Author: A.T.

Disaster:  More people have health insurance; none of us can be turned down for affordable care if we develop a pre-existing condition; and now, Bloomberg reports, Obamacare will cost 20% less than projected.

We’re clearly on the wrong track and should repeal rather than improve this law — as Republican leaders have been saying all along.  Doing so would get rid of the 3.8% surtax on investment income above $250,000 that helps to pay for it.  If we want greater inequality and a tougher life for those already struggling, we must repeal Obamacare.

But that’s not all.

We should abandon the failed economic strategy of the last six years.  The Republicans were right all along in predicting disaster, just as they were when they predicted disaster from Bill Clinton’s first budget and voted unanimously against it.

If Republicans can be trusted with one thing, it’s good honest judgment about economic policy.  (Also: good judgment on science and in their choice of men and women to lead the world in the event of presidential incapacitation.)

This is, after all, serious stuff.  They are the grown-ups.  They don’t sugar coat.  “By any standard,” they tell us, “Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country.”

They will repeal Obamacare, build a pipeline for Canadian oil to flow out into the world market, and all will be right with America, as inequality continues to widen, our infrastructure continues to crumble, and the climate continues to change.

THE INSPIROGRAPH

John Seiffer:  “You haven’t posted a time-waster in a while – here’s a great one.  Use the arrow keys to get it to move.”

SCHOPENHAUER

My newest “book on tape” is The Year of Reading Dangerously read to me — delightfully — by the author himself in the Audible edition. (The little “ding!” he employs to signify a footnote may itself be worth that format’s higher price.)  And it was there my ears stumbled on this quote . . .

“It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them. But one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents.”

. . . from Schopenhauer — Schopenhauer! — who was way too famous (or just too German?) for anyone to use his first name (Arthur) . . . written in — and this is the part that floored me — 1851.  More than 150 years ago!  Long before the effortless one-clicking on Amazon, yet his essay addressed — at least glancingly — the same problem I have:  I buy too many books / can’t help myself / bursting at the seams with them / may someday soon be murdered by a tower of them toppling onto my head / even sometimes buy the physical book after “reading” the Audible version, to have it tangibly in my home (they should offer a discount for that)* — yet, and this is the punch line you surely knew was coming:  can’t begin to find time to read most of them.  Maybe one in 20.

My intentions are always good.  I generally mean to read them.  But I am a horribly slow reader and have so little time in the first place given my extensive responsibilities to Words With Friends.  (“Damn you, Zynga!” [right fist and eyes upraised to the heavens, ala Jon Stewart].)

But now, at least, I’ve “read” one sentence of Schopenhauer.  I may tackle Nietzsche next.

*Ding!  I put quotes around “reading” because it always made Charles crazy when I said I had “read” something I had actually listened to.  A voracious eyeball reader, he would have none of my protest that, yes, I had read it, just through a different portal.

COSMIC THINKING: THE NEXT 15 YEARS

As you know, I love this kind of stuff.  I think you will too.  Under two minutes.  (Thanks, Tom Stolze!)

MISINFORMATION

Marc B.:  “Last week’s post on ‘two pernicious misconceptions’ (you wrote, ‘there is a lot of misinformation out there’) brought up a couple points that struck me as ‘misinformation’ on your part.  First, you implied that Bush was the cause of the global economy on the brink of catastrophe.  (‘Bush handed Obama a $1.5 trillion deficit and a global economy on the brink of catastrophe.’)  The blame for the global economy, and even the US recession, cannot be solely placed on one political party…both political parties had a hand in the US downturn, but on a global scale, the blame is very widespread, including governments, central banks, banks, bank regulators, bank regulations, individual best interest, and the list goes on and on.”

☞ No question, the world is too complex to suggest that Bush alone could all its problems.  But he chose to invade Iraq; he chose to slash taxes on the rich.  In combination, that greatly weakened our national balance sheet.  He and his administration were at the helm as the real estate bubble inflated and inflated and inflated — and if someone like you or me could see it (and I was hardly alone in writing about it over and over and over), surely the Bush folks could have spotted it, too, and worked to avoid or at least minimize the worst damage.  In any event, my point was that where Clinton handed Bush a surplus (and might have had something to do with the success of his eight ears in office), Bush handed Obama a $1.5 trillion deficit that should not be blamed on Obama (who hadn’t yet even been elected when the fiscal year began), even if you think it’s unfair to blame it on Bush.  Still, you raise a fair point.  Just because a president may get a daily briefing report titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” or reports of a massive economy-threatening real estate bubble doesn’t necessarily mean he or she can be blamed for ignoring them.  Only with hindsight, perhaps, can we really know which of the thousands of reports and briefings a president gets should have been given special focus, and presidents do not operate (or vacation) with the benefit of hindsight.

One last piece of this is the Republican misinformation that (essentially) “it was all Barney Frank’s fault.”  In the back of Barney Frank’s forthcoming memoir — praised by Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Elizabeth Warren alike — there’s an appendix that just totally blows all that out of the water.

Back to Mark B. — whose comments, I want to be clear, are thoughtful and appreciated, even if my response to them is . . . energetic.

“The second part of potential ‘misinformation’ is your discussion of the $1.5T deficit in 2009 under Bush — regardless of the cause (some/much due to his prior policies), the US was in recession at the time (NBER dates the recession start in December 2007).  You state, when explaining the high debt that Obama has racked up, ‘there’s at least a reason: pulling out of a nose-dive toward depression requires massive deficit spending.’  If you find it OK for Obama to have the high deficit because the US was heading toward depression, then Bush’s 2009 deficit must be given the same free pass—admittedly it may have been much his fault, but once the country is in that position, based on your own argument, Bush is allowed the same free pass that you are giving Obama.”

☞ Ummm . . . no.  I think no president who serves for eight years is absolved of some responsibility for how he’s attempted to manage the economy and national balance sheet.  But again, let’s say Bush did the best anyone could.  He had to slash tax revenues from the wealthy.  He had to spend trillions on those wars.  He had to starve the regulatory agencies and the IRS.  My main point in all this, however much or little you may blame Bush, is that it’s nuts to blame Obama for the debt it took to pull out of the nose-dive.  Yet Republicans unfailingly do.

It was under Reagan, Bush, and Bush — Republicans! — that the gradual decline in our National Debt, from 122% of GDP in 1946 down to 30% when Reagan took office, was reversed and sent soaring back upward.  And it was under Democrats that the upward trend was reversed — first Clinton and now Obama.  Both of whom saw massive job creation on their watches despite the Republican insistence that taxing the best off kills jobs.

Joel Grow:  “Another way to look at it . . . in just 20 years of Supply-Side under Reagan/Bush/Bush, they ran up 75% of the debt for our entire 233-year history. George W. ran up over 50% of our 233-year debt all on his own — and with a GOP Congress for 6 of his 8 years. Where were the deficit hawks then?”

☞ Where indeed?  We need moderate, sensible folks willing to compromise and make smart decisions that invest in the future.  Deficits to fight unnecessary wars or fund ineffective programs or make unnecessary tax cuts are bad.  Deficits to fund investments in our kids’ health, education, and civic development, or to fund R&D or to fund infrastructure for the next 100 years are in our best interest, so long as in most years the overall Debt grows slower than the economy as a whole, as it did from 1946-1980, did under Bill Clinton, and now finally has begun to do again under Barack Obama.

Yesterday I argued two things:

> We don’t have to pay down the National Debt.

> Taxing the wealthy will not cost jobs.

These are fundamental misunderstandings the right has used to great political advantage, benefiting the very best off to the detriment of everyone else.

DEBT: Unless we’re planning to close up shop as a nation, it’s fine to carry debt.  The goal should not be to pay down — let alone pay off — our National Debt; merely to have it grow slower than the economy in most years, as it did from 1946 to 1980.  (If only Reagan/Bush had understood this!  Instead, by slashing taxes on the wealthy, they quadrupled the Debt.  If only the second Bush had understood this!  By slashing those taxes still further, he nearly doubled it — and handed Obama an economy in such nose-dive it required tremendous deficits to set right.  By contrast, Clinton succeeded — and now Obama has succeeded — in cutting the deficit such that the Debt is again shrinking relative to the economy as a whole. Which except in recession years is exactly what you want it to do.)

TAXES:  Redistributing life’s financial burdens back a bit toward the wealthy — after decades of shifting the other way — will not hurt the economy.  I love the wealthy!  In a modest way, I’m one of the wealthy!  But the economy will grow better with less inequality and a more robust middle class.  See yesterday’s post if you’re not already sold on this.

> To help move the President’s agenda with your activism, click here.

> To persuade a friend or loved one to get affordable health coverage, take 56 seconds to watch this — what’s that on your face?! — and then forward it to said friend or loved one.

#

NEXT ISSUE

The last thing I need is more stuff to read; and at $14.95/month for the full slate, Next Issue ain’t cheap.  But consider the upside: unlimited access to current and back issues of 140 magazines, including, I’d guess, most of the ones you already subscribe to . . . whenever you want, wherever you are . . . on your phone, iPad, and computer.  At no cost to the planet.  No paper, no ink, no chemicals, no delivery trucks.  Try it FREE for 60 days and make a note in your calendar to cancel at any time thereafter if it turns out not to be your thing.  [Full disclosure:  If you sign up and don’t cancel, and if I’ve not botched the referral link, I will allegedly get a $25 gift certificate.  Oh, boy!]

STATE OF THE UNION

Vince DeHart:  “Is this a GREAT president, or what? Barack Obama makes me PROUD to be an American!”

Guess what: I agree.  If you missed it, read it here.  Better still, watch the whole thing.

TWO PERNICIOUS MISCONCEPTIONS

The Mitch McConnell crowd believe that “by any standard” the President “has been a disaster for our country.”  And that global warming is a hoax; Darwin’s theory of evolution is hokum (the planet is only a few thousand years old) — and on and on.  Donald Trump seems pretty sure the President was born in Kenya.  Seventy percent of those who voted to reelect George W. Bush believed Iraq had played a role in attacking us on 9/11.

There is a lot of misinformation out there.

Two particularly widespread — pernicious — misconceptions are that we should pay down or pay off our national debt and that raising taxes on the wealthy would hurt the economy.

Not true!

THE DEBT

It’s fine to run deficits so long as we expand our debt more slowly, in most years, than we expand our economy.  This is what we did from 1946, when the National Debt peaked at 122% of GDP, to 1980, when it bottomed out at 30% — before Ronald Reagan arrested that healthy trend.  He — and then George W. Bush — so slashed taxes for the wealthy and ramped up military spending that they sent that 30% debt ratio soaring back up to 100% by the time Bush handed Obama a $1.5 trillion deficit and a global economy on the brink of catastrophe.  (Bill Clinton, in the interim, managed to lower the debt ratio; as Barack Obama has now again begun to do.)

By way of illustration, if we were to run $500 billion deficits for each of the next 50 years but grow GDP at 2.5% plus 2% inflation annually, by 2065 the debt would have ballooned to more than $40 trillion (!!!) . . . yet that seemingly horrifying number would represent less than 30% of GDP — lower than the ratio Reagan inherited from Jimmy Carter.

To try literally to “pay it down” — let alone “pay it off” — by raising taxes sharply and/or slashing spending, would be insanity: it would plunge the economy back into recession and the same nose-diving vicious cycle of unemployment and lower tax receipts and higher safety-net payments — with even higher deficits, not lower — that President Obama managed to pull us out of.

(For those who still insist Obama is responsible for more debt than his predecessors, note, first, that “his” $1.5 trillion 2009 deficit was for the fiscal year that began October 1, weeks before he was even elected and months before he took office — this was clearly Bush’s deficit, not Obama’s.  He was handed such a disaster that the next few years’ deficits were pretty well dictated by Bush’s gross mismanagement.  Never before had we attempted to “finance” wars by cutting taxes, let alone slashing them, as Bush did.)

(Note, also, that while the “Obama” deficits are huge in absolute dollars, relatively speaking they are less so.  Ronald Reagan inherited a National Debt under one trillion dollars — and tripled it.  George W. Bush inherited a National Debt that, because of the Clinton surplus, had actually begun to shrink modestly — and doubled it.  Like Clinton, Obama is once again lowering the debt relative to the size of the economy as a whole.  It’s unlikely to have doubled by the time he leaves office.  But if it does, there’s at least a reason: pulling out of a nose-dive toward depression requires massive deficit spending.  Ronald Reagan and the Bushes had no such reason.)

TAXES

Yes:  If President Obama were proposing to raise $320 billion in added taxes over the next 10 years — and nothing more — that would suck $320 billion of demand out of the economy and might indeed hurt growth and employment, as the Republicans assert with one voice it will.  “It’s a nonstarter!”  Totally unthinkable!  A fantasy!

But here’s what they’re missing (or pretending to miss): the President doesn’t propose to have that money disappear (i.e., reduce the deficit).  Most of it would stay in the economy . . . to pay for community college tuition and books and lodging; to lower taxes (and increase the earned income tax credit) for the middle class and lower income workers.

So money would not be sucked out of the economy — it would simply be redistributed and spent by others.  Which is an appalling concept when the redistribution flows from the wealthy to everyone else . . . but was just fine for the decades when more and more of the nation’s wealth was being redistributed to the wealthy (and especially the 1% of the 1%, who fund so many Republican candidates and dark money groups).

If this unthinkable redistribution is permitted to occur, we will become a society that builds modestly smaller mega-yachts and supports the purchase of modestly fewer $50 million condominiums (this nice one just went for $100 million).  But also a society that has fewer children living in poverty and that invests more in their health and education and — as a result — our future prosperity.  (A healthy, educated workforce is more productive.)

It’s a matter of priorities:  Is your first priority helping the already best off, like Jeb Bush and most other Republicans?  Or is it addressing the problem of our growing inequality and shrinking middle class, like Barack Obama and most other Democrats?

JOB CREATORS

The last little piece of this is the canard that raising taxes on the wealthy kills jobs.  Nick Hanauer decimates that notion in this must-watch short video I keep linking to.

For those who want the newer, longer version, it’s now available here:

What really impresses me about this three-minute video (thanks, Mel), where a young pilot in an emergency situation lands his harrier jet on a “stool,” is not the landing itself but that someone had the foresight to design and deploy such stools in the first place.  Because, when you think about it, was this emergency any more foreseeable — or potentially devastating — than, say, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster that spewed tens of millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf?  Could a consortium of the giant off-shore oil drillers not have pre-deployed one or two containment domes as a sort of cheap insurance policy against just such a disaster?  One day’s transport time from any rig in the Gulf instead of the 87 days it took to cap the BP spill? Have any such been made and pre-deployed even now?

Indeed, isn’t it generally smarter and cheaper to deal with foreseeable catastrophes in advance — like repairing or replacing decrepit bridges before they collapse?  Or mitigating climate change before most of the world’s major cities have to be moved?

How do we persuade the Republicans in Congress to stop blocking the American Jobs Act that would put so many people back to work repairing our crumbling infrastructure?  How do we persuade them to replace the climate deniers who chair the Senate* and House** science committees with people who actually “believe in” science?

The President’s State of the Union proposals make so much common sense.  For the common good.  But for the party that rejects them, priority #1 — as this Tom Toles cartoon reminds us — is enriching the already best off.

*” . . . ‘God’s still up there [says James Inhofe]. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.'”  (Click here for more Inhofe quotes juxtaposed with science-based rebuttals.)

**”Smith . . . has worked to undermine climate science in his position as chairman of the committee. He’s investigated National Science Foundation grants to researchers working on climate change on the premise that those grants aren’t in the ‘national interest.’  Nor does he seem particularly interested in finding out more about climate science. His committee has held more hearings on aliens than they have on climate science . . . “

KIDS AND MALARKEY

So get this:  It now turns out that 6-year-old Alex Malarkey didn’t go to heaven!

KIDS AND MEDICAID

Republican governors spurn federal funds for Medicaid expansion — they care deeply for you until you’re born; thereafter, not so much — yet it turns out, as the Times reports, “Giving [children] health coverage may boost their future earnings for decades. And the taxes they pay on those higher incomes may help pay the government back for some of its investment. The study used newly available tax records measured over decades to examine the effects of providing Medicaid insurance to children. . . . People who had been eligible for Medicaid as children, as a group, earned higher wages and paid higher federal taxes than their peers . . . ”

KIDS AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Oh, by the way?  This clip from Friday’s NBC Nightly News makes it clear Republican climate deniers are making life way more difficult for our kids and theirs.

*WATCH THE STATE OF THE UNION TONIGHT AT 9PM EST*

*The Beatles’ You Never Give Me Your Money, quoting a nursery rhyme.

Today’s a holiday so, technically, you deserve respite.  But I did threaten you with “animal pictures Monday” and who am I not to follow through on a threat?

Have you seen Selma?  I keep thinking, as we celebrate Reverend King’s birthday, that the monumental struggle it recounts — with all the hatred and beatings and murders — culminated in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 . . . and that a 5-4 majority of the Bush Supreme Court recently gutted that Act.*

Shameful, really.  But with power and wealth generally come the desire for more.  Making it harder for black people to vote (because they vote overwhelmingly against the party focused on aiding the wealthy while cutting things like drug treatment programs, as Jeb did) is just one more means to that end.

And now:

ANIMALS!

Each of us Earthlings just doing what it takes to get by.  Five minutes.  I love this.

*I call it the Bush Supreme Court because three of the five votes to gut the Voting Rights Act came from Bush appointees and the other two, from Reagan/Bush appointees.  If Jeb should win the Presidency, he might well have a chance to replace liberal Justices Ginsberg and Breyer with two more Bush conservatives.  (And Scalia and Kennedy, who will be 80, with two 50-year-olds.)  Which is one of the reasons I keep badgering my affluent friends for support.

Animal pictures Monday!  (And if you missed yesterday’s post, at least enjoy these amazing 8 minutes.)

But did you see E.J. Dione, Jr., in the Washington Post commenting on ITEP’s just-released annual findings?

How Government Helps the 1 Percent

You may think that government takes a lot of money from the wealthy and gives it to poor people. You might also assume that the rich pay a lot to support government while the poor pay a pittance.

There is nothing wrong with you if you believe this. Our public discourse is dominated by these ideas, and you’d probably feel foolish challenging them. After Mitt Romney’s comments on the 47 percent blew up on him, conservatives have largely given up talking publicly about their “makers vs. takers” distinction. But much of the right’s rhetoric and many of its policies are still based on such notions.

It is thus a public service that the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has issued a report showing that, at the state and local level, government is indeed engaged in redistribution — but it’s redistribution from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy.

. . .

This gets to something else we don’t discuss much: Public policies in most other well-to-do countries push much harder against inequality than ours do. According to the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), the United States ranks 10th in income inequality before taxes and government transfers. By this measure, Ireland and Britain, and even Sweden and Norway, are more unequal than we are. But after government transfers are taken into account, the good old USA soars to first in inequality. Norway drops to sixth place and Sweden to 13th.

. . .

On its face, the property tax would seem progressive, because big houses are taxed more. But the study finds that on average, “poor homeowners and renters pay more of their incomes in property taxes than do any other income group — and the wealthiest taxpayers pay the least.”  [Renters pay the taxes indirectly, though their rent. – A.T.]

. . . We need to stop claiming that we have a massively redistributive government. We need to stop pretending that poor people are “takers” when they in fact kick in a lot to the common pot.  [And do some backbreaking, mind-numbing, often-unpleasant work for us, by the way. – A.T.]  And we need to replace arguments about “big” and “small” government with a debate over what governments at all levels are doing to make our society more just — or less.

Marco Rubio has been out on the talk show circuit engagingly making his case — always beginning with the fact that his mom and dad were a maid and a bartender, respectively, yet managed to live decently and pout all four kids through college.  Not possible today, he correctly notes.  So maybe he should switch parties and vote for hiking the minimum wage?  (I doubt bartender or maid jobs could be shipped off-shored as a result; or that a machine could easily be found to make beds, scrub toilets, or attract bar patrons with its personality or sex appeal.)  Maybe switch parties and vote for the infrastructure revitalization that would create so many good jobs?  Vote for increased Pell grants and the ability of refinance federal student loans at today’s low rates?  Encourage labor unions . . . not to swing the pendulum all the way back to the featherbedding Fifties, but to restore some balance that values work and workers?

STEVEN III

Bart:  “Re your ‘idiot’ post . . . . You are on to something. Please do not back off.  I am at total loss why our President, the party of D’s, and you, obtain zero traction with the message of the many good things that have been accomplished during President Obama’s term.  Those worthy accomplishments cannot fit on a bumper sticker.  Perhaps that is our problem.  Producing pithy bumper sticker slogans are something the R’s seem to win at with every topic and campaign. And of course there is the constant repetition of lies that then appear to become greater than the truths. . . . ‘Idiots’ seem to run strong in my personal circle of friends and family. What is peculiar is that nearly every one earns a living or directly receives easy-to-identify benefits from federal, state or local government largess, programs or laws. When I attempt to link this to their out out of step ideology, their personal cases become re-interpreted as ‘exceptions.’  Why people vote against their best personal interest remains a total mystery to me.”

Theo:  “Steven’s not an idiot.  What Steven is, however, is selfish, scared, confused, typical, short-sighted, narrow-minded, tunnel-visioned, passionately and blindly attached to his position, unwilling to change his opinion with the facts, and most likely a bigot. He may even be stupid (the determined and careless combination of ignorance plus pride).”

☞ Now, hang on, Theo — you’re talking about my pen pal!  I agree he’s confused (per E.J. Dione, above, he’s hardly alone in having been fed misinformation), and, well, yes, blindly attached to his position (as he would insist we are blindly attached to ours); but not at all sure he’s selfish, let alone a bigot.  One day, you and he and I are all gonna have a beer and find lots of common ground.

RATIONALISM v. EMPIRICISM

Mike Myler:  “Wow: Mike Martin seems to be pretty smart, though I wish you’d condensed his essay that to the point where I could memorize it and recite it to my FOX-viewing friends.  But spot on.  (One of my Republican friends who was silent when I used your climate-change argument — ‘if 97 doctors said your son had cancer and if treated now could survive but 3  doctors said NO he doesn’t have cancer, would you not treat your son?’ — a week later came up with ‘the 97 scientists are cooking the data so they can get more funding.’  It’s hopeless.)”

Pamela:  “Sorry — Mike Martin is tl;dr.  I watched this instead (and you should too).”

☞ Spectacular!  But you could have listened to it while you read Mike’s piece!  Political philosophy set to Beethoven — how cool is that?  (Does everyone know that tl;dr = “too long; didn’t read”?  Now they do.)

Have a great weekend!

Except that with Audible, you don’t need any physical tape or CD — you can start listening right now.

Or as you do your power-walk.

Or sit in traffic on the way to work.

It’s Neil Patrick Harris’s Choose Your Own Autobiography, read by the author, way more fun than reading it with your eyeballs.

Yes, I loved Doogie Howser, MD.  Is it terrible to admit that?  (Watch episodes here.)  (And no, not everyone from Baltimore is a doctor just because her name tag reads MD, but I digress.)  Did you see his eight-minute entirely live 2013 Tony Awards opening number?  Good lord.  Clicking that link alone should make the rest of your Thursday, even without reading its back story.  

And, yes, Broadway is gay — but as he explains here, “it’s not just for gays anymore.”

And he’ll be hosting the Oscars next month.

If you’re a Neil Patrick Harris fan (I have no idea how he met your mother, but maybe that’s why God invented Hulu), you’ll enjoy having him tell you his story.

He even does card tricks for you — with your own deck.

ETRM

The Perfect Segue Dept.:  The aforementioned must-watch eight-minute entirely live Tony number is called . . . “Bigger.”  And that’s just what we Americans have become.  (I had trouble finding good stats on this — I think airlines now assume passengers will be nearly 40 pounds heavier than they were in 1960 or so — but I couldn’t find the link.  Help with that?)

First suggested at 90 cents or so a couple of years ago (read that here), EnteroMedics has a device that appears to help with weight loss.  The company finally got FDA approval yesterday.

From Seeking Alpha:

• The FDA approves EnteroMedics’ (ETRM +20.3%) Maestro Rechargeable System for weight loss treatment in patients at least 18 years old who have been unable to lose weight with a weight loss program and who have a body mass index (BMI) of 35 to 45 with at least one other obesity-related co-morbidity such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes or hypercholesterolemia.
• The Maestro delivers VBLOC vagal nerve blocking therapy via electrodes that are surgically implanted subcutaneously in the abdomen. The electrodes are placed in contact with the trunks of the vagus nerves just above the junction between the esophagus and the stomach. The device intermittently blocks vagal nerve signals throughout the patient’s waking hours.

This could prove good news for the morbidly obese (did I tell you I took my first Carnival cruise?) — and good news for those of us who own the stock.  The entire ETRM gut-busting pie is divided into 69 million slices (“shares”) — and trading volume yesterday exceeded 20 million of them.  The stock opened at $1.20, spiked to $2.05, and then quickly gave up most of the gain, as long-suffering shareholders “sold on the news.”  (As in: “Buy on the rumor, sell on the news.”)  I bought some more at $1.40.  It’s still certainly risky — who’s to say for sure how many docs will recommend Maestro and how many patients will follow that recommendation? — but the stock was $4 when it first looked as though the FDA would approve it; then plunged to 90 cents when it didn’t.  So could it get back to $4 now that it has?

Guru:  “ETRM could be worth 5 to 10 in a few years, depending on how sales go.  It ‘should’ be a great launch and it ‘should’ be bought out.  However, a nation full of obese people is obsessed with spending its money keeping cancer patients alive one more year rather than addressing a monumental public health crisis.”