Shine on harvest moon.

Today's Tids Issue 3,177

Opening Stuff:

 

This Tids has chance to be better than average, since the first thing I saw this morning was the setting moon. The great moon that follows the magnificent red harvest moon of the night before. A big moon in the western sky, with a wisp of a cloud cutting through. Sending a glowing stream of light to the glistening sea below, a gleam creeping across the quite waters, illuminate a three master moored well, ripples lapping at the bow. Well, at east it opened my mind, now, to see if there’s anything in there.

 

I was thinking the other day, about 5 years too late, that all of that money the USA sent to bail out the giant banks who probably committed some level of negligent or belligerent fraud against the US shareholder, would actually have used that dough to make their customers whole. That would have accomplished two things – the shareholders would have gone back to spending and investing faster, and the banks would have to rethink being stupid.

 

I think the Electric BMW I3 is going to be one, hot selling car.

 

The Question:

How many billionaires are there in the world? The USA? Name the twenty most politically powerful in order?

 

The Headlines:

--Russian Strategic Bombers Near Canada Practice Cruise Missile Strikes Against US.

--US, Euro Intelligence Agencies Racing To Get Handle On Home Grown ISIS Fighters.

--World Sees Estonia As Putin’s Next Target.

--President Obama Condemns Ray Rice; Says Rice Actions, And Similar Actions By Men Behind Closed Against Women, Are Not Those Of Real Men, Nor A Civilized Society.

--CDC Confirms Presence Of New, Widespread, Serious Respiratory Disease Affecting Children In US.

--Trump Entertainment Enters Bankruptcy For Third Time; The Donald Lost TE The Last Time The Company Filed.

 

Here’s one of those headlines that makes me cringe, “Eleven colleges ban Booing At Soccer games.” In a letter that could only be written by liberal arts colleges, the coaches of the NESCAP Conference (Amherst, Bates Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury, Williams, Tufts, Wesleyan, Trinity, Hamilton and Connecticut college) urged fans: “We would hope that all spectators refrain from antagonistic interaction between opposing fans, including verbal disputes, or holding/posting sign or other forms of material that could be considered offensive in nature.” These are all great little schools, every one of them, but neutering enthusiasm and guttural reaction is a little like the dogmatic irrationality of Sharea law.

 

Marketing has come a long way from my days in the trenches. Just now, while I am sitting here typing away, awaiting along with many for the big Apple announcements, I get an email from LG Electronics filling me in quickly and pleasantly succinctly on all of the benefits of their smart wristwatch. I love it!

 

Primary day for RI Races, Department

This is Primary Day in RI. Frankly, I’m finding it hard to tab any of the candidates as a favorite. –Dems: Travarous and Pell just don’t seem capable of understanding the concept of private sector jobs, both candidates using extensively the rich versus poor wedge. Gina had been a disappointment, mainly because she has retrenched a bit from her hard nose pension reform days. And with some of her commercials, like forty new jobs for Gansett beer which were in fact out of state – she’s appears at just another politician, misinforming the electorate. I see Gina winning that primary. –Repubs: Fung started out so poorly that few realize that he is a pretty good guy who has fought tremendous battles in Cranston for the good of “all “ people. Block looks like a winner in that race among Repubs, although I believe he’s a pretty liberal republican. --Frankly, the only office I’m really interested in is defeating Mollis for Lt. Gov -- that would represent to me the voters understanding of and desire to get rid of cancerous old fashioned hacks. –The much discussed Providence mayoral race seems to be coming into focus, especially with the release of new voter registration stats showing a huge dominance by Hispanics. It seems to tell me that Buddy’s old constituencies are drying up and the race is Jorge for the taking. Buddy may have the big picture vie what the city needs, but too many vters have trouble looking up. But this is fro the next round when he goes against today’s winner which should be Jorge. –On the Congressional side , I believe the repb east is a toss-up

 

You may be wondering why I spend so much time on the Dems. There are no republicans running for several state offices and barely any on tickets for assembly seats.

 

The Providence Journal lately reads like an Education Department Newsletter with more information than you’ll ever need to know about schools. Personally, I know they are becoming expensive and that spending more money has been proven not to correlate to improved learning. They never mention that. My guess is that with the elections upon us, the powers to be in the NEA are feeding journalists publicity releases that puts a glow on teachers and administrators programs. Snd the liberal journalists gobble them up – unquestioning. Peter Zenga just died another death.

 

Everybody has been waiting for today for the Big Apple wristwatch and IPhone 6. What we will probably see are improvements but not technological breakthroughs. And what we will see as we have in the past is that most of the new technology and mega financial stars make products for goofing off, sitting around doing nothing.

 

The Answer:

There are 429 US Billionaires controlling about $2 Trillion included in a world of 1,645 controlling about $6.5 trillion.. The most Politically Powerful are . the Koch Brothers, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, Sheldon Adelson, George Soros, Rupert Murdoch, Bill and Melinda, John and Laura Arnold, Penny Pritzker, Warren Buffett, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff and McKenzie Bezos, Pierre ad Pamela Omidyar, Art Pope, Paul Singer, Peter Peterson, Marc Andreessen, Donald Trump and Alice Walton. They appears to be 10 Dem/Libs, 8 Repub/Conservatives and 2 Libertarians. This comes from a new book called “Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust”, written by a good guy I have gotten know pretty well, Darrell West of Brookings Institution. He is a knowledgeable guy capable if seeing both sides, you might expect from the son of a a good old fashioned rock ribbed Ohio republican Mom, with a liberal education. It hits the bookstores on September 18.

 

Remember good, old fashioned, rock-ribbed Ohio Republicans? We used to have them in RI too.

 

I don’t think the moon thing is working.