{"id":15820,"date":"2012-11-05T09:05:14","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T14:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=15820"},"modified":"2012-11-05T09:16:52","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T14:16:52","slug":"15820","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=15820","title":{"rendered":"An endorsement and some reasons"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/strong>Barack Obama has been a disappointment. He spoke so well. We expected so much more from his first term. But he was dealt a double whammy: A horrendous economy (a recession second only to the Great Depression) and a recalcitrant Congress. Still, though he is no Lyndon Johnson, he managed many accomplishments — from universal health-care to new financial legislation, to immigration reform for youth, to getting rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,<\/em>” to getting us out of Iraq and reducing our presence in Afghanistan. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I love that Romney’s a businessman with serious business accomplishments. But I understand so little of what his real beliefs are, or even what his plans are (except to reduce my taxes). What little I do understand frighten me. The crackpot right wing of his Party freaks me out. Whatever happened to the moderate Reagan Republican? I cannot risk the slightest chance\u00a0 that Romney will appoint someone to the Supreme Court who will reverse legalized abortion, driving it underground once again, destroying women’s lives and our society’s safety. Since Roe v. Wade, crime in our cities has dropped dramatically. The reason? The absence of unwanted children — a direct result of Roe v. Wade. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I worry too much about Romney. I worry too much about his plans for unfettered energy development — from fracking to a pipeline from Canada.I’m worried about his repealing Dodd-Frank. I worry about his plans for illegal immigrants.Because he doesn’t explain what he’s planning, I worry.<\/p>\n

I’m a moderate businessman who loves his adopted country and who has paid over $60 million in taxes to the Federal Government. I’m not a nut case upper west side screaming liberal on the dole, part of the 47%.<\/p>\n

In early life I worked on the assumption that all people were honest and did the right thing.\u00a0 I no longer do. When I sold the business and moved into my new business of searching for investments, I encountered dens of thieves that blew my mind. I remember the elegant Swiss banker telling Michael and me to lie, cheat and steal from the U.S. Government. I’ve met people throughout Wall Street who profess to acting in my interests and clearly don’t. They steal from me. And I’ve seen Wall Street sell securities that they bet against. I’ve seen rating agencies giving junk securities AAA ratings. I’ve seen horrendous stories of fracking ruining communities’ drinking water.<\/p>\n

I no longer believe in the ubiquity of the honest\u00a0 man. I do believe in progress. And I believe in setting logical rules and regulations which can protect us all, and make our society a cleaner, safer place — given that we’re not all honest.<\/p>\n

Reluctantly, we have two flawed politicians running for president. For now, I’ll take the one less flawed — Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

There’s a wonderful piece by my favorite author, Michael Lewis, in the latest issue of Vanity Fair<\/em>. One excerpt — this is Obama speaking:<\/p>\n

But if you happen to be president just now, what you are faced with, mainly, is not a public-relations problem but an endless string of decisions. Putting it the way George W. Bush did sounded silly but he was right: the president is a decider. Many if not most of his decisions are thrust upon the president, out of the blue, by events beyond his control: oil spills, financial panics, pandemics, earthquakes, fires, coups, invasions, underwear bombers, movie-theater shooters, and on and on and on. They don\u2019t order themselves neatly for his consideration but come in waves, jumbled on top of each other. \u201cNothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable,\u201d Obama said at one point. \u201cOtherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. Any given decision you make you\u2019ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn\u2019t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made the decision. You can\u2019t be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out.\u201d On top of all of this, after you have made your decision, you need to feign total certainty about it. People being led do not want to think probabilistically<\/p>\n

This is<\/em> Michael Lewis and President Barack Obama in the Colonnade of the White House, heading toward the Oval Office.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Michael Lewis’ excellent Vanity Fair<\/em> article is here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Apple and\/or Google AdSense Developer?<\/strong><\/span> Both Apple and Google have changed the way they send their developers money. Unless you\u00a0 fill in their ridiculous paperwork and follow their insane procedures they won’t send any more money. Apple removed my Dictionary from their App store because of paperwork and still haven’t replaced it despite promises of “It’ll be back up in 24-hours.<\/em>”\u00a0 Apple is changing for the worse since Steve died.<\/p>\n

Major lesson from New York’s flood:<\/strong><\/span> Check your generator. Check that you have one. Check it’s located somewhere protected from a flood and other nasties. Check that it has fuel. Check that it works. Our emergency generator runs off the house’s propane tank and runs itself every week for a few minutes. We also get it serviced regularly.<\/p>\n

Jon Stewart called southern Manhattan “Little North Korea.” Here’s this week’s New York Magazine<\/em> cover photo:<\/p>\n

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Make sure you have flood insurance. A friend’s tennis Club got flooded. His insurance broker didn’t think he needed flood insurance. The Club is 50 yards from the Long Island Sound. Check.Check. Check.<\/p>\n

I don’t make this stuff up.<\/strong><\/span> I logged online onto my bank account last night. They won’t offer me a decent interest rate I can live on, but they are offering a deal on ….. pillows.<\/p>\n

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Harry Newton who is impressed (?) that many Wall Street analysts are, once again, pushing mortgage REITs. The analysts all\u00a0 work for the companies that recently underwrote secondaries of the mortgage REITs.\u00a0 Just a\u00a0 coincidence? What do you think?<\/p>\n

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Barack Obama has been a disappointment. He spoke so well. We expected so much more from his first term. But he was dealt a double whammy: A horrendous economy (a recession second only to the Great Depression) and a recalcitrant Congress. Still, though he is no Lyndon Johnson, he managed many accomplishments — from universal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}