Going Slow Today I turn sixty-six years old. According to the Social Security Administration, I am now eligible for full retirement. I’m waiting until March to start my monthly check for the silly reason that the monthly amount will then click over the maximum amount for someone my age of $3,011. If I waited until age seventy to claim (four years from now), I could claim $3,790 per month. That means I am choosing…
Best Seat in the House When the dust settles on the Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, regardless of the outcome, I feel Rep. Adam Schiff deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I’m not so sure Donald Trump will feel up to bestowing it, but I hope whomever is next to sit at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office will set the record straight. Schiff, who has represented the San Gabriel Valley (think Pasadena and…
All-In My son-in-law emailed me yesterday with a business question. I am officially an advisor (compensated with some granted shares) to his start-up company, which he is launching on his own time while doing his day job. Therefore, I feel obliged to give him pragmatic business advice that tries to separate itself from my father-in-law role and the issues that might affect my daughter and two granddaughters. His start-up is like many of the things…
Selling Futures Greta Thunberg has spent the week in Davos at the World Economic Forum. Knowing her, she probably rode her bike there from Stockholm and is probably camped out on a ski slope (Swedes are a hearty bunch and Swedish climate activists are especially hearty). My calculations suggest it would take her a week to cycle there, so I bet Greta would do it in five days. She would probably give speeches along the…
Riding on the City of New Ordeals I can’t help myself. I am a child of the sixties and Arlo Guthrie is never far from my consciousness. Consider yourself lucky that I am not ready to give you my rendition of the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree in four part harmony as Arlo would say. My pal Arthur “Living Legend” Einstein, a founding member of my motorcycle gang knows Arlo well enough to have sold him his…
Run Away, Run Away I have managed to avoid listening to the broadcasts of the Senate Impeachment trial which began today. Granted, the opening statements are not expected to be high drama and the meat of the trial, but as I tune in tonight to catch up on the day I note a few important things. To begin with its 9:30pm and they are still going strong with their statements and amendments votes. They have…
Birth of a Movement I am coming up on my 66th birthday next week. That used to be a relative nondescript milestone, but now, thanks to the shifting retirement standards of social security which make me a part of the first cohort to get pushed back on their retirement date by a full year. I am now technically eligible for “full retirement benefits” as of January 30, 2020. Those who are sixty now will wait…
Lev and Igor’s Great Adventure When Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman we’re arrested by the FBI at Dulles Airport in October we all took mild notice. No one was surprised that Rudy Giuliani was associating with guys who looked and acted like thugs. In some ways, the mug shots of the two did little to help us take them seriously. Igor looked shellacked with his Gordon Gecko Brylcreamed hair and puffy Russian face. Lev was…
The Scholar and the Dilettante Yesterday I wrote a piece about Trump’s killing of General Suleimani at the Baghdad Airport. My approach was based on a burning in my gut that said that all Trump succeeded in doing, besides distracting our feeble-most electorate from his impeachment clamor, was to get us into another war in the Middle East. Now that might well have been his plan with the idiotic and self-centered thinking that a war…
War on the Way This weekend, like always, I have the choice of watching the news or a movie. What should I stumble upon flipping the satellite dial, but The Great Escape. Back in ninth grade when I spent a year in boarding school at Hebron Academy, The poster of choice among the young male adolescents was Steve McQueen in his chinos and sweatshirt and on his motorcycle with the Nazi barbed wire fence and…