Two Reasons This Is a Great Country December 11, 2000February 17, 2017 1. You know how all the stuff you’re getting these days comes with a power converter? The reasons for that are beyond me — the only thing that amazes me more than electricity is the way radio waves can travel through walls — but the practical problem is that power converters are too fat to fit in our power strips. You’ve got a 5-plug power strip, but room for just two or three plug-ins, no matter how you try to arrange them. (‘What if you put the big one there, Sweetie?’ ‘No, Honey, that doesn’t work either.’) Seriously: I’ve been thinking about this a lot. (Someone has to. I’m also working on getting the Post Office to accept your old first-class stamps even after they go up a penny.) Well, what do I find at Costco this weekend but power strips specifically designed for this problem – ‘includes two extra-wide positions for power converters.’ Adam Smith, shake invisible hands with whoever invented the fat power converter. 2.However the Supreme Court rules, we will all accept it. Grumbling, some of us, depending on the outcome — but we will accept it.
Closed-End Funds – III December 8, 2000February 17, 2017 Dennis Matecun: Enjoyed your article on closed end funds, but think you made an error in calculating discounts. You wrote: “If GM is worth $50 a share, wouldn’t GM’s performance-minus-1%-per-year be worth only $45, if that?” But $50 minus 1% would be $49.50 per share, yes? ☞ No. I knew I should have written this more clearly. Sorry. Here’s what I meant (and even if you knew what I meant, keep reading, because there’s something that might actually make you some money, as you get into this): Say you knew that GM, between its dividend and the appreciation of its stock, would average a 9% return over the next 20 years. Heck of a lot better than a 5% savings account! So maybe you go ahead and pay $50 a share. (None of this has anything to do with GM, I am just using it as an example.) Now along comes a closed-end fund that owns, let’s say, nothing but GM. (Of course, it would own lots of other stocks as well, but I’m trying to keep this simple.) For its management, it charges a 1% annual fee. Some closed-ends charge less, some more. The site I suggested Monday — http://www.cefa.com/celeadrsdis.htm (at the suggestion of the estimable Joe Cherner, by the way, which I forget to mention) – will show you what different closed-end funds charge. So now, the GM shares you paid $50 for that will enrich you at the rate of 9% a year can enrich you, instead, within the closed-end fund, at the rate of 8% a year. Namely, GM’s 9% less 1% in fund fees. My point was: if you’d pay $50 for a 9% return, how much would you pay for an 8% return? Maybe you’d be willing to pay only eight-ninths as much — $45, if that. The overall point was: closed-end funds should generally sell at a discount to their net asset value, because they are siphoning off their management fee from the return you could get if you owned the underlying stocks directly. But should these funds be selling at 30% discounts, as some of them are? Or even a 45% discount, as in the case today of the meVC Draper Fisher Jurvetson Fund I (symbol: MVC, traded on the New York Stock Exchange). Some of them probably should, but there are some interesting factors to consider here. First, according to closed-end guru Thomas J. Herzfeld, who has been plying these waters a long time, tax-selling frequently drives up the discounts in closed-end share prices this time of year by 5% or 6%, with a snap back in January. A fund that sells at a 15% discount all year might dip to a 20% discount under the pressure of tax selling – and then fairly quickly return to a 15% discount. Second, if people get scared and want out of the market, because it seems to be tanking, they may sell regardless of the discount, driving it down further. Third, some fund managers defy the odds and manage pretty consistently to do even worse than average in picking stocks, so that far from adding value that might be enough to justify their fees (in which case a discount would not be rational), they may subtract value by their stock-picking exploits. Such a manager would deserve a very hefty discount – part to compensate for the drag of the fees, and part for the drag on performance. But 45%? I bought some MVC today at 10¼ because it looks as if it could be an interesting speculation. Basically, it’s a venture capital fund that started moments ago — March 31 — just as the dot-coms were about to collapse. So far, it has invested 38% of the capital it raised, with the balance — $11.72 per share – remaining in cash. So the good news is that for $10.25, I got $11.72 in cash, plus my tiny proportional stake in 18 private investments the fund has made so far, which it values at a further $7.18 a share. (The fund says the investments are valued conservatively, but who knows what they’re worth? Only time will tell.) The bad news is that MVC could quickly invest its remaining cash, and that all these deals could then go to hell in a hand basket. If AT&T can fall by two-thirds in a few months, imagine what a basket of illiquid little start-ups can do! The further bad news is that, because this is a venture capital fund, it charges the normal VERY HIGH fees – 2.5% a year, plus a 20% share in of any gains it is able to make. (Some venture managers charge “2 plus 20,” some, like this one, “2½ plus 20.”) I am loath to pay high fees and would not have bought into this fund at the IPO eight months ago at 100 cents on the dollar. But to buy it at 55 cents on the dollar improves the odds – especially now that we’ve gone from a seller’s market, when any 18-year-old with an idea could command a $100 million valuation, to a buyer’s market, where even the best ventures have to cut attractive deals to stay afloat. Cash is king, and my new fund has $11.72 of it per share. MVC is a special case, and may turn out to be nothing more than my latest folly. Many of the other closed-ends you’ll find selling at the steepest discounts are “country funds,” like the Morgan Stanley India Fund, at a 31% discount to Net Asset Value. These entail their own extra currency risk. India might do well, and the stocks Morgan Stanley chooses for this fund might do even better. But if the rupee loses ground to the dollar, it will be a drag on your investment. Then again, the dollar might weaken or Morgan Stanley might decide to narrow the fund’s discount by using the fund’s own cash to purchase its own shares on the open market. Or it could narrow with no help from Morgan Stanley, once tax-selling season is over, or if India ever returns to fund fashion. Have a good weekend. And remember: It’s not too late to buy bumper stickers! “New low prices” announces GoreGear.com – and, yes, well, I should think so! I’m not trying to change your vote at this stage, and I don’t think the DNC gets any money from this. What amused me, when Bob Cole pointed it out, is that you can buy 50 bumper stickers at 99 cents each — $49.50 — or buy twice as many – 100 of them – for ten bucks less. They pay you ten bucks to take the extra 50. Yard signs, buttons, coffee mugs, T-shirts – 200 years from now, this stuff will be really, really valuable.
Source Code! Source Code! December 7, 2000February 17, 2017 Have you read this, from the Guardian? (Why have the British covered this better than, say, our own television networks?) The article alleges that 700,000 Floridians with criminal pasts were denied the right to vote. Here’s an excerpt: When he was 23, Wallace McDonald fell asleep on a bench in Tampa waiting for a bus. He was arrested for vagrancy and obliged to pay for his misdemeanour by working on a municipal rubbish truck. Disgusted with his sentence, the young McDonald walked off the job, an offence for which he was fined $30. That was in 1959. Forty-one years on, Mr McDonald received a letter from the Hillsborough County election supervisor, Pam Iorio, informing him that as an ex-felon his name had been removed from the voters’ roll. “I could not believe it, after voting for all these years since the 50s, without a problem,” he said, pointing out that even by Florida’s harsh standards his offence did not amount to a felony. “I knew something was unfair about that. To be able to vote all your life then to have somebody reach in a bag and take some technicality that you can’t vote,” Mr McDonald said. “Why now? Something’s wrong.” He is in good company. The Rev Willie Dixon . . . Not covered in this piece, but of related concern, are all the NON-citizens who WERE permitted to vote. Like my friend’s Cuban maid, who is a legal resident alien, but not a citizen, and who voted for George W. Bush. It might not have been a difficult matter to check the voter registration files against the list of Green Card holders. But at least in Miami-Dade, this was not done. According to the Guardian, here’s is what was done: Under the banner of an anti-fraud campaign, Governor Jeb Bush, the brother of the Republican presidential candidate, and his now-famous secretary of state, Katherine Harris, implemented a series of administrative steps which may well prove to have swung the election. In June, the division of elections in Ms Harris’s office drew up a list of more than 700,000 Floridians permanently disqualified from voting — more than any other state — because of a criminal past, and sent it to county election supervisors. The idea was to enforce strictly an 1868 law disqualifying felons and ex-felons from voting for life. The law was originally part of the southern backlash against voter registration among freed slaves after the civil war, and was based on the assumption that black residents got in trouble with the law more often than their white counterparts. That assumption holds true today, in a state where African Americans make up 13% of the general population but 55% of prison inmates. According to Human Rights Watch, around a third of African American men in the state were disqualified from voting because of a past conviction, mostly resulting from the “war on drugs” that has been raging in urban America for two decades. But Ms Harris’s list went further than simply upholding a 19th-century law. It included several thousand people who should not have been disqualified, either because they had gone through the arduous process of having their rights restored or because they had never been convicted of a felony in the first place . . . Meanwhile, have you seen this, from Carl Bernstein, on Voter.com? You remember Bernstein – Dustin Hoffman played him in All the President’s Men. To repeat: If Bush wins, we should all wish him well and work to find common ground. (Silver linings abound – auto insurance reform!) But those who feel the Democrats are making contentious mountains out of molehills really should step back and cast their eye upon the landscape. It is positively alpine.
Closed-End Funds II December 6, 2000February 17, 2017 ‘I look forward to the day when you are able to discuss something other than the election (though I fear you will suffer from severe Post-Partisan Depression).’ — the estimable Less Antman Yesterday, I pointed you here for a very handy site on closed-end funds, promising to tell you today what they are and some of their pros and cons. Maybe the best way to start is with a related question one of you asked: ‘How do you buy shares of closed-end funds selling at a discount? Why would they be selling at a discount? I thought that closed funds meant that you can’t get into them.’ Mmmmm . . . no. You’re confusing two very different things. Some regular mutual funds do close their doors temporarily (or permanently) to new investors — but they are not what’s meant by closed-end funds. To redeem your shares, you still send them to the mutual fund company and get 100% of their then net asset value. And if you already own shares and want to buy some more, you mail a check to the mutual fund. A closed-end fund, by contrast – also known as a ‘publicly traded fund’ — is sold to the public through brokers, just like a new stock. Typically, it will debut at $10 a share. (Never buy closed-end funds on the initial public offering, because once the underwriter takes his fee, you are in effect paying $10 for what may be only $9.50 in assets.) After the initial public offering — perhaps 20 million shares are sold at $10 each — the only way to buy the shares is in the open market from someone who already owns them and wants to sell. And the only way to sell them is on the open market to someone who wants to buy. (I.e., you can’t redeem them with the fund company.) If a lot of people want to get in and not too many are keen on getting out, the price goes up — sometimes to a premium far above the value of the underlying assets of the fund. More often, they sell at a discount, especially in a bear market. (So there you have a double whammy: the underlying value of the fund has dropped with the bear market, and the discount has widened, to boot.) Typically, they sell at a discount for several reasons. One is that most money managers can’t beat the averages — so why pay 100 cents on the dollar for assets out of which is typically taken 1% a year in management fees? If GM is worth $50 a share, wouldn’t GM’s performance-minus-1%-a-year be worth only $45, if that? Well, a closed-end fund may own GM and 50 other stocks, and the same reasoning applies to the whole batch. (The site I linked you to yesterday shows the expense ratios and discounts for virtually all closed-end funds.) If you think this money manager can out perform the market by 1%, thus covering his fee and matching the market, then the fund should sell at 100 cents on the dollar. If you think she can not just beat the market by enough to pay her own fee but add an extra 1% or 2% or 5% of performance to boot — as few can — then you might reasonably pay a premium. Another reason closed-ends typically sell for a discount is that people know they do, expect them to — and thus resist bidding them up to full value. Or look at it this way. They know closed-ends rarely sell at a premium but can drop to 90% or 80% or in a bad market perhaps even to 70% or 65% of net asset value. (Some, of course, will do better than others.) Knowing that, why risk paying 100 cents on the dollar? You expect a bit of a bargain to induce you to take this extra risk. Theoretically, closed-end managers could end the discount and enrich their owners by going ‘open-end’ — i.e., offering to redeem whatever shares were tendered at net asset value. Suddenly, each $1 of assets would be redeemable for $1, so the fund would sell for about 100% of its value. But that could mean less money under management and, in turn, less money for the fund manager. So instead they often do the opposite. Rather than offer to redeem your existing shares, they ‘force’ you to buy more. How? By offering you and all the other shareholders the ‘right’ to buy additional shares at 5% or more ‘off’ the going market price. You’re not literally forced to buy, of course; but if you don’t, your own shares become a little diluted in value by the discount given those who do accept the offer. (Closed-ends know many shareholders don’t like these rights offerings, but make them anyway to expand the pool of capital they have under management, from which they can take fees.) In short, closed-ends can offer great value. Or not. Only buy them when they do.
Closed-End Funds December 5, 2000February 17, 2017 Want to buy $1 worth of assets for 75 cents? Click here for a most useful site. If you don’t know what closed-end funds are, or why they may from time to time represent exceptional value, come back tomorrow. Also tomorrow: caveats, before you rush in. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming. (From here on, I’m going to try to remember to put political stuff in color, so you can skip it. I’ll keep financial stuff in the black.) Nancy Brenner: ‘Are you aware that the GOP has asked for a hand recount in New Mexico saying that it is the only way to guarantee an accurate tally? It’s in Sunday’s New York Times.’ Bryan Norcross: ‘In the 1940s movie, Key Largo, Edward G. Robinson, playing the gangster, makes an interesting speech to Humphrey Bogart: ”Let me tell you about Florida politicians. I make them. I make them out a whole cloth just like a tailor makes a suit. I get their name in the newspaper, I get them some publicity and get them on the ballot. Then after the election we count the votes and if they don’t turn out right, we re-count them and re-count them again until they do.” David Scheim, a writer who is no friend of the Bush clan, points us to this web site, for a summary of the Seminole County situation (the numbered footnotes refer to sources you can link to on that site): At the invitation of Seminole elections supervisor Sandra Goard, two GOP operatives camped out in elections offices for 15 days, unsupervised, with access to files and a computer terminal.1 Goard’s staff separated out incomplete GOP absentee ballot requests from similar incomplete Democratic and independent absentee ballot requests.2 GOP operatives added voter identification numbers to 2,132 absentee ballot requests that yielded 1,936 actual votes, 95% for Bush.3 More than 550 similar Democratic ballot requests with missing information ended up in a discard box, rejected.4 Goard told two Democratic campaign workers5 and stated in a radio interview broadcast while GOP workers were filling in voter IDs6 that she would honor no absentee ballot requests that were missing this ID number. She “emphasized that this was required by Florida state law.”7 Goard later denied the Seminole Democratic party the same opportunity to fix incomplete Democratic absentee ballot requests.8 Goard admitted she had never before allowed such activity to fix incomplete absentee ballot requests in her 23 years as county elections supervisor.9 Finally, should the Florida Supreme Court overturn Judge Sauls’ decision yesterday about the recount, or should some other court intervene on one of these matters, the Bush campaign might re-read this column by Anthony Lewis before commenting on the result.
Count or Concede! December 4, 2000February 17, 2017 Governor Bush lost the popular vote but hangs on tenaciously to his hoped-for victory in Florida. There is no shame in winning the Presidency by winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. There would be shame in winning the Presidency by losing the popular vote and blocking a count that would later show Governor Bush to have lost Florida as well. The Miami Herald reports on yesterday’s front page the results of an independent analysis it commissioned that showed Gore winning Florida by 23,000 votes if all the uncounted ballots were counted. This does not include the ballots mistakenly cast for Buchanan, or the African-American voters turned away if they lacked three forms of photo ID, or the disputed 4,700 ballots in Seminole County, and so on. So if I were the rowdy type, I would hop a plane to Austin and start chanting, ‘Count or concede!’ With the election essentially a tie, both nationwide and in Florida, either man could find grounds right now to graciously concede. (And, incidentally, spare himself what promises to be a tough four years.) What is ungracious is for Secretary Cheney to tell the Vice President and the American people that ‘it is time’ for the Vice President to concede. The Republican team has done a fantastic job of making it seem as if, once the TV networks, led by a close Bush family member at Fox, ‘called it’ for Bush, any further discussion was carping. Clearly, in hindsight, the networks should all have reported that this election was simply too close to call. Indeed, they should be calling that even to this moment. Ballots are the currency of democracy. It is crucial to Governor Bush’s success that not all the Florida ballots be considered. The Bush team argues that ballots that cannot be read by a machine must be considered counterfeit. That, his team argues, is the test of valid currency. In effect, if your dollar bill is repeatedly rejected by a Coke machine, it is not a valid dollar bill and should be burned as counterfeit. Greg Dermond: ‘I don’t think the dollar bill in a Coke machine is a good analogy….if the dollar does not go through, WE have the common sense to put a different dollar in…..thus people have the responsibility also to READ instructions and to make sure their ballot was punched through correctly.’ Ah, but with a Coke machine, we know our dollar was rejected, both because it comes rolling back out and because we didn’t get our Coke. With a punch card ballot, it’s easy not to know for sure whether your ballot was cast properly. There is no great philosophical issue here. It is simply that machines are not yet as able to do some things as humans. One is speech recognition — you are better able than a computer to make out speech. Another is handwriting recognition. You are better able than a computer to decipher a note from your doctor. Would you throw out all prescriptions that cannot be accurately read by a machine? Or fill the prescription with arsenic instead of aspirin if that’s what the machine reads, even though a human might read it differently? I am hopeful the courts will count the disputed ballots, in a manner they consider fair, so we can find out who won and move on, supporting whichever man becomes President. Meanwhile, if Governor Bush wins, the Senate will be split 50 / 50. You may have seen Senator McConnell of Kentucky facing off with Senator Feinstein of California on TV yesterday morning. It is the contention of some that, with the Senate split 50 / 50, a bipartisan form of power-sharing should be adopted. Senator McConnell said no, the leadership of the Senate, and all the committee chairmanships, should rightly be Republican, because with a 50 / 50 split and a Republican Vice President to break ties (after the first two weeks, when Vice President Gore would still be the tie-breaker), control of the Senate would rightly reside with the Republicans. After all, he implied, it was the will of the people, nearly as many of whom voted Bush/Cheney as for Gore/Lieberman. The vote may have been 50 / 50, but 100% of the control should go to the Republicans. The heartening thing about all this is that we will get through it all fine. And conceivably, we will be surprised on the upside, as the better angels of our respective natures rise to the challenge. That’s not a prediction, but I do believe it is a possibility. For now, I’m going out to find some orange ribbon.
Count or Concede December 3, 2000February 17, 2017 Governor Bush lost the popular vote but hangs on tenaciously to his hoped-for victory in Florida. There is no shame in winning the Presidency by winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. There would be shame in winning the Presidency by losing the popular vote and blocking a count that would later show Governor Bush to have lost Florida as well. The Miami Herald reports on yesterday’s front page the results of an independent analysis it commissioned that showed Gore winning Florida by 23,000 votes if all the uncounted ballots were counted. This does not include the ballots mistakenly cast for Buchanan, or the African-American voters turned away if they lacked three forms of photo ID, or the disputed 4,700 ballots in Seminole County, and so on. So if I were the rowdy type, I would hop a plane to Austin and start chanting, ‘Count or concede!’ With the election essentially a tie, both nationwide and in Florida, either man could find grounds right now to graciously concede. (And, incidentally, spare himself what promises to be a tough four years.) What is ungracious is for Secretary Cheney to tell the Vice President and the American people that ‘it is time’ for the Vice President to concede. The Republican team has done a fantastic job of making it seem as if, once the TV networks, led by a close Bush family member at Fox, ‘called it’ for Bush, any further discussion was carping. Clearly, in hindsight, the networks should all have reported that this election was simply too close to call. Indeed, they should be calling that even to this moment. Ballots are the currency of democracy. It is crucial to Governor Bush’s success that not all the Florida ballots be considered. The Bush team argues that ballots that cannot be read by a machine must be considered counterfeit. That, his team argues, is the test of valid currency. In effect, if your dollar bill is repeatedly rejected by a Coke machine, it is not a valid dollar bill and should be burned as counterfeit. Greg Dermond: ‘I don’t think the dollar bill in a Coke machine is a good analogy….if the dollar does not go through, WE have the common sense to put a different dollar in…..thus people have the responsibility also to READ instructions and to make sure their ballot was punched through correctly.’ Ah, but with a Coke machine, we know our dollar was rejected, both because it comes rolling back out and because we didn’t get our Coke. With a punch card ballot, it’s easy not to know for sure whether your ballot was cast properly. There is no great philosophical issue here. It is simply that machines are not yet as able to do some things as humans. One is speech recognition — you are better able than a computer to make out speech. Another is handwriting recognition. You are better able than a computer to decipher a note from your doctor. Would you throw out all prescriptions that cannot be accurately read by a machine? Or fill the prescription with arsenic instead of aspirin if that’s what the machine reads, even though a human might read it differently? I am hopeful the courts will count the disputed ballots, in a manner they consider fair, so we can find out who won and move on, supporting whichever man becomes President. Meanwhile, if Governor Bush wins, the Senate will be split 50 / 50. You may have seen Senator McConnell of Kentucky facing off with Senator Feinstein of California on TV yesterday morning. It is the contention of some that, with the Senate split 50 / 50, a bipartisan form of power-sharing should be adopted. Senator McConnell said no, the leadership of the Senate, and all the committee chairmanships, should rightly be Republican, because with a 50 / 50 split and a Republican Vice President to break ties (after the first two weeks, when Vice President Gore would still be the tie-breaker), control of the Senate would rightly reside with the Republicans. After all, he implied, it was the will of the people, nearly as many of whom voted Bush/Cheney as for Gore/Lieberman. The vote may have been 50 / 50, but 100% of the control should go to the Republicans. The heartening thing about all this is that we will get through it all fine. And conceivably, we will be surprised on the upside, as the better angels of our respective natures rise to the challenge. That’s not a prediction, but I do believe it is a possibility. For now, I’m going out to find some orange ribbon.
Crashing Stocks, Hamlet, and More December 1, 2000February 17, 2017 Have you noticed the stock market getting a bit . . . rocky lately? The way it normally works, the market oscillates pretty wildly around underlying ‘value,’ hard as that is to pin down. For a while, with a specific stock — or stocks in general — prices may be a mere fraction of what a sensible, hard-headed businessman might pay, based on prospective earnings. Then the price may trend up to that reasonable range – and keep going, a little or a lot past that range. And then, sooner or later, fall back to the reasonable range, and back past that reasonable range. A complete cycle can take decades. Of course, it’s never quite so simple as this, and, in any event, the ‘reasonable range’ may change over the years, as the company’s (or the market’s) prospects improve or deteriorate, and as the general level of interest rates (read: competing investments) rises or falls. And none of this is very precise. But when good companies like Dell rise to seemingly absurd prices – on February 3, 1999, I pointed out that Dell was valued by Wall Street at ‘more than General Motors, Ford and United Airlines combined’ – they tend to fall back. Since late Spring, Dell stock has fallen by two-thirds. And when iffy companies like Priceline or Amazon, that have a lot of promise but are unproven as moneymakers, reach crazy heights – 113 for AMZN and 105 for PCLN – they, fall back even further. Today, Amazon is down to 24 and PCLN to 2½. And then, typically, they fall past their reasonable valuations, as people grow disillusioned with the market and their unreasoning euphoria gradually turns to unreasoning despair. I’m not sure we’re there yet with a lot of stocks. (Dell is still valued at $50 billion, more than either Ford or GM, and 29 times its trailing earnings.) But when we do get there, bargains will become irresistible – and, with time, highly rewarding. Some of today’s stocks may get a nice bounce after tax-selling pressure lets up. Others may have a ways further to fall, and still others – quite a lot of them — may disappear altogether. Martin dellaValle: “Note to Rulison Evans — There is nothing uniquely American about clean tap water. Open a faucet pretty much anywhere in Western and Northern Europe, and not only is the water perfectly healthy, it also tastes better than what you can get anywhere here. There is, however, something uniquely American about the assumption that all good things, from clean water to democracy, are uniquely American.” Dozens of You: “I hate to be picky, but when Ben Franklin said “neither a borrower nor lender be,” he was actually quoting Shakespeare’s Polonius, in Hamlet: “Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For a loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all; to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not be false to any man.” ☞ You’re right, of course. What’s a little scary is that I made this same mistake, and the same subsequent apology, three years ago. Who says you only live once? Scott Flanagan: “Maybe you pronounce forte as ‘fort,’ but do you describe certain foods as healthful? If so, good for you. Otherwise, if you refer to ‘healthy foods’ I hope you mean food that isn’t sick. It is true that hamburger isn’t a healthy food, but only from the cow’s point of view. On the other hand, that light salad isn’t healthy, it is healthful, unless you are talking about those healthy lettuce plants in your garden.” Kevin Clark: “‘Every vote should be counted.’ (Except for absentee military votes, which I’m fighting to exclude.) ‘There are thousands of ballots which have never been counted.’ (Except for a couple times by the normal (machine) vote counting procedure.) Care to retract your column(s) about how Gore’s tendency to lie is all a Republican myth?” ☞ Huh? What has this got to do with lying? It’s like saying “Bush lies in matters of life and death!” because he said Cheney was in good health when he had had a heart attack. Ridiculous. Can we please stop accusing these men of lying? As to your two examples: << “Every vote should be counted.” (Except for absentee military votes, which I’m fighting to exclude.) >> Don’t you think a store that accepts checks “from everyone” should nonetheless not be required to accept checks that are unsigned? I guess you can argue that a soldier’s unsigned, unpostmarked ballot should count, even though the law says it should not, and even though someone could easily fill out a phony ballot and/or mailed it after the election. That would be an honest difference of opinion. Let’s let the court decide without charging hypocrisy or dishonesty. If you disagree, I’m going to ask you to start accepting unsigned checks. << “There are thousands of ballots which have never been counted.” (Except for a couple times by the normal (machine) vote counting procedure.) >> Say you have a dollar bill that is constantly rejected by the Coke machine. Are you really comfortable with my saying it is worthless? That may be your position, but surely you would agree we are entitled to believe that such a dollar is still worth $1, even if you have to look at it to know. And that we are neither hypocritical nor liars for believing this – no? Have a great weekend.
Hold the Fort, Waterboy! November 30, 2000February 17, 2017 Pete Kirby: ‘I was glad to hear that someone else knows the rules of the fort vs. fortay controversy! Two other often mistaken uses of words and phrases are: ‘1. People that say ‘I could CARE less!’ what they mean is that they ‘could not’ care less. They care about the subject so little, that they could not possibly care less. So if they could care less, they care to some degree, correct? People can be so careless! ‘2. Nauseous vs. nauseated. People say that something makes them ‘Nauseous’ when what should be said is that it makes them ‘Nauseated.’ If you are Nauseous, you create nausea in others! ‘Small matters, true! Thanks for letting me sound off. I actually heard someone say once: ‘I could care less, it makes me nauseous.'” Joe M. Barron: ‘I’m afraid if I heard someone pronounce forte as ‘fort,’ my genetically transmitted pronunciation checker would cringe in the same way it does when I hear someone pronounce the ‘l’ in Salmon. Merriam-Webster’s discussion discloses the pronunciation is open to more choice and interpretation than you may have indicated: Main Entry: 1forte Pronunciation: ‘fOrt, ‘fort; 2 is often ‘for-“tA or for-‘tA or ‘for-tE Function: noun Etymology: French fort, from fort, adjective, strong Date: circa 1648 1 : the part of a sword or foil blade that is between the middle and the hilt and that is the strongest part of the blade 2 : one’s strong point Usage: In forte we have a word derived from French that in its “strong point” sense has no entirely satisfactory pronunciation. Usage writers have denigrated ‘for-“tA and ‘for-tE because they reflect the influence of the Italian-derived 2forte. Their recommended pronunciation ‘fort, however, does not exactly reflect French either: the French would write the word le fort and would rhyme it with English for. So you can take your choice, knowing that someone somewhere will dislike whichever variant you choose. All are standard, however. In British English ‘fo-“tA and ‘fot predominate; ‘for-“tA and for-‘tA are probably the most frequent pronunciations in American English. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, Tenth Edition, is copyrighted 1994 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. ☞ Yeah, yeah – well, I don’t buy it. I think Merriam was a corrupting influence on Webster. Barbara McElroy: “I went to Princeton from Alabama with a deep, deep Southern accent that made my classmates assume I was stupid. I remember using the word ‘forte’ in casual conversation (of course, pronouncing it correctly) and having an upperclassman stare at me in amazement that I got it right. “Fight the good fight … and don’t forget grimace and err while you’re at it. At least 50% of Episcopalian priests can’t pronounce ‘err’ correctly, which is especially distressing in a Rite One service.” And speaking of liquefaction . . . Rulison Evans: “I must comment on your ‘thanking heavens for bottled water.’ If you own stock in a bottled water company that has the nerve to charge $1.00 or more for a pint of H2O, then I suppose you could count your blessings. However, if you are implying that bottled water somehow provides for the health and safety of more than just a handful of Americans, you are mistaken. The vast majority of Americans should ‘thank heavens’ for the safety, abundance and affordability of the public water supply. As a democrat, Gore supporter and all-around intelligent person, you should realize that the federal Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act (among others) provide for this uniquely American LUXURY that is unfortunately thought of as a RIGHT by most people. Full Disclosure: I am a Civil Engineer, who deals primarily in the design and construction of water treatment, distribution and storage facilities.” ☞ You are quite right. I was joking, but I can see why that would not have been apparent. And now, on top of all this other valuable info, you actually want me to demystify finance? OK, here goes: Neither a borrower nor a lender be. For decades this seemed to me to be charmingly homespun — but dubious. What harm is there in a mortgage? What folly in buying a bond (which is, in effect, lending)? And, while we’re at it, what did the song mean when it said, “sing praises to His name, he forgets not his own?” Why would He forget His own name? I wondered, aged 7, and too embarrassed to ask – if He could make the heavens and the earth, for crying out loud, and porcupines, surely he could remember His name. But it turns out that “his own” means, loosely, “his own children” – you and me. And it turns out, or at least my guess is, that when Ben Franklin said neither a borrower or a lender be, his point must have been, “If you want to keep a friendship, neither a borrower or a lender be.” Show me a friendship that’s survived a personal loan, and I’ll show you an unusual friendship.
First-Hand Accounts November 29, 2000February 17, 2017 If Katherine Harris does become an ambassador, Ken Ruebush suggests her posting be . . . Chad. Meanwhile, there are a lot of things that are not practical to do to fix the mess in Florida. Foremost: a revote. In the first place, it wouldn’t be fair to Governor Bush, because all those Nader voters, seeing how close it was – or most of them, anyway – would vote for Gore. So that’s out. (Other problems? Well, for one, you’d then have to count the revote, and you know how controversial the counting process is.) It’s probably also not possible to do much about all the confusion in Palm Beach County, or the voter-intimidation in certain predominantly African-American Florida precincts. I heard of one instance today where a woman was asked for three – count ’em, three – forms of photo i.d. before she was allowed to vote. Were you asked for three? I wasn’t. So all the Vice President is asking for is that we count the ballots the machines couldn’t read. It’s true, this is not normally done with undervotes in other states. There were something like 2 million ballots nationwide that weren’t counted. But these are not normally counted because it’s not necessary. Why on earth go to all the trouble of a manual count when someone has won by a wide enough margin that it doesn’t matter? Or in a state with insufficient electoral votes to change the outcome of the election? The precise count in California doesn’t matter! Gore won by a very wide margin. The precise count in New Mexico doesn’t matter! Even if it swung New Mexico into Bush’s camp, it wouldn’t affect the outcome of the election. Where they are necessary, manual counts — slower and more expensive — are done. Anyway, you’re sick of all that. Yes, we should count the ballots the machines couldn’t read. It’s that simple. But there’s tons of stuff we probably can’t correct in Florida, so I do not present the three items that follow to suggest that we can. Only to suggest that some Republican leaders’ seeming disdain for even the possibility that anyone in Florida has reason to be upset is . . . well, insensitive. Perhaps even a bit ungracious or divisive. But you be the judge: Rabbi Richard M. Yellin of Palm Beach County, FL: ‘I came to my voting precinct at the St. Thomas More Church in Boynton Beach, Palm Beach County, Florida, at 6:30 am on Election day 2000. I was fifth in line waiting for the precinct to open. By the time it opened, about 30 people had already lined up, and by the time I exited from the poll at 7:15, 100+ individuals were waiting to enter a very crowded precinct area. I was fully prepared to vote my choices with my own pre-prepared list of candidate selections and referendum choices. I came early because I had to be at my Synagogue by 8 am to speak at a morning religious service. ‘When I entered the precinct I signed the voter register and received the ‘computerized ballot.’ I went to a cubicle on a desk that had a ‘votamatic’ platform which had a ‘butterfly brochure’ fixed on the platform, with pages of the brochure to be turned sequentially so that candidates and referendum questions could be ‘hole punched,’ i.e., voted for. I followed the instructions placing the ballot into the slot so that it could be properly fixed and aligned under the ‘butterfly,’ so that the holes on the ‘butterfly’ lined up over the computerized ‘ballot.’ At that point I started the voting process. I wanted to vote for Gore/Lieberman. I searched for the Gore ‘butterfly hole’ and could not find it!! The arrows to the right of the candidate’s name, pointing to the proper ‘butterfly hole’ did not align properly!! I struggled to find the appropriate place for my vote, and tried to figure out which one it was by looking at the Bush ‘hole’ and the others on the page. By a process of elimination, I chose the hole I thought was for Gore and Lieberman. I took 3-4 minutes to do this. It made me feel rather stupid, so I hid my stupidity, figuring that I voted my choice. I went on to all the other candidates on the next pages of the ‘butterfly’ and the alignments to the proper holes were arranged neatly and to perfection. I took out my ‘ballot from the ‘butterfly’ and placed it in the ballot box upon leaving. ‘As I left, I heard people complaining that it was difficult to vote for President and V.P. I did not have time to consult with these individuals because I had my appointments. As I drove away, I had a gnawing feeling that something was not right, with the blame on me. I had a sample mock ‘butterfly’ that was mailed out before the election, and I looked at it briefly while driving and I saw that it did not look anything like the ‘butterfly’ that was attached to the ‘votamatic.’ At which point I dismissed the experience and went about driving. At 7:45 am, when I came to my synagogue (of which I am the Rabbi), Temple Emeth of Delray Beach, a 2800 member congregation of retired senior citizens, our parking lot was a bee-hive of activity. A voting precinct is housed in our facility’s auditorium, and it had lines waiting to go in to vote. I went into my office to prepare my sermon and at 8:10, I went out of my office, passing the voting precinct waving to many voters whom I knew. I rushed past the auditorium and went into the Chapel and began the service with a sermonette on the subject of voting and religious freedom. I told my prayers that in order to be religious, they had to vote, because political freedom is the guarantor of religious freedom. At exactly 8:20, my speech was interrupted by a synagogue Staff member who said to me in front of the 60 people in the chapel, ‘There is a problem in the precinct.’ My 7:15 emotions began to gnaw at me again. ‘I entered the precinct ahead of the lines and I was told by several people leaving that they had trouble voting their choice for President. In fact one person was crying that she thought she had mistakenly voted for Buchanan. I summoned the supervisor of the precinct housed in our facility and I asked her to get the butterfly ballot from one of the ‘votamatics’ and to look at it together with me. Two or three other people gathered around, and it was the identical ‘butterfly’ that I had used at the Church. I said to the supervisor that the arrows are completely misaligned with the holes and therefore the ballots could not be punched, expressing with certainty the intent of the voter. She agreed, and I asked her to interrupt the voting in the precinct and I told her that the precinct should be closed until an announcement was made to all those voting, that ‘the ‘butterfly brochure’ was problematic, and that people should exercise great care.’ I said to her that the supervisor of elections in Palm Beach and in Florida should be called immediately. She agreed. The phone lines to the election board were busy. She made the announcements, and I went to call all the media outlets in the area — 3 TV stations and the radio station of record. At which point, I felt I did my duty and I went into the synagogue office and began listening to people exiting from the precinct who complained that it was an impossible experience, and how they think they voted for Buchanan by mistake because of the ‘butterfly.’ At that point, I too put 2 and 2 together and I think I may have voted for Buchanan, a vote that would be anathema to my whole political disposition. ‘By 9:15 I had meetings in my office and duties to attend to, and thought that others had been sufficiently apprised of the situation and that it was in hand. Wrong, by mid day all hell broke loose in the media. ‘Addendum: On Friday night November 10, I had planned to speak about Kristallnacht, the Rabin Assassination, and Veterans Day. Instead, before 500 people I asked them to shared their voting experience during election day. Several people got up to speak and told their stories that they had trouble with the ‘butterfly’ in trying to vote for Gore, and they think they voted for Buchanan. (It is important to know that my congregation has well over 100 holocaust survivors, and no one would have knowingly voted for Buchanan. I took a referendum on that!) At which point several people in the congregation began to laugh at those who expressed a problem with the vote! I asked those who were laughing to explain their lamentable public ridicule. They said they voted, and it was a piece of cake. I then asked them to explain why it was easy for them. They said their ‘butterfly’ was lined up correctly and all they had to do was follow the arrows for the candidates and punch the holes. In response, those who had the problem, said publicly that they had a DIFFERENT LOOKING ‘BUTTERFLY’ AND THE ARROWS WERE MISPRINTED. I then took a tabulation. ‘If you thought the votamatic was easy to use, raise your hands.’ 50% raise their hands. Then: ‘If you were troubled by the vote and think you may have voted incorrectly for Gore because of your ‘butterfly,’ raise your hands.’ 30% raised their hands. 20% were unsure. ‘The conclusion of this ‘Town Hall’ sermonic discussion? There were two different versions of the ‘butterfly’ or maybe even a partial misprint of the butterflies used by many voters in various precincts of Palm Beach County. ‘I tried the same experiment on Saturday morning to an even larger crowd, dispensing with the planned sermon, asking people to share their voting experiences. The Saturday morning congregation is made up of different people than the Friday night congregation. To my amazement the same thing virtually the same happened again. People laughed, and slowly they came to the realization that there were 2 different versions to the ‘butterfly.’ The tabulation was the same as the previous night. Conclusion: The real problem is the ‘butterfly’ brochure. There were misprints in the alignment of arrows and holes, and there were bad ‘butterflies’ hovering within and mingling with normal ‘butterflies,’ and the way you could predict who received infected misprinted ‘butterflies,’ was to scan the precincts where Buchanan received greater numbers of votes than expected compared to all the other 50+ counties in Florida. It just so happens that the Buchanan factor surfaced most within Jewish and African-American areas and precincts. As an African-American pastor friend of mine said, ‘there is no one in his congregation who would for a moment think of voting for Pat Buchanan.’ Buchanan subsequently went on air saying he knew that these exaggerated votes, close to 3500 in Palm Beach County, ‘should not have gone to me.’ ‘The real question for these 3500 suspected votes: Why doesn’t the government impound all the ‘butterflies’ and search for the misprinted ones. The media is totally confused by this, and it is no wonder that the former Secretary of State, The Honorable James Baker, could hold up a normal ‘butterfly,’ and unconscionably imply, that elderly, Jewish, African-Americans, and Palm Beach County citizens, were ‘confused’ (implying ‘stupid’). Mr. Baker, in this case, was really ‘holier than thou,’ meaning, of course Bush voters were not confused because their candidate was the first on the list, and you could not mistake punching the Bush ‘butterfly’ hole because it was at the top of the column of holes, i.e., ‘holier than thou.’ Baker held up the proper butterfly — he never knew about the misprinted one!! ‘I do not believe in conspiracies! I am a registered independent voter who learned as a child: ‘It is not who won or lost, but how we played the game.’ In this election, the voting machinery was flawed, not the electorate!’ * Ben Austin: ‘My mother was a precinct clerk in Palm Beach County, Florida, election day of 2000. Mom’s very good friend Leah was a precinct clerk as well. Both of them were incredibly upset during and after election day, before anyone knew the import of these specific voters. And my mother was convinced there were serious irregularities long before they gained national prominence, and she called me to say so. ‘I note this because some Republicans are now asking if there were these irregularities, how come they were not raised until after the election? In fact, my mother and the other precinct clerks raised these issues from the moment that the polls opened in the morning; the problem is that the person they initially called on was Theresa LePore, elections supervisor of Palm Beach County. She was the source of the ballot confusion, and was uninterested in the issue. ‘First, the paper ballot was extremely confusing to these voters. Although both major parties got a chance to review the card layout, it is not clear if any had a chance to put the actual ballot in an actual machine and punch the holes. The card is laid horizontally as you vote, and it is hard to see the holes as you punch them. And my mother, who supervised the precinct she was in (this is a paid position, and she reported directly to Ms. LePore) said the card did not even fit correctly in the ballot machine, so the holes in the card did not line up with the ballot. ‘Anyone who thinks this was minor voter confusion has never dealt with retirees in a West Palm Beach retirement village in Florida, I promise you. ‘My mother, following the rules, said the poll workers had been told not to help people with the cards, as it might bias the voters. My mother witnessed many, many people who voted incorrectly. Some stayed on a second line and had their cards re-done, some punched the second hole (and thus were probably thrown out), and some found out they voted for Buchanan after they had deposited their cards in the ballot box, and there was thus nothing they could do. ‘Mom called me up to complain about this after the election, and she called me up again on Thursday, very upset after reading a story in the New York Times (Nov. 9 2000, p. B6). The Times story states: ‘After numerous complaints were received on Tuesday morning, Ms. LePore issued this directive to the county’s 106 precincts: Attention all poll workers. Please remind all voters coming in that they are to vote only for one (1) presidential candidate and that they are to punch the hole next to the arrow next to the number next to the candidate they wish to vote for.’ ‘Mom never received this directive, and she believes that if anyone knew they could have helped people vote their preference, the outcome would have been very different. Instead, my mother and the others were trying to do the right thing, and they felt that helping explain the ballot to these people would have been helping them to vote for Gore, something she didn’t feel was proper. These women are honest to a fault. ‘Leah did receive the directive, but not until 4pm on election day, and only by accident; someone was coming to visit from the main office and told her about it. In the meantime, my mother and Leah (and most of the precinct clerks) had been desperately trying to call the county office. They had been given a phone number by Ms. LePore and told that the phone line would be staffed throughout the day. They were told to call if there were any problems. Mom tried to call starting at 7:30am, calling straight through when polls closed, but she got a busy signal the entire time. But Mom was at a polling station with only a pay phone, so she had to deposit coins each time, and with long lines waiting for her, she was becoming increasingly frustrated. ‘Leah was precinct chief at the retirement village where they live, and ran a polling station at the clubhouse. Having a more modern facility, Leah tried on the phone as well, and when she couldn’t get through, she called the operator to ask her why the phone was busy. Leah had the presence of mind to get the operator’s number (history is made by people like Leah) when the operator told her the phone was off the hook, meaning nobody was on the line the entire day. Evidently, the supervisor’s office just didn’t want to hear the complaints. ‘Leah then faxed the supervisor’s office with her concerns at noon and again at 2pm. Nobody called Leah back until 5pm, when she heard from Ms. LePore, with the following words ‘don’t bother me.’ ‘So as this news starts to be spun and re-spun, let me tell you a few things I am certain to be true: I can’t argue intent either way, but the supervisor’s office in Palm Beach County is at the very least unable to carry out an election in which these people have their say. ‘These people started trying to fix the problem from the moment polls opened, and were fought along the way. This is not about crying about the election once it is over. ‘It pains me to see the issue being politicized by both sides. Gore has no place having his advisor Daley make statements that after a recount, Gore will emerge victorious; and Bush has no place saying that he is the victor, or setting up a transition team. In fact, the idea that Bush and his brother were together on election night, with Jeb Bush promising to ‘deliver Florida,’ draws a picture at least to me with the semblance of impropriety, especially now that we have seen the results so askew. I hope everyone will pay attention to the facts here, and let the people of South Florida have the same opportunity to vote that the rest of us had. You are free to send this to anyone you wish.’ * Susan Guberman-Garcia: ‘I spent several hours this morning watching the NAACP public hearing on the Florida vote on C-SPAN. Having done so, it is very clear to me that there was a systematic and calculated effort to lessen the Gore vote by denying the franchise to as many African Americans as possible. ‘The hearing was orderly, well run, and transcribed by a court reporter and was presided over by NAACP President (and former Congressional Black Caucus chairman) Kweisi Mfumi. The hearing was much like a Congressional hearing (but without the wordwaste and puffery that usually dominates Congressional hearings), there were several panels of witnesses, 2 to 4 people per panel. The witnesses included voters who were denied the right to vote, NAACP activists who worked the get-out-the-vote effort all day, NAACP phone-standby volunteers who worked the phones fielding election-day complaints, poll workers and news media people. The witnesses were all credible and impressive, their information detailed and often accompanied by notes with names, dates, places. I would not hesitate to call any of these people as witnesses if I were handling a lawsuit on their behalf. Witnesses testified that they (and family members and others in their presence) were denied the right to vote because they ‘were not on the rolls’ even though some of them had their voter registration cards as well as identification showing their names and addresses. This violates Florida law. In many cases, the poll workers who refused them declined to make any effort to validate their status and told them to ‘come back later.’ Some poll workers were sympathetic and attempted to get approval for the voters to go ahead and vote but were denied by ‘headquarters.’ ‘THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: Two poll workers testified that they had been instructed by ‘headquarters’ that they should apply ‘qualification’ procedures VERY STRICTLY and if there is the slightest doubt, DENY THE REQUEST TO VOTE. They were also told to refrain from giving out any written verification of the refused voters’ requests, including affidavits (this is illegal; the law REQUIRES that any voter whose attempt is challenged be given an affidavit of challenge signed under oath by the poll worker). And in fact, many of the denied voters asked for an affidavit or something in writing to prove they had attempted to vote and ALL such requests were refused. NONE were given the chance to cast a ‘challenge ballot’ (which I gather is similar to the ‘provisional ballot’ that is used in California when there is a dispute as to whether someone is entitled to vote or not). Witnesses testified that they and others who were African American (but not white) voters were asked to provide BOTH photo ID and a current voter registration card and many who could not do so were denied the right to vote even though the law does not require that the voters present both ID and voter registration cards. A newswoman who spent all day at various polling places witnessed the above time and time again. When she tried to intervene, she was threatened with arrest. This newswoman (who happens to be white and a former policewoman) accompanied one black voter to SIX polling places as she was turned away time after time because, despite her having a voter card and ID, she was told ‘this is not your polling place. Finally, she returned to her original polling place and was allowed, finally, to vote. ‘The newswoman testified that at one polling place in Healdsberg County, there were numerous police cars who were stopping African American voters and asking for ID and ‘what are you doing here?’ She saw them stop one elderly man after he left the polls, order him to ‘assume the position’ and question him, as he tried to explain he had just voted (and was wearing a button that said ‘I voted’). When she tried to intervene, she was told to move on or she would be arrested, and when she did so out of fear for her safety, she was followed for several miles by a police car. This newswoman, who is white and a former policewoman, broke town in tears because she was ashamed that she left the scene. The newswoman testified that she was leaked a list of over a thousand absentee voters by an election official. This was a list of absentee voters who were disqualified for being ‘felons’ (their votes were not counted but they were not informed of the rejection of their vote or the opportunity to challenge it the Republican commissioner who leaked the list told the newswoman that the instructions were to NOT notify the rejected absentee voters of their disqualification. The newswoman happened to know one of the people on the list and it is someone she knows has never been convicted of a crime, let alone a felony. ‘Many witnesses testified that people who came in to vote were required to answer a litany of questions even though they were on the rolls and had ID, the questions had to do with whether they had been convicted of a felony since the last time they voted, was their address correct, etc. Only African Americans appeared to be asked these questions. A police lieutenant testified that a box of ballots was sitting in the police station. Someone called in that it had not been picked up. The police department claimed that they had tried to call the election commission on Friday but nobody answered because it was a holiday. As of now (actually, the hearing was Saturday but C-SPAN aired it this morning), the box is still sitting in the police evidence room, sealed with evidence tape. A minister testified that nobody ever came to pick up the box at his church (a polling place for his precinct) and STILL HAS NOT DONE SO!! ‘The president of Haitian Women of Miami testified that she was threatened with arrest for attempting to enter the polling booth to help first time Haitian voters who needed translation assistance, and even though she presented a copy of the statute that permits such assistance inside the booth she was told that she would be arrested if she did not leave and the police were actually called. None of the Creole speakers who asked for Creole ballots (which were printed for the first time this election) were given them and although there were Creole speaking volunteers present to assist those voters, they were denied the right to do so. Handicapped people were able to get into some polling places but the polling booths were not acceptable to them and requests for special ballots or other assistance was denied in African American precincts, according to the witnesses.’ * What a fine mess this is, Ollie.