Author: A.T.

The debate: Don’t get me started. Suffice it to say that Houston really IS smoggy, that Bush really DOES oppose the Hate Crimes statute, and that Gore’s characterization of Bush’s tax proposal is ACCURATE, while Bush’s characterization of it is disingenuous at best. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Things can change a lot in a few months.

Yahoo was down another 17 or so yesterday, to 65. Here’s what I wrote about it on January 4, under the headline, Yahoo! The stock was just touching its all-time high of $500 (which became $250 once it split).

This is really getting exciting. Yahoo was up $42 yesterday, to $475 a share – its market cap is now $125 billion. If it quadruples again this year and next, it will be the first $2 trillion company. (So far, the world’s highest market cap goes to Microsoft, at around $600 billion.) Yahoo earned a solid 25 cents a share in the most recent 12 months, so who says earnings are the kiss of death for an Internet company?

Needless to say, paying $475 for an annual earnings stream of, most recently, 25 cents, seems high. Would you give me $475 if I promised to give you 25 cents a year? Would you liquidate all your assets and give me $475,000 if I promised to give you $250 a year?

But it’s not the 25 cents that has people excited. Obviously.

First Union analyst Carolyn Luther Trabuco rates the stock a strong buy at $475 – it’s cheap here! – because, according to CBS/Marketwatch, she thinks it should hit $600 in the next 12 months. What has her excited is her expectation that revenues for this past quarter will come in at $190 million. And she has upped her earnings-per-share forecast by a full penny, to 16 cents for the quarter just ended from the 15 cents she had previously anticipated. Multiply those quarterly sales and earnings expectations by four, and you have the company now selling for 164 times annual sales and 742 times annual earnings.

But of course the point is that Yahoo sales and earnings will keep growing. Otherwise, why would you pay $475 for a claim on 16 cents in quarterly earnings? You could get $8 a quarter right now from a federally-insured bank certificate of deposit.

(For those slow at math: $8 is a larger amount of money than 16 cents.)

Right now, Yahoo is valued at significantly more than Ford and General Motors, combined. Toss in Dow Jones (which owns, among other things, the Wall Street Journal) . . . and Yahoo is still considered the greater prize. Only when you toss in the New York Times Company, too, does the market consider the two baskets – Basket A, containing Yahoo, and Basket B, containing Ford, GM, Dow Jones and the New York Times Company – about equal in value.

Carolyn Luther Trabuco thinks this is ridiculous. Within a year, she thinks, Yahoo will have added another 26% in market value, leaving Basket B in the dirt.

And the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised.

With a lot of us licking various wounds these days, there is at least some fun in looking back on the folly. For those of you with a taste for it, here’s what I had written a few days earlier, December 27, about Internet Capital. ICGE closed at 12 yesterday, down from a post-split high of 212. And here was the next day’s column about Priceline. PCLN is down from a high of 104 to around 5.

Nor is it only the Internet stocks. Have you ever tried my little Scale? (You can get to it by clicking SCALE in the middle of the bar above this column.) A while back, I used it to point out how Dell was being valued by Wall Street at more than Ford, General Motors and United Airlines combined. Today, Dell is still worth $60 billion — not nothing. But at $23 a share, down from $59 earlier this year, and selling at “just” 35 times its past year’s earnings, it has reentered the earth’s atmosphere.

Of course, it’s far easier being right than rich. I did make money shorting some of these stocks, but probably lost even more shorting others too early. (In theory, I could have just ridden out the storm. But you’d be surprised how one’s nerve buckles when one is losing $20,000 a day and seasoned 28-year-old analysts at venerable Wall Street investment banking houses are raising their target prices 100 points at a time.)

But never mind me — the questions on your mind (I’d wager) are:

☞ Well, are these stocks buys now?

Mmmm . . . no. Some of them may survive and even rebound, but most of them will, at the very least, have to suffer months’ more “consolidation,” as it is known, and tax-selling pressure.

☞ What’s wildly overpriced, ripe to be shorted, now?

My current albatross is a company called Juniper, which makes the Internet backbone that will be central to the future of civilization. At 206, it’s not quite 15% off its all-time high, up from 35 earlier in the year — a respectable gain in a difficult year — and though it has very little in the way of sales, it is currently valued at more than General Motors, Apple, Amazon and the New York Times Company, combined. A Juniper fan tells me he expects that the company will soon show the fastest ramp up from zero to $5 billion in sales in the history of the world, and I don’t doubt it. Juniper is, from what I can tell, and all kidding aside, a very fine, exciting, company. But even assuming 100% of the $5 billion is profit — with no overhead, expenses or taxes — I’m not sure the company is currently worth its $60 billion market valuation.

Because if this is such a phenomenally profitable business, won’t others try somehow to come in and compete? The barriers to entry are very high. But if little JNPR was able to enter when Cisco was the only player, might Lucent or IBM or someone be able to compete with Juniper?

The truth is, I don’t know. I can’t even get my DSL line work, let alone predict the future of the communications industry. Which is why I try to make measured bets. (And why I generally lose money shorting stocks, as you will, too, if you try this.) My world won’t end if Juniper soars still further.

The truth is, Juniper may one day be valued more highly not just than GM, Apple, Amazon, and the New York Times Company, combined, as now, but more highly than all those plus (are you ready?) Federal Express, Ford, AT&T, Kodak, Yahoo, and the entire U.S. airline industry.

Why not? Cisco already is.

For a while all they could talk about was the kiss. Prescription drug benefits and a patients’ bill of rights? Very nice. Paying down the debt to keep mortgage and auto loan rates low and the economy humming? Lovely. But did you see that kiss? Awesome!

Now all they can talk about is the sighing, which I admit was unfortunate. (One of you wrote to me that the first debate was a case of “the overbearing versus the overwhelmed.”)

Few question the VP’s competence for the job.

Few dispute that the last eight years have been really good.

Few think Al Gore’s choice of running-mate sent anything but the best signals.

But what about the sighs?

(Having been in a couple of debates over auto insurance reform, where the other side was spectacularly misleading the audience by, in effect, calling the facts “fuzzy math,” I have made the same mistake. It’s a hard reflex to quash.)

More to the point, what about the lies? And this is where the other side makes me truly crazy, because it turns out that, if anyone has been deliberately misleading the public, it’s the other side.

This is not to say that the VP has not occasionally misspoken or exaggerated in the telling of a story — who hasn’t? But that’s a million miles from the kind of picture the Bush folks are skillfully — one might almost say cynically — attempting to paint.

Let’s start with the Internet. It is now well known among those who follow these things — and must surely be known within the Bush campaign — that the Vice President never said he invented the Internet. He . . . just . . . never . . . said . . . it.

He did claim to have been the Internet’s champion in Congress — and that was true.

If you doubt this, I offer you Robert Parry’s now pretty famous article in the Washington Monthly. Or consider the words of Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, who did invent the Internet:

“No one person or even small group of persons exclusively ‘invented’ the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore’s contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.”

☞ That would seem to be a good thing, no? Deserving of respect?

“Last year,” Kahn and Cerf continue, “the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: ‘During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.’ We don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he ‘invented’ the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. . . . As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. . . . Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept.”

☞ What good was George W. doing for anyone in the 1970s?

“When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. . . . No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort . . . “

I go on at such length — and quote Kahn and Cerf at such length — because this is important. The other side has taken something truly praiseworthy and consciously twisted it into character assassination.

Is that not a big deal?

What does that say about the other side?

To me it says that they see no other way to regain power and enact multi-million-dollar tax cuts for the wealthiest Republicans.

Ah, you say, but there’s so much smoke here, there must be fire. What about the famous Buddhist temple? If you read Jeffrey Toobin’s extensive article in the New Yorker last month (sorry, not on-line), you’ll find out that the Vice President seems to have done nothing wrong.

And Love Canal? He never said he discovered Love Canal. His comments to a group of students were misreported by the pool reporter. They went around the world, exposing Gore to Republican ridicule — to the dismay of the students who heard him with their own ears, and who got a lesson in just how unfair the world can be — before eventually, in much smaller type, being corrected. And yet the ridicule continued. (The Love Canal episode was documented extensively in the March, 2000 Brill’s Content and elsewhere.)

And Love Story? The VP told a couple of reporters on Air Force Two that author Erich Segal had once told a Tennessee newspaper that he and Tipper had been models for characters in Love Story. Well, the newspaper article did quote Segal saying that! And apparently one of the characters in Love Story was based partly on Al Gore (though the other was not in fact based on Tipper).

Well, then, how about the abortion flip-flop? Journalist Mickey Kaus looked into this one and concluded it was “mostly a bum rap.”

The Union Label lullaby? He was kidding. It was a funny way of saying, “I’m with you guys.” But quoted without the smile or the laughter, it can be used as “yet another example” of something that most of the other examples weren’t examples of, either.

Yes, he said he co-sponsored the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill — clearly wrong, since, by the time it was introduced, he was already out of the Senate and VP. But he supported the bill, and had earlier co-sponsored other campaign finance reform bills. So in hindsight, of course, he should have said “supported” rather than “co-sponsored.” Is this slip even remotely newsworthy?

And the fundraising phone calls? No controlling legal authority? Not a winning turn of phrase, to be sure. But the law he was accused of violating had been written before there were telephones, back when fundraising solicitations were face to face and it was considered a bad idea to shake down government employees for contributions on the job. How would calling some rich out-of-town donors from his office relate to this? Yes, it would have been better if the calls had been made elsewhere. But isn’t the larger issue here that we badly need campaign finance reform? And that Gore has pledged to make McCain-Feingold the very first bill he submits to Congress? And that Bush opposes it?

Then you have, from the first debate, the Sarasota school kid standing at the back of the class with no desk. Apparently, unbeknownst to the visitors, she did later get a desk. But was this a willful deception? Or simply a way to communicate something completely true and crucially important: far too many of our classrooms are run down and wildly overcrowded. I had two tenants who taught in the Miami public school system. They told me repeatedly, before they quit, how awful the conditions were, with some classes being conducted in trailers with 35 or 40 kids — an impossible number to teach effectively. I’m told the Sarasota classroom the VP visited was designed for 24 and had to accommodate 36. The child’s father has spoken up to support the VP’s message.

Accompanying James Witt to a fire? Clearly, Gore goofed in saying this, and I don’t know why. But I’ll bet you the VP has been to a lot of disaster scenes, and that he has flown with James Witt. So maybe in the heat of the moment — and, yes, overeager to score a debating point — the two melded in his mind.

Again, I’m not saying the Vice President is perfect. In front of a camera or yet another audience of strangers, he sometimes gets stiff or pedantic or awkward or defensive or perhaps overly competitive. I wish he didn’t and I have no doubt he wishes he didn’t. But this is a fine, loving man with a great sense of humor, a deep sense of justice, an abiding commitment to make the world a better place, and exceptional competence to do the job.

So the most self-interested thing you can do — though it’s hard — is to try to ignore the stuff that really doesn’t matter very much (what was with that makeup?) and attempt instead to figure out which guy wants what you want.

If you want Roe v. Wade overturned, vote for Bush. If you want it preserved, vote for Gore.

If you want the wealthiest sliver of Americans to get a big tax cut that even John McCain says is too heavily weighted in favor of the rich, vote for Bush. If you want a more modest tax cut targeted mainly at the middle — leaving that much more money to pay down the debt, beef up the military, help seniors buy prescription drugs, and fund a cushion for emergencies — vote for Gore.

If you’re proud that the United States nixed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that Clinton and the leaders of 152 other nations signed, vote for Bush. If you favor ratification, vote for Gore.

If you like the idea of Jesse Helms “un-vetoed,” vote for Bush. If you would rather Helms were checked and balanced, vote for Gore.

If you sided with the Republicans in opposing an increase in the minimum wage, vote for Bush. If you were glad to see it raised, vote for Gore.

If you feel the Brady bill was a mistake and the gun-show loophole needs to be preserved, vote for Bush. If you think guns are as dangerous as automobiles and should be subject to reasonable regulation, vote for Gore.

If you think two white, Texas oil men care deeply about issues of diversity and inclusion, and protecting the environment, vote for Bush. If you think Gore is more comfortable drawing on the talents of all Americans, and that he has a deeper understanding of the kinds of environmental challenges our planet faces, vote for Gore.

I could go on, but I fear I’m becoming a little pedantic and overbearing myself.

If you want some fun, click here to read it the Molly Ivins way. (Her Monday, October 9 column, in case it scrolls off.) Forward it to everyone you know.

GURU NET

No one’s opinion is better considered than Walt Mossberg’s, at the Wall Street Journal, so when he recommended GuruNet last week, I tried it. Not surprisingly, Walt’s right again: Took no time to install and less to learn. Now, whether in an e-mail or on the net or anywhere, just point to a word or name you want to know about and “Alt-Click.” Seconds later, you know what prestidigitation means, what a coup de grâce is, what NGO stands for, or who Disraeli was. Amazing and wonderful.

MACRO EXPRESS

This one is a little harder to get up and running, but only a little, and I’ve used it with great success for more than a year since Joe Cherner first turned me on to it. You can download it and use it free for 30 days; beyond that, it’s $35. Basically, MacroExpress lets you assign “hot keys” and “short keys” that will spare you typing things the long way, and automate tasks you do frequently. I’m too stupid to have figured out the second part of it — who has time to figure out how to save all this time? But the first part is very helpful. Instead of typing my address, I type zzF and out pops my Florida address, whether in my word processor or e-mail or anywhere else. Instead of typing the disclosure statement about political contributions, I type zzP and out it pours. There’s much more to it than this, but you get the idea.

QUICK BROWSE

I own part of this one, as many of you know; but it’s free, so I don’t feel too bad telling you it’s gotten still better. Just type qb.com (your browser should supply the rest) and you’ll find tools that let you search or browse the web much more easily. Under SELECTIONS, you can (for example) pull together a daily one-click feed of your favorite comic strips or customize a page from sites on your favorite football team. Under NEWSSTAND you can design your own e-newspaper in under 30 seconds and have it delivered to you at will. SEARCH lets you see the first page or two of hits from all the search engines you like to use, without having to go from one to the next. Finally, MY QUICKBROWSE gives you the tools to combine any set of web pages into one long one, viewed once, or delivered to you on a schedule of your choosing. Not bad for free. You can even win a Palm Pilot by telling friends about Quickbrowse.

As you know, you can now view my past columns in Quickbrowse Mode, as well. A good use of your time? No! But at least with QB, you’ll waste time faster.

Meanwhile, QB hit the New York Times’ Navigator list yesterday — first on its list of “new additions.” And for those of you who read Arabic, you’ll see an article explaining how Quickbrowse can be used to get around oppressive government censorship.

QB is still in its infancy, but it’s amazing to see how much Marc Fest and his small crew have accomplished on a budget of about 18 cents. It’s used from New York to New Delhi, from Maine to Marrakech.

Tomorrow: A Kiss Is Just a Kiss, A Sigh is Just a Sigh

John Hendricks: “I may be the only Republican on the Hill who reads your column. I understand your election year enthusiasm for the VP. But despite your partisan full disclosure, I still think you’re missing the mark about Republican tax cuts. I remember my economics coursework at UCLA well enough to understand one’s fear about inflationary pressure if tax cuts return more cash to circulation. But according to numbers released today by the Speaker’s office, the sum of the current Congressional tax reduction proposals only add up to $531.5 billion…that’s just 11.6% of the entire budget surplus. I know that Bush is advocating for somewhat more, but surely neither of these are as “massive” as you and your party repeatedly insist. The real point we Republicans want to make is that the money belongs to the taxpayers anyway, and not to the government.”

☞ But so does the debt, no? Doesn’t that also belong to us? So why not do the conservative, formerly-Republican, thing and pay it off?

And with whatever tax cuts you do enact — Bush’s is pegged at well over $1 trillion over 10 years, which is MUCH more than 11.6% of the hoped-for surplus — why skew them to the most politically powerful who need them least? At some point, doesn’t the ever-widening gap between the rich and the middle become embarrassing or unhealthy? This is a very gray area, I know. But my own sense of it is that a small cut for the rich would be dandy — I’d love the 3.6% “millionaire’s” surcharge to kick in at, say, $500K instead of $250K . . . that would be a delightful $9,000 soupcon for the rich, enough for an exceptionally nice weekend in Paris. And I’d love to see the estate tax ceiling lifted to $5 million, so all but the tiniest fortunate few can just forget about it. But more than that? Not fair. It’s your taxes that should be lowered, not mine. Sorry.

Steve Gilbert: “I have a slightly more reasonable death penalty proposal than Steve Meyer’s Wheel of Misfortune: Given that in our democracy treason is the most heinous crime (and the first federal death-eligible crime), and that the bribery of public officials is arguably only one step below treason, why not add bribery of an elected official to the list of crimes punishable by death? Like that other Steve, I’m opposed to the death penalty. (As an appellate lawyer who represents indigent defendants, I know that our legal system is not sufficiently trustworthy to make me comfortable with its making decisions that can never be corrected.) While I recognize that there is no chance that such a proposal would be adopted, I’ve thought that it would be interesting to see what would happen if it were a ballot proposition here in California. Do you think that the many pols who have run on the pro-capital punishment bandwagon might have a different opinion if it were proposed that their friends and colleagues and contributors faced the ultimate penalty? ”

David D’Antonio: “Steve’s Wheel of Misfortune is totally unConstitutional, since it’s ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment, almost by definition. Justice isn’t quite that much of a lottery yet! My idea on how to deal with capital punishment is to require everyone who is involved in recommending or sentencing someone to die (so that’s the judge and the prosecutor and/or the jury itself) to sign a pledge that if the defendant is EVER found innocent, they will die as well. For most people, this changes the rules from ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ to ‘beyond ANY doubt’ which is a good thing to me, since you can’t undo an execution. You can’t really undo several years in prison, either, but you can attempt to compensate someone anyway. No so with capital punishment.”

Vince: “I found today’s article very disappointing (and downright frightening). Maybe it’s because I’m a lawyer who has worked on criminal cases, but I can’t imagine anyone making light (Steve is making light, right?) of topics as serious as the death penalty and white-collar crime. As the statistics indicate, the current system is laden with racism. In addition, many “white collar” cases are far from innocuous, particularly when hard working low and middle income people are bilked of their entire life savings and/or pensions. None of this should be treated in such a tongue and cheek manner.“

LIFE INSURANCE

Beth: “I am trying to get my life insurance organized and get the most for my money. This is what I currently have: 1. Variable life insurance thru Prudential (held since age 19 and I’m now 35) with a yearly premium of $210.50, a current death benefit of $30,291 and a cash value of $3401. 2. Flexible premium adjustable life thru Federated (held for 3 years) with a yearly premium of $386.28, a death benefit of $100,000 and no current cash value. My question is that I wonder if I am getting the most for my money with these or if I should surrender these policies and get term life insurance which is less expensive. I have a quote from Kemper for a 20 year fixed premium of $165 for a death benefit of $150,000. This is considerably less than what I am paying now. I have every intention of being committed to investing the difference in either a Roth IRA or mutual fund. I am married, have three children and work part time and therefore definitely need to have decent life insurance coverage.”

☞ Well, I think it’s pretty terrific that after 16 years of the greatest bull market in the history of the world, Prudential has been able to turn the $3,368 in premiums you’ve paid into $3,401 of cash value — an increase of more than $30, or nearly $2 a year — at the same time as they were able to provide you with $30,000 in life insurance coverage. Women between the ages of 19 and 35 are, after all, such a high-risk group.

Forgive my sarcasm, but it makes me angry you’ve been so ill-served. I think you should cash in the Prudential policy, drop the other one as well, and shop around for whatever amount of inexpensive term coverage you think you need. If you are in good health, you can get a 20-year fixed rate $500,000 policy for not much above $300. (Go to quicken.com and you’ll see.) And, yes, a Roth IRA is a fine thing to fund.

U GOTTA TRY THIS

That was the subject heading of Don Trivette’s e-mail — U GOTTA TRY THIS — and the truth is, you do. It’s so . . . different! I didn’t get very deep into it, but with a little clicking you will find yourself in a two-dimensional play-pen. Try one of the demo creatures first, then modify it or build one of your own. Watch him lumber clumsily around; switch off gravity and watch him flail in space; reverse gravity and watch him crawl along the ceiling. This is a total waste of time. You gotta try it.

“I hear this Republican message that we’re rich as hell and we’re not going to take it any more. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’m paying taxes at a lower rate than my secretary … and frankly I think that’s crazy.” — Warren Buffett

I watched the two candidates on Larry King and, I’ll be honest: Governor Bush looked relaxed and seemed to be having a good time. This is appealing. The Vice President, by contrast, looked to me as if he might prefer to be somewhere else.

That’s by no means always the case. The Vice President seemed to be having a ball on David Letterman — he was very funny and relaxed. Often, his warmth and humor come through just fine. But sometimes they don’t. In case tonight Governor Bush should win the popularity contest part of it, as he may, there are a couple of things worth noting.

First, I suspect Bush does have more fun with this than the Vice President, because, heck, it must be kind of a kick. If he wins, he gets to be President! How cool is that? And if he loses, he’s said it won’t much bother him, and I believe it (truthfully, it can be a lot of work being President) — he’ll get to enjoy his ranch. So, sure, he’d like to win. But is it that big a deal to him? I don’t think so. Which is why he can often just be himself, be relaxed, let the chips fall where they may. For the Vice President, by contrast, it is a very big deal. Partly, no doubt, that’s because he has been working toward this much of his life; partly it’s because his personality is just more intense; but largely, I expect, it’s because he believes, as I do, that it really matters a great deal who is entrusted with the Presidency, and what policies that person is committed to pursue.

So that’s the second thing to say: we make a mistake if we turn this into a contest of personalities. The fact is, both men are charming in private. And, as the President frequently notes in commenting on the race, both candidates are good, bright, decent people who love their families and love their country. But they have huge policy differences, huge philosophical differences. And it’s those different visions we should be choosing between even more than trying to divine which man we think would better command the respect of his counterparts at the G7 economic summit, or which one we’d rather watch on TV.

There are a lot of specifics. The Republicans took pride in killing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that most of the other nations of the world have ratified; the Democrats wanted to pass it. The Republicans opposed hiking the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15; the Democrats fought to get it through. The Republicans oppose a woman’s right to choose; the Democrats support it. The Republicans opposed the Brady bill and closing the gun show loophole; the Democrats advocate these things. The Republicans appointed not one openly gay or lesbian American in their last two administrations; the Democrats, with 170, have drawn upon the talents of all Americans. The Republicans do their best to protect the tobacco industry (choosing, among other things, not to cite for contempt the seven CEOs who swore they thought nicotine was not addictive); the Democrats have been the tobacco industry’s worst nightmare. And on and on.

Not to mention the stark difference in the kind of Supreme Court we will have depending on who wins. (Yes, sometimes Justices turn out to be a surprise. But generally, they do not.)

I know quite a few of you favor the Republican side of these issues. I’m not asking everyone to agree with me. What I’m asking is that people make their choice based on substance. Both men can be trusted to try to do more or less what they say they will do. And they say they will do very different things.

So the question isn’t whether someone intentionally put something subliminal in a TV ad or whether the Governor can pronounce it . . . or whether the VP did anything wrong at that Buddhist temple (it turns out, if you read Jeffrey Toobin’s detailed recent account in the New Yorker, he did not). Both men are bright and honest and love their country. (Gore never said he invented the Internet, so isn’t it Bush who’s the truth-bender, if anyone is, for suggesting that he did? Gore was clearly joking when he told a labor group that the “union label” song was his lullaby, so isn’t it Bush who’s the truth-bender, if anyone is, for suggesting otherwise? Gore never did say he discovered Love Canal, and the high school kids whom he was addressing have been appalled and outraged to see how the truth could be completely misreported by the press and then, even once corrected, perpetuated by the Republicans. And, yes, Gore did claim to have been the model for a character in Love Story. But the author, Erich Segal, has said that’s true. Character assassination is a really rotten, dishonest thing, and both sides should refrain from it.)

As you watch the debates, I hope you’ll bear in mind one overwhelming difference that sets the stage for much of the rest. At the heart of Governor Bush’s economic plan — the plan you and I and the rest of the world hang our hopes on for continued prosperity — is a huge tax cut for high-income people like me (and even more huge for high-income people like Bush, Cheney, Forbes, the Forbes 400, Pat Robertson and the rest). It is a tax cut that would add stimulus to the economy exactly when you don’t want to add stimulus. But more than that, it is a tax cut that even conservative Republican John McCain has said is far too heavily weighted to the rich.

I would love to see my taxes slashed. I would! But when I look at all the things that need doing in the world — improving health care for kids and seniors, improving education, paying down the national debt to give us a cushion when times are not so good, I just don’t see a big tax cut for me, let alone Dick Cheney or Steve Forbes, as a top priority.

(The R’s say government should get out of all these social programs and let private charity do it. Did you see what Governor Bush’s chosen running mate, an exemplary Republican, has given to charity? It is revealing. Here’s a clip from Lycos News: “Dick Cheney defended his charitable giving Tuesday, terming it ‘appropriate’ that he has donated 1 percent of his income over the past decade. The amount is less than half of the national average. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, donated $209,832 out of an adjusted gross income of $20.9 million from 1990 through 1999.”)

So, yes, I’d love an extra few tens of thousands of dollars each year — I’m a good guy, why not? But how about preserving or even expanding our pathetically small foreign aid budget, which is a tiny investment in world peace and prosperity? (The average person thinks a huge portion of his taxes goes to foreign aid. It’s barely 1%.)

And what about spending a little to confront our environmental challenges? The North Pole melted this summer! The ozone layer is thinning! These things may not matter. But what if, perchance, the scientists are right and they do? Is it really a gamble we want to take? One wonders whether the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, didn’t take a somewhat similar position.

A big tax cut for the wealthy can’t be a top priority.

That’s why I was struck by Buffett’s quote. Warren Buffett is not an unwise or imprudent man. Nor is he a man who despises free markets or eschews wealth. But he recently said he considers himself “very undertaxed.” As I quoted him up top: “I hear this Republican message that we’re rich as hell and we’re not going to take it any more. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’m paying taxes at a lower rate than my secretary … and frankly I think that’s crazy.”

At the heart of the debate tonight and in this election is the large portion of the hoped-for surplus that Governor Bush has committed to lowering taxes on the wealthy. This drives everything else, because by making this choice, he can’t possibly have as much money to spend on education or health care or the environment or defense or paying down the debt.

And what does he plan to do if we should ever have a recession? The budget surplus would dry up — less tax revenue, more food stamps — and could well turn back into a deficit. Would he cut taxes further, increasing the deficit and scaring the bond market, to stimulate the lagging economy? Would he cut back on education and health care to make up the deficit? Would he raise taxes — in the middle of a recession — to try to balance the budget? I’m sure we would survive; but why back ourselves into this unnecessary corner? Are we that sure we’ll never again have a recession?

When you’re with your friends watching the debates tonight, I hope you will encourage them to focus not on who’s a more skillful debater (who cares?), or who gets in the funniest zinger (you know that’s what will dominate the TV coverage — and our memories), let alone who’s more telegenic . . . but, rather, whose positions are most likely to be good for you and your kids and your country and your planet. And which guy is most likely to have the vision required to grasp looming problems and craft the best solutions in what has become an ever more highly complex world.

One of you suggested a brilliant bumper sticker I mentioned once before that captures it all very well. AL GORE: DESIGNATED DRIVER. He might or might not be the most fun guy at the party (he is more fun than you think); but who do you want driving home from the party, with your kids in the car?

Tomorrow: Adventures in IPO Land

I discovered this completely by accident.

Yes, you can buy seedless watermelon, just as one day you will be able to buy self-scraping carrots and beds that make themselves.

But somehow there was a large container in the refrigerator filled with big heavily-seeded watermelon chunks. This is the kind of watermelon one buys from the Korean markets in Manhattan. It comes not in a thick rind but in a thin see-through plastic container, alongside chunks of other fruit in their own containers, sitting on beds of ice chips. (Ah, city life.) And at this particular moment, it was stacked on top of two other such large containers, one cantaloupe, one honeydew, on the top shelf of the refrigerator, in front of something I was aiming to retrieve. While I was on the cordless phone. So I was doing it with one hand.

In my mind, I was lifting the stack of plastic containers out of the refrigerator and temporarily setting it down on the counter, to retrieve my grail, which in this case was an Arizona fizzy chocolate egg cream (I forget their exact name for it, but it’s good), and then putting the melon stack back in its place.

That was the intended scenario.

Instead, because of the maldistribution of the melon chunks at various levels of this tri-containerized stack, an instant later I had the phone jammed between my should and ear, as with my second hand, now free, I was vainly trying to catch the top container — the one with the watermelon chunks — as it slid off the top and fell — splat — to the blue tile floor.

It was not unlike the moment that guy retrieved the film that had been near the radium with his handprint on it (sorry — but you know what I mean), or even, although I am first to grant I may be overstating the importance of my discovery, the time Archimedes jumped into the bath tub and — scalded by water hotter than he had expected — let out a shriek (Eureka!), which led to the invention of the single-handle hot-and-cold water faucet.

What happened, quite simply, is that, upon inspection of the juicy mess on the floor, I realized, in beginning to clean it up, that the seeds, with few exceptions — having a mass greater than the melon — had all jumped out of their slippery sockets and flown clear of the mess. With this simple splat, the melon had de-seeded itself.

It was — perhaps even more than a seedless melon would have been — delicious.

And I must tell you, in the interest of science if not the interest of getting you to hire my steady hand for some delicate task, that I somehow managed to do the exact same thing a few weeks later, a second time — and again the seeds flew clear.

So I think I am really onto something here.

Obviously, not everyone has a tile kitchen floor. And not everyone will be comfortable walking on the stickiness that remains when the juice dries. But with the principle established and confirmed, the rest is just refinement.

National Presto (NPK) — the $30 New York Stock Exchange-listed perennial underperformer with no debt that sells at one times cash (full disclosure: I own a little) — may finally win some respect if, instead of electric “bread slicing systems” and corn poppers, it sells an electric Watermelon Slab. No moving parts, just a slab on which to drop your watermelon chunks from a great height. With raised edges to keep the seeds from flying beyond its perimeter. Just drop and — Presto! — ready to eat.

With no moving parts, electric consumption would be minimal, adding to the Slab’s appeal.

A company with no debt selling at one times cash is essentially a company selling for free. Presto! You get your 6.5% dividend while you wait to rake in the profits from the electric Watermelon Slab and, you hope, a bump in the stock. The question is, what might such a company — “free,” when you net out its cash horde — actually be worth? And that depends on your opinion of electric corn poppers and such, which in turn depends on the amount of space you believe people have remaining way in the back of their closets for stuff like this, beside the fondue maker they never used, either.