Shouldn’t We Pile On A LITTLE? January 29, 2016January 28, 2016 So much was made of the hit job on Planned Parenthood . . . and so much is being done to restrict access to reproductive health care . . . should the story of the Planned Parenthood case be simply a quick, “Never mind” and then dropped? (A Republican-impaneled Texas grand jury not only failed to indict Planned Parenthood they indicted the accusers instead.) Should it not stretch over more than a single news cycle? In the interest of emphasizing the event . . . and perhaps piling on at least a little . . . here’s Trevor Noah’s take on it from Wednesday’s “The Daily Show.” (Afterward, he had an interview with Jerry Seinfeld, now 61 and loving it.) A couple of other things that have not proven true despite much insistence from certain quarters: Clinton’s first budget, that got not a single Republican vote, did not destroy the economy . . . “by far the vast majority” of the benefits from George W. Bush’s tax cuts did not go to those “at the bottom of the economic ladder” . . . invading Iraq was not the “last resort” to protect America . . . Barack Obama was not born in Kenya . . . Obamacare has not killed the economy (or deployed death panels or cost Ted Cruz his health insurance) . . . and . . . . . . drum roll please . . . . . . Senator Inhofe’s snowball does not disprove global warming. Much as Republicans love to mock Al Gore — and employ the same “scientists” who whitewashed tobacco to whitewash carbon emissions — it turns out that 2015 was the warmest year in 136 years of record-keeping. And by a record margin. And that 15 of the 16 warmest years have occurred since 2000 (with the 16th being 1998). “Moderate” Republicans like Chris Christie are emphatically unconcerned (here, at 38:51).
Bedside Reading: My New Order January 28, 2016December 18, 2016 Three days left to sign up for 2016 coverage! Tell your uber driver and anyone else: HealthCare.gov So. As described Monday, the Donald and his fellow Republicans insist things are awful.* This has left a significant chunk of the Fox electorate yearning for a strongman. That’s what people do when things are awful. When rapists and murderers are flooding across the border, the economy is collapsing, and everybody needs a gun to protect against ISIS.** And so today — while acknowledging he is fun to golf with (according to a mutual friend), terrific sex (according to Marla Maples), good at what he does (demonstrated long ago with Wolman Rink), and quite often funny (even I laughed out loud when, asked in that first debate what Secret Service code name he’d want, Donald chose “Humble”) — can we explore the strongman meme just a little? Trump is no Mussolini or Putin. But he does seem to feel a certain affinity with Putin. And Mussolini, like Trump, was a showman (and narcissist, frequently stripping to the waste, like Putin). He wanted to “make Italy great again” and wiped out half the population of Libya. Or so I learned on the Evolution of Evil website.*** Trump loves and has tremendous respect for the Mexicans and the Chinese and the Muslims — and a great relationship with the blacks. He rejects David Duke’s endorsement. But he does retweet @WhiteGenocideTM. And he did keep a 1941 book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. Which is fine. I now have it by my bedside, too. Cost me $159 (offered now at $124). I wanted to see what it was. And, when you think about it: what an interesting thing for a student of marketing and publicity and persuasion to read. Hats off to the Donald for intellectual curiosity. From the 1941 introduction to My New Order by an American correspondent: [Hitler’s oratory] stirs hatred and feeds self-vindication, and whether on paper it bears inspection for consistency, logic or soundness is immaterial. From the 1941 foreword by a French journalist: To use constantly and untiringly the same arguments, and to pound into the heads of his listeners the same formulas, is part of Hitler’s oratorical technique. . . . [He] is past master at throwing up verbal smoke screens . . . He knows equally well the effectiveness of massive oratorical assaults that shake the nerves of his victims or opponents . . . he knows how to give pledges that will be broken later . . . he uses insults and lies in the same manner as his generals use Stuka planes and tanks to break through the respectable but often weak front of his adversaries. . . . His crudity frequently borders on downright vulgarity. I presume the Donald read those same words and, like everyone else, finds Hitler to have been unspeakably evil. Trump may be a bully and a narcissist . . . and perhaps an egomaniac . . . but he is surely not the Apotheosis of Evil. Basically, I think, he’s just having fun. I like Stephen Colbert’s theory — that the Donald doesn’t actually want to be president (that’s hard! look what it does to your hair after eight years!) . . . and now realizes that, OMG, it could happen . . . so seeks ever more outrageous ways to try to disqualify himself, toying even with the idea of “standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shooting someone.” But no, he exults (or secretly laments, as Colbert would have it): even random street-shootings wouldn’t lessen his lead among Republicans. So enough of all that. Trump is not evil. Dreadful, perhaps; unfit to be president, for sure; but not evil. Still, having dipped my toe into the strongman thing . . . and learning now that the Koch brothers’ fortune comes in part from the oil refineries their dad built for Stalin and Hitler**** . . . I was fascinated. And found myself clicking from one three-minute Evolution of Evil video to the next. Like the one on Haiti’s Papa Doc Duvalier. Or, especially, the one on Hitler, which tells a jaw-dropping story I had never heard. Did you know that Hitler, then a messenger in World War I, was temporarily blinded by mustard gas? But that in his case, his sight failed to return in a few hours as it should have? And that a psychiatrist ultimately cured him by persuading him he had been endowed with prodigious powers for the purpose of making Germany great again? Could this story be true? Absent time travel and a workable scheme to assassinate or otherwise redirect the temporarily blinded young soldier, it doesn’t much matter I guess. But it didn’t take much Googling to come up with this corroboratory account of Dr. Edmund Forster, “The Man Who Invented Hitler: The Making of the Fuhrer.” *Things are pretty awful for the working poor and the middle class, but that’s in significant part because those same Republicans have blocked cost-of-living adjustments to the minimum wage; blocked refinancing of federal student loan debt at today’s low rates; refused Medicaid expansion; blocked the Senate-passed comprehensive immigration reform; and blocked the American Jobs Act that would have created millions of good jobs revitalizing our crumbling infrastructure. **Unfortunately, a gun won’t protect you if there’s a nuclear terrorist incident, or some other awful frightening thing — real threats that keep the government awake nights. And the chances of some horrible thing like San Bernadino happening to you — where a gun might help — are like the chances of getting hit by lightning . . . yet we don’t carry lightning rods around. ***Sponsored, jarringly, I thought, when I was watching it, by a series of amusing GEICO ads. ****Which does not suggest he had — let alone that his sons have — undemocratic leanings. But it does add a bit of color to the Koch story; and perhaps explains a little better how they have so much more money than you or I.
One World Observatory January 26, 2016 But first, even though you’ve surely already seen it: A Texas grand jury convened by a Republican district attorney at the urging of the Republican lieutenant governor cleared Planned Parenthood . . . but indicted the folks who made the video that led to five Republican-led Congressional investigations. (Still, with the ninth Benghazi investigation underway and a 63rd vote scheduled to repeal the job-killing* Obamacare . . . and with climate science roundly denied . . . at least we know Congressional Republicans are hard at work moving America forward.) And now . . . Take the tour — and I dare you then not to buy tickets. Who could resist? See you there. (Thanks, Mel.) *There been no month since Obamacare passed that we’ve not had job growth — with more net private-sector jobs added in the most recently reported 12 weeks than in the last 12 years of Republican rule.
It Won’t Be Trump Part IV (V? VI?) January 25, 2016January 25, 2016 Gail Collins had a great column about the Republican field last week, worth reading in full, from which I draw just this: Under normal conditions, if a party was confronted with a candidate who had never held any public office, whose political activism consisted mainly of trying to prove Barack Obama was born in Africa, and whose platform consisted of whatever stuff was getting good crowd response at the last rally, everybody would race to get behind the alternative. So if Trump does win this thing, he’ll owe it all to the terribleness of Ted Cruz. . . . Everyone I know agrees Cruz would be even worse. And the two people I know who know Donald (“he was sitting exactly where you are now two weeks ago,” one told me, amused, as he faced me on his office couch; “we play golf pretty often,” the other told me) agree he’s basically a charming guy and fun to be with. (Though “if he or Cruz wins,” the golfer told me, “I am moving to Canada.”) A lot of people ascribe the Donald’s lead in the polls to his celebrity status and liken the whole circus to “reality TV.” But the Trump Show is not “reality TV,” I think, so much as professional wrestling. Either way, that the dignity of the Presidency should be so debased — and the gravity of this moment in history so trivialized — is someplace between dismaying and frightening. A presidential candidate publicly mocking a disabled newspaper reporter? Really? So long as Trump loses — badly — it will be just one more colorful part of our history. “Those crazy Americans,” and all that. (You likely saw the Brits debating a ban on his entry into the UK.) But it’s not entirely harmless, this entertainment. It’s likely already stoked radical Islamic flames — what ISIS recruiter would fail to link to the Donald? And he’s stoked dissatisfaction here at home. Ever since Ronald Reagan told us government was the problem, that dissatisfaction has only built. Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare! people would ultimately cry, after decades of being “informed” by talk radio and Fox News and Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. Can you blame them for gravitating toward Trump? “By any standard, Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country!” says the Senate Majority leader. “Things are awful!” all 19 Republican presidential candidates tell us over and over and over and over. Gas is $4.50 a gallon! (Well, $2, but still.) We’re needlessly hamstringing our oil production! (Well, we’ve become the world’s #1 energy producer, surpassing Saudi Arabia. But still.) “Drill baby, drill,” advises Trump campaign partner Sarah Palin (“the best decision I ever made,” John McCain years later called her selection to lead the world should he become incapacitated) . . . even as the Republican “science committee” chairmen deny climate science. (“The Greatest Hoax,” one titles his book.) Unemployment is off the charts! (Seventy consecutive months of job growth with more added in the most recently reported 12 weeks than in the last 12 years of Republican rule — but still.) The deficit is out of control! (Down by two-thirds, with the debt finally again growing slower than the economy as a whole — but still.) Everyone is dying from Ebola (zero fatal cases contracted on American soil). We should have let Detroit go bankrupt (it’s booming). And on and on. Things are so bad that the electorate — or at least a good chunk of the Fox electorate — yearns for a strongman who can make America great again. Who can get the boot of Mexico and China off our necks. Yet it’s not Mexico and China who’ve shifted wealth from our working poor and struggling middle class to the top tenth of one percent — to the billionaire class. It’s the Republicans. Like all their candidates for the White House, Donald Trump would hold down the minimum wage — squeezing the working poor ever tighter as prices rise — yet eliminate the estate tax on billionheirs. Hold that strongman thought.
More Good News January 22, 2016January 22, 2016 Monday we took 13 minutes to celebrate not just the end of the Iran War but our not having had to fight it in the first place. That saved us a couple of trillion dollars. Tuesday we added quality years to our lives. Wednesday we explored the big win-for-America that is the TransPacific Partnership. And yesterday, well, who doesn’t like to dance? And so here we are, Friday, with the market actually up a bit yesterday, and two upbeat items to end the week. (I’ll try to be less cheerful next week but it’s hard. We have hot water! As much as we want!! Anytime we want it!!! Think how amazing that would have been to the first few thousand generations of humans who struggled and suffered and shivered to get us to this point.) Upbeat Item #1 In the What Have Your Ex-Presidents And Ex-Vice Presidents Done Lately Department, I give you Jimmy Carter, who among much else since leaving office has all but eradicated a horrible human agony: guinea worm. Down from millions of cases in 1986 to only 22 in 2015. “The Carter Center: Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope.” Upbeat Item #2 You know how gerrymandering subverts the will of the people? and discourages moderation and compromise? Well, a citizen named Ellen Freidin decided to do something about it in Florida, one of the worst examples — a state that’s long leaned slightly Democratic yet has had an overwhelmingly Republican state legislature and Congressional delegation. She organized and led a referendum — which in Florida requires not just a majority but 60% to pass — and she won! And then fought five years of Republican efforts to block implementation of that referendum . . . efforts which essentially ended with this headline yesterday: Senate Won’t Appeal Redistricting Ruling. As Ellen reported to her donors: We now have Senate and Congressional maps that give Floridians the opportunity to elect Senators and Congressional Representatives that reflect the political choices of voters – not legislators. Because of your contributions, Florida is way ahead of the vast majority of states. We have done something about this pernicious problem of gerrymandering. We have changed Florida in a monumental way. See? We can make positive change. We can eradicate disease. We can become energy independent. We can prevent Iran from going nuclear without repeating the mistakes of Iraq. We can unite the world to combat climate change. We can level the field for competing in Asia. We can avert the global depression we teetered on; restore our housing and auto industries to health; cut the deficit by two-thirds (and get our Debt shrinking, once again, relative to the economy as a whole); enjoy 70 consecutive months of private-sector job growth (more in the last 12 weeks under Obama than in the last 12 years under Republicans). We can raise the high school graduation rate to record levels. We can allow our LGBT sons and daughters to serve openly and marry the ones they love. We can tax wealthy investors — albeit less than Ronald Reagan did — in order to subsidize health insurance for millions of low-income workers and prevent anyone (even you) from ever being denied coverage for a pre-existing condition. The market has sucked of late and may suck some more. But there’s still lots to cheer about — and will be lots more if we don’t buy the line that “everything’s awful and we just need to build a wall, stop taxing billionheirs, ignore climate change, and carpet bomb the Middle East for it all to be good again.” Have a great weekend!
Dancin’ Round The World January 21, 2016January 20, 2016 Tom Stolze: “The world ain’t all gloom and doom — this four and a half minutes has gotta be a post for you.” ☞ In a week dedicated to the upbeat, who can say no to that? Meanwhile, back on the campaign trail . . . Headline from the Borowitz Report: Palin Endorsement Widens Trump’s Lead Among Idiots Putin likes him, Palin likes him, these peeps like him. Let’s put the future of humanity in his hands. Three years ago today, in his Second Inaugural Address, Barack Obama said a lot of really important things (obviously), but two snippets I particularly like: The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great. and Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Who could have imagined?
A Great Deal January 20, 2016January 19, 2016 Continuing this week’s upbeat theme . . . Monday: a 13-minute video wherein we can feel really good that our leaders (despite being “stupid, stupid”) seem to have rid Iran of its nuclear weapons capability at zero cost to the US taxpayer and zero loss of life and without radicalizing millions of people whose children we didn’t carpet-bomb and whose country we didn’t occupy for 13 years . . . Tuesday: adding quality years to your life or the life of a parent or grandparent (why is it always about you?) . . . . . . today, I give you yet more reason to feel pleased: Your stupid, stupid leaders have negotiated a deal that removes 18,000 taxes on US-made goods and that in several other important ways as well puts our country — its businesses, workers, and shareholders — on a stronger footing in the global marketplace. This is a big, big deal and I urge you to watch Charlie Rose ask Michael Froman about it. Interestingly, the Republicans have this one right (as do many Democrats not running for office). How could Bernie and Hillary and so many others have it wrong? I addressed that here.
Beans, Beets, and Berries January 19, 2016January 18, 2016 Les Rosenbaum: “I just put your forthcoming book into my Amazon basket for my daughter. I’ll buy the Kindle version for myself. Now, I HIGHLY recommend a book to you: How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease.” ☞ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I bought it; I’ve read it; I’m retitling it — split infinitive be damned — How to NOT Die. And re-subtitling it: Or At Least Extend Your Life and Improve Its Quality. I have no credentials whatever to make these claims, nor to evaluate the book’s 132 pages of footnotes and the studies they point to. And I find it hard to believe that watermelons are a berry. But in the same way you just know Twinkies and Pringles can’t be as good for you as a fresh peach, I think you will just know this book makes sense . . . so nicely written and easily organized that you may actually change your diet somewhat — out of enthusiasm, not guilt or obligation — and urge it on others as Les has urged it on me and I now urge it on you.
This Will Be A Terrific Week . . . January 18, 2016January 18, 2016 . . . starting today, with the stock market: It will have one of its best days of the year. How it will do when it reopens after observing MLK’s birthday is less clear. Certainly, it could have further to fall after running up past Dow 18,000 last year from a March 2009 low of 6,500. It’s not unusual after a long run of complacency to encounter a sharp pullback. So I’d argue that this may not be anything more than that. After all, one key reason for the current bloodbath — and if you own energy-related stocks, it’s been nothing short of a bloodbath — is the price of oil. But there was a time when the broader market might have looked on low energy prices as a good thing. Not good for the Saudis or Kuwaitis or Russians or Venezuelans or Iranians or Iraqis, certainly. Or for the oil companies who’ve restored America’s place as the world’s largest producer. But for anyone who drives a car? Or who makes or buys or sells anything that’s shipped? I.e., any “goods” at all? For them — which is to say for all of us — each penny drop in the price of gas puts roughly $1 billion back into our pockets that we can spend on other stuff . . . the purveyors of which may thus make more profits (and employ more people who, newly employed, may themselves buy more stuff). The oil collapse, in short, is not like the housing collapse. And may be reason for the brave contrarians to start buying oil stocks and their brethren. This time could be different, but ordinarily, this is how cycles work. When oil is over $100/barrel, no one imagines it can ever again be under fifty. When oil is $29, people begin to think it may never again hit seventy-five. And maybe it won’t. Between conservation and efficiency on the one hand and ever-cheaper clean alternatives on the other, we may someday need oil for little more than to make Saran wrap (and about a zillion other things it’s used to make). On the other hand, as noted here, American consumers are now reveling in cheap gas all over again and are likely to supply some of the demand that might one day once again boost the price of oil. Aaaaaaanyway . . . despair does little good, even in falling markets, and my point is: I would like to dedicate this week to making you feel better. So one day this week I will add health and length to your life. And another day this week I will make you feel good about an important new macro-economic development we’re about to nail down. But today, I give you simply these 13 minutes in which are summarized the way our “stupid, stupid leaders” made a deal that ends all Iranian paths to producing nuclear weapons . . . without the loss of a single life . . . the bombing of a single carpet . . . or the expenditure of a single taxpayer dollar. (Also: the return of Americans held prisoner. And even: the possibility, over time, of an ever more cooperative Iran relationship.) I know the Republicans think all this is awful. And that our economy — with a booming auto market, healthy housing market, and more net new private sector jobs created in the most recently reported on the last 12 weeks than in the last Republican 12 years — is just awful. Everything is just awful because Mexico’s leaders and China’s leaders are so much smarter than ours and we tax billionaires and billionheirs too heavily. But actually, there’s lots to feel good about — and there would be lots more if the Republican Congress hadn’t blocked hiking the minimum wage and blocked putting people to work revitalizing our infrastructure. The economic record of the last 7 years is really good. And take those afore-touted 13 minutes to see how we avoided what might have been 13 years of war with Iran. It wasn’t the approach Bush and Cheney took in Iraq; and no one is smarter than Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. But still.
The Only Investment Guide You’ll EVER Need. EVER! January 15, 2016January 15, 2016 Today is the deadline to send in your fourth quarterly estimated tax payment (if money is due). Here are the forms and instructions. You don’t have to file it if you file your complete return by January 31. With the long weekend ahead, find time to watch the President’s final State of the Union? How proud Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been, I think, of his accomplishments. But the main thing is: please don’t buy my book, inasmuch as . . . even though it’s the only one you’ll EVER need . . . there’s a new edition on the way. Pre-order it at Barnes & Noble here or Amazon here. Multiple copies to satisfy all your graduation-gift giving needs. Because you know what they say: “Give a child some money for graduation and you feed her bad habits for a day. Teach a child about money, and you put her on the path to financial health and happiness for a lifetime.”