Year: 2019

Trint

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?

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.

 

Climate Debate Debate Redux

Must see:  This two-minute wind-power clip from Denmark.  Wind is cheaper than coal. Danes are “blacked out” less each year on average than we here in the U.S.

Entirely optional:  The world’s 10 most dangerous airports.  One more reason to stay home this weekend.

And now . . .

. . . circling back to the issue of whether to hold a single-issue DNC climate debate, Ed C. writes: 

“A Princeton professor said: ‘This past July was the hottest in human history. The temp reached 94 degrees in the Arctic Circle. Temps reached 114 in France. Temps in India reached 120. The crisis is not coming. We are here. It’s the most crucial question facing the human species. What is the DNC afraid of?’  Do you know the answer?”

→  The DNC is afraid of nothing that I know of, and, as I wrote last week, it shares our concern over the climate crisis.

The professor seems to assume that changing the rules now to make an exception to hold a single-issue climate debate would meaningfully impact . . . what?

Is it his belief that more people would watch a debate knowing it would be only about a single issue?  Possibly true.  But possibly not.

Is it his belief that a DNC debate would change the minds of science-deniers in a way that dramatic images of the Paradise, California fire that destroyed 14,000 residences and killed 85 people could not?

Is it his feeling that the best course for dealing with climate change will be better charted in two hours on the debate stage than by scientists and policy makers out of the glare of TV lights?

Listen: I totally share the professor’s goals.  I would have been fine with making an exception for this one debate topic only. 

To me, this little “process” issue — debates versus forums — is SO minor compared with winning everything next year so that we’re in a position to confront the crisis.

It’s a mistake, I think, to make the DNC the enemy for sticking to its rules, when the DNC and all OUR candidates share the professor’s alarm  . . . while the Republicans bring snowballs to the floor of the Senate and call the crisis a hoax. 

Want to help?  

Here’s the case for chipping in — and possible fodder for your own fundraising:

  1. OVERALL STRATEGY
  2. PUSHBACK – AND ANSWERS
  3. WHAT YOUR MONEY GOES TO FUND
  4. JUST VENTING
  5. HOW YOU CAN HELP

Have a great weekend!

 

Ending Our Longest War — The War On Drugs

But first . . . the crime with legal drugs is that they cost so much.  Check out Costco online (even if you’re not a Costco member) to see what you can save.  For example, 30 tabs of Viagra list for $2,244 — but, at Costco, just $46 for its generic alternative.  And have you got GoodRx on your phone?  It found me the same 30 tabs at a nearby Costco for just $24, with a coupon . . . or $334 at the closest CVS or Target and $524 at the nearest Rite Aid.  Shop around!

And now . . . .

Nick Kristof writes:

My Sunday column is the Sunday Review cover and so is online early. It’s about a brave experiment unfolding in Seattle to decriminalize possession of heroin and other hard drugs, as a step toward ending America’s catastrophic war on drugs. In Seattle, a cop might confiscate heroin or cocaine but wouldn’t normally arrest an ordinary user; instead, that person might be referred to social services.

I’m all in favor of this experiment. As I see it, America’s half-century war on drugs was a catastrophe: It resulted in mass incarceration and left as many Americans with arrest records as with college degrees, it accentuated racial inequity, it devastated America’s family structure, and it had no deterrent effect. One American still dies every seven minutes from a drug overdose, and 2 million American kids are living with someone with an illicit drug dependency. It’s time to stop dealing with narcotics as primarily a law enforcement issue and instead approach it as a public health problem. It’s a disgrace that only one-fifth of drug users get treatment, which pays for itself several times over.

I have no illusions about drugs and have lost any number of friends and classmates to them, but we can’t arrest our way out of this problem. So bravo to Seattle for leading America to a more sensible approach that recognizes that we’re facing a massive health problem that needs to be dealt with as such. I hope the presidential candidates will endorse the Seattle model, and here’s my piece on why they should.

No?

 

Your Lazy Grandmother

Michael Myler: “I’ve asked five conservative friends and all agree Trump is abhorrent — but then all add that all the Democrats want to do it give money to lazy people.”

→ Yep.  Especially to the lazy mostly-white people of Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky.  (“. . . In 2017, the state received $40 billion more from the federal government than it paid in taxes. That’s about one-fifth of the state’s G.D.P.; if Kentucky were a country, we’d say that it was receiving foreign aid on an almost inconceivable scale. . . .“)

Michael goes on to say, “If a Democrat could find a way to dispel this notion, we’d be home free.”

Maybe we could get “the explainer in chief,” Bill Clinton, to address this at next year’s convention.  He could note that the overwhelming majority of federal spending goes to lazy old people on Social Security and Medicare . . . lazy Army veterans . . . lazy active military personnel (and contractors from whom we probably do buy too much stuff) . . . lazy workers who — because Republicans oppose unions and minimum wage laws — are paid too little to feed their kids without food stamps and school lunch programs and the Earned Income Tax Credit . . . lazy holders of the National Debt that Ronald Reagan sent soaring, as his initially-reasonable tax cuts for the rich overshot the mark in their second round, and that George W. Bush and Trump made worse still.

And so on.  If anything, Republicans are the party of the idle rich; Democrats, of the working poor.

(By the way?  I like rich people!  By most definitions, I am one myself.  We make a mistake when we demonize the rich, so many of whom are wonderful people.  It’s just that ever since 1980, Republicans have relentlessly — and effectively — managed to shift the balance of power and wealth ever further in favor of the rich.  And it’s gone way too far.)

Want to help?

Here’s the case for chipping in — and possible fodder for your own fundraising:

  1. OVERALL STRATEGY
  2. PUSHBACK – AND ANSWERS
  3. WHAT YOUR MONEY GOES TO FUND
  4. JUST VENTING
  5. HOW YOU CAN HELP

 

Thanking Taxpayers; Burning The Rain Forest

So it turns out I’m not the only one who’s had the idea of thanking taxpayers.  My pal Richard Factor has given it a great deal of thought.  Plus, he likes stroopwafels.

Robert J. Samuelson writes:  “The conspicuous cynicism of a president trying to buy his own reelection with the public’s money, especially when that money is borrowed, is stunning. Of course, self-serving efforts to boost the economy during an election year are hardly unique to Trump, but he has taken the practice to new lows.”

If you read the whole column, note, that as the National Debt grows ever larger, Democrats are not blameless; that it’s fine to have it grow larger . . . but that it needs to grow more slowly than the economy as a whole (except during recessions), so that, gradually, over time — as between 1946 and 1980 — it shrinks relative to the ec0nomy as a whole (from 121% of GDP in 1946 to 30% in 1980, when Reagan headed it back up again).

Do you know what’s causing “the lungs of the planet” to burn?  Not forest fires — government policy.  A Brazilian autocrat, Jair Bolsonara, in the mold of his pal Donald Trump.  Watch it and weep.

 

The Climate Debate Debate

Bob:  “I am angry, frustrated and bewildered by the terrible decision taken by the DNC stifling debate in our party regarding the climate crisis.  With the Amazon burning, Australia digging for $20 BILLION of coal to burn in a $20 BILLION Indian electrical generating station, and a buffoon for President calling the climate crisis a ‘Chinese hoax’ … the DNC looks a lot like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.  How can the DNC can be so weak?  The fact is our planet is disintegrating before our eyes … and too many people are willfully ignorant as to its consequences.”

→ Hey, Bob.

Is it better to have climate discussed at each of the next 11 debates (with possibly larger audiences than a single-issue debate might garner)?  I don’t know.

I think I’d have voted for a single-issue climate debate if only because we should never be seen “opposing” action addressing the crisis.

I think the DNC should have made an exception to their decision not to have single-issue debates.

(The thinking: what do you tell the criminal justice folks when THEY don’t get a single-issue debate? what do you tell labor when there’s no single-issue debate on wages and jobs?)

Either way, the topic will surely come up at all or virtually all the debates; and DNC rules allow for an unlimited number of climate forums.

The big picture is: you’d be hard-pressed to find a single DNC member . . . or Democratic candidate . . . who denies the climate crisis and doesn’t urgently want bold action to confront it.

So the main thing, by ten thousand per cent, is ousting Trump and McConnell, and flipping state legislatures blue in advance of the 2020 census redistricting (and in time to possibly end-run the Electoral College for every race from 2024 on, via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact).

Want to help with that?

Here’s the case for chipping in — and possible fodder for your own fundraising:

  1. OVERALL STRATEGY
  2. PUSHBACK – AND ANSWERS
  3. WHAT YOUR MONEY GOES TO FUND
  4. JUST VENTING
  5. HOW YOU CAN HELP

 

The World Happiness Report

Maybe Paraguay should build a wall to keep us out.

Not long ago, my friend Kim Samuels asked in Canada’s Globe and Mail:

The Economy Is On The Rise.  So Why Aren’t We Getting Happier?

How are you feeling?

That question is more than just a reliable standby for small-talkers. It might be the most essential query that governments aren’t examining closely enough.

The opinion research firm Gallup released results from an annual survey of 151,000 people in more than 140 countries asking that question, and based on responses to 10 questions about the emotions people experience on a given day, the survey reached some clear conclusions. While most people across the world thankfully report smiling, laughing and feeling respect on a regular basis, the trend line over the course of the 13-year-old research project shows a significant increase in negative experiences, including worry, anger, sadness and stress. In Canada, stress and anxiety are particularly serious problems, and over all, the global levels of negative emotions being experienced are at their highest recorded point.

The findings raise a crucial question: In an age when the global economy keeps growing at a steady pace and poverty keeps falling, why isn’t humanity getting happier?

Leading social scientists, including Nobel Prize winners such as Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, have shown that the relationship between wealth and well-being is shakier than we might assume. While it’s crucial to meet basic needs and ensure time for leisure, growth in gross domestic product (GDP) above a relatively modest per-capita level doesn’t usually equate to more self-reported life satisfaction. Rather, once essential needs are met, it’s other factors, such as the strength of community bonds and social trust, that often matter most.

Some observers, including the iconoclastic economist Umair Haque, believe it’s no accident Latin America scored the highest for positive emotions in the Gallup study. People in the region tend to enjoy high levels of social connectedness. In Paraguay – the country with the highest reported levels of positive emotions in the world – people customarily work from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., then go home to eat and relax with loved ones, and finish the work day from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Such social conventions matter. As Gallup’s Jon Clifton put it: Latin Americans tend to “laugh, smile and experience enjoyment like no one else in the world.”

Policy-makers should take note. In Canada and around the world, projections of economic growth, as measured by GDP, tend to dominate official decision-making on matters from taxes to health care to environment. It’s an orientation that leaders across the political spectrum generally share.

Yet, if the goal of government is to help meet real human needs and facilitate high quality of life – rather than simply optimizing a set of statistics – then policy-makers should be paying attention to what generates real human thriving.

As people question the legitimacy of our prevailing economic and political institutions, it’s high time to start thinking about new ways of assessing social progress. Reimagining GDP has long been a priority for the political left, especially given the ways that standard measures fail to account for the full costs of pollution and inequality. But the issue now resonates across the political spectrum. Conservatives here and abroad have championed values of strong families and community bonds that GDP generally fails to reflect. The former centre-right French president Nicolas Sarkozy put it plainly: “We will not change our behaviour unless we change the ways we measure our economic performance.”

Canada has led the way in the development of new measures of progress. For example, John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia has led the development of the World Happiness Report. Back in the 1990s, two Canadian economists, Lars Osberg and Andrew Sharpe, developed a brilliant Index of Economic Well-being that has become an inspiration for efforts around the world. And the Nova Scotia-based nonprofit GPI Atlantic has led the way with new local economic measurements and contributed to the development of the groundbreaking Gross National Happiness Index in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

But Canada, as a country, has yet to start thinking seriously about new benchmarks and measures. Following Europe-wide meetings more than a decade ago, the national statistical agencies of Germany, France and Britain started work on more holistic measures of progress. And American states, including Maryland and Oregon, have taken on reforms on a smaller scale.

It’s time for Canada to expand and improve current measurement tools to look more systematically at what makes people happy. This isn’t an academic exercise. For instance, Statistics Canada can help set benchmarks for government agencies around self-reported human well-being and capabilities that can inform day-to-day policy decisions. Of course, it’s up to our political leaders to invest in measures and then take them seriously with respect to decisions on national legislation.

Measurement matters. It’s a reflection of what we value as a society. Looking to the rising levels of anxiety and anger present in society today, it’s time to upgrade our tools of analysis. Let’s end our hyperfocus on economic prosperity and start paying attention to what matters to achieve prosperity of a more fundamental and emotional kind.

Happiness, as I’ve long argued, is a matter of direction, not amount.

If we had two families under the microscope — the first earning $30,000 a year but somehow knowing it was headed up to $100,000, the second earning $400,000 a year but somehow knowing it was headed down to $150,000 — I’d expect that first family — earning less than 10% as much as the second — to be happier.  Why?  Because things are looking up.

Plus, as we all know, money can’t buy happiness.  Though it sure helps.

Kim’s point: social connections are a big part of it, too.

Have a happy, healthy — socially connected — weekend!

I’ve gone into the T-shirt business:

A bunch of you liked Wednesday’s gun-safety suggestions.  But it turns out there can be a good reason to buy a silencer (you don’t want to wake or alarm the neighbors when you’re shooting varmints in the back yard), so I have deleted #4.

 

Do You Make More Than $5 Million A Year?

Listen to Abigail Disney — the two New Yorks, in under two minutes.

But I do think the tax authorities should send thank-you notes, and  — if they give their permission — laud large taxpayers just as colleges do in their reports of annual alumni giving.  Yes, paying taxes is required.  But especially to those who could easily move to another jurisdiction, we should still say thanks.

So excited was I by the prospect of solar roadways that — as thanks for my not entirely insignificant contribution — I have in my kitchen an octagonal solar roadway brick.  It’s in the kitchen because (a) that’s where I open packages and I wasn’t sure where else to put it; (b) the kitchen is where my goose is cooked; (c) it now seems pretty clear solar roadways are not gonna happen.

“Oh, well.”

I’m not a manager and have no boss, so Nine Lies About Work would not ordinarily grab me.  But a good friend’s review and the first few pages drew me in deep enough to suggest it to you.  For all I know, unlike me, you actually do have employees or a boss, and a Human Resources Department somehow connected to your life.