February 17, 2020

Millennials are racking up retirement savings in Roth IRAs

Some savers have done what seems impossible.

They’ve managed to save $1 million or more in their workplace retirement accounts. I’ve written before about this trend and will continue to do so to encourage those of you who think you can’t save — but could if you made it a priority.

The number of people with more than $1 million in their 401(k) hit a record 233,000 at the end of 2019, up from 133,800 for the same period a year earlier, according to Fidelity Investments, one of the country’s largest administrators of workplace retirement accounts. The number of IRA millionaires increased to 208,000, also a record high.

There was also a record-setting jump in the number of million-dollar accounts in the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), the federal government’s version of a 401(k). As of Dec. 31, there were 49,620 TSP millionaires, a 131 percent increase over the 21,432 reported at the end of 2018, according to the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/personal-finance/millennials-are-racking-up-retirement-savings-in-roth-iras/2020/02/14/7f6de960-4eac-11ea-9b5c-eac5b16dafaa_story.html

February 16, 2020

Remember, Roger Stone is only one of the bad apples in Trump's basket

Fresh from his acquittal by the U.S. Senate, President Trump is on an I-am-exonerated victory tour, touting his integrity along with that of his cronies, advisors and appointees, and castigating the supposed witch-hunters of the Democratic Party.

But the sentencing later this month of Trump’s longtime friend and political advisor — the self-proclaimed “dirty tricks” operative Roger Stone — offers a timely reminder of the scope of scandalous, and in some cases criminal, behavior by the president’s associates and underlings.

No fewer than six people in the president’s near orbit — including Stone — have been convicted or pleaded guilty to criminal charges including fraud, lying to federal investigators and lying to Congress. Four Cabinet-level appointees left amid allegations of misusing tax dollars or other misdeeds. More investigations continue into Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and Trump’s inaugural committee. There’s nothing “fake” about those controversies.

Perhaps that’s to be expected, given the president’s own character. He lies, he bullies, he interferes with investigations and exudes disdain for the rule of law. As we’ve seen again in just the last week, he meddles with the Justice Department, attacks judges and generally encourages American cynicism toward crucial institutions.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-02-16/roger-stone-trump-corruption

February 16, 2020

NASCAR Races Into an Uncertain Future

As NASCAR readies for its first, and most important, event of the year, the Daytona 500 on Sunday, it sits at a crossroads. It has hundreds of thousands of passionate and fiercely loyal fans. But the days when it was on the brink of joining the major American sports seem past.

Over the past few years, just about all of NASCAR’s biggest-name drivers, the ones whose fame transcended the sport and crossed over into mainstream appearances on talk shows and in commercials, have stepped away. Jeff Gordon retired in 2015 and Tony Stewart in 2016. Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be the honorary starter at Daytona this year, but he last raced in the series in 2017.

Next to join them will be Jimmie Johnson, who won seven championships including five in a row and is now starting his final season at age 44.

Although Danica Patrick did not win a NASCAR race in her four years in the sport, her high profile as the first woman with a full-time ride in the series and heavy presence in advertisements brought added attention to the series from 2013 to 2017.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/sports/autoracing/daytona-500-nascar.html

February 16, 2020

No, radical policies won't drive election-winning turnout

Despite what Sanders says, Democrats still have to persuade voters in the middle.

No myth is stronger in progressive circles than the magical, wonderworking powers of voter turnout. It’s become a sort of pixie dust that you sprinkle over your strenuously progressive positions to ward off any suggestion that they might turn off voters. That is how Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), now the Democratic presidential front-runner, has dealt with criticism that his more unpopular stances — including eliminating private health insurance, decriminalizing the border and covering undocumented immigrants in a government health plan — might cost him the votes he needs to beat President Trump.

Sanders’s explanation of why this is not a problem is simple, and he has repeated it endlessly. When a member of the Los Angeles Times editorial board asked him whether “a candidate as far to the left as you” would “alienate swing voters and moderates and independents,” the senator replied: “The only way that you beat Trump is by having an unprecedented campaign, an unprecedentedly large voter turnout.” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s campaign manager, adds: “Bernie Sanders has very unique appeal amongst [the younger] generation and can inspire, I think, a bunch of them to vote in percentages that they have never voted before.”

This has remarkably little empirical support. Take the 2018 midterm elections, in which the Democrats took back the House (a net 40-seat gain), carried the House popular vote by almost nine points and flipped seven Republican-held governorships. Turnout in that election was outstanding, topping 49 percent — the highest midterm turnout since 1914 and up 13 points over the previous midterm, in 2014 — and the demographic composition of the electorate came remarkably close to that of a presidential election year. (Typically, midterm voters tend to be much older and much whiter than those in presidential elections.) This was due both to fewer presidential “drop-off” voters (people who voted in 2016 but not 2018) and to more midterm “surge” voters (those who voted in 2018 but not 2016).

Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of the Democrats’ improved performance came not from fresh turnout of left-of-center voters, who typically skip midterms, but rather from people who cast votes in both elections — yet switched from Republican in 2016 to Democratic in 2018. The data firm Catalist, whose numbers on 2018 are the best available, estimates that 89 percent of the Democrats’ improved performance came from persuasion — from vote-switchers — not turnout. In its analysis, Catalist notes, “If turnout was the only factor, then Democrats would not have seen nearly the gains that they ended up seeing … a big piece of Democratic victory was due to 2016 Trump voters turning around and voting for Democrats in 2018.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/no-radical-policies-wont-drive-election-winning-turnout/2020/02/14/07a0b602-4e97-11ea-b721-9f4cdc90bc1c_story.html

February 16, 2020

George Conway: There is no one to stop Trump now

When the subject of Attorney General William P. Barr comes up these days, it’s hard not to think of John S. McCain. Not the late senator, mind you, but the USS John S. McCain, the naval destroyer named after his father and grandfather.

It was an incident involving this ship that, as much as anything else, captures how the Trump administration — and its attorney general — operates. It explains Barr’s intervention into the criminal sentencing of Trump’s longtime friend and adviser, felon Roger Stone, and much, much more.

The McCain was docked at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan in May 2019, when the 7th Fleet issued a directive that had originated from conversations with the White House Military Office. The president was coming to Yokosuka on Memorial Day, and so, accordingly: “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.” So sailors were ordered to hang a tarp over the vessel’s name, and they removed any coverings that bore the words “John S. McCain."

President Trump didn’t need to say a word. It just happened. He didn’t even know, he later said. But he was hardly displeased. “I was not a big fan of John McCain in any shape or form,” Trump said. “Now, somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him, okay? And they were well-meaning.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/15/george-conway-no-one-to-stop-trump-now/

February 16, 2020

Bloomberg's Billions: How the Candidate Built an Empire of Influence

In the fall of 2018, Emily’s List had a dilemma. With congressional elections approaching and the Supreme Court confirmation battle over Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh underway, the Democratic women’s group was hosting a major fund-raising luncheon in New York. Among the scheduled headline speakers was Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor, who had donated nearly $6 million to Emily’s List over the years.

Days before the event, Mr. Bloomberg made blunt comments in an interview with The New York Times, expressing skepticism about the #MeToo movement and questioning sexual misconduct allegations against Charlie Rose, the disgraced news anchor. Senior Emily’s List officials seriously debated withdrawing Mr. Bloomberg’s invitation, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In the end, the group concluded it could not risk alienating Mr. Bloomberg. And when he addressed the luncheon on Sept. 24 — before an audience dotted with women clad in black, to show solidarity with Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Judge Kavanaugh of sexual assault — Mr. Bloomberg demonstrated why.

“I will be putting more money into supporting women candidates this cycle than any individual ever has before,” he declared.

It was not an idle pledge: Mr. Bloomberg spent more than $100 million helping Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. Of the 21 newly elected lawmakers he supported with his personal super PAC, all but six were women.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/15/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-spending.html

February 16, 2020

In the race for California's 50th Congressional District Trump has become the defining factor

Even before Rep. Duncan D. Hunter resigned from Congress last month, it was no secret that the race to replace him was going to get brutal, especially on the Republican side of the aisle.

After all, the top Republican frontrunners, former San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio and former Rep. Darrell Issa, are two of San Diego County’s most well-known firebrands.

What has intrigued political observers though is the messages the two have latched onto to attack each other. DeMaio and Issa have traded pointed barbs for months in TV ads, tweets, mailers, and forums — all about who would be the strongest and most ardent supporter of President Donald Trump if elected to Congress.

Trump “is the Republican Party,” said Carl Luna, professor of political science at San Diego Mesa College, so that tactic is expected in the race for California’s 50th Congressional District, which includes parts of East and inland North San Diego County and a southern portion of Riverside county. Currently there are 161,184 registered Republicans in the district compared to 115,581 registered Democrats.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2020-02-09/in-the-race-for-californias-50th-congressional-district-trump-has-become-the-defining-factor

February 15, 2020

ICE subpoenas San Diego Sheriff's Department; first time new tactic used in California

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took the rare step of serving four administrative subpoenas Friday to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department for information on four Mexican nationals wanted for deportation.

The immigration subpoenas are the first of their kind in California, though they’re just the latest deployment of a new, month-old Trump administration tactic aimed at so-called sanctuary cities and states.

ICE, the Department of Homeland Security agency responsible for arresting and deporting people in the U.S. illegally, used the subpoenas Jan. 15 in Denver for what was believed to be the first time. The agency subsequently used them in New York and on Thursday in Connecticut.

According to an ICE spokeswoman, the subpoenas are not court-ordered or signed by a judge. But if the Sheriff’s Department does not comply, ICE said it can coordinate with federal prosecutors to seek an order from a federal judge that would compel the Sheriff’s Department to comply.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/story/2020-02-14/ice-subpoenas-san-diego-sheriffs-department-first-time-new-tactic-used-in-california

February 14, 2020

The Right's Big Lie About Roger Stone

Randy Credico is the witness from Robert Mueller’s investigation who Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s longtime adviser, has been convicted of threatening. A few months ago, Credico texted me, “If Stone goes to jail I’m a walking dead man.” On Thursday, after the president’s intervention to get Stone a lighter sentence convulsed the Justice Department, I spoke to Credico, a left-wing comedian and activist, and he elaborated on what he’d meant. “The guy goes to prison and I’m to blame, and you’re being called a rat, you’re worried about somebody with a red hat, a MAGA hat, doing a Jack Ruby on you,” he said.

His fear has national implications, because a central question in the Stone sentencing is whether Credico truly felt endangered when Stone promised to cause him harm. Despite what the administration’s defenders say, the answer is yes.

I’ve known Credico since 2002, although not terribly well. We met when I was reporting on New York’s monstrous Rockefeller drug laws, which put people in prison for 15 years or more for low-level drug offenses. Credico introduced me to people whose lives had been destroyed by these sentences. (The campaign against the Rockefeller laws is also how Credico got to know Stone, a libertarian on drug laws.) Credico told me his father was incarcerated for a decade for cracking safes and came out a badly damaged man, sparking Credico’s lifelong hatred of prison as an institution. He texted me on Wednesday, “I would ask for leniency for Hannibal Lecter.”

It was out of a combination of anxiety and idealism that, following Stone’s conviction, Credico wrote to the judge in the case, asking that she show Stone mercy. “I don’t want to see a guy go to prison because of me, it’s going to be on my conscience, plus it’s going to anger a lot of people out there who called me a rat,” he told me. Now, because of that letter, Credico finds himself near the center of the unfolding scandal over Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr’s intervention in Stone’s sentencing. His words are being used by Trump allies to argue that the prosecutors in the Stone case went overboard. “Unfortunately, they’re exploiting it for their own agenda,” he said of his letter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/opinion/roger-stone-randy-credico.html

February 14, 2020

New Horizons images of Arrokoth show building blocks for planets

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past a city-sized object just over a year ago. The most distant object ever explored, since named Arrokoth, was a “planetesimal” lurking quietly in the outer solar system a billion miles past Pluto. The spacecraft beamed back images of what looked like two lumpy, reddish snowballs, one larger than the other, gently pressed together to form an extraterrestrial snowperson.

On Thursday the New Horizons scientists published their full analysis and high-resolution images of Arrokoth in three voluminous reports in the journal Science. They contend this quirky object provides compelling evidence for how planets in our solar system, including Earth, formed four and a half billion years ago from a primordial cloud of dust. The reports suggest planet formation is not as violent and chaotic a process as once assumed.

Arrokoth is a fossil. It has not changed for billions of years. It has been immaculately preserved, like an insect trapped in amber, in a cold, dim, stupendously serene realm of the solar system where nothing much happens, ever.

“This is the best archaeological dig we’ve ever found into the history of the solar system,” enthused Alan Stern, the scientific leader of the New Horizons team.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/new-horizons-images-of-arrokoth-show-building-blocks-for-planets/2020/02/13/3ba09220-4dba-11ea-b721-9f4cdc90bc1c_story.html