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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). My engineer is Bob Gartner.

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.)

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

• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts;
  

  Houston Mayor Annise Parker [L] with Mike, just before the show. (Dec. 7, 2015)

• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]:

 

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1. Are you ready for the runoffs? Make sure you are registered to vote.
   1. Make sure you are registered:
   2. HarrisVotes.com
   3. VoteTexas.gov
2. Who’s on the May 22 Texas primary runoff ballots?, By Ryan Murphy March 14, 2018
   1. Early voting for the May 22 runoffs begins on May 14 and ends on May 18.
   2. More than 30 Texas primary races are headed to a runoff. Here’s what you need to know.
3. Austin is looking for a ‘serial bomber.’ Here’s what we know – Austin police chief says fourth bombing shows ‘different level of skill’, By Joshua Barajas [PBS Newshour] Mar 19, 2018
   1.    … four package bombs across the city … have killed two people and injured another four.
   2. The latest explosion came Sunday, when a fourth package bomb was triggered by a tripwire, Austin police said, injuring two males in their 20s. … the mechanisms behind Sunday’s attack demonstrated a “different level of skill” than the others, police said.
   3. Austin Police Chief Brian Manley announced March 12 that all three of the initial explosions were linked [saying] they were not mailed through the U.S. Postal Service or private carriers like UPS. The packages appeared to be hand-delivered to the victims’ door steps overnight…
   4. …the latest attack Sunday showed a “higher level of sophistication,” said Fred Milanowski of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who was assisting in the investigation. … the bomb was activated by a tripwire set alongside a roadway. The two male victims triggered the bomb as they were walking on the road.
   5. Unlike the past three bombs, this one appeared to be more random; since it was out in the open, anyone in the community could have triggered the bomb.   Another distinction: The fourth bomb was set up in the Travis Country neighborhood, on the opposite side of the city from the sites of the first three explosions.
4. Toys ‘R’ Us will close or sell all US stores – Toys “R” Us is closing its doors after 70 years in business, by Chris Isidore, Jackie Wattles and Parija Kavilanz   [@CNNMoney] March 15, 2018
   1. In a bankruptcy court filing Thursday, Toys “R” Us said it had a horrific holiday season, “well below worst case projections.” It earned just $81 million in pre-tax profit in the fourth quarter, $250 million below the company’s target and a quarter of what it earned a year earlier.
   2. “The company was taken over by private equity giants KKR, Bain Capital and real estate investment company Vornado in 2005. Together they paid $6.6 billion, but saddled the company with $5.3 billion in debt.”
   3. The internet isn’t the only thing killing U.S. retailers, By Aimee Picchi [CBS MoneyWatch] May 12, 2017, 5:00 AM Last Updated May 15, 2017 12:09 PM EDT
      1. Private equity (PE) funds operate by raising money from investors and using the funds to acquire companies that, while distressed, still have value. PE executives then direct management to make strategic and operational changes in order to boost a business’ performance. The goal, buyout firms say, is to turn companies around and eventually sell them for a profit. PE firms make money by collecting fees for managing funds and in taking about 20 percent of the earnings when a business is sold.
      2. But PE firms also tend to fund their acquisitions partly with debt raised by the target company. That can leave already struggling businesses swimming in red ink, hindering their recovery — or pushing them into insolvency.
      3. “When you are in public relations for private equity, you say leveraging up the company imposes discipline, because they have to generate a certain amount of cash to pay the debt,” said Jude Gorman, general counsel at Reorg Research. “It sounds great until you say, ‘But what happens when some sort of secular trend hits and the company doesn’t have the cash to make the loan payment?'”
      4. The result, he noted, are companies like Rue21, which are struggling to juggle their loan repayments while figuring out how to get consumers back in their stores.
   4. Many of the worst-performing retail bonds are backed by private-equity companies, according to Bloomberg News.
   5. Private Equity’s Retail Debt Carnage – Business is bad, covenants are weak and assets are walled off, By Lisa Abramowicz and Shelly Banjo [Bloomberg.com] March 17, 2017
      1. Not all poorly performing retail bonds are created equal. The worst of the bunch have a shared feature: They’re all backed by private-equity companies.
      2. Loss Leaders – Debt of PE-backed retailers has plunged more than those of non-PE owned peers (*= Not PE-owned)
         1. Neiman Marcus, Claire’s, Tailored Brands*, Rue 21, Sears*, Bon-Ton, Petsmart, Toys R Us, Hot Topic, Limited Brands*
      3. [MIKE]: Also, SEARS isn’t PE-owned, But K-Mart (Sears’ acquirer) was.
5. Ireland Says Brexit Border Deal ‘Legally Firm’; DUP Says Not Resolved, By Conor Humphries and Ian Graham [U.S. News & World Report] March 19, 2018
   1. The future of Ireland’s border with Northern Ireland – which will be the EU’s only major land border with Britain after Brexit – was widely seen as the biggest obstacle to an agreement on a 21-month transition deal to avoid a “cliff edge” Brexit.
   2. “The backstop is as legally firm as the government said it would be in December,” a spokesman for Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said. …
   3. Northern Ireland’s largest Irish nationalist party shared the Irish government’s interpretation. … But the Democratic Unionist Party, whose support May depends on to pass legislation in parliament, said it was not concerned as no deal had been done.
6. U.S. Actually Agrees With Iran and Syria, Says Turkey Is Helping ISIS By Attacking Afrin, By Tom O’Connor On 3/19/18 at 6:30 PM
   1. The U.S. found itself on Monday roughly aligned with Syria and Iran…over their mutual opposition to a Turkish offensive that has rocked the alliances of a seven-year civil war.
   2. Washington hails Turkey as both a fellow NATO Western military alliance member and a partner in the fight against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), but Ankara’s ongoing offensive against a mostly Kurdish city in northwestern Syria has caused Pentagon-backed Kurdish fighters to redirect their efforts away from battling jihadis, frustrating the U.S.-led coalition. As Turkey and the mostly Arab Sunni Muslim insurgents of the Free Syrian Army took control of Afrin on Sunday, the State Department said it was “deeply concerned” over reports of mass evacuations and looting.
   3. As the Syrian Democratic Forces’ Kurdish fighters left the U.S.-led coalition assault on ISIS in eastern Syria, they struck an alliance with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The agreement left Washington in an awkward position as its leading ally on the ground teamed up with a government Western powers have attempted to overthrow since 2011.
7. Mississippi bans abortions at 15 weeks, earliest in the nation, By Jessica Ravitz, [CNN], Mon March 19, 2018
   1. With a swipe of a pen Monday, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law a bill that prevents women from getting abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. His state, effective immediately, now holds the distinction of having the earliest abortion ban in the nation.
   2. … Also known as the Gestational Age Act, Mississippi’s new law makes exceptions only for medical emergencies or cases in which there’s a “severe fetal abnormality.” There are no exceptions for incidents of rape or incest.
   3. The law also puts physicians on notice. Doctors who perform abortions after 15 weeks will be required to submit reports detailing the circumstances. If they knowingly violate the law, their medical licenses will be suspended or revoked in Mississippi. If they falsify records, they will face civil penalties or be forced to pay fines of up to $500.
8. Uber’s Self-Driving Car Just Killed Somebody. Now What?, By Aarian Marshall [www.wired.com] 03.19.18
   1. At about 10 pm on Sunday evening, a self-driving Uber struck and killed a woman crossing the street in Tempe, Arizona. The crash appears to be the first time a self-driving vehicle has killed someone—and could alter the course of a scantily regulated, poorly understood technology that has the power to save lives and create fortunes.
   2. The Tempe Police Department reports the Volvo XC90 SUV was in autonomous mode when the crash occurred, though the car had a human safety driver behind the wheel to monitor the technology and retake control in the case of an emergency or imminent crash. The woman, Elaine Herzberg, was transported to a local hospital, where she died from her injuries. The police department will complete its full report later today.
   3. Uber, Waymo, and other autonomous vehicle developers like Arizona not just for the sunny weather and calm conditions but for the near total lack of restrictions on how they test: Self-driving vehicles don’t need any sort of special permit, just a standard vehicle registration. And their operators don’t have to share any information about what they’re doing with the authorities.
   4. Thus far, only California demands developers make public specific data on their operations, including descriptions of any crashes, how many miles they drive each year, and how often their human safety operators take control from the robot. Even those numbers are less than helpful in understanding the pace of their work or just how well these things really drive. The state will begin allowing the testing of totally driverless vehicles—without safety drivers for backup—on public roads next month.
   5. …companies … await legislation that would put the federal government firmly in charge of all autonomous vehicle design, construction, and performance, and allow even more testing—as many as 100,000 vehicles per manufacturer—all over the country. The bill, called the Self Drive Act, passed in the House this fall. But the companion Senate bill, the AV Start Act, has been held up by a few senators who wonder whether the young technology needs more aggressive oversight.
   6. … Tempe police report the woman was outside the crosswalk when she was hit and killed.
   7. … human drivers kill just 1.16 people for every 100 million miles driven. Waymo and Uber and all the rest combined are nowhere near covering that kind of distance, and they’ve already killed one.
9. What is a “Populist”?
   1. From Wikipedia: … a political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against a privileged elite.^[1] Critics of populism have described it as a political approach that seeks to disrupt the existing social order by solidifying and mobilizing the animosity of the “commoner” or “the people” against “privileged elites” and the “establishment”.^[2] Populists can fall anywhere on the traditional left–right political spectrum of politics and often portray both bourgeois capitalists and socialist organizers as unfairly dominating the political sphere.^[3]
      1. Political parties and politicians^[4] often use the terms “populist” and “populism” as pejoratives against their opponents. Such a view sees populism as demagogy, merely appearing to empathize with the public through rhetoric or unrealistic proposals in order to increase appeal across the political spectrum.^[5]
   2. From Merriam-Webster:
      1. 1: a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people; especially, often capitalized : a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
      2. 2 : a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people
   3. oxforddictionaries.com:
      1. A person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.
10. America’s Cultural Revolution, by Catherine Rampell
    1. Last month in Shanghai, Chinese venture capitalist Eric X. Li made a provocative suggestion. The United States, he said, was going through its own “Cultural Revolution.” …
    2. Li said he saw several parallels between the violence and chaos in China decades ago and the animosity coursing through the United States today. In both cases, the countries turned inward, focusing more on defining the soul of their nations than on issues beyond their borders.
    3. He said that both countries were also “torn apart by ideological struggles,” with kinships, friendships and business relationships being severed by political differences.
    4. “Virtually all types of institutions, be it political, educational, or business, are exhausting their internal energy in dealing with contentious, and seemingly irreconcilable, differences in basic identities and values — what it means to be American,” he said in a subsequent email exchange. “In such an environment, identity trumps reason, ideology overwhelms politics, and moral convictions replace intellectual discourse.”

1. 7 Reforms After Trump, by Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) 12/3/17, 19:31
   1. Repeal Shelby v Holder (LEGISLATE: Renew Voting Rights Act)
   2. Repeal Citizens United (LEGISLATE/AMENDMENT: Limit Money in Politics, abolish anonymous money in politics)
   3. Abolish electoral college (or can it be saved?)
   4. Apply anti-nepotism law to White House (It was WRITTEN for White House [Robert Kennedy serving with JFK])
   5. POTUS candidates must release tax returns (LEGISLATE/AMENDMENT: for how many years)
   6. Presidents may not self-pardon (AMENDMENT OR LEGISLATION: or pardon executive appointees?)
   7. Special counsel has power to indict president
      1.  ADD:
         1. 2/3 Senate vote to confirm SCOTUS appointment

TOPICS FROM PREVIOUS WEEKS:

1. What do belts around Proxima Centauri mean for exoplanet research?, By John Wenz  |  Published: Friday, November 03, 2017 [http://www.astronomy.com]
2. TV Talk:
   1. “The Good Place”
   2. “The Orville”
   3. “Adam Ruins Everything”

LINKS:

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

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