The Republican and the Penny Stock

THE FIRST DECLARED REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE

If I were going to vote Republican in 2012 (I am so not going to), my candidate would be Fred Karger, a long-time Republican strategist who last month became the first challenger to file with the F.E.C. What’s cool about his candidacy is that he may well be included in the debates – and he would be the first openly gay candidate ever to attract that kind of national attention. It might make it harder for Republicans to continue to oppose his equal rights once he can respectfully challenge their rationale on national TV.

THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL DEBT

Joel Grow: “Another way to look at [your comment last Tuesday] . . . In just 20 years of Supply-Side under Reagan/Bush/Bush, they ran up 75% of the debt for our entire 233-year history. George W. ran up over 50% of our 233-year debt all on his own, and with a GOP Congress for 6 of his 8 years. Where were the deficit hawks then?*”

☞ Where indeed. The general notion of cutting taxes for the wealthy – even now! when we’re so deep in the hole! and when they’ve already been cut so far! – at the same time as they push to reduce home heating aid to the poor, defund environmental regulation, and cut funds for securing loose nukes . . . well, the Republicans have a strange set of priorities.

*“Further,” Joel writes, “though very slowly raising the age for full Social Security benefits, and also very slowly raising the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes, are not outrageous ideas, the notion of including Social Security in the deficit reduction discussion is absurd. Social Security, an entity totally separate from all other government agencies, has run in the black and not contributed to the national debt. It has only very recently had to dip into its own huge surpluses because of the economic downturn. The US government has borrowed more from Social Security than from China (nearly twice as much, in fact) and the debt owed to Social Security is just as real as the debt owed to China, or to Wall Street bond investors.”

MYLGF

Guru told me about this one a few days ago, at 25 cents, but asked me not to tell you until he had established his fund’s full position, which he did at the end of last week. (Somehow, he feels his investors need to come before my readers – where does he get off?) By Friday, it had climbed to 37 cents. Needless to say, I would have preferred to tell you about it at 25 cents. Still, it’s worth passing on Guru’s view: “Target is $1 to $2 based on data at ASCO (abstracts out early May; full data in June) in lung and gastric cancer and an update in prostate cancer perhaps by the end of June. They have the same kind of molecule as EXEL, but the side-effect profile looks much better. About 360 million shares outstanding and a piggybank of $35 million in cash, so not as cheap as before but still a bargain.”

☞ As an MYLGF owner myself, I hope so. (Remember, if you buy penny stocks like, this to do so at a broker like Ameritrade or Fidelity, that will charge $8 to fill the order – even if you buy 100,000 shares – not some broker that charges 2 cents a share. And remember this, too: only speculate with money you can truly afford to lose.)