It Won’t Be Trump December 3, 2015December 3, 2015 Three months ago, I suggested UPIP at 77 cents. Someone smart had bought a whole lot privately at $1. It’s now back up to that level in the public market — I know, I bought some more yesterday at $1 — not least because the company, which owns a library of patents, seems successfully to have sued to enforce one of them. Which could presage more such successes — perhaps they know what they’re doing! — and cause others to seek negotiated settlements with UPIP rather than endure the same fate. (It’s not nice to violate someone else’s patents. ) Note that UPIP’s CEO was formerly Apple’s head of Intellectual Property. He’d likely not have taken this job if he didn’t sense upside. And, no, it still won’t be Trump. (Click here in case you haven’t already seen the devastating ad of Trump mocking the handicapped.) But, boy, is he ever bringing out the worst in people. And speaking of the Republican front runner, Gene Robinson was particularly eloquent in a segment titled, “Trump Expands Lead, Causing GOP To Panic” on yesterday’s Morning Joe: All this, “O woe is us” from the Republican establishment is a bit ironic, because in fact the entire party has helped create the atmosphere in which Donald Trump thrives. You know, “Barack Obama’s the worst thing to happen to this country since World War II or since whatever” . . . you know, “Everything is going to hell, we have no national defense, we’re weak in the world, we’re this, we’re that.” It created, or helped create, this anger, this resentment, this frustration, that Trump so adroitly channels and is using, and then they’re like, “O woe is us, what happened? what happened to the voters? They’ve lost their minds.” Well, you helped drive ’em crazy. I refer you again to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s prepared remarks: “By any standard, Barack Obama has been a disaster for out country.” Right? He inherited from his Republican predecessor two wars, soaring unemployment, a crashing stock market, crashing housing prices, zooming bankruptcies, $4 gasoline, a $1.5 trillion deficit, an economy teetering toward global depression . . . and here we are after seven years with Obama — who may not even have been born America! we should build a wall! look at the thousands of cheering Muslims in Jersey City! our leaders are so stupid! — and guess what? The economic ship has been righted, the deficit slashed by two-thirds,* the ground wars ended, the gas price halved, the American Ebola death toll — that so dominated the weeks leading up to the mid-terms when we should have been talking about Republican refusal to raise the minimum wage, pass comprehensive immigration reform, and revitalize our crumbling infrastructure — zero . . . and, oh, yeah, LGBT got equal rights** and 320 million Americans can no longer be denied health insurance because of a preexisting condition (and the next Democrat, we hope, will turn his or her attention to outrageous drug prices — see tomorrow’s post) and relations have been opened with Cuba, China has agreed to work to combat climate change, and the Iranians are dismantling their most advanced centrifuges and disposing of 98% of their enriched uranium. But what we need now is Donald Trump? Or another born-again Texan in the White House — Ted Cruz — whose idea of compromise is shutting down the government? Or any of the others, all of whom agree we should eliminate the estate tax on billionheirs while continuing to shrink the minimum wage?*** Really? *Once again shrinking relative to the economy as a whole. **Well, except for employment, housing, credit and such, which the Republicans block. ***By holding it constant while life gets ever more expensive.