February 13, 2021

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump was a Rorschach test for the Republican Party. We have known for a long time who Donald Trump is, and what he was doing. We weren’t be surprised by anything that happened. The Democratic impeachment managers laid out the case against Trump in an unequivocally straight line from cause to effect. This is no longer about Trump. He his guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. The trial was about the Republican Party, and the whole world was watching. What it saw was a political party afraid of the facts.

We were all looking at the same set of ink blots. Some of us saw a President who sold his own country down the river in order to hold on to power. The Republican Party saw something different. The Republican Party had all the evidence it needed to convict Trump, yet the cowardly Republican Senators could not bring themselves to convict. They clung to the First Amendment as if it was the Second. They twisted themselves up in process arguments. Ten months was not enough time to put Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court, and two weeks in January not enough time to convict a traitor. The GOP should rename itself the RIP. Blue lives don’t matter. The oath of office doesn’t matter. The Republican Party has declared officially that nothing is impeachable. The ink blot that we are all looking at is the stain that the Republican Party has left on American democracy.

February 13, 2021

“The Lancet,” a worldwide, highly- respected, public health journal, recently took the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic to the woodshed. Previous administrations shoulder some blame as well. Here are some of the highlights.

• Trump exploited the anger of low and middle income white people through racist appeals and xenophobia to enlist their support for policies that benefitted high income people and corporations and threatened health.

• His trillion dollar tax cut and subsequent deficit was used as an excuse to justify cutting food subsidies and healthcare.

• His nationalism emboldened white supremacists and insurrection.

• He appointed judges dismissive of affirmative action, and reproductive, labor, civil, and voting rights.

• He promulgated policies reducing access to abortion and contraception globally.

• He weakened the Affordable Care Act after failing to repeal it, increasing the number of uninsured by 2-3 million.

• His hostility to environmental regulations has hastened global warming resulting in thousands of excess deaths.

• Cuts in public health have impeded the response to the COVID pandemic, causing tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

• 40% of deaths could have been avoided if the U.S. mirrored the other G7 nations.

• President Trump refused to develop a national strategy, worsened shortages of PPE and testing, politicized mask wearing and school openings, and convened indoor events where masks were not worn and physical distancing was impossible.

This has been part of an anti-progressive trend started 40 years ago. Life expectancies in the U.S. now trail the rest of the industrialized world by 3-4 years, and our healthcare costs substantially more. This was before the pandemic struck, affecting low income people and people of color disproportionately. We will be cleaning up this mess for a long time.

Thank you to my friend, Vinnie Ferraro, Professor Emeritus, Mt. Holyoke College, for the reference.

February 10, 2021

A mulligan in golf is a do-over. Mulligans are never allowed under the rules, but, informally, many golfers allow them. Golfers will invoke a mulligan on the first tee, referring to it as a breakfast or lunch ball depending on the time of day. There is the traveling mulligan, which can be used at anytime during the round. Many charity events will allow you to buy mulligans. There are many theories about the derivation of the term, but none of them are definitive. It is like the history of the number “33” on the inside of a Rolling Rock beer bottle. No one knows where it came from. I assume that at one time there was a cheater named Mulligan, who’s egregious actions on the golf course earned him his eponym.

This is just background for Senator Mike Lee’s statement that Donald Trump deserves a mulligan for his incendiary and seditious speech on January 6th. A mulligan? This is the perfect reference for someone who has been called the “Commander in Cheat” by author Rick Reilly for his shenanigans on the golf course. I could see Trump saying, “You know, boys (Proud or otherwise), I shanked that one. I am going to take a mulligan.” Fortunately, in golf as in life, the rules do not permit a mulligan. You must play the ball as you found it, and suffer the consequences. Trump is asking for a do-over in his impeachment trial. As any golfer knows, a do-over will get you disqualified. We should only be so lucky.

February 8, 2021

Live by the Sword

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, more than any other indicator, was the metric Donald Trump used to tout his performance. Just before his defeat, he tweeted, “That’s a sacred number, 30,000, and nobody thought they’d ever see it.” This was just one of the numerous tweets about the stock market he sent out during his four years. However, The DJIA is not always directly linked to decisions the president makes. More often, the direction of the index is attributable to factors beyond the president’s control, from geopolitical incidents to decisions made by the Federal Reserve to the decisions of a former president, or even a pandemic. That is why one should never hang their hat on the performance of a fickle and volatile index. The DOW is actually up over 18% since his election, but Joe Biden has not mentioned it once.

So how did Trump actually do versus his predecessors regarding the DOW. Based on easily retrievable data, he should have kept his mouth shut. At 35.5%, he did better than Hoover (-82.1), Nixon (-28.3), George W. (-26.5), and Carter (-.7). He also bested JFK, Harding, and Johnson. However, he woefully lagged Northampton’s own Calvin Coolidge (+230.5), Clinton (+228.9), FDR (+198.6), and Obama (+148.3). He also lagged Reagan, Eisenhower, and Truman substantially as well as trailing George H.W. Bush and Ford. Based on his own evaluation criteria, Trump was less than mediocre. If you live by the sword, you should be prepared to die by the sword, metaphorically speaking.

February 5, 2021

Back bencher Marjorie Taylor Greene is now an official no bencher. She was removed from her committee assignments is an unfortunately party line vote except for eleven Republicans. What does a no bencher do all day? Is it like retirement? She can use the Congressional gym to work out so she can keep up with young, Parkland shooting survivors. She can go to the Congressional shooting range to work on her marksmanship with a AR-15. She can get her vision tested so she doesn’t miss the next time a plane flies into the World Center. She can patrol the forests of California looking for Jewish space lasers. She could spend her time ferreting out Democrats who are drinking the blood of Christians and eating babies. She could go looking for Nazi collaborators. Seth Rich’s killer is still on the loose. We still need answers to Pizzagate and who was behind Charlottesville. She needs to find Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s body double. She will now have time to cancel herself out on social media. Or was she removed from her committees?

February 3, 2021

Georgia was red state that went blue, and now it hopes it doesn’t go Greene. I wish I had though of that, but it’s true. Marjorie Taylor has come up with her own version of the Greene New Deal. Ironically, the Green New Deal is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s signature environmental proposal, and AOC feared for life at the hands of GangGreene in the Capital insurrection.

We now have the wings of our two major parties facing off again each other. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party through its Green New Deal is fighting to save the environment. Interestingly, General Motors just announced that it’s vehicles would be 100% electric by 2035. On the other hand, the regressive wing of the Republican Party is trying to make the country safe from democracy. Word association with the GOP these days conjures up QAnon, insurrections, conspiracy theories, and the wing nuts that promote them. The Republican Party is fairly imbalanced.

America has to decide which Green(e) New Deal it wants. The one that addresses the future, or the one bent on destroying it. Hopefully, the House of Representatives will do the right thing.

February 3, 2021

I read a recent article about a well known spinning instructor for SoulCycle in New York City getting into a spot of bother because she called herself an educator and went to the front of the COVID vaccination line. I am not sure if I am bothered more by the fact that, as fellow spinning instructor, she called herself an educator or that I am over 65 years of age and still waiting for my vaccination. I had said many times during a class that I would never call myself a teacher because that would do a disservice to teachers. Even before the pandemic, they were on the frontlines doing a job many us of either didn’t want to do or couldn’t do. They were underpaid and under appreciated. Now, with the pandemic, they are truly essential workers, who are still underpaid, but maybe appreciated a little more. Spinning instructors can call themselves instructors, trainers, or class leaders, but they cannot call themselves educators even though they do try to pass on a little wisdom. The instructor in New York City is now going to have to find out how to put the soul back into SoulCycle.

January 31, 2021

I have to admit that I can’t get very excited about the Robin Hood versus Wall St. brouhaha. As a former retail brokerage branch manager, I try to look at these things somewhat dispassionately. My first takeaway is that someone is going to get hurt, and I really don’t have any sympathy regardless of who it is. This is not about investing, or stealing retiree pension funds. This is about a bunch of sophisticated wise guys getting their comeuppance at the hands of a digital mob that has not yet discovered the principle of gravity. They are all playing a very dangerous zero sum game of chicken. There are good people on both sides, but that has nothing to do with it.

The old adage about investing wisely is to “buy sheep and sell deer.” The hedge funds have taken this advice, and turned it on its head. They are vultures, who create their own carrion. James Chanos made shorting popular years ago when he shorted Enron, and made a killing as the employees got killed. The reality is that shorting stocks is an institutional strategy that retail investors eschew. It is too arcane and risky for most individuals. So let both the buyers and sellers beware. The market has a tremendous capacity for overcorrecting. Robin Hood stole from the rich, but Little Red(dit) Riding Hood got eaten by the big, bad wolf.

January 30, 2021

Let’s face it. What we refer to as the minimum wage is actually a maximum wage for the workers, who are earning it. I find that all of the arguments that Conservatives will make to argue that the minimum wage will destroy jobs and companies to be very convenient and self-serving. Allowing companies to pay employees a less than livable wage is a corporate subsidy paid for by the tax payers. Workers who cannot afford the basics of life have to collect food stamps, welfare checks, and rent subsidies as well as suffer the ridicule of the righteous right.

The increase in the minimum wage will eventually get passed on to the consumers who use those services, which is the way it should be. The cost of a McDonald’s hamburger may go up, but that is the meager price we all have to pay to make sure we are not being served by indentured servants. There is scant evidence that an increase in the minimum wage destroys jobs. There is more evidence that a rise actually increases work incentives and job stability. It will not cause rampant inflation. We have also come to realize that a lot of these non-essential workers were essential after all. Let’s support a national increase of the minimum wage to $15/hour, and pass it on.

January 28, 2021

I have been sick to my stomach for the past four years, and now I am ready to throw up. Donald Trump wasn’t bad enough, but the Republican Party had to give us the devil herself in the guise of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. She is the one, who posted death threats to Nancy Pelosi, and has denied the student shootings at Parkland and Sandy Hook, calling them “false flags.” Members of Congress are concerned, again, for their safety, and parents of shooting victims have to, again, relive their horror. Leader Kevin McCarthy had the audacity to put her on the Education Committee. The Republican Party is truly deranged. She has no right holding a seat in Congress.

The Republican Party has decided to sell America short just like the hedge funds created a short position in GameStop stock, betting that the company would go bankrupt. Bankruptcy is something it learned about from Donald Trump. It is up to the rest of us to band together to go long on America, and inflict great losses on the Republican Party to the point that it has to reverse its apocalyptic behavior. The Democratic Party needs to keep putting forward positive proposals designed to keep the country moving forward, and proposals that are favored by the vast majority of the American people. That is how you put a short squeeze on the Republicans.