"The Month That Was - June 2017"

Sydney M. Williams

The Month That Was – June 2017

July 3, 2017

“It is better to be a young June bug than an old Bird of Paradise.”

                                                                                                            Mark Twain (1835-1910)

With June behind us, so is the first half of 2017, a year that seems to have just begun, yet which has brought so much news.

Mainstream media has assumed a Potemkin village-like stance – twisting news to corroborate a prescribed narrative. James Comey’s testimony before the Senate (see my TOTD “The Dystopian World of James Comey,” June 19, 2017) began as an investigation into alleged Russian interference in last year’s election, but then had to adjust, as Comey suggested that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch needed scrutinizing for persuading him to refer to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server as a “matter.” Muddying the waters further, it was disclosed that then President Obama tried to put a lid on probing Russian interference last fall, when it seemed probable that Mrs. Clinton would win the Presidency. In Georgia’s sixth district, Republican Karen Handel overcame a $30 million spending campaign by Democrat Jon Ossoff to keep Tom Price’s seat in Republican hands. DNC Chair Tom Perez blamed the loss on gerrymandering, while mainstream media took succor from the fact that Democrats narrowed the size of the loss; though they skipped over the inconvenient fact that Congressional wins in Georgia and South Carolina were by wider margins than that achieved by the President in November.

The Senate healthcare bill was released by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but a full vote in the Senate was delayed until after the July 4^th recess. Unilateralism, as we saw in the previous Administration, encourages partisanship. In 2009, with 60 Democrat Senators, it took 18 months to pass the Affordable Care Act, and it was passed without a single Republican vote. The insufferable Nancy Pelosi, then House Speaker, said we would have to pass the bill to see what was in it. The American people would like the Party’s to work together, but the media knows that bad news (partisanship and bickering) sells better than good news (reconciliation and concessions). In the meantime, the Affordable Care Act is in trouble. An article in the June 9^th The New York Times reported that by next year no insurance companies would be operating in 45 counties in the U.S., and that 1,388 counties will only have one plan. For left-leaning Democrats, the only option to a failing ObamaCare is a single-payer system – socialized medicine. For right-leaning Republicans, the only answer is repeal, and replace later. Neither is good. The best would be for the two Party’s to find a bipartisan path – seek common ground, fix what needs to be fixed, eliminate what’s wrong, work on tort reform and allow insurance companies to compete across state borders. But that is not what Party leaders want, nor is it what the media prefers.

Hysteria about Mr. Trump persisted during the month, manifested by investigations into anything that can be contrived, with flames of hatred fanned by a media that cannot stand him. Granted, Mr. Trump’s Tweet regarding Mika Brezinski was inexcusable. Nevertheless, does it compare to the Obama Administration’s setting the IRS on conservative groups? The first is boorish and uncivil; the second, a threat to democratic principles. While a few Democrats are concerned over brand identity, most and the media are driven by a palpable hatred for Mr. Trump. CNN’s Reza Aslan called President Trump a s**t on national television and CNN’s Kathy Griffin blamed him for her loss of a job, after she held up a bloodied mask of his face. One wonders: Does the Left understand the consequences of what they are doing? Do they not realize that actions today beget similar reactions tomorrow? Does rending the nation in two warrant the satisfaction of driving Mr. Trump from office? Debates are healthy. Hatred is not.

Two parades in New York during June displayed the differences between urban progressives and middle-Americans. The first was the Puerto Rican Day Parade, which highlighted convicted terrorist, Oscar López Rivera. The second was the Gay Pride parade that applauded convicted traitor, transgender Chelsea Manning, while booing U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. In this dystopian, Potemkin-village-like world the left has created, one is reminded of the quote often attributed to George Orwell: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Obama’s Orwellian world, depicted in the “Pajama Boy” and “Life of Julia” – government from cradle-to-grave – is the goal of the far-left.

The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, temporarily allowed the Trump’s Administration travel ban to remain in effect while they wait to hear the Administration’s appeal of lower courts’ blockage. In Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, the Court ruled 7-2 that churches cannot be denied access to a public benefit simply because they are religious. The Justices extended that principle by overturning a ruling that had struck down Colorado’s school voucher program on religious grounds. In Matal v. Tam, the Supreme Court, in an 8-0 decision, said the Patent and Trademark Office was wrong for denying an Asian-American rock band to register the name, “The Slants.” The Justice Department then dropped the case the previous administration had brought against the Washington Redskins. A former Bernie Sanders supporter and vocal Republican hater, James Hodgkinson, shot four Republicans on a ballfield in Arlington Virginia, including Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Many on the left immediately indicted the proliferation of guns and the election of Donald Trump as the cause, ignoring a culture of dissonance promulgated by identity politics. In an incredulous statement, FBI officials later said that Mr. Hodgkinson didn’t have any “concrete plans” to inflict violence on Republicans he “loathed.” President Trump selected Christopher Wray, a lawyer and former Assistant Attorney General under George W. Bush, to serve as the new FBI Director. Attorney General Jeff Sessions ended the Obama Administration’s practice of forcing corporate defendants to allocate a portion of penalties (known as “Slush Funds”) to Left-wing activists.

In international news: Tensions between Washington and Pyongyang worsened when Otto Warmbier died within days of being released from imprisonment. Three Americans remain captive in North Korea. President Trump nixed the Paris Accords. (See my TOTD, “The Paris Accords – Much Ado About Nothing,” June 12, 2017.) A horrific fire in a London council apartment, the 24-story Grenfell Towers, killed at least 80. More than 60 people were burned in wild fires in Portugal, many of whom were incinerated in their cars, as they tried to flee. The election called for by British Prime Minister Teresa May in April proved disastrous, as Conservatives lost their majority in Parliament. A known, radicalized Islamist rammed his car carrying explosives into a van filled with police on Paris’s Champs-Élysées. The driver of the car was shot; none of the police were killed. Eight people died in Britain’s third Islamist terrorist attack this year. Later, a van drove into a crowd leaving the Finsbury Park Mosque, showing that violence begets violence. The U.S. shot down a manned Syrian military jet that had dropped bombs near U.S. forces. Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations severed relations with Qatar, a nation known for harboring terrorists. Parliamentary elections in France solidified Emmanuel Macron’s new political party, En Marche!

First quarter GDP, at 1.4%, was double what was initially reported. The Federal Reserve raised the Fed Funds Rate by 25 basis points to 1.5%, still low by historic comparison, but, at least, moving toward normalization. The yield-curve has flattened, with the 10-Year to 2-Year spread having narrowed from 126 basis points at the start of the year to 92 today. Some see that as portending a tougher time for the economy. But since the Fed is only now beginning to raise short rates after a prolonged period of extraordinary low rates, old rules may not apply. Stocks during the month continued higher, with the DJIA rising 1.6 percent. The Wall Street Journal, the repercussions of which are yet to be told, reported that the number of publically traded stocks in the U.S. has been halved over the past twenty years, declining from 7,355 in 1997 to less than 3,600 today. Ironically, there are today about two and a half times the number of mutual funds and ETFs as individual stocks – 9,511, according to the website Statista.com. Reasons for the decline in the number of publically-traded companies include regulations – Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank being most prominent – and a flood of money in venture capital and private equity funds that support private companies. The amount of investible capital continues to increase, which may account for rising multiples – more money chasing fewer stocks. Keep in mind, index funds and many ETFs are blind as to multiples. The ECB and the Bank of England are considering detoxification – normalizing interest rates and tapering their bond buying programs – extricating banks and economies from years of easy money and stimulus programs. Dependency is not only a risk to individuals. Facebook announced that they now have over two billion monthly users (more than a quarter of the world’s population) – giving enormous power to the company in terms of cultural and political influence. Will it be used wisely? Jeff Immelt resigned as CEO of General Electric. He will be replaced by John Flannery, who had been CEO of their health care business. Immelt had a tough act to follow in Jack Welch, but after sixteen years as CEO the stock price is lower than when he took over. European Union regulators, hungry for resources, slapped a $2.7 billion fine on Google, alleging the company hindered competition.

Satire is healthy, but New York’s Shakespeare in the Park crossed a line of incivility, with their mocking depiction of Trump as Julius Caesar. A U.S. destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, was struck by a Philippine-flagged containership sixty-four miles south of its homeport in Yokosuka, Japan, killing seven U.S. sailors. A mudslide in China buried more than a hundred in Sichuan Province in southwestern China. An oil tanker truck exploded near the eastern Pakistan village of Bahawalpur, killing 153. Damage was done but no lives lost when a Tsunami hit Greenland. Indicative of a growing vulnerability to technology, one cyberattack hit Britain’s Parliament and another affected more than a hundred businesses and institutions around the world. More than $1 billion in aid money has gone missing in Mozambique. Alex Honnoid, 31, became the first person to climb the 3000-foot El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, without using ropes.

Identity politics are affecting campuses: Harvard held its first commencement for African-American students; the University of Delaware held “lavender” graduations for its LGBT students. At Columbia, students who were the first in their families to graduate from college were invited to the college’s inaugural “First-Generation” graduation. Yet the pendulum may be swinging back. The Harvard Law School named a conservative, John Manning, as dean. Mr. Trump is pushing for the privatization of the U.S. air traffic control system. The President made apprenticeships a centerpiece of his labor policy, a policy that would allow those for whom college is not the right option to get paid while learning specialized skills. Chinese scientists succeeded in sending specially-linked particles from space to Earth, “an achievement,” according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, “experts say gives China a leg up in using quantum technology to build an ‘unhackable’ global communications network.” The New York Times reported that the oldest fossils of Homo Sapiens – dating back 300,000 years – were found in Morocco.

The Pittsburg Penguins beat the Nashville Predators to win the Stanley Cup, while the Golden State Warriors defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers to clinch the NBA title. At age 23, Jordan Spieth joined the 10-win club, becoming, other than Tiger Woods, the only golfer to do so before age 24 in the post-World War II era. (Woods won 15 times before he turned 24.)

As is his wont, the grim reaper made an appearance. Helmut Kohl, orchestrator of German reunification, died at 87. Also, dying at age 87 was Jimmy Piersall, long-time outfielder for the Boston Red Sox. Emmy-winning TV journalist, Gabe Pressman succumbed at 93. Adam West, best known as ‘Batman,’ died at 88. “Flounder,” also known as Stephen Furst, died at 63, prompting my wife and me to re-watch “Animal House.”  And I lost a good friend and former Salomon colleague, ‘Bobby’ Hamecs who had a heart attack at 69.

Welcome to July, the birth month of our nation! 

"The Messy Desk"

Sydney M. Williams

Essays from Essex

“The Messy Desk”

November 23, 2016

“Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition.”

                                                                        Kathleen D. Vohs

                                                                        Behavioral Scientist, University of Minnesota

                                                                        Study published August, 2013 in Psychological Science

I appreciate order, or, at least, a semblance of order, but it would hardly describe me. Growing up, I shared a room with three siblings. When one is confined to two drawers in a bureau and a top bunk, one learns to keep precious items close. The command, “Clean up your room!” was never given to me alone.

We are told that cleanliness is next to godliness. We are conditioned to believe that neatness and order are “good,” and that messiness is “bad.” “We are charmed by neatness,” wrote Ovid, in an observation that does not especially pertain to me. In the 1960s, minimalism became central to art, music and architecture. “Brown” furniture is now out of fashion. Today we see this trend in pets: Cock-a-poos and Double-doodles have replaced the mutts of my youth and the labs we once owned. The cat, distant toward man, is fond of neatness; whereas the dog, which gives unconditional love, will roll in whatever smells the foulest. So dog pets have become small, toy dogs, kept constantly groomed and supervised.

At home, I tend to accumulate the detritus that comes with one interested in books, newspapers, magazines and writing. Papers pile up. Last January Caroline and I moved to an apartment about one third the size of our former house. Now that I share a library/office with my wife, I find confinement confining – or, at least, challenging. I try to keep in mind advice given me years ago from a friend who worked at IBM: If you have a file on your desk you have not looked at for six months, throw it out; but, like most good advice generously proffered, it is usually (and ungraciously) ignored.

In my case, chaos lovingly reigns. Under the desk are a dozen folders – subjects of interest and on which I would like to write…someday. Additionally, there are reams of yellow-lined pads, manila folders and other litter. Book shelves are jammed, intermixed with rubber animals my parents produced in the 1950s and sold to school systems around the world. There are carved wooden figures, cast iron and porcelain figurines, and approximately 700 books – special books we brought with us. At least forty-two framed pictures and photographs adorn what wall space we have. When one moves from a large library to a small one, one never down-sizes appropriately.

On my built-in, glass topped desk sit many objects, some practical, but most curios that snuck in and stayed. Beneath the glass lie twenty-one pictures and photographs, one of which is a Polaroid of me and a friend, Duncan Kendall, taken about 1956 by Dr. Edwin Land who was then a summer resident of Peterborough, New Hampshire, where I grew up. Duncan and I look like the arrogant, young wise-guys we were. Another is of Caroline shortly before we met in late 1961. She looks happy, unaware that her life will change in the next few months.

Among the items on top of the desk are many commonly found: computer, pens, a container of paperclips, photographs – nine, in all – a lamp, telephone, books (sixteen at last count), and scribbled notes, some now illegible. There are knickknacks, which include three of my parents’ rubber animals, a snuff holder carved from a whale’s tooth, two cast iron, spring-loaded non-pc piggy banks, quarterly tax reminders, a pair of silver dice given to me forty-five years ago by a friend who had just begun work at International Silver, two metal plates from which my mother made Christmas cards, and at least a dozen other objects, some of which lie hidden behind and beneath news clippings, magazines and printed reports.

Above my desk, and below two rows of shelves, hang three small oil paintings, two photographs – one of me and my sister, taken in 1943 in East River, Connecticut, next to the ’38 Chevy that would return us to New Hampshire. The photo shows a goat peering out the backseat rear window – part of the baggage that will return with us. The other is a photograph of my parents in East River, each peering into the opposite ear of a giant snow head that only young sculptors could have created. There is a framed arrowhead I found at my maternal grandmother’s home in Tennessee. Everything is personal and it all has meaning.

A recent article in the Life & Arts section of “The Financial Times” (October 8/9, 2016), was titled “Say yes to the mess.” Tim Harford, the article’s author, begins and ends with stories of Benjamin Franklin who claimed order was necessary to be productive: “Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.” Yet, brilliant and exceptionally busy, Franklin was messy, but “in an orderly way.” There are people who believe that simply being busy ensures productivity. Not Franklin. As Mr. Harford writes, “Franklin was too busy inventing bifocals and catching lightning to get around to tidying up his life. If he had worked in a deli, you can bet he wouldn’t have been organizing sandwich orders. He would have been making sandwiches.”

   

A few years ago (September 22, 2013), The New York Times published an article about a series of studies conducted by Professor Kathleen Vohs (quoted at the start of this essay) and her staff at the University of Minnesota. It seemed to contradict the broken-windows theory that suggests disorder and neglect can encourage nonchalance, poor discipline and nihilism – that chaos begets chaos. One hundred and eighty-eight people were invited into either a clean or a messy room where they spent ten minutes doing some unrelated chore, like imagining new uses for ping-pong balls. When leaving, they were presented with one of two food items, and they were asked asked a few questions, like donating to charity. The study found that those with the cluttered desk were more creative in finding uses for ping-pong balls, but tended to be less charitable and less healthy in their food choices. Those in the tidy room, while less creative, were more likely to select the apple over the chocolate bar. “Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition,” concluded Dr. Vohs. However, the study also found that those who are more organized typically ate better and lived longer. I take satisfaction, though, in knowing we live in a grey world, where there are always exceptions. Living amidst clutter, I try to stay active, eat healthily – not always successfully – and to be as charitable as I can. And I do believe in the broken-windows theory – that order begets order.

The study showed that we are influenced by our surroundings. But, intrinsically, we are either messy or neat. What not Felix Unger (Jack Lemmon in The Odd Couple) have straightened up the messy desk? Would Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau in the same movie) have trashed the neat desk? We create our surroundings. Either we use file drawers, or we pile papers on the floor.

Is my desk messy? Most people would say, of course. I do have a file cabinet and four drawers. In the latter lie important stuff, like a magnifying glass, flashlight, pens, some daguerreotypes of great and great-great grandparents, scissors, a stapler and, naturally, more rubber animals. But there is a difference between messy and disorganized. I usually can find what I need, and if it takes a little longer than it should, well I have enjoyed the nostalgic trip down memory lane. I take comfort in Albert Einstein’s famous quip: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”