Dodd-Frank: Good for Consumers, Good for the Country July 30, 2013July 31, 2013 POPE HOPE My brother-in-law the gay Catholic priest is thrilled, and I dare say Jesus would have been, too: “Pope Francis & Gay Priests: A ‘Sea Change’ Is At Hand As Pontiff Reaches Out To LGTB Community.” DODD-FRANK HOPE On the third anniversary of its passage, only 39% of the massive Dodd-Frank financial reform bill’s regulations have been completed. But watch former Senator Dodd and former Congressman Frank discuss it. Just as people are beginning to realize all the good Obamacare may do them and the country, so it looks as though Dodd-Frank may have been a solid piece of work as well, despite the best efforts of the G.O.P. to kill, gut, stymie and neuter it. BUBBLE SOCCER Seriously: can you imagine anything more fun than this? I want one of these thing for when I ride the subway. “BUYER AND CELLAR” So here was the original New York Times review in April — “seriously funny” — and here is the front page of the New York Times Arts & Leisure section yesterday, calling it “the most talked about new comedy of the season . . . It goes down as easily and tastily as lemon sorbet, and the only pain in your stomach it creates is the kind that comes from laughing too hard.” I own a piece of this show. Buy a ticket!
Mosquitos July 29, 2013 FORGET AFRICA — I WANT THIS IN MIAMI! Okay, don’t forget Africa — at all. But seriously . . . how great would this be (unless you’re a mosquito)? Mike Molletta: “While I am on opposite sides of your political view, I enjoy your hopeful outlook for the future and thought of you when I saw this. Entrepreneurial innovation that helps others is what we need more of as opposed to financial engineering.” ☞ Amen, brother. High frequency mosquito repellant from my iPhone seems no more worthwhile than high-frequency trading by Goldman Sachs. But this thing? It just might work! (And, BTW, it’s not possible you are on the opposite side of my political view. I’ll bet there’s a lot more we agree on than disagree.) T-TIP Gently stick a T-TIP in our economic ear — a U.S.-European Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership — possibly coming next year — and, as described in Richard Rosecrance’s Sunday Times op-ed, add half a percent of growth to both giant economies . . . which, especially over decades, is not as small as it sounds. (If we otherwise might have expected 2.5% annual growth, say, adding half a percent, to 3%, adds 20% to the growth rate.) One more reason to be hopeful. WT Speaking of which, here’s an item on WheelTug from airlinereporter.com, a site “based in Seattle with writers located around the world” which has a rosy disposition of its own: “Many people see airlines as an ‘evil’ business and that flying ‘is not like it used to be,'” they write; “AirlineRepoter.com tries to remind folks that flying is still a magical experience and it is not like the way it used to be; in many cases it is better.” Certainly a load safer and cheaper and less environmentally taxing than it was in the golden age, and with better entertainment and productivity options, to boot. Now, if only we didn’t have to wait for a tug to back us out from the gate; and if only we could board and deplane in little more than half the time, by using the rear door as well as the front (“the WheelTug twist“). Just might happen.
Banning Nipples July 26, 2013July 26, 2013 BALANCE Bruce: “I appreciated your response to Cat. I hope that we all think ourselves ‘fair’ yet acknowledge the existence of bias. Nonetheless, it is a painful reminder to me of the success of Karl Rove’s ‘both sides lie’ strategy: Craft the most extreme, false, and self-enriching position possible. Shout it as loudly as possible. Use unofficial sources to turn it into ‘official’ reality. Spend time confusing people. Then simply say, ‘Oh, of course we might be extreme, but that is because both sides lie. We are just as correct as they are.’ As you allude, on most of these issues, the Republican argument is that the Earth is flat. The Democrat argument is that the Earth is round. Both sides lie. The Earth is not a perfect sphere, but rather somewhat ovoid. The Republican tactic is not to convince skeptics that the Earth is flat, it is just to convince the faithful that they are being lied to when told that it is round.” It’s what the tobacco companies (long defended by Republicans) did for decades. It’s what the climate change deniers (almost all of them Republicans*) do. It’s what the wealthy-are-the-job-creators-so-cutting-their-taxes-helps-the-middle-class* proponents (Republicans!) do. It’s what George W. Bush did when he insisted that “by far the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum.” It’s what Bush and Cheney did to launch the disastrous Iraq war. It’s what Mitt Romney did in his very first campaign ad. It’s what the Republicans are working so hard to do to discredit the virtues of Obamacare (it’s not perfect, but a big step forward). What they did to destroy ACORN, thus shifting the balance of power yet further from the already powerless. But I digress. *Including their House Science & Technology Committee chair. **Not true! Not true! Not true! NIPPLES If you thought North Carolina was bad yesterday, watch Rachel’s five-minute follow-up: Let’s say you wanted to ban nipples. You want to make it a crime for which a woman would serve 30 days in jail if anybody saw her nipple in public for any reason? Let’s say you wanted to do that. Let’s say also you wanted counties and cities in the United States of America to be able to establish an official state religion. Here, in this country. Let’s say you want to make teachers in your state teach seventh graders . . . that if you have an abortion, you’re not going to be able to have a baby ever again. Let’s say you want all those things, plus you want to throw 70,000 people off their unemployment benefits immediately, close down 15 of 16 abortion clinics in the state, take $90 million out of the public schools and give that money to the private schools and reorganize the fiscal structure of the state to give millionaires in the state a check for $10,000 each. Oh, oh, oh, oh! And also you want there to be loaded guns in playgrounds. What could possibly go wrong with loaded guns in playgrounds? So say that’s what you have to offer. If that is what you have to offer, congratulations: you are a North Carolina Republican state legislator in the year 2013, and you are in charge there now. You have a Republican governor there, a veto-proof Republican super majority in the house and the senate, should your Republican governor ever want to veto any of your ideas. But why would he? Your ideas are all so good! Especially the nipple one. If this is the kind of agenda you are working on, then the single most important thing you’re working on is what the North Carolina legislature worked on today and into tonight. A version of this is already passed the house. Tonight, it started to get through the senate where Republicans are also in control. Democrats are fighting tooth and nail with everything they’ve got, trying to stall this bill as much as they can, but they are in the minority, and this thing is expected to pass the North Carolina senate by tomorrow and then it will soon be on its way to the governor’s office. Out of everything North Carolina Republicans have been doing this year, this is the most important thing. Because if your agenda is nipple banning and the establishment of state religion and giving millionaires $10,000 checks, then the one thing you are probably worried about with that agenda is what people are going to think of you once you start trying all this stuff, right? The bill that is moving through the North Carolina legislature right now, tonight, negates any reason for Republicans to worry about what people think of them. It is the insulation for everything else they want to do. When the Supreme Court last month gutted the Voting Rights Act, that meant for North Carolina the state no longer needed the go-ahead from the federal justice department if they wanted to change the state’s voting laws. . . . At a time when we have had a lot of draconian voter suppression efforts by Republicans in a lot of states, this [one in North Carolina] is kind of the big kahuna. They are going after early voting. They are going after voter registration drives. For college students, not only will you not be able to use your college i.d. to allow you to vote, but if you vote where you go to college, the state wants to tax your parents as a penalty for you voting in your college town. The voter i.d. part specifically is called the most draconian voter i.d. law in the country. If your i.d. is from public assistance, you can’t use that to vote. If you’re i.d. is because you’re a public worker, because you work for a city or you work for a county in North Carolina, you cannot even use that i.d. to vote. If it’s from the college, you can’t use that. Essentially the idea is your i.d. has to say, ‘I’m a Republican’ and then you can use it to vote. Not really, but close. Of everything North Carolina Republicans have rushed through since they took over in November, this is the keystone to all of it. . . . The only way to get away with aggressively unpopular measures that are radically out of step with everything that has happened in your state in modern times is to make sure that nobody can vote you out of office. That’s exactly what Republicans in the North Carolina senate are expected to finish doing tomorrow, and then send to that governor. Watch this space. And all we have to fix this madness in North Carolina and elsewhere is inspire the kind of turn-out in 2014 not normally seen in a midterm election. Easier said than done; but possible. UPDATE: The North Carolina legislature passed the anti-voting bill, to make it as hard as possible for students and the poor and working poor, many of them African American, to vote.
What The S.O.P. Stands For July 25, 2013March 28, 2017 It will not surprise you to know that I thought the President’s speech yesterday was spot on, especially in its focus on putting people back to work modernizing our national infrastructure. Try to find time to watch “A Better Bargain for the Middle Class” . . . and the subsidiary speeches he will be making to flesh out each theme: jobs, education, housing, health care, retirement security and ladders of opportunity. Let us know what you think. # Rachel had two clips Tuesday night your Republican uncle needs to watch. The first was on . . . VOTER SUPPRESSION Watch what the G.O.P. is doing in North Carolina. You will find it hard to believe: . . . [They] are ramming through with basically no debate [a bill that] would [put] an end to same-day voter registration which over 100,000 people used in the state in last November’s election . . . get rid of state support for voter registration drives . . . ban local election officials from extending polling times for an hour if, for example, there’s really long lines still waiting outside . . . lop off a full week of early voting . . . get rid of a program in high schools that reaches out to students who are nearing the age of voting to show them how to be model citizens. . . . We can’t have students registering to vote! We can’t have that! . . . It all goes away under the bill senate Republicans advanced this afternoon. The bill would also require i.d. you never had to show before. An estimated 300,000 registered legal voters in North Carolina will not have that kind of documentation. In an ideal Republican world, it would be just white males with property who voted — as the Founders intended — because so much of the Democratic vote comes from people of color, from women, and from the young and poor who rent rather than own. Well, we’re not going back to 1789. But in virtually every Republican-controlled state — especially now that the Supreme Court has neutered the much-debated and reauthorized Voting Rights Act of 1965 — the G.O.P. (or S.O.P. as I have come to think of today’s incarnation) is working to keep people from voting. What does your Republican uncle think of that? The second clip was on something else important to Republicans . . . HEALTH CARE As aggressively as Republicans are working to make it harder to vote, they are working to block access to affordable health care. Not, certainly, because they want to hurt the sick. Their motives, rather, are (1) to keep Democrats from being seen as having improved tens of millions of lives; (2) to repeal a program that adds 3.8% to the tax on investment income above $250,000, because it is the top 1% — and especially the top 1% of the top 1% — to whom this really matters and to whom the S.O.P. is most fully beholden. To repeat from an earlier column, because I don’t think most people yet get this: At its core, here’s what Obamacare does: it taxes the best off so virtually everyone can get better health care coverage. A terrible idea, from the perspective of the S.O.P. But not a bad idea if you might someday have a preexisting condition or run into the limits of a lifetime cap — or lack health insurance altogether. Or if you like the idea of free preventive care; or the idea of caps on how much of your premium your insurer can keep for itself. Karen Geronymo: “Working 2-3 part time jobs (in healthcare!) for the past 15 years, I have maintained my own health insurance with a $6000-per-person deductible. Despite the fact that I am healthy (thankfully) and take no medicine on a regular basis, my insurance premium (with the same company for the past 5 years) has increased an average of $150/month (yearly), costing me approximately $10,000 per year. That’s crazy! I am looking for some relief as dropping my insurance is not an option that I can afford. I do laugh when I hear someone say that Obamacare is the slippery slope to socialized medicine…considering that most people will be happy to begin ‘receiving’ Medicare when they are of age to do so. Additionally, when someone shows up at the teaching hospital I work in, they receive care regardless of ability to pay….who, but the taxpayer, is paying for that?” Watch this clip. Rachel shows how Republican members of Congress will shortly be working to alarm people, especially seniors, about Obamacare over their summer break — she’s gotten hold of the town-hall playbook they’ll be using. And yet, Rachel says . . . . . . you know, there is a pilot project that has been run in our country on how to implement health reform. The reform law that everybody calls Obamacare is essentially the same thing as the Romneycare health reform that Mitt Romney signed into law and implemented in Massachusetts where I live. Very successful. Very popular. Very effective. She goes on to show how the Romney team sold Massachusetts residents on Romneycare — using pro athletes, among others, to sell the plan — and how Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has used his office to threaten pro athletes not to do the same for Obamacare. But what I love about the clip is Rachel’s interview with Senator Al Franken. What a magnificent senator he has turned out to be (will Senator Jon Stewart be next? Governor Amy Poehler? I’d vote for Tina Fey for anything). Watch, and feel good about Obamacare. GRAPPLES – CORRECTION! Adam’s Apples: “Grapples are not ingeniously ‘cross-bred to taste like a grape.’ They are regular apples infused with grape flavor. Akin to these. Apple breeders are honest hard-working folk who grow great apples that require no additives. The world of apples offers an amazing range of tastes and textures, no chemistry required. Make your way to an orchard or greenmarket this fall to try the real thing.”
Power Chips? July 24, 2013July 24, 2013 One of the many reasons to have been a Borealis skeptic all these years is their claim to have multiple breakthrough technologies, not just one (and to have a small fortune in mineral wealth besides). And yet its Chorus Motors technology really has powered commercial jets around the tarmac, and so seems to be real. Alone, and just for airplanes — via the WheelTug subsidiary — that technology could be worth billions. (And what if it found application in cars? forklifts? elevators?) What if some of the other technologies were real, too? From yesterday’s weekly update: Avto Metals/Cool Chips/Power Chips Our University Research Facility has finished the construction of the structures needed to test the Ev for these structures. The structures look very good, the build was very successful. We had months of the usual problems associated with such builds. The Avto Metal™ devices are now in the hands of our lead in-house researcher and they are off to be tested at another University facility. This is the culmination of about 18 years of work for our scientific teams in facilities around the world. If the tests show a significant reduction in work function, confirming earlier work that was repeated thousands of times in several laboratories, we will first build additional structures to increase our understanding of the Avto Effect and then proceed to build test PowerChips™. This will be followed by the building sufficient quantities of PowerChips to build probably 100 watt prototype devices, that can be scaled up, to be initially 1000 KW devices and larger. With any luck Power Chips can be a money spinner in probably 30 months, which in this business is tomorrow. We would like to thank Dr. Hans J. Walitzki for staying with the project for many years and directing the research for the past few years. Dr. Walitzki’s work is much appreciated. It is now a question of properly testing the Avto Metal Structures to increase our understanding of the Avto Effect and then to build working, standalone prototype devices. We will see if the last two decades of work and millions of dollars have been wasted in the next couple of months. This is show time for many of our technology companies. Well, you never know. (Technically, Power Chips is a public company, another of the Borealis subsidiaries . . . but it hasn’t traded in — forever.) One thing for sure: Where they say, above, “with any luck,” it would be more accurate to say, “with enormous luck.”
Reader Feedback July 23, 2013March 28, 2017 THAT 1987 INTERVIEW Bill S.: “I watched the Werner Erhard tape with great interest. It was amusing to hear you lament how 30 year Treasury rates were only 9% after hitting 15% five years back. I liked your suggesting keeping assets in cash just weeks before the Black Monday crash. (I also liked hearing you joke that folks believing you are holding back on the big stock tip that will make them rich. I kept thinking of BOREF in that segment and how if that stock ever hits its perceived potential you will never be accused of keeping that one to yourself.)” PLUMOGRANATES Brooks Hilliard: “Was at Trader Joe’s yesterday afternoon and bought some of these. You are absolutely right (‘I just had my first plumogranate! Oh . . . joy!‘) . . . they’re GREAT!!!” ☞ And lest you think I recommend my hybrids lightly — that I’m some kind of fruit-novelty pushover — let me say I have tried the “grapple” — those apples cross-bred to taste like a grape — and they’re just weird. If grapple were a stock, I’d be short. BALANCE Cat: “So, let me start by saying I’m a lesbian and a Democrat. And glad to be both! However, one thing that kills me about the the political debate is how extreme both sides can be. The whole ‘polarized’ thing we hear about all the time. Your impassioned post yesterday paints a clear and vivid picture that seems impossible to refute. But I’d be willing to bet there’s some equally passionate Republican out there painting his or her own equally vivid picture. I have a, well, suspicion of anything so strongly, clearly, unimpeachably, rigidly one-sided. Kinda a knee-jerk ‘what isn’t he telling me’ reaction. Cherry picking examples, which everyone does all the time (even avowed unbiased sources), is inherently unbalanced. We do it to prove a point, make a case, counterbalance the other guy, etc. That’s fair enough. But my fairness streak (a mile wide and 2 miles deep), leads me to challenge you: write a similar, passionate, well thought out defense of the other guys. You needn’t publish it, or even share it, but the exercise might be insightful, even for an experienced hand like yourself. I suppose balance and reason (oh, and civilized discourse and compromise) don’t get us very far these days, and certainly the other guys stack every deck they can get their paws on, but still … I don’t mean to say that you are unbalanced or unreasonable or that your discourse is uncivilized. Only to acknowledge that voices that don’t take the extreme ‘flatten the fly with a sledge hammer’ approach tend to get drowned out. Does this make any sense?” ☞ It makes a lot of sense. I’m a big fan of fairness streaks and hope my own surfaces from time to time. I guess the other side of the general case you’re making – with which I agree – is the case against “false equivalence.” The notion that if someone makes an impassioned case for racial cleansing, or for denying lesbians the right to civil marriage, or for the earth’s being – quite obviously – flat . . . and someone else makes an impassioned refutation, then the truth presumably lies someplace in between. To me, the positions and tactics of the new Republican Party – the S.O.P., as I see it – are extreme and needlessly hurtful to our collective prosperity. I don’t see “the other side” to voter suppression. Or to remaining the only industrialized country without universal health care. Or to not putting people eager for work to work doing things like repairing tens of thousands of bridges that will become orders of magnitude more expensive to repair once they collapse. Or to not reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. Or to not closing the gun show loophole. Or to paying banks to make student loans when they take none of the risk of extending those loans. I do often know the other side’s argument – e.g., that without photo ID, there will be significant voter fraud, or that we can’t afford to put people to work modernizing our infrastructure, or that allowing gays to marry poses a great threat — but it’s hard for me to give much weight to the impassioned Republicans making these arguments because I no more buy them than I believe that the earth is flat. Study after study – and the failed concerted efforts of the Bush Administration to find more than a statistically insignificant number of examples – and common sense – all tell me that people do not go to the polls in any significant numbers impersonating others. And I believe we can’t afford not to put people to work modernizing our infrastructure – that by blocking this, I believe, the Republicans are adding to our economic woes and long-term deficits. And I believe the advances we’ve made toward LGBT equality enrich, rather than threaten, our national commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And on and on. So I love your email and fairness streak. And I take your point generally. And I hope that when I make an unfair, extremist argument, you will call me out.
Race, Health Care, and the S.O.P. July 22, 2013July 21, 2013 Did you get to watch (or at least read) the President’s remarks on race? (Or, for that matter, his recent remarks at Morehouse College discussing race, fatherhood, and responsibility?) By the very fact of his having been elected and reelected, but also by the way he has governed, it seems to me, he has helped us move a little further down the eggshell-strewn path toward a more harmonious multi-racial society. Not that, as he acknowledged, we’re anywhere close to “post-racial.” But with each generation, we make progress. This is an area not easily scored or discussed — though important. In areas that are easily scored, the progress has been at least as great. I would note that the stock market, having more than doubled, is at record highs — that CAFE standards have been doubled — that tens of millions of people now have or are about to have better access to health care — that the Federal deficit as a percentage of GDP is likely to be less than half what it was the year he took office (more like 4% than 10%) — that LGBT Americans have made huge strides (at no cost to anyone else) — that we have wound down two wars — that there is a Credit Card Bill of Rights and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — that stem cell research is now encouraged rather than impeded — and lots more. Standing against most of this progress has been the new Republican Party — the one that considers Eisenhower and Nixon to have been socialists and through whose primary process Ronald Reagan, were he running today, probably could not make it to the nomination. It’s the party doing all it can to keep African Americans and young people and poor people from voting (watch the Chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party and one of his colleagues in the legislature all but copping to this — just one example of many). The one mandating vaginal ultrasounds and government-written scripts doctors must read their patients. The one that filibustered its own proposal for a bi-partisan deficit commission once the President signed on — one of more than 400 filibusters Harry Reid has faced as Majority Leader (versus just one when Lyndon Johnson had the job). It’s the party that torpedoed the American Jobs Act that would have renewed our economy by investing in infrastructure. The party that passes subsidies for corporate farmers but nixes food stamps for hungry families; that fights to hold down the minimum wage but zero out the tax on billionheirs; that repealed the assault weapons ban and rejects universal background checks. The party voting, 40 times now, to repeal Obamacare. Once the “Grand Old Party,” it has become the the Selfish Old Party. The S.O.P. Yes, of course, there are some terribly selfish Democrats — and some wonderfully generous Republicans. But c’mon: when you watched that amazing Tammy Duckworth clip linked to a couple of weeks ago — where the government-contractor was so shamelessly milking the system — what odds would you have given he was a Democrat, what odds a Republican? Watch the clip and take your guess! Sure enough: a max-out Romney donor. However generous individual Republicans may be, the ones serving in Congress vote to make life easier for the rich and powerful, harder for everyone else. And so naturally they want to kill Obamacare. From the widest perspective, here’s what Obamacare does: it taxes the best off — by adding a 3.8% tax on investment income for high-earning individuals — so virtually everyone can get decent health care. Democrats favor that trade, Republicans (or at least those in Congress) oppose it. It does a lot of other things, too, of course. But the way it can provide so many “goodies” — near-universal access, an end to “lifetime caps,” an end to “pre-existing conditions” — yet still lower the federal deficit is that simple: it asks the best off to chip in more. (Though at a rate still lower than we were paying at the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term.) Beyond that, it is filled with pilot programs aimed at improving the quality and efficiency of care, and — and of special importance to our global economic competitiveness — mechanisms to drive down costs (or at least stunt their growth). And it looks as though it may do just that. Insurers can’t keep more than 15% or 20% of premiums for their overhead and profit, and those that do have to refund the difference — already 8.5 million refund checks have gone out. And as the White House reports: For those Americans who already have health insurance – the vast majority – the only changes you will see under the law are new benefits, better protections from insurance company abuses, and more value for every dollar you spend on health care. If you like your plan you can keep it and you don’t have to change a thing due to the health care law.For the uninsured or those who don’t get their coverage through work, a key component of the Affordable Care Act will take effect on October 1, when the new Health Insurance Marketplace open for business, allowing millions of Americans to comparison shop for a variety of quality, affordable plans that best meet their health care needs. Preliminary data shows that the competition and transparency that these marketplaces will create for individual and group insurance will result in health care plans that are both higher quality and more affordable. We have already seen evidence of this in states like California and Oregon and now New York, where the State just announced its health insurance plan rates for insurers seeking to offer coverage through New York’s Health Insurance Marketplace. According to the State, not only will new insurers be entering the market to offer more choices to consumers, the premiums will be below what the Congressional Budget Office projected. This is despite the fact that the state’s health care costs are much higher than the national average. Additionally, a new analysis being released today by the Department of Health and Human Services shows that the preliminary premiums for plans offered to individuals in these new Marketplaces will be lower than expected. Specifically, the HHS analysis finds that that: In the eleven states for which data are available, the lowest cost silver plan in the individual market in 2014 is, on average, 18 percent less expensive than the HHS estimate of the premium that was assumed by the Congressional Budget Office. . . . Now if only we could pass the American Jobs Act to employ people who want to work modernizing our badly decaying national infrastructure, we could really see things begin to hum. All that’s keeping us from doing this is our not doing it. (So please plan to vote in 2014 even if you normally sit out the mid-terms.)
Still Being With Money July 19, 2013 Yesterday, this site’s host was down for several hours. Sorry if the page kept “timing out” on you. Then, as part of coming back on line, it seems to have lost its mind. Sorry if it sent you several random columns from the distant past. No one has any idea why it did this. Please take the rest of the day off by way of my apology — and because Thursday’s column included this 90-minute video from September, 1987 — “Being With Money” — that even I haven’t yet found time to watch in its entirety. See you Monday.
Being With Money July 18, 2013March 28, 2017 But first . . . I just had my first plumogranate! Oh . . . joy! And now . . . This has suddenly shown up on the Internet — I have no idea why — and so . . . in the spirit of Nick at Nite . . . I offer you an hour and a half of my thoughts from September, 1987, a month or so before the Crash of 1987 . . . an interview conducted by Werner Erhard for participants who had paid I think $600 each to be part of this televised lecture series. Watching it now, I naturally focus mainly on my hair. And whether I’ll ever brush the clump that seems to have fallen down back up into place. (I got distracted about half way through watching, so actually don’t know how it turns out. If I said anything particularly regrettable in the second half, chalk it up to youthful exuberance.) About eighteen minutes in, I note that Ford Motor stock is up 10-fold over the past few years and farmland down by about two-thirds, so a thirty-fold shift in the relative value of a share of Ford versus and acre of soil so — I said — maybe it was time to sell Ford and buy farmland. (I also suggested that stocks in general seemed a bit toppy.) With hindsight, you could have done worse. But much of it is just the platitudes for which you have all paid me so well over the years (thank you very much), and which may be as true today as they were in Aesop’s and Ben Franklin’s day. Anyway, it being summertime — when even “60 Minutes” is in re-runs — this quarter-century old re-run seemed as good an excuse as any for me to go for a swim. Watch?
Seriously? July 17, 2013July 16, 2013 TRAYVON I was so pleased when Judge Nelson advised the jury — over the defense’s objection — that they could consider the lesser charge of manslaughter. Suddenly, a difficult decision seemed easy: surely they would grab this middle ground. But they didn’t. P-FAW’s Michael Keegan reflects: Less than three weeks ago, the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a key enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, saying that the Act had worked so well that its provisions designed to confront ingrained institutional racism were no longer necessary. Just this weekend, a Florida man was acquitted for shooting an unarmed African American teenager walking to his father’s house armed with only a bag of Skittles. The verdict was heartbreaking, not just because it left Trayvon Martin’s family without justice, but because it illustrated so clearly what so many Americans already know. Our criminal justice system, like our voting system, is stacked against people of color. . . . Contrast Zimmerman’s going free — with his gun, no less, after pursuing (and killing) a boy he had been instructed by police not to — with this African-American woman‘s getting 20 years for firing a warning shot (that hurt no one) after being threatened by an abusive husband. Both in Florida. Seriously? HOPE This three-minute clip makes me hopeful. Despite Washington’s gridlock, there is a bright generation of young future leaders eager to make progress. Including the 2013 DNC Hope Institute participants on the clip. (And while I’m being partisan, can anyone guess, if young Malala — the 16-year-old Pakistani girl whose UN speech I posted Monday — had to chose between the two American political parties, which party she’d favor?) SIGA And speaking of hope, our SIGA jumped slightly on this “news” yesterday of an impending $79 million payment from Uncle Sam. (I put “news” in quotes because the payment was expected.) That kind of money may not sound like much to you — perhaps you’re considering a bid on this just-listed $190 million Connecticut waterfront home* — but to me, or, more to the point, to little SIGA, with its current $180 million market cap, a $79 million check is more than a footnote. My current plan is to hold on for a year or two for a significantly higher stock price. Though only (cue the chorus) with money I can truly afford to lose. RIP Long-time readers will recall that I went through an extended “estimable” phase. I would frequently refer to many of you, when I used one of your comments on this page, as “the estimable” this or “the estimable” that. It’s not, by the way, that any of you have become even the slightest bit less estimable — quite the contrary — but at some point the “estimable” thing seemed to be getting a bit old, so I largely stopped doing it. Well, yesterday morning we lost the estimable Alan Rogowsky . . . as gentle and good-hearted and cheerful and constructive a soul as there was. So just in case he’s still reading this (giving new meaning to The Cloud), I just wanted to say: thanks for 40-some years of friendship, and numerous contributions to this page.