June 6, 2022

One of the first things that every person in the financial services industry learns early on is that investors are motivated by two emotions, fear and greed. In my over thirty years as a practitioner, I can confidently say that fear is a much more powerful motivator than greed. Most investors are more than happy to sacrifice relative performance on the upside for an absolute assurance of limited losses on the downside.

Trump learned this lesson from his days in real estate. He played on the fears of the American people. Immigrants were rapists, Muslims were terrorists, Mexicans were mules, and Blacks were AntiFa. People became afraid of voter fraud, rigged elections, the media, school officials, medical professionals and others. As a political strategy fear worked, and is still working.

Democrats should take a page from the Republican playbook this year and in 2024. The DNC needs to constantly and loudly remind Americans what we really need to be afraid of. We need to be afraid of politicians trying to steal elections. We need to be afraid of white supremacists. We need to be afraid of teenagers wielding AR-15’s. We need to be afraid of hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires. We need to be afraid of Republicans looking to roll back civil rights and a woman’s right to privacy. We need to be afraid of political hacks running school committees. We need to be afraid of the war on science. We need to be afraid of conspiracy theories. These are all very real things to be afraid of.

Democrats need to remind voters that this Republican Party is a clear and present danger. This is a Republican Party that totally embraces the ethos that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vise.” Biden calls it ultra MAGA. No matter what you call it, call it what it is.

May 29, 2022

Tom Brokaw wrote a best-selling book titled, “The Greatest Generation.” In the book, Brokaw profiled American members of this generation, who came of age during the Great Depression and went on to fight in World War II, as well as those who contributed to the war effort on the home front. Brokaw wrote that these men and women fought not for fame or recognition, but because it was the “right thing to do”. The commonweal came before the common. What is my generation going to be called? The moniker “baby boomers” is not very descriptive or helpful. Maybe we should be called the “Rip Van Winkle” generation.

It’s as if an entire generation has been asleep at the wheel while the country has gone off the road. When we fell asleep decades ago, we were making progress on the environment, a women’s right to privacy was the law, voting rights were protected, pandemics were the subjects of text books, and mass shootings were almost unimaginable. An entire generation that was going to change the world has woken up after a deep slumber, interrupted only by careers, children and consumption, to find a country that it almost doesn’t recognize.

When the historians that are produced by Generation Z write our history, it won’t be flattering. They will blame us for despoiling the environment, and not addressing climate change. They will blame us for making it more difficult for them to vote. They will blame us for allowing Roe vs. Wade to be overturned. They will blame us for 1,000,000 deaths due to COVID. And they will blame us for not being willing or able to stop mass shootings. That will be our legacy.

May 27, 2022

Famed founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, would have a field day with today’s Republican Party, and I am not even talking about former President George Bush’s Freudian slip about confusing the invasion of Ukraine with Iraq. Freud postulated the existence of libido, sexualized energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments. I think he would find the Republican obsession with long guns very revealing. They cradle them, they oil them, they squeeze them, and they go off. I guess happiness really is a warm gun.

In recent confirmation hearings with Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Republican inquisitors were uncomfortably focused on pedophilia. What were they projecting? Psychological projection is the process of misinterpreting what is “inside” as coming from “outside”. A bully like Josh Hawley may have been projecting his own feelings onto the Judge, and a person like Ted Cruz may have been projecting his feelings of confusion and inadequacy onto her as well. Matt Gaetz has his own demons.

Finally, they are way too concerned about a woman’s uterus, and not just as it relates to the abortion issue. We now have over 400 ministers of the Southern Baptist church, presumably staunch supporters of the Republican Party, credibly accused by its own convention of sexual misconduct. If we could only know what they dream about.

January 31, 2020

It is a matter of fact that the United States has the most gun-related deaths per capita than any other country in the world by orders of magnitude. And it is also a fact that we do not suffer from mental illness more than any other countries. We love our guns. We also love our cars and trucks. So why can’t we regulate guns the same way we regulate motor vehicles? After all, we obviously consider cars and trucks lethal weapons when in the wrong hands. Here is how we should regulate firearms, which is analogous to the way we regulate cars and trucks.

• Must be sixteen years of age to operate

• Must take and pass a course in gun safety

• Must pass a shooting proficiency test in the presence of a police officer

• Must take an eye exam

• Must have a gun owner’s license with photo ID

• The license should be subject to renewal

• Guns must be registered

• Guns must be insured

• Must have established procedures for transferring ownership of a firearm

• Gun owners must go through a criminal background check

• Gun owners must store their firearms in a secure location.

• Gun owners must report stolen firearms

• Gun owners must not carry a firearm while intoxicated

• The size, characteristics, and capacity of firearms must be regulated

• Guns should be taxed

• Guns should have inspection stickers

• Guns must not be concealed

• Gun owners must be subject to “red flag” laws

May 25, 2022

I woke up way too early this morning to read that the Russians had attacked innocent children and adults in an elementary school, killing 19 children and two adults. Putin once again demonstrated that he is a war criminal, and deserves to be put on trial. His inhumanity and heartlessness are breathtaking. Oops…my bad. It wasn’t a brutal killing in Ukraine. It was Texas.

I know. Gun regulation is a slippery slope, but it is made slippery by the grease that gun manufacturers and the NRA apply to the palms of Republican legislators. I have written about guns and gun control before so I would like to not repeat myself. I don’t want to talk about bogus Second Amendment rights, false narratives about mental health, good guys with guns, and so on. Guns don’t kill people. People with guns kill people.

Ironically, if we could only ship all the guns in Texas to Ukraine, we could solve two problems at once.

May 23, 2022

We recently had a nice visit from my cousin and his wife, who live in a Congressional district in Georgia next to Marjorie Taylor Greene. We commiserated about some of the crazy stuff that has been coming out of Georgia recently. MTG, David Perdue, and Herschel Walker were all part of the Georgia clown car. Georgia has passed legislation to make voting more restrictive, and it is poised to virtually eliminate a women’s right to choose. Republican state legislators in Georgia, as many as 44% per the New York Times, have continued to support Stop the Steal efforts.

I made the statement that one of the nice things about living in Massachusetts is that our Republicans are not as crazy as Georgia’s Republicans. We are, after all, the state of Volpe, Sargent, Weld, Brooke, and Baker. And then, after they left, I read about the state Republican convention just completed in Springfield that shattered all my illusions. The headline in the Sunday Republican read, “Trump’s Spirit Runs Through Convention.” They want the party to be pro-life, and overturn Roe vs. Wade. They want to fight for their god-given right to play golf during a pandemic. They will “fight to the death” to make sure that critical race theory doesn’t find its way into our schools.

The state Republican Party seems to be on a death march. Many of us were comfortable voting for moderate Republicans like Charlie Baker, but that may become a historical footnote.

May 15, 2022

What do Buffalo, NY and Australia have in common? They once again reminded us of the evil that Donald Trump released on the United States. He opened the Pandora’s Box of hate, fear, disinformation, and mistrust, and we are still suffering the consequences.

In Buffalo, an 18 year old man/boy went on a racist-fueled rampage, killing ten, innocent people, most of whom were black. The shooter was filled with hate from white supremacist websites, and crazy conspiracy theories. Forget the Second Amendment issues. It was Trump, who said it was okay to vilify black people and people of color. He said that we should send certain Congressmen back to the shit hole countries that they came from. In Trump’s world, black lives don’t matter. It was AntiFa that stormed the Capitol, not the Proud Boys.

Likewise, in a recent story, it was reported that Australia had 1/10th the per capita death rate from COVID as the United States despite similar demographics. Dozens of interviews pointed to a lifesaving trait that Australians displayed and that Americans lacked, namely trust in science, institutions, and in one another. No other person was more responsible for dismissing science than Trump. He ignored the experts while at the same time advocating bleach, hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, and UV light as possible cures. He trashed the reputations of the CDC, the NIH, Dr. Fauci, and the media. Lastly, and more importantly, he set Americans against each other. This resulted in 1,000,000 deaths, 900,000 of which were unnecessary based on the Australian experience.

May 13, 2022

An international team of astronomers led by scientists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian produced a much-anticipated glimpse of a black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. Unlike the mythical Bermuda Triangle, this one is very real. It is where time gets warped, and where gravity is so strong that nothing escapes. In a lot of ways, it is like Congress and the Supreme Court.

Republicans in both branches of government are set on turning back time. They want women to rewind the clock by fifty years, and give back their rights to privacy. They want Americans of color to go back to a time when voting rights were not protected. They want the environment to pretend that time is not inevitably moving forward. They want to make America great again, but it is not clear which time frame they are referring to. I guess they will just leave it to Beaver.

Congress lacks gravity, but it is still where the important issues facing the country go to die. Issues are raised and bills are proposed, but the black hole created by Mitch McConnell sucks them in never to be seen again. Democrats tried to call a vote to codify abortion, but it never saw the light of day. Build Back Better died in the man-made black hole called the filibuster. Bills to address voting rights abuses and gerrymanders got sucked into oblivion.

The photos taken of the black hole in our Milky Way are a scientific achievement. The sight of the black hole that is Washington is an eyesore.

May 12, 2022

I usually didn’t wake up in the morning thinking about the Supreme Court, at least not until recently. I am not sure if I am an institutionalist, but I haven’t been in favor of monkeying around with the Supreme Court, at least not until recently. I haven’t turned my back on the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court has turned its back on me.

Mitch McConnell stole one seat, and jammed another one through, putting two, undistinguished jurists on the court, who passed the abortion litmus test. Clarence Thomas’ wife, Gianni, was active in attempts to overturn a legal election. Thomas clearly knew about it, and did nothing. Now we have Samuel Alito, who is prepared to turn the clock back fifty years on women’s rights.

Democrats face overwhelming odds because of the geographic apportionment of their supporters, Democrats can win 51% of the votes in the 2022 and 2024 elections and still lose eight Senate seats. Minorities who don’t reflect the overwhelming majority of the American people have the ability to control the Senate, the House, and the Presidency, and, now, the Supreme Court.

In this politicized environment, an expanded Supreme Court, to reflect a much larger country, and term limits, to reflect much longer life spans, are now on the table. I didn’t want to go there, but you made me do it. Republicans should be very careful. In the words of a Wall Street slogan, “Bulls make money, bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered.”

May 20, 2019

After several decades of civil strife and legal litigation, the Supreme Court, by a five to four majority, has ruled that mandatory abortion is legal. It is now the law of the land. The government may make abortion mandatory if it determined that there is an overwhelming societal interest in doing so. It would be up to individual states to determine what that interest was. The decision cited China’s “one couple, one child” policy.

The state can mandate that a woman terminate a pregnancy whenever it sees fit. The reasoning from the court came from previous case law where it was determined that the state could control a women’s reproductive system. In the opinion of experts, it was only a matter of time until the courts would use these precedents to say that, if the state could mandate a woman to give birth, it could also mandate that a woman not give birth.

Apparently, the right-to-lifers got hoist by their own petard. They now need to consider what their next move will be. Sources say that they may argue that the state has no right to infringe on the privacy and reproductive rights of women in any circumstance. This would not be ideal, but at least women would be free to have babies when they wanted to, or not have them. In other words, women would control their own bodies. Sadly, it may be too late.