He Liked Ike April 7, 2010March 17, 2017 Admit it – you were all about Gerald Ford. Hey, that’s fine. Nice guy. And if you were never a Republican, surely you had friends who were. Chris Currey, “an old, free market, religious Republican businessman,” was the same way. His first vote was for Eisenhower. But as he writes here, something’s changed: . . . I voted for Nixon and for Reagan. Although I did not like the deficit spending of the Reagan administration, I blamed it on and rationalized it by the necessities of fighting the Cold War. I liked Reagan — who didn’t? Even my Democrat and liberal friends liked and respected him. I voted for Clinton, twice. I thought he was the best Republican president since Ike. No, I did not make a mistake. Bill Clinton was closer ideologically to Eisenhower and Nixon than Bush I and II could ever be. I thought that Clinton practiced and articulated true Republican ideology in his fiscal discipline, job creation, smart tax cuts, and foreign policy better than anyone since Ike. Then something happened in the 1990s. The leaders of the GOP grew belligerent. They became too religious, almost zealots. They became intolerant. They began searching for purity in Republican thought and doctrine. Ideology blinded them. I continued to vote Republican, but with a certain unease. Deep down I knew that a schism happened between the modern Republican Party and the one I grew up with. During the fight over the impeachment of President Clinton, the ugly face of the Republican Party was brought to the surface. Empty rhetoric, ideological intolerance, vengeance, and religious zealotry became the common currency. Suddenly, if you are pro-choice, you could not be a Republican. If you are for smart and sensible taxes to balance out the budget, you could not be a Republican. If you are pro-civil rights, you could not be a Republican. . . . ☞ It’s worth reading the whole piece. “How did we go from William F. Buckley to Glenn Beck?” he asks. How, indeed. CHOCOLATE Peter Kaczowka: “Eat LOTS of chocolate. Per Wikipedia, the world’s longest-lived person, Jeanne Louise Calment, lived on a diet of olive oil, red wine and chocolate, living 122 years and 164 days. There’s no need to eat cocoa powder, Lindt makes a delicious 90% pure chocolate bar. Calment ate nearly 5 oz of chocolate a day, more than an entire Lindt 90% bar which weighs 3.5 oz and has 550 calories. Calment was not eating ‘a little chocolate every day,’ as you advise; chocolate was a substantial part of her diet of unsaturated fats.”
Taxes April 6, 2010March 17, 2017 EAT (A LITTLE) CHOCOLATE EVERY DAY Tom Anthony: “According to a recent study by European governments, eating chocolate was associated with a 48% reduction in stroke risk and a 27% decrease in heart attacks. Chocolates, however, vary widely in their flavonoid content. To get the best health effects, alkali-treated chocolate, i.e. Dutch chocolate, should be avoided as this particular chocolate has been treated with alkalis to remove its bitterness and unfortunately many of its flavonoids. Note, for example, that Hershey’s DARK alkalized cocoa has much less flavonoid content than their regular cocoa. . . . The regular inexpensive baking cocoa at most supermarkets is natural cocoa and is what you want. Just adding a teaspoon of natural cocoa to your coffee should get you the reductions in stroke and heart attack risk without any of the added fat or sugar that you get by eating candy chocolate.” OH, CANADA Steve Baker: “Here’s the difference between Canada and the USA.” EXECUTIVES SAY IT’S TIME TO RAISE TAXES By Richard Blackwell Globe and Mail Mar. 29, 2010 Canada’s business executives, not usually a tax-friendly bunch, have acknowledged that it may be necessary for Ottawa to boost taxes in order to get rid of the deficit. Almost three out of five of the senior executives who responded to the latest C-Suite survey agree that in order for the federal government to balance its books, some form of tax increase may be necessary. While executives are almost unanimous that the recession is over and economic growth is under way, they are worried about how the government is going to deal with the stimulus-induced deficit. Half don’t believe Ottawa will be able to balance the books in five years, and that’s why so many think a tax increase is necessary. “I think it is in the country’s best interest in the short term to suffer a little bit and perhaps pay some higher taxes in order to try to get things back under control and back on an even keel,” said Chad Ulansky, chief executive officer of Metalex Ventures Ltd., a diamond exploration firm based in Kelowna, B.C. Mr. Ulansky was one of 151 top executives who responded to the C-Suite survey, which was conducted just after federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled his budget in early March. The survey was conducted for Report on Business and Business News Network by Toronto research firm Gandalf Group. While almost two-thirds of the executives surveyed said they had a favourable view of the budget, half of respondents said it did a poor job of reducing the deficit and almost two-thirds oppose running a deficit through 2015. Mr. Ulansky, who believes consumption levies are the fairest form of taxation, said a temporary boost to the GST might be the best way to get the country out of the red – partly because it would involve the fewest administrative headaches. Other tax increases would also be acceptable to Mr. Ulansky. “I’d be willing to pay a little more on my income tax” and even a boost in corporate taxes might be palatable for the short term, he said. “If we could somehow have consensus around the country to all suffer through a bit of higher taxes for the next five or 10 years, we’ll be a far stronger country on the other side of it.” Philip Deck, executive chairman of Waterloo, Ont.-based software firm MKS Inc., said he, too, feels a tax hike may be necessary, and raising the GST makes the most sense. ☞ People seem horrified at the prospect that taxes might return to their levels under Clinton/Gore. Among Republicans, it hearkens back to 1993. The first Clinton budget got not a single Republican vote. Not one. And yet it wasn’t such a bad time for Americans at all income levels. The rich grew richer; the poor, less poor; the deficit, not at all. Think about it.
A Sea of Plastic Not Credit Cards -- The Other Kind March 19, 2010March 17, 2017 MUSTARD I ate some “sell by February 28, 2007” generic Publix honey mustard yesterday and it was fine. Just sayin’. FLUSTERED Later, I had dinner with three college seniors – a microbiologist, an avian ecologist, and a history major – none of whom knew what a filibuster was. Which meant they don’t follow the news. How do we fix this? (I thought Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert were our answer to that, but apparently not enough.) PLASTICS It seemed like a good idea in “The Graduate” – “Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Plastics. Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?” – but wait til you read about the Great Pacific Waste Patch. And, no, cleaning up the oceans probably isn’t environmentally viable, as you’ll read. The good news: San Francisco has made the kind of progress every city should and can. I’m going to try even harder to remember to bring our recyclable bag to the supermarket . . . I no longer put apples inside plastic bags: they can sit loose on the scale just fine . . . and have I mentioned tap water? TORTURE – ONE LAST TIME Mark Budwig: Regarding what Mike Martin says of the Viet Cong, one might consider also the Japanese soldiers in hopeless island positions in the last days of WWII in the Pacific. Their officers sought to induce them to fight to the death rather than surrender by portraying Americans as monsters who tortured and killed prisoners. Our enemies now needn’t bother themselves with such anti-American propaganda; stupid American ‘patriots’ do it for them. Indeed, it’s astonishing to think how well Japanese prisoners were treated considering the ferocious anti-Japanese sentiment of the time, certainly equaling or exceeding the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment of today, bad as it is. And the country then was fighting against a truly existential threat. Even so, people were less concerned with safety and more with values – ‘with liberty and justice for all’ – they were fighting for.” ☞ Even at our worst, I don’t think most people saw us as monsters; and by now I think most realize we have largely rejected Abu Ghraib and the rest. But Mark has a point. VIRGINIA, ONE LAST TIME Rachel Maddow’s take on the new Governor and Attorney General. Coming: Offshore Windmills! (And a Health Care Bill?)
Of Eggnog and Tax Strategy December 28, 2009March 16, 2017 Last week I missed a day, ostensibly to eggnog. Richard Theriault: “Eggnog is the best of reasons. None other is required. William Rainey Harper, first president of the University of Chicago, drank a quart of it every day with his lunch (and though it was a Baptist school, it did contain rum or brandy; I have the recipe). It did not cause him to miss his lectures but he was inured, unlike you, who are exposed only to seasonal excess.” From Richard’s alumni magazine: Eggnog was considered a “strengthening” drink at the turn of the 20th century. According to Young Man in a Hurry, Milton Mayer’s biography of William Rainey Harper, eggnog fueled the “busiest man in America.” As dean of Yale Divinity School, Harper’s typical day went this way: “His schedule took him to his first class at 7:30 in the morning. He taught until 11:00, and went to his office to work on his mail, discuss perhaps a dozen matters with each of his five assistants, and drink a quart of eggnog at his desk. Catching the 1:00 o’clock train to New York or Boston, he would deliver a lecture in the afternoon and another in the evening. The midnight train took him back to New Haven and his study.” When he became president of the University of Chicago in 1890, Harper’s to-do list lengthened—but his lunch of eggnog remained in force. INGREDIENTS 1 egg ¾ tbsp sugar A few grains salt 1½ tbsps sherry or 1 tbsp brandy or rum 2/3 cup cold milk A few gratings nutmeg DIRECTIONS Beat egg slightly. Add sugar, salt, and, slowly, liquor; then add, gradually, milk. The nutmeg may be used with or instead of the liquor as flavoring. Serves one. INCY Suggested June 11 at $3.40, sold July 28 near $6 (though guru still liked it), suggested again at $5.62 in a basket of three stocks October 29, and now just sold half Christmas Eve at $9.26 (guru likes it for the long term; thinks it might give back some gains in a bad market). The other two items in the basket are up only slightly, but guru still likes them, too. Remember: these are bets to be made only with money you can truly afford to lose. Because – as long-time readers know all too well – we may. VSP It’s a little late in the year to be reminding you of this, but if you bought a stock at various prices – as I’ve bought INCY, for example – then you own a variety of “tax lots.” When you go to sell, each gets its own tax treatment as to gain or loss and holding period. If you sell all your shares, you just recognize the appropriate gain or loss on each separate tax lot. But if you sell just some of your shares, it becomes a matter of some interest just which shares they were. In the real world, of course, it makes no difference – it’s like asking which water you drank from a glass, the water that came out of the tap first or the water that came out a second or two later as the glass was filling up. It’s all the same. Water. INCY shares are INCY shares. But for tax purposes it does matter, and if you don’t specify, the IRS will assume the shares you bought first are the ones you’re selling. That’s why it can make sense to specify. So far, all my INCY is short-term. But come April 25, the first shares I bought, at $2.09, will go long-term. So last Thursday, I didn’t want to sell my $2.09 INCY shares and be liable for tax on a big gain (especially as, in just a few months, that gain will qualify for lighter, long-term gain tax treatment) – I wanted to sell the shares I bought at $6.90 just a few weeks ago and be liable for tax on a small gain. Different brokers have different systems of “specifying” the tax lot you are selling. In the days of rotary phones, you would call your broker and just say, “Hey, please sell 200 shares ‘versus purchase October 12, 1975’ and your printed confirmation slip would arrive in the mail noting ‘VSP 10/12/75’ in case the IRS ever wanted to see it. Many full-service brokers still work that way. Others, like Fidelity, automate the process (so it’s easier and much cheaper). Ameritrade lets you make the trade on-line and then either call a human to specify the lots you sold or email your instructions through their on-line messaging page. It’s not too late to realize some tax losses for 2009 to lower your income tax. Then again, because so many folks have been selling for this purpose – driving some low-priced, thinly traded losers down even further – it might be smarter to wait. We may see quite a bounce next week once the tax-selling pressure is removed (and sometax-sellers, having taken their losses in November or December and waited the requisite 31 days to avoid the “wash-sale” rule enter buy orders to reestablish their positions). This well known pattern – a New Year bounce in stocks killed the previous year – is the well-known “January effect.” But because it is well known, a lot of people try to take advantage of it, beating the January crowd by buying beaten-down shares in late December. Which could leave you at the station waiting for the January effect, not realizing that it came early and has already passed you by. That it has already passed you – “Bye!” That it has already passed you – don’t buy. See what a challenging game this is? Sometimes, for some stocks, the January effect works in January, sometimes in December, sometimes not a all. VSOP And we’re back to eggnog.
Uh, Oh – A Teux Deux Over Liberal Mangos December 18, 2009March 16, 2017 I’m basically taking the day off. But . . . WHAT TO NAME THE DECADE After I referred to “The Awful Oughts” Tuesday, George Mokray wrote in to say, “I saw one British paper called the first decade of this century ‘The Naughties’ which is very good. I call it ‘The Uh Ohs’ – and have for quite a while.” THE DEMISE OF THE DOLLAR James Musters: “Forget the Oil nations not taking the dollar any more, this is what will drive the exchange rate!” ☞ It’s a lot easier to carry drug money in 500 euro notes than $100 bills – takes just a seventh as many. MANGOS There are only 135 calories in a mango. Can you believe it? Nice and cold and ripe – don’t try to be genteel or mannerly, just slice and slurp. Does it get any better than this? TO DEUX Bob Miller: “I’ve been looking for something this easy for years. Go to teuxdeux.com and watch the little 2-minute video. The sign-up is quick and easy. You’ll love it.” ☞ Boy, if all apps were this simple, and all demos this amusing. It may or may not fit into your life “system” (you do have a system, don’t you?). But it’s definitely worth a look. (Click the choice on the left: VIDEO.) At the top of your To Deux list: See “Invictus.” WHAT’S A LIBERAL? Still enjoying Jack and Lem, mentioned here last week, wherein, on page 163, is found this passage: In those days, before it became a dirty word, Jack [Kennedy] had no compunction about calling himself a liberal. But he was careful to define the word lest his opponents define it for him. “If, by a liberal, they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people – their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties – someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad … if that is what they mean by a liberal, then I’m proud to say that I’m a liberal.” ☞ Have a great weekend.
Enjoy . . . November 5, 2009March 16, 2017 CURRENT.TV This site has come a long way. I can’t imagine that you have any more time than I do; but – in theory at least – you could spend all day here and never get bored. POMEGRANATE And as if that weren’t delight enough, pomegranates are in season! What for $3 can you possibly find that’s more fun, more delicious, or healthier? Refrigerate until nice and cold, then eat the abundant, translucent, ruby-red seeds. Here’s how . . . although a real guy will basically just rip one open, never mind staining his t-shirt with juice, and dig his snout into every luscious nook and cranny, spitting out the pulp as he goes. I’m guessing not all of you have ever even tried a pomegranate. I would be honored to be the one who introduced you to them.
Masks, Guns, and a Travel Tip October 27, 2009March 16, 2017 MASKS Denise: “This recent article compares the cheaper surgical masks versus the N95, which filters better if you fit it tightly around the face. It says they are equally effective – but may not be that effective (over 20% infection rate per flu season with either). Other studies disagree. The paper surgical masks are much more comfortable. However, most people will probably tell you to get N95 (which is what I have too). They smell funny, though, and are very hot.” ☞ Better hot than dead. Ken Smith: “This is what you want.” ☞ Not cheap or easy to find, but I got a couple here. GUNS Sheldon Teperman: “Not sure if you’ve been following this tragic story: a church-going, happy and vibrant 92-year-old woman whose life was snuffed out by a stray bullet that came through her window as she cooked dinner. Unfortunately they keep reporting one fact incorrectly. She was very much alive when she came to Jacobi (not DOA). First the ED, and then my team and I and Anesthesia in the OR, struggled mightily and for some time to save her frail, beautiful life. But suffice it to say, there is no technique of 21st Century medicine that could have fixed what that bullet did. When I pronounced her, I was overcome with the futility and the horror of what had just transpired. I am grateful to the OR staff for their usual professionalism and their support in what was a very dark moment in my career as a trauma surgeon. Had there been a chance, Jacobi would have seized it. This morning they arrested a teenager and charged him with murder. Another wasted life. Our society has become inured to this type of violence and accepts, as a matter of fact, that we must have our guns, to remain free. I continue to challenge that assumption – in the name of Sadie Mitchell and in the name of those that have come before and those who are most certainly to follow.” TRAVEL TIP Instead of recycling that wide-mouthed plastic Honest Tea container, pack it, along with a box of Crystal Light Cherry Pomegranate Immunity On the Go or one of its cousins (Antioxidant Blueberry White Tea On the Go, anyone?) Total weight added to your luggage? About 3 ounces. Homeland Security issues? Zero (neither liquid nor gel). So now you check in to your Priceline hotel (one silver lining of recessions: name your own price when you travel), fill up the ice bucket with complimentary ice, pour one packet into the empty plastic container, add water and ice, shake like crazy – and you’ve just saved anywhere from $1 to $12 depending on how you travel. (The packets themselves run around 33 cents* and make the equivalent of two glasses of cold drink that room service would send up at $4 each plus service charge plus tax plus tip plus the time it takes to wait for room service. And don’t get me started on mini-bar charges.) Over a three-day stay, even if you just go down the hall to use the $1.50-a-can vending machine, you could save anywhere from $10 to “real money” on this tip. And avoid the frustration of not having what you want when you want it. The nutritional value is questionable, I grant you. But could these drinks be any worse for you than soft drinks that corrode car bumpers? *I do understand you could just . . . drink water. And save even the 33 cents. But plain water leaves me with cottonmouth. I need to taste something.
Drink Up – A Walkie Talkie Just Got Sucked Into the Engine September 17, 2009March 16, 2017 Summer is almost over, but it’s not too late to tell you about a recipe that my friend David came up with: HONEST TEA-QUILA! Start with a bottle of Honest Peach White Tea – remove half the tea, add crushed ice, a shot of tequila, a half shot of triple sec, a splash of Rose’s lime juice, and a squeeze lemon. Now replace the screw cap, shake it up, and drink. ABSOLUT HONEST TEA! We were in the midst of figuring out the best varie-tea to mix with Absolut – and, for that matter, which Absolut – but we did not feel we could do our best work after consuming so much Honest Tea-Quila. Please take some time to experiment and submit a recipe or two of your own. If you don’t drink, or drink as little as I do, that’s okay – forget the vodka, just drink the tea. The purpose here, as long-time readers will know, is to sell more Honest Tea. Foosball tables do not come cheap. (After an Honest Tea-Quila, who can resist little plastic feet?) BOREALIS – FOD I know. Still, I thought this, from the FAA, was interesting. FOD is short for “Foreign Object Debris/Damage” – as in, say, a stray luggage container getting sucked into a jet engine, which can’t be good for the engine. The operative paragraph is on page 9: The presence of FOD on airport runways, taxiways, aprons and ramps poses a significant threat to the safety of air travel. FOD has the potential to damage aircraft during critical phases of flight, which can lead to catastrophic loss of life and the airframe, or increased maintenance and operating costs. Costs to the industry are now estimated to be in excess of $1-2 billion per year for direct costs and as much as $12 billion when indirect costs are considered. FOD hazards can be reduced, however, by the establishment of an effective FOD management program. So . . . what if the jet engines weren’t started at the gate? What if the plane could taxi out like a golf cart and only start up shortly before take-off? This is of course what the WheelTug system, being developed by a subsidiary of Borealis, is designed to make possible. One more reason to remain guardedly hopeful Borealis may one day fly.
Cooking Like a Hun And Getting Involved in Reforming Health Care August 6, 2009March 15, 2017 YUM Dan Becker: “Regarding your Dashboard Cookie Recipe, here in Austin, Texas, our month of July had 26 out of 31 days with over 100 degrees Fahrenheit! So our local paper ran a recipe for sun-drying Juliet tomatoes. I tried it with grapes, and it worked well also. I guess any sort of fruit would work well. Just put it on the dashboard in the morning, and you have a healthy snack for the ride home in the evening.” Greg Bandy: “See also Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine!” ☞ Listen, if it’s going to be this hot, there’s no point making it hotter and wasting energy by firing up your oven. The Huns had a similar notion. They would place slabs of raw meat between their saddles and their horses’ bare backs and “cook” the meat in the course of a long ride. I know this because when I was 12 I wrote a book about Attila (properly pronounced AT-ill-a, by the way). It began, “Like demons out of hell they came [riding down upon the Romans] . . .” and ended when my parents decided completing it would take too much time away from my studies and hurt my chances of getting into a good college. “Oh, please,” I said, rolling my pre-teen eyes. “They’re going to reject me because my grades suffered, but I wrote a book?” We’ll never know who was right or whether I would have found a publisher (in hindsight, I think not); but I did learn a lot about barbarians. HEALTH CARE – RECISSION My guess is that this is overstated – “If you ever really need your health insurance policy, you have less than even odds that the insurance company will actually pay for your health care.” – but my guess is also that it’s closer to the truth than the insurance companies would have us think. HEALTH CARE – FACT FROM FICTION James Musters: “This newsletter does for health reporting what Dean Baker does for economic reporting, or Media Matters does for political reporting.” HEALTH CARE – CYNICISM Take 30 seconds to watch the opposition. HEALTH CARE – GET INVOLVED Find an event near you. MYMDOS.COM Hey – look at that. MYM for DOS, orphaned 15 years ago, has its own web page. With its own forum. You can only reach it though on a dial-up modem using 5-1/4 inch floppy disks. (Just kidding.) I have nothing to do with it, but am happy to see MYM still kicking.
Common Cement, Engine Block Burgers … . . . and WHERE did I leave my keys? August 4, 2009March 15, 2017 ELLEN’S COMMENCEMENT SPEECH So much fun I watched it twice. COOKING LIKE A GUY™ WITH A HOT ROD Denis Trover: “Out here on the desert even the women use the guys’ way to cook.” ☞ I love it. A carbecue! The advice here is really helpful. E.g.: Obviously, you don’t want to drive around the block 300 times just to cook dinner. That would be a waste of gas and time. Rather, if you’re already driving somewhere, find something to cook that fits into your travel plans . . . And this, for one of those days when the car is parked in the blazing sun: Prepare your favorite cookie dough recipe. Slice evenly and place on lightly oiled baking sheet. Place the baking sheet on top of your vehicle’s dashboard . . . Pluses include: Dinner ready the minute you pull in your driveway; saves the gas or electricity that would have been needed to cook. Minuses: wastes a lot of aluminum foil; can’t have chocolate chip cookies and hot dogs at the same time unless willing to drive for hours with no a/c in the blazing sun. I KEEP FORGETTING TO RECOMMEND THIS AmazingMemorySecrets.com. Benjamin is a friend, and truly amazing. You can trust him. He may steal your watch (right off your wrist – that’s how I first met him) but he always gives it back. Want to remember people’s names? Where you left your keys? Check it out.