Just Say No

Two weeks ago I remarked upon the reason I no longer sign up for ID-theft services:

They always involve sharing with yet another company very detailed information, such as date of birth, social security number, bank account and brokerage account numbers, where one has lived for the past forty years, whether one owns or rents, etc. To me the risk of that new company being breached by a hacker or a crooked employee is greater than the benefit of that company's protection.

In other words information can't be stolen if it wasn't out there in the first place.

(WSJ image)

One's Social Security number is among the items that should be most zealously guarded. That, along with one's date of birth, allows access to one's medical and financial records over the phone. (I speak from recent personal experience.) However, many companies who have no legal necessity. such as tax reporting, to have the social security number of customers routinely ask for them. [bold added]

In many cases, there’s a simple solution to this: Just say no. According to privacy and security experts, in many situations we shouldn’t have to turn over our number. And if we refuse to give it, organizations often will back down.

“Skip it if you’re filling out something that isn’t a legal document, related to a loan or opening a financial account,” says Rachel Tobac, chief executive of SocialProof Security, which helps companies protect themselves from malicious hackers. “If somebody then comes up to you and says, ‘Unfortunately, it stinks, but we really need to get your Social Security number to verify you,’ you can simply ask them to access your records with some other form of ID and see what happens. Sometimes, they should be able to.”

I'm so old I remember when one's social security number was routinely printed below one's address on checks. Now writing a check itself isn't safe:

When you write a check, you're providing a wealth of personal information, including your name, address, bank account number, and signature. This sensitive data can be exploited by fraudsters for identity theft or other malicious purposes, putting your financial security at risk. ‍

Life is much better than it used to be, but not in every case.

Illegal Bookkeeping

Donald Trump, as is his wont, sucked all the air out of the news room tonight when he was found guilty of 34 felony counts by a Manhattan jury earlier today. (Mercury News early Friday edition front page, right.) If you need a summary, dear reader, here's a link to the Wall Street Journal.

Since everyone's pontificating on the story, your humble non-lawyer blogger will add a few observations.

Improper bookkeeping was the first crime on which the entire case hinges, and the Manhattan D.A. got to 34 felonies by counting individual checks as separate crimes all related to the same subject. From the D.A.'s summary: [bold added]

After winning the election, TRUMP reimbursed the Special Counsel [blogger's note: Michael Cohen] through a series of monthly checks, first from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust – created in New York to hold the Trump Organization’s assets during TRUMP’s presidency – and later from TRUMP’s bank account. In total, 11 checks were issued for a phony purpose. Nine of those checks were signed by TRUMP. Each check was processed by the Trump Organization and illegally disguised as a payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a non-existent retainer agreement. In total, 34 false entries were made in New York business records to conceal the initial covert $130,000 payment. Further, participants in the scheme took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the reimbursements.

Were I a bookkeeper in the Trump organization I would have routinely classified all payments to lawyers as "legal expenses." That satisfies both accounting and tax requirements, while protecting my employer because the payments, the invoices, and supporting documents would fall under attorney-client privilege. So far there's been no assertion by anyone that a Trump accountant below the level of CFO would know that this was wrong.

The Manhattan D.A. asserted that the CEO (Donald Trump) and the CFO (Allen Weisselberg) knew that the payments to Michael Cohen should have been called "campaign contributions" but purposefully misclassified (or let the accounting system misclassify) them as legal expenses. This is the first crime that led to another unspecified crime (there had to be two crimes in order to make this a felony, else the purported legal-expense misclassification was at worst a misdemeanor on which the statute of limitations ran out years ago).

I'm a humble retired accountant who thinks it's crazy that an alleged accounting mistake on $130,000 could cause me to be thrown in prison seven years later, but again I'm no lawyer.

Sentencing is on July 11th, so this story will recede in a few days, then come back in early July. Meanwhlle we have a debate to look forward to, and possibly the naming of Donald Trump's running mate.

Let's Have More Gaslighting

Erika Minkowsky, co-owner of personal chef service The
Heirloom Chef, cooks at her Richmond, Calif. home
on a gas range. (Mercury News photo)

Earlier this month we noted how Berkeley's 2019 ban on natural gas in new buildings was successfully challenged in court by the California Restaurant Association. Other Bay Area cities who had followed Berkeley's lead are now suspending their bans: [bold added]

The Sunnyvale City Council recently temporarily suspended its ban on natural gas in new buildings, which was first adopted in 2022 to help cut Sunnyvale’s greenhouse emissions in half by the end of the decade.

Recently, Cupertino announced the city will suspend its gas ban until this fall. In the East Bay, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors earlier this month agreed to pause their all-electric building requirement and gas ban in unincorporated areas of the county. San Mateo County and San Luis Obispo also recently suspended their bans.

Except for his grandparents' house before 1961, your humble blogger has never lived in an apartment or home with a gas range and likely will never do so. Although I agree with the nanny staters that cooking with gas is riskier to health and safety than electric, I don't agree that the decision should be made for people.

Besides restaurants, there are many home chefs who prefer gas--in Chinese cooking, for example, electric cooktops cannot heat woks to the temperature required--and they should be allowed their choice.

Sure, bombard everyone with warnings about the potential dangers to themselves and "the planet," but one of the country's basic principles is that informed citizens should make their own decisions instead of having decisions purportedly made for their own good by a government bureaucrat.

Can you feel it? The tide hasn't turned, but it has been stalled.

There But for the Grace of God Go I

Everyone I know has had a family member--sometimes it's my acquaintances themselves--who's had cancer. Whether or not the patient survives, it's a grueling experience for everyone. Years of tests, chemotheraphy, surgery, and/or radiation, plus the financial strain of paying for everything, await.

Fortunately--I realize that's not the appropriate word--most of the cancer victims I'm familiar with were retired or close to retirement, which means that they had Medicare or other health insurance to absorb most of the costs, and they probably didn't need to work to make up money shortfalls.

There is a growing cohort of Americans who are diagnosed long before retirement age, and, even if they survive the cancer, experience financial ruin. [bold added]

The economic burden of a cancer diagnosis is getting strikingly worse in the U.S., as drug and medical costs soar and more patients live longer with the disease. About 55% of cancer drugs introduced between 2019 and 2023 cost at least $200,000 a year, according to Iqvia’s Institute for Human Data Science. And an increasing number of patients are working-age, a group more likely to report financial hardship after diagnosis compared with older adults.

Nearly 60% of working-age cancer survivors report facing some financial difficulty. Many patients struggle to afford care and end up taking on debt, with some getting payday loans or running up credit cards. Cancer alone accounts for some 40% of medical campaigns seeking financial help on GoFundMe, research shows...

Among common diseases, cancer creates a uniquely difficult financial strain known as financial toxicity. Treatments with expensive medicines start immediately and come with a string of nonmedical costs. Chemotherapy and other treatments can leave patients too weak to work for weeks or months. This can result in a twofold blow, with patients losing income and their employer-sponsored health insurance. The financial fallout can last for years...

Many patients have to take time off—or actually stop working—after a cancer diagnosis. Patients who get chemotherapy are more likely to stop working within four years than those who don’t.

Could one straightforward way of relieving the financial burden be to buy up medical debts--for cents on the dollar because they've been sent to collections--then forgive them?

Undue Medical Debt (aka RIP Medical Debt) does exactly that--it's rated four stars by Charity Navigator--and is a 501(c)(3) organization that my church has donated to. RIP Medical Debt opened its books to economic researchers to find out whether paying off medical debt made a difference in people's lives. The results were disappointing:

[Stanford Prof. Neale] Mahoney and his collaborators find no evidence that buying and then forgiving medical debts that are in collections improved on average beneficiaries’ finances, access to credit, or their physical or mental health. People were even less likely to pay existing medical bills after their debt was eliminated.

Prof. Mahoney and other researchers, as well as RIP Medical Debt, are studying if earlier interventions might be more helpful.

Meanwhile, we're just lucky that we were able to enjoy good health during our working years. If either of us had been diagnosed with cancer in our 40's and 50's, when we didn't have much savings and had mortgages and tuitions to pay, then our lives would be immeasurably more difficult.

Memorial Day, 2024

Dad, near Tokyo in 1945

On this Memorial Day my thoughts turn to my father and his five brothers who wore the uniform during and after World War II.

They were raised in a dirt-poor household of nine children in early 20th-century Honolulu and were expected to help out with family finances after high school. World War II disrupted everyone's plans, but they all answered the call--some were drafted and others enlisted--but it was inconceivable that they wouldn't.

After the war, two went on to college, and all of them led "normal" lives--raising families, buying a house, and retiring in modest comfort.

They all live in my memory, and my appreciation for them has grown mightily over the years.

May you, dear reader, only have good memories today.

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

(Image from Today show)

Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker gave the commencement address at Benedictine College, a private Catholic college in Atchison, Kansas, on May 11th. He espoused traditional Catholic values in a way that offended America's dominant secular culture. For example, [bold added]

For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.

Thousands called for his firing by the Chiefs from other statements:

Bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values in media, all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.

Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the Sign of the Cross during a pro-abortion rally. He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I'm sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice.

Some commentators cited the NFL's apparent hypocrisy in not firing Harrison Butker while it blackballed Colin Kaepernick for kneeling when the National Anthem was being played. For the record, I supported the former 49ers quarterback then, but there is a clear difference between the two: CK expressed his views in full uniform while millions had to watch, but HB was speaking as a private citizen on his own time to a Catholic audience. Most Americans agree that employers have the right to fire employees for workplace behavior that could damage customer relationships.

(To be fair, there were liberal celebrities, like Bill Maher and Whoopi Goldberg, who came to HB's defense while disagreeing with the content of his speech.)

To this humble blogger, what was most interesting about the speech was the importance he placed on the traditional Latin mass:

I've been very vocal in my love and devotion to the TLM and its necessity for our lives. But what I think gets misunderstood is that people who attend the TLM do so out of pride or preference. I can speak to my own experience, but for most people I have come across within these communities this simply is not true. I do not attend the TLM because I think I am better than others, or for the smells and bells, or even for the love of Latin. I attend the TLM because I believe, just as the God of the Old Testament was pretty particular in how he wanted to be worshipped, the same holds true for us today. It is through the TLM that I encountered order, and began to pursue it in my own life. Aside from the TLM itself, too many of our sacred traditions have been relegated to things of the past, when in my parish, things such as ember days, days when we fast and pray for vocations and for our priests, are still adhered to. The TLM is so essential that I would challenge each of you to pick a place to move where it is readily available.

Three years ago Pope Francis gave local bishops the authority to ban the Latin mass. Even this non-Catholic sees the benefit of a tradition that has great meaning to some, so why not keep it optional? Is Pope Francis on "the other side" in the culture wars?

After the break is the text of Harrison Butker's speech from the National Catholic Register:

Anglerfish: Two Become One

Male anglerfish fuses with larger female (scitechdaily)

We can't avoid lingering on the sensational aspect of anglerfish reproduction before getting serious: [bold added]

These anglerfishes, called ceratioids, reproduce through sexual parasitism, in which the tiny males attach to their much larger female counterparts to mate. In some species, the males bite the females and then release once the mating process is complete. In others, the male permanently fuses to the female. In a process called obligate parasitism, the male’s head dissolves into the female and their circulatory systems merge. He transforms into a permanent sperm-producing sexual organ.

The theory is that it is so difficult to find a mate at the bottom of the ocean that the male latches onto the female and becomes a "permanent sperm-producing sexual organ." (Insert jokes here.)

Somehow the female's immune system does not reject the male's foreign tissue, as it would in every other species. Despite her absence of protective "killer T" cells, the female is able to stave off infection by other means. Research into the anglerfish mechanisms could have profound implications for human health, where foreign tissue rejection is a major problem for transplant surgery.

“Better understanding how deep-sea anglerfishes lost adaptive immunity could one day contribute to advances in medical procedures, such as organ transplants and skin grafting, where suppressing immunity is crucially important,” [Yale Professor Thomas Near] said. “It’s an interesting area for future medical research.”

The science is interesting and important, but my takeaway is that the next time your friend says he's lost his mind over a woman, tell him that's nothing compared to the male anglerfish.

An Economist's Approach to Immigration

2023 millionaire migrations. (Visual Capitalist)

Economics professor Richard Vedder and Matthew Denhart of the Coolidge Foundation want to allow immigrants to buy their way in: [bold added]

One way to modernize our immigration laws would be to allow market forces to decide who should become new citizens. Consider America like a club, with initiation fees required for admission. Instead of choosing immigrants based on where they are from, admit them based on likely contributions to America.

An example: Sell 8,000 visas to the highest bidders for 250 days a year. Suppose the average price is $30,000. Of the $60 billion in annual visa revenue [blogger's note: 250 days x 8,000= 2,000,000 immigrants per year. 2MM x $30,000=$60 billion], devote one-third to more-intense border enforcement, one-third to income-tax reduction (an “immigration bonus” to taxpayers), and one-third to increasing the anemic defense budget. Or apply the money to debt reduction, helping delay the fiscal armageddon threatening the pensions and healthcare of elderly Americans.

Those buying visas could get access to huge labor and capital markets. Productive potential newcomers would avoid years of waiting to enter the country, and America would gain largely productive citizens.

Once we set aside the romantic notion that all immigrants must be hard-working, law-abiding poor who just need a break, this proposal makes a lot of sense. Immigrants who can buy their way in are unlikely to claim welfare benefits but become immediately productive members of society and not run afoul of its laws. [This concept is already contemplated--but not explicitly with a price tag--through the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.]

Think of it as a fast track lane through airport TSA where "only" two million can get through. There's still room for many more to enter in the traditional, terribly inefficient way. This proposal is worth a try.

Caltrans: Back to its Basic Mission

The Yolo 80 Corridor Improvements Project

Traffic from the Bay Area to Sacramento has gotten worse. Thousands of households (and their cars) have relocated to the Central Valley from LA and SF because of cheaper housing, newer schools, and the friendlier regulatory environment.

Meanwhile, we who remain in the Bay Area like to go on holiday to Lake Tahoe, Reno, and points beyond, which means taking I-80.

We do our best to avoid peak congestion hours, but lately it's been impossible to circumvent the traffic. Last summer it was stop-and-go in 107°F heat throughout the 100 miles to Sacramento.

After years of deliberation Caltrans has finally approved the addition of lanes to I-80 along the "Yolo Corridor," the worst bottleneck. Of course, the coastal environmentalists who don't have to endure the traffic regularly like the hoi polloi, object: [bold added]

Environmentalists balked, viewing the Yolo 80 Corridor Improvements project as a retreat from California’s ambitious climate goals. Many predicted that by adding two lanes to the interstate, Caltrans would lure commuters out of Capitol Corridor trains and into cars. But the California Transportation Commission voted unanimously last week to secure $105 million in state funds for the first phase of the project, all but ensuring construction will break ground.

It’s a shining moment for Yolo county and the city of Sacramento, a seat of governance in a rural valley, where road projects don’t usually draw massive infrastructure grants. At the same time, the Yolo 80 Corridor has become a flash point for two competing visions of transportation in California — one focused on managing congestion, the other aiming to wean people off cars.

...Collective misery about traffic, particularly among Californians who can’t afford to live near their jobs, often dwarfs concerns about carbon emissions, [UC-Davis Prof. Susan] Handy said. Politicians and agencies have to respond and show they’re taking action.

As a result, major highway infrastructure projects are proceeding throughout California. Caltrans is doubling the width of Highway 37 in the North Bay from two to four lanes for seven miles. In Los Angeles, a plan to add lanes to Interstate 710 is inching forward.

Sustainable transportation advocates argue that increasing the capacity for traffic only encourages people to drive, perpetuating the problem that engineers hope to solve. They cite the “bold climate agenda” that Gov. Gavin Newsom invoked in a 2019 executive order, which made reduction of fuel emissions a top priority for transportation spending.

Despite the highest gas taxes in the nation, California supposedly doesn't have the funds to pay for the additional lanes and will make them toll roads. Little matter, the wonder is that the project has been approved at all.

It's too much to hope that climate alarmism has peaked, but for now it looks like the government is paying attention to the immediate needs of its Central Valley citizens rather than the worries of the coastal elites that their grandchildren will get their toes wet in a hundred years.

Obsessed by a Pittance

One of my New Year's goals (it's an aspiration, not a resolution) was to write letters regularly.

I've been averaging five letters per week, which requires frequent stamp purchases. It's a personal predilection, but I prefer to pay full price for a first-class stamp, currently 68¢, and pick out the images that I like. (One can buy slightly discounted stamps in bulk at stamps.com or big box stores.)

Yesterday I bought eighty stamps (picture) but didn't bother putting them in an envelope.

The smallest plate block was missing when I took inventory. Retracing my steps, I searched the car several times. After 20 minutes, I gave up, rationalizing that what was lost was only $13.60 (20 x 68¢), nothing in the scheme of things.

The next morning the first thing I did was search the car again. Et voilà! The manatee block was at the bottom of the driver-side storage compartment. I felt a brief moment of elation, then sobered immediately.

This chronicle of events was not about commitment, writing letters, buying stamps, or money.

I had been obsessed by a pittance, and I need to fix that.

Financial Therapy

(WSJ Illustration)

When I was going to business school 50 years ago, I admired the select few who were in the JD/MBA program. They had to be accepted separately to both the law school and business school--each of which was tough to get into--and devote four years to complete their studies.

But I'm not impressed by this latest dual credential, the financial therapist: [bold added]

The goal of financial therapists ultimately is to help people make good financial decisions, typically by raising their clients’ awareness of how their emotions and unconscious beliefs have affected their sometimes messy experiences with money...

Financial therapists tend to come from mental-health and financial-planning disciplines, and there are signs that their ranks are rising: The Financial Therapy Association has 430 members, up from 225 in 2015. Still, according to the group, fewer than 100 financial therapists have completed its certification process, introduced in 2019. You can be an association member without being certified by it...

Still, there are possible pitfalls when hiring a financial therapist. One major drawback: Anyone can claim they are qualified to practice financial therapy.

No government agency regulates the young profession. Candidates for certification by the Financial Therapy Association must take online courses designed by the association covering financial and therapeutic techniques, counsel clients for 250 hours and pass a 100-question test. But you can call yourself a financial therapist and not be certified by the association.

Meanwhile, the cost of financial therapy varies widely—from $125 to $350 an hour, [Financial Therapy Association President Ashley] Agnew estimates. Insurance rarely covers the tab.

Because of recent well-publicized policy mistakes, "experts" have lost the deference that their credentials used to afford them. However, credentialing and licensing do have their place in verifying that a person has a certain level of knowledge to practice often-complex professions.

The fact that there are zero certification requirements in "financial therapy" will result inevitably in scandal, defalcation, and possibly worse outcomes for clients. I wish it weren't true, but sad experience teaches otherwise.

There Once Was a There There

What did Oakland use for traffic control before stop signs? Traffic lights!

Oakland is now replacing traffic lights with stop signs due to homeless encampments stealing from Oakland's electrical boxes: pic.twitter.com/Y2lFQ8BJsM

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 19, 2024

Don't blame Republicans. John H. Reading was Oakland's last Republican mayor from 1966-1977. Wikipedia:

In 1968 Charlie Finley moved the Athletics baseball team from Kansas City to Oakland during Mayor Reading's tenure. The Oakland Athletics won three World Series while Reading was mayor. He was instrumental in gaining funding and supporting construction of the new Oakland Coliseum and expansion of the Oakland International Airport.

Pentecost 2024

In contrast to the sparse attendance of last year, this year's Pentecost was a well-attended, joyous affair.

Half the congregation was dressed in red, symbolic of the spiritual fire that swept through the early Church, and a children's choir and guest soprano enlivened the music.

Four readers took turns reading the passage from Acts 2 in English, Cantonese, French, and Spanish:

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

It's wishful thinking, but I'm hopeful we're on the verge of another Great Awakening.

Loud Budgeting

I missed this new term in personal finance: loud budgeting.

Lukas Battle (Instagram)

Loud budgeting began as a joke, said Lukas Battle, the 26-year-old comedian who coined the term in a December TikTok video after a night of overspending.

When Battle’s friends then messaged him asking to go out to an expensive Italian restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood, he proposed they all cook dinner at someone’s house and have a game night instead. It was a riff on “quiet luxury,” the trend of favoring well-made, expensive, but understated fashions.

Battle’s video took off, generating over one million views and more than a thousand comments. Hundreds of people have shared their own examples of how loud budgeting helped them save money.

“People want a break or some sort of relief from this constant need to be spending and buying,” said Battle, who lives in New York.

Loud budgeting has helped some combat the peer pressure to spend.

Madeleine Burke (WSJ)

Madeleine Burke, 26, said her best friend visits the nail salon every two weeks for a manicure and pedicure. The last time Burke went with her, she paid $45 for a pedicure and instantly regretted the decision.

“I cannot believe I paid for that and I could’ve done it at home,” said Burke, who lives in New Orleans. The next time she was asked, she felt more comfortable declining. She credits loud budgeting with helping change how she approaches spending.

Burke said her friends now host more potlucks at each other’s homes and go secondhand shopping together.

Your humble blogger admits that during his career he yielded to social pressure by going on expensive outings that he didn't want and couldn't afford--or, to be more accurate, could pay for if he defunded activities that had a higher priority (e.g., retirement savings, replacing a 15-year-old car).

If proclaiming publicly that you don't have the dough gets your non-wealthy status out in the open, that's a welcome improvement over "my spouse and I have other plans" or "we can't find a babysitter." Any friends you may lose aren't really your long-term friends anyway.

Satisfaction

Free shredding last Saturday

More than half of the companies (financial, telecommunications, medical) that I deal with have experienced data breaches. To allay customers' worries they always offer a year's free subscription to a security service that will monitor suspicious activity--for example, new credit cards taken out in customers' names--and provide insurance against ID theft losses.

I signed up for one or two of these protective services in the past but have stopped doing so. They always involve sharing with yet another company very detailed information, such as date of birth, social security number, bank account and brokerage account numbers, where one has lived for the past forty years, whether one owns or rents, etc. To me the risk of that new company being breached by a hacker or a crooked employee is greater than the benefit of that company's protection.

So I go back to the traditional method of checking credit card statements and reconciling (what's that kids? look it up) financial accounts monthly--stuff I had been doing for thirty years before the internet existed. Other than a few times my credit card number has been stolen to make some purchases for several hundred dollars, I have never had a problem with ID theft (knock on wood).

As for preventing leaks from paper sources, we bundle the documents that need to be destroyed--old tax returns are too voluminous for our home shredder--and take them to City Hall for Foster City's free-shredding Saturdays.

There was a grinding sound as the papers were lifted into the machine and pulverized. You can't get that satisfaction from cleaning a hard disk.

Nvidia and Apple: Matters of the Heart

Nvidia's Santa Clara HQ (NY Post)

Homegrown $2.3 trillion-dollar tech giant Nvidia gives a much needed shot in the arm to the Bay Area economy.

Headline: Nvidia widens South Bay property holdings with $350 million-plus deal

Nvidia has bought several office and research buildings in Santa Clara in a deal that tops $350 million and greatly broadens the fast-expanding tech company’s holdings in Silicon Valley...

The sites Nvidia bought are adjacent to and near the tech company’s modern and futuristic-looking headquarters complex at 2788 San Tomas Expressway. The just-bought properties could be redeveloped with new office and research buildings, potentially totaling up to 2 million square feet, according to Santa Clara city planning records.

Unlike big-name companies (Tesla, Oracle, HP) that have moved their headquarters from California, Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook) have indicated that they are staying put by continuing to add people and real estate in the Bay Area, recent layoffs notwithstanding.

But Apple and Nvidia are special cases. When Apple built its $5 billion spaceship headquarters in Cupertino, it was an announcement to the world that it would always be based in Cupertino. Similarly, Nvidia bought, not rented, additional real estate, a signal that it, too, would not only be staying but expanding in Silicon Valley.

Cost-benefit analysis always produces the same result: expand anywhere outside of California because of California's high-cost housing, high taxes, and onerous regulation. Sometimes, after succeeding with a far-flung workforce, these companies move their headquarters away.

But Nvidia and Apple won't be moving away for the foreseeable future. Nvidia and Apple's founders got their start in the Bay Area, have a great deal of affection for their home towns, and most importantly controlled their companies. And who knows...the heart sometimes sees the future better than the head.

Lucky to Have It

Once upon a time, kids, I highly valued a
CSAA membership because of its maps.

After reading about all the difficulties that California homeowners have had in obtaining insurance, I breathed a sigh of relief when I opened the renewal invoice from CSAA for July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. I was doubly relieved that the total premium was under $2,000, less than double what it was ten years ago. Other California homeowners covered by CSAA aren't as lucky as I am, but so far they're being renewed. [bold added]

Over a million California policyholders insured through AAA are seeing their home insurance rates rise — sometimes by substantial amounts.

CSAA, the Northern California insurance affiliate for AAA, was approved last Friday to raise its average home insurance rate by 6.9%. Some homeowners may see their rates go up as much as 23.3%, though a small number of others may see their rates decline as much as 11.3%, according to filings with the California Department of Insurance.

The approximately 448,000 customers affected by the rate change can expect to see their new price at their next renewal date on or after August 1, according to the company’s filings.

And in Southern California, 865,579 policyholders with the Interinsurance Exchange of the Automobile Club — another AAA-affiliated insurer, sometimes known as the Auto Club of Southern California — are seeing home insurance average rates rise by an average of 20% when they renew, in a rate rise that went into effect in March.

Part of the reason the premium didn't go up much for us was due to the calendar: the approved increase affected policy periods beginning in August. Also, the Northern California territory (average 6.9% increase) is perceived to be less risky by the insurer than the Southern California territory (average 20% hike).

Like a sleepy stock that suddenly becomes an investment darling, Foster City is now taking off as a high-benefit, low-risk place to be.

Another Sign that Global Warming Alarmism Has Peaked

If an extinction-level asteroid headed towards earth, politics would be set aside. If it meant that the U.S. and China had to share their most advanced technology to save the planet, cybersecurity, intellectual property, and job protecting concerns would vanish, or at least tabled for the future, if the human race were to have a future.

By their behavior we know that no government's leaders truly believe that global warming poses an existential threat to humanity. "Net-zero" emissions by 2050 cannot be fulfilled by anyone in power today, so it's a hollow promise meant to satisfy noisy activists, who call anyone who questions their data and conclusions as "deniers" who do not "follow the science." So let's look at the science. [bold added]

When politicians tell us we must “follow the science” toward extreme climate policies, they are really trying to shut down the discussion of enormous, unsustainable costs. We shouldn’t let them.

Climate change is a real problem but isn’t the imminent existential crisis of which the media and activist politicians breathlessly warn. They run headlines and give speeches about extreme weather events, though the United Nations’ panel of climate scientists hasn’t been able to document evidence of most of them worsening. The data show that climate-related deaths from droughts, storms, floods and fires have declined by more than 97% over the last century, from nearly 500,000 annually to fewer than 15,000 in the 2020s. That’s a real human cost but far from cataclysmic. More people die in traffic accidents in an average week...

The world still gets four-fifths of its energy from fossil fuels, because renewable sources rarely provide good alternatives. Half the world’s population entirely depends on food grown with synthetic fertilizer produced almost entirely by natural gas. If we rapidly ceased using fossil fuels, four billion people would suddenly be without food. Add the billions of people dependent on fossil-fuel heating in the winter, along with our dependence on fossil fuels for steel, cement, plastics and transportation, and it is no wonder that one recent estimate by economist Neil Record showed an abrupt end to fossil fuel use would cause six billion deaths in less than a year.

Few politicians advocate solutions this extreme, but many use activist paranoia about global extinction to justify proposals with only marginally more sensible timelines. Rather than knocking speed limits down to zero in one blow, they plan to force them to a crawl across several decades. It’s still a destructive idea. Politicians suppress discussion by grandstanding about the existential threat climate change poses. Weigh the actual costs of the proposals, and it becomes obvious that they’re preposterous.

(image from ptc.com)

The latest evidence that President Biden doesn't really believe in the threat posed by fossil fuels is his imposition of a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles earlier today. (For that matter, former President Trump said he would make the tariff 200%, but at least the latter never claimed that global warming was going to destroy the world.)

One of the biggest obstacles to Americans' acceptance of EVs is the sticker price, and Chinese EVs cost less that $15,000 in China. Despite generalized worries about low reliability and shoddy workmanship of Chinese-made products, a report from the Beijing Car Show indicates those fears are unwarranted. President Biden, in order to get re-elected, is pandering to the American Auto industry and its workers by eliminating competitors who could save the world--if he really believed the world was in danger.

Gimme Some of Those Induction Cooked Ribs

2021: Oakland food hall (Chron/Getty)

One of the underpinnings of the urban lifestyle is at war with urban culture's aspirations.

Headline: the surprising force stalling climate progress: California restaurants [bold added]

When Berkeley became the first city in the country to ban the extension of gas pipes into new buildings, it targeted a contentious source of climate pollution...Berkeley was the first to try to stop this climate problem from becoming bigger. Since it enacted its ordinance in 2019, more than 100 cities, counties and states across the country have followed.

Today, these efforts are reeling. The California Restaurant Association took the city to court in November 2019, arguing that its 20,000-plus members preferred cooking with a gas flame and that, even though the rule wouldn’t require changes to existing buildings, such an ordinance would limit their options when opening new locations. Moreover, they argued, federal energy laws preempt these aggressive local ordinances.

After a see-sawing legal battle, the restaurants prevailed...

Now, Bloomberg Green has learned, a coalition of gas companies and their supporters are planning to wield the restaurants’ legal victory to beat back similar rules across the western US. This puts restaurants directly at odds with a hospitable planet, as there’s no feasible pathway to avert catastrophic warming if places like California don’t sharply reduce gas combustion in buildings, according to climate experts.

“It’s rather irritating to have restaurant owners put their heads in the sand,” says Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University. “We have to move away from natural gas. The planet demands it.”

Comments:

1) Travel and dining-out shows heap effusive praise on fancy restaurants, street-food vendors, and everything in between around the world. These places all cook over an open flame. I've never seen an induction heater (the warmists' cooktop of choice) on any of these shows.

2) Restaurants are going out of business across the country, a post-COVID phenomenon that's not related to the ban on natural gas. One just has to be patient for dining-out economics to take hold, and carbon emissions will go down on their own accord without the need for government intervention.

3) Banning gasoline-powered cars and natural gas stoves in the U.S. pales before China building two new coal-fired power plants per week, but that's just me.

4) Old-time believers claimed to speak to God. New time religionists speak to Gaia ("the planet demands it.")

The Long March Claims the Methodists

Chaplain at UMC convention on May 1st. Crucifixes not
required, just your obeisance to the rainbow. (WSJ photo)

The Methodists are among the last Protestant denominations to bend to the cultural winds: [bold added]

The United Methodist Church at its General Conference last week voted by large margins to lift its ban on practicing homosexual clergy and to eliminate from its “Social Principles” the statement that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. The decision is significant for what has long been one of the nation’s biggest religious groups, with more than five million members.

As with every other mainline Protestant denomination in America, there has been a long struggle over the church’s traditional teaching that homosexuality is wrong and that marriage is between a man and a woman. The UMC stood its ground for longer than many other denominations, even reaffirming its position and strengthening the penalties for breaking the rules in 2019. That, however, was also the year the UMC adopted a policy that allowed congregations to leave the denomination with their property. Traditionalists did so in droves, with more than 7,000 American churches departing in the past five years, preparing the way for the progressives’ triumph.

The recent changes weren’t surprising. Liberal Protestantism has always been a religious reflection of the broader culture. In the 1950s that meant supporting the Cold War, with John Foster Dulles being perhaps the most prominent liberal Protestant in public life. The 1960s, the Vietnam War and the civil-rights movement changed that. Liberal Protestants continued to do what they have always done, adding a pious blessing and an air of divine sanction to the cultural politics of the day, but the politics moved left. As the notion of civil rights fused with the sexual revolution, supporting abortion, homosexuality and then transgenderism became the imperative of divine love.

We saw this phenomenon occur in my Episcopal Church decades ago. When non-chaste homosexuality became approved--not just in congregations but in priests and bishops--the Progressive takeover began, and millions left the Episcopal Church.

Today Progressives' triumph is complete (my retiring Bishop admiringly quotes Marx), with clergy openly lobbying not only for LGBTQ+ causes but for giving illegal immigrants the rights of citizens, free medical care for all, and the forced conversion of fossil-fuel power to wind and solar.

Someday I'd like them to explain why they repudiated nearly everything the Church told us 50 years ago, and why today's principles are the Way, the Truth, and the Light. But I'm not holding my breath. As Marx--the one whose followers didn't kill tens of millions--said, "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

Happy Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day, but today we were moved by this father's love for his child and how it turned out 16 years later.

Today in 2008, Li Yang dug with bare hands for over 10 hours, rescued his buried daughter Li Jiaqin, from the rubble of Wenchuan earthquake汶川地震.

16 years later, daughter has made a transition from a student to a doctor.

A father's love is strong like a mountain父爱如山 pic.twitter.com/Vj3RK1JMjt

— China in Pictures (@tongbingxue) May 12, 2024

Neither a Lender or Borrower Be (to Relatives)

(Image from Etsy)

In many families the Bank of Mom and Dad (or Grandma and Grandpa) start as the lenders of last resort.

As the borrowers find out that their monied relatives can often be sweet-talked into loan extensions or even loan forgiveness the BOMAD becomes the lender of first resort.

(Disclosure: your humble blogger luckily does not have this problem in his immediate family but has first-hand knowledge of adult children and grandchildren who never fulfilled promises to repay "loans" for purchases of cars and houses.)

Now technology has stepped into the breach by formalizing and tracking these loans, making it less likely that relationships will be permanently strained. [bold added]

relationship-based loans come with inherent risks, and financial advisers generally recommend avoiding them. Roughly a third of Americans have had a falling-out over money, and the most common reason was because a loan was never paid back, according to a November survey from price-comparison platform Finder.

“Lending money puts your relationship as collateral for the loan, which is risky and can lead to resentment,” said Chris Hostetler, a financial adviser at Hilltop Wealth Advisors in Durham, N.C.

It should also be noted that the presence of "responsible" siblings complicates the situation. Resentments, especially if unequal treatment has been perceived since childhood, often come to a head when the failure to repay the loan is discovered and can poison relationships even after the parents die. Here's how software can reduce the risks of estrangement:

Platforms and apps like Namma, Pigeon and Zirtue have facilitated more than $100 million in loans between friends and family since 2020, offering practical tools and assisting with some tax record-keeping. These three services have reported low default rates, a trend financial advisers attribute to the accountability fostered by close relationships.

These loan apps and services can turn verbal agreements between friends and family into official, written contracts. They also keep track of payments and terms, and assist in adhering to other IRS guidelines, such as establishing a fixed repayment schedule.

There's anecdotal evidence that using these apps increases the likelihood of repayment. Borrowers agree to use them because a) they're in no position to argue and b) the terms are customizable and are almost always better than any bank. However, an app is not a panacea:

Even with the growth of these apps, financial advisers say those lending money should probably consider the money as a gift—if you can afford to go without it.

“If it’s a gift, then getting any money back from them is a treat,” said Tommy Lucas, a financial adviser at Moisand Fitzgerald in Orlando, Fla. “If they can’t get it elsewhere, there’s a good amount of risk that it may not be paid back.”

The old advice holds true: never lend money to a relative or friend unless you're willing to have it never paid back.

God Giveth, and California Regulators Take It Away

"Lake" Oroville on July 22, 2021 (Chronicle photo)

In 2017 the Oroville dam was in danger of breaching, and downstream communities had to be evacuated. In 2021 the Oroville hydroelectric plant was shut down due to lack of water (picture, right).

Today the Oroville reservoir is at capacity. [bold added]

Lake Oroville contains 28% more water than it historically has on this date. While the lake also filled to the brim last year, three years ago water levels sank to their lowest point ever, a testament to California’s increasingly variable climate.

Oroville today (Chron photo)

This year, snowpack in the northern Sierra measured 123% at its peak, according to state data, helping boost flows in the Feather River, which feeds Lake Oroville.

Federally managed Shasta Lake, which is California’s largest reservoir, was 97% full on Monday, or about 115% of average.

At the beginning of this rainy season water managers were worried about too much rain.

Heading into the winter, many water managers were concerned that if huge atmospheric river storms pounded the state in November and December, that could have caused major flooding because there was less space left in the big reservoirs than in most years to catch runoff

Whether by luck or divine intervention California had a Goldilocks winter--above average rainfall but not too much to cause flooding. With plentiful water for everyone there would seem to be no need for austerity---unless regulators make Californians cut back because they know what's best for everyone.

Even with Lake Oroville at capacity, and other reservoirs above average, state water officials have said they expect to provide only 40% of the water requested by communities and irrigation districts in the coming year...

One of the reasons for the limited deliveries, state officials say, is an ongoing issue with the pumps that move the water. The State Water Project pumping facility in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta often draws in fish and kills them, including delta smelt, chinook salmon and steelhead trout. In response, the state reduces how much water is pumped.

Who built the faulty pumps? Who decided that fish were more important than the needs of millions of Californians? Those questions are never answered in the one-party State, whose decrees must be obeyed.

Apple's Ad Misfire: Grist for Social Media But That's All

In the age of social influencing, quick first takes, and harvesting of clicks, the crowds swarm over topics important and trivial, then move on to the next thing.

One of Apple's ads for the new iPad has attracted negative attention:[bold added]

An Apple advertisement that depicts a patchwork of creative tools being crushed and revealing a new iPad in their place is facing broad criticism on social media.

The ad, which Chief Executive Tim Cook posted on X after Apple unveiled new iPads Tuesday, depicts a studio filled with musical instruments, a record player, cans of paint with vibrant colors and other items being physically crushed by what appears to be a giant compressor.

When the compressor lifts, an ultrathin iPad is all that remains in place of the tools.

“Apple’s new iPad Pro ad is a rare fail from a normally flawless advertiser,” Peter Intermaggio, a former marketing and advertising executive for companies including Comcast, wrote on LinkedIn. For a brand that “elevates creators, this is an ad that celebrates destruction. It is heavy handed and nihilistic.”

While the ad, named “Crush!” emphasizes the thinness of the iPad, a point Apple executives highlighted when they unveiled the device, some critics saw it as an ominous symbol of the company’s power, the rise of artificial intelligence and its potential to replace human creativity.

Your humble blogger felt a little uncomfortable watching the artifacts of his era being "crushed" and amalgamated into a new iPad.

Not liking this ad should have no bearing on customers' decision to purchase an iPad. Dear reader, if that was the determining factor in not buying a thousand-dollar item, your decision-making process likely needs some work (in my humble opinion).

Below is the ad in question.



Update - 5/9: Apple Apologizes for iPad Ad Depicting Crushed Creative Tools

Threat to Democracy in California

California Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero

One never knows until the ruling is issued, but so far the California Supreme Court appears reluctant to pull the tax initiative (discussed yesterday) from the November ballot: [bold added]

The state Supreme Court seemed reluctant Wednesday to grant Democrats’ request to remove from the November ballot a business-supported initiative that would require voter approval for any increase in state and local taxes or fees. But the justices appeared willing to put the tax-cut provisions on hold if the measure passes and then decide their legality.

As the hearing began, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero asked a lawyer for Gov. Gavin Newsom and Legislative Democrats why the court should take the rare step of blocking the ballot measure “instead of allowing the voters to consider it.”

Justice Joshua Groban asked a similar question, and Justice Martin Jenkins said less-drastic actions were available, like a freeze on provisions that would slash government revenue. Justice Leondra Kruger noted that the court usually considers a ballot measure’s challenged sections individually rather than taking up the entire measure, and asked, “Why shouldn’t we do so here?”

Governor Newsom and the Democrats argued that the legislature's power to control taxation is in the California Constitution, and the people's ability to supersede the legislature through an initiative is therefore un-Constitutional.

Your humble blogger is not a lawyer or historian, but because California initiatives have been around since 1911, the constitutional arguments would seem to have been settled.

To be frank (and a little childish), I like seeing the single-party State squirm a little and, after denouncing Republicans as a threat to democracy, argue that the people should not have the ability to decide.

To Make Our Displeasure Known

Last year the EDD lost $20-$33 billion because of fraud.

On specific categories (income, property, sales, gas) California may not be the highest-taxed state, but there's no question that in the state rankings of the overall tax burden California is #1 or #2.

The pain would be lessened if the monies were employed somewhat effectively, but California continues to spend $billions on homelessness, high-speed trains to nowhere, and public education, with no signs of progress. And we've not even mentioned the $billions lost to fraud.

We've lamented the situation for years, but the voters keep re-electing the same people, and the one-party state rolls on, more dominant than ever in its taxing and spending and wastefulness.

However, once in a blue moon the political process still has the capacity to surprise (pleasantly).

Headline: These California taxes could be overturned by ballot measure before state Supreme Court [bold added]

The initiative, a proposed state constitutional amendment, would require any increase in state or local taxes or fees to be approved by the voters — and by two-thirds of the voters if the funds are for a specific purpose, like housing or zoo maintenance, rather than general government revenue.

Perhaps the most far-reaching feature of the measure is that it would apply retroactively to taxes and fees passed since the start of 2022. They would be rescinded unless voters gave approval by the required majority no later than a year after the initiative took effect.

Overall, state officials say the retroactivity standard would affect 15 bills signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that could affect statewide fees or taxes, and at least 131 such measures passed by local governments since the start of 2022.

This initiative received enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, but, not unexpectedly, Governor Newsom and Democratic legislators have filed "emergency" lawsuits with the State Supreme Court to have it removed.

The initiative threatens to halt the endless cycle of tax and spend, and strikes at the heart of the one-party State. Your humble blogger doesn't give the initiative much of a chance of surmounting the obstacles in front of it, but at least those of us who are fed up with the way things are finally have a chance to make our displeasure known.

Buffett to Apple: It's Not You, It's Me

The Berkshire Hathaway shareholders' meeting in Omaha last Saturday.

Apple stock has been Berkshire Hathaway's largest and most successful investment in Warren Buffett's storied history. [bold added]

Apple is Warren Buffett’s greatest investment. It has also become one of his riskiest.

In 2016, Buffett made perhaps the most surprising bet of his career. That year, Berkshire Hathaway, the company he runs, began buying up shares of Apple—the exact kind of stock Buffett and his longtime partner, Charlie Munger, had long avoided...

Yet working with protégés, Buffett soon transformed into an Apple bull in a remarkable about-face. After an initial purchase of nearly 10 million shares worth about $1 billion in 2016, Berkshire added to its holdings later that year and then stepped up its buying in 2017 and 2018, spending about $36 billion on the stock over those years. Berkshire later trimmed some of those holdings.

By the end of the third quarter of 2018, Berkshire’s Apple stake represented about a quarter of its entire investment portfolio. In dollar terms, it was twice as large an investment as Buffett had previously made.

The move has paid off, in a very big way. Today, Berkshire’s 5.9% stake in Apple is worth about $157 billion, even though Apple has fallen lately. Berkshire is sitting on about $120 billion in paper gains, likely the most money ever made by an investor or a firm from a single stock. Nothing in Buffett’s long career comes close. Apple stock represented nearly 50% of Berkshire’s stock portfolio at year-end.

Warren Buffett has never followed hard-and-fast rules for portfolio diversification. Many portfolio managers would sell an individual stock if its value exceeded, say, 10% of their portfolio, but Warren Buffett rode a seven-year wave until Apple equalled nearly half of Berkshire's $370 billion stock holdings.

At that point no one would criticize Warren Buffett for trimming his position, which he did in the first quarter. He announced his action in last Saturday's Berkshire shareholders meeting, all the while continuing to praise Apple:

Warren Buffett is still a big fan of Apple.

The legendary investor praised the iPhone maker on Saturday from the stage of his annual meeting, even after revealing that Berkshire Hathaway had slashed its stake in the first quarter. He hinted that tax considerations may have played into the decision.

Buffett told an arena of Berkshire shareholders that Apple is “an even better business” than American Express and Coca-Cola, two other big positions in his company’s massive stock portfolio.

Berkshire sold about 13% of its mammoth stake in Apple in the first months of 2024, leaving it with $135.4 billion of the iPhone maker’s shares at the end of March, according to a regulatory filing released Saturday morning.

He really didn't have to justify the sale, but what was the reference to "tax considerations"? Was there some esoteric tax rule that applied to unbalanced insurance company investments?

No, Mr. Buffett was simply referring to the likelihood that the Federal government, facing unprecedented deficits and unwilling to cut spending, will soon raise the long-term capital gains rate from 21%. (He elaborates on YouTube.)

We don’t mind paying taxes at Berkshire , and we are paying a 21% federal rate on the gains we’re taking in Apple. That rate was 35% not that long ago and has been 52% in the past when I’ve been operating. The Federal government owns a part of the earnings of the business we make. They don’t own the assets but they own a percentage of the earnings. They can change that percentage in a year and the percentage is currently 21%, and I would say that with the present fiscal policies I think that something has to give and I think that higher taxes are quite likely, and if the government wants to take a greater share of your income or mine or Berkshire’s, they can do it.

They may decide that someday they don’t want the fiscal deficit to be this large because that has some important consequences and they may not want to decrease spending a lot and they may decide they’ll take a larger percentage of what we earn, and we’ll pay it. We always hope at Berkshire to pay substantial Federal income taxes. We think it’s appropriate that a country that has been as generous to our owners—Berkshire was lucky that it was here—and if we sent in a check like we did last year, we sent in over $5 billion to the US Federal government—and if 800 other companies had done the same thing no other person in the United States would’ve had to pay a dime of Federal taxes [applause], whether income taxes, no Social Security taxes, no estate taxes, all down the line. I hope things develop well enough with Berkshire—we say we’re in the 800 club [companies with a market capitalization of at least $800 billion]-- and maybe even move up a few notches. It doesn’t bother me in the least to write that check, and I would really hope with all that America has done for all of you, it shouldn’t bother you that we do it, and if I’m doing it at 21 percent this year and we’re doing it at a lot higher percentage later on, I don’t think you’ll actually mind the fact that we sold a little Apple this year.

Far be it for me to argue with Warren Buffett, but his statement that no one would pay any taxes if 800 companies paid $5 billion to the Treasury is technically true, but fantastical. Excluding banks, who need multi-$billions to conduct operations, there are fewer than 50 companies that have at least $10 billion on hand. (It's like saying that if everyone had an EV there would be no climate crisis.)

However, the Oracle of Omaha is very likely to be correct in his prediction that the government is unwilling to cut spending and will raise taxes in the near future. At 93, Warren Buffett talks about the way things are, not the way he wishes they could be.