Year: 2018

You will recall Trump’s characterization of Democrats who did not applaud sections of his State of the Union address as treasonous.

“Can we call that treason?  Why not,” he said.

Take a minute to watch Representative Jeffries’ response, if you’ve not already seen it.

We know the Republican platform was altered with respect to Ukraine — the only thing the Trump team weighed in on (and the only piece of the platform Russia cared about).

We watched Trump call out to Russia, “if you’re listening,” for its help defeating Hillary.

And from Jane Mayer’s must-read piece in the New Yorker, it appears Putin nixed Romney as our Secretary of State (but approved Tillerson, who has yet to use the money Congress appropriated to fight Russia’s ongoing attack).

Take another minute as Tom Steyer asks: why is he still president?

And six more minutes to watch Rachel’s take.

In all, eight minutes well spent.  We are under attack.  We are losing.  Our commander-in-chief refuses to defend the Constitution to which he took an oath.  Most Republicans in Congress are at least publicly okay with that.  It’s time for them to step up.

Every time your brother-in-law touts the Republican tax cut, please forward this column.

It’s what I’ve been trying to say for months now, but Krugman says it better.  (And has a Nobel Prize.)

It begins:

So you go out for dinner with a wealthy acquaintance. “I’ll take care of everything,” he says, and orders you a hamburger. Then he orders himself an expensive steak and a bottle of wine, which he doesn’t share. And when the waiter comes with the check, he points at you and says, “Charge it to his credit card.”

Now you understand the essence of the Trump tax cut, signed into law a little over two months ago.

But you really need to read it all.  And so does your charming, handsome, well-intentioned . . . but, I would gently argue, misled . . . brother-in-law.

Question: If you ingest probiotics and antibiotics at the same time, will you explode?  Discuss.

And now . . .

Thirty-five years ago, Fortune paid me $1,500 to review Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder letters.  At the time, they had developed a cult following.  Today, they make national news.

It was an easy assignment.  His writing is so clear, wry and insightful, all I had to do was string together some excerpts.

I concluded with words to the effect of, “At $300, Berkshire Hathaway’s stocks seems to be a little ahead of itself.  But I might well buy some on the next dip.”

I wrote much the same thing when it got to $3,000, then $30,000.  (Today: $300,000.)

Had I taken my $1,500 fee and bought 5 shares of the $300 stock, I would today be 35 years older (that part worked out), and $1.5 million richer (oh, well).

At least, that’s the way I remember it and have been telling this story for decades.

Having just now reread the piece, it seems Berkshire stock wasn’t $300, it was $955 — so I missed only a 300-fold gain.  And, no, I did not conclude the piece with a comment about buying some on the next pull-back.

It’s interesting, if not a little scary, to see how one’s memory can play tricks.

But I digress.

The point is: Warren’s latest letter is out, yours to read here.

If you want more, just change the year in this URL — berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2017ltr.pdf — to any other year back to 2003.  (For 1965-2002, you’ll have to search further.)

The big headline this year?  The Republicans’ “middle class” tax cut enriched Berkshire Hathaway shareholders by $29 billion.

Even when you’re rich, every little bit helps.

The extra $1.5 trillion over ten years — borrowed from your children and grandchildren at exactly the wrong time in the business cycle, allegedly to help you — may indeed add a few bucks to your take-home pay . . . I hope it does.  But those few bucks were included to keep you from noticing or caring too much that the bulk of the money was borrowed to enrich those at the very tippy top, like the Trumps and the Kushners.  And the Mnuchins and Wilbur Rosses and Peter Thiels and DeVoses (and, of course, the Waltons, who alone control as much wealth as the bottom 139 million Americans combined).

Have a great weekend.

Your phone hears you mention “Aruba” and next thing you know, reading some blog-post on line, an ads pop up for suntan lotion and hotels in Aruba.

Coincidence?

Once minds communicate directly with computers — you don’t have to SAY “Alexa, turn on the bedroom light,” you just have to think it — will Alexa (or, by then, perhaps, “Donald”) be able to read your thoughts?

And send an electric shock if your thought is less than loyal to the Supreme Leader, failure to applaud whose benevolence can be called treasonous?  (Why not?)  A leader so brave — and selfless — he would run toward a school shooter empty-handed in hopes of saving even a single innocent life at the cost of his own?

This story at Gizmodo — The House That Spied On Me — doesn’t go nearly that far.  But it’s fun and, yes, a little scary.

Did you know there are “smart” sex toys?

Calling Aldous Huxley . . .

HOUSEKEEPING: Those of you who get this column emailed to you, generally see what everyone else does.  But some of you point out typos I’ve made . . . or upon reading the emailed version I go back the next morning, as I did yesterday, and tweak something (yesterday, I realized we should “dispense with fish altogether” and just give a man or woman cash). So I hereby declare the draft emailed to you the night before not necessarily to be final until about noon.

When Chris Hughes and I were at Harvard (40 years apart), and for the year following, we were both little business tycoons.  He wound up making $500 million for three years’ work; I wound up on a magazine cover inside a bubble about to burst.

We are virtually the same person, except he has half a billion dollars.

And ran the 2008 digital campaign that helped elect Barack Obama.

And has launched a campaign to end poverty.

Toward which end, he’s written Fair Shot — short, sweet, and important.

The sweet part is his personal story.  And his total recognition of the role luck played.  (His college roommate was Mark Zuckerberg.)  And his description of his parents and grandparents and what it was like to be the poor kid on scholarship at the elite prep school.

The important part is his effort to address America’s increasingly debilitating and immoral inequality, informed in part by two trips he took to Africa.  (Yes: give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish . . . but it turns out there’s a stronger case than you’d think for leaving fish out of it altogether and just giving a man or woman cash.)

His plan is to tax income above $250,000 — including dividends and capital gains — at 50%. Along with other revenue-raisers he proposes, he calculates it would be enough to provide $500 a month to every worker who earns less than $50,000 a year — including students who work at studying, and parents who work at raising kids or caring for their parents.  And that, in turn, would cut poverty dramatically — and do good things for our economy overall.

As reviewed here, in the New York Times — and as you may conclude on your own — the plan needs work.

Would someone earning $50,100 get nothing, while someone who earned $49,900 get $6,000 a year?  (Presumably the benefit would phase out on some schedule as one approached $50,000.)  Would this be based on what you earned last year?  If you kept getting checks this year — but wound up earning more than $50,000 this year — would you have to send the money back?  How would Uncle Sam avoid fraud?

Should someone earning $280,000 really be in the same 50% marginal tax bracket as someone earning $280 million?

I’m quite sure Chris has sensible answers or could come up with sensible tweaks.  (In rural Alabama, he suggests, the check might be lower than in San Francisco or New York.)

But for me what’s important are not the details of his plan, but his argument that after decades of rising inequality — and as we near the time when artificial intelligence puts so many out of work it becomes unclear what everyone will do — we need to talk seriously about what sort of society we want to have.

A Universal Basic Income?

The smaller-but-important boost Chris proposes?

The winner-take-all plutocracy we have now?

In which a single family of heirs and heiresses, the Waltons, Chris notes, controls as much wealth as the bottom 43% of the country, combined — 137 million Americans?

Is it really because those 137 million — many of them working for WalMart — are lazy . . . or have things gotten out of whack?

Read Fair Shot and let me know what you think.

If you deplore the idea of teachers carrying concealed weapons, watch the Colorado teacher who already does, as reported on CBS News.  Are you sure Colorado shouldn’t be allowed to allow that school to allow that teacher — perhaps even encourage him — to keep his weapon in his boot?  And others like him?

But even if schools should be allowed to have such carefully-regulated programs, none should be forced to — and, in any event, it’s by no means all that needs to be done.

We have a crying need for: a ban on the sale of assault weapons (as Ronald Reagan and Antonin Scalia both favored, and our local police do) . . . bans on the sale of bump-stocks and “gun kits“ (where you assemble your own untraceable weapon from a few parts) . . . a ban on the sale of  high-capacity magazines . . . heightened requirements for the purchase of “silencers” (Republicans are trying to loosen them) . . . a hike in the age of purchase to 21 (dads could still buy rifles for their 12-year-olds) . . . effective universal background checks that close “the gun-show loophole” and screen out — or at least subject to greater scrutiny — those with mental health or disciplinary histories.

Expelled from school?  Court filings for restraining orders against you?  911 reports of domestic violence?  On the no-fly list?  Even anonymous tips called into a special FBI hot line?  Folks like that should be subjected to more scrutiny.

Think of the airport.  The TSA pre-check line goes quickly because the TSA has no reason to worry about you. That should be the way with gun sales.  Most people, not having red flags, would automatically be in the fast lane.  But if something does pop up, well, then, moderately inconvenient, frustrating — and possibly unfair — as it may be, the screening process is more intrusive, in the interest of public safety.

And another thing: unless you were a member of a well-regulated militia (now known as the National Guard), you should need a license — like a driver’s license — to own a gun.  To get it, you should have to pass written and proficiency tests.  An eye exam couldn’t hurt, either.

(Wanting to be well-regulated, the militia wouldn’t admit just any fool.  It would do a little background-checking of its own.)

Finally, just as pilots’ licenses have different requirements for different aircraft, so should weapons require different licenses for different types.

To me, all the above is common sense.  Your thoughts?

What’s also common sense is that we cannot threaten to confiscate guns — even the assault weapons already sold — because this plays into all the fears and propaganda of the NRA and would likely doom any legislation.

What would be good is to sue (or regulate) the gun makers — as we have sued (and regulated) the tobacco makers — to devote 20% of their profits each year to a program of buying back assault weapons and contributing them to the Armed Forces.

There’s also likely something sensible to be proposed about the sale of ammunition.

Maybe not the 22-caliber slugs we kids used to fire, under close supervision, as 10-year-olds at Camp Wigwam.  (I was good!)  But quantity-limits and/or taxes and regulations on, say, armor-piercing “cop-killer” bullets?  Don’t you think?

Which brings me to this, from our own estimable Jim Burt, in Texas:

I’m sure you’ve seen discussions of the lethality of the AR-15 round via the hydrostatic shock administered by its high velocity and the accompanying energy, which leaves a tunnel of mangled tissue through the body .  What I haven’t seen is what I was taught 50 years ago when the M-16, the militarized version of the AR-15, was introduced into service.  (I had previously trained with the M-1 and M-14, which fired heavier, larger diameter rounds.)

What we were told at the time was that the light weight of the military round (same weight as the civilian equivalent) caused it to tumble when it hit flesh, so that in addition to the hydrostatic shock induced by the mere power of impact and passage the bullet, over an inch long and a little less than a quarter inch in diameter, would be turning end to end and ricocheting off bones as it went through a body.

Explosive rounds – hollow or soft points of the “Dum-Dum” variety, named after a British arsenal in India which pioneered such ammunition against restless natives – were banned by the various arms control treaties, but the tumbling simulated that mushrooming effect.

Incidentally, this behavior makes such ammunition and the weapons that fire it completely unsuitable for hunting, because they spoil the meat, by turning too much of it into hamburger on the hoof.  That’s what’s being used on our children and our neighbors.

Republicans in control of Congress think that 18-year-olds on the no-fly list must be allowed to buy assault weapons — as they now are.  They believe it’s part of what James Madison, et al, meant by “a well-regulated militia.”

The NRA-endorsed Republican solution: train and arm a million teachers.  (And clergy?  And movie-theater projectionists?)

Which bring me, finally, to this, from our own estimable Mike Martin in Arizona:

Now, suppose I’m a teacher in a classroom with a gun provided by President Bonespurs. In the middle of the lesson in walks the student everybody calls “Crazy” because he is.

“Well, I’m glad you could join us,” I say to him.

“How glad you gonna be when I shoot everybody?” he asks me.

I immediately open a drawer of my desk and pull out the Glock provided precisely for this purpose. Crazy looks at me and laughs, “What you gonna do? Shoot me? I haven’t done anything.”

He has a point — though as he says this, feeling threatened by my own weapon (and being crazy), he pulls his own.

I raise my Glock near my chest.

Crazy grins and brings his gun to HIS chest. Nodding to his terrified classmates he says, “How many you think I can shoot before you hit me?”

I glare at him, “I’ve been practicing. You won’t be able to kill more than two or three.”

Crazy smirks, then quickly squats behind a student to open rapid fire around the classroom. I quickly snap off a shot, but hit the student in front of him, as Crazy keeps shooting students right and left. I try to get off another shot but one of the panicked students runs across my line of fire toward the door and I drop him. Crazy keeps shooting while laughing loudly. I finally get a clear shot off and Crazy falls back, his gun sliding across the floor.

Just then the door bursts open. A police officer sees bloody students everywhere and me, with my smoking gun.  Reflexively, he fires. I go down with a bullet in my chest.

In the ER, I lie on a gurney watching President Bonespurs take credit. “Six fatalities.  Horrible.  Horrible!  But that’s less than half what we had at Parkland, less than a third Sandy Hook. People are saying, if it hadn’t been for me, it would have been much, much worse.  That I can tell you.”

Oh, my.

Have you read David Brooks’ account of a group called Better Angels?

Really worth three minutes.

I think you’ll be able to picture yourself in one of these conversations.

While Putin is busy trying to divide us with fake tweets and real on-the-ground provocateurs, Better Angels — and Oprah, as you may have seen on “60 Minutes” — are trying to bring us back together.  Not to agree on everything, but to see each other as the mostly good people we are; to listen; and to assume the best of each other, as we all too often fail to do.

Listening to each other requires — it seems to me — not shutting down people we disagree with.

Even if we really disagree.

Here is the story of Professor Amy Wax, whose views some find offensive.

But shouldn’t universities be places for robust debate?  Places where people feel free to float — and decry — unpopular views?

If a white supremacist or an atheist or right-to-lifer is speaking at your school, you don’t have to attend.  Or you could attend with a protest sign.  Or you could make a compelling, heartfelt comment when called on during the Q&A.  Or write a passionate op-ed before or after the event.

But not to allow the event?  To drown out the speaker?

“The politically correct Left is doing itself a terrible disservice when it renders certain topics undiscussable,” argues Steven Pinker in this compelling eight minutes of sanity.

Just how we repel the ongoing Putin attack — and learn to tune out our own, homegrown provocateurs, for that matter — well, that I don’t know.

But we should try.

Have a great weekend.

Take 75 seconds to watch this Ikea ad?  How was it not on the Super Bowl?  (Thanks, Mel!)

I once had the opportunity to write this foreword to Charles McKay’s 1841 classic, Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.  The iconic madness?  “Tulipmania” in 17th Century Holland.  Yet according to this just-published research by Anne Goldgar, the story that’s been passed down over the years has been blown way out of proportion.

Still: one tulip bulb selling for as much as “a well appointed house”?  Maybe not that far out of proportion.

Just not a devastating bubble that ruined masses of people — anymore than whoever today buys a signed urinal for more than $1 million is likely to be ruined if it falls in value (and relatively few people do).

It was more like Beanie Babies.

Oh, and by the way?  We are under attack.  We are losing. Putin is winning.  As Tom Friedman puts it: This is code red.

I linked to this — and a lot else — over the weekend, but it deserves its own day and 10 minutes of any patriot’s consideration:

. . . We have both spent our professional careers strenuously avoiding partisanship in our writing and thinking. We have both done work that is, in different ways, ideologically eclectic, and that has—over a long period of time—cast us as not merely nonpartisans but antipartisans. Temperamentally, we agree with the late Christopher Hitchens: Partisanship makes you stupid. We are the kind of voters who political scientists say barely exist—true independents who scour candidates’ records in order to base our votes on individual merit, not party brand.

. . . [And yet]under certain peculiar and deeply regrettable circumstances, sophisticated, independent-minded voters need to act as if they were dumb-ass partisans. . . .

“If conservatives want to save the GOP from itself, they need to vote mindlessly and mechanically against its nominees.” 

Read their entire argument?

Pass it on to a friend?

In case you’re in a position to help, click here.

I’ll see whatever you do the minute you do it, to say thanks.

We can’t let Putin — or “Trumpism,” as Rauch and Wittes call it — win.

Read this.  A guy “opened” a non-existent restaurant and posted so many fake reviews praising it, it became the hottest place in London.  Literally #1 on Trip Advisor.  No one could even get a reservation — because when they called for one, he’d tell them, sorry, sold out.

So eventually, once it was literally the place to go, he opened it in his shed and served frozen dinners.  And at least one couple was so pleased, they asked to re-book.

It’s a great story.  (And fascinating to know he got his start on this writing fake positive reviews of restaurants he’d never visited, at $13 a pop.)

But — with this in mind — do you really think the massive Russian disinformation campaign was not able to get millions of people to think less of Hillary Clinton? 

> It got one well-intentioned North Carolina man to so believe she ran a child sex ring out of a DC pizza parlor that he showed up with an AR-15 and shot the place up!

> It got millions to think there was “there” there with Benghazi, even though eight Congressional investigations found no wrongdoing.

> It got millions — including my friend Matt’s hedge-fund uncle — to think Hillary gave Russia our uranium.  (Snopes, among many others, points out this is false.)

I don’t know whether any of these three phony smears actually originated with the Russians.  Let’s assume not.  But once they were in the air — perhaps from Trump pal Alex Jones, who claims the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax? — the Russian operation amplified them.

Even with all this, Hillary won nearly 3 million more votes than Trump — more than ANY Republican presidential candidate had ever racked up.

But Putin won, and unless the Supreme Court intervenes, Trump is the “national disgrace” (Colin Powell) and “dangerous con man” (Marco Rubio) . . . the “pathological liar” (Ted Cruz) and “complete idiot” (Karl Rove) . . . leading our great country deeper into debt, dishonor, and discord.

My fantasy, once again . . . that someone soon sue to have the election overturned, once the Russian attack becomes widely known and accepted, and the Court issue this ruling:

Seventeen years ago this Court faced a national crisis and — in a ruling it went out of its way to brand as non-precedential — made a tough and widely criticized call that, in effect, gave George W. Bush the Presidency and, as it happened, the opportunity to appoint two of us to this body.

Last year, the Senate made the unprecedented decision not to allow the President to fill a vacancy on this Court, on the grounds that the will of the people as expressed in 2008 and 2012 did not give him that authority — the Senate needed to see how the people leaned in 2016.  As we now know, the people in 2016 — not the Electoral College, the people — leaned toward the Democratic candidate.

Today we face a new crisis.  In developments that have been building all year, it has become clear that the 2016 election results were interfered with by a massive Putin-directed thumb on the electoral scale.  In that context, we have been called upon to overturn the 2016 result as tainted, and to order a workable mechanism by which the country can move forward and regain its footing.

We hereby direct former presidents Obama and Bush, acting in concert, to recommend to this Court, in the shortest time possible, an interim president and vice president to serve out the remainder of this presidential term — or a shorter term if a majority of the House and Senate shall call for an earlier election.

Or something like that.  And Barack and George, very different people but both sane patriots, would perhaps recommend to the Court Joe Biden and Mitt Romney; the Court would approve; and most of the nation — not having attained anything like great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost — nor remotely to have tired of “winning so much they got tired of winning” — would breathe a huge sigh of relief.  As would the world.

In the meantime, I know a great restaurant in London.