Author: A.T.

Never have, never will.

I’m afraid of snakes, spiders . . . undomesticated animals of any kind, really . . . hate bugs and poison ivy, fear getting lost, require modern plumbing, broadband, and abundant ice.

I’ll never forget the scene in Christopher Buckey’s Wet Work where the guy jumps off the boat into the Amazon to escape being shot and a candiru swims up his urethra sending him into such brain-exploding pain that he begs to be shot.  Something like that.  The specific memory fades, but my fear remains indelible.

My basic philosophy: “If it’s not paved, it’s not safe.”

That said, I’m gob smacked by the beauty and importance of the remote and untamed; and have long proudly supported the Amazon Conservation Team.

Each year they invite me to “Come on down!”

Each year I write my check with the memo: “Are you crazy?!”

But now we can travel down the Amazon just by clicking here.

CLARIFICATION

Yesterday’s post was accurate (I really did pay 18 cents for HYMC shares) but confusing (because it did not adjust for HYMC’s intervening 1-for-10 reverse split).

The stock is up 10-fold not because it’s up, but because it reverse split.

Post-split, my cost was $1.80, not 18 cents; and the stock is down from $160, not $16.

A COMMON ENEMY

Israel completed its voluntary withdrawal from Gaza on September 12, 2005, forcing all its citizens who were living there to leave.

The Palestinians continued firing rockets and devoted the next 18 years to building 300 miles of tunnels and underground weapons-manufacturing facilities with the stated goal of destroying Israel.

Can you imagine how much steel and cement and wood — and effort — that took?

More to the point, how different things would be if those same resources had been devoted to building a prosperous economy above ground?

Farms and schools and factories?  And good business and cultural relationships with its prosperous neighbor?

The Palestinians and Israelis have a common enemy: Hamas.

A TAX-SELLING OPPTY UPDATE

A couple of weeks ago, I bought more HYMC, at 18 cents [$1.80, adjusted for the subsequent 1-for-10 reverse split], down from its $16 high [$160]; and OPRT, at $2.50, down from $27. 

“The first has cash and gold that might (might!) prove to be worth a lot more than its debt,” I reported. “The second has been the victim of bad management that might (might!) get replaced with good management.”

My thought was, and is, that these stocks may have been unduly beaten down by year-end tax selling.

The update is that someone has gambled $7 million (that I hope he can afford to lose) on OPRT and yesterday filed this with the S.E.C.

Scroll down to “Item 4” for his rationale.  After reading it — you know I can’t resist these things — I bought more.

But first:

Republican Congressman Chip Roy.  An unmissable 31 seconds.

And also:

Did you see yesterday’s White House announcement of nearly 30 new actions to strengthen supply chains critical to America’s economic and national security?

“These actions will help Americans get the products they need when they need them, enable reliable deliveries for businesses, strengthen our agriculture and food systems, and support good-paying, union jobs here at home.”

Saturday, I suggested that government should be “competent, thoughtful, civil, collegial, law-abiding — democratic — and inspired to serve and improve the lives of its citizens.”

These actions are just the latest example of Team Biden’s past three years’ work do just that.

The job is definitely not done yet; things remain really tough for many. But it’s worth noting that we’re doing way better than the rest of the rich world.  And at least most Americans are better off financially now than before the pandemic.

Meanwhile (did you watch those 31 seconds?), the Republicans have been doing all they can to obstruct progress, to keep insulin prices high, keep assault weapons on the street, keep from solving the border crisis, and keep the IRS from collecting taxes owed by billionaires and corporations.

Not to mention Tommy Tuberville.

And now:

Paul London puts the new House Speaker’s economics into perspective.

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. . . What is scary about the new Speaker and the Republican Party in 2023 is how enthusiastically they are recycling 19th century ideas about the government’s role in the economy, and especially about government debt and spending. They are even spreading the view that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs that Simons and many Republicans would certainly have supported are “socialistic,” could be privatized, and therefore that spending for them should be cut back.

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The threats America faced back during the Depression were not socialist programs like public schools and public roads, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but, rather, these guys on the right and these guys on the left.  Both extremes truly suck.  (Though it should be noted that those on the extreme left envisioned a utopia where everyone was respected . . . while those on the right envisioned a master race that would subjugate all others, exterminating some as needed.)

Anyway: read Paul London.

Highly relevant, as Republicans aim to “shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.”

Move to a blue state — or Japan.

Tom Hartmann Explains Why.

It’s a little shrill in places (well, heck: it’s life or death, so perhaps that can be excused?) —

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While all this is shocking in aggregate, it shouldn’t surprise us that a political party that swears its first allegiance to billionaires and giant multinational corporations would choose money and profits over health and life.

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— but worth the read.

Also worth the read:

Two memoirs. Jann Wenner’s, Like A Rolling Stone, which I’ve been reading with my eyes; and Barbra Streisand’s, My Name Is Barbra, which I’ve been reading with my ears.  In both cases, occasionally asking Alexa to play the song they’re writing about.  If you’re 20 and your thing is Lil Uzi Vert, Wenner and Streisand may be lost on you.  But if you ever read Rolling Stone or are a person who needs people . . . dig in.

I was so carried away with Peggy Noonan’s column yesterday, I forgot to tell you that I’m grateful for your readership!

In an ordinary year, I might leave it at that.

I am grateful for your readership.

But everything is on the line over the next 12 months so it’s worth adding that I’m also grateful for patriots like Liz Cheney, Mark Milley, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, John Boehner, John Kasich, Barack Obama, Mary Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hillary Clinton, Cassidy Hutchinson, Brad Raffensperger . . . among so many others . . . and for the overwhelming majority of Americans who fought to preserve democracy 80 years ago, and the slim majority who fight to preserve it now.* 

You know what government should be?

Competent, thoughtful, civil, collegial, law-abiding — democratic — and inspired to serve and improve the lives of its citizens.

That said, take a minute to watch “normal versus crazy.”

*Click here to help.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

I was particularly struck by what two women I admire had to say in the Wall Street Journal.

First, Peggy Noonan: We Should All Give Thanks for Taylor Swift.

Infused with goodwill, a Noonan trademark; and beautifully written (another).

→ If you encounter a paywall, don’t despair!  The Journal seems to be running a Black Friday sale today — a year’s subscription for just $26 — 94% off!

Second, PEN America’s Suzanne Nossel: A Free-Speech Fix for Our Divided Campuses.

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. . . As the conflict continues in the Middle East, college students are alternately emboldened and alarmed, faculty are at loggerheads, donors are irate, and college presidents are embattled. But the crisis presents an opportunity. . . .

. . . Students and faculty alike . . . need to see that free speech is most valuable not as a weapon to wield against ideological opponents but as a tool in the search for common truths. Among top universities, the University of Chicago has taken a lead on these issues, making free-speech awareness a key part of orientation programs for undergraduates and law students and recently launching a new campus center to reinforce those efforts.

But free-speech education must not end there. Today’s students have come of age in the era of social media, where speech too often consists of short, angry ideological salvos. The speech promoted by engagement-driven algorithms is long on outrage and virtue-signaling, short on nuance, balance and basic politeness. . . .

. . . During the short years that students share meals, dorm life and classes with those unlike themselves, they need to be taught how to use the power of speech, how to listen and how to grasp and hold the complexities of a pluralistic society. . . .

Universities also need to reinforce the idea that hateful speech, though protected by the First Amendment, is still contemptible and thwarts reasoned discourse. . . .

Rather than shying away from uncomfortable subjects, professors should encourage students to hear out ideas that may be upsetting and learn how to regulate their own feelings and reactions. . . .

. . . Turning universities into thriving free-speech communities is not a matter of a one-time freshman orientation or, worse, click-thru online training. What is required is a whole-of-university approach, supported by donors and alumni. Presidents and provosts, student affairs offices, residential staff, faculty, administrators and even facilities and security personnel need to understand and embrace the norms and habits of democratic discourse. . . .

They also need to demonstrate the behaviors they seek to inculcate by ensuring that heterodox views are represented in academic departments, hosting debates between speakers who sharply disagree and facilitating meetings where contentious subjects are discussed. In recent days, some campuses and scholars have modeled this approach. The Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies departments at Dartmouth hosted joint events about the Israel-Hamas war, and the deans of the policy schools at Columbia and Princeton—one of them Israeli, the other Palestinian—wrote an essay together on how to keep dialogue going. . . .

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Worth reading in full.

Peggy Noonan concludes her column:

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Happy Thanksgiving weekend to the great and fabled nation that is still, this day, the hope of the world.

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Amen.

Read it here: Trump’s Dire Words Raise New Fears About His Authoritarian Bent.

Except that the Times is (appropriately) understated in its tone, examining the situation calmly and thoughtfully, without exclamation marks or italics or for-God’s-sake-wake-up bold face capital letters.

That, you can get from still-conservative former Florida Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough and his brilliant wife, Mika.

Watch or listen, as they bring this crucially important Times piece to life.

The contrast they draw between the Steve Scalise shooting and the Paul Pelosi hammer-bashing I found particularly telling.

But either way, whether you read or watch . . . or both, as I did . . . for God’s sake, Carl —WAKE UP!!!*

*And if you can help, click here.

But first:

A fellow investor wired $50,000 to help fund a private venture and — being appropriately cautious — first wired just $10 to be sure the wire instructions were correct.

“Did you get the $10?” he emailed the company.

“We did, thanks,” they emailed back.

So he sent the other $49,990.

When I reviewed the email chain some weeks later I noticed that the English in the email that accompanied the wire instructions was just a tiny bit off — only a stickler like me might have noticed — and the receiving bank was in . . . Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which bore no relation to the business of the venture.  But my fellow investor was new to this company, and having had his $10 wire confirmed, what was there left to worry about?

Everything, as you’ve doubtless guessed.

Somehow, a Russian or Nigerian — or Louisianian — had hacked into the recipient’s email to the extent that he or she was able not merely to send the bogus wire instructions, to intercept the email asking whether the $10 had been received.

For years, banks have warned people to “verify the wire instructions verbally” to avoid being scammed.  I have generally ignored that advice.

Not anymore!

If you’re wiring to someone new, take the trouble to call and verify the numbers over the phone.  (And be sure you’re calling the actual intended recipient, not a phone number in Baton Rouge set up for the purpose of scamming you.)

And while we’re on the subject of scams, be careful when you buy fine art.

I never have . . . I buy toilet paper by the case when it’s on sale . . . but I was at a fundraiser Sunday night hosted in a home filled with astonishing art . . . including what appeared to be, to even my untrained eye, an Old Master.

“It that . . . a Rembrandt?”  I asked.

“It was a Rembrandt,” the host concurred.

“It was a Rembrandt?  You mean it turned out to be a fake?”

“Yes.  The buyer before me paid $2o million.”

“And then it was discredited?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, wow.”

“And I got it for $17,500.”

Coulda fooled me.

And now, having perhaps saved you $50,000 or even $20 million (how many websites can boast that without charging a subscription fee or serving up footwear ads?) something important:

Jared Kushner, Arab and Israeli officials outline day-after solutions for the first time since the Oct. 7 attacks at Yale’s Middle East Peace Dialogue

Worth reading in full.

And at no cost to us, no less.

Fareed Zakaria lays it out this way:

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Is there anything that can be done to address . . . stalemate on the frontlines and waning support in Western capitals?

Actually, there is a policy that could help on both fronts:

Set up an international and legal process by which Russia’s $300 billion-plus of frozen reserves could be used to aid Ukraine’s reconstruction, which the World Bank estimates would cost more than $400 billion over the next ten years.

In one swoop, that would signal to Putin that Ukraine will not face a funding crisis and that even were Trump to be elected, these funds, administered through some international body, say in Switzerland or Belgium, would continue to flow to Kyiv.

There are challenges to this policy. Russia’s reserves lie in various countries, but European allies hold most of them, and their governments worry that they don’t have the legal authority to divert them. Laurence Tribe, the distinguished legal scholar, and some of his colleagues have written up a definitive case as to why it would be legal and appropriate to go down the path of using Russian reserves for Ukraine’s reconstruction. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former World Bank head Robert Zoellick, and former 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow have argued persuasively that it is good policy.

Tribe’s basic argument is that Russia has engaged in a massive and systemic violation of international law and norms and that it is appropriate, indeed necessary, for there to be some price to pay for this. To reject this logic in favor of one that protects Russia’s “property rights” is perverse since Russia has engaged in brutal, sustained violations of Ukraine’s property rights and has taken the lives of thousands of its civilians as well.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a core violation of any conception of a rules-based international order. It strikes me as right and wise to force it to pay a heavy price. But how that policy is pursued matters. In the past, the United States has tried to enforce its own conception of international rules unilaterally, often generating huge opposition to it. The approach we should take this time is the opposite.

This policy should be rooted in international consensus, law and norms. Legal opinions like Tribe’s should be presented. An international legal organization and process of adjudicating claims should be established and the funds handled through it. Russia’s assets and Ukraine’s reconstruction should serve as a building block for international law and norms that help shore up the rules-based order. As Summers, Zoellick, and Zelikow note, if this case sets the precedent that a country that engages in naked aggression might find that its dollar reserves are in jeopardy, that is not a bad precedent for a world in disarray.

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Indeed, it “would strengthen, not undermine, international law.”

An idea worth spreading far and wide — and implementing ASAP.

That one day in the summer of 1963 — just 8 weeks hence — 100,000 people would march on Washington demanding civil rights for African Americans.

As it turned out — in the face of tremendous opposition from powerful men both white and black — a quarter million turned out.

The man who had that dream was not Martin Luther King, Jr., whose speech that day will rightly and forever be remembered, but Bayard Rustin, whose story this movie so compellingly tells.

“His was a rich, fascinatingly complex history, filled with big personalities and tremendous stakes . . . From the second that Rustin sweeps into the movie, throwing open his arms to King — and, by extension, welcoming the future they will help make — the actor seizes hold of you.  — The New York Times

“Riveting.” — The Wall Street Journal

Do you have Netflix?  If not, Rustin alone is worth signing up for $6.99/month.

Or watch it at a theater near you.