Author: A.T.

In case the six-minute Nick Hanauer TED talk I keep linking to hasn’t persuaded your uncle, now comes Marcus Ryu to seal the deal.  Please read and forward.

. . . I am what certain politicians call a “job creator.” Two recessions ago, in 2001, five partners and I founded a software company in Silicon Valley. After great difficulty and great good fortune, that company grew to serve customers in over 30 countries, generating over $500 million in annual revenue and employing more than 2,000 professionals in high-skilled, high-paying jobs — a large majority of them in the United States. Today I am the chief executive of that company, Guidewire Software, valued on the New York Stock Exchange at over $5 billion.

As an entrepreneur myself and a friend to many others, I know that lower tax rates will not motivate more people to start companies. . . .

He makes such a persuasive case — it’s a quick and easy read.

President Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy, even as the economy was weak, and we gained 23 million jobs during his eight years.  President Bush then slashed them — and we gained fewer than 1 million during his eight years, even as we massively increased inequality, exploded the National Debt, and allowed our infrastructure to crumble.  President Obama raised them again and we enjoyed 75 consecutive months of job growth — more than 2 million jobs each of the last six years of his presidency.

So if your overarching goal is to ease the burdens of the wealthy, stand with Trump and the Republicans — National Debt and crumbling infrastructure be damned.

But if you’d like to see millions of Americans put to work at good jobs revitalizing our infrastructure, and/or health care co-pays and deductibles reduced — and inequality reduced — the better plan is to raise taxes a little (not a lot!) on those who can best afford to pay.

As our vulgar, incompetent, egomaniacal president — our “national embarrassment,” as Colin Powell put it long before he, Trump, came within 3 million votes of his opponent (with the help of a massive post-KGB disinformation campaign) — as he seems poised to wreck the deal  by which we halted Iran’s rush to nuclear weapons, Madeleine Albright writes:

It’s hard to overstate how disastrous abandoning the Iran nuclear deal would be. But that’s exactly what this administration is threatening to do.

Now, I served as Secretary of State, but you don’t have to be a foreign policy expert to know that we’re all safer if Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons.

U.S.-Iranian relations are complicated, I know from experience. I tried to begin a dialogue with Iran decades ago, but unfortunately, they weren’t ready. So when the Obama administration — with the support of China, Russia, and our closest allies – negotiated a nuclear accord with Iran, I understood the historic nature of this diplomatic achievement.

Let’s be clear: The deal is working. Both the UN’s independent nuclear watchdog and our own State Department have certified that Iran is adhering to the terms of the agreement. Which means, if we unilaterally withdraw from the deal, we’re simply breaking our promises — and that carries great danger on many fronts.

Security for the entire world is at stake — we can’t allow this deal to be undercut by a reckless administration.

Going back on this deal would embolden the hardliners in Iran. It would allow them to resume nuclear activities that were blocked by the deal. It would weaken our hand in the region and hamper our ability to influence the very behavior about which this administration is rightly concerned.

And it would send a message to our allies and our adversaries alike that America can’t be trusted to keep its word, crippling our capacity for diplomacy. If America reneges on this agreement even though Iran is upholding its commitments, why would North Korea even consider curbing their own nuclear program?

This administration has already backed out of the 195-nation Paris climate accord, diminishing our international standing. Now they’re considering withdrawing from a crucial nuclear agreement with Iran and five other world powers.

The United States can’t keep giving away our seat at the table and relinquishing our global leadership. We can’t replace serious diplomacy with reckless threats and bluster.

Please join me in urging the administration to do the right thing, the responsible thing, and maintain our commitment to the Iran Deal:

https://my.ofa.us/This-Deal-Is-Working

Thanks,

Madeleine Albright

If everything has gone according to plan, a friend and I have hurtled through the air across an ocean, dining, sleeping, and waking to eggs Florentine — all this and first-run movies on a 500-ton double-decker — and are now, as we speak, checking out the Colosseum, where two seconds ago in the scheme of things 65,000 Romans would have been cheering on their favorite gladiator or bestiarius and wondering how a f——g moron like Nero ever got to be emperor.  Overhead, a Roman eagle soars.  What if I could soar like that, some season ticketholders surely day-dreamed.  And now we can.  (We can also speak into our iPhones in English and have it come out seconds later in Italian.  Free.  È incredibile come?  (How incredible is that?)  Ronzoni, sono buoni, as my father once wrote (heretofore, my only Italian).  He also wrote, “Man, oh Manischewitz, what a wine,” later the exclamation of choice on the surface of the moon, but I digress.  (Though I imagine the ancient Romans also fantasized about being able to walk on the moon.)

Who knows what’s happened over the weekend?

So if this week’s posts seem even less relevant than usual, it’s because I couldn’t figure out the power adapter in my room or am just having too much fun.  But here are a couple of items from last week:

SUCCESS!!!

Stanford’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes released a study last week that shows (page 46) New York’s Success Academy students gaining 137 extra days in reading achievement and 239 extra days in math compared to their district peers.  That’s a lot of days in a 180-day school year.  It suggests that the 15,500 scholars in the 46 Success Academy schools got roughly double the learning per day of attendance compared to their peers.

As always: The success of Success is a thrilling story that points the way toward breaking the cycle of poverty, crime and despair.  Great for those 15,500 kids — and their kids and kids’ kids, but also for society as a whole.  Imagine the social, civic, and fiscal/economic impact.

Some charter schools suck.  Many are mediocre.  But when you find a public-school formula that works so spectacularly well?  And has been proven in not just one or two schools for just one or two years, but now 46, some of them for a decade?  Spread the word.

IRONY

Man Whose Life Was Saved By Married Lesbian Cop To Speak At National Convention Of Anti-LGBT Groups.

JOY

Last week I got to shake hands with Norman Lear on the occasion of his 95th birthday.  Even THIS I got to experience. Talk about American heroes!

Jim Burt: “Of all the daily Republican outrages, the one that’s getting the least attention in proportion to the danger it holds – in my opinion – is the ongoing destruction of the Affordable Care Act by deliberate sabotage: the diversion of public funds appropriated for the purpose of promoting enrollment to propaganda against the law; the 50% reduction in the enrollment period; the torrent of lies about the efficacy of the program.  To combat this, a range of responses is needed, including efforts by states and by private charity to take up the slack in promotion and education concerning enrollment during the truncated period, but there should also be a sustained effort by Democrats.  Just as Cato the Censor, in ancient Rome, moved a nation to undertake the final conquest of its rival, Carthage, by tacking on ‘Carthago delenda est‘ — ‘Carthage must be destroyed’ — to every public statement and private encounter, Democrats should include a reference to the sabotage of Obamacare:  ‘Senator, what do you think the Fed is going to do about interest rates?’  ‘Great question, but first I have to call your attention to the ongoing efforts of the Trump administration to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, which will ultimately hurt almost all of us.  As to interest rates, . . .'”

Really: the sabotage is deliberate.  They even admit it.

Trump and the Republicans have no clue how to provide “everybody great health care” — let alone at a “tiny fraction of the price” — but told us they did.

What a con job.

The main driver of their effort is repeal of the tax on the rich imposed to help make health care affordable.  Republican officeholders’ first priority is always cutting taxes for the rich.  Presidential George W. Bush said that “by far the vast majority” of his proposed tax cut would go to “people at the bottom of the economic ladder” — a bald-faced, trillion-dollar lie.  Trump tells us he wants a massive tax cut for the middle class that would not benefit him or the rich — but what they’ve proposed would massively benefit him and the rich, so: another trillion dollar bald-faced lie.

It is to cry.

But as soon as the tears dry, go see Kingsman: The Golden Circle.  If you saw the first one, it’s likely already on your list.  But there’s no need to have seen the first to love the sequel.  The basic test: do you like James Bond movies?  These are in that genre, but fresher — and crazy fun.  (Warning: violence!)

Have a great weekend.

UPDATE to yesterday’s post on our voting against United Nations condemnation of the death penalty for gay sex: Snopes here provides the other side of the story — basically, that the U.S. felt the resolution was too broad, urging nations that have not yet abolished the death penalty altogether to consider doing so.  To judge for yourself, here is the resolution.  While we’re at it, if you think people aren’t wrongfully sentenced to death, here’s Jon Oliver on the glaring flaws in forensic science. (The clip itself is at the end of the article.)

Now have a great weekend.

So what do you think of the death penalty?

Even if you’re for it in some circumstances, what do you think of imposing it as the punishment for consensual gay sex?  Too harsh?

So what would you think of a UN resolution calling for an end to that?

And — the real question — what would you think of a country that votes against that resolution?

Welcome to America, folks: your country just did.

[UPDATE: This, at Snopes, provides the other side of the story — basically, the U.S. felt it was too broad, urging nations that have not yet abolished the death penalty altogether to consider doing so.  To judge for yourself, here is the resolution.  While we’re at it, if you think people aren’t wrongfully sentenced to death, here’s Jon Oliver on the glaring flaws in forensic science (the clip itself is at the end of the article).]

Meanwhile: Michigan lets taxpayer-funded child-placement agencies reject gay couples regardless of their ability to provide good homes for abandoned kids.  Here‘s a 30-second spot — “The Kids Pay The Price” — meant to debut on Fox but rejected by the network.  And here‘s the ACLU’s take on that.

My onw view: some prospective gay parents, like some prospective Irish or Hindu or elderly or disabled parents, may be unfit to provide good homes.  But the determination should be based not on race or religion or gender identity — you don’t think Ellen DeGeneres could be a good mom? Anderson Cooper, a good dad? — but on the character, motivation, and resources of the applicants.

No?

Here’s the Warren Buffett story.  The kinds of stocks I own are mostly “special situations” — but make no mistake: in a bear market, everything goes down.  So it’s arguably a mistake to hold stocks in advance of a bear market (except: what if you’re years early in selling, plus the taxes you might incur?).  But it’s more certainly a mistake, and a more common one at that, to give up — or panic — at — or near — the eventual bottom, before the thus-far-inevitable recovery.

Here’s what Stephen Colbert had to say about Las Vegas.  I have the feeling that he — or Jimmy Kimmel or Jon Stewart or Jane Pauley or Oprah — or you, esteemed reader — would make a far better president than the one the Russians selected for us.

So Saudi women are going to be able to drive — a small but hopeful sign.

Islam is at war with itself.  It is desperately in the world’s interest to have the forces of modernization win.

With that in mind, I commend this remarkable 6-minute clip — Shiite clergyman calls on Muslims to imitate Jews, who “were killed and burned” by the Nazis, but emerged to win “respect of the world through science.”

“If it’s real,” I wrote Parvez Sharma (A Sinner In Mecca), “how do we get every Muslim in the world to see it?”

He did some checking and reported that yes, this man is a Shia cleric and, yes, the clip has been subtitled accurately. But no it’s not gone viral.

To me, at least, it’s beyond fascinating.  Does one of you know how to upload it to YouTube?

Tikkun Olam.

As patriotic Americans increasingly focus on the effective attack we and much of the rest of the world have  been — and are — under from the murderous kleptocrat Vladimir Putin and the successor to the KGB, whence he came . . . an attack our unstable, incompetent, vulgar, constantly-lying President seems almost to encourage . . . I hope Republicans in Congress will begin to consider removing him.  They can, after all, interpret “treason” — let alone “misdemeanors” and “emoluments” — as they see fit.

How long will they tolerate this?  We’re at war — and we’re losing.

It seems quite possible that more Americans will die in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Maria than died on 9/11.  It’s too early to know; one certainly hopes this will not be the case; but it’s hard to live without food, water, or — in some cases — medicine and medical care.

One difference is that 9/11 came, quite literally out of the blue– apart from Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S. and other urgent general warnings the President had — while Maria was predicted for all the world to see days in advance.

Where were the contingency plans in case it did hit?  Did anyone at FEMA think Puerto Rico’s electrical grid could withstand a category 4 or 5 hurricane?  Why were ships and helicopters and supplies not pre-positioned to arrive within two days rather than three weeks?

Are there not such plans on the shelf for the inevitable and long-overdue Southern and Northern California quakes?  For the even longer-overdue and potentially more devastating Cascadia quake?  For outbreaks of various diseases?  For a suitcase nuke?  For cyber attacks?

And don’t quite a few of these contingency plans involve the Pentagon in some way?

If not — if such contingency plans don’t already exist — wouldn’t they be a good idea?

I’m not saying a President Hillary Clinton would not also have dropped the ball on Puerto Rico, bragging how “fantastic” things are going there and attacking Puerto Ricans who disagree.  But somehow I suspect she would not.  I suspect she would have known it took 20,000 troops to assist with Hurricane Andrew in 1992 — impacting just one-tenth as many Americans.

But elections have consequences, as Vladimir Putin clearly knows.

Here is David Remnick’s extensive debrief with Hillary, in the New Yorker.  How is she dealing with all this?

And here, also in the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin’s brief review of Justice Gorsuch. 

. . . In his first fifteen cases on the Court, he joined Thomas, the most right-wing Justice, every time—and he even joined all of Thomas’s concurring opinions. . . .

I would just add that when Bush won the presidency with fewer votes than Gore, he got to add Roberts and Alito to the Court, putting Clarence Thomas (his dad’s pick), in the majority.  That led to Citizen’s United and McCutcheon, which gave the rich and powerful more electoral clout; and to Shelby County, gutting the Voting Rights Act, which gave the little guy less.

So there was the loathsome Mitch McConnell, who (as you’ll read in the Remnick piece) would not allow a bipartisan acknowledgement of the ongoing Russian attack (might the voters have had a right to know it was real?) . . . and who had made President Obama’s failure his party’s number one goal . . . saying that, no, President Obama could not fill Justice Scalia’s seat, as the Constitution prescribed.

Though a majority of voters had chosen Obama in 2008 and 2012, it would only be fair, he said, to wait nearly a year to see whether the voters still leaned toward having a Democrat fill that seat.  Which they did by a margin of millions of votes — even with the Russian attacks and Comey’s bizarre choice to suppress acknowledgement of that investigation “so close to an election” while announcing the “email” investigation.

They wanted a Justice like Merrick Garland, a moderate progressive.

Instead, we got another Clarence Thomas.

It is to weep.

McConnell and Trump deserve each other.

America, this wonderful country of ours, deserves neither.

And no, I don’t mean tonight’s premier of the reconstituted “Will and Grace”, though there’s that, too.

I mean Rachel Maddow’s first segment from last night, that begins with Russia (presumably) blowing up Ukraine’s arsenals — so their army will have no ammunition — and then tells you more about their cyber attack on our election — and lots of other elections — and our society — and even a small town in Idaho — than any of us would ever have imagined.  (The Idaho part comes in the following segment.)  Headlined, “Expansionist Russia promotes division everywhere else,” it must have Ronald Reagan spinning in his grave.  If you are any kind of red-blooded American, you simply have to watch to see how the Russians are attacking — and beating — us.  And pass the link on to everyone you know, in every way you know how.

Revlon, suggested here in May at $20, has suddenly jumped to $27.50 as I type this, and a couple of you have wondered why.  I, of course, don’t know.  But presumably it’s on news that its largest shareholder, Ron Perlman, has been adding to his stake, most recently buying 106,784 shares at an average price of $20.56.

Friend of this page Bryan Norcross writes in the Washington Post:

All Americans should be horrified by the depth of the tragedy in Puerto Rico. While we can’t forget our friends who are suffering in Texas and Florida — especially in the Keys — the Puerto Rican tragedy is on a different scale.

. . . [The] apocalyptic destruction combined with large-scale suffering remind[s] me of the scenes of devastation and isolation I saw after Hurricane Andrew demolished the suburbs south of Miami in August 1992.  . . . In the end, the U.S. Army was required to bring order to the madness.

. . .  civilian systems for dealing with a major disaster cannot handle a cataclysm, no matter the skill of the administrators or the intensity of the effort.

. . . The U.S. military is increasingly becoming involved in the Puerto Rican response effort, which is a good sign, but the comparisons with the eventual Andrew response are stark. The Andrew catastrophe zone was, perhaps, 250 square miles and involved about 350,000 people — closer to 100,000 after those that could resettle elsewhere did. It took about 20,000 troops and military-support personnel to provide security, housing, communications, and other critical services after Andrew. They were still operating the Homestead tent city eight months after the storm.

Puerto Rico is about 3,500 square miles and home to about 3.4 million people. Having seen firsthand the crisis that developed in the first few weeks after Andrew, and the seeming endlessness of the 1992 disaster zone, it is impossible for me to imagine the scope of the calamity engulfing Puerto Rico. And, having learned that only the military has the ability to deliver men, materiel, organization and leadership in the time frame required, I am left to wonder why that Andrew lesson wasn’t applied to this catastrophic situation, which is at least an order of magnitude larger.

FEMA should have planned for this possible, foreseeable — and now entirely real — catastrophe the week before Maria hit, not the week after.  If 20,000 troops were required in Homestead, a much larger force is required in Puerto Rico.

And what an opportunity to put Puerto Rican American citizens to work building modern, resilient infrastructure for the next 100 years — an effort that in itself would kick start their troubled economy . . . and for far less than we’ve spent trying to build Iraq.