Year: 2015

TED OR NORTH KOREA

I’ll be out at TED next week, listening to interesting people.  (After a few weeks or months, most of those talks wind up on the Internet, along with the 1900+ you can already watch for free here (with tools to sort by topic, type and popularity, among other things).  In case I fail to post one or more days next week, just watch a few dozen TED talks.

But as you do, consider this clever quiz from Mother Jones, wherein you are presented a series of short quotes and asked whether they came from a TED talk or from North Korean propoaganda.

It’s a lot hard than you might think.

IN CASE YOU FORGET WHERE YOU CAME FROM

Meanwhile, say you’re struck by lightning or something and — thankfully — there’s no damage at all.  No blood, no pain; maybe you have to send your clothes out to the cleaner.  The only thing is: you can’t for the life of you remember who you are.  (Haven’t we seen this movie?)

By asking you a few questions about how various words sound to you, this quiz will at least tell you where you’re from.  That’s a start.  (Try it!)

Now, if you could only remember your name.  And your PIN.

(Thanks, Mel!)

#

Monday (I Hope): A Few Thoughts on Hillary’s Emails and the 46 Senators’ Letter to the Ayatollah

“Mad Men” starts again April 5 here on AMC — the final season.

And now yet another reason to live: “Better Call Saul,” the lawyer from “Breaking Bad,” here on AMC.  If you’ve missed the first four, treat yourself.  So good.

And a completely zany “Mary Tyler Moore for the Twenty-First Century” is available for binging here on Netflix — “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”  You think Mary had spunk?  Wait til you meet Kimmy.*  Being a creature of Tina Fey, with no small assist from Jane Krakowski, it is just ridiculously funny most of the time.

And there are lots more, but no time.  I still have episodes of “The Roosevelts” in queue!

The problem with kids these days, I keep telling people: they don’t watch enough television.

But if, like them, you don’t either . . . if you insist on books (thank you) . . . then read (or listen to) Ghettoside.  Gripping.  Wrenching.  Real people most of us would otherwise never meet.

*Lou Grant, famously: “Mary: You’ve got spunk.”  Long pause, as Mary blushes and beams.  “I hate spunk.”

In case you missed this, a couple of years ago — as 99.99% of us did — here they are, in three minutes.  Could we please, please, please find some Republicans like these again?

π

Hey!  What are you doing this coming Saturday, March 14 at 9:26am?  Wait 54 seconds to experience a once-a-century moment.  It’s pi!  Namely, 3/14/15 at 9:26:54 . . . 3.141592654.  Bake something!

YESTERDAY’S PUZZLE

I would say “spoiler alert,” but if your spatial intelligence is as bad as mine, you won’t understand the explanations, either.

Mark:  “Yesterday’s puzzle was easy to decipher.  Between 1:02 and 1:03 if you listen closely you hear hm drop a tile on the table from his hand.”

☞ Perhaps — but not according to George:

George Vivino-Hinze:  “You can see that he’s cooking the books, skimming off 1.7% for himself each time he moves the skewed blocks.  After the camera break, he lets you see his second set of books – I mean blocks – and the middle blocks no longer are perfect squares, having been replaced with inflated blocks from ‘under the table.’  If you had a straight-on view, you would see the middle blocks getting shorter, but like a professional con, he doesn’t let you see that.  And after he’s pocketed his 5%, another camera break, and he shows you the first set of – uh – blocks and confidently counts the deflated squares neatly fitting back into their folder, keeping the stockholders from having any suspicion.”

☞ Perhaps — but not according to Bruce:

Bruce:  “Here’s a video that shows how it’s done.”

☞ I didn’t get that one either.  But I can tell you how they saw people in half.

EVEN MORMONS SOMETIMES LIE

My two Mormon friends of longest standing are spectacularly decent guys.  A little nuts in some of their views, if you ask me, and needlessly shy of caffeine; but first-class folks.  Which is why this account of Church duplicity — found guilty on 13 counts of election fraud (written by the only openly gay candidate for President that I can recall, a Republican, no less) — struck me.

ENERGY PARTNERSHIPS

Doug Gary:  “I’m writing to see if you are still holding this energy partnerships you mentioned sometime back. I have them in my IRA and they haven’t done great — but time will always be the ultimate, judge, right? I hold CMLP, MWE, OKS, PAA, RGP and TOO. Thoughts?”

☞  They’ve gotten hammered, but I hope that makes them an even better buy.  In the meantime, I suffer along with you, even as we’re collecting very nice distruibutions.  (Since you have them in your IRA, your custodian may be siphoning off some of the distributions to the IRS, as explained here.  It’s an IRS interpretaion that’s never made the slightest sense to me; but the law’s the law.)

How, oh how does he do this?  Seriously?

BEANIES

I don’t hold babies.  I’m afraid they might poop, afraid I might drop them, see no way to reason with them, think they all look like Winston Churchill.  I’d make a horrible dad.  (Once they’re two, let alone four or five, I make a really good uncle.)

I have also never held a Beanie Baby.  Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever been in the same room with one.

So I might not have been the most likely candidate to read The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, published this week, had it not been written by my pal Zac Bissonnette.

But what a story it turns out to be!

Don’t settle for my blurb (best business bio of the millennium) — here are a couple of others:

“Equally heartwarming and heartbreaking, this accessible work will captivate.”
—Library Journal, Starred review

“The spectacular story of the strangest speculative bubble there ever was and the man behind it.  A must-read for anyone looking to understand how manias start and markets go insane.”
—LIAQUAT AHAMED, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lords of Finance

Move over, Charles MacKay.

BARNEY

Also just out is Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage.  I love that the two principal blurbs come from George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary — the former head of Goldman Sachs — and Elizabeth Warren, who, shall we say, comes at Wall Street from a different point of view.

“Barney Frank will be remembered as one of the hardest-working, quickest-thinking, most effective — and most quotable — congressmen in our nation’s history. Frank tells his story with characteristic candor, from coming out of the closet and working for LGBT rights to fighting for sensible financial reforms. Frank’s belief that government can improve people’s lives has given passion and energy to every part of his remarkable career in public service.” — Senator Elizabeth Warren

“This is authentic Barney — a compelling narrative because it mixes the personal with the professional and with his one-of-a-kind sense of humor. It’s also an important piece of history by a skilled legislator who has been able to get things done in Washington, D.C., that have made a real difference in all of our lives. I was privileged to work with him.” — Hank Paulson, former Secretary of the Treasury

Full disclosure: The photo of Barney and the doe on Fire Island?  (Captioned: “Contrary to some people’s expectations, I did not yell at it, and it did not run away from me.”)  It was taken in Charles’ and my back yard.

CASEY & BRUTUS

Floating around the internet, in case you haven’t already seen it.  (Thanks, Mel!)

A Man Found Two Bear Cubs Beside Their Dead Mother. Words Can’t Describe What Followed.

A naturalist named Casey Anderson stumbled across two grizzly bear cubs nestled beside their dead mother in the wild mountains of Alaska. Casey couldn’t just leave these little guys to die in the wilderness, so he made the brave decision to take them with him. He trains animals for a living, so he knew he would be able to give these cubs a real shot. That simple decision, borne out of grief, turned into one of the most unique and adorable rehabilitation stories we have ever laid eyes on.

Warning: you’ll want to adopt a bear after this. You probably shouldn’t.

Behold the photos.  (And if you’re having fun, skip to the last minute or so of the video, when they really start having fun.)  I like that Brutus (the 800-pound grizzly) was best man at Casey’s wedding.

HOW TO REACH JARED

My pal Jesse Kornbluth reviewed Merchants of Doubt, upon which the documentary I linked to yesterday is based:

This book, written with science journalist Erik Conway, is about the absence of reasoned action — and not just when the issue is global warming. The real shocker of this book is that it takes us, in just 274 brisk pages, through seven scientific issues that called for decisive government regulation and didn’t get it, sometimes for decades, because a few scientists sprinkled doubt-dust in the offices of regulators, politicians and journalists. Suddenly the issue had two sides. Better not to do anything until we know more.

“How do you talk to these people?” he wrote in response to yesterday’s post about Jared.  “Good luck.”

Jim Batterson: “I have known people with whom I share very few views.  A good starting point is the challenge: Let’s see if we can find some issue that we can agree on.  My libertarian friends and I can agree on pro-choice issues, or LGBT rights, or keeping the church out of the government.   Some of my fundamentalist friends share my views on gun control or supporting prison reform.  It’s a start.  Where do your political views overlap with [Jared’s]? There  must be something.”

☞ Yes.  I think that’s an excellent approach.

Manny Sodbinow:  “You asked how we can reach Jared and people like him.  I’m not sure we need to, because it is our experience that we cannot change their minds, even when the evidence solidly suggests they are wrong.  (In fact, the proof that Andrew Wakefield was a fraud made a large segment of the anti-vaccination crowd even more convinced that he was right.) Instead, we should be strengthening the resolve of those who believe as we do, and those who are truly on the fence about various matters.  We need to ensure that their voices are heard more loudly and more consistently, so that we drown out the shouts and echoes of the wrong-headed.  And, of course, we should do this politely.”

☞ Amen.  But I can’t help myself.  I still want to try.  Occasionally, people come around.  Look at George Wallace, who recanted on segregation.  Look at Davd Brock (Blinded By The Right).  Look at this guy (How a Right Wing, Fundamentalist, Conservative Pastor Became a Leftist, Liberal Heathen).  Or this guy (How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative).  Or at the guy who organized a national bus tour against same-sex marriage – who actually drove the bus.  On his tour, he wound up actually meeting gays who were following in protest. Once he came to see them as nice people, with the same kinds of hopes and fears as anyone else, he decided they should have the same rights and respect.

Have a great weekend!  I just may take Monday off.  (National Crabmeat Day.)

Jim B: “When Hannity refers to the president as Barrack Hussein Obama his emphasis on the Hussein is clearly a dig at his Muslim middle name, although he can defend his choice by saying that it is just a fact that it is his middle name.  We cherry-pick our facts and this choice is clearly gratuitous.  Likewise when you highlight a poster’s pitiful education, as you did yesterday — Facebook identifies him as having “studied at Central New Mexico Community College” — you are cherry-picking your facts and committing an ad-hominem error.  Admittedly his point is very, very poorly argued, but you can do better than to attack his education as your refutation.  Because you are better than Hannity.”

☞ I did hesitate before including that.  Maybe I made the wrong call.  But after reading his comment on Facebook, I was curious to see who Jared was and so clicked his name.  The only thing listed was what I quoted.  So technically, I wasn’t cherry-picking; I was taking the whole bowl.  And I didn’t intend “to attack his education as [my] refutation.”  Basically — and this was my point — I had no refutation.  How do you argue with people who simply dismiss anything that their thought leaders — Rush Limbaugh, say, or James Inhofe — have not approved?

(James Inhofe — selected by the Republicans to chair the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee — who recently brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to mock the scientific consensus on climate change.)

It’s no small question.  If America — or humanity generally — can’t act rationally in its own long-term interest, what do we have to look forward to?

I often think back to 1974, after the second OPEC oil shock, and the oppoortunity I had to interview then Treasury Secretary Bill Simon.   Should we not begin adding a dime a gallon to the gasoline tax each year — using all those billions to lower the income tax — thus discouraging the thing we wanted to discourage (oil imports) and encouraging the things we wanted to encourage: work, saving, and fuel efficiency?

Gas would have risen to the same $5 it hit recently, but the cost of driving a mile would have stayed modest as fuel efficiency soared; and all those trillions of dollars over the years would have stayed in American coffers rather than flowing to our friends abroad.

The Secretary — who was considered a bit of a terror (and who certainly scared me) — gave a long glower, as if trying to figure out how to deal with such a moronic question — and said, “Yes, of course we should!  Everybody knows that.  But we could never do it politically.”

Just one enormous example of a simple, obvious policy change that would have made us far more prosperous today, and very likely safer, with a much stronger balance sheet.

Forty years from now, will we be saying the same of our failure to address climate change?  Or our failure to shift modestly from private consumption (bigger homes, bigger yachts) to public consumption (infrastructure revitalization)?

MERCHANTS OF DOUBT

One reason we often fail to make rational policy decisions is that talented people are well paid to mislead the public.

To wit, from eSkeptic:

. . .  A new documentary film opens this weekend titled Merchants of Doubt, about the nature of pseudo-skepticism and climate denial and the link to the tobacco industry, featuring Skeptic publisher Michael Shermer and magician and skeptic Jamy Ian Swiss, among others. In addition to the many climate deniers and their industrial lobbyists featured and interviewed in the film, Jamy Ian Swiss plays a key role in demonstrating, through card magic, how easy it is to be deceived and how, through his principle “once revealed, never concealed,” the exposure of the tricks employed by industrial lobbyists to deny science means that they cannot use them again (just like knowing the secret behind a magic trick makes it hard to be fooled again). Forewarned is forearmed. Michael Shermer is featured as a one-time climate skeptic, who flipped his position (famously in the pages of Scientific American) after reading the primary scientific literature on the subject. . . .

We need to find ways to reach our friends like Jared.  I’d be the first to admit that insulting his educational credentials is no way to do it.  What is?

All suggestions welcome.

But first . . .

WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST

Seventy percent of the folks who voted to reelect George W. Bush believed Iraq was complicit in the 9/11 attack — even though it was not.  Some large percentage believed that “by far the vast majority” of Bush’s proposed tax cuts would go to “people at the bottom of the ladder” — a multi-trillion-dollar lie — yet disbelieved Al Gore’s warning about climate change, even though virutally the entire scientific community shared his concern.  And some percentage believe today that — in the words of Mitch McConnell — “by any standard, Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country” even though, by almost any standard — the strength of the dollar, the deficit, the housing market, gas prices, the stock market, unemployment, the availability of affordable health insurance, the number of troops dying each month — things have improved dramatically on his watch.

And so I suppose I should not be surprised that Monday’s post — “Worst Forecasters Ever” — was simply dismissed by some readers.  Like Jared Day, whose Facebook page identifies him as having “studied at Central New Mexico Community College,” who writes:  “What a worthless article.  Just more ignorance and blind belief in made up numbers, sad.”

That’s it.  End of analysis.  How can you argue with that?

EATING LIKE AN APHID

I was already a fan of beets and radishes but now find you can also eat the leaves!  Seriously!  I just ate a few radish leaves.  No need to cook or prepare them in any way: just ate ’em.  Yum.  (Well, yum-ish.)  Which got me to wondering what other kinds of leaves are okay to eat.  Should we start drinking pine-needle tea?  One leaf to avoid, I’m guessing: hemlock.  But poinsettia?  Those poisonous Christmas plants?  A myth, apparently.  Eat up.  (Well, don’t; but at least you won’t die.)  And the poison flora that killed poor Chris McCandless when he trekked Into the Wild?  A myth as well, though a compelling mystery.  My point is: if you buy bunches of raw beets or radishes, don;t waste the leaves.

NEW HAMPSHIRE ZEROES

Ed Keeling:  “I picked up a copy of Money Angles at a charity white elephant table and like the zero coupon story of bonds maturing in the unimaginably distant future of 2014 when, you wrote, ‘I will be sixty-six (not a pretty thought): the New Hampshire State Housing Authority may or may not be solvent; and a box of Jujyfruits may cost $48.’  Well — what happened? Did you hold the bonds till maturity? Were they called? Are Jujyfruits $48 a box?  Don’t leave us in suspense.”

☞ JujyFruits are $12.80 for a pack of three; the bonds were noncallable, which was part of their exceptional allure; and I just spoke with the New Hampshire Deputy Treasurer:  Yes, the $200,000 in face-value “zero-coupon” bonds that I bought for $5,300 in 1984 had indeed faithfully paid zero interest every year until maturity, and then — more impressively — were redeemed at par.  You seriously think The Granite State would default on a bond issue?

That $200,000 par value didn’t go to me, however.  As inflation and thus the general level of interests declined (thank you, Fed Chair Paul Volcker, for saving the world), the value of tax-free municipal bonds that had initially been priced to yield 12% a year compounded to maturity soared.  I think I sold mine for around $36,000 two or three years later — leaving the remaining $164,000 on the table for someone willing to wait anohter 27 years, but happy nonetheless.

For the record:  I’ve never bought a box of JujyFruits.  I just think they’re funny.

PUERTO RICAN ZEROES

Ryan N:  “I was curious to get your updated thoughts on purchasing Puerto Rican municipal bonds. I toyed with the idea of picking some up back when you first mentioned it but never got around to it. Alas, here I am thinking about it again and was wondering if any developments since then have swayed your thought process in one direction or another as to whether it’s a still good idea? I appreciate any input.  Thanks in advance.”

☞  Well, in the first place, since I mentioned them September 10 (along with Home Depot), the bonds have gotten cheaper (and HD is up 30%).  Ordinarily, that would make them even more enticing.  But one very smart, very connected guy I know sees “no way out” for Puerto Rico and says that if it were he, he would consider selling — even the 8% “general obligation” bonds I bought at less than 90 cents on the dollar (now 83 cents), free of state, city, or federal income tax.

But I’m not selling, for three reasons.

The first (and only good one) is that I just don’t see Uncle Sam failing to find some way to prevent a complete default.  A moratorium on interest payments as it’s all being sorted out, perhaps; some kind of restructuring, perhaps.  But I don’t see the downside for bonds backed by the full faith and credit — and taxing authority — of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ever being worthless.  We’ll see.

The second is that I’m stubborn, don’t like being wrong, and don’t like taking losses.  That may be three reasons, not one, but all are dumb: a rational investor would not be swayed by any of that.

The third is that another supersmart guy I know came by to visit this summer when Apple was $99 a share and told me he was short (betting it would go down).  I was long (I owned it) and had been for quite some time.  I mocked his arguments — but quietly sold after he left, figuring I probably shouldn’t be greedy with my gain; and, after all, this guy is really really smart.  Apple closed at $129 last night, meaning I could have made a further 30% on my money in barely seven months had I not listened to him.

Of course, this has nothing to do with Puerto Rico — rationally speaking.  Just because one really smart guy proved wrong doesn’t mean all really smart guys will be wrong.  But there you go again expecting me to be rational.  For that, you need to buy the platinum subscription.

(I also own some Puerto Rico zero-coupon bonds, backed by sales-tax revenues, promising to pay $1,000 at maturity in 2054, when I’m 107, but costing just $74 each today.  Odd little investments like this keep me young.)

Let’s review:

Not a single Republican voted for Clinton’s first budget.

They forecast terrible job losses.

“Suicidal,” one called it.

(Read the quotes!)

Yet the economy boomed and 23 million jobs were created.

Same with Obama:  They hated his stimulus package — not a single Republican vote in the House, just three* in the Senate — hated his tax hikes on the best off — hated Obamacare — hated financial regulation — all forecast to kill jobs and strangle small business.

Yet we’ve had 59-straight months of private-sector job growth, added 12 million new jobs, tripled the stock market and cut the deficit by two-thirds.

And small business?  This Bloomberg chart is headlined:  Small Businesses Beat Big Counterparts in Jobs Gains: Drive Jobs Growth.

> So why would anyone listen to Republicans when it comes to the economy?

They are the Party of National Debt (Reagan/Bush quadrupled it in 12 years), the Party of Holding Down Wages (not least by freezing the minimum wage), the Party of Health Care Inflation (fighting Obama’s successful efforts to curb it), the Party of the Rich (and Growing Inequality) . . . and the Party of Terrible Predictions.  Reelect Obama, Gingrich told us, and we’d have $10 gasoline.  Reelect Obama, Romney told us, and we’d have four more years of chronic unemployment.  Reelect Obama, Limbaugh told us, and the economy would collapse.

(Elect him, Texas Governor George W. Bush had told an electorate in 2000 eager to believe, and “by far the vast majority” of his proposed tax cuts would go to people “at the bottom of the economic ladder” — a multi-trillion-dollar lie that nonetheless won him almost as many votes as Gore.)

Republican forecasters are so bad they can’t even predict the present!

. . . “By any standard,” Republican leader Mitch McConnell tells us, “President Obama has been a disaster for our country.”

Except that everything is dramatically better than it was when he took office.

. . . “Today our nation is on the road to decline,” Marco Rubio told CPAC last week.

Yet the dollar is exceptionally strong; our ongoing economic recovery, the envy of the world.

Ironically, the two ways Senator Rubio’s “road to decline” does comport with reality — our broken Congress and our crumbling infrastructure — are squarely his party’s fault.  Because his is the Party of No, a considerable faction of which believe in “no compromise” and who have no problem shutting down the government.**

Mitch McConnell’s first priority as Republican leader of the Senate was was not to help rescue a collapsing economy or end wars or fix health care but — in his own words — to make sure Obama would serve just one term.  To see him fail.  Even though that would mean missed opportunities and impeded progress for the American people.  (How else to hold him to one term?)

There’s no starker example of this — the Republican-broken Congress and the Republican-crumbling infrastructure — than the American Jobs Act, designed to jump-start our economy by revitalizing infrastructure.

As President Obama told a joint session of Congress in 2011 specifically convened to urge passage:

. . . We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union.  Founder of the Republican Party.  But in the middle of a civil war, he was also a leader who looked to the future — a Republican President who mobilized government to build the Transcontinental Railroad — launch the National Academy of Sciences, set up the first land grant colleges.  And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.

Ask yourselves — where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways, not to build our bridges, our dams, our airports?  What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges?  Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the G.I. Bill.  Where would we be if they hadn’t had that chance?

How many jobs would it have cost us if past Congresses decided not to support the basic research that led to the Internet and the computer chip?  What kind of country would this be if this chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do?  How many Americans would have suffered as a result?

No single individual built America on their own.  We built it together.  We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another.  And members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities.

Every proposal [in this bill that] I’ve laid out tonight is the kind that’s been supported by Democrats and Republicans in the past.  Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight will be paid for.  And every proposal is designed to meet the urgent needs of our people and our communities. . . .

Regardless of the arguments we’ve had in the past, regardless of the arguments we will have in the future, this plan is the right thing to do right now.  You should pass it.  And I intend to take that message to every corner of this country. And I ask — I ask every American who agrees to lift your voice:  Tell the people who are gathered here tonight that you want action now.  Tell Washington that doing nothing is not an option.  Remind us that if we act as one nation and one people, we have it within our power to meet this challenge. . . .

A wide majority of economists — and voters — and Congresspersons — wanted to pass the American Jobs Act. But the Republican Congress forbade a vote.  They’ve broken Congress; they’re letting our infrastructure crumble; and the Koch brothers have rounded up $889 million in hopes of taking the one remaining branch of government they do not yet control.

*Two of those three moderate Senators, now gone.