The Speech Rephrased January 31, 2018January 31, 2018 There was much to like in the President’s State of the Union address last night — just as there was much to like in his campaign speeches. Who would not be for “great health care for everybody at a tiny fraction of the cost”? It’s not clear to me how much of the good stuff he will achieve or how he will pay for it. And much of what he said last night was overstated. Here is CNN’s attempt at fact checking. But there are other things he might have said, but didn’t. For example, he could have said this: The state of the Union is precarious. In my first year I have: 1. Told more than 2000 public lies or falsehoods. 2. Ended the American Century and abdicated our leadership of the world. 3. Plunged the nation into economic peril through what is — according to Reagan budget director David Stockman — a massively irresponsible tax cut at exactly the wrong time in the business cycle. (We will be running a $1.2 trillion deficit in the tenth year of a recovery!)* 4. Prioritized those lower taxes on the rich — including real estate developers like me — over borrowing that same money to employ millions of Americans at good jobs revitalizing our infrastructure. 5. Denied and ignored the massive and ongoing attack on our democracy ordered by a former KGB operative with whom I enjoy a warm relationship and against whose country I have refused to impose the sanctions mandated by Congress. 6. Ceded economic leadership in the Pacific to China. 7. Taken credit for the low unemployment and steadily improving economy I inherited (slightly more jobs were added in Obama’s last year than my first). 8. Decimated the State Department, hobbled the Environmental Protection Agency, neutered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and put agencies like HUD and the Departments of Education and of Energy in the hands of people with no expertise. 9. Destabilized the health insurance market in ways that will lead to higher premiums and more uninsured (despite my promise of “great health care for everybody at a tiny fraction of the cost”). 10. Demonized the free press, the FBI, and our intelligence community. 11. Widened inequality, praised as “very fine people” torch-bearing white supremacists, set an example of incivility for your children. 12. Solicited contributions to my campaign with the promise of running your name over the live stream of this State of the Union address. No president in history has thought to cheapen and politicize the presidency that way, but then neither has a president embarrassed America on the world stage as I have. And if the —-holes of the world don’t like it, —- ’em. There’s more, but that’s enough for now. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. *If you own stocks — let alone on margin as one of my friends does (true story: he took out the margin debt to buy Bitcoin) — click that David Stockman link above. A cautionary note.
The State of the Union’s National Parks January 30, 2018January 29, 2018 But first: Paul Manafort. The Atlantic cover story everyone’s reading. . . .When it comes to serving the interests of the world’s autocrats, he’s been a great innovator. His indictment in October after investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller alleges money laundering, false statements, and other acts of personal corruption. (He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.) But . . . his personal corruption is less significant, ultimately, than his lifetime role as a corrupter of the American system. That he would be accused of helping a foreign power subvert American democracy is a fitting coda to his life’s story. . . . Riveting. Don’t miss this one. From the Guardian: Rotting cabins, closed trails . . . At Zion national park, a popular trail has been closed since 2010. At the Grand Canyon, a rusting pipeline that supplies drinking water to the busiest part of the park breaks at least a half-dozen times a year. At Voyageurs, a historic cabin collapsed. The National Park Service is the protector of some of America’s greatest environmental and cultural treasures. Yet a huge funding shortfall means that the strain of America’s passion for its parks is showing. Trails are crumbling and buildings are rotting. In all there is an $11bn backlog of maintenance work that repair crews have been unable to perform, a number that has mostly increased every year in the past decade. . . . Our infrastructure crumbles while Republicans cut taxes on the rich — and on real estate developers. The flu is a killer — but the agencies charged with mitigating its effects are under attack by the Trump Administration. . . . In its 2017 budget, the Trump administration proposed a $1.2 billion cut — a full 17 percent — to the CDC, the agency on the front lines of the national response to the flu outbreak. If Trump had his way, the agency would have faced an enormous shortfall just as the crisis began. Former CDC Director Tom Frieden, who worked under the Obama administration, sounded the alarms on the proposed cuts. He described them as “unsafe at any level of enactment,” adding that the Trump proposal “would increase illness, death, risks to Americans, and health care costs.” . . . Given the choice between funding the Centers for Disease Control and cutting taxes for the top 1%, Republicans make the choice they always do.
It Just Gets Better! January 29, 2018January 27, 2018 Today: Steven Pinker on Why Progressives Hate Progress. An upbeat 10 minutes in case you found Friday’s post too depressing. It shows how things have for decades gotten steadily better even as the headlines have grown more bleak. Of course, if the last 446 days have shown us anything it’s that progress is not guaranteed. But Pinker notes that the odds would improve if young people would simply . . . vote.
A World That Can’t Learn January 26, 2018January 27, 2018 I don’t think it’s as bad as Umair Haque says (read on). Americans do smile. But his perspective merits our attention. Our national brand fell from #1 to #6 by July (one winces to think where it is now) . . . our health care ranks last among these 11 countries . . . our infrastructure, starved by Reagan Republicans who prioritize tax cuts for the rich, gets a D+. (Eisenhower was a Republican who built infrastructure. The Interstate Highway System. His top federal bracket was 90%. Too high! But by overshooting in the other direction, Reagan, Bush, and Trump have wrecked our national balance while allowing our infrastructure to decay.) Anyway, here is Umair Haque. From Eudaimonia: What Do You Call a World That Can’t Learn From Itself? Why Don’t Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? Whenever I go back and forth between Europe and the States, a curious set of facts strikes me. In London, Paris, Berlin, I hop on the train, head to the cafe — it’s the afternoon, and nobody’s gotten to work until 9am, and even then, maybe not until 10 — order a carefully made coffee and a newly baked croissant, do some writing, pick up some fresh groceries, maybe a meal or two, head home — now it’s 6 or 7, and everyone else has already gone home around 5 — and watch something interesting, maybe a documentary by an academic, the BBC’s Blue Planet, or a Swedish crime-noir. I think back on my day and remember the people smiling and laughing at the pubs and cafes. In New York, Washington, Philadelphia, I do the same thing, but it is not the same experience at all. I take broken down public transport to the cafe — everybody’s been at work since 6 or 7 or 8, so they already look half-dead — order coffee and a croissant, both of which are fairly tasteless, do some writing, pick up some mass-produced groceries, full of toxins and colourings and GMOs, even if they are labelled “organic” and “fresh”, all forbidden in Europe, head home — people are still at work, though it’s 7 or 8 — and watch something bland and forgettable, reality porn, decline porn, police-state TV. I think back on my day and remember how I didn’t see a single genuine smile — only hard, grim faces, set against despair, like imagine living in Soviet Leningrad. Everything I consume in the States is of a vastly, abysmally lower quality. Every single thing. The food, the media, little things like fashion, art, public spaces, the emotional context, the work environment, and life in general make me less sane, happy, alive. I feel a little depressed, insecure, precarious, anxious, worried, angry — just like most Americans do these day. So my quality of life — despite all my privileges — is much worse in America than it is anywhere else in the rich world. Do you feel that I exaggerate unfairly? It’s not just an anecdote, of course. Americans enjoy lower qualities of life on every single indicator that you can possibly think of. Life expectancy in France and Spain is 83 years, but in America it’s only 78 years — that’s half a decade of life, folks. The same is true for things like maternal mortality, stress, work and leisure, press freedom, quality of democracy — every single thing you can think of that impacts how well, happily, meaningfully, and sanely you live is worse in America, by a very long way. These are forms of impoverishment, of deprivation — as is every form of not realizing potential that could be. But I don’t wish to write a jeremiad, for I am not a pundit. The question is this: why don’t Americans understand how poor their lives have become? Is it even a fair question to ask? Of course, one can speak of capitalism and false consciousness and class war, of technology hypnotizing people with outrage. But I think there is a deeper truth here. There is a myth of exceptionalism in America that prevents it from looking outward, and learning from the world. It is made up of littler myths about greed being good, the weak deserving nothing, society being an arena, not a lever, for the survival of the fittest — and America is busy recounting those myths, not learning from the world, in slightly weaker (Democrats) or stronger (Republicans) forms. Still, the myths stay the same — and the debate is only really about whether a lightning bolt or a thunderstorm is the just punishment from the gods for the fallen, and a palace or a kingdom is the just reward for the cunning. Hence, I have never once seen in America a leader saying, “hey! See that British healthcare system? That German union and pension system? Why don’t we propose that? They work!!” Instead, the whole American debate is self-referential — pundits debating Andrew Jackson (LOL) instead of, say, what the rest of the world does today in 2017. How can a broken society grow only by looking inwards? If you are a desperate, heart-broken addict, what can you learn from yourself? Won’t you only, recounting your pain, reach for the needle quicker? So we must look outwards, always, to learn best and truest — but I will return to that. Still, though, “why don’t Americans get it!” is an unfair question unless we ask it for both sides. So let us look at the picture from the opposite side, to see if our question is worth asking. Do Europeans “get it” — how good their lives are, relatively speaking? Well, in Europe, regressive forces are at work, too — not as badly as in America, but rising, to be sure, in every single nation. So Europeans, too, at least enough to seat extremist parties in parliaments, take their quality of life for granted a little. Why would that be? Probably because they have now grown up with the gift their grandfathers and grandmothers gave them — constitutions in which healthcare, education, dignity, and so on, are essential rights — which are what underpin Europe’s stunningly high quality of life. Hence, regressive forces in Europe say “these people must not have rights!”, not understanding that those very rights, enshrined in rewritten constitutions, are exactly how Europe rose in a generation from the ruins of war, to the highest living standards ever, period — and to take them away is to begin erasing history. So just as Americans don’t get how bad their lives really are, comparatively speaking — which is to say how good they could be — so too Europeans don’t fully understand how good their lives are — and how bad, if they continue to follow in America’s footsteps, austerity by austerity, they could be. Both appear to be blind to one another’s mistakes and successes. Now. What does that really mean? We are living in a world unable to learn from itself. What would sane societies do, watching each other, watching each other’s fortunes rise and fall? A sane America would look at Europe, see it’s tremendously higher quality of life in every possible regard, and say, “My God! That is what we should reach for, too!”. And a sane Europe would look at America, see it’s falling life expectancy and imploding middle class, and say, “My God! We must never become that!” But you see, the irony is this: both are doing precisely the opposite. Europe is fighting against becoming more American, and America is not fighting to become more European. (Of course, I don’t mean culturally — I mean in terms of constitutions, institutions, economy, polity, and social contracts). History teaches us tragedy with irony. And this to me is the greatest irony of now. We are making three great mistakes in this age. The first is that we cannot learn from modern history — which is the story of Trump and America and tyranny. The second is that we cannot learn from deep history — that the whole story of human progress has been written by lifting one another up, not keeping anyone else down, and so the seductive ur-myth of the fascist, that I rise by pulling you down, right down into the abyss, is mesmerizing societies whole. The third mistake we are making, though, is more invisible, and perhaps the greatest of all — what this essay is about: we cannot learn from one another anymore. How do we learn things? We can learn only in these three ways: from our own mistakes, from the mistakes all people have made, or from the fortunes and misfortunes of our peers. And of those three, the swiftest way to learn is to simply look at what others are doing, that work, and copy it. Mimicry, of course, is how babies learn the most basic things — yet we cannot seem to even handle that much. So here is the unforgiving truth. We, in this age, this time, have regressed to something past an infantile state: we cannot even manage the mimicry that babies perform happily, the most basic form of learning that exists. We have regressed beyond regression itself. And so we live in an age that feels paralyzed, stuck, unable to even grow like a baby does. It is failing the most basic test of all: the test of ignorance, of folly, of being unable to see, hold, mature, develop, grow. History is easy to forget — and it’s easiest of all to take it for granted when you are the one who has not learned from it yet. What do you call a world that can’t learn from itself? It is not even a baby. It is something more like an old man, on the edge of darkness. Umair December 2017 Oh! And this just in . . . The Doomsday Clock just moved: It’s now 2 minutes to ‘midnight,’ the symbolic hour of the apocalypse. Have a great weekend! Have you seen The Good Place on Netflix? The 23-minute pilot is so fun.
Solar Setback January 25, 2018 He’s working to destroy trust in the free press, FBI, and intelligence community . . . has ended “The American Century” . . . coarsened the national dialog . . . deepened divisions and inequality . . . and cost us our hard-earned world leadership — all to Putin’s doubtless delight. Also: exalted coal, exited the Paris Climate Accords, and now, to launch his second year in office, Time reports . . . President Trump Slaps Tariffs on Solar Panels in Major Blow to Renewable Energy In the biggest blow he’s dealt to the renewable energy industry yet, President Donald Trump decided on Monday to slap tariffs on imported solar panels. The U.S. will impose duties of as much as 30 percent on solar equipment made abroad, a move that threatens to handicap a $28 billion industry that relies on parts made abroad for 80 percent of its supply. Just the mere threat of tariffs has shaken solar developers in recent months, with some hoarding panels and others stalling projects in anticipation of higher costs. The Solar Energy Industries Association has projected tens of thousands of job losses in a sector that employed 260,000. The tariffs are just the latest action Trump has taken that undermine the economics of renewable energy. The administration has already decided to pull the U.S. out of the international Paris climate agreement, rolled back Obama-era regulations on power plant-emissions and passed sweeping tax reforms that constrained financing for solar and wind. The import taxes, however, will prove to be the most targeted strike on the industry yet. . . . Have a great day.
FANH SPRT PRKR January 24, 2018January 23, 2018 With FANH now above $30 (we paid $5.40 when the symbol was still CISG), I’ve sold about half and sit marveling happily at the rest. One reason I bought it was that a very smart guy who’d done lots of research told me it had $8.50 in cash, so you got the shares for less than their cash value — and the company (well run, he said) for free. I certainly don’t expect a quintuple from SPRT, but it’s a (vaguely) similar situation. When first suggested a year or so ago, it was selling for less than its $2.85 in cash and short-term securities. Two months later, at $2.16, it was even cheaper. Closing at $2.93 yesterday, it may now be trading a bit above cash — but the smart young friend who brought it to my attention, and who has much of his own money in it, thinks a fair value now might be the cash plus “one times revenue” for the business itself (which is no longer losing money) — so, he calculates, about $5.40. And what if the business, under new management for the last year and a half, actually begins to take off? All of which is to say: if you bought shares with money you could truly afford to lose, don’t sell this one for a while. Wildly more speculative — a total crapshoot, really — are shares of PRKR I bought yesterday at $1.10. Supposedly, the company has a huge patent-infringement lawsuit finally coming to a head, possibly in the next few weeks. If their claim is denied, as the market clearly seems to expect, the stock drops even closer to zero. If approved, it could be ten. “My guy,” “who knows a guy,” thinks there’s a better than 50% chance the market gets a surprise. This has all the hallmarks of failure — but I couldn’t resist.
Bryan Cranston January 23, 2018January 23, 2018 Remember Hal, the father in “Malcolm in the Middle”? Bryan Cranston. Remember Walter White in “Breaking Bad”? Bryan Cranston. Did you get to see LBJ on Broadway in “All the Way”? Bryan Cranston. Well, he’s written a really good autobiography, and I think you shouldn’t read it — you should let him read it to you. As long-time readers know, I’m a fan of “books on tape” — audible.com (your first book free) — especially “celebrity autobiography.” Why just read Tina Fey or Trevor Noah or Steve Martin or Amy Schumer, when these amazing performers are happy to tell you their stories directly, perhaps even while you power-walk through the park or sit in the waiting room? You can listen to them at regular speed or — very comfortably in some cases — at 1.25X or 1.5X speed (read a 9-hour book in 6). Enjoy.
What To Do About Trump’s Lies Don't Miss Jimmy Kimmel's Take January 22, 2018January 21, 2018 DON’T BUY TOO MUCH SPRT. Suggested here and here a year ago at $2.37 and $2.16 — and closing Friday at $2.79, which sounds good but actually trails the Dow — the company now seems to trade at about the value of its cash . . . giving us whatever the company’s business may be worth, if anything, “for free.” But please don’t buy more than 935,000 shares, says the company — 5% — because that could jeopardize the value of its $140 million in accumulated tax losses (NOLs). . . . “Our improvement in year-over-year profitability through the third quarter of 2017 has generated increased shareholder interest. Since our earnings release for that period, two shareholders have acquired more than 4.99% of our common stock and, as a result, have put us closer to an ownership change for purposes of Section 382. We determined that both acquisitions were inadvertent under our tax benefits preservation plan and have exempted such acquisitions from the plan, but there can be no assurance that any future acquisitions of more than 4.99% of our common shares by any investor or group will be determined to be inadvertent, thereby triggering our plan and significantly diluting the ownership interest of that investor or group. As a courtesy to our shareholders, we wanted to remind everyone of these limitations” said Rick Bloom, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer of the company. . . . My hope is to see my shares — bought only with money I can truly afford to lose — at $4 before I even consider selling any of them. And who knows? Seven would be nice. HOW TALL IS HE, REALLY? Joseph R. Prochaska: “In that photo you referenced, take a close look at Trump’s shoes—the angle of the vamp is SOOOOO much steeper than President Obama’s; this means either that Trump has really fat feet (a possibility) or that he is wearing elevator shoes (which is supported by the thickness of the heels in the picture). Truth in all things (large and small) is about respect, first and foremost, for the people receiving the statement. If someone is lying to us about something this trivial, it shows a lack of respect for the American people, and a lack of respect for the integrity that the office of the President demands. De Gaulle: ‘The word of the American president is good enough for me.’ The value of that integrity and that respect for America has a price beyond measure. That we have lost it will cost us more than we can calculate.” WHAT TO DO ABOUT TRUMP’S LIES Paul: “Trump’s Lies Versus Your Brain is required reading of everyone in Dem politics. As you will see, it suggests no particular solution. But I thought of one that is consistent with the article’s explanation of human psychology: Every time Trump says or tweets something, everyone in Dem politics should say, both at the beginning and end of each response, ‘Trump lies about everything.’ With enough repetition, it will make headway.” All presidents lie. . . . It is, in some ways, an inherent part of the profession of politicking. But Donald Trump is in a different category. The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent. . . . Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it. A whopping 70 percent of Trump’s statements that PolitiFact checked during the campaign were false, while only 4 percent were completely true, and 11 percent mostly true. (Compare that to the politician Trump dubbed “crooked,” Hillary Clinton: Just 26 percent of her statements were deemed false.) . . . Lies are exhausting to fight, pernicious in their effects and, perhaps worst of all, almost impossible to correct if their content resonates strongly enough with people’s sense of themselves, which Trump’s clearly do. . . . Have you seen Jimmy Kimmel on the President’s 2,000+ lies? Share it widely. Have a great week. [UPDATE – My JET delivery arrived undamaged and on time. Fourth time was a charm!]
Patented Shopping Tips January 19, 2018January 21, 2018 In case you’re one of those readers blessed with inexhaustible patience and money you can truly afford to lose — i.e., a fellow BOREF shareholder — check out these 140 patents, more than a dozen of them issued in the last year alone. Of course, they’re mostly Greek to me. “Space-maximizing clutch arrangement for vehicle drive wheel” . . . “System and method for improving efficiency of aircraft gate services and turnaround” . . . “Heat dissipation system for aircraft drive wheel drive assembly.” And even to a Greek, until there’s some cash cow to protect — or sue — they may not be worth the pixels they’re printed on. But a lot of intellectual property has been developed and, as previously noted, the work continues. Which would be nice even for non-BOREF shareholders, if they don’t like sitting in a cramped seat waiting for a tug. Or would prefer to board and deplane in half the time (from front and rear doors). Imagine if driving were like flying — as these clever folks have. (It’s a little silly, but it’s Friday.) JET is not only what WheelTug hopes to assist, but also WalMart’s answer to Amazon, as plugged here in July: I love Amazon, but competition is important — and the glass-bottle Honest Tea varieties that are so hard to find in physical stores but that are just a click away with Amazon ($44.62 for a 12-bottle case of Moroccan Mint) are just a click away on Jet at $16.27 (for Cinnamon Sunrise or Ginger Oasis, my other two favorite varieties) — after the 15% new-customer discount on my first three orders but before the additional $4.31 they knocked off of already-free shipping for my willingness to wait a couple of days to receive it. In all, $61.69, delivered, for 48 bottles, versus what would have been three times as much on Amazon. Needless to say, that’s an extreme example — and I still love Amazon. But “shop around?” So here’s a little update. Those cases of Cinnamon Sunrise and Ginger Oasis did eventually arrive, but only 17 of the 24 bottles — each wrapped in its own JiffyBag. It seems seven of the glass bottles had broken in transit and the carrier, noticing iced tea leaking from the box, did its best to clean things up and deliver the rest. Jet was abject in its apology and promised a replacement — which never came. That was last summer. A month ago, having given them time to get the kinks out, I tried again. My order is on its way! Tracking info! Progress emails! Delays! And then a refund notice — the order was canceled. Seeing a REORDER button beside the REFUND-ISSUED check mark, I did just that — and got a whole new round of congratulations on my wise purchase, tracking info, and so on. More delays, another cancelation (“damaged in transit”) and refund, with the REORDER button. Which I clicked. The story may end today, when the goods are scheduled to arrive. Here’s the tracking info to see for yourself if they have. Fourth time’s a charm? [UPDATE – My JET delivery arrived undamaged and on time. Fourth time was a charm!] But if the price variation on Honest Tea is wide, the variation on Viagra — for which I have zero need, putting all my energy into voter registration, but friends have told me — is little short of vein-popping. You’ve read, I assume, that there are now, as of last month, generics. And yet ten 100mg generic sildenafil tablets will run you $480 at Walgreen’s (many seniors found it smarter to buy the hundreds and cut them into halves, thirds or quarters, because the lower-dose tablets cost nearly as much) . . . while the GoodRx and OneRx apps on my phone found local pharmacies offering 90 of the 20mg tablets for well under $100 — about a nickel per milligram versus ten times as much. Bottom line: Should voter registration ever leave you so exhausted you need a little help — shop around. Finally, here’s how they shop in China — without cash or plastic. Take 10 minutes to visit our main economic competitor and — let’s hope — our most important partner. Have a great weekend!
How Tall; The Wall January 18, 2018January 17, 2018 Joe Cherner: “How did President Trump grow an inch this year? Does anyone in his 70s actually get taller? Or could it be that if he were still six two (as he was measured at his last physical), he would be considered obese (he’s only borderline at 6’3″)? Do you think he was trying to avoid being labeled obese?” His head may have swelled? In this photo, he appears to be the same height as President Obama — 6’1″. But if you input his age (71) and his weight (239, unless they fudged that a little, too), and 6’2″ — or if you just look at him — you will see he is officially obese. The more so if he is 6’1″. I once wrote “How Tall Is Robert Redford Really?” for New York Magazine, so celebrity stature is a field with which I have some familiarity. Bob Sanderson: “There’s a narrative on the wall that almost everyone in Washington is missing. WE ALREADY BUILT THE WALL! The Secure Fence Act of 2006 launched the construction of hundreds of miles of walls, fencing, and vehicle barriers at the cost of many billions of dollars. They referred to this as “barriers” or “fences”, but when I drive from Phoenix to San Diego, it sure looks like a wall. I believe we decided to refer to it as a “fence” so as to minimize offence to Mexico, a partner in border security and drug interdiction. Almost every news story about the border, even coverage of Trump’s wall prototypes in San Diego, shows the existing wall in the background, but nobody ever points it out. . . . As Trump’s wall has evolved, it is settling on a description that the current wall already matches. They’re now calling for see-through construction, fences in some places, high-tech sensors instead of a physical barrier for some sections. This is what we already bought and (maybe) paid for. I don’t doubt that Border Patrol has some areas where they would like additional barriers, or stronger barriers where they’re frequently breached. Previous Congresses ran out of enthusiasm for what was starting to look like a money pit. I suspect that Trump knew none of this when he proposed his wall. His concept of our border was likely formed by listening to Fox News and talk radio, which likes to refer to our “open border” when discussing border security. . . . Every discussion of Trump’s wall should say not that “Trump wants to build a wall”, but instead that “Trump wants to build another wall”. And any proposal to spend more money on walls should first answer the question “what problem will Trump’s proposed wall solve that was not already solved by the billions we spent on our existing border barrier system?”