The Race Of Our Lives (No, Not That One) August 17, 2018 I try to leave the longer things for weekends, to keep you out of trouble. With nothing to do, you could be led astray in so many ways; but with Jeremy Grantham’s brilliant The Race Of Our Lives, you will be enlightened, and perhaps spared a bad sunburn, poison ivy, getting lost in the woods, Lyme tick disease, lake leaches, sand-shark bites, a mountain bike accident — really, it’s safer just to stay home. (My motto: if it’s not paved, it’s not safe.) Though you may feel the need to go out for a drink afterward. But just before you settle in with Jeremy . . . did you know all this about Brett Kavanaugh? I didn’t. And it’s only 90 seconds. And could we please frame today’s economy as, a continuation of the Obama economy that was SO strong, even Trump hasn’t killed it yet? As noted by “the resistance” . . . The unemployment rate dropped two-thirds of one percent each year under President Obama, but just one-third of one percent each year under Trump. Inflation-adjusted wages went up one-quarter of one percent each year under President Obama, and have DECLINED by one-quarter of one percent each year under Trump. The average price of gasoline in President Obama’s last year in office was $2.14 per gallon; under Trump, at $2.87, it’s up 34%. President Obama inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Trump inherited the Obama Recovery. And of course inequality just grows. Per the Washington Post: CEOs of America’s biggest companies saw their average annual pay surge to $18.9 million in 2017 — up 18%, even as real average hourly earnings for all employees decreased 0.2 percent from July 2017 to July 2018. But now read Jeremy Grantham and stay indoors, where it’s safe. Have a great weekend. [Email subscribers: sorry I missed the deadline for this to go out last night.]
Winning August 16, 2018August 13, 2018 Mostly what we need is for our folks who generally sit out mid-terms not to sit out this mid-term. The daily outrages, corruption, and incompetence just might impel them to show up. But there’s something else this year, too: our candidates. We have great ones! Like these DCCC “red-to-blue” Congressional challengers. And Beto O’Rourke to knock off Ted Cruz! And Stacey Abrams to govern Georgia! And so many others. But if we finally do get the kind of mid-term turn-out we always should (because Democratic economic policies are always better for the bottom 99% than Republican economic policies), who knows how deep the change could go? Here’s a guy who could turn North Dakota blue even though his state is “R+16.” He’s for taking Medicaid expansion money; she voted against it. He’s for family farmers; she’s for corporate farmers. He opposes Trump’s trade war; she supports it. (And he captained the University of North Dakota football team and plays well with Republican legislators. Perfect!) Here’s a pistol-packing Latina so different from the current Texas governor — well, watch her two-minute video and tell me if you don’t think she’s better positioned to address the kitchen-table problems most Texans face. And it’s not just traditional Democratic voters who may vote D this November. Independents lean our way. And Republicans may heed the pleas of conservatives like Max Boot (“I want Democrats to take over“) . . . George Will (“Vote against the GOP this November“) . . . and Rich Barlow (“I’m a Republican, but I’ll vote Democratic“). And John Zeigler (“I have never voted for a Democrat for a federal or state office in my life. This year, much to my amazement and disappointment, not only will I likely be voting for Democrats at that level, I will actually be rooting for Democrats to win.) Me, too. You, too? Join Team Blue. CrushTheMidterms. It even designs an action plan for you. MobilizeAmerica. No need to choose: sign up with all three. And if you can — click here.
200 Years In Four Remarkable Minutes August 15, 2018August 14, 2018 Here it is. (Thanks, Mel!) So worth the four minutes! So uplifting! And so worth not destroying it all — as humanity, after so many tens of thousands of years, clearly now has the capacity to do. We are two minutes from midnight, “the closest we’ve been to the apocalypse since the height of the Cold War.” It’s worth doing something about: Join Team Blue. CrushTheMidterms. It even designs an action plan for you. MobilizeAmerica. No need to choose: sign up with all three. And if you can — click here.
The Mob Connections August 14, 2018August 13, 2018 But first: Microwave your sponges. Who knew? Extend their life . . . and perhaps your own. And second: The view from Scotland . . . two minutes not to be missed. Waaaaay more important than the sponges. And third: Yesterday, I appended a short SPRT update. A Wall Street pal was initially skeptical until he check his Bloomberg and found that Renaissance Technologies owns 6%. Yes, this is beyond trivial for them; and I assume it’s their algorithms that made the decision, not an actual human. But in my friend’s words, “They are soooo good and soooo smart and usually so right.” Which is a guarantee of nothing, but encouraging nonetheless. We’re in good company. And now! Your president and the mob. Plus: This is so much bigger than Paul Manafort. I’m sorry, but as the Scotsman told you, above, this really is an emergency. So: Join Team Blue. CrushTheMidterms. It even designs an action plan for you. MobilizeAmerica. No need to choose: sign up with all three. And if you can — click here.
On Fred Trump And The Great Gatsby August 13, 2018August 12, 2018 Frank Rich begins: If you were standing in the smoldering ashes of 9/11 trying to peer into the future, you might have been overjoyed to discover this happy snapshot of 2018: There has been no subsequent major terrorist attack on America from Al Qaeda or its heirs. American troops are not committed en masse to any ground war. American workers are enjoying a blissful 4 percent unemployment rate. The investment class and humble 401(k) holders alike are beneficiaries of a rising GDP and booming stock market that, as measured by the Dow, is up some 250 percent since its September 10, 2001, close. The most admired person in America, according to Gallup, is the nation’s first African-American president, a man no one had heard of and a phenomenon no one could have imagined at the century’s dawn. Comedy, the one art whose currency is laughter, is the culture’s greatest growth industry. What’s not to like? Plenty, as it turns out. The mood in America is arguably as dark as it has ever been in the modern era. The birthrate is at a record low, and the suicide rate is at a 30-year high; mass shootings and opioid overdoses are ubiquitous. . . . Today’s America is . . . marked by fear and despair . . . akin to what followed the crash of 1929, when unprecedented millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes after the implosion of businesses ranging in scale from big banks to family farms. It’s not hard to pinpoint the dawn of this deep gloom: . . . Frank pinpoints the financial crisis. Which makes sense. (And it’s definitely worth reading the whole piece. “Trump’s nationalistic right-wing populism, which scapegoats immigrants and minorities to deflect rage . . . is nothing new.” “That hastening concentration of American economic power wasn’t fully understood by most Americans then, and neither was Gatsby, which was published to disappointing sales and reviews in 1925. It’s almost too exquisite an irony that just two years later, the budding real-estate developer Fred Trump would be arrested at a Ku Klux Klan riot in Queens, not far from Tom Buchanan’s home in Fitzgerald’s fictional Long Island enclave of East Egg. The rest is history inexorably leading America to this dark place . . .”) But to find the dawn of our deep gloom, I would go back further, to the widening inequality that Ronald Reagan kicked off with his massive tax cuts for the rich, his union busting, and his demonization of government. All three began the slow decline of the American middle class. It’s not that Reagan was entirely wrong — > The 70% top federal tax bracket was too high. It’s just that Reagan (and then Bush 43 and now Trump) overshot the mark in lowering it. > Union abuses were widespread (just as are abuses throughout the business world). It’s just that Republicans have tilted the balance too far in favor of management. > Government did suffer from inefficiencies and fraud (as did and do the private and nonprofit sectors). But Republican politicians never rail against businesses that pollute and defraud . . . or non-profits that spend barely half your contribution on their mission (or that buy $20,000 buying portraits of themselves, half going to the artist for six minutes “work,” at a dinner the namesake of the foundation was paid to hold at his golf club). No, Republican politicians focus only on government fraud and abuse. Public servants are the bad guys; capitalists like Wilbur Ross — a $120 million grifter — and his ilk are the good guys. But I digress. Read Frank’s piece. And note that this “booming” economy is simply the continuation of the truly remarkable Obama economy, whence 90% of the gains of the last 8 years arise — and that Obama and his administration rescued the world from an imminent global depression even as he left Trump a National Debt back to shrinking relative to the economy as a whole. A positive trend that Trump’s Republicans have now reversed. As an SPRT shareholder, I was pleased to see that cash remains at about $2.60 a share (so you get the rest of the business for about a dime), and sales are up and marginally profitable. Who knows what will happen; but if the business itself were ever valued at 1 times sales plus that $2.60 in cash, we’d have (roughly, vaguely) a $6 stock, up from the $2.85 and $2.16 we paid. So I hold on.
Truth Decay August 10, 2018August 8, 2018 Michiko Kakutani, writing in The Guardian: Two of the most monstrous regimes in human history came to power in the 20th century, and both were predicated on the violation and despoiling of truth, on the knowledge that cynicism and weariness and fear can make people susceptible to the lies and false promises of leaders bent on unconditional power. As Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie the standards of thought) no longer exist.” Arendt’s words increasingly sound less like a dispatch from another century than a chilling description of the political and cultural landscape we inhabit today – a world in which fake news and lies are pumped out in industrial volume by Russian troll factories, emitted in an endless stream from the mouth and Twitter feed of the president of the United States, and sent flying across the world through social media accounts at lightning speed. Nationalism, tribalism, dislocation, fear of social change and the hatred of outsiders are on the rise again as people, locked in their partisan silos and filter bubbles, are losing a sense of shared reality and the ability to communicate across social and sectarian lines. . . . The piece is called “The Death Of Truth: How We Gave Up On Facts And Ended Up With Trump.” . . . For decades now, objectivity – or even the idea that people can aspire toward ascertaining the best available truth – has been falling out of favour. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s well-known observation that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts” is more timely than ever: polarisation has grown so extreme that voters have a hard time even agreeing on the same facts. This has been exponentially accelerated by social media, which connects users with like-minded members and supplies them with customised news feeds that reinforce their preconceptions, allowing them to live in ever narrower silos. . . . . . . the algorithms of social networks – which give people news that is popular and trending, rather than accurate or important – are helping to promote conspiracy theories . . . It’s worth doing something about: Join Team Blue. CrushTheMidterms. It even designs an action plan for you. MobilizeAmerica. No need to choose: sign up with all three. And if you can — click here. Have a great weekend!
Disowning The Best Little Boy In The World August 9, 2018August 7, 2018 He had a 4.16 GPA and was class valedictorian, but his parents kicked him out. The world faces so many challenges — climate change; artificial intelligence; nuclear proliferation; a sociopath beloved by white supremacists — but the biggest, as illustrated in this story, may just be learning to love and look out for each other. In the meantime, while we work that out: Join Team Blue. CrushTheMidterms. It even designs an action plan for you. MobilizeAmerica. No need to choose: sign up with all three. Spread the word. And if you can — click here.
Best Monopoly Games Ever August 8, 2018August 7, 2018 Now anyone can customize a Monopoly set. And that’s nice. But how great is this story? (Thanks yet again, Mel!) Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape…Now obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of ‘safe houses’ where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter. Paper maps had some real drawbacks — they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush. Someone in MI-5 (similar to America’s OSS) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It’s durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever. At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort. By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, ‘games and pastimes’ was a category of item qualified for insertion into ‘CARE’ packages’, dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war. Under the strictest secrecy in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington’s, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were located. When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece. As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington’s also managed to add: 1. A playing token containing a magnetic compass. 2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together. 3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money. British and American crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a ‘rigged’ Monopoly set by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the ‘Free Parking Square’. Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POW’S who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another future war. The story wasn’t declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington’s, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a public ceremony. It’s always nice when you can play that ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card! Ah, World War II. Remember when there were good guys and bad guys? And we were the good guys? And the fascists were the bad guys? And then, later, the KGB? And it was really, really bad to call journalists “enemies of the people,” let alone murder them? Or to praise those who do?* If you think it would be a good time to reinstate some checks and balances: Join Team Blue. CrushTheMidterms. It even designs an action plan for you. MobilizeAmerica. No need to choose: sign up with all three. Spread the word. And if you can — click here. *Or to mock disabled people or rip children from their mothers arms as they sought asylum? Or to start trade wars? Or even just to lie?
The Only Voter Fraud . . . August 7, 2018August 6, 2018 . . . is sitting in the Oval office. (Not literally: he’s in New Jersey, golfing.) Read the story of the voter-fraud commission here. (And Dunlap’s letter, on which it is based, here.) Even more important is this must-read history of Russian spying in the US. The parallels between 1946 and 2018 are stunning and instructive. It concludes: . . . In the months ahead, Congress, and then the public, will learn the findings of Robert Mueller and his investigators regarding the Trump campaign’s actual relationship with Russia on its route to the White House. There will be unpleasant revelations, to be sure, but nobody who is familiar with the VENONA story will be truly surprised by any of it. And then there is the story of KGB awareness of Trump (via its allied Czech intelligence service) beginning in 1977 — 41 years ago! — and how the Russian relationship began developing more than 30 years ago. Did you know all this? I didn’t.
War August 6, 2018August 4, 2018 Watch this trailer. “Active Measures” opens August 31. Russia is at war with us, and our commander-in-chief, a sociopath, is — at best — looking the other way. If that’s not impeachable, what is? His pace of falsehoods and misleading statements has accelerated. The Russians are winning. The Republican Congress just nixed $250 million to shore up state election protection efforts. We are losing our country and losing the generally constructive world order our country worked so hard to help build. THREE WAYS TO VOLUNTEER Join Team Blue. CrushTheMidterms. It even designs an action plan for you. MobilizeAmerica. No need to choose: sign up with all three. Spread the word. If you can, click here.