Author: A.T.

This is a little unfair — but not much.  Click here and see if you agree:

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

With his first swallow, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Joe gets it too. . . .

And it goes on from there.  How much of it do you agree with?

Zac Bissonnette quotes Lincoln . . .

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

And then — “150 years of investment in education and social progress later” — President-Elect Donald Trump:

Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got “swamped” (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. So much for being a movie star – and that was season 1 compared to season 14. Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary.

November 8 was a great victory for Vladimir Putin, clearly.  Less so, Trump voters may come to realize, for the rest of us.

Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda — updated.

Oh!  And good news: wages are up 2.9% year over year, as private sector job growth continues its 6-year record streak.

Our last ill-qualified president ignored CIA warnings delivered to him days before his inauguration that Bin Laden was a “tremendous” “immediate” threat to our security . . . and then an August 2001 intelligence briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”

Trump is even less qualified and not only ignores but mocks the intelligence community . . . not least for its having to delay his “hacking” briefing until today.  (Except that it was in fact scheduled for today all along.)

The only thing longer than his list of outrages is this list of Obama’s achievements.

(Actually, that’s not true.  The first list has 230 items; the second, just 50.)

But unless you’re truly bored or masochistic, ignore the first list. The things Republicans have said about him are all too true. No need to review; we seem to be getting fresh examples every day.

It’s the second list that’s worth reading.

Imagine how much longer it could have been if the Republican Congress had not made it their game plan from Day One to block virtually everything he tried to do, even if they had previously proposed it themselves.  (E.g., the deficit reduction commission they co-sponsored — but filibustered once he signed on.)

Have a great weekend.

Yesterday, if you missed it (posted late on account of three kinds of margaritas with increasingly unpronounceable names), I offered a Borealis update and — more important — an editorial explaining why corporate CEOs will help the President-Elect distort the truth about his “unbelievable success” bringing back jobs.

Today, I offer these two Bernie Sanders segments: here and then here.

I was neutral in the Democratic primary — I didn’t even cast my superdelegate vote — admiring both candidates very much.  Had the KGB and FBI and 30 years of Republican disinformation not managed to give her opponent his otherwise legitimate Electoral College victory, Hillary would have made an outstanding president. It’s tragic (and outrageous) what happened. But Bernie’s clarity and moral force are also most welcome as he helps to lead the way forward.  Watch.

But first, for those long-suffering shareholders in Borealis: the latest annual report (covering 18 months) and information circular showing how many shares of each of its subsidiaries the company owns.  There is a lot of information here — and even more in the annual reports of the subsidiaries, ChorusMotors, WheelTug, Power Chips, Cool Chips, and the others.

The biggest takeaways — to me: (a) this is actually a serious effort, whether or not it ever actually pays off; (b) WheelTug’s FAA application has been filed.

The current stock price values the entire company at $25 million (5 million shares at about $5 each).  As noted here ad nauseam, paintings have sold for ten times as much. And dozens of (I would argue) equally speculative companies routinely command market caps more like $500 million, on the chance (for example) the drug they’re developing may turn out to work.  If Borealis were given the same valuation — a gambler’s $500 million bet that maybe one day it will be worth five or ten times as much — the stock would be $100, not $5.

(A tidbit in the Cool Chips report: “We are now funded with the purchase of 36,000 shares of WheelTug plc at the then market price of US$126/share. WheelTug plc has gotten most of the Borealis Family’s attention and most all of its funding. This share sale was for the benefit of all the companies in the family and we expect sales to be made at ever-increasing share prices. The first sale point will be a few shares at US$270/share, and we expect within a couple of years to see 4-figure sale prices, as long as WheelTug plc progresses as expected.”  If 36,000 shares of WheelTug really sold for $126 a share, and if any are ever sold at $270, that would be another suggestion that Borealis shares — controlling roughly one WheelTug share each — are worth more than $5.  That said, the last decade’s experience with this stock suggests potential investors should not get carried away.  Buy shares, if at all, with money you can truly afford to lose; and always use “limit orders” when buying, as the stock is very thinly traded.)

And now a word about the “unbelievable success” top Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told ABC’s Jonathan Karl the President Elect has already had bringing 6,000 jobs back to the U.S. (which he arguably did not do — see below — and which, in any event, should be seen in the context of the 39 million net new private sector jobs created under the Clinton and Obama administrations, versus the fewer than one million created under the most recent 12 years of Republican administrations).

From the New York Times:

President-elect Donald Trump would like everybody to believe that his election is energizing the economy by forcing businesses to create thousands of jobs in the United States. And companies like Sprint seem perfectly happy to go along with this fiction because they know they can profit handsomely by cozying up to Mr. Trump.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said Sprint’s top executive had told him the company would add 5,000 jobs “because of what’s happening and the spirit and the hope.” But it turns out that the jobs are part of a previous commitment by Sprint’s parent company, SoftBank, whose chief executive said at Trump Tower in December that it would invest $50 billion and create 50,000 jobs in the United States. And even that promise was part of a $100 billion technology fund that SoftBank announced in October, before the election. In sum, Mr. Trump’s statement was hot air, just like his tweet in which he thanked himself for an increase in a consumer confidence index last month. . . .

The whole thing is worth reading. And if you believe we need a strong press now more than ever, subscribe to the New York Times and Washington Post yourself.

Finally, my post for tomorrow will be these Bernie Sanders clips: here and then here.  But just in case you can’t wait . . . I say, “right on.”

Amazing. Two minutes. Enjoy.  (Thanks, Mel!) If you have any idea how he does it, do tell!

Eight minutes with Bill Maher on Donald Trump. I’m sorry for the blue language, but otherwise spot on.  He says we should start by combining the Dakotas — why on earth should they have 4 senators when his home state of California, with 25 times as many people, has just 2?

Those of you who still use Managing Your Money for DOS — orphaned 23 years ago but still better than Quicken (if you ask me), much as Sanskrit may be better than English (i.e., sure, maybe — but it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to switch from English to Sanskrit now) — may be pleased to know Mike Starkey has discovered it runs better under the free DOS emulator  vDOS than DOSBox, and should be sharing settings and tips in the next week or two . . . but even more intrigued to know he’s begun running it himself on this Lenovo stick, a tiny $100 Windows 10 computer you can essentially stick in your pocket.  More on that forthcoming from Mike this month, I hope, too.  Hurray for 2017!

The year just ending had more than a few bright spots.  As a happy-gene guy, I loved this report from CNN.com.

Here’s a to a better-than-expected 2017.

I appreciate your readership.

Gray Chang: “Why would someone pay $5.95 for one of your e-books when they can get the hardcover for $0.01 (plus $3.99 shipping)?”

☞ Ah, well.  To save even that penny (and the $3.99 shipping), get them free through Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Lending Library.  (Here and here.)

My friend Ira offers this Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda. Having watched Republicans block much of President Obama’s agenda, the authors see lessons for thwarting the worst of Trump’s initiatives and appointments.

Ira also offers this ingenious extension you can install in Chrome or Firefox that fact-checks Trump’s tweets.  Even if you don’t tweet, you’ll find it of interest.

If you have 30 seconds to support Senator Elizabeth Warren’s request to audit Trump’s finances, Ira has discovered that “the way to make sure your support counts is to email administrators Katherine Siggerud and Timothy Minnelli.”  Something along these lines:

Subject:  Audit for President-Elect Trump’s financial concerns

Dear Ms. Siggerud and Mr. Minnelli:

I’m writing in support of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s request for an audit of our incoming President’s finances, to prohibit conflicts of interest that would prevent him from carrying out the responsibilities of the office without corrupt influence.  His tax returns almost must be disclosed.

Sincerely . . .

And finally — thank you for all this, Ira! — he offers this protest music video featuring his friend Harry Belafonte.

So good.

Yesterday I linked to billionaire Nick Hanauer’s famous TED Talk wherein he explains why the rich are not the job creators.

Today, his subsequent talk (or transcript).

. . . I see pitchforks, as in angry mobs with pitchforks, because while people like us plutocrats are living beyond the dreams of avarice, the other 99 percent of our fellow citizens are falling farther and farther behind. . . .

[T]he problem isn’t that we have some inequality. Some inequality is necessary for a high-functioning capitalist democracy. The problem is that inequality is at historic highs today and it’s getting worse every day. And if wealth, power, and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th-century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks.

So I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened. There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising. The pitchforks will come for us if we do not address this. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when. And it will be terrible when they come for everyone, but particularly for us plutocrats. . . .

At the rate we’re going, he notes, the top 1% of Americans — who earned 8% of all national income in 1980 and now earn 20% — will earn 30%. Leaving the bottom 50% of us — who earned 18% of the nation’s income in 1980 — to earn just 6%.

As Donald Trump and the Republican Congress seek to eliminate the estate tax on billionheirs . . . and to slash taxes yet further on the wealthy (like himself) . . . while blocking hikes in the minimum wage and killing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau . . . they should listen to or read Nick’s full argument. It’s not just the threat of pitchforks; it’s that rising inequality is terrible for business as well.

Read his argument.  Share it with everyone on your list.  Especially with the Republicans who represent you in Congress and your state legislature.

(Or do they more faithfully represent the Koch brothers, and the other funders of the REDMAP project that put so many of them there?)

Why there just might be enough jobs in the future, even with driverless trucks.

A TED Talk by David Autor — or just read the transcript.

. . . It’s foolish to say there’s nothing to worry about. Clearly we can get this wrong. If the US had not invested in its schools and in its skills a century ago with the high school movement, we would be a less prosperous, a less mobile and probably a lot less happy society. But it’s equally foolish to say that our fates are sealed. That’s not decided by the machines. It’s not even decided by the market. It’s decided by us and by our institutions. . . .

One thing’s for sure (if you ask me): lowering taxes on the rich won’t finance the infrastructure revitalization we so badly need, that would increase productivity and create so many jobs.

Nor finance the debt-free higher education that would prepare today’s kids for future jobs and reduce inequality.

(Nor finance Trump’s proposed military buildup that would rob us all.*)

Lowering tax rates on those best off is not the key to economic growth — George W. Bush proved that.

Raising them — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama proved — does not kill economic growth.

The rich are not the job creators, as Nick Hanauer’s fundamentally important six-minute TED talk explains.

As Autor argues: “Clearly, we can get this wrong.”  But we don’t have to.

*”Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” — DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Here.

Boy, will we ever miss them.

Happy and Merry . . .