Year: 2014

All good.

Enjoy the extra time.

Oh.  My.  You have almost surely seen this by now, but — if not —  do not want to miss Jon Stewart’s rejoinder to Sean Hannity, in re the Cliven Bundy stuff.  (The patriot cattleman who won’t pay his grazing fees and doesn’t recognize the United States government.)  It starts a minute into the show.  I just wish Bundy had kept his musings on “the Negro” to himself so Republican senators could have continued to rally around him.  What better illustration of their knee-jerk antipathy to a government of, for, and by the people (should the people, for example, want to collect grazing fees on their land; or regulate polluters and financial predators; or enjoy a system of universal health insurance like every other modern nation in the world).  Don’t get me started.  Just enjoy the clip.  It’s really funny.

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And while we’re skewering fools and blowhards, do you remember my friend Zac Bissonnette?

(He’s probably not going to like the sound of that, but hold on.)

I got to write the foreword to his first best-seller, Debt-Free U, now in its 9th printing . . . copy-edited his second, How to Be Richer, Smarter, and Better-Looking Than Your Parents (I take odd jobs on the side to make ends meet) . . . and note tomorrow’s publication of his third, Good Advice from Bad People: Selected Wisdom from Murderers, Stock Swindlers, and Lance Armstrong. 

It’s funny and slightly informative (so that’s what happened to “chainsaw Al” Dunlap): a short self-help quote on one page opposite an ironic thumbnail bio of the advice-giver, who’s generally off in prison someplace.

Some of the advice in the book might even prove helpful — at least “as much as any other collection of self-help quotes,”  Zac says — “as long as you can follow it better than the people who gave it.”

Like Ernest C. Garlington, author of Roots of a Man: 7 Principles for Growing Strong And Powerful, who offers Christian principles of anti-violence but spent $30,000 on a hit man and now resides (for a term of 33 years) in a secure facility in Connecticut.

You know what may be the best self-help advice?  Just do what you know you should do.  Or not — it’s up to you.*

Now: go watch that Jon Stewart clip. Free, funny, and — because there are sitting United States senators and presidential candidates who actually see Bundy and his armed supporters as patriots — important.

*I never took est, but from what I learned of it from so many friends back then who did, that was pretty much it.

KEYSTONE

As noted yesterday, the real reason for pipeline foot-dragging, of course, is not some secret deal with Warren Buffett, it’s this $20 trillion problem, which Chris Hayes presents in a unique way that really helps to see the big picture.  But before you watch that, warm up with this appetizer, wherein Newt Gingrich, John McCain, George W. Bush, and Mitt Romney weigh in on the urgency of dealing with climate change.  (Until all of a sudden they don’t.)

Between the appetizer and the entree: 20 minutes or so.  We owe it to the thousands of generations who suffered so much to get us to the cusp of unimaginable prosperity — and to the thousands of generations to come — not to screw it all up through shortsightedness.  Take those 20 minutes and then, if you agree about those generations, spread the word.  We owe them.

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BUYER & CELLAR

Ed Costello:  “Thanks for recommending (and disclosing your interest in) ‘Buyer & Cellar.’ My wife and I saw it last night and loved it. It was funny, poignant, brilliantly written and acted, and perfect for the small venue.”

☞ Ed is a Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, so he knows something about dramatic conflict.

(Recalling Elaine May’s dispositive line: “And that man is a doctor.”  Ten bucks to the first one of you who identifies the reference.)

I was a little nervous about re-plugging ‘Buyer & Cellar’ after its original star left to take it on the road (Chicago, Washington, LA, Toronto, and beyond) . . . I haven’t found time to see it with its new star, Christopher Hanke . . . but as you can see from Ed’s review, it still delights.  Click here for tickets!  And if you promise not to tell anyone I told you, use the promotional code BACFNF1 to save $20 when you do.  One more perk of your subscription.  You owe me.

Bill Clinton used to talk about “the vital center” — a “third way,” neither hard left or hard right.

The hard right accused him of drug dealing and murder and being a communist (among much else).  The hard left accused him of being Republican lite.

But for my money, he led the country through eight years of peace and prosperity, with a sharp focus on “building a bridge to the Twenty-First Century.”  And I was not alone in my admiration: he had a higher approval rating on leaving office — 37 points net positive — than Reagan (+34%), Eisenhower (+31%), Ford (+21%), Bush 41 (+19%), LBJ (+12%), Carter (-21%), Truman (-24%), Bush 43 (-27%), or Nixon (-42%).

President Obama — who inherited a far worse mess than President Clinton — faces similarly strident criticism from both left and right.  His net approval rating upon leaving office will likely not match Clinton’s (right now, it’s -8%) but I expect it to be in positive territory (as, for example, the Affordable Care Act turns out not to have destroyed America after all, but rather to have made our future healthier and our economy stronger).

The stridency on the right these days seems a lot more intense than the stridency on the left — witness folks coming from all over the country with guns to defend 20-year-scofflaw Cliven Bundy from the Bureau of Land Management — but I thought this morning, perhaps just to test my own sanity, I’d offer a recent email illustrating each end of the spectrum.

From the left, in friendly frustration over my recent “Stop Hillary” post (because Hillary, you know, is the devil), wherein I was taking the liberal side of things, but not liberal enough . . .

Tom A.: “The worst column of yours that I’ve ever read!  Worse even than blaming Nader for Gore’s failings.*  I’m sure you’ll get plenty of flak on this.**  The light blue color of your responses was unreadable.***  And, since ‘all publicity is good publicity,’ you probably promoted Matt Salmon’s career.  And what’s the point of ‘If there’s a primary, I will be neutral.’  Who did that pay off?****  You’re such an upbeat cheerleader for corporate Democrats like Obama, who has consolidated the unconstitutional presidential power grabs initiated by GWB.  Nixon has been proved right: if the President does it, it’s not against the law.  When will you ever see Obama’s faults?  Jeebus, buddy, please get back to the basics!”

And from the right, via one of you with a Tea Party accountant . . .

Michael M.:  “I was dropping off my taxes  and mentioned the weather.  Climate change, perhaps???  ‘Bullshit,’ this CPA with an MBA said.  I got off the subject quickly, as he had his hands on my money, and moved to another topic which evolved into unions, of which he had a similar opinion.  I quickly changed gears and started to discuss tax rates and somehow got onto Warren Buffet and mentioned how much I admired him.  This brought a vociferous response in the form of ‘he’s not a good guy and the reason the Keystone pipeline has been stopped is that Buffett and Obama cut a deal so Buffet’s railroad could carry the oil and make money . . . and as for his tax rate’s being lower than his secretary’s, that’s bullshit, too.’  (I have learned that you cannot argue with these guys.)  This quickly evolved to guns … concealed carry is a good idea, he thinks, he is himself applying for a permit.  I asked if he watched FOX ‘News’ — he had it on right now in his office, he said.  I went home and looked up on the Internet about Buffett and the railroad etc and ran into Peter Schiff giving a talk about Buffet and higher tax rate etc…He was calling Buffet a liar etc….the vitriol was not pleasant…I had run into this attitude on Buffet  in other pieces written by people who I assume were Republicans … they don’t simply disagree but you can feel the hatred in their words  … I wonder if FOX ‘News’ makes them hate or they are just unpleasant people and FOX feeds the fire… I have ordered Madness of Crowds hoping it will shed some light.”

☞ There are so many well-meaning people like the CPA / MBA described here, but my money is on Warren Buffett — long revered by CPAs and MBAs for his exceptional wisdom, integrity, success, and devotion to rational capital allocation — until he sided with the Marxist Muslim Kenyan out to destroy America so his railroad would make more money.  (Virtually all of which he is giving to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)

The real reason for foot-dragging on Keystone, of course, is not a secret deal with Warren Buffett, it’s this.  And this.  Which are so important, they will be tomorrow’s post to give you the whole weekend to watch them.

*No, I blame Nader for not urging swing state voters to vote for Gore, thus risking, and, as it turned out, causing, loss of the Supreme Court and everything else.
**Actually, just this one email.
*** Apparently not.
****DNC officers are expected to remain neutral in contests among Democrats.

HOW ARE WE DOING?

Here’s the latest update from Patrick Johnson, showing what would have happened if you had invested $1,000 in each of the suggestions here over the years (a 14.6% annualized return on your money) versus the same $1,000 each time in the S&P 500 Index (an annualized 7.5%).  All the usual disclaimers apply.

(Not included in his results were GENIX and GONIX, suggested here a month ago and each already up more than 4% while the S&P 500 has remained flat.  But Patrick felt — quite reasonably — they should not be included because their $250,000 minimums put them out of reach of most readers.  But if this is an example of his subjective judgments working “against” me, I’m sure there are others that worked “for” me.  I know his goal is just to be sensible and not skew the results in either direction.)

HOW IS U.S. DOING?

If I had told you as Barack Obama was being sworn in five years and three months ago — with the Dow plunging toward 6,500 — that we would avert depression, rescue Detroit, stabilize the housing market, double the Dow, achieve energy independence, end two wars, avoid two others, kill bin Laden, destroy Syria’s chemical weapons, degrade Iran’s nuclear capability, achieve LGBT equality, sell Plan B over the counter, triple the female representation on the Supreme Court, provide universally affordable health insurance, double the energy efficiency of our cars, grow private sector employment 49 straight months, slash the deficit, and bring National Debt growth back into line with GDP growth . . . you might well have said, “Dream on.”

Yet of course, with some important caveats, that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Sure, the fuel efficiency of our cars hasn’t doubled yet.  But it’s headed that way.

Sure, we are only in the early stages of destroying Syria’s weapons and degrading Iran’s.  But it’s begun.

“Sure,” I wrote back in December, “the health insurance roll-out makes news solely for its problems, gleefully exaggerated and exacerbated by its critics.  But the problems will be solved.”

And guess what?   All of us (except lower-income people living in states controlled by Republicans) now have access to affordable coverage regardless of whatever health problems we may have — or may develop.  It doesn’t take long to say that, but it took our country nearly a century to get it, after we first started trying.

Sure, we haven’t entirely achieved LGBT equality.  But the last major piece of the federal legislative puzzle – the Employment Non-Discrimination Act – is now favored by a wide majority of the public, has been passed by a wide majority in the Senate, and would be signed into law tomorrow if only the House Republicans would allow it to come up for a vote.

Same (more or less) with comprehensive immigration reform — and with the $10.10 minimum wage — and with universal background checks — and with the American Jobs Act to put people back to work revitalizing our crumbling national infrastructure — all favored widely by the public, they would be law if only our Republican friends in Congress allowed them to come up for a vote.

So as we begin to look toward November and beyond, please take heart.  Despite unprecedented obstruction, we’ve made enormous progress.  And if we should happen to elect a Democratic Congress in 2014 — which would mean the House could actually vote on things that a majority of its members favor — we could make a lot more.

LOVE +IS+ WHOLESOME

Click here.

GOD DID IT

Don’t click here if you believe the earth is 6,000 years old.

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Tomorrow (or soon): An Updated “How Our Stock Picks Are Doing”

As the Bush Supreme Court shifts ever more power to the rich, this new study argues that we live in more of an oligarchy than a democracy.  What do the patriots among us think of that?

And speaking of patriotism, there is a certain irony in the brand of patriot who loves his country but hates funding its military and its schools and its infrastructure . . . hates funding its safety net and the debt incurred fighting wars it never should have entered and tax cuts for the wealthy it could not afford to enact.*

Which brings me to this spot-on New York Times op-ed you may have read by Timothy Egan, with regard to the heavily-armed “patriots” who stared down the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada last week.  (Harry Reid calls them “domestic terrorists.”)

Deadbeat on the Range

Imagine a vendor on the National Mall, selling burgers and dogs, who hasn’t paid his rent in 20 years. He refuses to recognize his landlord, the National Park Service, as a legitimate authority. Every court has ruled against him, and fines have piled up. What’s more, the effluents from his food cart are having a detrimental effect on the spring grass in the capital.

Would an armed posse come to his defense, aiming their guns at the park police? Would the lawbreaker get prime airtime on Fox News, breathless updates in the Drudge Report, a sympathetic ear from Tea Party Republicans? No, of course not.

So what’s the difference between the fictional loser and Cliven Bundy, the rancher in Nevada who owes the government about $1 million and has been grazing his cattle on public land for more than 20 years? Near as I can tell, one wears a cowboy hat. Easterners, especially clueless ones in politics and the press, have always had a soft spot for a defiant white dude in a Stetson.

[CORRECTION]

Oops.  Friday’s item on the school answering machine, though still fun, was too good to be true, after all.

*A special irony, perhaps, in the wealthy patriot who thinks the tax cuts for billionheirs were not deep enough — who loves having a spotless toilet in his five-star hotel room, but hates that the maid who cleaned it is “given” Medicaid and a minimum wage.  She is a “taker.”  He is a victim of big government.
 

And do you know what?  The Affordable Care Act is working — despite the enormous Republican commitment to its failure.

Republicans have prevented millions of struggling people from getting affordable coverage — your housekeeper, say, who works hard for you (and spends more than two hours a day on the bus, unpaid, just getting to you and her other clients).  The Medicaid expansion is there for her if only her Republican governor had decided to accept 100% federal reimbursement to fund it (the first few years, 90% thereafter).

They’ve done their best also to see “the exchanges” fail. (In states like Kentucky, New York, and California, where governors wanted their constituents to have access to affordable care, the exchanges have worked well.)

And they’ve spent massively to discourage people from getting health insurance.  (Will they next work to discourage people from buying flood insurance? wearing seat belts? recycling?)

Yet despite all this, it’s working.

You’ve likely seen the numbers by now.

It turns out that the famous “7 million” target was not just met — when the dust settled at the April 15 deadline . . .

• Eight million had signed up — 35% of them under 35 years old, virtually the same youth percentage that signed up in Massachusetts in their first year of health reform.
• And, yes, they’re paying their premiums.
• A further 3 million young adults gained coverage by being able to stay on their parents’ plan.
•  3 million had enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP from October to February, with further enrollment to continue year-round.
• 105 million of us no longer have to worry about the “lifetime caps” many didn’t even realize their policies had.
• Up to 129 million with pre-existing conditions – including up to 17 million children – no longer have to worry about being denied health coverage or being charged higher premiums.
• And the 200 million of us without pre-existing conditions don’t have to worry about developing one.
• Tens of millions with private insurance are now covered for preventive health care services not previously covered, like mammograms, birth control, or immunizations.
• 37 million Medicare recipients received at least one preventive service last year at no out of pocket cost.
• Tens of millions have gained expanded mental health and substance abuse treatment benefits.
• Almost 8 million seniors have saved nearly $10 billion on prescription drugs as Medicare’s “donut hole” gradually closes.
• Millions have gotten rebate checks from insurers now required to use at least 80%-85% of our premiums for health care, limiting their operating expenses and profit to 15 or 20 cents on each dollar (depending on the size of the plan).
• Health-care-cost growth is slowing: Since the law passed, real per capita health care spending has grown at the lowest rate on record for any three-year period, less than one-third the long-term historical average stretching back to 1960.
• The deficit is shrinking:  The Congressional Budget Office had previously projected that the ACA would reduce the deficit by $1.7 trillion over two decades.  This week, they estimated that lower-than-expected Marketplace premiums and other recent developments will cut a further $104 billion over the next ten years.  And that lower premiums will persist, running 15% below projections in 2016.
• Medicare spending growth is down:  This week, for the fifth straight year, the CBO reduced its projections for Medicare spending over the next 10 years – this time by $106 billion.  They project that Medicare and Medicaid costs in 2020 will be $180 billion below their 2010 estimates.  And the ACA’s Medicare reforms may have “spillover effects” that reduce costs — and improve quality — across the rest of the health care system, not just in Medicare.

How about sending this to everyone you know?  It’s really good news.  Like our kids not dying overseas and the stock market being at record highs and the American auto industry thriving.  We should enjoy these things, even as we try to persuade our Republican friends in Congress to allow votes on putting the unemployed back to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure . . . and raising the minimum wage . . . and enacting comprehensive immigration reform . . . and passing ENDA . . . and extending unemployment benefits until the economy improves . . . and requiring background checks before nut jobs can buy assault weapons — all things that the voters, by wide majorities, want.  Wouldn’t that be a good idea?

On a lighter note . . .

PUBLIC EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA

You will almost surely be amused. (Thanks, Alan!)

CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT AT UNITED AIRLINES

Apparently, the above is real.  [OOPS.  NO IT’S NOT.]  I’m a lot less certain the same is true of this anecdote — but who cares?  It has the same refreshing take-no-prisoners quality. (Thanks, Michael!)

During the final days at Denver’s old Stapleton airport, a crowded United flight was canceled.  The single agent was rebooking a long line of very inconvenienced and frustrated travelers.

Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk in front of all the others. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, “I HAVE to be on this flight and it has to be FIRST CLASS.”

The agent replied, “I’m sorry sir.  I’ll be happy to try to help you, but I’ve got to help these folks first, and I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.”

The passenger was unimpressed.  He asked loudly, so that all the passengers behind him could hear, “Do you have any idea who I am?”

Without hesitating, the gate agent smiled warmly and grabbed her public address microphone. “May I have your attention please?” she began, her voice bellowing throughout the entire terminal. “We seem to have a passenger here at the gate WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come forward to the gate.”

With the folks behind him in line now laughing hysterically, the man glared at the United agent, gritted his teeth, and spat out the words, “F*** you.”

Without flinching in the least, the agent smiled politely and said, “I’m terribly sorry, sir, but I’m afraid that you’ll have to stand in line for that, too.”

The man retreated as the people in the terminal applauded loudly and cheered. Although the flight was canceled and people were late, they were no longer angry at United.

Have a great weekend.

Paul Krugman nails it (as usual), here:

Four years ago Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, abruptly canceled America’s biggest and arguably most important infrastructure project, a desperately needed new rail tunnel under the Hudson River. Count me among those who blame his presidential ambitions, and believe that he was trying to curry favor with the government- and public-transit-hating Republican base.

Even as one tunnel was being canceled, however, another was nearing completion, as Spread Networks finished boring its way through the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. Spread’s tunnel was not, however, intended to carry passengers, or even freight; it was for a fiber-optic cable that would shave three milliseconds — three-thousandths of a second — off communication time between the futures markets of Chicago and the stock markets of New York. And the fact that this tunnel was built while the rail tunnel wasn’t tells you a lot about what’s wrong with America today. . . .

An important column worth reading in full.

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John Connors: “I loved the video of the Big L.C. and the big payday he got at the auction. I just hope someone told him to put off buying a house and to invest in a well diversified portfolio of [equally- or fundamentally-weighted] equity index funds along with an appropriate allocation of US government bonds.  I’d hate to see him end up like some lottery winners have down the road.”

☞ I hope so, too.  Though with $1 million or so (after the auction house share and taxes), it would not be crazy to buy a $150,000 house.

WHEN WILL HUMANS COOPERATE AS BEAUTIFULLY AS STARLINGS?

Watch this.  (Thanks, Mel!)  Four minutes.

And read this for at least a sense of how they do it.

(Or this if, not satisfied by a murmuration of starlings, you seek a hover of trout, a knot of toads, a rafter of turkeys or — the perennial favorite — an exaltation of larks.)

It was engaged in this research on your behalf that I learned today, after a mere 43 years of misunderstanding, what midges are.  I had first encountered them reading Bernard Baruch’s famous 1932 preface to Charles MacKay’s even more famous Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, continuously in print since 1841, to which I had the privilege of appending this foreword in a later edition.   (“If you read no more than the first 100 pages — on money mania,” I wrote of this 724-page book, the remainder of which is worth a quick skim at best — “it will be worth many times its purchase.”)

Bernard Baruch knew more than a little bit about investing.  He claimed Extraordinary Delusions had saved him millions.  And he asked in his preface:

Have you ever seen, in some wood, on a sunny quiet day, a cloud of flying midges – thousand of them – hovering, apparently motionless, in a sunbeam?…Yes?…Well, did you ever see the whole flight – each mite apparently preserving its distance from all others – suddenly move, say three feet, to one side or the other? Well, what made them do that? A breeze? I said a quiet day. But try to recall – did you ever see them move directly back again in the same unison? Well, what made them do that? Great human mass movements are slower of inception but much more effective.

Why does the stock market move as it does, when it does?  Are we a bit like midges?

And what are midges?

I had just assumed they were starlings — or at least birds — by another name, much as the little boy in The World According to Garp assumed the dangerous “undertoad” at the beach he was always being warned about was something reptilian.  You just get a thing in your head and it sticks there for 43 years.

And do you know what?  (Well, you probably did know, but I didn’t.)  Midges aren’t birds.  They’re tiny gnats, basically.  (Which collectively are called a cloud, but I think should be called an annoyance.  A pandemonium of parrots, a descent of woodpeckers, an annoyance of gnats.  Or of telemarketers.)