We will be taking callers during this show.

SHOW AUDIO:

Houston Mayor Annise Parker [L] with Mike (Dec. 14, 2015)

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 9-10 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). 

Listen live on the radio or on the internet from anywhere in the world! When the show is live, we take calls at 713-526-5738. (Long distance charges may apply.)

For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:

• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts;
• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

POSSIBLE TOPICS:

SIGNOFF QUOTE: To vote in November 8th’s presidential elections, you have to be registered by October 8th. It will be here before you know it, so make sure YOU are registered! HarrisVotes.com or VoteTexas.gov.

• TEXAS:
  • REGISTER TO VOTE FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION
• Daylight Saving Time: Benefit or bane? Is it hard to adjust?
  • What should we do about Daylight Saving Time?
• “NASA’s Unexplained Files” on the SCIENCE Channel.
  • Given the title, I watched it with low expectations, but have been pleasantly surprised. The show actually ends up providing rational explanations for the topics they discuss.
  • REFRESHING
• The Alcubierre Drive: A future Warp Drive (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia): Faster than light without breaking the law?
• A brief moment to discuss “licensed brands”.
  • How Brand Assets Get Depleted (FROM: Evangelical Christianity’s Brand Is Used Up, Posted on March 4, 2016 by Valerie Tarico)
  • “In the business world, a corporation sometimes buys or licenses a premium brand in order to either upgrade their own brand desirability or to sell a lower quality product. Coca-Cola acquired Odwalla for example. Dean Foods acquired Silk soy milk. Target and Wal-Mart license various designer labels for their made-in-China housewares and clothes. Donald Trump sells his name to real estate developers who use it to set an expectation of quality.
  • “Once a premium brand or label is acquired, the parent company often uses the premium label to sell an inferior product. Alternately, if they acquired the whole company rather than just the name, they may gradually change the product, ratcheting down input costs (and quality) to the point that the premium brand becomes just another commodity. The profit advantage comes from the fact that it takes people a while to notice and change their brand perceptions. Also, being creatures of habit, a person may stick with a familiar brand even though the quality of the product itself has changed. In this way, a corporation can draw down the value of a brand the way that a person might draw down a bank account.”
  • There are companies like Samsung, LG, Sony and others that start of as little-known brands most-associated with shoddy products. Over years and even decades, companies like these had to develop their products and their images in order to be recognized as producing products of high quality.
  • Other companies, for a whole variety of reasons, after having built strong and identifiable brands with a reputation for quality have gone the other route. They have done this by licensing or selling their brands to other companies, giving the licensees/buyers permission to make and sell products under the seller/licensor’s name. Some examples are Honeywell, Bell & Howell, Pyrex, and Emerson Electronics, though there are many others.
  • For consumers, this presents a problem. A trusted brand is suddenly associated with an inferior product, but there is no way for the consumer to know this immediately.
  • It’s not like the package says: “Note: No longer made by the company you trust.”
• United Airlines adding more seats to their Boeing 777s, because we have too much room to stretch and thrash around as it is…
  • United Airlines adding another seat to each row in economy on Boeing 777s, By Jessica Plautz, (Mashable.com) 3/9/2016
    • “Consider this just the latest in the airline industry’s constant march toward adding as much capacity as possible. The 10-across configuration for widebody aircraft is now considered the industry standard. (SEE ALSO: Airbus manages to cram another seat in every row of economy.) The retrofitting will begin this May and be completed in 2017, according to Today in the Sky. The good news for passengers is the retrofit will also include the addition of power outlets at seats, and the aircraft will be Wi-Fi enabled. And 10 seats is not the maximum number of seats being considered for jumbo jets: Airbus last year unveiled a design to put 11 seats in each economy row. While United’s 777s now have either a 3-3-3 or 2-5-2 seat configuration, the new design will have a 3-4-3.”
• THE TRUMP REPORT
  • A President Trump could be a disaster for US foreign relations and alliances.
  • From Australia: Donald Trump as US president no longer a black swan event, by Michael Pascoe, Business Day contributing editor (Sydney [Australia) Morning Herald) March 1, 2016
    • …[W]ith the Super Tuesday bunch of US state primaries, there’s a probability the boastfully racist, sectarian, protectionist Trump will take a very big step closer to winning the Republican nomination.
    • There’s the wildcard factor of voter turnout – only 54.9 per cent last time – in a country where Clinton seems to be as strongly disliked as liked.
    • And there’s the reality of the US being a violent, over-armed society with more than its fair share of right wing extremists. (The Kalamazoo mass shooting on February 20 seemed to receive plenty of coverage because the perp was an Uber driver – the 17 shot in Kansas and three police in Virginia within the week, not so much. Uber wasn’t involved.)
    • President Trump would be scary stuff on any number of fronts.
    • He promises to be bad for Wall Street as well as international trade and Mexican relations.
    • [F]or Australia, his protectionism, jingoism and Putin-esque ego are a threat to our well-being.
    • President Trump would rattle our markets and should give pause to our blind loyalty to American foreign policy, causing a reassessment of where our self-interest ultimately lies.
  • Donald Trump:
    • The best example of why highly successful business people should absolutely NOT be president?
      • Authoritarian?
      • Unable to tolerate – or even comprehend – limits on their power?
  • The ‘Trump As Mussolini’ meme is gathering stream. On Bill Maher, they even discussed some reports (I have not been able to find them myself) that Trump may have been watching and listening to old B&W films of Mussolini and reading books on Fascist speeches.
  • I’m waiting for protesters (or followers?) to do a Fascist salute and chant, “Duce! Duce! Duce!”
  • Can the Republicans Party survive as the party of racism, intolerance, hate, divisiveness, and the thinly veiled “Make America WASP Again.”?
• The Republican Party should have disavowed Trump long ago.
  • The biggest joke – except it’s not funny – is the number of Republicans who say that they don’t like what Trump stands for but they’ll support him if he’s the nominee.
• Done by 2100 CE? “Fukushima Keeps Fighting Radioactive Tide 5 Years After Disaster” http://ms/1QQuxbn
  • Fukushima is out of the news media but still very much an ongoing disaster.
  • Filtered water with reduced radioactivity is still being dumped into the sea.
  • Cleanup is estimated to take 50-100 years!

• The Republican Party should have disavowed Trump long ago.
  • The biggest joke – except it’s not funny – is the number of Republicans who say that they don’t like what Trump stands for but they’ll support him if he’s the nominee.

• TERMINOLOGIES: Words Matter
  • The term “Conservative” is so inaccurate as currently used by the Media, the Media and all of us really need to rethink their classifications and terminology.
  • There are Liberals/Progressives and there are Conservatives. Both of those ae fine and serve a useful purpose in civil opposition to each other.
  • Today’s “Conservatives” are conservative in name only

• How much influence does the media really have over elections? Digging into the data: “My sense is that what we have here is a feedback loop. Does media attention increase a candidate’s standing in the polls? Yes. Does a candidate’s standing in the polls increase media attention? Also yes.”By Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray [www.niemanlab.org] Jan. 11, 2016, 2:49 p.m

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

=======================================================

• Texas’ new laws for 2016, Posted: 4:02 PM, December 30, 2015 (com) Updated: 4:04 PM, December 30, 2015
• The dos and don’ts of open carry, By Robert Arnold – Investigative Reporter (click2houston.com) Posted: 9:37 AM, December 31, 2015 Updated: 10:04 AM, December 31, 2015
• Poll: Whites and Republicans Rank as Angriest Americans, by Andrew Rafferty (Meet the Press) Jan 3 2016, 11:54 am ET
• Obama’s team says the GOP earned Donald Trump: Loyalists say that after two terms of obstruction, Republicans are getting the anger candidate their rhetoric created. By Edward-Isaac Dovere, 12/27/15 (com, 07:45 AM EST) Updated 12/27/16 11:17 AM EST
  • “’It’s not that the country has changed, it’s that a narrow band of mostly white, low- and middle-income Americans are supporting a candidate who is speaking to their anxiety about being left behind in this economy,’ said Bill Burton, a former deputy White House press secretary.”
  • “Blue collar anxiety” is a real thing with real causes. That’s why so-called “Post-industrial Economies” are a fraud perpetrated against semi-skilled workers, and why industry needs to be re-invigorated in this country. We NEED blue collar jobs. Not everyone is cut out for ‘service’ work.
• The Crude Oil Export Ban–What, Me Worry About Peak Oil?, by Art Berman, Contributor (FORBES.COM) Dec 27, 2015 @ 12:18 PM 10,512 views
  • Peak oil is not about running out of oil. It is about what happens when the supply of conventional oil begins to decline. Once this happens, higher-cost, lower-quality sources of oil become increasingly necessary to meet global demand.
  • Congress ended the U.S. crude oil export ban last week. There is apparently no longer a strategic reason to conserve oil because shale production has made American great again.
  • The 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) that banned crude oil export was the closest thing to an energy policy that the United States has ever had. The law was passed after the price of oil increased in one month (January 1974) from $21 to $51 per barrel (2015 dollars) because of the Arab Oil Embargo.
  • The 1975 export ban was enacted because of the disastrous economic consequences of becoming dependent on imports following the peaking of U.S. oil production in 1970. Now that oil production is again close to peak levels, we have apparently forgotten that imports were the problem then and that we import twice as much today as in 1975.
  • Production of crude oil is higher today by 7% but consumption has grown to more than 16 mmbpd, an increase of 32%. At the time of the Arab Oil Embaro, consumption was only 12 mmbpd.
  • So, consumption has increased by one-third and imports have doubled but we no longer need to think strategically about oil supply because production is a little higher?
  • The technology behind tight oil has also made it the world’s most expensive barrel.
• Houston Toll Road Authority (HTRA) is slowly going all-electronic. What does this mean to you?
  • Rates – Sam Houston Tollway Counter-Clockwise
• Study: Presidents die younger than unelected candidates, By Julia Belluz 1 day ago (com)
• 40 Percent Of Ford Models To Be Electrified By 2020, by Sarah Shelton December 21, 2015 (http://www.hybridcars.com): By 2020, Ford wants 40 percent of its global lineup to be offered as a plug-in or hybrid variant.
  • To reach this goal, Ford will be investing $4.5 billion and adding 13 electrified models to its lineup, calling [this] the “largest-ever electrified vehicle investment in a five-year period” for the company.
• Hillary Clinton targets corporate inversion with new ‘exit tax’ plan: Tax is part of Democratic presidential frontrunner’s strategy to ‘rein in Wall Street’ on the heels of Pfizer’s plan to merge with Allergan and move to Ireland. The proposals are part of Clinton’s larger economic agenda, which includes boosting infrastructure spending by $275bn. Photograph: Jose Luis Magana/AP

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