Randi, David, Ken, and HYMC June 26, 2025June 26, 2025 CORRECTION: Next Monday’s Virtual Conversation with Heather Cox Richardson and DNC Chair Ken Martin is not free. It’s a $25 ask. Today’s 3pm Indivisible planning call is free — and will be attended by tens of thousands of us. Union leaders’ exit from DNC exposes ‘mind-boggling’ tensions inside Democratic party. If you read the whole story, you might conclude that headline is unhelpful sensationalism. (I love and support the Guardian, but still.) Let me add my own two cents. I know union leader Randi Weingarten. Rather than craft a practical solution to COVID once it became clear that children and healthy adults under 50 or 60 were not at great risk — providing on-line schooling for children living with at-risk relatives taught from home by at-risk teachers — Randi pushed to just shut it all down. This caused enormous long-term harm to children and enormous economic damage to their families. I believe she failed to see the big picture. In today’s situation, she certainly does see the big picture — that we have to win! — but rather than remain on the DNC and help mobilize her union members to do all the things she wants the DNC to inspire people to do, she made it about her. Like other wonderfully idealistic people — Ralph Nader comes to mind* — she put ego ahead of what really matters. David Hogg‘s departure as a DNC Vice Chair is more complicated and could certainly have gone more smoothly, yet I’m a fan. He proposes to raise $20 million to unseat Democrats — not, in my view, an appropriate role for a DNC officer — but to do it only in deeply blue districts not at risk of flipping red . . . and to primary only Democrats who don’t seem to him and his team to have the fire in the belly required to meet this moment. My calculus is: worst case, Leaders We Deserve will be wasting 20 million Democratic dollars, if the candidates he backs don’t wind up strengthening the Party. Over two years, in the scheme of things — as horrifying as this is — $20 million isn’t all that much. Best case, his efforts will electrify a generation of young people who’ve given up on politics and feel unrepresented. That could be worth a lot more than $20 million. So, I’m a fan — as I am of DNC Chair Ken Martin. Ken is terrific. And a winner. And deserves our support. Tune in Monday to hear him in conversation with the amazing Heather Cox Richardson. *Had Ralph, days before the 2000 election, urged his swing-state supporters to vote for Gore — since there was obviously no chance he would win — Gore would have won by an even wider** margin, there would have been no war in Iraq, no right-wing Supreme Court, no Trump, no inaction on the climate crisis, far less inequality . . . the list goes on and on. All because Ralph refused all his friends’ entreaties to put country over ego. **Bush allegedly won Florida by 537 votes. Had the “over-votes” been counted — where voters punched the Gore chad but, to be doubly sure, wrote in “Gore” — he would have won by about 45,000. HYMC In order to raise more working capital, HYMC recently sold $40 million of stock and warrants. Including its $128 million in debt (coming due in 2027), the company is currently valued at $300 million, give or take (depending on how you account for the warrants). I asked Copilot (Microsoft’s AI): What are Hycroft Mining’s proven and probable gold and silver reserves worth? Copilot shot back: As of the most recent estimates, Hycroft Mining’s proven and probable reserves include approximately 12 million ounces of gold and 481 million ounces of silver. To estimate their potential worth, we can use current market prices: Gold: ~$2,300 per ounce Silver: ~$29 per ounce Rough Valuation: Gold: 12,000,000 oz × $2,300 = $27.6 billion Silver: 481,000,000 oz × $29 = $13.95 billion Total estimated gross metal value: ~$41.55 billion Of course, that’s a theoretical maximum. Actual economic value would be significantly lower after accounting for: Extraction and processing costs Recovery rates (not all metal is recoverable) Royalties, taxes, and capital expenditures Time value of money over the life of the mine Still, it gives a sense of the scale. It does indeed. Suggested here at $2.20 a couple of years ago (adjusted for its reverse split) and now around $3.20, I’m gambling — with money I can truly afford to lose — that: (1) the price of gold and silver may rise further, and/or (2) yet more gold and silver may be found to lie under HYMC’s 64,000 acres, and/or (3) someone may one day come along and acquire HYMC for (say) 5% of the value its reserves, which would give us a modest homerun. Alternatively, gold and silver prices could fall, the estimated reserves could prove over-estimated (or too expensive to mine economically), or the company could run out of cash, leaving us with nothing but dashed dreams and bitter recriminations. Speaking of which . . . BOREF – Even if I could find a broker that trades it, I wouldn’t sell (and to whom?!). But as the years turn into decades and the decades pile up, I’m beginning to think air travel may be superseded by teleportation before we ever see a dime. SQNS – A big disappointment, they seem now to be trying a Hail Mary speculation on Bitcoin. I suppose that if Trump so craters the dollar that Bitcoin replaces it as the world’s reserve currency, SQNS could yet pay off; but I hope not. PRKR – I haven’t sold a share. I still have this naive faith that justice will prevail. ANIX, CNF, RNGE, UNIT, VERU, OPRT — high hopes for all. One of the few names I’ve suggested that’s not a swing-for-the-fences speculation is CHRB. This odd little “senior note” has been paying us its outsized $2.125 annual dividend even as it’s climbed from the $13.50 we paid toward the promised August 31, 2026 $25 pay-off. Not a home run, but a solid hit. BONUS Trump’s CFPB rollback will cost Americans $18 billion a year, consumer groups say.