- How the baby boomers destroyed everything (Boston Globe) "Improvidence is reflected in low levels of savings and high levels of bankruptcy. Deceit shows up as a distaste for facts... Although boomers peaked at just over half the voting age population in the early 1980s, their influence kept growing as they voted more frequently, unleashed a flood of political money, and elected co-generationalists... By the late 1990s, as boomerism really expressed itself, disasters arrived: financial scandals, economic infirmities, mounting debt, unaddressed climate change, a growing entitlements crisis, and more. So what if Social Security faces partial insolvency after 2034, or that climate change has scientists and generals fretting for the world circa 2040? By then, the median boomer will be dead. The only germane issue for the aging, un-empathetic sociopath was blocking reform of senior entitlements. ...their overriding imperative is to consume at someone else’s expense."
BUSINESS:
- Elon Musk Is Really Boring (Bloomberg) "But after the election, Musk made several trips to Trump Tower, impressing the president and, especially, Bannon. A former Goldman Sachs banker, Bannon is the main proponent of Trump’s 'America First' economic nationalism. After meeting privately with Musk on Jan. 6, Bannon told an associate that he views Musk and his companies as embodying the kind of U.S.-based job growth that Trump intends to foster. Lately, he’s been more explicit about the economic impact of his work. 'My goals,' he recently tweeted in defense of his relationship with Trump, 'are to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy and to help make humanity a multi-planet civilization, a consequence of which will be the creating of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a more inspiring future for all.' Musk might be an environmentalist, and Trump might believe climate change is a Chinese hoax, but Musk’s companies employ 35,000 people, many of them working the very sorts of manufacturing jobs that Trump says are key to America’s future."
- What Booming Markets Are Telling Us About the Global Economy (NYT) "Much of the buoyant optimism on Wall Street is driven by investors’ expectations of corporate tax cuts and deregulation under the Trump administration. But there is also some real improvement in the economic data underneath the shifts, reflecting economic forces that have been underway for years. And this resetting of expectations is evident in market data beyond the always erratic stock market."
HEALTHCARE:
- Will Obamacare Really Go Under the Knife? (NYT) "According to a January Fox News poll, Obama’s signature program now enjoys a 50 percent approval rating. 'The joke around Washington,' the former Democratic congressman Jim McDermott told me, 'is that the Republicans are going to repeal Obamacare — and they’ll replace it with the Affordable Care Act.' But the problem for Republicans is that Obamacare’s sweeping coverage has changed the paradigm. Of the 31 states that have opted for expanded Medicaid coverage, 16 have Republican governors. None of these governors have expressed a desire to throw their states’ residents off the rolls.
MEDIA:
- How The New York Times Is Clawing Its Way into the Future (Wired) "...the Times is embarking on an ambitious plan inspired by the strategies of Netflix, Spotify, and HBO: invest heavily in a core offering (which, for the Times, is journalism) while continuously adding new online services and features (from personalized fitness advice and interactive newsbots to virtual reality films) so that a subscription becomes indispensable to the lives of its existing subscribers and more attractive to future ones."
NEWS:
- Trump fails the leadership test of commander in chief (WaPo) "One of the first things drilled into my head as a newly commissioned officer in the U.S. Army, and which is a golden rule of leadership, is that you are responsible for everything that your subordinates do, or fail to do. Asked during a Fox News interview about the mission which resulted in Owens becoming the first U.S. service member killed during the line of duty during his administration, Trump said the operation was something his generals 'were looking at for a long time'; it was 'something that was, you know, just — they wanted to do. And they came to see me and they explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected.' Then the president of the United States declared 'And they lost Ryan.'"
- Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking (NYT) "Some officials began asking specific questions at intelligence briefings, knowing the answers would be archived and could be easily unearthed by investigators... At intelligence agencies, there was a push to process as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low level of classification to ensure as wide a readership as possible across the government... There was also an effort to pass reports and other sensitive materials to Congress. Beyond leaving a trail for congressional investigators to follow, the Obama administration also wanted to help European allies combat a threat that had caught the United States off guard. Former senior Obama administration officials said that none of the efforts were directed by Mr. Obama."
- Mattis and McMaster are canaries in Trump’s coal mine (WaPo) "The stakes couldn’t be higher — everyone knows that if they [Mattis and McMaster] aren’t able to make it work, something must be seriously broken. ...if Trump and his staff learn anything from previous administrations, they will soon accept that exhaustive debates and chilly relationships from disagreements over department personnel are too slow and impractical an endeavor to sustain. By my count, Trump’s staff is due to arrive at that conclusion pretty soon, and Mattis and McMaster will get most of what they want. If not, well, there could be two dead canaries and one extremely toxic White House."
- If Trump Adds $54 Billion to the Defense Budget, Here’s What They Might Spend It On (Wired) "The proposed spending increase, however, isn’t as impressive as it sounds. Here’s the truth: The Trump administration measured its $54 billion increase against budget caps put in place by the 2011 Budget Control Act. But the Obama administration routinely spent above those caps, and it accounted for a large portion of that $54 billion in its last budget projection. It’s not going to be $54 billion for Defense. It’s more like $18 billion." and Trump is right to spend more on defense. Here’s how to do so wisely (WaPo) "Although some increases in force size may be warranted, such as a larger Navy fleet and modest increases elsewhere, the dramatic across-the-board hikes in force structure that Trump proposed during his campaign are both unaffordable and unwise. U.S. military leaders should moderate their appetite for a bigger force today to protect critical investments in cutting-edge capabilities that will determine whether we succeed on the battlefield tomorrow. The Trump administration has promised dollar-for-dollar cuts in non-defense programs, reportedly targeting the State Department and USAID for cuts of 30 percent or more. This would create an even more imbalanced national security toolkit, limiting our ability to prevent crises through diplomacy and development and result in an over-reliance on the military."
- If Trump is Impeached, it Might Be the End of America (Medium) "The leaders of the Trump movement (the real leaders) are so disconnected from the media that most of us read every day, and from the information provided by the government, that they might as well be living in one of Jones’ alternate dimensions. To them, it’s 100% fiction, just shadows flickering on the wall of Plato’s cave. And, like the liberated cave dwellers, they’ve seen the outside, and they’ll never believe the shadows again, no matter how factual they may be. The well is polluted to its core. Who to blame for this is at this point irrelevant (though in my last piece I argued the MSM should largely blame itself) because the distrust is so deep that it’s never coming back. Trump knows this... Here’s a fact that might surprise you: most Trump voters do not care if he collaborated with Russia to take down Clinton. ...if you think Trump supporters are going to be like Nixon supporters and lose faith in their candidate if it’s proven that he acted nefariously, think again. They won’t care."
- Generals May Launch New ISIS Raids Without Trump’s OK (Daily Beast) "President Donald Trump has signaled that he wants his defense secretary, retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, to have a freer hand to launch time-sensitive missions quickly..."
- I Was a Muslim in the Trump White House—and I Lasted Eight Days (Atlantic) "Placing U.S. national security in the hands of people who think America’s diversity is a 'weakness' is dangerous. It is false."
PERSONAL FINANCE:
- How Big Do You Want Your Nest Egg to Be? (NYT) "Money may not buy happiness, but it can certainly buy freedom and security, which contribute mightily to happiness. At a time when the ranks of the ultra-wealthy — millionaires and even billionaires — are on the rise, the magic number for many people is surprisingly modest." and How to Make Your Money Last as Long as You Do (NYT) How about some information on billionaires Who Are the Richest of the Rich? (NYT) and Where the World’s Wealthiest Invest Their Billions (NYT)
READ THIS:
- The Wright Brothers (David McCullough) "On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two brothers—bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio—changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe that the age of flight had begun, with the first powered machine carrying a pilot."
SCIENCE:
- Did the Oscars Just Prove That We Are Living in a Computer Simulation? (New Yorker) "The thesis that we are in a simulation is, as people who track such things know—my own college-age son has explained it to me—far from a joke, or a mere conceit. The argument, actually debated at length at the American Museum of Natural History just last year, is that the odds are overwhelming that ours is a simulated universe."
- Two races to the moon are hotting up (Economist)
SPORTS:
- South Korea’s Olympian Winter Moment (NYT) "Indeed, compared with neighboring Japan and its ingrained ski culture, deep-powder skiing and well-established resorts, South Korea is in many ways still coming into its own as a skiing and snowboarding destination. But this could soon change when Pyeongchang hosts the Winter Olympics from Feb. 9 to 25, 2018, only the third time the Winter Games will be held in Asia, and the first time outside Japan."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Uber Case Could Be a Watershed for Women in Tech (NYT) "Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, and others at the company appear to understand the gravity of the threat. The company moved swiftly to open an investigation into Ms. Fowler’s allegations. Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general, and Arianna Huffington, the media entrepreneur who sits on Uber’s board, were among those it appointed to find out what’s going wrong at the company. People who fight for diversity in the tech industry point out it is a hard problem to solve; it could take years of careful and publicly embarrassing actions for Uber and other companies to become more hospitable to women." and Travis Kalanick, Uber Chief, Apologizes After Fight With Driver (NYT)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- How the Chili Dog Transcended America's Divisions (Atlantic) "Several coney islands, a type of restaurant, in Michigan claim to have invented the coney—a hot dog dressed in a meat sauce, striped with yellow mustard and punctuated with diced onions."
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