2016 . . . 2017 December 30, 2016December 29, 2016 The year just ending had more than a few bright spots. As a happy-gene guy, I loved this report from CNN.com. Here’s a to a better-than-expected 2017. I appreciate your readership.
Music for the Resistance December 29, 2016December 27, 2016 Gray Chang: “Why would someone pay $5.95 for one of your e-books when they can get the hardcover for $0.01 (plus $3.99 shipping)?” ☞ Ah, well. To save even that penny (and the $3.99 shipping), get them free through Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Lending Library. (Here and here.) My friend Ira offers this Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda. Having watched Republicans block much of President Obama’s agenda, the authors see lessons for thwarting the worst of Trump’s initiatives and appointments. Ira also offers this ingenious extension you can install in Chrome or Firefox that fact-checks Trump’s tweets. Even if you don’t tweet, you’ll find it of interest. If you have 30 seconds to support Senator Elizabeth Warren’s request to audit Trump’s finances, Ira has discovered that “the way to make sure your support counts is to email administrators Katherine Siggerud and Timothy Minnelli.” Something along these lines: Subject: Audit for President-Elect Trump’s financial concerns Dear Ms. Siggerud and Mr. Minnelli: I’m writing in support of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s request for an audit of our incoming President’s finances, to prohibit conflicts of interest that would prevent him from carrying out the responsibilities of the office without corrupt influence. His tax returns almost must be disclosed. Sincerely . . . And finally — thank you for all this, Ira! — he offers this protest music video featuring his friend Harry Belafonte. So good.
Pitchforks December 28, 2016December 27, 2016 Yesterday I linked to billionaire Nick Hanauer’s famous TED Talk wherein he explains why the rich are not the job creators. Today, his subsequent talk (or transcript). . . . I see pitchforks, as in angry mobs with pitchforks, because while people like us plutocrats are living beyond the dreams of avarice, the other 99 percent of our fellow citizens are falling farther and farther behind. . . . [T]he problem isn’t that we have some inequality. Some inequality is necessary for a high-functioning capitalist democracy. The problem is that inequality is at historic highs today and it’s getting worse every day. And if wealth, power, and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th-century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks. So I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened. There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising. The pitchforks will come for us if we do not address this. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when. And it will be terrible when they come for everyone, but particularly for us plutocrats. . . . At the rate we’re going, he notes, the top 1% of Americans — who earned 8% of all national income in 1980 and now earn 20% — will earn 30%. Leaving the bottom 50% of us — who earned 18% of the nation’s income in 1980 — to earn just 6%. As Donald Trump and the Republican Congress seek to eliminate the estate tax on billionheirs . . . and to slash taxes yet further on the wealthy (like himself) . . . while blocking hikes in the minimum wage and killing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau . . . they should listen to or read Nick’s full argument. It’s not just the threat of pitchforks; it’s that rising inequality is terrible for business as well. Read his argument. Share it with everyone on your list. Especially with the Republicans who represent you in Congress and your state legislature. (Or do they more faithfully represent the Koch brothers, and the other funders of the REDMAP project that put so many of them there?)
Invention Is The Mother Of Necessity December 27, 2016 Why there just might be enough jobs in the future, even with driverless trucks. A TED Talk by David Autor — or just read the transcript. . . . It’s foolish to say there’s nothing to worry about. Clearly we can get this wrong. If the US had not invested in its schools and in its skills a century ago with the high school movement, we would be a less prosperous, a less mobile and probably a lot less happy society. But it’s equally foolish to say that our fates are sealed. That’s not decided by the machines. It’s not even decided by the market. It’s decided by us and by our institutions. . . . One thing’s for sure (if you ask me): lowering taxes on the rich won’t finance the infrastructure revitalization we so badly need, that would increase productivity and create so many jobs. Nor finance the debt-free higher education that would prepare today’s kids for future jobs and reduce inequality. (Nor finance Trump’s proposed military buildup that would rob us all.*) Lowering tax rates on those best off is not the key to economic growth — George W. Bush proved that. Raising them — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama proved — does not kill economic growth. The rich are not the job creators, as Nick Hanauer’s fundamentally important six-minute TED talk explains. As Autor argues: “Clearly, we can get this wrong.” But we don’t have to. *”Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” — DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
A Christmas Message from the President and First Lady December 25, 2016 Here. Boy, will we ever miss them. Happy and Merry . . .
Joy To The World December 22, 2016 MERRY CHRISTMAS! Donald Trump flanked by Christmas trees: “When I started 18 months ago I told my first crowd that we’re going to come back here someday and we are going to say ‘Merry Christmas’ again. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.” Chris Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager: “You can say Merry Christmas again because Donald Trump is now the president. You can say it again. It’s OK to say. It’s not a pejorative word anymore.” For those who actually believe President Obama had some kind of war on Christmas — just as they doubt his place of birth and the science of climate change — please bathe in these must-watch, heartfelt Christmas wishes from the President of the United States. But I second the President Elect: Merry Christmas. HAPPY CHANUKAH! A Hamilton Chanukah at the White House. So good. Oy! Want more? Another, on stage. Oy! Oy! Oy! Wonder who got the biggest Christmas gift from this past election — at least so far? The answer is not “the workers at Carrier,” as you might expect; nor the Trumps themselves, though their fortunes seem to be rising fast. No, it’s Goldman Sachs, whose stock closed at $182 on Election Day and $240 Thursday — a $32 billion gift. Now, more than ever: Peace On Earth, Good Will To Man. And (says the aggressive atheist): God bless us . . . everyone. Click that link: an hour twenty-seven in black and white, as it was meant to be seen. (Colorized? Humbug!) I ask you: is there anything more wonderful than the spirit of Christmas?
Use One of These Credit Cards to Buy One of These eBooks? December 21, 2016 One of the things you would want to do, if you were a strongman, ala Vladimir Putin or so many others throughout history, is delegitimize and intimidate the press. Click here for a taste of that if you missed Rachel Maddow Tuesday night. And if you agree this is a danger to our democracy, perhaps subscribe to the New York Times and the Washington Post, among others, to help keep them strong. Could one of these credit cards be worth switching to, if you have good credit and never run a balance? I was pleased to see SMBC — first suggested here at $11 five years ago — touch $36 yesterday. (Thanks, Chris Brown!) It may go higher, of course, but especially in a tax-free account, this could be a good time to take your triple and park it on the sidelines while you look for something else. Not to go all . . . “money” . . . on you. But there was a time that was my main focus. If you enjoy reading about money, two of my books have just been posted as e-books: Getting By On $100,000 A Year (And Other Sad Tales) and Money Angles. Ancient history, of course, but what do you want for $5.95?
One More Reason To Eat Less Meat December 20, 2016 And less, just generally. Six minutes. No words. (It’s from My Science Academy. Which has videos like this, too — “crazy bike balancing.” Please tell me he’s tethered to a guy, out of frame, running alongside.) And, yes: Donald Trump will be our next president. The dignity, intellect, temperament, and thoughtfulness of President Obama — a rescued economy, rescued housing market, rescued Detroit now booming, tripled stock market, 80 consecutive months’ private-sector job growth, energy independence, rising household incomes (finally!), a deficit slashed by two-thirds with the Debt once again (finally!) shrinking relative to the economy as a whole, Bin Laden dead, ISIS on its heels, the American body count zero most weeks, a world brought together to combat climate change — to be succeeded by . . . what?
Kinky Boots December 19, 2016 What caught my eye about Ivanka Trump’s boots, in brown, grey, and black, suede or leather, size six, offered here, on Amazon, were the comments below. Gabriela: “BUYER BEWARE! These boots are some sort of port key or wrinkle in the space time continuum.. I put them on and I was transported back to Berlin in 1933.” AR wrote that both boots came for right feet – extremely right and alt-right – with care instructions in Russian though made in China. The one plus? “They look really well together with either a brown shirt or a white hood.” Etc. Disrespectful; but isn’t that what Crooked Donald Trump has led us to accept? Demeaning – and outright lying about – political adversaries in his new order? No, I think. Thoughtful people should not accept that. But satire is okay. Did you watch SNL Saturday night? Virtually every segment hit it out of the park. IS OUR DEMOCRACY IN PERIL? Well, duh. Thoughtfully articulated here. A MESSAGE FROM THE MAYOR OF SOUTH BEND But there is a way forward. This, from a rust-belt Afghanistan war veteran is well worth your time.
Kinky Boots December 19, 2016December 19, 2016 What caught my eye about Ivanka Trump’s boots, in brown, grey, and black, suede or leather, size six, offered here, on Amazon, were the comments below. Gabriela: “BUYER BEWARE! These boots are some sort of port key or wrinkle in the space time continuum.. I put them on and I was transported back to Berlin in 1933.” AR wrote that both boots came for right feet – extremely right and alt-right – with care instructions in Russian though made in China. The one plus? “They look really well together with either a brown shirt or a white hood.” Etc. Disrespectful; but isn’t that what Crooked Donald Trump has led us to accept? Demeaning – and outright lying about – political adversaries in his new order? No, I think. Thoughtful people should not accept that. But satire is okay. Did you watch SNL Saturday night? Virtually every segment hit it out of the park. IS OUR DEMOCRACY IN PERIL? Well, duh. Thoughtfully articulated here. A MESSAGE FROM THE MAYOR OF SOUTH BEND But there is a way forward. This, from a rust-belt Afghanistan war veteran is well worth your time.