it can be produced and certified — KLM, Alitalia, El Al, Jet Airways, Israir, Onur Air — and a still-growing team signed on to produce and certify it. If they should succeed, which this video suggests they may, it’s hard for me to imagine why the operator of any commercial jet would ever not want this capability. So with each new development it seems increasingly possible that more than 10,000 aircraft may, in the intermediate future (a few years), be taxiing around with WheelTug systems that could net WheelTug perhaps $50,000 a year each — a pre-tax net of half a billion dollars a year. At its current $8.50 a share, Borealis, which owns most of WheelTug, is currently valued at about $45 million, which is to say more like “one-tenth times” dreamt-of earnings than the more traditional “ten times earnings.” For it to get from one-tenth to ten times — which it may surely never, ever, ever do — would be for it to rise a hundredfold from here. The world is a funny place. Given your choice of $10,000 worth of Citicorp stock or General Motors or Enron — or Borealis — in 1999, when we first started buying these crazy shares, any prudent person would have taken one of the blue chips. But Citi is down 87% since then. And GM shareholders have fared even worse. (Enron, at least, with $100 billion in sales at the time and named by Fortune “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years, has probably done well. But for some reason I can’t find a stock quote.) Borealis, meanwhile, has tripled. I do understand it may all amount to nothing. Who knows what hidden pitfalls and catastrophes lurk. But I also enjoy musing about the hidden upside — that if WheelTug actually succeeds, maybe the technology could find application elsewhere, as, for example, in automobiles. And maybe the company’s other technologies have value. And maybe — who let me out of the asylum? — its behemoth iron ore deposits have value as well. I like to think each of you has at least a little money you can truly afford to lose — mad money! money for the fun of it! — and that, if you do, some of it sits not in cash but in a few shares of BOREF (purchased with a “limit order” via a discount broker).
How We Won November 27, 2012 My friend Bill can’t give money because neither the Obama Campaign nor the DNC accept contributions from federal lobbyists (even the good ones, like Bill). But I loved reading about how he did help. It’s so inspirational, I might actually get on the bus next time. Today, I hand the mike to him: GETTING OUT THE VOTE — ELECTION DAY 2012 By Bill Myhre We all had different reasons for heading to Richmond that Saturday morning in early November. Different but really the same. After all, we had been friends for over thirty years and by now had spent most of our lives in Washington, D.C. David is a political junkie who had worked in the Carter White House and hadn’t missed volunteering in an election year for decades. Jill is a full time artist, but no stranger to public policy having retired not long before after a career at AARP. Donald was born in the United Kingdom and has lived in DC longer than the rest of us. He has a green card and can’t vote here, but is just as “American” as anyone I know. For me, it was a commitment more than a decade earlier not to let a federal election go by without volunteering in some way. If nothing else, the 2000 election taught us all that every vote counts and that we shouldn’t take anything for granted. As a practicing lawyer in Washington DC I have found the need to register as a lobbyist and was constrained from writing checks to the campaign, but not from ringing doorbells. Although Richmond is only a couple of hours from Washington, it is definitely “the South” and it felt different. More conservative to be sure. There was little doubt that it was an election year, and that we were in a swing state. We couldn’t escape the campaign signs or the political ads. The hotel was busy and as we encountered each person in the lobby we couldn’t help but wonder which side they were on. As we were checking in the hotel staff was perfectly cordial to our band of aging baby boomers, but they noticeably warmed when they realized which side we were on. Jill soon befriended Doris, a young woman behind the desk who seemed to take particular notice in our well being. Like most of the hotels in town, the staff was largely African American. We had arrived early and the rooms were not yet ready so we checked our bags and headed off to find the Obama headquarters a few blocks away. It was a dreary store front affair, and frankly not as busy as we would have expected given the election was only four days away. It felt a little ominous, but it just reinforced why we were there. A guy who looked to be in his twenties named Adam seemed to be in charge and he quickly dispatched us to an address on East Franklin Street. The neighborhood was close in, mostly 19th century townhouses, one of which our hosts, Erin and Andy, had purchased a few years earlier. They bought it from a “trust fund kid” who had gutted the house and installed a high-end commercial stove, but hadn’t gotten to the heating system or most of the basic wiring before the money ran out. Erin, an artist herself, had transformed the space into a gallery of local art that would have been unrecognizable to the original occupants. We were met at the door by a young man who introduced himself as “Twin” (spelled “Tuyen”) and who looked to be all of sixteen. We quickly learned that he was the precinct coordinator. He was born in Viet Nam, and came to Oakland, California with his parents when he was two months old. He graduated from college in San Francisco and had volunteered with the Obama campaign several months earlier. They sent him to Richmond, where he had been staying with a volunteer “host mom” and working long days out of Andy and Erin’s townhouse. Helping out was an attractive young woman with a pronounced British accent. Turns out she was visiting from London. Having appreciated the importance of national health care to Great Britain she decided to spend her annual “holiday” in the States working to be sure her American friends didn’t lose Obamacare. She just called up the campaign to volunteer when she arrived and they sent her to Richmond. So, that is how we all came together on a sunny autumn weekend in Virginia. We collected our precinct work sheets, google map print outs, and headed to a lower middle class neighborhood to get out the vote. Tuyen, Erin and Andy had worked closely with the campaign to map out every corner of the precinct. We were armed with carefully prepared folders listing every Democrat there who had voted in 2008, but not in 2010. They were counting on the regular voters to come out, but it was those that hadn’t voted last time that needed encouragement. And that is what we were there to do. The print-outs identified each targeted Democratic voter by name, age and sex, so we would have a good idea who we were looking for. We started by asking for the named individual, identifying ourselves as working for President Obama and asking if they planned to vote on Tuesday. That was quickly followed by questioning to see if they were supporting the President, and also Tim Kaine, the popular former Democratic Virginia governor running against George Allen, a former Republican Governor who famously (and fatally to his Senate campaign) referred to a young American-born Democratic campaign worker of South Asian descent as “Macaca” six years earlier. We finished our visit by being sure each voter knew the location of the polling station and with an offer to provide a ride to the polls if they needed one. The first few calls felt awkward, the rest followed easily as we realized how welcome our visit was to these some-time voters. Jill closed each interchange with an engaging smile, and a reminder about just how important it was for everyone to vote in this election. David simply said that he would see them on Tuesday, reinforcing with each person that someone was counting on them to be at the polling station on election day. Looking far too much like Mitt Romney, I faced more of a challenge, but I soon learned to relocate my Obama button to the top collar of my jacket so when they looked through the blinds to see who was there, that they would actually open the door. Many were not home, working on the weekends, and at odd hours were part of their routine. But for those that were, the greetings were almost uniformly positive. In three days of canvassing, I met only one person who was not voting for the President. When we returned to the hotel later in the day to collect our luggage and get settled, we were pleasantly surprised by unexpected room upgrades, including a corner suite with a living room and commanding view of the city. It appeared that Doris had continued to look out after us. The host at the hotel restaurant was a handsome young black man named Lavon Johnson. He broke into a broad smile seeing my Obama button, and later took me aside to ask if he could vote on Sunday. I told him that there was no early voting in Virginia, but spent a few minutes explaining the new more stringent voter identification requirements to be sure he had the right ID, and asked if he knew where his polling station was located. He confirmed that he had registered, and said he would check on the voting place. I asked when he planned to vote and he said after work. Then following David’s example, I told him that I would see him at the polls on Tuesday, knowing full well that there were many precincts in the area and the odds that I would be working at his polling station were slim indeed. Lavon seemed grateful for the advice. He greeted us every morning with a smile, never seeming to miss an opportunity to talk with us during the rest of our stay at the hotel. We spent Sunday and Monday in the “projects” … public housing located on the flood plain, well below the white neighborhoods on the cliff overlooking the river. The housing was relatively new, vinyl-clad frame construction, mostly garden apartments, separated by wide expanses of meadow, that looked almost idyllic in the late fall sunlight. I couldn’t help but notice that in virtually every apartment the blinds were drawn, shutting out the sunlight, the pastoral view, and the world of Richmond, Virginia. Here the faces were tougher and the reception a little more distant. It was not uncommon for a man answering the door to tell us that he “couldn’t vote” a response that only left us wondering what felony he had committed. We didn’t ask. By Sunday, Stan, an old friend of David’s joined us in the canvassing. He had driven down from Alexandria with his wife and two sons to help in the effort. It was not until we stopped at his mother-in-law’s house later in our stay that we noticed pictures of Stan, his family, and the President on the fireplace mantel. Turns out Stan went to Harvard law school with Barack, and spent many hours on the basketball court with a fellow student he never dreamed would become President. I don’t know that I will ever forget the Americans I met that weekend. Mostly working class, moms and dads, some married, some not, children, grandparents, assorted relatives, mostly African American, but others as well, single moms, single dads, boyfriends staying at home with the kids, young men caring for aging parents, preachers, carpenters, students anxious to vote for the first time and everything in between. At one door I was greeted by a friendly middle- aged man in a dress shirt, boxer shorts and dress shoes. When I told him why I was there he explained that he was just changing after returning from Obama headquarters where he and his wife, Brenda, had spent Sunday afternoon calling prospective voters as they returned from church. He introduced himself as “Butch” and then called to Brenda to come to the door to meet “Bill from the White House.” He gave me his cell phone number, suggesting that I share it with anyone in the neighborhood who needed a ride to the polls on Tuesday. We deliberately chose neighborhood restaurants during our visit, hoping to get to know the Virginians we were trying to convince to at least maintain their purple status among the swing states. The attractive woman who waited on our table at an early stop opened up once she learned why we were there. She had been a waitress for 15 years, a white mom originally from Cincinnati, struggling to raise a disabled child on her own who worried about the fate of Obamacare. One night we went to a funky Italian restaurant highly recommended by Erin. Although we got there early, the place was crowded with neighbors and, we learned later, a fair number of diners from the wealthier Richmond suburbs. The traditional Italian fare, mixed with unusual fresh fish entrees, was scrawled on a huge chalkboard behind the bar. There were no printed menus, and even the wine “cellar” was a help-yourself rack at the back of the restaurant. Upon learning why we were in town, the waitress behind the bar turned the conversation to the election, volunteering that in her family it was the women (her mother and two sisters) who supported the President pitted against her father, who didn’t. Her parents had met in the Israeli Army, and the family had spent the summer in Israel, where she was surprised at how many of her father’s friends shared his views. The wait was at least an hour, but the time passed quickly in the friendly and crowded atmosphere. You could not help but talk to your fellow patrons as every conversation was overheard. One attractive woman, well-dressed in a totally black outfit with a matching feathered jacket, started her conversation with us about the veal scallopini which was “to die for” yet finished up with a warning, passed along from her defense-contractor husband, that his firm was letting their workers off early on election night, because they had it on good authority that if Obama were not to win, that “they” would be rioting in the streets of Richmond. We needed no explanation that by “they” she meant the folks in whose neighborhoods we had spent the afternoon. Sunday concluded with an 8 pm conference call among the lawyers who had volunteered to participate in the campaign’s “Voter Advocacy” program. We had already spent a couple of hours at a training session at American University’s law school a few weeks earlier. We each had a thick booklet that included the recently enacted voter ID laws, the guidance for poll workers published by the Virginia Board of Elections, and various flow charts and diagrams intended to provide some order to a confusing labyrinth of requirements and procedures regarding the voter ID requirements, the process for provisional voting and a host of other possible issues that could come up on election day. The much –vaunted Obama ground game was in full evidence with these organizers. For each of the targeted precincts there were two “advocates” consisting of a Virginia lawyer inside the polling place, and a co-advocate located outside the polling place who was not required to be a member of the Virginia bar, or a lawyer for that matter. We received e-mails with our precinct assignments, a unique identifying number for each of us, and the cell phones, e-mail addresses and contact information for our fellow advocate at each polling place, as well as a central “boiler room” number should other questions arise. The outside advocates were each equipped with an easel and large sign, subtly marked with the Obama symbol, offering help with voter ID questions and provisional ballots. These came to be known as the “Lime-aide Stands” named for the green envelopes that signified provisional ballots, and that were illustrated in full color on the sign. We each had similarly marked Voter Advocacy buttons. That night we reviewed the statute and regulations, assembled advocacy notebooks and reviewed likely questions, all in order to be ready to report for duty at our respective precincts early Tuesday morning. We later learned that there were some 1500 volunteer lawyers in Virginia on the conference call, each prepared to be sure that everyone in the Commonwealth who was qualified and wanted to vote, could vote. Tuesday morning came early. In order to get to our respective precincts by 5:30 am, we had to be out of the hotel and at the neighborhood diner by 4:30 am. We were there, alright, joined by a number of other Democrats and assorted police officers finishing up their night shifts. We couldn’t figure out where the Republicans were, as this seemed to be the only place downtown that was serving breakfast at that hour. The waitresses were particularly friendly and wished us well on the day ahead fully appreciating why we were up so early. It was colder than expected and almost totally dark when I arrived at the Randolph Community Center on Grayland Avenue, the designated voting place for Precinct 504. The line had already formed down the block. I set up my sign, pinned on my Obama Voter Advocacy button (still looking a little too much like Mitt Romney, I made sure that it was high enough on the collar to be clearly visible) and started to work the crowd. As I walked up and down the long line of voters it became apparent that almost everyone had heard of the stringent voter ID requirements and had come prepared. It was almost as if they were determined not to let anyone take away their vote. One woman told me that she had brought with her “my birth certificate, my driver’s license, my voter registration, my utility bills and my death certificate…I just hope I don’t have to use the last one!” This is not to say that there wasn’t any confusion about the requirements. Throughout the day voters had questions about exactly what was needed, whether an address was required on the ID, whether an out-of-state driver’s license would work, and what other photo ID was acceptable. My Inside Advocate partner was Bindy, a young Indian woman attorney at a prominent Richmond law firm. We had e-mailed each other the night before and planned to meet before the polls opened. This was her first time working on election day, but she was well read, had studied the manual, was enthusiastic and sharp. I somehow knew this was going to be a good team. We introduced ourselves to the election officials and then headed to our respective posts. It wasn’t long before she texted me the description of a young man who was not allowed to vote and given a provisional ballot, due to a discrepancy in his address and voting place. I intercepted him as he was leaving, and was able to take down a brief summary of his case and asked him to authorize the Virginia Democratic Party to represent him with respect to the missing information that was required to be submitted to the election board by Friday. At regular intervals throughout the day we reported back to the campaign on the number of provisional ballots that we had, together with contact information and voter authorizations, so that if Virginia turned out to be “another Florida” this year, they would be fully prepared. It was an impressive organization that, from everything I could tell, worked like clockwork throughout the day. If I didn’t text in my reports on provisional ballots, or the length of the lines, headquarters would call me. They appeared to be on top of every development. I learned later that the Republicans’ much-lauded, but untested communications software failed miserably on election day, leaving their supporters, ready to help, but literally without direction, making their contribution all but meaningless. In Ohio the President had four times as many offices to get out the vote. It would seem that Republicans were counting on the burdensome voter ID laws in their states to help make up the difference. There were many moments that day, talking with folks in line, and observing local candidates, that helped restore some of my faith in the system and to appreciate our democracy, which Winston Churchill had once famously described as “the worst form of government …except for all the others”. It was gratifying to see, at least in one precinct, that the much publicized efforts to suppress voters seemed instead to be energizing them. Linda was one of the volunteers who was passing out leaflets in support of a local candidate. She was a tall, good looking African American woman in her sixties with an unmistakable sense of humor. She had retired from the local phone company a few years earlier and was no stranger to the folks at the Randolph Community Center. She seemed to devote much of her time to watching out for her neighborhood and by noon I was feeling a little like part of her community. It was a cold day, with temperatures in the forties, and I hadn’t thought to bring gloves or a hat, a fact that did not escape her attention. She encouraged me to go to the Dollar Store, a few blocks away, to get something warmer to wear. I had my sign, easel, and voter materials all set up, and told her I really couldn’t leave my post, but that I would be fine. The time passed more quickly in the afternoon, with a number of provisional ballot questions that caused me to delve into my notebook and call headquarters for advice, including making arrangements to get one voter to come back to the polling station to vote provisionally, after having been rejected the first time. Just as the sun was disappearing and the temperature continued to drop, Linda showed up with a dark gray knit cap from the Dollar Store. She wouldn’t let me pay for it, but did make sure that I put it on. Not only did it warm my ears, but it took care of any remaining physical resemblance I might have had to Mitt Romney. We had a pretty steady stream of voters throughout the day, and unlike some of the other precincts, there were no long lines at closing time. By 6:00 pm it was totally dark, and colder than it had been thirteen hours earlier. The day was finally beginning to take its toll on my aging frame, and I found an excuse to go inside to sit down and warm up. I got engaged in conversation with the gruff, heavy set substitute history teacher who was the door keeper. He took his policing role seriously ensuring that cell phones were turned off in the polling place, and that no one got out of line. He was also watching the clock scrupulously and as 7 pm neared, he was standing by ready to lock the door. Just as he was about to declare the polls closed, he held the door open for one last voter. As it turned out, it was Lavon Johnson, the host at the restaurant in our hotel. He seemed not at all surprised that I was at the door, after all I had told him that I would see him at the polls on election day.
What’s Wrong With Republican Governors? November 26, 2012 Did you have a great long weekend? I spent part of mine with a Republican you’d likely recognize from TV — a sensible, moderate, deeply civil Republican (which narrows the field more than it should, sadly, but no, I will not confirm or deny who it was) — and, as always happens in a situation like this, it left me wondering how this person could not have switched parties by now. But it also left me wondering, and not for the first time . . . WHAT’S WRONG WITH REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS? This Bloomberg editorial castigates them for pretending they can’t develop the health insurance exchanges mandated by the Affordable Care Act, when they clearly can (with the tab picked up by Uncle Sam, by the way). This Rachel Maddow segment castigates them for making it hard to vote. By doing so, she says, “they are not competing in our democracy, they are competing against our democracy. How about competing on the merits? Democrats have ideas, Republicans have ideas — let’s air them out and let the voters pick.” This New Yorker cartoon has nothing to do with Republican governors (except to the extent they cave to corporate lobbyists) but it may prove to have been ruefully on point. I couldn’t resist. WHAT’S WRONG WITH LIBERALS AND PROGRESSIVES? What’s wrong with liberals is that we are wusses. Exhibit A: Our running away from the word “liberal” in favor of the safer “progressive.” (But with reason. “Progressive” equals progress. “Liberal,” though born of an illustrious tradition, can be twisted to connote laxity, licentiousness, or excess.) What’s wrong with progressives is that we are wusses, too. Is there any doubt that if Bush v. Gore had gone the other way, their folks would have encamped on the Supreme Court steps . . . with signs that read “THIEVES!” . . . for eight full years? Where were our protestors? Is there any doubt that if our side had made it difficult for their folks to vote, they would have rallied thousands to march on our governor’s mansion, chanting “SHAME!” Where were we? It worked out okay this time; but in 2000 it cost us Florida, which gave Bush his first term; and in 2004 it cost us Ohio, which gave Bush his second term. Republican governors in both states were working hard in 2012 to do it again. This is not progressive — or patriotic — in any way.
I Can Hardly Contain Myself November 21, 2012 Let’s start with this: We have hot water! As much as we want! Any time we want it! The list of blessings most of us have to be thankful for dazzles me nonstop. I’ll spare you that rant this year, as I’ve made this case so many times before. We live better than any czar or pharaoh — we have aspirin. We have antibiotics. We have entire symphony orchestras ready to play any piece we want — perfectly — at the tap of an iPhone. We have iPhones. We fly through the air. We have zippers. We have air conditioning. I can hardly contain myself. Yet instead of further enumerating things of which Caesar himself could have barely dreamt (light bulbs! Words With Friends! GPS!), the more relevant list may be of things some of our fellow citizens lack. Stewart Dean: “Brutal. Have your right-wing friends play the game at this website.” Indeed. “There but for the grace of God go I,” say I, the atheist, with feeling. # THIS WOMAN IS AN IDIOT – II A Reader: “I’m as frustrated as you by the deliberately misleading information presented (and consumed, I gather) as fact on Fox News. But I take some solace in the fact that their audience is indeed large as cable networks go, but at the same time its terribly narrow and not expanding. 95% of the viewing of Fox News is done by just 20% of their audience. So their messages truly do reside and resound in an echo chamber. I believe that, as with the current GOP, demographics will overtake and marginalize further Fox News at some, hopefully not too distant point in the future. (You’re welcome to use this info, but if you do, please keep my name out. I’m a media researcher and have the Nielsen ratings at my fingertips, but like to keep my hat on that on the interwebs.) FILIBUSTER REFORM – II Rachel Lawrence: “I’m surprised you would ask us to blindly sign a petition to ‘reform the filibuster’ without explaining how the so-called “reform” would operate.” The most obvious and popular reform is simply to require that a senator who wants to filibuster actually FILIBUSTER. Stand there for hours on end making his or her case, or reading the phone book, or whatever he or she wants to do, as it used to be. That would likely cut out a high proportion of them, as his or her colleagues – and the voting public – quickly lost patience over shutting down the entire government to keep from voting on (say) an appointment that had the unanimous or nearly unanimous recommendation of the subcommittee that had vetted it. I think one thing we need not worry about is that reform will go too far. PLEDGE NOT TO VOTE FOR TAX-PLEDGERS Paul deLespinasse: “I wrote an article a few weeks before the election urging that people NEVER vote for anybody who has signed the Grover Norquist tax pledge. As a result of the article, I was contacted by a guy running a petition campaign against Norquist-types. You might want to give it a plug, as you did the anti-filibuster campaign Monday.” # We have the Grand Canyon! We have the Bill of Rights! We have a $12 billion company signed on to make WheelTug’s wheels! We have corrective lenses! Have I left anything out? Have a great Thanksgiving weekend.
Fairness, Cucumbers, Grapes, Borealis November 20, 2012November 20, 2012 FAIRNESS Equal pay for equal work? Even monkeys want that. Do not miss this quick video. FAIRNESS II It gets more complicated when you get to the tax code. What’s the “fair” tax a billionaire’s estate should pay? Today’s Republicans say: zero. Today’s Democrats (and yesterday’s Republicans): half. There’s no “right” answer, though it seems reasonable to assert that taxes should be levied in ways that will cause the least hardship and the least economic disincentive. What billionheir ever suffered hardship by inheriting just $200 million, say, instead of the $400 million he and each of his siblings would have gotten had there not been a 50% estate tax? And what billionaire was ever disincentivized by the estate tax rate? He could still leave it all untaxed to his spouse (if heterosexual); he could still leave it all untaxed to a charity (and have the hospital wing named after him). Are you telling me that, knowing each kid would have to make do with less would diminish his incentive to grow richer? It’s such a ridiculous notion I’m having trouble explaining it clearly. Like the reason billionaires keep trying to get richer isn’t the excitement and fulfillment of building great enterprises or the mega-yachts and private jets they can command or scholarships they can endow — or the sheer competitive ego of it — but, rather, their intense need to be sure that someday each of their children inherits $400 million after tax instead of $200 million? Seriously? So, yes, it’s fine to exempt the first $5 million from estate tax, as we do now, which makes it a non-issue for almost everyone. And it’s fine, I guess, to have the “by-pass trusts” that virtually all wealthy married people use to double that exemption to $10 million. And reasonable people can disagree on how fast the tax on estates beyond the exemption should rise to the top bracket, and whether that bracket should be 45%, as now, or 55%, as before — but that it should be zero? On multi-billion dollar estates? This is wrong on so many levels — not least as it would allocate yet more precious capital to stewards who may have little or no training or aptitude for that stewardship — how can the Republican Party possibly argue for it? Is the goal truly to complete our transition from a democracy to a plutocracy? Which brings me to . . . FAIRNESS III On income tax, the Republican line is that they’re now open to raising revenue . . . but only by closing what they describe as loopholes. They can’t abide having the portion of your income that exceeds $250,000 taxed at the Clinton/Gore rate (or the Reagan rate on dividends and capital gains). Instead, the Republicans have begun talking about capping allowable deductions at $25,000 or $50,000. It’s a flawed idea, but more than that it’s missing the point. It’s a flawed idea because it would hurt charities. Where today it might cost just $650,000 to make a $1 million gift (because of the value of the tax deduction), tomorrow it would cost the full $1 million. The more it costs to do something, the less that thing gets done. It’s a flawed idea because it would disproportionately burden high-income tax states like New York and California (coincidentally: heavily Democratic) while leaving untouched residents of no-income states (like Texas, which provides the most Republican Electoral College votes). Affluent New Yorkers and Californians who might now be paying $100,000 in state taxes, but at least getting to deduct that from their federally taxable income, would now have an even heavier lift while leaving Texans relatively unscathed. Unfair. It’s also a flawed idea because it wouldn’t raise nearly enough money. But flaws aside, it’s missing this point (or maybe I should say its critics seem to be missing this point): it doesn’t affect the truly wealthy. If you’re a New Yorker making $600,000 a year and struggling to put three kids through private school, it would pinch. But if you’re the Koch brothers, or Sheldon Adelson — not the “top 1%” but (say) the top 1,000 families in the country — the Citizens United crowd — what do you care that the mortgage deduction is capped? You haven’t taken out a mortgage in 30 years! What do you care that the value of your employer-provided health insurance benefit is taxed? A pittance! Losing the deduction for state income tax? If you haven’t already, you’ll move to a no-tax state. Charity? Well, so you’ll just give less (and blame it on the Democrats). I say again: do not miss this quick video. What’s going on in Washington these days is all about the cucumbers and the grapes. BOREALIS If you can’t make bricks without straw (which from watching “The Ten Commandments” I know that you can’t) neither can you make WheelTug systems without wheels. Hence the importance of this announcement yesterday, wherein a division of $12 billion Parker-Hannifin has agreed to join the WheelTug effort. Michael Walasinski, Managing Director of Aircraft Wheel and Brake, says, “We have worked with WheelTug’s team on this project for most of 2012. We are excited about the scale of the business opportunity, the technical expertise of the WheelTug partners, and our positive working relationship.” (Readers new to this page should be warned that I am obsessed with a company called Borealis that owns most of a company called Chorus Motors that owns most of a company called WheelTug. )
This Woman’s An Idiot November 19, 2012November 19, 2012 Which I know is not a nice thing to say, and I suppose we should blame Fox News for hiring her — but really: how can you be given national exposure as a personal finance expert when you argue, as Gerri Willis does here, that the average family will be paying 50% of its income in taxes next year? Her piece is headlined: Half Your Paycheck to the Government in 2013. . . . All told, next year, total taxes will go to almost 50% for the middle class; the very group that the president says he wants to protect. That means 50 cents out of every dollar earned has to go to the government. Half of everything will go to an entity that didn’t earn that money, and shouldn’t be entitled to all that dough. Unbelievable. . . . Well of course it’s unbelievable, you nitwit — it’s not true. On the last $1,000 you earn, close to half might go in taxes, if you bend over backwards to count your employer’s share of payroll taxes and sales taxes and your state and local income tax that the President has no sway over. But that’s what’s called the “marginal” tax rate. You don’t pay it on all your income. How did you get to be Fox’s top finance guru not understanding that? Take a married couple earning $35,000 each — $70,000 — with two kids at home and no special deductions and what’s their income tax? About $4,500. True, with FICA taken out, it’s more like $10,000 — but FICA provides this hypothetical couple disability insurance and survivor’s benefits and keeps their parents from needing to live with them and entitles them to expect a subsistence safety net of their own when they’re old. And, in any event, $10,000 is not anywhere close to “50%” of $70,000, nor is it even anywhere close to 25% of $70,000, so why is this woman on TV? And how is Fox serving its viewers, really? Or, at the end of the day, does it exist simply to exploit a marketing niche, like professional wrestling, except that this marketing niche — amplified by rich and powerful people using it to further their own ends — is tragically huge, and the audience in this particular niche does not, for the most part, realize that it’s all kinda fake. Excuse the italics, but when my pal Zac Bissonnette sent me this link it made me almost as nuts as it had made him. (Zac notes that Ms. Willis, formerly of CNN, adopted Fox’s political slant only after they started paying her, and suggests there’s a word for such a person — “and it’s not ‘journalist.'”) FILIBUSTER REFORM Sign here. I’m so happy Elizabeth Warren is planning to spend her first day in the Senate fighting for this. She has a lot of company, too. Wouldn’t it be great if a lone senator couldn’t easily block a bill the country wants? or keep an important job unfilled for a year? There’s some hope for our dysfunctional government yet.
KLM November 16, 2012March 27, 2017 BOREALIS The first time I flew KLM it was from Idlewild Airport in New York (Kennedy was still President so they hadn’t begun renaming airports after him) to Amsterdam on a DC7. It was the start of a three-month student trip behind the Iron Curtain . . . (in Amsterdam, we would rent VW buses and begin our journey through the campsites of Holland, Germany, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Poland, and — by this time we had ditched our adult leaders — a hotel in Paris) . . . and the underbelly of the propeller closest to me seemed to have a little black line drawn beneath it, which I came to realize was a little oil leak, as . . . drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . drops of oil flew off the back. This concerned me, but as I had never flown alone before, or in a window seat over a wing, I had no way to know for sure it wasn’t standard. Except that the propeller further out on my wing wasn’t doing this, so I became increasingly nervous as it gradually became a drip-drip-drip and then a DRIPDRIPDRIP and then, someplace over Newfoundland — and just as I was finally about to rise from my seat and say something like, “stop the plane!” — flames began flaring out the back and suddenly the plane dropped 2000 feet as the propeller shut off (my first color slide of the trip showed the blade motionless, with the clouds below). It will not surprise my keener readers to know that I survived. The two punch lines are — first — that even after we returned to Idlewild on three engines, deplaned, rebooked, and took off seven hours after we first had, we got to Amsterdam early. They had rebooked us on one of those new-fangled “jets.” The second punchline is that the next time I fly KLM, whenever that is, my aircraft will be powered around the tarmac by a WheelTug system. KLM has now joined Alitalia, El Al, Israir, India’s Jet Airways and Turkey’s Onur Air in signing a letter of intent with Borealis’ subsidiary Chorus Motors’ subsidiary WheelTug. This can’t be bad; and if KLM ultimately likes WheelTug, who knows? Its parent Air France might sign on as well. And the stock? I hold on, clutching the mast, resolute, wind-torn, harpoon tightly grasped — for precisely 13 years to the day I’ve been chasing this great light wheel. Which of us will prevail? [Newcomers: You’ve missed the first 50 chapters. Sorry. Never mind us. Though you should buy a few shares if you have money to blow on a lottery ticket with what I believe are far better than usual odds.] THE READING ROOM A lot of people came. I have to get up early for jury duty again so I don’t have time to describe it, but it was good. Here are some iPhone photos I took just before the guests arrived: Click an image to see it larger
Socialism and a Reading Room November 15, 2012November 15, 2012 TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN SOCIALISM Carl Granados: “I can’t understand the alternate reality my Republican friends and some of your critics must live in, saying Obama is a socialist or that he is engaging in class welfare because he wants to return to Clinton era rates. Do these people think America was a socialist nation before Reagan, when tax rates where close to 90% for the top? Do they believe the American Dream was dead before The Gipper? Do they forget that under Clinton tax increases the economy grew more than under Reagan, that we were starting to balance the budget, and that the Middle Class got stronger (but weaker under Reagan and the two Bush’s)? Do they forget that Clinton, who is now viewed as a moderate by Republicans, was once attacked as tho he was the anti-Christ who would destroy the American economy by Fox, Rush, and the other similar Ditto heads? Finally, if higher taxes kill wealth, competition, and inventiveness why are California and New York, among the highest-taxed states, also among the most successful? None of us likes paying more taxes, but the idea that we can pay down the deficit, go to war, triple spending and magically pay for it with tax cuts for the rich is delusional and has been proven wrong under three Republican Presidents. How much does a failed policy have to be proven wrong until common sense replaces ideology?” Good question. I meant to post this before the election, but it remains relevant as Congress and the President get back into the trenches. THE CHARLES NOLAN READING ROOM Here are a few photos. Went I went to post them, the first was so large it would have spread over your entire desk and wall and out the front door for you to see it all without scrolling, and try as I might I couldn’t get WordPress to agree to downsize it. So I called Luann in Hawaii, asked her to choose five or six (if possible, Luann, the ones without the cardboard boxes on the tables — those were from before I shelved all the books), and will wake to see if it worked. If it did, these are photos of the Reading Room (two rooms, really, an anteroom and then the main room) with thousands of books and magazines that Charles collected over a lifetime, now housed at the High School of Fashion Industries in New York: Click an image to see it larger