Tony Blair On Brexit September 15, 2019September 13, 2019 But first: Ed Costello: “Trump Administration Bars Access to Immigration Tent Courts. No public/press in a COURT? Am I the only one freaked out by this?” → It’s what Jesus would have done. Just as He would have separated children from their mothers, cut taxes on the rich, cut aid to the poor, shunned Medicaid expansion, tossed paper towels to hurricane victims, mocked the disabled, despoiled the planet, sided with dictators, advocated torture, used his fame for personal enrichment, defended torch-carrying white supremacists, and ordered Maria Isabel Bueso — invited here when she was seven to help medical researchers — to leave the country and die. (Watch.) I would argue that Putin — definitely not Jesus — is winning. Among his goals: destabilizing our democracy, weakening NATO, weakening the European Union, weakening the U.K. He’s making big progress on all those fronts. The U.K. is in such a mess. If you’re interested in the details, watch or read former prime minister Tony Blair. Basically, he argues a “no deal” hard Brexit would be a disaster. And a general election is not the way to reassess the popular will. Needed instead is a new referendum on the kind of Brexit, if any, the people want, now that, three years on, they’ve had more time to think it through. (My suggestion: offer three or four alternatives, ranging from hard exit to the deal/s Theresa May worked out to “remain” and use ranked-choice voting to determine the result.)
Patience, Jackass, Patience September 13, 2019September 13, 2019 Big news for Borealis shareholders at the end of this post. Bill Shust: “I’ve read TOIGYEN four or five times since the 1980s. Way back then you were praising inflation-adjusted Treasuries. Is there some place you have a chunk of investment today squirreled away against inflation’s possible return?” → Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities — TIPS — were a terrific buy when they were first issued, yielding as much as 4% on top of inflation. Today, with the yield below 1%, they still have some advantages, especially in tax-deferred accounts, but are far less compelling. So what else? Real estate could eventually rise with inflation . . . though inflation-caused high interest rates could hurt real estate first. Same with stocks: as a class, they have been a great long-term inflation hedge. But as a class, they don’t seem cheap today; and inflation, with the higher interest rates inflation brings, could knock them down first. Most of my money is in highly illiquid private deals, many of which fade into dust, but a few of which, with time, do okay (Honest Tea was one) – entirely independent of inflation or the stock market. One I had held for 15 years . . . that I thought had gone bust and had lost track of and written off . . . sent its investors an email not long ago saying that this was different from the email they had sent us the previous week (really? there had been a previous email?) and something different we needed to sign. I figured, oh well, they are finally going bankrupt and I have to sign something, so I went hunting around for that previous week’s email. Sure enough. There it was. It turned out to be an email — Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect (annoyed yet?) . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect (this better be good!) . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . — saying they had sold the company for a quarter billion dollars. Mine was a very small slice; but it was still a twenty-fold return. Patience is my middle name. Speaking of which, slavishly loyal readers may recall the ‘patience, jackass, patience’ story that so convulsed my brother and me, aged 11 and 7, and that became family lore. (What family doesn’t have its lore?) After an endless shaggy-dog buildup . . . the jackass asking the camel for water and the camel responding ‘patience, jackass, patience’ and the jackass asking the camel for water and the camel responding ‘patience, jackass, patience’ and the jackass asking the camel for water and the camel responding ‘patience, jackass, patience’ . . . my dad finally fell for it and asked my brother to get to the point – and my brother responded, ‘patience, jackass, patience‘ as he, and then I, wide-eyed with disbelief, burst into laughter (joined soon by my mother and, eventually, Dad). Current stocks I’ve suggested for which patience might someday pay off — but which you should own only with money you can truly afford to lose — include CNF, SPRT, PRKR, and, yes, BOREF, first suggested in 1999. After the close of trading yesterday, they issued this spare but significant press release: “GIBRALTAR, Sept. 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — WheelTug plc, a subsidiary of Borealis Exploration Limited (OTC Markets: BOREF), announces that it has entered into a definitive agreement with a third party for an investment expected to bring its eponymous aircraft system into service, subject to FAA certification and other factors.” Rather cryptic, but I sure wouldn’t sell any shares, on this news. There’s still much that could go wrong! But it sounds as though they may have secured the funding they need to see this through. Which means I’m not the only one foolish enough to bet fairly big bucks that there could be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Here’s how I argued 14 years ago (!!!) that the shares could be an interesting speculation even at $100, let alone the $12 they were then or the $6 they are now. And here was the column from five years ago where I showed how, with varying assumptions, the “true value” of the shares could range from $2.79 to $338. (The next day, one of you produced a spread sheet into which you could plug your own assumptions and see the share price those assumptions supported.) So, like those hoping for exit visas in Casablanca, we wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Who knows? We might yet make it to Lisbon, and from there, on to the New World. Have a great weekend.
A Word To White Supremacists September 12, 2019September 12, 2019 Here. What if we had a president or vice president or attorney general who made such a powerful statement? Hats off to Northern Ohio U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman. Three perfect minutes. Oh! And remember when we had a president like this? (And a first lady like this?) To get another extraordinarily decent, thoughtful couple leading our country and showing the world the better angels of our national nature, click here. (See how easy it is to fundraise? Almost anything comes back to our urgent need to get the country back on track.)
Have You Actually LISTENED To Ilhan Omar? September 11, 2019September 10, 2019 But first: have you seen Valerie Plame’s 80-second announcement video? The thing is, you will love it and be moved immediately to send money. Which is great, if you send just a tiny bit. But note that she’s running against other Democrats in a heavily Democratic district we are likely to win no matter what; and that it’s the Senate and White House, not the House, we have to win. So as awesome as she is — and she is –this is another example of a place we have to be ruthlessly logical. Want to help with that? Here’s the case for chipping in to the broader effort rather than individual charismatic candidates like Valerie Plame . . . and perhaps fodder for your own fundraising: OVERALL STRATEGY PUSHBACK – AND ANSWERS WHAT YOUR MONEY GOES TO FUND JUST VENTING HOW YOU CAN HELP And now, Ilhan Omar. What part of her op-ed from a few months back do you find scary or alien or offensive? Why would anyone want to “send her back” to Somalia? To me, her words fall well within the bounds of thoughtful, constructive, deeply-American discourse. We should be proud to have her in Congress, even where we disagree with her — and scared and horrified to have a deeply-un-American lying* fascist* sociopath* in the White House. *Look up those terms — lying, fascist, and sociopath — and tell me what parts of their definitions he does not fit. You will really have to stretch to come up with any.
History’s Not Kind To The Guys Who Held Mussolini’s Jacket September 10, 2019September 9, 2019 Have you read American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump? A compelling, alarming and scoop-heavy history of the fall of the party of Lincoln. — The Guardian Although Alberta is clearly not an admirer of the President, he is not unsympathetic to the voters who have embraced him and their feelings of resentment toward what they see as an increasingly liberal culture. — The New Yorker It is less about the daily mayhem in the White House than about the unprecedented capitulation of a political party. — The Washington Post . . . when Ted Cruz told his aides during the primaries, “History isn’t kind to the man who holds Mussolini’s jacket,” he surely had no idea what lay in store for him. — New York Magazine I’ve not yet read it — just finished listening to Admiral William “Make Your Bed!” McRaven’s wonderfully uplifting Sea Stories — but am struck by the clarity of that line: history isn’t kind to the guys who held Mussolini’s jacket. Centenarian Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote this in 2007, when he was barely 88: “PITY THE NATION” (After Khalil Gibran) Pity the nation whose people are sheep And whose shepherds mislead them Pity the nation whose leaders are liars Whose sages are silenced And whose bigots haunt the airwaves Pity the nation that raises not its voice Except to praise conquerers And acclaim the bully as hero And aims to rule the world By force and by torture Pity the nation that knows No other language but its own And no other culture but its own Pity the nation whose breath is money And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed Pity the nation oh pity the people who allow their rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away My country, tears of thee Sweet land of liberty! → Ever so much more relevant today. Jim Burt: “Workers and farmers of America, Donald Trump and his whole party are shaking your hands while picking your pockets.”
Vast Masses Of Filth September 8, 2019September 8, 2019 We are under attack by Russians intent on weakening our democracy. Trump welcomes that, making the heart and soul of his presidency a wall to protect us from desperate Hondurans seeking to clean our toilets and pick our tomatoes. So how did I miss George Will’s review earlier this summer of Danny Okrent’s The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America? Better late than never: . . . [Late in the 19th century] racist thinking about immigration saturated mainstream newspapers (the Boston Herald: “Shall we permit these inferior races to dilute the thrifty, capable Yankee blood . . . of the earlier immigrants?”) and elite journals (in the Yale Review, recent immigrants were described as “vast masses of filth” from “every foul and stagnant pool of population in Europe”). In the Century monthly, which published Mark Twain, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, W.E.B. Du Bois and H.G. Wells, an author informed readers that “Mediterranean people are morally below the races of northern Europe,” that immigrants from Southern Italy “lack the conveniences for thinking,” that Neapolitans were a “degenerate” class “infected with spiritual hookworm” and displaying “low foreheads, open mouths, weak chins . . . and backless heads,” and that few of the garment workers in New York’s Union Square “had the type of face one would find at a county fair in the west or south.” . . . Theodore Roosevelt, who popularized the phrase “race suicide,” wrote to a eugenicist that “the inescapable duty of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world, and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.” Woodrow Wilson warned against the “corruption of foreign blood” and “ever-deteriorating” genetic material. . . . Four years before the 1924 act, 76 percent of immigrants came from Eastern or Southern Europe. After it, 11 percent did. Some of those excluded went instead to Auschwitz. Some Americans today — many of them “very fine people” in Trump’s view — think, Yes! We never should have let all those Jews and Italians in. Jews will not replace us! We never should have allowed freed slaves to vote, they think. So they keep devising ways to make it difficult. But most of us read this history and think — Wait! What planet were Americans ON a century ago? Was America ever really this backward? Most of us favor the sort of sensible, welcoming, bi-partisan, comprehensive immigration reform the Senate passed 68-32 in 2013 — that House Republicans would not allow to come up for a vote. Here’s hoping most of us vote next year, however difficult Republicans try to make it; and that those votes get accurately counted, however hard the Russians try to hack our democracy.
The Roots Of All Evil — And One Good Solution September 6, 2019September 5, 2019 NADER. Tragically, there was a great and idealistic man whose stubborn egotism gave us the war in Iraq and the right-leaning court that gave us Citizens United and gutted the Voting Rights Act, which gave us Trump and ended The American Century. All Nader would have had to have done was take 20 minutes three days before the election to call a press conference exhorting supporters in solid red or blue states to vote for him, for sure, but in states like Florida and New Mexico to vote for Gore. COHN. Roy Cohn was Senator McCarthy’s right hand man — and Donald Trump’s mentor. Sony Pictures Classics Where’s My Roy Cohn opens in New York and LA September 20 and “a theater near you” soon thereafter. “Endlessly fascinating. Impossible to look away.” — The Hollywood Reporter. “A comprehensive portrait of evil incarnate.” — Vanity Fair. “An origin story for today’s amoral political landscape, its marriage of incisiveness and timeliness should make it an indie hit this fall.” — Variety. Watch the trailer? BIDEN. Any of our candidates can win if we all work toward that goal. (One crucial piece: funding the early organizing — now — that will snowball into a massive blue turn-out next fall.) I know several of them personally and believe that — in different ways and for different reasons — they’d all be pretty great. I’m 110% for whichever one wins the nomination. But because Joe is the current the front-runner, I was heartened to see him do so well in his three segments Wednesday night on Colbert — here, here, and here. He is the exact opposite of Roy Cohn and Trump, decent and honorable to the core; and he is willing to compromise in pursuit of progress, where Nader, tragically, was not. Have a great weekend!
How Labor Unions Should Move Forward September 5, 2019September 4, 2019 All hands on deck — why Stacey Abrams, Steve Bullock, and Beto O’Rourke should reconsider. Anyone but Trump: 14 reasons this conservative former Republican would vote for Bernie or Elizabeth if need be. Did you catch this Labor Day column in the Washington Post? Abraham Lincoln made a very good point — and so does David Von Drehle. (Thanks, Glenn!)
Trint September 4, 2019September 1, 2019 But first a cap: And a thought: “If you’re paying $3 for a bottle of Smart Water, it isn’t working.” (Thanks, Mel!) And now: I have an interest in a London-based start-up called Trint. Designed by a former ABC News correspondent for other TV news folk, it can now sit on your iPhone (and, one day, your Android) . . . to record and transcribe phone conversations. (And in-person conversations.) In multiple languages. You never know when you might get a call from a Bulgarian. Trint can record and transcribe it; then Google can translate the transcription. Get your free trial and see what you think. In the App store, search for TRINT – RECORD CALLS ANYWHERE. Trint advises: > In the US, the majority of the states have one-party consent. Meaning that only one person needs to agree to the recording. However other states do require two-party consent. Outside of the US some jurisdictions have harsher punishments than others so its always worth checking beforehand. You can find more information here. > You can record for as long as like. (And pause and restart the recording, if you’re put on hold, etc.) Your phone memory will not be used; all recordings are stored in Trint’s cloud. > All recordings and transcripts are completely private. No one (not even Trint employees) can access the content unless you decide to share it. > Call costs will depend on where you’re calling. When you enter the phone number, the cost will be displayed. > Transcription usually takes less time than the length of your file. For example, a 20-minute call should take no longer than 20mins to transcribe. The great thing about Trint — whether for journalists or you and me — is that the transcript comes synced to the audio . . . so when you find the key paragraph you want to quote, you can listen to it and easily correct the transcript. Let me know if you find it useful, and/or have problems or suggestions. The Associated Press is using it. Maybe you’ll have occasion to use it, too. Ending Our Longest War (The War on Drugs) redux . . . George: “Seattle may be bigger, but Gloucester has been offering rehab rather than arrest since 2015. As Politco reports: “In 2015, police in towns across eastern Massachusetts began to embrace a new way to respond to a public health crisis with a rapidly escalating death toll. That spring, the exasperated police chief in the fishing town of Gloucester, Mass., announced that anyone who showed up at the police station and asked for help overcoming an opiate addiction would get it, without fear of arrest, no matter where they lived or whether they had insurance. Police, he said, would get them into treatment.” The Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative “provides support and resources to help law enforcement agencies nationwide create non-arrest pathways to treatment and recovery.”
Will He Leave? September 2, 2019September 2, 2019 You remember this from Trump’s visit to London? My friend, venture capitalist Kevin Kinsella, wonders whether he ever will: Thinking the Unthinkable… Well, actually, very thinkable. Given this despicable, buffoon president’s penchant for autocracy and proposing unconstitutional measures, it is very probable that, when he loses on November 3, 2020 — he will scream fraud, illegal voting from bused-in illegal immigrants, all the usual tropes — and refuse to leave office until the fraud is “investigated” by a commission of his choosing. Even, if after the election, Trump says he will accede to the will of the majority, he will be lying. He has already proven he is incapable of thinking about anything but himself. He has told more than 12,000 documented lies in the course of his presidency. How naïve to believe otherwise now. He will retreat to his Twitterverse and go absolutely bonkers engaging in massive conspiracy nonsense, excoriating the “lamestream media” and hobnobbing with his toadies at Fox News, casting blame everywhere but himself. Trump will also have to contend with the imminent prospect of living in an orange jump suit for the rest of his life along with his children and supporters. Just before January 20, 2021, he will issue a call to arms to his supporters to descend on Washington to protect him from being physically ousted from the White House. Imagine a rag-tag army of his white supremacist base converging on Washington, armed with assault weapons (think Proud Boys in Oregon on steroids) glutting the streets and parks around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He will invite them to surround the White House and camp out on the Ellipse, the National Mall and Lafayette Park. He will invite the leaders of his most ardent support groups into Blair House. It would ultimately cause a horrific massacre, making Tiananmen Square look like a picnic. Just what Trump would want – a very public spectacle of his “base” being carted off to jail. Does anyone seriously think Trump will go “quietly?” As Americans, we must be fearful that as the beast becomes unhinged he would do irreparable damage to the country and the body politic through insane foreign adventures, despicable domestic escapades, or both, employing his power, improperly or illegally, which he has done dozens of times in his presidency so far. So what can we do? Immediately following Trump’s historic loss and galvanizing win for the people, the Congress needs to impeach and remove from office both Trump and Pence to protect our safety and the Constitution, but also to prevent a massive unending stream of pardons. Pence has been Trump’s mindless lap dog for four years – and he would begin the pardon process for Trump himself and the dozens of others who have broken the law, defied Congress, and debased the Constitution they took an oath to uphold. Trump’s judicial appointments must be stopped in their tracks. Although Nancy Pelosi would theoretically become president at that point, it would be far better that the House replace her as Speaker with the winner of the presidential election, simultaneously with the impeachment of Trump and Pence. The Speaker does not actually have to be a member of Congress and, in these dire circumstances, arranging the presidential election victor to be installed in the White House, two-and-a-half months early, enhances and accelerates the will of the people. Once in office, the new president will need at least two months to reverse all the illegal acts that Trump has caused and replace his despicable cabinet with honorable people who will bring democracy back to the republic. At the same time, Federal prosecutors – perhaps led by the ousted Preet Bharara, the former distinguished Attorney from the prestigious crime fighting force from the Southern District of New York, to bring Federal charges against Trump, Pence, Steve Mnuchin, Betsy Devos, Wilbur Ross, Stephen Miller, Scott Spicer, Sarah Sanders, and any and all enablers of Trump who engaged in illegal acts. As much as possible, a band of state’s attorneys general must cobble together state charges against any and all of the enablers so that, if any presidential pardons sneak through, We the People will have an alternative path to justice. If anyone reading this doesn’t think Trump would behave in precisely this way, you are hopelessly naïve. Every thought, act, lie of his presidency (and his 2016 campaign before that) compels any rational person to believe this is precisely what Trump will do. Reporters and analysts need to start asking Trump – today – what are his plans if he loses the presidential vote on November 3, 2020. Will he leave office in a dignified way, as all his predecessors have done? Or will he claim fraud – as he was preparing to do when, shocker of shockers, he was elected president by the Electoral College? And every Republican representative and senator needs to be asked, today, if they will vote to impeach/convict if Trump even hints that he might refuse to leave office. Our free press needs to do their duty here by asking these tough questions, over and over – if only to alert the American public that this outrage is coming down the pike. → I’m not sure how much of this I agree with. I inherited the happy gene, after all. But this much I know: > Putin is winning. > It’s all but treasonous that Republicans have blocked the paper-ballot safeguards that would assure the integrity of our elections — whoever wins. And outright treasonous that our commander-in-chief takes the side of our attacker over the warnings of the FBI and CIA. > Everyone who trusts the New York Times and CBS News — and science — over the National Enquirer and FOX News needs to persuade young people that this is their moment. Voting in 2020 — meaningfully easier than dying on the beaches of Normandy or leaping tall buildings in a single bound — is the way today’s 18-to-30-somethings can fight to protect democracy, decency, truth, justice, and the American way. So much is riding on them.