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Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 2-3 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My engineer is Don.

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. Make sure you are registered to vote:
   1. HarrisVotes.com (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965)
   2. VoteTexas.gov
   3. Next Election: August 25, 2018 – Harris County Flood Control District Bond Election
      1. Be sure to early-vote when polling places and hours are announced
      2. Election Day polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
      3. You may vote early by-mail if you are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
         1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
         2. Sick or disabled;
         3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day;
         4. or Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
   4. I MAILED IN MY BALLOT LAST WEEK!
2. Trump may have just given a big boost to Mueller’s case against him, by Greg Sargent | WASHINGTON POST | August 6 at 9:39 AM Email the author
   1. When President Trump flatly declared on Twitter that his son held that Trump Tower meeting in the full expectation of receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton, he may have done more than concede that collusion did, in fact, take place. He may have also inadvertently pointed to a motive for his repeated efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation — possibly strengthening the case that he obstructed justice. …
   2. … As many news accounts and analyses point out, Trump has now flatly conceded to that collusion more directly than ever before. As those accounts also point out, in so doing, Trump has also revealed that the statement he helped dictate about this meeting in the summer of 2017 — which claimed it was primarily about adoptions — was a lie. …
   3. … People close to the president believe that he may be increasing his legal jeopardy by continuing to speak publicly about sensitive matters even as his campaign is under investigation for possible collusion with Russia and he himself is under scrutiny for possible obstruction of justice.
   4. This strongly suggests Trump’s own team privately worries he is supplying a motive for obstruction. Trump’s efforts to scuttle the investigation are continuing — he recently called on his attorney general to shut it down. And in this context, Trump’s admission that collusion did, in fact, take place might help explain why he has continued to do that. As Hemel told me: “Trump is making Mueller’s case for him.”
   5. Or, as Adam Davidson puts it, Trump has at this point “openly admitted to attempted collusion, lying, and a coverup.” Which means that the case against him — politically for sure, and perhaps legally as well — has just gotten stronger.
3. White House uses foreign aid agency to give jobs to Trump loyalists, By Robert O’Harrow Jr. | COM |July 28, 2018
   1. The White House has assumed control over hiring at a small federal agency that promotes economic growth in poor countries, installing political allies and loyalists in appointed jobs intended for development experts, according to documents and interviews.
   2. Until the Trump administration, only the chief executive and several other top officials of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) were selected by the White House, former agency officials said. The chief executive, in turn, used authority granted to the agency by Congress to appoint about two dozen other staffers, primarily for their technical ­expertise.
   3. But starting last year, the White House began naming political appointees to the lower-level positions, according to internal rosters obtained by The Washington Post and interviews with former employees and other knowledgeable people. The employees were warned by an agency leader they could lose their jobs to make way for the new political appointees, the former employees said.
   4. Fourteen allies and Trump loyalists have been placed at the agency as political appointees so far — more than double the number of political staff on the day the president took office, the rosters show. Among them are a 2016 college graduate with a degree in English literature whose grandmother is a senior personnel official in the White House and a recent congressional intern who graduated in May with a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
4. Trump’s first round of nuclear sanctions on Iran sends a message: This is not a test, By Tom DiChristopher | @tdichristopher | Published Aug 6, 2018 | com
   1. The Trump administration’s first deadline for companies to wind down some transactions with Iran begins Monday.
   2. The sanctions hit Iran’s ability to access dollars, engage in some financial activity and attract investment into its auto and aviation industry.
   3. The penalties pale in comparison to energy sanctions due later this year but send a message that Washington is not backing down.
   4. The first round of U.S. nuclear sanctions on Iran snaps back into place on Monday, and although it pales in comparison to a raft of penalties yet to come, experts say it sends a clear signal that Washington is willing to pummel the Iranian economy.
   5. President Donald Trump gave banks and companies 90 days to prepare for the return of some sanctions after he abandoned the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in May. Since then, Iran’s currency, the rial, has plummeted and the Iranian economy is faltering, sparking protests across the country.
   6. The Trump administration is wagering that the sanctions can pile enough pressure on Iran that they will lead to a better deal than President Barack Obama secured, even though Obama enforced the same penalties and marshaled far more international support for them. …
   7. … Under the 2015 agreement, the international community lifted wide-ranging sanctions on Iran in exchange for the oil-rich Middle Eastern country accepting limits on its nuclear program. The Trump administration wants Iran to accept a dozen additional concessions. …
   8. … The initial volley of sanctions on Monday aims to block the Iranian government from accessing U.S. dollars, making significant rial transactions, maintaining overseas bank accounts or issuing sovereign debt [more difficult]. Iran also faces renewed barriers to transacting in gold, precious metals and other commodities like graphite and types of aluminum and steel. …
   9. …The automotive industry is the nation’s biggest employer after the energy sector… But the sanctions have forced European automakers like Peugot to suspend investments In Iran.
   10. Similarly, the sanctions dashed a $20 billion deal to sell Boeing aircraft to Iran and threaten to wipe out billions in orders for Airbus …
   11. …The question boils down to whether Iran can continue to sell enough oil and sustain enough trade with small and mid-size firms to avoid recession, …
5. Kirsten Gillibrand Has an Ambitious Plan to Take on Payday Lenders: The Post Office – The New York Democrat wants to let USPS act as your bank, By Tonya Riley | MOTHERJONES.COM | Aug. 6, 2018 6:00 AM
   1. While it might seem like a chore to go to the bank in an age of online payments and mobile apps that allow you to deposit a check with the snap of a picture, for some families, access to any bank could be life-changing. A 2015 survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) found that 9 percent of American households had either no bank at all or relied on nonbanking institutions for financial services. (These numbers are up to four times higher in black and Hispanic communities than for white Americans.) Unbanked families spend an average of $2,412 a year, or about 10 percent of their average annual income, on interest for financial services that most bank customers get for free.
   2. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) has introduced legislation that would allow the United States Postal Service to branch out and offer basic financial services, including savings accounts and loans, to the underbanked. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) introduced the bill in the House a month later in May. Although Gillibrand’s legislation is unlikely to get much traction in a majority-Republican Congress, the potential 2020 presidential candidate has been rallying support for the legislation online and in her home state of New York.
   3. While postal banking might seem like a modern invention to save an increasingly maligned public agency, the idea actually has deep roots in American history. In 1910, legislation was passed during the Taft administration to create a “postal savings system.”The plan, which was an attempt to counter public distrust in private banks, aimed to encourage immigrants and those skeptical of banking to invest and practice financial thriftiness.
   4. According to USPS, at its peak in 1947, the postal bank had $3.4 billion in deposits. But by 1964 deposits had dropped to $416 million. Private banks enjoyed higher consumer confidence thanks to the FDIC and post-World War II reforms, and people shifted their accounts away from the post office. Congress eventually abolished the system in 1966.
   5. But financial inequality has gotten worse in the decades since. Growing overdraft fees, limited free checking options, decreases in loans to low-income communities, and closures of thousands of banks since the 2008 financial crisis are just a few factors that have ramped up the reliance of low-income Americans on pricey check cashing services and payday lenders. Payday lenders, which offer short-term, high-cost loans at nearly 400 percent interest, have thrived under the Trump administration thanks to increasingly lax consumer protections.
   6. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, Americans spend upward of $9 billion per year on fees associated with payday loan. Research shows that payday lenders are twice as likely to be located in African American and Latino neighborhoods  and that African Americans are 105 percent more likely to take out a payday loan than any other demographic. …
   7. … [S]aid Sen. Gillibrand in a statement provided to Mother Jones[,] “[Postal banking] would effectively end predatory lending nationwide, provide low-cost, basic financial services to all Americans, and make a huge difference in the lives of millions of families.”
   8. … [Mehrsa Baradaran, associate dean for strategic initiatives at the University of Georgia Law School and author of How the Other Half Banks and The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap.] … says that while community banks and finance technology might seem like an easy fix, those solutions are just as inaccessible to the Americans most in need of financial services. An analysis of 2014 data from the Consumer Financial Health Study found that 40 percent of US ZIP codes  had a USPS outpost but lacked a bank or credit union. “We have this myth of this George Bailey savings and loans,” Baradaran says, “and there are a few banks in the country that are based on a small lending nonprofit model, but it’s very difficult for a community.”
   9. …Republicans have already started to come out against the new set of bills before they’ve even reached a vote. …
   10. … Baradaran says a strong bank lobby poses a threat to getting the act actually passed. There are also concerns that pushes by the Trump administration to privatize the agency could make any banking it offers just as predatory as what’s already out there. “You want to avoid a path,” she says, “where you have private shareholders reaping profits from the public.” …
6. Some Bacteria Are Becoming ‘More Tolerant’ Of Hand Sanitizers, Study Finds, By Melody Schreiber [NPR.org] August 2, 20184:22 PM ET
   1. In the early 2000s, hospitals across Australia began installing more hand-sanitizer dispensers in their rooms and hallways for staff, visitors and patients to use. Research showed these alcohol-based disinfectants helped battle staph infections in patients and certain kinds of drug-resistant bacteria. And rates of these infections went down.
   2. But other infections didn’t drop when people started using the sanitizer stations. In fact, certain infections went up.
   3. In the early 2000s, hospitals across Australia began installing more hand-sanitizer dispensers in their rooms and hallways for staff, visitors and patients to use. Research showed these alcohol-based disinfectants helped battle staph infections in patients and certain kinds of drug-resistant bacteria. And rates of these infections went down.
   4. But other infections didn’t drop when people started using the sanitizer stations. In fact, certain infections went up.
   5. In particular, enterococcal infections — caused by bacteria that affect the digestive tract, bladder, heart and other parts of the body — started increasing.
   6. This wasn’t only happening in Australia. Countries around the world saw rises in this type of infection even as hand sanitizer became more popular. Globally, enterococci make up ten percent of bacterial infections acquired in the hospital. In North America and Europe, they are a leading cause of sepsis, a deadly blood infection.
   7. Now, researchers say, they may have found the cause. Blame it on the alcohol.
   8. New research published by Science Translational Medicine on Wednesday shows that several strains of these bacteria have begun adjusting to alcohol-based hand sanitizers. They’re not resistant to the alcohol — at least, not yet — but they’re becoming “more tolerant” of it, the authors write. That means the bacteria were able to survive for longer periods of time after being doused with alcohol.
   9. The researchers used different strengths of alcohol concentrations to combat the bacteria, starting with 23 percent. Eventually, at a 70-percent alcohol mixture, the bacteria were conquered. Typically, hand sanitizers are 60 percent alcohol.
   10. To make matters worse, many of these alcohol-tolerant bacteria are resistant to multiple drugs as well. Half of the strains the researchers studied cannot be treated with vancomycin, a last-line antibiotic. That means the bacteria are spreading more easily within hospitals, and there aren’t many options for treatment.
   11. The researchers were surprised by their findings.
   12. “To our knowledge this was the first time anyone had shown hospital bacteria becoming tolerant to alcohols,” says Timothy Stinear, a coauthor of the study and a researcher at the University of Melbourne’s Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. …
   13. … Health-care institutions trying to control the spread of these infections will need to “adhere rigorously to hand-hygiene protocols,” Stinear says — and probably institute additional measures to stop the spread, such as increased hand-washing with soap after coming into contact with the bacteria. …
   14. … Lance Price, a professor at the George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health and the founding director of GW’s Antibiotic Resistance Action Center, was also surprised by the findings. … “If you’re washing your hands less because that alcohol-based hand sanitizer makes you feel confident that your hands are clean,” Price says, “all of a sudden you can become a vehicle for alcohol-resistant organisms.”
   15. The research is still clear that alcohol-based hand sanitizers are more effective at battling some bacteria, like those causing staph infections. However, this study indicates that other bacteria are best cleaned off with simple soap and water.
   16. “It’s the physical action of lifting and moving them off your skin, and letting them run down the drain,” Price says.
   17. “We have to be careful about this new trend towards heavy reliance on alcohol-based hand sanitizers,” Price continues. “Soap and water should be our number-one protection” — both in hospitals and for personal use….
7. New Drug Wipes Out Malaria In A Single Dose — But There’s One Hitch, by  Michaeleen Doucleff  [NPR.org] July 26, 20181:02 PM ET
   1. The world now has a potent, new weapon against malaria — one that can wipe out the parasite from a person’s body with a single dose.
   2. But before many people around the world can use it, scientists have to overcome a big obstacle. …
   3. … In certain people, tafenoquine can cause red blood cells to burst open and die. As a result, people can become anemic, and in some instances, this can be lethal.
   4. Here in the U.S., there is a lab test available to see which people will respond poorly to Krintafel. It’s called a “G6PD” test. The FDA and the World Health Organization require a health care worker to give this test before prescribing tafenoquine or other similar drugs.
   5. Right now, this test requires expensive machinery and a high level of expertise to run it, Domingo says.
   6. “It requires the kind of laboratory facilities that are not available where most people with malaria seek care,” he says.
   7. But Domingo and his colleagues are trying to change that. Over the past few years, several companies and nonprofits have been working together to develop an affordable, easy-to-use test that runs off a battery. …
   8. … In terms of cost, GlaxoSmithKline and Medicines for Malaria Venture say it’s too early to say how much tafenoquine will cost in poor countries.
   9. “[We] are committed to making tafenoquine accessible and affordable on a not-for-profit basis to those who need it most,” a spokesperson for GlaxoSmithKline wrote in an email to NPR. “A shared goal is for the cost of tafenoquine not to be a barrier to access.”
8. Meteor Explodes with 2.1 Kilotons of Force 25 Miles Above US Air Force Base in Greenland, By Jack Phillips [TheEPOCHTIMES.COM] August 3, 2018 Last Updated: August 3, 2018
   1. A meteor exploded with 2.1 kilotons of force above a U.S. Air Force base in July, but the military has made no mention of the event, according to reports.
   2. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that a meteor exploded 26 miles above U.S. Air Base Thule on July 25. It was detected by … the early missile warning radar at Thule Air Base, The Aviationist reported on Aug. 3.
   3. The Aviationist’s Tom Demerly, … reported on the incident, [and] wrote in an analysis that it’s concerning because there was no public warning from the U.S. government about the meteor blast. “Had it entered at a more perpendicular angle, it would have struck the earth with significantly greater force,” he wrote.
   4. [As of August 3,] The Air Force has remained silent about the incident.
9. Are Stock Buybacks Starving the Economy? A new report finds that big companies could have given their workers thousands of dollars’ worth of raises with the money they spent on their own shares, By Annie Lowrey [THEATLANTIC.com] Jul 31, 2018
   1. Stock buybacks are eating the world. The once illegal practice of companies purchasing their own shares is pulling money away from employee compensation, research and development, and other corporate priorities—with potentially sweeping effects on business dynamism, income and wealth inequality, working-class economic stagnation, and the country’s growth rate. Evidence for that conclusion comes from a new report by Irene Tung of the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and Katy Milani of the Roosevelt Institute, who looked at share buybacks in the restaurant, retail, and food industries from 2015 to 2017.
   2. Their new paper contributes to a growing body of research that might help explain why economic growth is so sluggish, productivity so low, and increases in worker compensation so piddling, even as the stock market is surging and corporate profits are at historical highs. Companies are working overtime to make their owners richer in the short term, more so than to improve their longer-term competitiveness or to invest in their workers.
   3. Buybacks occur when a company takes profits, cash reserves, or borrowed money to purchase its own shares on the public markets, a practice barred until the Ronald Reagan administration. (The regulatory argument against allowing the practice is that it is a way for companies to manipulate the markets; the regulatory argument for it is that companies should be able to spend money how they see fit.) In recent years, with corporate profits high, American firms have bought their own stocks with extraordinary zeal. Federal Reserve data show that buybacks are now equivalent to 4 percent of annual economic output, up from zero percent in the 1990s. Companies spent roughly $7 trillion on their own shares from 2004 to 2014, and have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on buybacks in the past six months alone. …
   4. … How much might workers have benefited if companies had devoted their financial resources to them rather than to shareholders? Lowe’s, CVS, and Home Depot could have provided each of their workers a raise of $18,000 a year, the report found. Starbucks could have given each of its employees $7,000 a year, and McDonald’s could have given $4,000 to each of its nearly 2 million employees.
   5. “Workers around the country have been pushing for higher wages, but the answer is always, ‘We can’t afford it. We’d have to do layoffs or raise prices,’” Tung said. “That is just not true. The money is there. It’s just getting siphoned out of the company instead of reinvested into it.”
   6. The report examines the period just before President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut came into effect, leading to an even greater surge of buybacks …
   7. … What did publicly traded corporations do with that money? Buy back shares and issue dividends, mostly. …
   8. … more and more analysts disagree. Larry Fink, who runs BlackRock, a huge money-management firm, has argued that buybacks are bad for companies and even bad for democracy. “Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” he wrote in an open letter. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate.”
10. Ruth Bader Ginsburg aims to serve “at least five more years” on Supreme Court, CBS News July 30, 2018, 8:08 AM
    1. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the eldest justice on the high court, says she has “at least five more years” left on the bench, according to CNN. The network reports that Ginsburg discussed her tenure on the court following a New York production of “The Originalist.”  The play focuses on the life and career of Ginsburg’s late colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia.
    2. “I’m now 85,” Ginsburg said Sunday evening. “My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years.”
    3. During the conversation, Ginsburg also disputed the idea of setting term limits for justices, citing the Constitution. “You can’t set term limits, because to do that you’d have to amend the Constitution,” Ginsburg said. “Article 3 says … we hold our offices during good behavior. And most judges are very well behaved,” she remarked. …
11. MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES

MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES (in billions of dollars)

HOLDINGS 1/ AT END OF PERIOD

May     Apr     Mar     Feb     Jan     Dec     Nov     Oct     Sep

Country                           2018    2018    2018    2018    2018    2017    2017    2017    2017

China, Mainland                 1183.1  1181.9  1187.7  1176.7  1168.2  1184.9  1176.6  1189.2  1182.3  1201.7  1166.9  1146.5  1102.2

Japan                           1048.8  1031.2  1043.5  1059.5  1065.8  1061.5  1084.1  1094.0  1096.0  1101.7  1113.3  1090.3  1111.5

Ireland                          301.0   300.4   317.9   314.0   327.5   326.5   324.3   312.4   310.6   309.0   312.3   304.4   297.8

Brazil                           299.2   294.1   286.0   272.9   265.7   256.8   265.3   270.0   272.8   273.6   271.9   269.7   269.7

United Kingdom                   265.0   262.7   263.7   250.5   243.3   250.0   237.5   225.9   237.4   225.0   229.6   236.0   236.4

Switzerland                      243.4   242.2   245.4   248.0   251.1   249.6   250.9   254.0   253.3   248.2   244.5   244.1   239.4

Luxembourg                       209.1   213.9   221.6   218.6   220.9   217.6   218.3   217.9   213.9   213.3   213.0   211.6   208.0

Hong Kong                        191.7   194.0   196.2   196.5   194.1   194.7   194.9   192.3   194.4   194.5   196.7   201.1   196.6

Cayman Islands                   185.8   180.7   165.5   176.9   168.0   170.6   240.4   247.2   246.9   242.9   240.5   249.3   250.1

Taiwan                           164.8   168.1   170.1   170.7   175.4   180.9   179.9   181.7   183.9   182.0   184.1   185.9   181.2

Saudi Arabia                     162.1   159.9   151.2   150.9   143.6   147.4   147.6   145.2   136.7   137.9   142.5   142.0   134.0

Belgium                          150.5   137.6   125.5   125.7   123.7   119.2   115.3   116.0   104.8    96.9    99.4    98.3    98.7

India                            148.9   152.8   157.0   152.9   148.6   144.7   140.8   141.4   145.1   138.9   135.7   130.3   127.3

Singapore                        118.9   118.0   117.8   118.0   122.6   125.0   124.2   130.4   125.2   119.3   112.3   106.4   107.9

Korea                            104.7   100.1   100.4   101.3   101.7    96.2    98.5   100.1    94.3    95.0    97.9    96.8   100.1

Canada                            96.6    89.4    92.9    89.1    85.5    86.1    82.4    78.0    75.0    73.6    75.5    76.5    80.1

France                            89.6    82.5    80.9    77.0    78.4    80.9    76.6    77.9    78.2    76.0    80.0    72.2    74.4

Germany                           78.3    86.0    76.5    78.5    71.0    72.3    71.6    72.9    74.9    73.0    73.3    68.3    68.3

Bermuda                           63.6    64.7    66.4    67.4    67.5    67.0    63.5    62.9    62.4    62.3    61.5    60.2    59.8

Thailand                          62.2    60.8    57.2    68.0    67.2    60.9    68.0    68.4    70.8    71.6    67.2    66.1    66.5

United Arab Emirates              60.0    59.7    59.2    57.5    55.1    57.7    58.2    57.7    54.3    55.9    59.9    58.8    60.5

Norway                            49.7    39.3    40.2    50.4    46.9    51.1    55.3    60.6    64.1    58.0    54.9    53.7    48.3

Sweden                            45.5    45.1    46.2    46.3    46.3    43.9    44.7    45.3    45.9    44.3    42.7    41.0    40.8

Netherlands                       45.1    42.5    43.9    44.8    45.1    48.6    47.6    45.1    47.5    50.3    50.5    53.1    52.2

Kuwait                            43.9    42.6    36.9    36.3    36.9    36.8    36.8    39.4    38.0    35.6    33.0    31.8    31.6

Mexico                            43.2    41.9    45.2    35.4    33.9    38.7    40.6    41.6    40.5    34.7    35.8    32.4    38.9

Poland                            40.2    41.4    40.3    40.4    40.7    40.0    38.4    38.8    37.3    36.3    35.6    34.1    35.0

Italy                             39.6    36.4    37.2    36.6    35.4    35.2    35.6    34.5    35.3    35.4    36.2    36.1    35.6

Australia                         37.6    36.0    34.1    38.5    37.8    37.5    40.6    38.7    36.9    37.8    37.9    38.1    37.1

Spain                             34.5    31.3    32.0    32.4    34.7    33.5    36.2    36.9    38.1    38.2    38.2    36.6    37.9

Turkey                            32.6    38.2    40.9    45.6    49.6    52.6    61.2    61.5    60.8    57.7    54.5    58.9    49.5

Philippines                       31.6    31.5    32.1    33.0    33.8    36.4    35.8    36.4    35.5    36.3    38.1    37.9    38.2

Chile                             30.2    28.4    29.8    30.2    29.0    28.9    29.2    28.8    25.6    26.2    27.1    27.4    27.3

All Other                        512.5   533.5   575.2   575.9   571.4   575.9   585.3   581.3   583.3   566.6   567.7   556.0   565.6

Grand Total                     6213.6  6169.0  6216.6  6216.4  6186.6  6209.7  6306.2  6324.1  6301.9  6249.4  6230.2  6151.9  6108.4

1. Facebook’s 20% Stock Implosion Signalled By Insider Selling, But Is It A Buy Now?, by Roger Aitken Contributor [FORBES.cpm] Jul 28, 2018, 04:16pm
   1. … In becoming the biggest-ever one-day wipeout in U.S. stockmarket history, Facebook’s stockmarket value recovered somewhat, but still declined by 19% to around $120 billion. In so doing, the personal wealth of Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of the social networking site, tanked by almost $16 billion over stalling growth. Some analysts described it as a “bombshell” moment and the earnings news caused immediate waves of selling on Wall Street. …
   2. … “I think we were all caught off guard by the extent of the move. However, investors should really have seen something like this coming as insiders at Facebook have been selling shares heavily in recent months,” remarked Neil Wilson, Chief Market Analyst at Markets.com in London in the wake of the earnings release.
   3. Indeed, over the last three months alone insiders – including Mark Zuckerberg – have sold off $3.8 billion worth of stock in the company. …
   4. MIKE: But why isn’t the insider selling for months prior to the crash discussed more in the article?
2. Typhus making comeback in Texas, By Todd Ackerman | August 3, 2017, Updated: August 3, 2017 10:20pm
   1. … Between 2003 and 2013, typhus increased tenfold in Texas and spread from nine counties to 41, according to Baylor College of Medicine researchers. The numbers have increased since then.
   2. Harris County, which reported no cases before 2007, had 32 cases in 2016, double the previous years’ numbers. Researchers do not know why the numbers are increasing. …
   3. … the infection is severe enough that 60 percent of people who contracted the infection during the 10-year period had to be hospitalized. Four died, one in Houston.
   4. “We can now add typhus to the growing list of tropical infections striking Texas,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor and Texas Children’s Hospital, “Chagas, dengue fever, Zika, chikungunya and now typhus – tropical diseases have become the new normal in south and southeast Texas.” …
3. Sucking carbon out of the air won’t solve climate change – But it might fill in a few key pieces of the clean energy puzzle, By David Roberts @drvoxdavid@vox.com Updated Jul 16, 2018
   1. Climate change is caused by putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What if, instead, we took it out? …
   2. … In June, we got the first solid engineering and cost numbers on DAC [“direct air capture”], courtesy of a company called Carbon Engineering out of Calgary, Canada. …
   3. … The headline news from the paper is that the cost of capturing a ton of CO2 — estimated at around $600 in 2011 — has fallen to between $94 and $232. Almost any source of renewable energy can prevent a ton of carbon for cheaper than that, but still, down at the lower end, beneath $100, DAC starts to look viable in a low-carbon world. …
   4. … To state the bottom line clearly: The ability to pull carbon out of the air is not a silver bullet. It is not the cheapest or most effective way to fight climate change. It won‘t allow us to bypass any of the hard work of reducing our emissions. …
   5. ‘’’ From a climate change mitigation perspective, there are two basic ways of dealing with CO2 emissions.
   6. The smartest and cheapest is to not emit them in the first place. We can do that in a million different ways, by reducing our consumption, using current technologies more efficiently, or shifting to low-carbon technologies and practices.
   7. The second is to remove CO2 from the biosphere and put it back into the geosphere, where it won‘t cook the planet. Such “negative emissions” may end up being necessary if we emit more CO2 than our “carbon budget” for no more than 2 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperatures, the target the world agreed on in Paris.
   8. Much of the confusion around [“direct air capture”] arises from the fact that it can play either role — it can either prevent CO2 emissions or draw down CO2. At least for now, Keith’s company, Carbon Engineering, has elected to play in the former space, not the latter. …
   9. … getting to true negative emissions [has] the greatest long-term implications: moving carbon from the biosphere back into the geosphere, taking it out of circulation (sequestering it) so that it no longer warms the earth.
   10. … From a net-carbon perspective, all that matters for negative emissions is burying more carbon than you dig up. It doesn’t matter what carbon you bury, or where, as long as the overall sign is negative, more in than out. …
   11. … Why aren’t the commercial DAC [“direct air capture”] plants burying their emissions? Two reasons.
   12. First, … CO2 used for greenhouses has economic co-benefits … Same with CO2 used to make fuels, or for enhanced oil recovery, or as an industrial feedstock. In contrast, burying CO2 has no economic co-benefits whatsoever. …
   13. … Second, even if there were a market for sequestration … [it] would pay for any CCS [“carbon capture and sequestration”], anywhere. That would put DAC in direct competition with carbon capture at thermal power plants, and it is always going to be easier to pull CO2 out of an exhaust stream, where it is concentrated (roughly 1 molecule out of every 10), than out of the air, where it is highly dispersed (roughly 1 molecule out of every 2,500).
   14. … [T]o get negative, we‘ll have to do more. [T]here are a number of ideas for how it might be done…
   15. [One] is bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS), which involves burning biomass (plants or biowaste) in a thermal power plant, capturing CO2 from the exhaust stream, and burying the CO2. Biomass is from the biosphere, so this really does involve transferring carbon from the biosphere to the geosphere — reducing net atmospheric carbon.
4. California’s future: More big droughts and massive floods, new study finds, By Paul Rogers | progers@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group [mercurynews.com] PUBLISHED: April 23, 2018 at 8:00 am | UPDATED: April 23, 2018 at 9:18 am
   1. The extreme weather swings that Californians have experienced over the past six years — a historic drought followed by drenching winter storms that caused $100 million in damage to San Jose and wrecked the spillway at Oroville Dam — will become the norm over the coming generations, a new study has found.
   2. Those types of extremes are not new, but because of climate change, they can be expected to occur more frequently, as hotter global temperatures and warming oceans are putting more water vapor into the air, concluded the study, which was published Monday in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.
   3. And perhaps most ominous, the odds are rising that a mega-storm — like the one that famously flooded California in 1862, forcing Leland Stanford to take a rowboat through the streets of Sacramento to his inauguration as governor — will strike again. Such a storm “is more likely than not” to hit the state at least once in the next 40 years and twice in the next 80, the study found. The 1862 event, the largest recorded flood in California history, saw 43 days of continuous rainfall that washed whole towns away and forced the state capital to be temporarily moved to San Francisco.

TOPICS FROM PREVIOUS WEEKS:

1. The Daily 202: Puerto Ricans who fled to Florida after Hurricane Maria are not registering to vote, By James Hohmann [WASHINGTON POST] July 27, 2018 Email the author With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve
   1. … Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico last September and prompted a mass exodus of more than 100,000 residents to the mainland United States. …
   2. … The exact number is still not known, but tens of thousands of people permanently resettled in Florida. …
   3. …Because they’re already U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans are eligible to vote as soon as they move to the mainland. The thinking last fall was that they’d be so angry at Trump that they’d be champing at the bit to vote against Republicans in the midterms. Operatives from both parties said that this could prove decisive in a perennial battleground like Florida where elections are always close. …
   4. … The freshest data reveals that there has been no surge in new Puerto Rican voters. During the nine months before the hurricane — January through September of 2017 — there were 343,000 people who registered to vote in Florida, and 18 percent were Hispanic, according to Daniel Smith, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Florida. During the nine months after the hurricane — from last October through the end of June — there were 326,000 new registered voters. Just 21 percent were Hispanic. That’s a pretty small uptick — and not necessarily explained by Puerto Rican registration at all.
   5. The Puerto Ricans emigres have mostly gravitated toward the Orlando area, mainly because so many other Puerto Ricans already lived there. The number of people of Puerto Rican origin living in Florida surpassed 1 million in 2015, which is more than double what it was in 2000.
   6. Steve Schale, a Tallahassee-based Democratic strategist who directed Barack Obama’s 2008 victory in Florida and was a senior adviser on his 2012 reelection campaign, has been closely tracking these numbers in Excel spreadsheets, which he shared Thursday.
   7. “The concern I’ve had for a while is that … the Maria impact was probably not going to be as significant as people initially thought,” he said. “We’ve got two-and-a-half months left for voter registration. But these numbers show it’s not going to happen organically. … This is a warning flare that there’s real work to be done. … Dems need to be registering around the clock, which they clearly aren’t doing.”
2. Trump’s ‘emoluments’ battle: How a scholar’s search of 200 years of dictionaries helped win a historic ruling, by Fred Barbash July 27 at 10:31 AM Email the author
   1. … John Mikhail, a law professor with a PhD in philosophy and associate dean at the Georgetown University Law School … went to dictionaries available to the framers of the Constitution in 1787, which is what litigants do when trying to figure out what the Founding Fathers meant.
   2. With the aid of a Georgetown law student, Genevieve Bentz, he embarked on a lexicological odyssey into dozens of long-forgotten dictionaries, published over a 200-year period before 1806, 40 regular dictionaries and 10 legal dictionaries, listed here.
   3. The research yielded a very different, much broader definition than that put forward by Trump’s lawyers. “Every English dictionary definition of ’emolument’ from 1604 to 1806″ uses a “broad definition,” including “profit,” “advantage,” “gain,” or benefit,” he wrote in his paper describing the research.
   4. As to the “office-and-employment-specific” interpretation by Trump’s team, Mikhail wrote that “over 92 percent of these dictionaries define ’emolument’ . . . with no reference to ‘office’ or ’employment.’ ”
   5. In other words, by his research, the emoluments clause would bar any benefit or profit to a president via a foreign state, whether in his capacity as president or in any other role, such as the owner of a hotel. It would, specifically, cover Saudi Arabia or Kuwait renting out space at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
   6. … On Wednesday [July 18], Mikhail’s labors paid off. In a historic decision, U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte in Greenbelt, Md., ruled that a suit brought by the District of Columbia and Maryland could go forward instead of throwing it out, as the administration desired.
   7. Messitte cited, in part, what he called the “exhaustive” research of Mikhail, mentioning him by name 17 times.
   8. And while citing numerous other factors, the judge’s choice of definition proved crucial to the ruling, the first on the meaning of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses. (There are two, one covering domestic gain, the other foreign.)
   9. The judge noted that Mikhail’s dictionary research was more extensive than that of the president’s lawyers, covering “virtually every founding-era dictionary.” Citing Mikhail again, Messitte said, “the President’s definition appears in less than 8% of these dictionaries” vs. 92 percent for the broader meaning.
   10. “The clear weight of the evidence,” wrote the judge, “shows that an ’emolument’ was commonly understood by the founding generation to encompass any ‘profit,’ ‘gain,’ or ‘advantage.’ …
3. TV Talk:
   1. “The Good Place”
   2. “The Orville”
   3. “Adam Ruins Everything”

LINKS:

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

1. Op-Ed: Texans should be wary of bullet train proposal, By Alain Leray  – Guest Contributor, Mar 22, 2018, 12:27pm –
   1. This opinion piece was written by Alain Leray, president and CEO of SNCF America Inc., which is France’s national state-owned railway company
   2. Amtrak partners with Texas Bullet Train for ticketing, access to national routes, By Dallas Business Journal staff, May 4, 2018, 1:09pm

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