Notes From a Fundamentalist November 8, 2004February 28, 2017 SCALLOPS Frank Nash: ‘You say, ‘Turn the scallops over and push ’em around a little.’ Don’t turn them over. Cook on one side only. The result is a splendid golden crust on one side and a much juicier scallop – no need to upend the pan to drink the juice, the juice remains in the scallops.’ ☞ Chacon a son gout. (I don’t speak French and spelled haricot vert wrong yesterday, but I keep trying.) YES, BUSH CAN It seems the YES, BUSH CAN folks I’ve referred to a couple of times here didn’t really start out as Bushies and convert – they were anti-Bush all along. Sorry not to have caught that. Click here for their exploits. ARROGANCE Katie: ‘Your column beautifully illustrates why the Dems lost. You arrogantly assume that the people who voted for Bush were uninformed. The arrogance of the elites is why you lost this election. The majority of Americans can and do examine the facts and decide for themselves. That they choose to ignore you and the Dems does NOT make them uniformed. It means they disagree. But until you and your party can figure out that you do not know what’s best for the rest of us, you will continue to lose national elections.‘ ☞ If the surveys are right, 60% to 70% of Bush voters believe Iraq had a significant hand in attacking us. That’s just one of many examples, but not an unimportant one. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.’ My fear is two-fold. First, that our citizenry does an only so-so job of staying informed. Second, that we are served by an increasingly consolidated, increasingly intimidated press. As to the arrogance of ‘knowing what’s best for the rest of us,’ there are places where, yes, we would intrude – for example, we wanted to extend the ban on the sale of assault weapons. But that’s an area where polls show most people agree with us. At the same time, there are so many areas where your elites believe they ‘know what’s best for the rest of us.’ For example: The Bush Administration says the people of California may not use medical marijuana to relieve their pain or reduce the nausea of chemotherapy – never mind the referendum by which they enacted this. The Bush Administration knows what’s best for them. The Bush Administration says terminally ill Oregonians may not choose assisted suicide, even though the people of Oregon twice passed this by referendum. The Bush Administration knows what’s best for them. The Bush team says abortion should be illegal. They know better than women and their doctors how to make this difficult choice – even though a majority of the country disagrees. The Bush team says that Charles and I should be denied equal rights – perhaps even jailed (as per the Texas law that Governor Bush supported but that, to his dismay, the Court struck down) – because they know better than we do whom it is okay for us to love. The Bush team says we cannot adopt, even if the trained social workers and family court judge believe it would be in the best interest of the child. The Bush Administration knows what’s best for the child. So I think it maybe works both ways. ONE FUNDAMENTALIST’S VIEW From John Leonarz: I write as a fundamentalist, born-again Christian, a Democrat and a strong Kerry supporter. I drove down to Jacksonville, FL, to give three days driving voters to the polls and do my bit to preclude a repeat of the debacle of 2000, when many thousands of votes (Dem.) were uncounted in Duval County. While at the Dem HQ a lady came in to ask for a bumper sticker which would say “Christians for Kerry.” There weren’t any. Apparently the campaign never made any of them up. The Black people I assisted were very strong Christians and had no difficulty seeing that God wanted them to support the Democratic Party. Mr. Kerry was a red (blue?) flag to these people – “liberal”, Catholic, anti-Vietnam war, pro-abortion, pro-Gay, from Massachusetts, and “nuanced.” If we expect to win, ever again, we will have to meet these people at least half way with someone who is a recognizable, sincere, biblically-literate Christian. This person need not be a gay-basher, nor one who wants to re-criminalize abortion (mostly the right-wing does not want actually to recriminalize abortion). The candidate would have to begin with a simple, consistent, pro-American, pro-gun, pro-conventional-marriage base. Strong support for a proper health care system, strong defense, strong anti-terror program. The person should be a church-attending, credible veteran free of antiwar notoriety, a person with stature as a leader and politician, probably a Governor. The person must be well-vetted because the Republicans will take any incident out of context and make up stuff to discredit the person. The person must have a record of making good decisions and staying with them. Decisions should be informed, but not marked by long periods of study. Bush would have been vulnerable to a charge that he made snap decisions made on guesswork and then let himself become the prisoner of his ego. We never said that in so many words. The gay marriage issue is answered for a concurrent majority of Christians by the appeal to fairness – i.e, advocacy of the civil union, together with the comment that “God knows who is married and who is not, and only God’s opinion counts.” The gun issue is answered by taking the position that one will respect the opinions of law enforcement organizations, and that therefore gun-owning, public spirited citizens have nothing to fear from the Democratic party. Christian voters abhor the idea of giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy, to be paid for by our children and grandchildren, but would not vote for Democrats because of the general fear of creating a massively secular, big-brotherly type of society, oriented to deterioration of the family and indulgent toward unconventional sexual mores. Bush’s comment that the majority of the tax cut went to low income citizens, was misunderstood by most. What he apparently based it on was the number of persons in the categories who received tax cuts, which was unquestionably highest among those of low income. [OK, but if you gave a $5 cut to each of 100 million low-income households and a $1 million cut to the top 10,000, that would be $500 million for the people at the bottom and $10 billion to the people at the top. Wouldn’t it be purposely deceptive to deny that such a scheme gave most of the benefit to the wealthy, as Gore suggested, and state flatly, as Bush did, that “by far the vast majority” of the tax cut would go to people “at the bottom end of the economic ladder”? – A.T.] Christian voters are not as stupid as many Democrats think they are. (Some of them, of course, are.) In general, Christians were greatly annoyed at the blatant lies put out by the Republicans, and appalled at the casual way in which they made stuff up as they went along. All things equal, a Christian will vote against that kind of tactic. In future we must adhere to a well-publicized effort toward truth and fair dealing in our campaign statements. When we slip from this standard we have to be prompt and full with our explanation and recognition of the truth, even apology, which can be even more devastating than any exaggeration we might have put forth. We must recognize that Republicans are not interested in facts, only in values and impressions. If the world divides between the nerds and the jocks, they are the jocks, and the jocks are more numerous. Did it matter whether Iraq played a role in 9-11? No. Or that Bush is a heartless scoundrel (the Tucker case, the suppression of photos of the returning caskets)? No. A decent regard for the heartland religion is key, because the heartland is where the electoral votes are. Karl Rove knows that, and that will still be true in 2008.
Haricot Vert November 5, 2004February 28, 2017 HOUSEKEEPING 1. Sorry about yesterday’s typos and garbles. I cleaned them up yesterday afternoon. 2. Sorry if you’ve me-mailed recently. I have more than 1,000 backed up and may for a brief time have to welsh on my normal practice of reading them all. 3. For those of you who may have come to this column because of the election, and thus not know what it’s about or how it works . . . it started in 1996, when Ameritrade asked me to write a daily comment for their web site. You can read about that here, on the occasion of my 750th and final column for Ameritrade . . . or here, on the occasion of the 2000th. (You don’t see the numbers, but today’s is #2154). I keep the subscription price low because I learn at least as much from my readers as they do from me. I often feel as if I should be paying YOU. (Predictably, the feeling passes.) But in return you have to suffer a lot of bad columns and a great deal of self-indulgence on my part (such as this parenthetical rumination on the topic of: ‘on who else’s part could self-indulgence be than one’s own?’) . . . with, I greatly hope, the reward of, here and there, from time to time, a thought on personal finance that makes you money. Or a thought on a political or economic issue that makes you think. (I particularly value those of you who come here who do not necessarily share my view of the world.) Or a thought that makes you smile. Or a recipe from my ongoing series, Cooking Like a Guy™, so fundamentally appalling that it makes you better appreciate your partner’s cooking. SEA SCALLOPS Sometimes my cooking is so good it dazzles even me. 1. Get rich enough so you can afford sea scallops, at $14 a pound, at the fresh fish counter of your supermarket. (They’re big white lumps, but not slimy. Be a man. Don’t be afraid to touch them.) Get half a pound for each of you. 2. Take your magic pan – everyone needs a little magic Teflon-coated pan – pour in a little olive oil and rub it around with your fingers so it coats the bottom of the pan. 3. Turn on the burner and, after a minute or two, when the pan is hot, drop in the scallops. This is far easier for the squeamish guy than lobster. The scallops are white lumps. They don’t scream little scallop screams the way lobsters do. 4. Sprinkle some interesting salt and ground pepper over top, sing a bawdy song . . . turn the scallops over and push ‘em around a little. Think about the Bears and the Bruins and the Bengals and the date you wish were watching you admiringly from the couch – guy stuff. 5. Stab fork into pan, lift sea scallop triumphantly, allow to cool a few seconds, and eat. 6. Is that not completely delicious? You’re telling me it is! 7. Now look skyward as you lift the pan above your mouth and drain the remaining olive-oily salt-and-peppery sea scallop juice down your gullet. Never in your life have you found a superior happiness. 8. Rinse out the pan and wipe dry with a rag. Elapsed time from commencement through consumption to completed cleanup – 7 minutes. If you do have a date on the couch, serve on plates instead, with some frozen green beans you tell her are “haricot vert” and microwaved before she came. Low light, a candle, and a bottle of Chardonay . . . man, are YOU ever going to score points. BLACK TUESDAY Professor David Kaiser began a blog last month that included this snippet from a long October 30 post, just before the election: The election pits two entirely different philosophies against one another. On the one hand, the Democrat John Kerry wants, essentially, to continue building upon the achievements of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, with a nod to Bill Clinton’s remarkable budget-balancing achievements. On the other, George W. Bush wants almost entirely to undo the work of the twentieth century, vastly reducing public services, effectively ending environmental regulation, reducing or eliminating progressive taxation, privatizing social security, and essentially substituting faith for reason as our guide. Abroad, meanwhile, he has already junked 60 years of multilateralism and commitment to international law in favor of a belief in the efficacy of unbridled American force. These changes are so dramatic that many in the major media refuse to believe they are taking place. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has expressed astonishment at his many friends who see catastrophe lurking if Bush should be reelected, and when Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind told Chris Matthews that many Bush supporters see the President as a messenger from God, Matthews exclaimed, “Oh, come on!” – prompting Suskind to exhort Matthews to get out of Washington and see what was happening in the rest of the country. The wholesale repudiation of the beliefs of our educated elite at the highest levels of our government—amply documented in Suskind’s recent New York Times Magazine article—does come as a shock, but Strauss and Howe’s historical scheme helps understand how it has happened. Nor is it without precedent in western history, as something quite similar happened in Great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century . . . ☞ If you have time, it’s worth reading the whole thing. Happy birthday, Marc!
If This Is My Last Column, You’ll Know Why (We're Going to Win) September 22, 2004February 27, 2017 COOKING LIKE A GUY™ I am sitting here with the label from a package of “refrigerated EGG BEATERS healthy real egg product” and a USE BY date of July 1. You are thinking that it’s September 22, and I am too late. But I am thinking, “Two thousand and one? This thing has been in the freezer since July 1, 2001?” Now, freezers are remarkable things, although at some point over the summer (but which summer, I wonder?) I apparently transferred this healthy real egg product from the freezer to the fridge. Didn’t they find a frozen 5,000 year old man in a glacier? They warmed him up, stuck a tennis racket in his hand, and he only lost 6-4, 6-2. Still, as I gazed at the USE BY date, two conflicting emotions were at were within me – my deep distress at wasting food (even now, there are children starving in China), and my strong will to live. With all the while a third force pulling at my wee brain – hunger. Or perhaps more accurately – hankering. I just had a hankering for some healthy real egg product. And I also have a frying pan even glue wouldn’t stick to. Nothing sticks to this. It puts Charles’s expensive Calphalon™ pans to shame. I think you could literally mix Epoxy in the pan, let it sit, and then just wipe it all out with a rag. It was hanging from a hook high above the bread section at our supermarket when I snagged it for $12.95. I love this pan. So I figured if there’s anything wrong, I will see it or smell it, and I opened the container, half expecting a healthy real chicken product to jump out, tennis racket in hand. But no . . . just the yellow liquid there always is when, every year or so, I treat myself to Egg Beaters. On with the stove, into the frying pan, toss in some salt and an individually wrapped slice of American cheese (omelet! omelet! I hear you cry) . . . having carefully broken the cheese slice into little pieces for even distribution through the egg product, now quickly turning into a smooth egg pancake if you don’t deftly move it around and fold it over on itself and attempt to give it some texture. Turn off the heat while Egg Beaters still highly runny, keep moving stuff around, and – voila! Eat it right out of the pan. (No muss, no fuss. This is the essence of COOKING LIKE A GUY™.) I am here to tell you it was delicious. If I am not here tomorrow, you will know why. WE’RE GOING TO WIN Senator Kerry’s Iraq speech Monday was a hit. His two speeches at our $4 million reception and dinner that evening were terrific. You can see it happening: The fight is rising in our candidate. The powerful end game for which he is known is building – and, while there will surely be bumps along the way – we are going to win. The latest Zogby poll is now showing Pennsylvania back in our column (we are going to win Pennsylvania) and Florida back to totally tied (we are going to win Florida, also – see last Friday’s column for 10 reasons why). Electoral-vote.com still shows New Jersey (15 electoral votes) tipping to Bush, based on an outdated September 12 poll – but no WAY will the President carry New Jersey. (Gore won it last time 56/40. And that was WITHOUT Springsteen.) With New Jersey and Florida, we’re at 281 to their 241. (You need 270.) We are going to win. I got an e-mail today (well, yesterday, as you read this) from a well known member of a well known conservative think tank. He sat next to one of his colleagues at a wedding the other day, to whom for now, at least, he asks that I refer as “X.” He says that X is “perhaps the premier conservative policy journalist of our time.” And he says that over the wedding cake he learned that X is voting for Kerry. Anecdotal, to be sure, but good to hear if you’re working for John Kerry, as I am. Likewise: I got $10,000 today from a fellow whose only previous presidential contribution since 1992 – you can look these things up on opensecrets.org – was $500 to Bush. And I got $25,000 today from an entrepreneur I’ve never met WHO HAD NEVER MADE A POLITICAL CONTRIBUTION BEFORE. People are getting it. This isn’t business as usual. President Bush went to the UN today, and – lost in all the understandable focus on Iraq – he affirmed that the United States wants to shut down stem cell research . . . worldwide. The President called it cloning, which is easier to decry; but the Costa Rican resolution he supports explicitly includes not just reproductive cloning – which almost all agree should be banned – but also therapeutic cloning, the stuff of stem cell research. Last time, we lost the vote – thankfully – but by the barest of margins, 79-80. The President has every right to want to impede stem cell research . . . and we have every right not to reelect him. So if you know any independent voters who worry about things like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, let them know about this. It’s not just Nancy Reagan and Ron Reagan who are concerned – everyone should be. And if your skeptical friends brush off the threat that President Bush will actually manage to seriously impede this research (“Oh, pshaw – that will never happen!”), remind them, first, that by using the expression “pshaw,” they show they are of an age ripe for such afflictions, so they’d best not dismiss this issue too lightly. And remind them, second, that President Bush has already made considerable progress in impeding this research . . . and that “assault weapons” happened against the wishes of almost everybody, so why not this? We are now taking cops off the streets and putting a wider variety of assault weapons back ON the streets, and as improbable as that seems, there you have it. Remind them that a disastrous war happened, that the never-to-be-touched Social Security surplus was spent, that judges like Pickering and Pryor were forced through, that . . . well, before I lose control and turn this ramble into a screed, let me conclude by telling you just one quick fundraising story: A dear old friend sent me $500 months ago — seemingly HIS first political contribution ever, too. I sent it back marked “NSF.” Being a financial guy, he would know, I knew, that NSF is bank shorthand for “Insufficient Funds.” It was the first time in nearly six years as treasurer I had done that, but this was just not right. He and his wife are as eager as the rest of us to win, and he is a man of good humor, good heart, great intelligence and significant means. Five hundred dollars? The law allows each of us to invest $57,500 in this enterprise – he was missing, at the very, very least, one zero. Well, after many further entreaties, he sent $5,000 and came to Monday night’s dinner – and left saying it was a terrific night he would never forget. And that was even before the deep-dish apple crisp with vanilla ice cream. (As usual with these things – and it kills me – everyone leapt from their seats the minute Senator Kerry finished speaking to go try to say hello to the next President of the United States. So we had 380 desserts left over . . . even after allowing for the several that I, and a handful of other stalwarts who have already met Senator Kerry and who hate to see even a penny of our contributors’ money go to waste, did our patriotic best to consume.) My point: when people let themselves get involved, and realize they are part of something REALLY IMPORTANT, as my friend ultimately did, it goes from being something they seek to avoid to something they are really proud of having been able to do. The purpose of this site is not to cost you money. (Note that the Anadarko Petroleum suggested here June 14 at $56.50 broke $64 yesterday and that the NTII re-recommended at $2.60 August 16 now sits around $3.80 – not that this is a fair sampling.) So if you have credit card debt on which you pay interest, stick to your plan to pay it off. Read no further. And if you agree with President Bush about stem cell research, or about running large deficits to fund giant tax cuts for the best off . . . if you think invading Iraq in the manner we did was well thought out and has discouraged terrorism, then you, too, should read no further. I annoy you enough as it is! And I appreciate your willingness to read my point of view!) But if you actually could afford to renovate your bathroom – or, dare I dream it – your kitchen . . . and if we do share some of the same concerns . . . then consider putting the renovation off for a year and saving your country instead. Go crazy. Dig deep in these critical last few days. Click here. Or if it really is a renovation-size contribution you are considering, click “Me-Mail” up top. When we win, you will know for the rest of your life that at a crucial moment in your country’s history, you helped make the difference in a really tight race. Many of you already have. Thank you! As for E.L. Doctorow, I have to put him off until tomorrow.
Nutty Stocks, Corn for Guys on the Go, Jogging in Iraq June 4, 2004February 25, 2017 BOREALIS Well, this stock that I’ve written about for so many years – that is surely going to zero, but I own a ton of it – has lately been trading just under $6, giving the entire enterprise a market cap of $30 million. (Five million shares at $6 each.) Its symbol is BOREF, and if you think it is lightly traded, you should see the stock of its ‘publicly traded’ subsidiaries. They barely ever trade at all. Each Borealis share represents ownership of approximately one share of: CHOMF (Chorus Motors, last reported trade at $6) . . . COLCF (Cool Chips, last reported trade at $10) . . . PWCHF (Power Chips, last reported trade at $6) . . . and RCHBF (Roche Bay, last reported trade at $7). So each $6 Borealis share supposedly represents about $29 worth of its subsidiaries. This is not for an instant to declare that the market prices of the subsidiaries mean a lot. Their true value is either zero (which I have to assume) or many times the current prices (which is my dream). Only time will tell whether any of this is real. But I’d rather own $29 ‘worth’ of the subsidiaries for $6 than for $29. SPEAKING OF NUTTY STOCKS Steve: ‘Actually, the price of SVNX never reached $2400, it reached $240. The quotes you’re getting are inflated by an adjustment for a 1-for-10 reverse split last year. But the 99.9% percentage loss is correct, as an unadjusted original share would now fetch only about 30 cents, down from $240.’ MY SUMMER CORN RECIPE FOR GUYS ON THE GO It has been a while since I’ve shared a recipe from my work in progress, Cooking Like a Guy™ (remember to slam your open palm on the table for manly emphasis as you say it). So, with summer in the air, here’s one: Quick Corn: 1. Buy some really nice young sweet corn. 2. Shuck. 3. Serve. I know this would seem to skip the “cook and slather in butter and salt” steps, which if you have time I would encourage you to take. But I have discovered, at considerable personal risk to myself by trying it out for you, that if you’re in a hurry, this works fine. Tasty, crunchy, with no untoward aftereffects. “Corn Aldente” I call it. “Eating Like a Rodent,” my partner calls it. To each his own. Just try to avoid the little poison pellets roommates may leave out for you around the baseboard. SPEAKING OF FRESH CORN James Redekop: “We use an online grocery delivery company up here in Toronto called Grocery Gateway. Just thinking about Karen Collins’ complaint about the waste of boxes: Grocery Gateway will take the boxes from a delivery back on the next delivery, to reuse (or recycle if they’re wearing out). Very efficient.” JOGGING AROUND THE GREEN ZONE Click here for a really interesting Iraqi-American’s account.
Salty Weekend Reading August 23, 2002February 21, 2017 SALTED GRAPEFRUIT Mark Kennet: ‘You might also try salt plus chili powder on slightly under-ripe mangos. That’s how they eat them in Thailand, and it’s really surprisingly good! Here in Peru, I’m so happy to have a zillion different types of fresh fruit every day that I don’t bother to put anything on it – I can’t imagine anything improving a cherimoya.’ John Calkins: ‘Your “Grapefruit” column described exorbitant room service charges at a four-star Beverly Hills hotel, while “Pressing Matters” states that the grapefruit in question was delivered to your hotel room in San Francisco. Jet lag, perhaps, or did you inhale too much steam in Des Moines?’ ☞ Oops. EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION Tim Bonham: ‘Have you seen ecomponline.com? It uses SEC reports to give you the compensation of the top executives of companies. Very interesting. Looking up ones like Enron, etc. can be infuriating! I just wish they had included a line at the bottom giving the total reported profit (or loss) for the company for that year.’ ☞ Neat. YOU CAN CUT/PASTE FROM MYM12 IN WIN ’98 OR XP! Michael Rutkaus: ‘For XP Home: Click over little icon at upper left of MYM12 Screen in XP. Select Edit. Now you can mark (you do this to select what to copy) cut, paste almost like in Windows. You also have a better Find than in MYM12. Also if you don’t have the nice MYM12 Icon on your Windows XP desktop, but have a DOS looking icon, you can right click on that, select Program, then select change icon and then Browse in the MYM12 folder to find the icon. For Win98/Me and even Win95, the key, running it inside a window, not ‘full screen.’ (Right-click on the MYM icon on your desktop and select Properties and then Screen. Then tell Windows you want to run MYM in a window, and that you want to Display Toolbar. Next time you start MYM12 it will have a modicum of a toolbar at the top.’ ☞ Now they tell me. VARIABLE UNIVERSAL LIFE INSURANCE Steven: ‘An advisor wants me to buy a low load, commission-free VUL. What do you think of this product?’ ☞ If there’s a load, low as it may be, how can there be no commission? If you mean he/she gets absolutely no commission for recommending this product, that would be a reason at least to listen. But do you need life insurance? (From Steven’s e-mail address, I’m guessing he may not.) If not, don’t buy. And even if you do, why not buy inexpensive term life insurance, that’s easy to shop for, and do your stock market investing separately (and/or use the money to fund a Roth IRA)? WEEKEND READING FROM GEORGE SOROS Click here.
Is 63 Too Old to Start? May 3, 2002February 21, 2017 Gary Hidden: ‘As a 63-year-old retiree with all retirement savings in fixed income investments, I continue to have serious doubts about the wisdom of my ultra conservative approach since you as well as all the other investment gurus advise a more balanced approach with up to 70% of investments in equities. At 63, is it really too late to start as you say on the last page of your book or should I switch some assets from fixed income to equities at this late date?‘ ☞ I wouldn’t rush to switch now. Nor would I have too much of my money in low-yielding long-term fixed income investments, because I fear interest rates may rise. But if/when the market is really scary low – and to me, 10,000 on the Dow is not scary low – you should consider putting some money into index funds. Or how about this? Embark, now, on a program of putting, say, 1% a month, or maybe just 2% a quarter, into a couple of the funds recommended at the back of my book. After three or four years, by which time you’ll have 30% or 40% of your assets in the market, stop. If the market has gone up significantly, you’ll be glad you at least did this much. If it has gone down a lot, you’ll be glad you didn’t do it all at once. And eventually it will come back to where you started and you’ll have a lightly-taxed profit. There’s nothing like sleeping well. So keep a good chunk of your money safe, especially now when stocks pay such low dividends and tend to sell, still, at high valuations. (This is one of the reasons that – for tax-sheltered retirement money only – I put a chunk of my own funds into TIPS.) Then again, if you’re not a smoker and you lead a relatively happy, healthy life, your life expectancy is another 20 or 22 years. And each year, it gets a little longer. If you do make it to 85 and haven’t taken up any wild or wicked ways, your life expectancy will then be 7 or 8 more years, to 93. And at 93, it will be longer still. My God, Gary, you could be . . . The First Immortal! So don’t be too short-sighted in your investment horizon, either. MATH QUIZ If you lost 1% of your money every month, how much would you have left after 100 months? (Math Quiz Answer: about 37% of what you started with.) EVERY CARROT’S FAVORITE Robert M. Youngman, II: ‘If you like carrot juice, try this: 12 ounces chilled carrot juice and two ounces chilled vodka. In college, we called it a Bugs Bunny.’ Coming Soon: The Wisdom of Dick Davis!
Can Value Line Beat an Index Fund? April 18, 2002February 21, 2017 COOKING LIKE A HORSE Brian Adair: ‘If you like ice cold carrot juice, try this: blend equal parts carrot juice and low fat vanilla ice cream (I like Breyers). My girlfriend made me try this drink a few months ago (‘Carrot juice? That sounds disgusting’ was my exact response.) Now I can’t enough of it. I bought a juicer just to make my own carrot juice and I buy a 5 lb bag of carrots every few days. (I’ve been eyeing the 20 lb bag every time I’m in the store, but I haven’t bought it yet.)’ ANDY’S GANG! Now I see why I remembered Froggie and his magic twanger. It comes from an old show called Andy’s Gang. Thanks to Jack Kirsch and Jon Zich for these links. Click here for the history. And here for Froggie’s page. Hiya kids! Hiya! Hiya! TOBACCO Eric E. Haas: ‘I read with interest your comment about Third World cigarette distribution. I remember an interesting press conference about ten years ago. President Bush (the First) was bragging about opening China to American cigarette exports — how this was a great thing for America. What seemed especially ironic was that this was the same man who sent his army to invade the tiny nation of Panama to bring Manuel Noriega to justice. The charge: Exporting addictive drugs to the United States.’ ☞ Tobacco helped build this country – you will note the tobacco leaves on the dollar bill – and the industry has had a good friend in the Republican Party, and vice versa. The Bushes and the Doles have gotten on fine with Big Tobacco. By contrast, Clinton/Gore, not to mention Congressman Henry Waxman, were the industry’s worst nightmare. (Remember smoking on airplanes? Ah, the good old days. Those days may have ended sooner had Elizabeth Dole not been Secretary of Transportation, calling for further study.) TRADING ONE ADDICTION FOR ANOTHER Mike Lebuf: ‘Forty years ago, cigarette companies were allowed to hand out free samples on US college campuses. But no more. Instead of free cigarettes, students are now given credit card applications.’ VALUE LINE VERSUS INDEX FUNDS Mike Gavaghan: ‘You’ve written quite a bit about the near futility of trying to beat the market average over the long term (thus recommending index funds). So, what can be made of the claims by Value Line that their ‘timeliness’ rankings are highly correlated, since 1965, with stocks that both outperform and underperform the market over a 12 month period? Here’s a link where they state there case. Are they just playing statistical games here, or is this track record worth paying attention to?’ ☞ I subscribed to Value Line for many years and loved those huge looseleaf binders they’d send, with their wonderful research and ranking system – it was sort of the equivalent of the Scott’s Catalog to a 13-year-old stamp collector. And I loved the notion that they could help me beat the market. I visited their offices, met the great man (then 90 or so and the head analyst, and came away impressed. (This was, by the way, well before the invention of index funds.) Then they had a rough patch – right around the time they went public, if I recall – as their ranking system seemed to get out of whack for a while. It may well have returned to whack. But: 1. Following their lead takes some work, and – if you do trade in and out as the rankings change – exposes you to tax. (Remember, if Warren Buffett had achieved the same astounding annual returns he has, but switched positions once a year incurring tax instead of holding for the long term, he’d be a poor man today! Well, OK, not poor. But consider this: A dollar left to compound at 26% a year for 35 years grows to $3,258. The same dollar compounding at the same 26% — but subject to, say, a 20% tax every year, compounds just 80% as fast, at 20.8% — to $745. So taxes matter. And index funds keep them to a minimum.) And . . . 2. Consider the results of Value Line’s own mutual fund, which probably uses its ranking system as well as you could. Here’s what Morningstar says of the Value Line Fund: ‘This fund paints by numbers. It uses the Value Line ranking system to direct its stock picks. But this quantitative strategy has churned out so-so performance numbers relative to other large-growth funds.’ So if you really worked at it, and leaving aside Value Line’s not insubstantial fee, you might do a little better than an index fund – or you might not. Especially in a taxable account. THEY KNOW EVERYTHING Joel Williams: ‘The last time I downloaded a form from the IRS website, when I printed it out on my printer, at the very bottom of the page it said ‘Printed on Recycled Paper.’ How did they know that?’ THE MEXICAN FISHERMAN Christoph: ‘Just to tell you. As far as I know: The history with the Mexican is an adaptation of a history from Heinrich Boell and features originally a Spanish fisherman, and a German telling him to work more. It is called: Anektote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral . . . which would be in English something like ‘Anectote to lower the working moral.” Frances: ‘There was a book written by Paul ter Horst around 1984, Cashing in on the American Dream: How to Retire at 35. The story was in there.’ Fleming Bearston: ‘What if the fisherman gets injured? If he can’t fish for more than a few days, he and his family may starve. I don’t mean to be a party pooper – it’s just that this simplistic put-down of corporate life ignores some important issues.’ John Mahoney: ‘Not to be a spoil sport, but doesn’t the fisherman’s reluctance to expand his business explain why so many Third World countries are mired in poverty?’ Chuck Dean: ‘This reminded me of a Depression-era story: A beggar came to a household, which happened to be a whore house, and asked for work. The kindly madam asked if he could work on her accounts for her. He said no because he couldn’t figure. So, she fed him a nice meal, gave him an apple and he left. The good meal satisfied him so much that he fell asleep under a tree holding the apple. When he woke he found that someone had taken his apple and left him a nickel (remember, this is a Depression-era story). He took the money and bought two apples, which he sold. This went on. His business grew and he became known as the Apple King. When he was being interviewed by Fortune, the reporter was in awe of the rich Apple King and said, ‘You’ve done all this without an education. Think what you could have done if you had gone to school.’ The Apple King replied, ‘If I’d gone to school I wouldn’t be here now. I would be a bookkeeper in a whore house.”
We Did It! And Notes on the Perfect Meal December 24, 2001February 20, 2017 For centuries, people have been trying to produce the perpetual motion machine, or the nuclear fusion process that will produce more fuel than it consumes. Well, last night Charles and I pulled off the holiday equivalent. We had a small throng over (small because we sort of forgot to invite anyone, and only our most clairvoyant friends and family members showed up), and we received more alcohol than we served. Bottles of wine, beautifully boxed bottles of champagne, a bottle of 20-year-old Port, a bottle of bourbon – are you hearing me? This is the Holy Grail of party-giving. The party that pays for itself – and then some. So, in the first place, I wanted to share some of that good cheer and wish you a very merry Christmas. I’d also like to point out that the days are getting longer – have you noticed that? Well, they are. (Still 24 hours, but you know what I mean.) Can Spring be far behind? But what I’d really like to do is extend this notion of produces-more-than-it-consumes to your own life, by calling to your attention Campbell’s Select 18.6-ounce can of ready-to-serve CHICKEN WITH EGG NOODLES soup in the convenient pop-top can. It is, quite possibly, the perfect food. * In the first place, for those of you under the weather, it is chicken soup. Need I say more? * For those of you concerned with convenience, it is prepared thus: 1. Pop top. 2. Pour into bowl. 3. Microwave a minute or two. 4. Drink. (Or eat, but that requires a utensil.) In the summer, you could just drink it cold, skipping steps #2 and #3. (In any season, some cracked pepper and coarse salt add zest, though this will kick the sodium content up even with Utah’s largest lake.) * For those of you concerned with diet, other than the sodium, you’re talking just 200 calories and 5 grams of fat in the whole 18.6 ounce can. Only Roasted White Meat is used in this soup – and ‘50% more chicken*’ (‘*than our previous formula’ reads the explanatory footnote – leaving me, I will admit it, just a tiny bit wary, as I prefer foods that result from recipes to foods that result from formulas). Will you gain weight drinking this soup? Yes. About 18 ounces. But not for long. * For those of you concerned with economy – and here’s the beauty part – the soup cost us $2.59, but peel off the label and you are left with a handsome ribbed canister that would surely fetch $3 on eBay or at the Pottery barn if attractively photographed and imaginatively merchandised. A pencil holder! A can to drop your spare change into (or other’s spare change if you’ve been downsized). Cans to fill with dirt with votive candles pressed into the top – use them to line your walk for parties. Cans to weld together into a sculpture or a small shiny dwelling. Everyone’s so focused on the soup, they miss the hidden asset – Campbell’s doesn’t even brag on it – and it makes all the difference in the world. You paid $2.59, you got the soup, the chicken, the 50% extra chicken, and an attractive $3 multi-purpose art deco canister. It’s as if they paid you 41 cents to have lunch.
Poor? It’s Your Own Fault December 20, 2001February 20, 2017 ‘I’ll take the floor covering,’ writes Jack (who asks that his last name not be used). ‘You write: ‘But relatively few folks are delivering mail, trimming hedges, or clerking at Home Depot one decade, piloting their own jet the next. And relatively few doctors’ daughters become hotel maids – at least not for more than a summer on the Cape.’ Well, if people haven’t moved up the income ladder, it’s their fault. There IS an even playing field in this country. People choose for themselves how far they go. I grew up in a lower income neighborhood in Brooklyn (my father worked in a movie theater, my mother was a store clerk). I finished high school at night, and college at night, working during the day as a stock boy at Macy’s (today’s equivalent of the Home Depot job you mention). I paid for college out of my paltry earnings. The people I worked with during the day back in the mid-sixties complained about not getting ahead, but they didn’t take advantage of the even playing field that lay before them (i.e., they never bothered to acquire skills that would enable them to get somewhere beyond where they were). Today, 35 years after graduating from college, I own a business that employs 45 mostly low skill-level people, who, like the people I left behind 35 years ago, complain, as you do, that the government is not doing enough for them, but too much for the rich. Every night as I drive home to my house in an upscale suburb in my luxury imported car, I hear people like you on the radio talk about the lack of a fair playing field. Too much being done for the rich? Not enough for the underprivileged? The song of the lazy and unenterprising, aided and abetted by social engineers. By the way, don’t print my name. I write this not to boast of my success – for there are thousands, no, tens of thousands, of my generation who started with nothing and ended up just fine, without the government doing ANYTHING for them. Let the church and other social engineers complain about poverty. In this country, people don’t-get-ahead by choice.’ ☞ Sounds good, if a little tough-minded. But a couple of points, Jack. Is it possible you did get some government help? For example, did you pay for your K-12 schooling, or did the government? And did you pay the full cost of college, or was your tuition subsidized? (At many state schools, ‘full tuition’ does not cover the full cost.) But leave that aside, and anything else I may have left out (was there a minimum wage that kept your Macy’s pay a little less paltry than it otherwise might have been?). Answer me this (as they say): Do we want people to trim hedges and change sheets in hotels and hospitals and so forth? I think we do. And if so, do we want them and their kids living decently? Or is it OK if they live as the really, really poor in some Third World countries do? If you answer ‘decently,’ then the laws of supply and demand may not be enough. The minimum wage and the earned income credit and unemployment insurance and Medicare may be the kinds of things needed to help the folks who do those jobs for us. Even then, working 60 hours a week at the minimum wage brings you just $15,000 a year, which isn’t much to raise a family. And if one of the parents has abandoned the family, the wage earner must also provide domestic services. Maybe it’s the parents’ fault – but is it the kids’ fault? Should poor people pay as much in tax as rich people? If not, where do you draw the line? What balance do you strike? I’ve been arguing that the balance we had during Clinton/Gore worked awfully well, even for the rich and powerful; and that we’ve made a huge mistake by shifting it even further in their favor. Jim Batterson: ‘I agree completely that the recent shifts and proposed shifts in tax law are foolish in the advantages that they afford the super-rich, and I strongly support a hefty estate tax and a progressive tax structure. The AMT corporate refunds are obscene. ‘But it is also fair to observe why it is that there is no revolution taking place in America over this issue. I am not quite as old as you, but I have traveled and lived in third-world countries, and do have recollections of the 1950s. Something is true in the United States that has never been true before, not here, not anywhere else in the world. Skilled tradesmen – auto mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, roofers, painters, electricians, factory workers, guys who do heating and air conditioning and construction and a thousand other jobs that require training but not a college education – jobs that 50 years ago we hoped our children would ‘do better than’ – these people all own, or can own, nice cars, pickup trucks or SUVs, bass boats, comfortable houses, entertainment centers with big-screen TV’s, VCRs, TIVO, good sound systems, cell phones, computers, internet access, summer cabins, you name it. ‘Explain to someone in China or even Japan that in the United States, carpenters and plumbers live in 1800-square-foot houses and drive SUVs, and there will be nothing but disbelief. When you look at the country as a whole, you should not see an upper class and a lower class. The dominant theme of our times is an enormous middle class with a very high standard of living.’ ☞ Well said. About the only guy who can easily afford to call a plumber these days is an electrician. OYSTERS – PART 3 Mark Harris: ‘Like you, I love Oysters, and they can be found on many of our nearby shores. In this area (and many others) bivalves become infected with Paralytic Shellfish Poisen (PSP) when the dreaded “ride tide” arrives (often June, July, or Aug). However, it’s important to know that PSP is NOT destroyed by cooking – raw or cooked, if they got it – you’ll get it. Here’s what you do: Eat a tiny (dime sized) chunk of oyster. Wait about 30 minutes. If your lips feel like you’ve gotten a shot of novacaine (i.e. they tingle), throw away the rest of the oysters. Otherwise, eat more – but remember PSP is only ONE of the several different deadly fallouts from eating oysters (actually on most of our Washington/Canadian seashores near population centers the fish and game guys have erected bivalve harvesting prohibited signs due to sewage contamination.’ ☞ Bon appetite.
Oysters – Part II December 17, 2001February 20, 2017 Steve Gilbert: ‘What’s this compulsive ‘fork‘ behavior all about? You wash forks every time you use them? I don’t think that a REAL GUY would be so picky. I mean, if you’re already eating something that might kill you, why worry about the next guy who’s going to use the fork? I’d at least wait a few hours to see if the oysters were fatal before I’d bother washing the fork.’ ☞ Point taken. Mike Koltak: ‘For recipe #1, I would add a shot of vodka. Dip the oysters into the vodka before dipping them into the cocktail sauce, or add vodka to the sauce. It is supposed to help kill the bacteria – probably not true but it is a good excuse to have a nip and it does taste great.’ ☞ So that’s why they call it cocktail sauce. Who knew? Alan Caroe, M.D.: ‘Cholera (epidemic diarrhea caused by Vibrio cholerea bacteria) is the disease most closely associated with raw oyster consumption. Death from this infection is uncommon (less than 1 in 100) if adequate nursing and oral rehydration is provided. (Chicken soup and Gatorade, in sufficient quantities, are live-saving.) Cholera epidemics appear to arise only in warm, salty water containing untreated human feces. This is the historic reason to avoid unrefrigerated oysters in the summertime. American oysters harvested outside of the Gulf of Mexico may be safer. Hepatitis A is also associated with ingestion of raw shellfish. It may be avoided by a commercially available Hepatitis A vaccine. It may be wise for any individual with immune deficiency or pre-existing liver disease (especially Hepatitis C) to talk to their health care provider about Hepatitis A immunization before eating raw oysters. P.S.: Cooked oysters do taste good. Ten minutes in boiling water should kill the most likely pathogens.’ Jim Summers: ‘No self respecting guy would eat oysters without first putting the oyster on a saltine with a spoonful of horseradish along with the cocktail sauce. A squeeze of lemon is also critical. This has extra shock value as it allows the guy to eat it in two bites, with a swig of beer in between, while the uninitiated gag at the sight of oyster liquor dripping from the soggy cracker between bites. Judging from the size of the Hilton oysters, it would appear that this would be a two-bite delicacy. If you don’t have horseradish, then a couple of shakes of hot sauce will do. As no cooking or measuring is involved, and it is eaten with fingers, it still qualifies as a guy recipe.’ Brooks Hilliard: ‘What? You can cook oysters?’