Ick May 9, 2013May 9, 2013 ICK Donald Trump is loathsome even when giving away suitcases full of cash to people in need. Read and watch it here. YOUR UNCLE STILL NOT SURE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE? Let Al Franken put it to him this way, in 20 seconds, as he did recently on the Senate floor. Unfortunately, a wide majority of Republicans — including the new Republican chairman of the House subcommittee on the environment — still don’t get it. INSANITY – PART 53 Or whatever Part we’re up to — the Republican notion that we should NOT put people who desperately want work to work doing things that desperately need doing. Things that will cost far more if we wait to do them (like repairing bridges after they’ve collapsed). Things that can be funded by long-term bonds at historically low interest rates. Insane. Their insistence that we not invest in our future is born of misplaced reverence for “austerity” and misunderstandings of economics. (Misunderstanding #1: the federal government needs to run a balanced budget. In fact, it needs only to grow the National Debt slower than the economy as a whole — which still leaves room for very-large-sounding deficits, and for even larger ones in times of severe economic contraction. Misunderstanding #2: you can’t tax the wealthy; they’re the “job creators.” How many times do I have to link to the Nick Hanauer clip?) As previously reported, the misplaced Republican reverence for austerity rests largely on a study everyone now recognizes was faulty. And here, from the latest issue of Foreign Affairs . . . The Austerity Delusion by Mark Blyth The results of Europe’s experiment with austerity are in and they’re clear: it doesn’t work. Here’s how such a flawed idea became the West’s default response to financial crises. . . . SIGA Jim Leff: “SIGA has appointed Jeffrey B. Kindler, a former Pfizer CEO, to its board. This could be seen as an overture to acquisition, but I doubt Ron Perelman would allow that. It’s not his style. More likely (and this would explain SIGA CEO Eric Rose’s enthusiasm in reporting the appointment in his recent conference call), Pfizer will partner with SIGA on its dengue drug, which, for technical reasons, is difficult to test in-house. This bodes well for the pipeline of drugs in development (which, due to the litigation, has been a complete black box), and thus for SIGA’s long term future. Short term, there’s a ton of betting re: the binary result of the upcoming appeal decision. Wedbush is predicting a big shoot-up in stock price after that announcement, because current stock price reflects worst-case scenario. I don’t share that expectation. I’m expecting a sharp but brief spurt followed by enormous sell-the-news pressure….and then a gradual climb back up (as pent-up news is announced) peppered by brief setbacks (as shorts generate trumped-up political and media outrage). I continue to look to the big picture: important and powerful people are clearly paying attention to SIGA – both in a positive way (their board keeps getting more impressive) and negative (lawsuits, accusations, shorting frenzies). If there wasn’t big substance and potential, none of this drama would be happening. I.e. lots of people angling for a piece of a prospective pie is a big ‘tell’ that there’s prospective pie.”
Significant Scandal May 7, 2013August 11, 2013 Yikes. Forgot to click PUBLISH last night. So this is today’s AND tomorrow’s. A couple of stock updates at the end. #43 Jeff Cox: “I have to disagree with your assertion that Paul Krugman ‘nails it.’ George W. Bush was not ‘arguably the worst’ president ever. He was indisputably the worst.” #10 Rhode Island last week became #10 to affirm marriage equality (#11 if you count the District of Columbia*) and the Bishop of Providence is not pleased. Writes Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon: . . . In a seriously buzzkill message, Bishop Thomas Tobin issued a pastoral letter to his brothers and sisters in the Ocean State suggesting they might want to decline invitations once same-sex marriage becomes official in August. . . . “Catholics should examine their consciences very carefully before deciding whether or not to attend same-sex ceremonies, realizing that to do so might harm their relationship with God and cause significant scandal to others.” Well, if anybody would be an authority on significant scandal, I’d bet it’d be a Roman Catholic priest. . . . Tobin is a product of a specific system and represents its ideology, to which he has to conform. It’s worth pointing out, however, that the Church can and does reverse itself, which will someday soon make Tobin’s comments look especially absurd. After all, in 1965 it stopped blaming all the Jews for killing Jesus. Just six years ago it decided that unbaptized babies might actually go to heaven. And a mere 359 years after branding him a heretic, the Church decided maybe it had been a little hasty regarding Galileo. . . . #2 Turns out, Jason Collins is the second out pro ballplayer in one of the four major sports — the Atlantic recounts the earlier history here. But how hugely great that Collins has taken this step . . . read his now-famous Sports Illustrated story here . . . and that the reaction from the two-highest ranking basketball fans in America, NBA Commissioner David Stern (“we are proud he has assumed the leadership mantle on this very important issue”) and USA President Barack Obama (“I’m very proud of him“) — not to mention from dozens of other pro athletes and millions of fans — has been so positive. ZERO Two of our speculations, DCTH and TTNP, have cratered recently, dropping nearly to zero. Not quite what we had hoped or Guru had expected, reemphasizing that these are speculations, to be bought only with money you can truly afford to lose. (Our ROIC warrants, by contrast, suggested at 27 cents and $1, closed last night at $3.28. So not every speculation goes bad.) Anyway, with the usual caveats, Guru suggests KYTH may rise from under $22.7 to $35 or more, and NKTR from $10.30 to $15 or more, both in the next few months, so I bought a little of each. Meanwhile, SIGA had an investor call that at least one of you found quite positive. I hold on to this speculation with high hopes. * No one does seem to count D.C., even though it is home to more people, actually, than Vermont or Wyoming, each of which has as many Senators as California. D.C. has no votes in either the House or Senate. Little Delaware, meanwhile, became the 11th state to approve marriage equality yesterday (or 12th if you count the District of Columbia).
Fracking May 6, 2013 First, the scary video. Have you seen it? Two minutes, warning of explosions in Greenwich Village and a new cancer risk you can’t avoid without moving to a different neighborhood. In New York, this video is going viral. But there are already natural gas pipelines throughout the City and they don’t generally blow up . . . and new pipelines, I would guess, are less likely to blow up than old ones, though I have no expertise in this area. The concerns about fracking unquestionably deserve close consideration. This recent article in Popular Mechanics is at least somewhat reassuring: “Is Fracking Safe? The Top 10 Controversial Claims About Natural Gas Drilling.” (Did you know, for example, that the famous water faucet we all saw on TV that caught fire when a match was lit wasn’t related to fracking after all?) In a perfect world, an article like this would accompany that viral video. This is not a perfect world. All comments welcome.
Touring the New Bush Library May 2, 2013May 2, 2013 It seems former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has decided that the Supreme Court’s actions in Bush v. Gore may have been a mistake. (“Now She Tells Us.”) In my view, of course, it was a catastrophic mistake, both because Gore won Florida along with the national popular vote . . . (if you count, for example, the thousands of Florida votes thrown out where “Gore” was punched but also written in — what’s known as an “overvote” — supposedly making it “impossible to discern the intent of the voter”) . . . and also because President Bush mis-led us into war and wrecked our national balance sheet. And impeded the stem cell research that might now not come in time to save your life. And tipped the court even further to the ideological right. And ignored the climate change crisis. And on and on and on. President Bush is fun to be around. A bunch of his college classmates I know affirm this; and in my 30 seconds with him last year he was charming. He is also a far better painter than I could ever be. But he was a disastrous president. (Paul Krugman nails it here.) And now the Bush Library has opened in Dallas, designed to mislead some more. Watch this clip . . . and the one that follows with Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. If only Justice O’Connor had voted the other way.
Solar Power May 1, 2013April 30, 2013 The sun came out! We walked all the way from the Mediterranean to the top of Park Guell, the view from the top of which, back to the sea, is straight off a postcard. I suspect Barcelona is just too hot and crowded to be what I’d want in the summer — it’s crowded even now, midweek — but if you can come off-season as we have, it’s just one of the nicest cities in the world. Jeff Schwarz: “Chip wrote, ‘The GPS worked on my phone even though I had no international data or phone service. I had no data or phone charges.’ GPS works off of a bunch of satellites – GPS satellites – which have nothing to do with the cellular or wireless network or anything. They are different signals, entirely. The GPS signal comes free of charge from those satellites, whether or not you have a cell signal and even independently of whether your device has cellular capability.” ☞ Yet I feel sure AT&T is working to find a way to charge us for it anyway. (Don’t get me started.) (Okay, okay, they wanted $494 for four days during which I made no calls and almost always had the phone either in “airplane mode” or with data roaming OFF but, mainly, and most of the time, entirely OFF. AT&T explained that my phone had nonetheless downloaded 24 megabytes of data for which they were charging $494. This, they noted when I called, was even more than the $30 they would have charged had I signed up for their 120-megabyte data package. Which — as I imagine this nice service rep is employed to do all day long — she cheerfully offered to grant me retroactively. So instead of $494, it was discounted to $30. But would not have been if I had not disputed the charge. A strange way to run a railroad.) ENERGY On the plane over, I read every word of last Thursday’s New York Times Special Energy Section. It was so fascinating — and, in the main, hopeful — I can’t even do my usual thing of picking out a few key paragraphs. (Plus, well, I’m on vacation.) Yes, there is the largely unaddressed question of how our becoming energy independent faster than anyone expected will work with our need to reduce climate-changing carbon emissions. But at least some of the good news in that Special Section is carbon-free; and for more — amazing news, really, if it pans out — here is the TED Talk I wrote about in February shortly after 19-year-old Taylor Wilson first gave it. [Schamlz ON] What a time to be alive. How we must strive to spread the opportunities; and not screw up the planet as we do so. [Schamlz OFF] Have a great day as I hurtle back across the Atlantic Ocean.
Fundamental Premises – II April 30, 2013April 29, 2013 If you get this column emailed automatically, you get the “early edition,” when I click publish. Invariably, I then realize I’ve misspelled something . . . “piqued” when I meant “peaked” . . . and in redoing it I realize I could have better said something else, so I tinker . . . and then maybe I boldface parts of an except to help guide a busy reader’s eye . . . and then I click update, so at least those who come here manually get the better version. I don’t resend the email because I can’t figure out how; and because even if I could, I wouldn’t want to clutter your inbox. (In an emergency, if I’ve REALLY screwed it up, I would re-post altogether; but that’s different.) In case you ever want to forward a post, the online version will always be the better one. As yesterday’s — renamed “Fundamental Premises” — was. (Overnight, I even figured out how to insert the photo — in case you’ve never seen what can be done with bathroom tissue and an exhaust grate at one a.m. on Barcelona’s Gran Via in the drizzle.) BARCELONA Chip Ellis: “I highly recommend that you use the PocketGuide App for iPhone. I used it last year when in Barcelona (other cities also available). Download next time you have WiFi service. PocketGuide gives you walking tours of the city as if you are in a museum with a headset. The GPS feature always knows where you are and describes buildings and sites as you approach. It also has a public transportation map feature to get you where you need to go. The GPS worked on my phone even though I had no Verizon international data or phone service. I had no data or phone charges.” MARRIAGE Jeff: “You wrote: ‘This is the ultimate conservative position: why should the government interfere with your freedom to marry the person you love?’ The ultimate libertarian position (which is what I think you meant to offer) is that government shouldn’t have anything whatsoever to do with a religious issue like marriage.” ☞ Not quite. Civil marriage is not a religious issue. No religious blessing is required or involved. Just go down to the taxpayer-funded courthouse and get hitched, with all the mundane secular government-granted and enforced rights and responsibilities that entails. Lots of atheists marry without having in any way to hide their atheism. But I do see that “conservative” can be defined I more than one way – I chose conservative as in wanting a “small government” that doesn’t try to tell you how to live your life.
Fundamental Premises April 29, 2013April 29, 2013 Barcelona rocks. Even if your trip coincides with nonstop chill drizzle. (And, today, chill thunderstorms.) We’re relying on Let’s Go: Barcelona, written by Harvard students, which is a bit of a kick as, back before you could phone home for anything other than an arm and a leg — let alone Skype home for free — I was myself such a student, charged with updating the sections on Ireland, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia. (There was a country called Yugoslavia.) At the time, there was only one book in the Lets Go series — Let’s Go: The Student Guide to Europe — and our “editors” for those three countries had, as far as anyone could tell, “gone missing” (not, presumably, in any sinister way . . . more like falling in love or discovering hash or who knows why they hadn’t mailed in their copy). Off I went to Ireland, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia, speaking passable English and laughable Russian, to update the restaurant and hotel listings. The quality of the effort has improved significantly since then. I’ll spare you any kind of ordered account, but just to give you a sense of it, my friend and I went out for an 11pm dinner last night (Sunday night) and, after deciding that the mussels place recommended in Let’s Go looked a little peaked so close to midnight, walked along the drizzly Via Grande or whatever it’s called (only one of us speaks Spanish and he is not me, por favor), one of the city’s many spectacular tree-lined boulevards (but wait til you see the many spectacular narrow shop-lined medieval alleyways or ride the spectacularly pleasant modern metro), and came upon a large and lively two-level tapas place, ordered a dozen amazing little items and a couple of Bitburgers and, as things were winding down, noticed from our second-storey perch a couple of streamers blowing up from the street outside. We were well back from the windows so couldn’t see what was causing their ends to be fluttering skyward from the wet pavement perhaps 15 feet below. So now the beers are drained, we’ve finished photographing and eating our tapas (my friend photographs everything he eats), the 41,35 Euro bill is paid (they use decimal commas instead of points; that much Spanish I speak), it’s one-ish, and back out on the chilly and drizzling street in front of the restaurant we see the source of the streamers, which had been knotted and were no longer streaming: a man holding a roll of bathroom tissue, with a hat for coins by his feet, had constructed an elaborate and rather appealing 13-foot sculpture, sturdy in its way, and somehow withstanding the light drizzle (could Charmin do this?), upflated by virtue of its having been anchored to a large rectangular metal exhaust grate cut into the sidewalk: Home by two, write my column, and off to bed. It’s barely midnight East Coast time, though six a.m. in Spain. And while we’re at it . . . VIVA LA FRANCE Spain has long had marriage equality. France wrote it into law last week. This is the ultimate conservative position: why should the government interfere with your freedom to marry the person you love? That would be as anti-libertarian as interfering with a religious group’s freedom to condemn those government-issued licenses as unholy. Both should be free to do what they want. There are now 14 countries, I think, and nearly as many American states, recognizing this. Whom you love is not really a choice. So any nation dedicated to liberty and the pursuit of happiness — as some think ours should be — might want to hop on the bandwagon. The idea that you can change your sexual orientation was propounded perhaps most impressively by a psychiatrist named Charles Socarides. His son Richard, as irony would have it, was this nation’s first openly gay White House liaison to the LGBT community. The New York Times once profiled them jointly. Charles has passed on, but Richard reminisces on the relationship in this recent six-minute clip. FAULTY PREMISES Charles Socarides was wrong. You don’t get to choose your sexual orientation. Yes, there is an “ex-gay” movement that argues otherwise. But for quite a while it was led by John Paulk, who now writes: A Formal Public Apology by John Paulk For the better part of ten years, I was an advocate and spokesman for what’s known as the “ex-gay movement,” where we declared that sexual orientation could be changed through a close-knit relationship with God, intensive therapy and strong determination. At the time, I truly believed that it would happen. And while many things in my life did change as a Christian, my sexual orientation did not. So in 2003, I left the public ministry and gave up my role as a spokesman for the “ex-gay movement.” I began a new journey. In the decade since, my beliefs have changed. Today, I do not consider myself “ex-gay” and I no longer support or promote the movement. Please allow me to be clear: I do not believe that reparative therapy changes sexual orientation; in fact, it does great harm to many people. I know that countless people were harmed by things I said and did in the past, Parents, families, and their loved ones were negatively impacted by the notion of reparative therapy and the message of change. I am truly, truly sorry for the pain I have caused. From the bottom of my heart I wish I could take back my words and actions that caused anger, depression, guilt and hopelessness. In their place I want to extend love, hope, tenderness, joy and the truth that gay people are loved by God. . . . John Paulk Funny how fundamental premises, long and firmly held, can be so wrong. The premise that the Earth is flat. (Well just look at it!) The premise that you can choose your sexual orientation. The premise that the wealthy should be lightly taxed because they are the job creators (irrefutably debunked here). The premise for the Republican insistence on austerity, which turns out to have been based on a series of Excel spreadsheet errors that no one disputes were errors. Toilet-paper sculptures all, supported by hot air.
Hurray for America, Mankind, and Satire April 26, 2013April 25, 2013 If all went as planned, I hurtled through the sky last night and am now ensconced in a foreign land trying to figure out how the electrical outlets work. Not entirely clear whether there will be posts next week or — if there are — how timely they may be. If you see a post about kittens even as the world appears to be ending (say), it’s not that I’ve lost my mind — just my Internet connection. Meanwhile, four videos: RABBI FELDMAN’S BAR MITZVAH SPEECH Here. An uplifting tribute to America. (And yes, not all rabbis have been bar mitzvahed — unless this guy was the last one left to be and now they all are.) And by the way? Just as he wondered throughout his boyhood why he was being punished simply for having been born Jewish, so must countless millions of kids wonder even to this day why they are being punished simply for having been born black or poor or gay or in any number of other ways “less than.” Of course, to Americans — when we don’t lose sight of our founding principles — we hold it to be a self-evident truth that they were born equal. GOOD NEWS! You are 35 times less likely to be murdered than you were in Medieval times. And the fun doesn’t stop there. Here. (This is a year and a half old, but that may be because it was based on an 800-page book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, it may have taken my pal Matt Ball, who just sent me this, a while to finish.) MORE GOOD NEWS! Matt also sent THIS — centuries of snappy, upbeat global perspective in just four minutes. ALPHA HOUSE As noted Wednesday, but you might not have had time to watch . . . Amazon has started producing TV shows (minus the TV). For example, watch the pilot for Garry Trudeau’s new series, Alpha House. With John Goodman, no less. By Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau, no less. Free! Funny! No commercials! Have a great weekend.
Substitute Teacher April 25, 2013April 25, 2013 HEROES – Part II Abe: “Back in the fifties they were renovating the White House and President Truman was living in Blair House across the street. A group of Puerto Rican nationalists disrupted the Congress one fine day and one of their number shot the GSA guard at the Blair House and started up the front stoop to assassinate Truman, who was napping within. The guard, dying in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, brought the guy down with his service revolver, firing from the prone position, before he died himself. Probably a wage board three in salary. Don’t know what sort of pension his widow got, if any. I have measured everybody put up for hero status by this man from that day to this. Not many measure up.” VENEZUELA – UPDATE My friend writes: Update one week later. Venezuela continues in a real state of tension and discordance. A wave of persecution has broken out against public employees (including teachers, doctors, police, government clerks etc) who are suspected of having voted for the opposition candidate Capriles — which obviously many many did. People may lose their jobs, and houses are being searched, violently and in some cases planting incriminating evidence. Sporadic government violence continues, some of it even perpetuated by people disguised as opposition. The short term looks grim, even while a semblance of a “vote recount” slowly proceeds. On the evening of the election (April 14th), and the next day, the current government agreed to a recount, given the closeness — 235,000 votes out of 15,000,000 — remarkably close in a system that totally favors the government in every way. They agreed to this in order to get all the presidents of Latin America to come to Maduro’s inauguration, which many of them did, on the pretense of a recount. Most of these governments owe Venezuela varying amounts of money owing to Chavez´s petroleum largess over the boom years of high oil prices — loans, aid, all with the condition of supporting his government, very effective (This was called Chavez’s Petrol Checkbook.) Very few of these heads of state now want to stop receiving these boons, much less have to pay back what they owe the people of Venezuela, so they were inclined to allow Maduro to assume the presidency, which happened, more or less. But now the electoral commission and the government is putting all kinds of creative limiting conditions on the agreement about the recount, as it is becoming increasingly clear that there was methodical fraud, and that Capriles indeed won the election by a significant margin. These officials have even stated that legally, no matter what the results of the recount, it will not change their proclamation of Maduro as the winner. Of course, all this only increases the conviction of fraud. The opposition carefully monitored the election with very different results which are beginning to come out. The government cannot afford to open this Pandora’s Box, as it will directly reflect upon earlier elections as well. The United States (among others, including the European Union) has correctly not recognized Maduro as the legitimately elected president of Venezuela to date, unless there is an adequate recount. Venezuela is threatening with oil and business sanctions against the USA – their usual style against many lesser countries – but we all really hope this non-recognition continues — it is the right thing to do. As many people say here, if the government committed fraud to keep Maduro in power, then this is no longer a democracy. And these comments, incidentally, are coming from the “pueblo,” low income people in the “barrios,” very many of whom finally rose to vote against this oppressive, ineffective government. They now use the word dictadura = dictatorship. It is unlikely that Capriles will be able to turn this around, despite the clarity of fraud, but on the other hand, he has already turned it around. Chavismo will never be the same, and we can anticipate its steady ungracious decline into the future, possibly (hopefully) dramatically. This is one situation where the United States can play a significant benign role, simply by not recognizing an acting president unless and until a careful vote recount establishes who really won. The USA has an opportunity to gain real stature in the eyes of the democrats of Latin America, especially given its dubious past of unfortunate interventions down here. CULTURE CLASH For a laugh. (Thanks, Alan.) The one about the substitute teacher — three minutes.