Benefits of cutting taxes

Cross this bridge

Keeping it secret

Derivatives were a major cause of the Great Depression. Two of the worst offenders were Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. The government (we) really helped them out. In 2011, Citigroup received $2.5 trillion in cumulative, secret low cost loans from the Federal Reserve during the 2007-2010 financial crisis while Merrill received $1.9 trillion. But both companies are still heavily involved with derivatives, so involved that they have been fined by "regulators". 

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) recently fined Citigroup $550,000 for failing to properly report derivative trades. One of the violations was defined as follows: “…Citi violated its reporting obligations by reporting ‘Name Withheld’ as the counterparty identifier for tens of thousands of swaps with counterparties in certain foreign jurisdictions.”

And, for the second time in two years, the Financial Conduct Authority in the U.K. has fined Merrill Lynch for failure  “to report 68.5 million exchange traded derivative transactions between 12 February 2014 and 6 February 2016.”

Some sad numbers

The oldest person to have tattoos?

Lily Hutchison is almost 94 and has twelve tattoos on her forearms and ankles. She got her first tattoo when she was 80. All of her tattoos have some family connection, initials for family members and the logos of the three colleges her grandchildren attended.

Lily is a little different in another way. The only television shows she watches are Penn State and Steeler’s football games.

Moving to the Arctic

A Three-Legged Elephant

A Sign for Today

She'd make a good Congresswoman

Rodriguez Aguilera is a candidate for Congress. She wants to replace Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Some of her claims may be accepted by members of our current Congress: 

• She has communicated with extraterrestrials since she was seven years-old.
• She has been brought aboard a space ship and had conversations with aliens who let her in on key secrets about their visits to Earth. 

The aliens told her:

• There is a cave in the island of Malta that contains 30,000 skulls that are “different from humans”.
• The world’s “energy center” is located somewhere in Africa.
• The limestone Coral Castle tourist attraction in Florida is actually an ancient Egyptian pyramid.

Killing more civilians?

A nonprofit monitoring group, Airwars, reports that in the first seven months of the Trump administration thus far more civilians have been killed than under the entirety of the Obama administration. The claim is that 2,300 to 3,400 civilians were killed in the 8 years of Obama. In the first seven months of the Trump administration, they estimate that coalition air strikes have killed between 2,800 and 4,500 civilians.

Will the Afghanistan War ever end?

Twitter Targets

Computer centers get hot...

and Sweden is taking advantage of that. Computers get hot enough that they have to be cooled off. This is done by a lot of fans blowing cool air in and sucking hot air out. That’s because computers get hot – and it takes a lot of fans to keep them cool enough to operate properly. The heat in most computer centers is discarded at waste. For the past few years Sweden and a few other countries do not send the heat to the waste pile. It is run back through the pipes that fed in cool air and into plants where it is distributed for heating. 

The system is still in early days but Sweden expects to generate enough heat to warm 2,500 residential apartments by 2018. Long term it hopes to meet 10% of the entire heating need of Stockholm by 2035.

Friendship

Carefully walking down the aisle

Someone should start a pool...

...as to who our first opponent will be in Trump's War. North Korea, Iran, China, Syria, Russia,......... You name it.

Beer from bread

Tristram Stuart, a British author,  makes beer from bread. Why not? They have the same ingredients: water, grain, and yeast. And there is enough wasted bread around. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that a third of all food produced globally—approximately 1.3 billion tons worth—is wasted every year. Stuart is also a food waste activist and has started the Feeding the 5000 event, in which mass public dinners are made from surplus food.

He calls his beer Toast ale. Each pint has the equivalent of one slice of bread in it. This is not a fly-by-night venture; the company has brewed 9 tons of bread since its inception. This summer it began exporting to the U.S. It is now brewed and canned in the Bronx by the Chelsea Craft Brewing Co. in roughly 10,000 can batches. It is available at Whole Foods Inc. and at select restaurants such as Tom Colicchio’s Craft and Dan Barber’s Blue Hill.

Stuart now makes three varieties: a lager called Much Kneaded; Bloomin’ Lovely, a session IPA; and Purebread, a pale ale. 

Heat can kill

Numbers keep rising

More people are dying from drug overdoses, particularly from Fentanyl and other synthetic opioid painkillers. In 2016 these drugs resulted in killing more than 21,000 people last year. When you ad in heroin, cocaine and prescription painkillers you wind up at almost 65,000 deaths, a 21% jump 2015. Overall, opioid overdose deaths quadrupled from 8,050 in 1991 to 33,091 in 2015, according to the CDC. Heroin deaths quadrupled from 3,036 in 2010 to 12,989 in 2015, driven by a sharp increase in the heroin supply. Now fentanyl is creating a third wave of overdose deaths, as those first two waves have steadied to each kill around 15,000 people a year.

Was there bribery?

Cyrus Vance, Jr., Manhattan DA, sure looks suspicious in two prominent cases in which he dropped the charges: Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. were being investigated for defrauding prospective tenants of the Trump SoHo and the Harvey Weinstein case which is now all over the media. In both cases it looks as though he was paid off through his reelection campaign, $50,000 in the case of Trump and $10,000 re Weinstein.

The Winner

Joel Holland won the 44th World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off for the seventh time. This time his pumpkin weighed 2,363 pounds, which is the heaviest pumpkin recorded in the history of the San Francisco Bay Area competition. Holland's prize was $7 per pound.

Texas does not like dildos...

...but it does like guns. According to Texas law, it is illegal for someone to possess “six or more obscene devices or identical or similar obscene articles,” or to possess them with intent to promote the same.”  But you can legally possess more than six guns.

This attitude holds at the University of Texas at Austin which bans sex toys, but not guns.

Glow, little glowworm. Glimmer,glimmer.

Hospitals as businesses

There are about 6,500 hospitals in the U.S. About 300 of them (less than 5%) are run by people with medical training. This trend has been years in the making; there are now 30 times more non-medically trained CEOs than there were 30 years ago. Plus, the number of independent practices has gone way down as hospitals buy them up. 

The CEOs are pressuring the medical staff to be more aware of the economic impact of their decisions. For example, doctors are being pressed to discharge patients quickly and to concentrate on profitable procedures such as orthopedic and heart surgeries. Administrators are even exerting control over traditionally medical domains, such as the credentialing of new physicians with hospital privileges. 

The results have not been very good. A study in 2011 found “a strong positive association between the ranked quality of a hospital and whether the C.E.O. is a physician.” Overall hospital quality scores were about 25 percent higher when physicians, not business managers, were in charge.

Some Numbers

Frederic Lemieux Professor of the Practice and Faculty Director of the Master's in Applied Intelligence, Georgetown University has done some research about mass shootings.

First, they're getting more frequent. The days separating mass shooting occurrence went from an average 200 days during the period of 1983 to 2011 to 64 days since 2011.

Next, look at the number of mass shootings, based on the number of guns per 100 inhabitants  (My apologies that the numbers don't line up.)

Country      Mass Shootings
Australia            4
Austria               1
Belgium             2
Canada              4
Denmark           0
Finland              2
France               6
Germany           7
Greece               0
Holland             2
Hungary          0
Iceland            0
Ireland            0
Italy                0
Japan              0
Luxembourg  0
New Zealand 3
Norway         1
Poland           0
Portugal        1
Spain            1
Sweden         2
Switzerland  2
United Kingdom 3
United States 78

Failing businesses

Colleges, like hospitals, have become businesses. And, like businesses they borrow money. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the question is whether it is a smart investment in an economy where the number of 18- to 24-year-olds is declining and students older than 24 are being drawn back into the workforce as the economy improves. This year there were 2.4 million fewer people enrolled in higher education in the academic year that ended this spring than there were in the fall of 2011, and the supply of potential customers continues to fall.

But borrowing by colleges increases. According to Moody's, colleges and universities collectively owe $240 billion. Public universities are the largest borrower at $145 billion, which is up 18% in the last five years. Private universities were less active as their debt it went up 3 percent, to $95 billion.
Colleges like municipal bonds best. Last year they borrowed a record $41.3 billion. That’s up from $28.7 billion a decade ago. Interest on the debt has gone from $21 billion in 2003 to $48 billion in 2012.  These interest payments come to the equivalent of $750 per student per year at public universities and $1,289 at private colleges. A lot of the borrowed money has gone to building costs, which are up 10% this year.

Lower tax rates for corporations?

Marcus Ryu, who in 2001 co-founded and now runs a very successful software company (Guidewire Software, revenue of a half-billion and market valuation in excess of 5 billion) says it makes no sense. 

Those thinking of starting a company are not doing it because taxes are now lower. They are doing so for a variety of reasons:  a compelling idea, ambition for fame and fortune, a desire to be one’s own boss, frustration with one’s employer. 

Those running a company don't invest more because of lower tax rates. In the words of  Warren Buffett, “I have yet to see” anyone “shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.” 

Furthermore, the tax rates on capital gains (the primary way that founders of successful start-ups make money) are already far lower than rates on ordinary income.

There are plenty of opportunities to improve our economy, such as investing in our schools or bringing our infrastructure into the 21st century.

The Facts?

Fact Check is funded mainly by the Annenberg Foundation, whose benefactor was very close to Ronald Reagan. It does get funding from other areas. It has been accused of being liberal as well as being conservative. Whatever it is, these numbers are interesting and probably reasonably accurate.

There is a lot of junk in space

Of the 4,000 satellites orbiting earth, only 1,400 are working. Plus, there are about 5,000 metric tons of garbage from the working satellites. So, maneuvering around this junk to avoid hitting it is not an easy task. Some of our legislators are concerned and have asked the FCC to work with NASA to keep the number of satellites manageable. 

The junk is not necessarily a whole satellite; just a tiny fleck of paint from an old satellite can cause a lot of damage. Yet, many companies, such as SpaceX and Boeing, want to launch even more satelites. SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 more by 2024 to build out a broadband network in space.

The Morning Walk

We are exceptional

Where do Nobel Laureates come from?

Mass shootings are on the rise

Friedman has a point

I haven't read a column by Thomas Friedman in quite a while. I read yesterday's column because of the title, "If Only Stephen Paddock Were a Muslim". Friedman contrasts the response of our government leaders to mass murders by ISIS and others with the murders of Paddock. Our leaders would have gone ape if Paddock was a Muslim. But, they have done or said nothing constructive because they are under the control of the NRA. I agree with him. 

Here is an excerpt from the column:

So let’s review: We will turn the world upside down to track down the last Islamic State fighter in Syria — deploying B-52s, cruise missiles, F-15s, F-22s, F-35s and U-2s. We will ask our best young men and women to make the ultimate sacrifice to kill or capture every last terrorist. And how many Americans has the Islamic State killed in the Middle East? I forget. Is it 15 or 20? And our president never stops telling us that when it comes to ISIS, defeat is not an option, mercy is not on the menu, and he is so tough he even has a defense secretary nicknamed “Mad Dog.” 

But when fighting the N.R.A. — the National Rifle Association, which more than any other group has prevented the imposition of common-sense gun-control laws — victory is not an option, moderation is not on the menu and the president and the G.O.P. have no mad dogs, only pussycats.

The Las Vegas Shooting will change nothing

That's Steve Israel's opinion. He has been a Congressman from Long Island since 2001 and is about to retire. In an Op-Ed in today's NY Times he gives three reasons why this is so.

• First, just like everything else in Washington, the gun lobby has become more polarized. The National Rifle Association, once a supporter of sensible gun-safety measures, is now forced to oppose them because of competing organizations. More moderation means less market share. The gun lobby is in a race to see who can become more brazen, more extreme.
• Second, congressional redistricting has pulled Republicans so far to the right that anything less than total subservience to the gun lobby is viewed as supporting gun confiscation. The gun lobby score is a litmus test with zero margin for error.
• Third, the problem is you, the reader. You’ve become inoculated. You’ll read this essay and others like it, and turn the page or click another link. You’ll watch or listen to the news and shake your head, then flip to another channel or another app. This horrific event will recede into our collective memory.

Power in Puerto Rico

Numbers

From articles in Vox and The Guardian  

• 1,516 mass shootings in 1,735 days
• Americans own an estimated 265,000,000 guns, more than one gun for every adult. 
• Data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive reveals a shocking human toll: there is a mass shooting – defined as four or more people shot in one incident, not including the shooter – every nine out of 10 days on average.
• America has 4.4 percent of the world’s population, but almost half of the civilian-owned guns around the world
• On average, there is more than one mass shooting for each day in America
• States with more guns have more gun deaths
• Most gun deaths are suicides
• The states with the most guns report the most suicides

Congress at work

Oops! I made a mistake as Congress failed once more by letting the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIPS) not be renewed. Funding stopped on Saturday.

The program usually enjoys broad bipartisan support as it has reduced the uninsured rate among kids to 5% from 14% over the two decades of its existence. But, the brouhaha over the Affordable Care Act took up all of Congress' time.

It's likely that children's health programs will truly suffer until funding is restored. We're talking about care for 9 million children and pregnant women in low-income households.

Not many drops to drink

The availability of water in Puerto Rico is getting worse. DOD's latest update on conditions show that 55%of the population does not have access to. Last week it was 44%. 

Power is still minimal. 95% of customers remain without power.

Who has the money?

Setting prorities