Year: 2014

Brandon Fradd:  “It’s interesting that corporations want the right to have freedom of speech as citizens (Citizens United) and to have freedom of religion as citizens (Hobby Lobby), but not to pay taxes as citizens.  Somehow they are extraordinary entities that we, the American public, must ‘persuade’ to support the country.  Is this why America was founded — to cater to corporations?”

Brandon references this New York Times discussion:  “How Can the U.S. Stop Corporate Tax Flight?”

. . . The latest round of planned inversions tells us that some corporations will do anything legal to profit from American markets without sharing the burdens of sustaining the United States. . . .

BONUS FEATURE

A completely safe way for you to climb Mt. Everest.  This is amazing.  And when you reach the summit, take as long as you want to marvel at the view Sir Edmund Hillary had.

FLORIDA

Here are Florida’s big utility companies asking their regulator for permission to gut energy-conservation goals:

Florida’s big public utilities spend very little on energy conservation. On Monday, they will ask state regulators for permission to spend even less . . .

Given their gerrymandered control of the state (which actually has more registered Democrats), the Republican-backed utilities may well get their way.  Never mind that half of Florida will be under water if we don’t arrest climate change; or that energy efficiency enriches us all.

And here is how Republicans stripped Florida’s insurance commissioner of the power to negotiate with health insurers for lower rates.

Meanwhile . . .

HEALTH CARE

Guru:  “America’s decline is because it is being dominated by financial engineers (like the ones who run who run VRX) and hedge fund managers (like William Ackman) who are interested in short term personal profits over long-term innovation.  We’ll see if they succeed in killing and milking AGN.  We all will be worse if they do.  Here’s the story.”

☞ Its essence: a drug company called Valeant that grows by buying others, is trying to buy Allergan, a drug company that grows by developing new drugs.  It’s plan is to boost short-term earnings by slashing chopping two-thirds out of R&D.

Guru goes on to say: “The CEO of VRX is an ex McKinsey consultant who buys out companies in the pharma space in order to cut R&D and milk the earnings.  He is very driven by ROE calculations.  It has worked.  His shareholders have benefited tremendously by a rise in stock.  Is this what made America great?  No.  America was the place for innovation, not financial engineering.  The great family-owned drug companies:  Pfizer, Merck, and, in Switzerland, Roche, Ciba, and Sandoz, were all started by chemists 150 years ago or so.  Chemists.  Not financial engineers.  These companies have continued to expand into novel chemistry and biology over the last 150 years, looking for new therapies.  They did not succeed by cutting R&D.  They were very interested in ‘shareholder value’ — they were private companies — the chemists were the shareholders!  Karen Ho (Princeton anthropologist who first worked on Wall Street) wrote a book that traced the current focus on financial ‘shareholder value’ as the only basis for corporate behavior to the Reagan administration.  Her book Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street might be worth citing on your website.”

CORN

As noted last year, the easiest way to cook corn — if it’s really sweet and fresh — is not to.  Just shuck and eat.  No cooking at all!  But here’s a no-shuck method that involves a microwave — 22 seconds to watch.

BEER

While it’s cooking, listen to this.

CORN AND BEER

Is there anything better than summer?

HAPPINESS

To me, it’s a matter of (a) genetics (I inherited the happy gene); (b) having love in your life (obviously) and (c) direction — not amount.  I’ve long argued that if you had two families — one earning $25,000 a year but somehow knowing it was headed up to $75,000, the other earning $400,000 a year but somehow knowing it was heading down to $175,000 — the family earning $25,000 would likely be happier than the one earning $400,000 . . . even though it will never be nearly as affluent.  Why?  Because things are looking up!  So much to look forward to!  Corollary: A luxury once sampled becomes a necessity.  Pace yourself.  If you find yourself at a young age with a windfall that would allow you to live large — don’t.  Live small, saving the rest, so you always have something to look forward to; always have a cushion of financial security; and never have to worry about having to move from the condo with a great view a smaller one in the back on the first floor.

That’s everything I know about happiness (a really good locally grown tomato with salt and pepper will also do the trick this time of year) and it comes to mind after reading Arthur Brooks’ more nuanced analysis in the New York Times — Love People, Not Pleasure.

News of the $25 billion being paid for cigarette maker Lorillard reminds us that, for all the progress of the past half century, smoking is still alive and well in America, even if an additional 480,000 of us each year — who continue to die from it — are not.

Here’s the latest: “How the Tobacco Industry Has Made Cigarettes More Addictive, More Attractive to Kids and Even More Deadly.”  Yankee ingenuity at its worst.

In small part:

The adult smoking rate has been cut by more than half – from 42.4 percent in 1965 to 18.1 percent in 2012. After climbing to 36.4 percent in 1997, the high school smoking rate has been cut by 57 percent, to 15.7 percent in 2013.

. . . [Yet] the new Surgeon General’s report released in January 2014, The Health Consequences of Smoking – 50 Years of Progress, found that cigarette smoking . . . currently kills 480,000 Americans each year, sickens millions more and costs the nation at least $289 billion annually in health care bills and economic losses.

Specifically, the report found that “today’s cigarette smokers . . . have a much higher risk for lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than smokers in 1964, despite smoking fewer cigarettes.”  The report finds that “changes in the design and composition of cigarettes since the 1950s” are responsible for smokers’ increased risk of developing lung cancer.

Kids: Don’t become slaves to the tobacco industry like your parents.  Think of the money you’ll save!

[BOREF shareholders:  WheelTug plc and airberlin technik GmbH to Develop Pilot Ground Situation Awareness System (PGSA) for Narrow Body Aircraft.  So the pilot can “see” what she’s doing while taxiing to and from the gate.  Even in the dark.]

#

I first encountered Ricky Jay 15 years ago.  “You won’t believe this,” a friend called to tell me, but I have two tickets for Rocky Jay tonight at the Beacon Theater!  Wanna go?”

“Who’s Rick Jay?” I asked.

“Are you serious?”

I was, so he explained.  Ricky Jay does magic.  With cards.  He is amazing.

I like magic.  I am lazy.  (The Beacon Theater is a short walk from me.)  So I went.

And here’s the thing about Ricky Jay.  He’s sort of this cult figure most people haven’t heard of.  But once you encounter him, that’s it: you are a lifetime member of the cult.  (Not to say the occult, but perhaps that, too.)

The show was called “Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants,” which through the magic of the Internet and what would appear to be an outlandish violation of copyright you can watch here.

To keep him honest, Ricky called audience members up to the stage to watch close up.  Were they shills?

At intermission, one of them was in the bar area with my friend and me and I told him he did a great job up there — the magic was amazing — was it real?

“Thank you — Andy,” he said.

My eyes widened in astonishment.

Long pause, as he made a show of concentrating.

“Tobias,” he said.

I reached for my wallet — still there, I’d not been pickpocketed — was not wearing a name tag — had not even known myself I would be coming to this thing until a couple of hours earlier, and was not wearing a name tag, tickets bought in my friend’s name, not mine . . . how did he do that???

My mouth was now open as wide as my eyes (uncharacteristically, words were not pouring out).  This rivaled — no, topped! — the magic i had just seen on stage.

 “Rick Steiner,” he said, sticking out his hand.  “Arn’s friend.  We met in Cincinnati.”

Ah.  As with any magic, once you know how it’s done it’s not magic at all.  But until you know?

#

It was quite a weekend, this Congress of Wonders, leading off with a screening of Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, followed by a talk-back with the film’s producers and the star himself.

The film is free, with Amazon Prime, I think, as I mentioned yesterday, so right there you’re thousands of dollars ahead of what I spent to see it.  And, while you may have the same question after seeing it that I did — “Is there anyone else in the world who knows how you did that trick with the two dollar bill in the shower?” — he won’t bite your head off for asking it. (He rubs two dollar bills together with his finger tips and produces a $2 bill.  He had astounded some fellow martial arts enthusiasts with it, years ago, and a few weeks later they accosted him in the shower — one assumes, naked and unprepared — and handed him two $1 bills.  He rubbed them together and again handed back a $2 bill.)

Dear Guest [read the letter we 140-or-so participants were handed], I welcome you and ask that if there is any unmet need or unanswered question, that you approach me or any of my collaborators at the Congress. This does not include inquiries such as “how is it done” “how did you do that” “how did Houdini really die” or “where do the ducks go?”

That last not a reference to Holden Caulfield — although with Ricky Jay, it may certainly have been that, too — but to a trick that went badly wrong for some magician he told us about — the ducks are supposed to vanish and the magician is supposed to ask, “where did the ducks go?” — but something had been miscued in the preparation and, while the magician faced the audience he expected to be gaping in wonder, the ducks, from from having vanished, were simply walking off stage behind him in plain sight.  (But that doesn’t explain where the canaries go every time someone does the trick with the cage that snaps shut and retracts into the magician’s sleeve, powered by an elaborate mechanism strapped to his back — which I assume I am allowed to tell you because Ricky showed us a 19th-Century sketch of it.  The ASPCA at some point could only conclude a new canary was killed every night, so convincing was the effect, that the magician actually had to prove in court that it was not.  But I digress.)

In addition, please note that the use of all recording devices (including but not limited to: audio, video, wax cylinder, photograph, pantograph) is not permitted. Any and all breaches of this policy will be dealt with humorlessly.  You are permitted and encouraged to take notes by means of holography, calligraphy or micrography.  Any guests wishing to make contemporaneous plein air paintings of the proceedings are asked not to block the aisles with their easels and to refrain from cleaning their brushes during the presentations.

Ricky Jay at all.

A second sheet:

To guests who are practitioners of the Mystic Arts:  On behalf of myself and my guest presenters, I extend a warm welcome to you and sincerely hope that our time together offers you information, inspiration and amusement. It is my hope that you will find this gathering unlike other magic events and your participation is needed to make it the best possible experience for the non-magician guests in attendance.  Unlike the traditional magic convention, our focus will be on ideas, not tricks. Therefore I respectfully request that you not before magic for the registrants.  [Over the course of the weekend, there was a certain amount of grumbling about this — performers love little more than to perform.]  Please keep the cards, coins, bodkins and billets in your pockets during the actual lectures as well. Our utmost desire is for every guest have the best experience possible while maintaining the spirit and purpose of the Congress.  . . . Thank you so much for your presence, support and understanding. I welcome you and I’m appreciative and encouraged by your attendance. Thank you for supporting our venerated art. Respectfully, Ricky Jay at al.

The sessions that followed that first movie were as varied as a lecture by famed theatrical lighting designer Jules Fisher (you have unquestionably seen his work, not to mention that he designed the lighting of Studio 54) and a performance by actor/magician Steve Cuiffo (“shoe-faux”) channeling Lenny Bruce.

We learned about Max Malini and the The Great Slydini and — yes! — saw a clip of Ricky Jay’s pal Steve Martin, aka The Great Flydini, an act that combines the genius of both men (Ricky helped put it together).

We met the amazing Oakes twins, whose work on curved easels is on display for just a few  more days at the Museum of Mathematics.

We learned how Ricky and his partner designed Captain Dan‘s wheelchair in “Forrest gump” so it would appear Gary Sinise had no legs.  And how, for a different film, they designed a martini that would drink itself.

We watched a yet-to-air series of conversations Ricky filmed with friends, one of which included Tom Waits, Tony Shahloub, and Pee-wee Herman.

And there was so much more.  Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women!  Cards As Weapons!  (We could not leave Rhinebeck before watching Ricky attack and subdue a watermelon — one of his signature acts.)  Congenial fellow guests ranging in age from 18 (a mentalist about to enter college in aerospace engineering) to, well, old — three of whom I came so close to getting to max out to the DNC.  Because the political challenges we face are never far from mind — nor, given the stakes, should they be.

In case I skip a day or two, enjoy some of these links.  Beginning with — if you can find an hour — the aforementioned Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants.

But I guess when there was no column yesterday, you figured that out.

It was quite a weekend, this Congress of Wonders, but start with this: Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, with which the weekend led off, along with a talk-back with the film’s producers — and the star himself.

The film is free, I think, with Amazon Prime, so right there you’re thousands of dollars ahead of me of what I spent to see it.  And, while you may have the same question after seeing it that I did — “Is there anyone else in the world who knows how you did that trick with the two dollar bill in the shower?” — he won’t bite your head off for asking it.

(He rubs two dollar bills together with his finger tips and produces a $2 bill.  He had astounded some co-workers with it, years ago, and a few weeks later they accosted him in the shower — one assumes, naked and unprepared — and handed him two $1 bills.  He rubbed them together and handed back a $2 bill.)

More to tell.  This column will grow longer in the coming days.

So I’m headed off to Ricky Jay’s Congress of Wonders.  I don’t ever do anything like this, not least because the train to this thing leaves from Track 8-1/2 at Penn Station and I am 100% muggle.  Also because so many emails pile up when I stray from my normal routine.  If Ricky Jay is as good as I think, he may be able to turn them all into a bunny.  I would really like that.

Random notes:

1. On yesterday’s news that WheelTug signed another 200 more planes, upping its order book by 25%, grandparent Borealis traded 836 shares (not quite $10,000 worth), finishing unchanged at $11.   Undeterred, I hold on.

2. On the news that smallpox was discovered in an unguarded storage room someplace, stock in smallbox antiviral drug maker SIGA was off a bit from its close a week before.  Undeterred (albeit less deeply invested), I hold on.

3. Whoever invented seedless watermelon is an unsung hero.  An amazing achievement.  We must be coming up on its — what — 20th anniversary?  I think there should be parade.

4. Despite Democrats’ attempts to destroy the economy, impose Shariah Law, and so forth, the economy seems to be picking up steam — normally financial collapses take a decade to emerge from, not 6 years — and the stock market floats in record territory.

What’s more, Obamacare — the coup de grace that will make all our bridges collapse (and here you thought it was our failure to put people back to work revitalizing the nation’s infrastructure) — actually seems to be working.

It appears the proportion of uninsured Americans has already dropped from 20% to 15% and that Obamacare is already helping a lot more people than its critics believed it would.  (More still, once Republican governors stop withholding Medicaid expansion from the working poor, who tend to vote Democrat.)  What’s more, as the Times summarizes a new survey from the Commonwealth Fund, most of the folks who have coverage under the new law are happy with it — even 77% of Republicans.

The margin of error in the survey is apparently large, and it’s still early.  The fat lady has only begun to sing.  But someday historians may determine it wasn’t Obamacare that caused our bridges to collapse — it was Benghazi.

This article describes what happens when your plane taxis in to the gate, sits around to be serviced, and taxis back out.  There’s a little mention of WheelTug at the end.  With each such mention, each new airshow and conference, one has the sense that “e-taxi” is ever more inevitable.

How much if any of that inevitability redounds to our bottom line remains to be seen; but if anticipation is half the fun the — boy — have we not been having fun these last 15 years?  I know I have.

Today, WheelTug announced it had signed HNA Aviation, which controls a bunch of Chinese airlines, for an additional 200 planes, bringing total system reservations to 985 spread it over more than 15 airlines — a market penetration of about 10% of all the 737’s and A320’s currently flying.

Of course, my assumption has always been that if any airlines wind up with WheelTugs in their nose wheels, all of them will.  Who would buy a TV today that doesn’t come with a remote control?  What airline would want a plane that doesn’t save time and fuel, cut maintenance costs, improve safety, and tread lighter on the environment?

With the biennial Farnborough Air Show starting Monday, Borealis shareholders are hopeful — or at least this one is — that some good contacts will be made and the ball moved another few yards down the field.

At last night’s close, grandparent Borealis was valued at $55 million.  Yet if 10,000 planes ever were ever throwing off $50,000 each in net profit from WheelTug leases, that alone would be $500 million a year . . . before allowing anything for any of the company’s other highly speculative assets.

(If its patented electric motor can move jet liners, could that same technology, scaled down, have an application in automobiles? elevators? fork lifts? golf carts?  And if this implausible Borealis technology ever truly gets off the ground, might some of its others pan out as well?)

The two really important caveats:

> None of this may ever pan out, increasingly hopeful though the signs may be.  It’s only for money you can truly afford to lose.

> BOREF is very thinly traded, so if you do go to buy some, be certain to use a “limit order,” lest you find yourself paying a lot more than you had planned to.

So the Koch brothers bought the Texas attorney general (now running against Wendy Davis to be governor, as the current governor, Rick Perry, runs to be President) and here is Rachel Maddow’s report on how thrilling this all is (unless you live near an unregulated chemical storage facility that could explode — or at least want to know if you do).  Listen: “what’s good for General Motors is good for the USA,” as they used to say.  Which has morphed, at least in the Republican Party, to “what’s good for the Koch brothers is good for those tens of millions of families struggling to make ends meet.”  How could their interests not be aligned?

(If you have time, watch the segment that follows, as well: Chris Christie explaining why he vetoed a measure that would have limited school-shooters’ clips to 10 rounds before reloading.)

And — on a totally unrelated note (to say the least) — this song, by an 84-year-old, will surprise you.

There’s no excusing the management failures at and poor oversight of the VA — which, having come to light, are now being corrected. (Until Congress increases funding to meet increased demand, the correction will not be complete.) But it may be worth noting that “customer satisfaction” with the V.A., as recently rated in an independent survey, is high.  And that for every unsatisfactory — let alone tragic — experience among the tens upon tens of millions of patient visits each year, there are many good ones.

One of you writes:

Harold E. Holcombe:  “I am a peacetime navy veteran for whom the most dangerous duty I had was a one-time few hours on Shore Patrol in Norfolk.  Because of my 3+ years as a sailor and because I live 5 miles from a large VA hospital I now receive medical care there. Having needed glasses since my late 20s I had paid quite a lot for them, hundreds of dollars, which was sometimes a considerable hardship. After transferring to the VA for medical care I receive glasses for very little, so modest, in fact, that I do not know my cost.  Being a peacetime veteran with no service incurred injury I have to pay for my care at the VA. If that care is any indication of what universal healthcare will or can be then I believe most Americans are going to be delighted. One has to stand in line occasionally, wait sometimes a few extra minutes for an appointment, accept the realities of being processed through the system. However, I have always received focused personal attention, genuinely considerate response to my concerns and never even a slight indication of impatience by any person at the facility. Kindness appears to be an absolute requirement there.”

IF YOU’RE A CIVILIAN MYOPE

Then eyeglasses can still be inexpensive (and stylish and socially enlightened): Warby Parker.

#

[Oh, look — I posted something yesterday, after all: “God Controls The Climate, So You Can Relax“]