DOES SOMEONE HAVE TO BE BORN IN THE UNITED STATES TO BE PRESIDENT?

The answer is No! The idea that the president of the United States has to be born in the United States is the most widely believed and most often repeated political myth in the U.S. I have heard this myth all my life. I don’t know how or where it began.

The president of the United States can be born anywhere. There are only 3 Constitutional requirements for being president of the United States:

1. The president must be at least 35 years of age.

2. The president must have lived in the United States for at least 14 years.

3. The president must be a natural born citizen. A natural born citizen is not the same thing as being born in the United States.

There have been many presidential candidates who were not born in the United States. 

In 2016, Ted Cruz ran for president. Ted Cruz was born in Canada. 

In 2008, John McCain was the Republican candidate for president. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone. The Panama Canal Zone was never part of the United States and was not a U.S. territory. It was on land the U.S. leased from Panama and which was returned to Panama when the lease expired.

In 1968, George Romney, the father of Mitt Romney, ran for president. He was born in Mexico. His parents left Mexico during the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and moved to Los Angeles, where George Romney’s classmates derisively called him ‘Mex.’

There have been many other presidential candidates who were not born in the United States.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater was the Republican candidate for president. There were people at the time who questioned whether Goldwater was eligible to be president because he was born in Arizona Territory in 1909, 3 years before Arizona became a state.

The Birther Movement. In 2008, Donald Trump publicly doubted that Barack Obama was eligible to be president, siding with conspiracy theorists that Obama was born in a foreign country. This wasn’t the first time that birthers claimed that a president was born in a foreign country. It has happened several times before. There have been several presidents and presidential candidates who were accused of being ineligible to be president. The issue has come up again this year. Donald Trump has raised questions as to whether either Nikki Haley or Kamala Harris are natural born U.S. citizens and therefore eligible to be president.

Chester A. Arthur. In 1880, Chester A. Arthur was elected vice president of the United States. When president James Garfield was assassinated, Chester A. Arthur became president. His political enemies claimed that Arthur was ineligible to be president. They claimed that he was born in Canada. Chester A. Arthur’s father was born in Ireland. He was a British subject at the time of Arthur’s birth, so by the laws of that time, if proof had been found that Chester A. Arthur was born in Canada, he would not have been eligible to be president. However, no one ever found any such proof. Chester Arthur was born in Vermont, very close to the Canadian border, but he had no documentary evidence, like a birth certificate, to prove that he was born in the United States. None of our 18th and 19th Century presidents had birth certificates. Issuing a birth certificate when a baby is born didn’t become a common practice until the 20th Century.

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.

The movie ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ (the 1936 version) was on TV a few weeks ago. It is on TV fairly often. It is a very well-made movie with a big-name cast, but it’s a hard movie for me to watch. That isn’t because this movie is wildly historically inaccurate, which it is, but because of the terrible things that were done to the horses in making this movie. In the cavalry charge at the end of the movie, a lot of horses were trip-wired. That was a common Hollywood practice at the time. It was done to simulate horses being shot in battle. Usually, no more than 1 or 2 horses were trip-wired in a movie, but in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, 125 horses were trip-wired. 25 of those horses were killed outright or had to be shot later due to the severity of their injuries.

Errol Flynn, the star of the movie, was an avid horseman. He was so infuriated by the number of horses killed and injured in the movie and by the indifference of the director, Michael Curtiz, that he physically assaulted Curtiz and had to be pulled away by crewmembers. Although Errol Flynn made many more movies directed by Michael Curtiz, the 2 men never spoke to each other again. Those movies include: ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’, ‘The Sea Hawk’, ‘The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex’, ‘Santa Fe Trail’, ‘Virginia City’, and several other movies.

When the public found out what happened to the horses in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, it created a worldwide outrage. There was pressure on the California state government to regulate the treatment of animals in movies, but the state legislature was unwilling to do anything that was opposed by the film industry. However, within a few months of the release of ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, the British Parliament passed the ‘Cinematograph Films Animals Act’ in 1937. This law banned showing movies in Britain or anywhere within the British Empire that were: “directed in such a way as to involve the cruel infliction of pain on any animal.” This is still the law in Britain. At that time, Britain was Hollywood’s most important and profitable foreign market. The British Empire and Commonwealth covered 25% of the Earth’s population. Plus, several other countries passed laws modeled after the British law. As a result, Hollywood had to make major changes in the way they made movies with animals, including allowing people from the American Humane Association to observe the filming of scenes with animals in them. You may have seen a line at the end of a movie that says: “American Humane certifies that no animals were harmed in making this movie.” That can be traced back to ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’

WORST APPLICANT EVER. Ding! Ding! Ding!

Many years ago, I was showing a house for rent when a woman came to look the place over. She walked through the house while I stayed in the kitchen and sat at the table. After she entered the first bedroom, I heard a little bell ring three times: ‘ding, ding, ding,’ followed by a minute of silence. Then she walked into the other bedroom, and the same thing happened again, ‘ding, ding, ding’, followed by a minute of silence. She continued walking through the house, ringing the bell in every room. When she returned to the kitchen, I asked her why she was ringing a bell. By that point, I was dying of curiosity. She said: “I’m checking out your house’s vibrations.” I told her that I didn’t know what that meant. She said that before she could fill out an application form, she needed to know if the previous tenants had left ‘negative energy’ behind. She said that she had a bad feeling in one of the bedrooms but that her tests were inconclusive, so my house needed a ‘vibration analysis’ by a ‘clairvoyant minister’ from the Berkeley Psychic Institute. She told me that this analysis would cost me $300. When I told her that I would not pay for a ‘vibration analysis’, she got angry and said: “Oh, you’re just like all the other landlords.” I assumed that meant that she had seen other houses for rent, and that the landlords there also refused to pay for a ‘vibration analysis.’ She walked out in a huff, and I never saw her again. People like this were common in Berkeley in the 1970s, but I never get prospective applicants like this anymore. I am not sure why that is. I think maybe it’s because Berkeley used to be a cheap place to live in those days, but that was a long time ago, and people like this can’t afford to live here anymore.

SECURITY DEPOSITS and COBRAS.

California has a new security deposit law. Up until now, a landlord in California could charge a security deposit equal to 2 month’s rent if an apartment was unfurnished or 3 month’s rent if an apartment was furnished. Under the new law, the maximum deposit is 1 month’s rent, whether the apartment is furnished or unfurnished. The purpose of this law is to make it easier for people with limited financial resources to rent an apartment by reducing the amount of money required to get a lease, but this law may well do just the opposite. This may turn out to be an example of the Cobra Effect. I had a professor in college who talked a lot about that subject a lot.The Cobra Effect refers to a law or government policy that makes a problem worse that it was intended to solve. It is very common.

The Cobra Effect. In the 19th Century, when India was under British rule, the government became concerned about the high number of cobras in the Delhi metropolitan area. In an effort to reduce the cobra population, the British government offered a bounty for dead cobras. Anyone turning in a dead cobra received a cash reward. Initially, the program appeared to be a success. Large numbers of dead cobras were turned in. That should have reduced the cobra population, but the number of reported deaths from cobra bites wasn’t going down. It was rising. That puzzled the British authorities. They finally figured out that enterprising people were breeding cobras in captivity in order to get the reward. When the British government became aware of the fact that they were being hoodwinked, they scrapped the program. That made the snakes being bred for sale to the British worthless, so the cobra breeders turned their snakes loose in the wild. In the end, there were a lot more cobras in the area than before the government tried to eradicate them. That’s called the Cobra Effect. A lot of economists have written about this.

The Great Chinese Famine. One of the most devastating examples of the Cobra Effect was the Great Chinese Famine of the early 1960s. That happened when a program designed to increase food production resulted in 30 to 50 million people dying of starvation. In 1957, Mao Tse Tung claimed that rice and wheat yields were low because sparrows were eating too much grain.  Sparrows were declared “animals of Capitalism”, and the government began a nationwide ‘Smash Sparrows’ campaign. People were required to kill sparrows and were assigned quotas of how many dead sparrows they had to turn in at government offices every week. If people exceeded their quotas, they received rewards. If they failed to meet their quotas, they were punished. Tens of millions of sparrows were killed, and by 1960, sparrows had become virtually extinct in China. However, the disappearance of sparrows meant that locusts were able to breed unchecked because their principal predators, the sparrows, were gone. Billions of locusts descended on China and devastated the country.  Incredibly, a locust can eat its own body weight in food every day. Grain production plummeted. Once the government realized its mistake, they imported 250,000 sparrows from the Soviet Union to restore the natural balance. Eventually that ended the famine. Below is a picture of a Chinese school poster from 1959 showing a boy with a slingshot killing a sparrow. The girl is holding a string of dead sparrows. The slogan at the bottom of the poster says: “Everybody Comes to Beat the Sparrows.” After 1962, bedbugs replaced sparrows on school posters in China as an ‘animal of Capitalism.’ Here is one of the many videos on YouTube about Mao’s war on sparrows: The War on Sparrows.

SECURITY DEPOSITS.

But – what does all this talk about cobras and sparrows have to do with security deposits? California’s new security deposit law is intended to make it easier for people with limited financial resources to rent an apartment; however, this law creates a financial incentive for landlords to do just the opposite.

Under the old law, an applicant for an apartment in California might have to come up with 3 month’s rent in order to get an apartment, the first month’s rent plus 2 month’s security deposit. So, if an apartment is $3,000 a month (which is what a 1-bedroom apartment typically rents for in one of the new apartment houses in Berkeley), an applicant might need to give the building manager $9,000 to get a lease.  What percentage of people in our society have $9,000? 50% of all Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. 33% have no savings at all. So, what’s the problem with lowering security deposits from 2 month’s rent to 1 month’s rent? 

First, you need to answer the question: “Why do landlords want security deposits?” The reason that landlords want security deposits is so that they won’t lose money if a tenant moves out with unpaid rent or with expensive damages to the apartment. The less money that a landlord is holding in the security deposit, the more risk the landlord is taking by renting an apartment to someone who is living from paycheck to paycheck and has little or no savings. This new law creates a strong incentive for landlords to only rent apartments to people with high credit scores and serious money in the bank. That is the opposite of this law’s intention. The mentality behind this law is that if something is bad for landlords, it is good for tenants. I have never been able to convince people who think that way that they are wrong, and that the world doesn’t work that way.

OAKLAND’S GUN BUYBACK PROGRAM. Here’s another example of the Cobra Effect, one closer to home. In 2008, the Oakland police department ran a gun buyback program called ‘One Less Gun’. The purpose was to reduce the number of guns in Oakland, but the result was the opposite. Under the ‘One Less Gun’ program, anyone could turn in a gun and walk away with $250 cash with no questions asked and no I.D. required. On the opening day of the program, the first people in line were gun dealers. Some came with 50 guns in the trunks of their cars. Most of these guns were in poor condition, and many were inoperable. The gun dealers used the money they got from the police to buy more and better guns. Some nursing home operators also turned in large numbers of guns, guns taken from their residents. That also cost the Oakland police department a lot of money, even though elderly residents in nursing homes aren’t the kind of people who are likely to use guns to commit crimes. Many sketchy characters turned in defective guns and got money from the police which they used to buy new guns. So many guns were turned in that the police department quickly ran out of money and had to issue I.O.U.s., leaving the police department with a debt of $170,000. Oakland never ran a gun buyback program again. Several other big cities have run gun buyback programs with similar results.

BLOWING UP A DEAD WHALE. Perhaps the funniest example of the Cobra Effect was the attempted disposal of a dead whale by the Oregon Highway Department by blowing it up. (It was funny, but not if you were there.) This was a big news story when it happened. In November 1970, a dead 40-foot whale washed up on a beach in Oregon. It had been so long since a dead whale had washed up on a beach in northern Oregon that nobody could remember how to get rid of one. The Highway Department decided the best way to dispose of the whale was to blow it up. They planted 20 cases of dynamite under the whale. They figured that would blow the whale into small particles which scavengers would dispose of. A biologist told the highway officials that the normal way of disposing of a dead whale was to have a tugboat drag it out to sea at high tide, where sharks and other large predators dispose of dead whales all the time, but her advice was ignored. Large numbers of people from the area came to see the explosion. When the explosion went off, the spectators cheered for a few seconds, but they then ran in panic when large chunks of rotting dead whale flesh rained down on them and their cars. The authorities had greatly underestimated the blast zone and what was a safe distance from it for the spectators. And, even after the explosion, the bulk of the dead whale was still intact and on the beach. Watch this video to see what happened: Blowing Up a Dead Whale. Like the other examples of the Cobra Effect above, blowing up the whale dramatically increased the cost of disposing of the whale.

KELLOGG’S SPOONS. When Kellogg ordered 30,000 promotional spoons, the manufacturer asked them what they wanted imprinted on the spoons. Kellogg replied: “Just the Kellogg logo.” The photo below shows what they got.

WHO DOES THE HOLY LAND RIGHTFULLY BELONG TO?

Unfortunately, this is not an easy one to answer. For purposes of this article, I am referring to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as the Holy Land. That includes Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

The Ottoman Empire. Prior to 1948, there had not been an independent state of either Israel or Palestine for over 2,000 years. This entire area was continuously ruled by foreign powers since the Romans took control of it in 63 BC. For almost 500 years prior to World War 1, the Holy Land was a province within the Ottoman Empire. The people who lived there were ruled by Turkish governors. The Ottomans were Muslims; but there were Christians, Jews, as well as Muslims living in the Holy Land. Most of the time, the Ottomans let each of these groups govern themselves, unless there was a dispute between the groups or a dispute that involved relations with a foreign country. At one time, the Ottoman Empire was the largest and most powerful empire in the world, but by the early 20th Century, the Ottoman Empire had become corrupt and weak. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire made a disastrously bad decision when they entered World War 1 as an ally of Germany. The Ottomans were crushed by the Allies. By the end of the war, the British army was in complete control of the Holy Land.

World War 1. The number of soldiers killed in this war was gigantic. Over 1 million British soldiers were killed in the war and another 2 million were seriously wounded. That doesn’t include soldiers from British commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia. The number of men killed in individual battles in the war seems unbelievable. For example, in 1916, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, over 20,000 British soldiers were killed, and that was just on the first day. The Battle of the Somme went on for 5 months, and at the end  of the battle, both sides were where they started. The British government was worried that they were going to run out of soldiers before the Germans, so they developed policies to get more allies.

The Holy Land Goes to the Arabs. Although the Ottoman Empire was weak, the bulk of the British army was in Europe fighting the Germans. If Britain was going to defeat the Ottomans, they needed a powerful ally in the Middle East. The only possible ally in the region strong enough to take on the Ottomans were the Arabs. The British convinced the Arabs to declare war on the Ottomans by promising to give them the Holy Land and Arabia after the war was over. Once the Arabs secured this promise, Sharif Hussein, the head of the Arab nationalists initiated the Great Arab Revolt in 1916 against the Ottoman Empire. They were very successful and drove the Ottomans out of the Holy Land. Thousands of Arabs were killed in this war. No one knows how many. The movie ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ is one of the few movies that deals with this war. It is a beautiful movie and well worth seeing, although there are many historical errors in the movie. Try to see it on the biggest screen you can.

The Holy Land Goes to the Jews. Another group that the British wanted to get to support their war effort were the Jews of Europe and the United States. At the beginning of the war, most Jews were pro-German. That wasn’t because Jews loved the Kaiser, but because they hated the Czar of Russia. In 1905, my grandparents Bores and Pauline Tarses left Odessa for America. Shortly after they left Ukraine, thousands of Jews were murdered in the streets of Odessa in the 1905 Odessa pogrom. The czar’s police supplied weapons to the mob. You can see photos of piles of dead Jews in the streets of Odessa from that pogrom on Google images. Periodic massacres of Jews in Russia like this had been going on in Russia for centuries. Most Jews felt that if Russia lost the war, the reign of the czars would be over, and they were right.

The British knew that there was only one thing they could offer the Jews that would get them to support the war and fight for the Allies – the Holy Land. The Zionist movement was well developed by the start of World War 1. In 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration. It declared that the Holy Land would become a ‘Jewish homeland’ after the war was over – if Britain won the war. Although the wording of the declaration was deliberately vague, it was intended to leave Jews with the impression that Britain would make Palestine a Jewish state. Below is an article from ‘The Times’ announcing the Balfour Declaration. The headline is ‘PALESTINE FOR THE JEWS.’

The Holy Land Goes to England. So – Britain promised to give the Holy Land to the Arabs, but they also promised to give it to the Jews. However, unknown to either the Arabs and the Jews, Britain had made a third deal, the Sykes-Picot Agreement. In 1916, a British civil servant named Mark Sykes met secretly with a French civil servant named Francois Georges-Picot. They met to decide how to divide up the Ottoman Empire after the war was over. They didn’t consider the historic borders of the Holy Land because there weren’t any. They agreed that the Holy Land would be declared an ‘International Zone’, but under British military control. See the map below. The people who lived in the Holy Land were not consulted and didn’t know about this agreement. At the time, European imperialism was at its peak. Even before the war, the British and French governments ruled over 40% of the Earth’s population, and both countries were anxious to add even more territory to their empires.

Dying For England. When World War 1 ended, both the Jews and the Arabs expected Britain to give the Holy Land to them. Both the Arabs and the Jews felt that they had paid for it with their blood and that it was promised to them. It was impossible for Britain to deliver on both of these promises, and the British never intended to give the Holy Land to either the Arabs or the Jews, but to keep it themselves.

The Collapse of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Just a few years after World War 1 ended, the Sykes-Picot Agreement fell apart. There were a number of reasons for this: the unexpected rise of nationalism in the Middle East, the creation of modern Turkey, and the Bolshevik revolution, which turned Russia from an ally of England and France into an enemy. After the collapse of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the British government didn’t know what to do about the conflicting promises they had made over the Holy Land. In the 1930s and 1940s, tensions between the Arabs and the Jews rose. At the end of World War 2, the British government announced they were leaving the Holy Land, with or without an agreement. Although most Americans have never heard of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Palestinian and Israeli politicians and historians know all about it and talk about it frequently. Now, a lot of stuff has happened in the Holy Land since World War 1, but this is how this got started. So, how do you decide who a country rightfully belongs to when it hasn’t had self-government or defined borders in over 2,000 years? I don’t know how to answer that question. Do you?

THE PAIN OF THE WORKING CLASS.

What explains the rise of extremism in American politics? I think that the explanation is the pain of the working class.

A new Gallop Poll concludes that only 13% of young American adults think that it is likely that their generation will have a better life than their parents, a record low. Republicans are more pessimistic than Democrats about the future. 53% of young people who identify as Democrats are ‘somewhat optimistic’ that they personally will have a better life than their parents, but only 33% of young Republicans feel that way. I think that this high level of pessimism about the future among Republicans explains why so many of the extremists in American politics today identify as Republicans, and their pessimism is not unwarranted.

The Starter Home. Historically, every generation of Americans expected to have a better life than their parent’s generation with a higher living standard, better homes, better education, etc.; but not today. The standard of living of American workers is declining and has been for a long time. In 1960, the average house in the United States sold for $12,000, and the average American Worker made $6,000 a year. In other words, the average house sold for 2 times the annual gross salary of the average house. Today the ratio is 4.5. For an ever increasing number of young people entering the workforce, it becomes increasingly unlikely that they will ever be able to buy their first home.

Savings. Today, 33% of Americans have no savings. Nothing at all. An additional 23% have less than $10,000 saved for retirement. Things are even worse for Millennials (age 18 to 34). Over 70% of them have no savings at all or less than $10,000. Even if a Millennial has $10,000 in savings, that is more than offset by their student debt. 

Student Debt. The average Millennial owes $43,000 in student debt. These are very depressing numbers. and getting worse. In 2001, average student debt was $20,500. In 1989, it was $11,000. Inflation accounts for some of this increase, but not all.

Desperate people turn to desperate solutions. Would the German people have turned over their government to Hitler if the country wasn’t in an economic crisis? In 1932, the unemployment rate in Germany was 25%. Would Lenin have come to power in Russia if the government hadn’t collapsed and people were starving? Desperate people look for a knight on a white horse to save them. They usually pick someone who offers simple solutions to complex problems and blames the nation’s problems on an unpopular minority group. History has shown this always ends badly.

GLOBAL WARMING MYTHS.

The most widely believed myth about global warming is that it is a relatively new scientific theory and that scientists are still debating whether global warming is actually going on and what the cause of it might be. However, this is a myth.

Scientists have known for a long time that the Earth is getting hotter. Prior to the 18th Century, human beings burned very little fossil fuel. Most heat was produced by burning wood. The burning of coal began to skyrocket in the 1700s as a result of the Industrial Revolution. By the mid1800s, scientists in many countries had become aware of the fact that temperatures and sea levels were rising. European governments began keeping temperature records in the 17th Century when accurate thermometers became available. In the mid-1800s, the British government developed machines that could record sea levels accurately and continuously throughout the day. These machines, some of which are still in use, record sea level on a long sheet of paper. The first of these machines was placed in service in Liverpool in 1880. By 1900, machines like these began recording sea levels in New York, San Francisco, and many other cities around the globe. The chart below shows sea levels as recorded in Liverpool, England. As you can see, sea levels have been rising by 1-inch every 10 to 15 years since 1880 and the rate is accelerating. On the surface, a 1-inch rise in sea levels over a decade may not seem like a lot, but over 150 years, it adds up. Sea levels around the world have risen by over 9 inches since the late 1800s, and the rate is rapidly accelerating. There are only 2 possible explanations for why sea levels are rising. 1. A lot of water that was locked up in ice has melted and made its way to the sea and 2. Warm water occupies more space than cold water. However, only global warming could explain either of these.

Scientists have known for a long time that burning fossil fuels is the principal cause of global warming. There really is no debate among scientists as to what the cause of global warming is. They have known right from the start that it is the result of burning fossil fuels. By 1900, articles were appearing in both scientific journals and popular magazines bluntly stating that the Earth was getting hotter and that the burning of coal was the reason. In 1912, Popular Mechanics, one of America’s top-selling magazines at the time, said: “The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 (2 billion) tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 (7 billion) tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. This effect may be considerable in a few centuries.” As you can see, global warming caused by burning fossil fuels is not a new idea. While Popular Mechanics was wrong in its prediction of how long it would take for the effect of global warming to become a problem, they were able to accurately calculate how much carbon dioxide was being put in the air by burning coal. And remember, in 1912, relatively few Americans owned automobiles, and there was no aviation industry.

Global warming skeptics used to say that more research is required before we can be sure that the world is getting hotter; however, it has become increasingly difficult for them to convince people that the Earth isn’t getting hotter because the evidence of it is everywhere. Today, politicians who used to say that global warming is a hoax now acknowledge that the Earth is getting hotter, but they claim that it is happening so slowly that we have nothing to worry about. Donald Trump said at a recent campaign rally: “They say the ocean will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years.” If only that were true! Many other politicians talk the same way.

Chesapeake Bay. The effect of rising sea levels has been very dramatic in some places. Many islands around the world have disappeared or have become uninhabitable. There used to be a lot of low-lying inhabited islands in the Chesapeake Bay. Most of the people who lived on these islands were the descendants of the families that settled on them in the 17th Century from England. However, many of these islands have disappeared or become uninhabitable mud flats. One of the biggest and most populous of the Chesapeake Bay islands was Tangier Island. In the 19th Century, thousands of people lived on Tangier Island. During the War of 1812, over 1,000 British soldiers were stationed on Tangier Island. The island was the base of the British navy during that war. Tangier Island had a downtown shopping district, public schools, a city hall, an airport, etc.; but the island has lost 2/3 of its area and 2/3 of its population due to rising sea levels. The remaining population know that it is just a matter of time before they will all have to leave. Here is a PBS news story about it: Tangier Island.

A few months ago, the Republican candidates for president met in Milwaukee for their first debate. It was a very hot day in Milwaukee. The heat index was 114 degrees. It was so hot that the city closed all the schools for the day. At the debate, the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed that global warming is real and that it is mainly caused by burning fossil fuels. None of them raised their hands.

THE SPIDER IN YOUR BATHTUB.

Here is another widely held myth, one that never goes away. When people see a spider in their bathtub, they almost always assume that the spider came up through the drain hole. After all, where else could it have come from? Some people put a plug in their bathtub’s drain hole when they aren’t using the tub if they see a spider in the bathtub, but that doesn’t do any good. Tenants have called me on the phone to tell me that there was a spider in their bathtub and wanted me to install a spider-proof drain pipe. There is no such thing as a spider-proof drain pipe. There is no need for such an invention because spiders do not get into bathtubs through drain pipes. Virtually every bathtub and shower stall in America has a ‘U’ shaped drain pipe underneath it. This section of pipe is also known as a ‘P-trap.’ There is always water in the P-trap. This trap prevents sewer gas from entering your house. It also keeps spiders from getting into your bathroom. Very few spiders can swim, and none of them can swim underwater.

So, if spiders aren’t getting into your bathtub through the drain pipe, where do they come from? Spiders can enter a house or apartment through very small openings. They can crawl through and around window screens, and they can easily slide under exterior doors. Spiders are pretty good at climbing walls, but once a spider gets into a bathtub, they are usually trapped there. Spiders are not good at climbing up smooth surfaces, like the sides of a bathtub or shower stall. So, when a spider falls into a bathtub, it will usually stay there. It has no place to go. Since bathtubs and shower stalls are usually white, spiders are more visible there than in other places in your home. Spiders really aren’t coming in through your drain pipe.

HEBREW TATTOOS.

A lot of people commented on my article last month about tattoos made by tattoo artists who flunked spelling. Another mistake that people make is getting tattoos in a language that the artist cannot read. This sometimes happens with tattoos in Chinese and Hindi, but most often, it happens with tattoos in Hebrew.

Finding a tattoo artist who can read and write in Hebrew can be difficult. Orthodox Jews have always prohibited tattoos, but prior to World War 2, there were many reform and non-religious Jews who got tattoos. That came to an end because of the war. When Jews entered Nazi concentration camps, the first thing that happened to the ones who weren’t immediately killed was that a number was tattooed on their arms. As a result, Jews began associating tattoos with the Holocaust, and today, there are very few Jewish tattoo artists.

Below are pictures of 2 Hebrew tattoos with spelling errors in them. It is easy to make mistakes like these because there are letters in the Hebrew alphabet that look similar. The first tattoo says ‘matzah’. I think it was intended to say ‘strength. ‘ Perhaps someone fluent in Hebrew can tell me for sure what it’s intended to say. The error in the second tattoo is more obvious. It is supposed to be the name of God in Hebrew, but it actually says: ‘He shall be pregnant.’  I feel pretty certain that wasn’t what it was intended to say.

WHO WAS AMERICA’S SMARTEST PRESIDENT?

There has long been a debate over who was the smartest U.S. president. While he was president, Donald Trump repeatedly told reporters that he is a “genius”. However, I think America’s smartest president was James Garfield, but read my story below and judge for yourself.

James Garfield grew up in extreme poverty. He was mocked by other children for the tattered clothing he had to wear. Nevertheless, Garfield was recognized as a genius at an early age. At the age of 3, he was attending school and reading adult books. He paid his way through college working as a janitor at Williams College and graduated summa cum laude. He then began teaching at Hiram College. At the age of 26, he became president of the college. (Imagine – a 26-year-old college president.) Garfield could speak 9 languages. When the Civil War began, Garfield joined the Union army. At the age of 30 and after a series of victories, Garfield was promoted to the rank of general. He became nationally famous after his army permanently drove Confederate forces out of eastern Tennessee, even though Garfield had no artillery and only half as many men as the Confederates. Garfield won every battle he fought.

James Garfield might have been a great president, but unfortunately, he was shot and killed just a few months into his presidency. Garfield was in a train station in Washington, D.C. chatting with Robert Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln, when a lunatic walked up behind Garfield and shot him in the back. Strangely, a lot of people died that way – shortly after meeting Robert Lincoln – but that’s a story for another day.

HOW TO GET RID OF CLUTTER AND HELP OTHERS TO GET RID OF THEIR CLUTTER.

There are a lot of books on the market about decluttering, but the advice in most of them seems like nonsense to me. The most popular of these books are the ones written by Marie Kondo. Her big idea is that you should only keep things that make you happy or that “spark joy” as she puts it. She says: “If it does (spark joy), keep it. If not, dispose of it.” That may sound like a profound idea, but it’s irrational to get rid of things that you need, whether they ‘spark joy’ or not. I have a spare tire in the trunk of my car. So do you. But why? Nobody keeps a spare tire because it ‘sparks joy’. You keep a spare tire because you may need it.

Cluttering vs. Hoarding. These words don’t mean the same thing. Here is how I define the difference. Cluttering is a large accumulation of possessions in someone’s home. Hoarding is when that accumulation gets to the point that rooms or parts of a house can’t be accessed or used for their intended purpose. Like most landlords, I’ve had to deal with hoarding in my business. I once had a tenant who rented a 2-bedroom cottage from me. He had so much stuff in his bedrooms that he had to sleep in the living room because he couldn’t get into either bedroom. None of his stuff had any apparent use or market value. I had another memorable tenant in that same cottage several years later who also slept in the living room because both of her bedrooms were full of pianos. It was impossible to get into either room. She used to check newspapers and Craigslist looking for free pianos. You might be surprised how many free pianos you’ll find on Craigslist. When I checked this morning, there were over 50 free pianos listed on Craigslist in the San Francisco bay area, including a couple of grand pianos. Whenever I see a piano store, I wonder how they stay in business. There are always a lot of free pianos available, but I digress. Below are some of my ideas on how to reduce clutter.

Remember that most people overvalue the things they own. This is the #1 reason why people can’t get rid of stuff. How can you convince someone to give away a cookie jar that is worth $5 if the owner believes that it is worth $500? Wild overvaluations like this are very common.

Why do people overvalue their stuff? People often think about what they paid for an item, which may have no relationship to what it is worth now. Things that were expensive when you bought them may now be worthless. That can be hard for people to accept. Things like clothing, furniture, and electronic products lose most of their value as soon as they leave the store. A desktop computer that you paid $2,000 for 10 years ago is probably worth nothing now.

People think about what things used to sell for. There are a lot of things that used to be expensive but that aren’t anymore. Silverware is a good example. I can remember when every department store had a silverware department. Silverware was the most common item at bridal registries. In many homes, the silverware was the most valuable thing in the house. Today, very few people want silverware. Manufacturers figured out ways of making stainless steel that looks just like silverware but that never needs polishing. Also, big formal dinners are now a rarity. Most silverware that is purchased by pawnbrokers or at auctions these days is bought for its scrap value and melted down.

Tastes and attitudes change. My stepmother collected carved ivory figurines. She spent tens of thousands of dollars on her huge collection. When she died, her ivory sold for a fraction of what she paid for it. As elephants began disappearing in Africa and Asia, attitudes about ivory changed. There are now international treaties restricting the sale of ivory. A lot of antique dealers won’t buy the stuff anymore regardless of the price. There are lots of things that used to be highly collectible and expensive but that are now nearly worthless; things like tobacco jars, Hummel figurines, Thomas Kinkade prints, British royal family commemorative porcelain, and most signed sports memorabilia. The FBI estimates that between 70% and 90% of all signed sports memorabilia is fake.

How to find out what your stuff is really worth. This has become a lot easier than it used to be. That’s because we have eBay. Ebay provides us with a simple way of finding out what our things are actually worth. If you know someone who has a wildly inflated idea of what something he owns is worth, suggest that he go to eBay and see what other people are selling that thing for. That may pop your friend’s bubble, but you’d be doing him a favor. I know that checking prices on eBay has made it a lot easier for me to get rid of things.

How to get started. Look around your house. Think about an item that you never use, preferably something that takes up a lot of space or that is in the way. Then ask yourself why you keep it. Then go to eBay and try to find that item or something just like it and see what it is selling for. You may be surprised. It may be worth more than you think, but usually it will be less. Remember that some people list stuff on eBay at unrealistically high prices, so look for average listing prices of items like yours. Also, if you decide to sell an item on eBay, think about how much time you will have to spend listing and selling it, packaging it up and shipping it. Plus, eBay and PayPal will each get a percent of your sale. Most of the time, you are better off giving away an item to a charity thrift shop.

TATTOOS AND SPELL CHECKERS.

I’ve been teaching history at junior high schools for a long time. One of things that has largely disappeared over the years is spelling errors in student essays. They used to be very common but not anymore. Students now write their essays on computers with spell checkers and auto-suggestion. If you’re not familiar with it, a computer’s auto-suggestion feature analyses a sentence and suggests an alternative word or phrase. For example, a student of mine once wrote: “My family took a tour of Notre Dame cathedral last summer. The tour was given by a French priest. He spoke very good English, but we couldn’t understand a lot of what he said because the agnostics in the church were terrible.” Well, the agnostics in the church may have been terrible, but a computer these days would probably have suggested that he substitute ‘acoustics’ for ‘agnostics.’ One place where I still see a lot of spelling errors is in tattoos. I think that’s because tattoo pens don’t have spell checkers in them. Take a look at the tattoos below.

FOOD MYTHS

SOME FOOD MYTHS YOU LEARNED IN SCHOOL. The food processing industry has a lot of clout in deciding what is taught in public schools about food and nutrition. They also have a lot of clout in deciding what foods should be in school lunches. Here are some things you probably learned in school about food but that aren’t true.

THE FOOD PYRAMID.    The Department of Agriculture created the food pyramid in the 1970s. You can find posters with the food pyramid on it in school classrooms all over the U.S. These posters are supplied to schools free by the Department of Agriculture. But – the job of the Department of Agriculture isn’t promoting public health, but promoting farmers and the food industry. Lobbyists working for the food processing and dairy industries had a lot of influence in the construction of this pyramid, and their influence is obvious. The most profitable sector of the food industry is making processed carbohydrates: breakfast cereals, breads, cookies, cakes, pasta, etc. Look at how heavily weighted this chart is in favor of carbohydrates. Imagine – a child eating 11 servings of carbs every day.

Milk. Another criticism of the food pyramid is that it was designed for white Europeans. Look at the dairy section of the food pyramid. The food pyramid teaches kids that they need to consume 2 to 3 servings of milk or other dairy products every day for good health; however, over 75% of native Americans, black Americans, and Chinese Americans are lactose intolerant. There is no accounting for that in the pyramid. You can find this same food pyramid on the walls of schools where most of the students are black as well as schools where most of the students are white, even though 70% to 80% of black kids can’t digest dairy products. This is called disparate impact. It’s unintentional discrimination, which is very common in our society. In other words, the people at the Department of Agriculture who constructed the food pyramid weren’t trying to make black kids sick when they published it. They just didn’t think about it.

IS BREAKFAST THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY?    No. No one meal is more important than another. The idea that breakfast is more important than other meals can be traced back to the late 19th Century when Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a physician and nutritionist, said so. This idea was picked up by his brother, Will Kellogg, who found the idea a good marketing tool. Beginning in the 1930s, Kellogg radio ads claimed that “Nutrition experts say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” The company continued making this claim for decades in its advertising. Although this started off as just an advertising slogan, it is now taught everywhere as fact.

WILL CAFFEINE STUNT A CHILD’S GROWTH?    No. If you are short, it isn’t because your parents let you drink Frappuccinos at Starbucks. Kellogg’s arch-rival was C.W. Post. He also created advertising slogans that became accepted as fact. In 1895, Post invented Postum, a caffeine-free alternative beverage to coffee. Postum is still made. It is made from roasted grain and molasses. It has the color of coffee, but it doesn’t taste anything like coffee. I don’t know anyone who likes it. In order to get parents to make their kids drink Postum instead of coffee, Post claimed, without evidence, that caffeine stunts a child’s growth. Postum ads were designed to make parents feel guilty for letting their kids drink coffee. The Postum ad below shows a sickly child in a classroom and says “this boy never had a fair chance” because his parents let him drink coffee. The ad says that coffee “robs children of their rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes” and most importantly “hampers proper development and growth.” This is scientific nonsense, but a lot of people now believe it’s true.   Personally, I think giving caffeinated beverages to young children is a bad idea, but a lot of parents let their kids drink Coca Cola with their meals, even though they won’tlet them eat Hershey bars They say it’s because of the caffeine. Recently, a woman wouldn’t let her daughter eat one of my chocolate covered mocha Oreos because of the coffee in the mocha filling. However, there is relatively little caffeine in chocolate compared to caffeinated beverages like coffee or Coke. A small cup of coffee at McDonalds contains 100 mg of caffeine. A medium size Coke contains 60mg. A Hershey bar contains 9mg. A child would have to eat a lot of Hershey bars to get a caffeine buzz.
WORST APPLICANT EVER.

IT’S IN THE STARS. Berkeley used to be a cheap place to live. Back in the 1970s, you could rent a 1-bedroom apartment in central Berkeley for $100 a month. I knew some people who were paying less than that. Even adjusted for inflation, rent in Berkeley was cheap, especially compared to other cities near San Francisco. That is why the ‘hippies’ came to Berkeley in the 1960s and 70s. In every generation, counterculture people need to find places to live that have cheap housing. However, people looking for cheap housing don’t come to Berkeley anymore. Rental housing here has become tooexpensive. One bedroom apartments in the new buildings in my neighborhood are $3,000 to $4,000 a month. They can be even more expensive closer to campus.   A lot of strange people came to Berkeley in the 1960s and 70s from the East Coast, attracted by the culture, climate, and cheap housing. I have saved some of the rental applications I got back then. Below is an excerpt from a tenant resume I got in the late 1970s. I don’t get applications from people like this anymore.

What I’m Looking For. Ideally, I would like to find a landlord who is either a Gemini like myself or a Sagittarius. Sagittarius is 180 degrees from Gemini, so we would get along very well. I would consider renting an apartment from a Taurus or a Cancer, but obviously they would not be my first choice. The owner of the building where I am living now is a Virgo, and I’m a Gemini. Our signs are at a 90-degree angle, so we don’t get along. I can’t rent an apartment from a Virgo or Pisces. Their signs are at right angles to mine, so their Sun is in a Sign which is square to mine. Landlords born very close to 91 days apart will have their Sun square the other, which would be a real challenge for me! Moon square Sun is also difficult, but I am willing to risk that. For example, a Leo would irritate me at times, but with patience, we could deal with each other.”   At the bottom of this resume, in the ‘References’ section, it says: “Madam Lastardo is my astrologer. She will have to do a chart on my new landlord before I can sign a lease.”Several days later, I received an astrological questionnaire in the mail from Madam Lastrado, but I did not fill it out or return it. I know nothing about astrology, but I know 2 people who know a lot about this subject, and both of them told me that this woman knew what she was talking about. It’s not just gibberish. However, I rented the apartment to someone else.   P.S. – A lawyer told me that it is legal for a landlord to refuse to rent an apartment to someone because of an applicant’s astrological sign, although he added that he wouldn’t recommend it. Apparently, discrimination laws do not cover ‘astrological incompatibility’ – at least not yet!

OPPENHEIMER AND THE ATOMIC BOMB MYTH.

The movie ‘Oppenheimer’ has renewed interest in Harry Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. There is a widely held myth about that decision. I was pleased that this movie dispelled this myth. The myth goes this way….The war was almost over, and Japan was ready to surrender on condition that they be allowed to keep the emperor, so the U.S. had some ulterior reason for dropping atomic bombs on Japan. This story isn’t true, but a lot of people believe it. Here are the facts.

The war was far from over. At the time the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan, vast areas of Asia were still under Japanese control, including much of China, all of Korea, Taiwan, most of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), plus, of course, the Japanese home islands themselves. See the map below. Thousands of soldiers and civilians were still dying every day from war-related causes.

The Japanese government was not ready to surrender. Let’s think about this logically.…if the Japanese were ready to surrender, then why didn’t they? Just before Hiroshima was bombed, President Truman sent an ultimatum to Japan demanding their surrender and telling them that they could keep the emperor after the war ended, but his ultimatum was rejected. After Hiroshima was bombed, Truman sent another ultimatum to Japan saying that if they did not surrender immediately, more Japanese cities would be bombed, but this ultimatum was also rejected. The following day, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, but the Japanese were still unwilling to surrender. 2 days later, the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, but still, the Japanese government would not surrender.  The war came to an end when Emperor Hirohito defied the generals who ran the government and made a radio address to the nation ending the war. If the generals were ready to surrender, they would have surrendered. It’s as simple as that. Don’t reject an explanation as to why something happened simply because it’s the obvious explanation. People who are into conspiracy theories always do that, but the most obvious explanation is usually the correct one. That’s Occam’s Razor.

Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Japan simply to force them to surrender. A lot of people still believe that the U.S. must have had an ulterior reason for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. There are a number of theories as to what that reason might have been. Some people say that the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan to show Stalin that we had this weapon and were willing to use it. The Cold War had already begun. According to others, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs to use the Japanese people as guinea pigs to see what the effects of atomic bombing of a city would be. Others say it was for revenge. The American people were very angry about the way the Japanese treated American P.O.W.s. during the war. Harry Truman said that was no ulterior reason, that he ordered the atomic bombing of Japan simply to force them to surrender. I met Harry Truman in 1964. He said that he did consider the morality of dropping an atomic bomb on a city, but that he felt that he made the right decision in 1945 and still felt that way.

CHOCOLATE MISNOMERS.

A lot of the words related to chocolate don’t sound like what they really mean. Here are a few of them.

German’s Chocolate. German’s chocolate isn’t German. It was not invented in Germany or by Germans. In 1852, Samuel German, an Englishman living in the United States, invented the first practical sweetened chocolate bar, which he named after himself. If you look at the package carefully, you can see that the label doesn’t say ‘German Chocolate.’ It says: ‘German’s Chocolate.’ Note the apostrophe and ‘s’ after ‘German.’

German chocolate cake isn’t German either. The recipe for this popular cake was invented by a homemaker in Texas. The recipe first appeared in print in a Dallas newspaper in 1957. It Was originally called ‘German’s Chocolate Cake’ because German’s chocolate was the cake’s principal ingredient. General Foods, which owned German’s Chocolate at the time, noted that whenever the recipe appeared in a newspaper in Texas, sales of German’s chocolate increased by up dramatically, so the General Foods paid newspapers all over the country to reprint the recipe. Over time, nearly all magazines and cookbooks dropped the apostrophe and ‘s’ after the word ‘German’. It is now widely believed all over the world that German chocolate cake is a traditional German dessert. Ironically, many restaurants in Germany that cater to tourists sell German chocolate cake as their principal dessert because foreign tourists expect and demand it. Many German restaurants in the United States now serve German chocolate cake as their only dessert. If you think about it, this recipe doesn’t really seem German. The principal ingredients in the frosting are coconut and pecans, neither of which can be grown in Germany, and both of which were historically expensive in Europe. If you want to eat a genuine German chocolate cake, I recommend Black Forest cake. The recipe for this cake goes back to the 1500s, shortly after chocolate first started to become available in northern Europe.

Dutched cocoa isn’t Dutch. Dutched cocoa can be made anywhere. The term ‘dutched’ means that the cocoa was treated with alkali to reduce its acidity.  The process was invented in the Netherlands, but dutched cocoa can come from anywhere. Virtually all cocoa powder sold in stores is either natural or dutched. If a recipe doesn’t specifically call for dutched cocoa, use natural cocoa. I recommend Hershey’s 100% cacao natural unsweetened. If you have a recipe that calls for dutched cocoa, use Droste or Valrhona. When baking cakes, brownies, cookies, etc., dutched and natural cocoa are not interchangeable because they react differently with baking soda and baking powder. Don’t use ‘cocoa mix.’ Cocoa mixes are mostly sugar.

Why are Oreo cookies black? Why aren’t Oreos brown, the color of chocolate or cocoa? I think people assume that Nabisco puts black food color in their cookies, but there is no food coloring in regular Oreos. The cookies are black because the cocoa they use is highly dutched. The more that cocoa powder is dutched, the darker it gets. If you dutch cocoa enough, it will turn black.

STONEHENGE.

My stepsister often says that when friends ask her what she would like for a birthday present, she tells them, but then, most of the time, they buy her something completely different, something that she didn’t want and has no use for. Last year, a friend asked me what I wanted for a birthday present. I told him that I wanted an insulated bag for transporting chocolate on hot days, but on my birthday, he gave me a raccoon cap instead. I had mentioned to this guy that when I was 10 years old, my favorite TV show was Davy Crockett. However, I never had a Davy Crockett cap. Wearing a dead raccoon on my head never appealed to me. The story below reminds me of my stepsister’s complaint.

At the start of the 20th Century, Stonehenge was in bad shape. It had been neglected and abused ever since Henry VIII took ownership of it 500 years earlier. In the 19th Century, visitors to Stonehenge commonly broke off chunks of Stonehenge and took them home as souvenirs. Snake oil salesmen sold medical cure-alls by grinding bits of Stonehenge into dust and mixing it with whiskey or other liquid. That came to an end in 1915 when an Englishman named Cecil Chubb went to an auction to buy an anniversary present for his wife. Chubb’s wife asked him to go to the auction and buy some dining room chairs that matched the chairs that she already owned. When Chubb arrived at the auction and read the catalog, he was surprised to see that Stonehenge was one of the items being auctioned. It was ‘Lot #15. Stonehenge, with about 30 acres.’ Stonehenge came up for sale before the chairs, and on a whim, Chubb bought Stonehenge instead of the chairs his wife wanted. On their anniversary, Chubb gave the deed to Stonehenge to his wife Mary. Mary was not pleased. She didn’t want to own Stonehenge and pointed out that Stonehenge was not a practical substitute for dining room chairs. In 1918, Cecil Chubb donated the deed to the British government, making him the last private owner of Stonehenge. I don’t know if Mary ever got the dining room chairs she wanted.

P.S. – Just in case you know my stepsister, her birthday is in March; but she doesn’t wear dead raccoons, she doesn’t need more chairs, and there is no room in her condo for a giant prehistoric stone megalith.

IT AIN’T JUST SAN FRANCISCO.

It seems like most of the national TV news stories about empty office buildings and nearby stores focus on San Francisco, and it’s understandable why. A lot of the big office buildings in downtown San Francisco at the time Covid began were occupied by internet-based companies. Because of the nature of these businesses, they were the first to have their employees work from home. Because apartment rents and house prices in San Francisco are so high, many of those employees chose to leave the city once they no longer needed to live near the office. And once the high-paid tech workers left San Francisco, the stores and restaurants that they supported went out of business as well.

However, a lot of people don’t seem to realize that this isn’t just or primarily a San Francisco problem. This is going on in big cities all over the country. In Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, Chicago, and Los Angeles; there are lots of high-rise office buildings that are over 30% vacant; and just like San Francisco, the shops and restaurants near those buildings have also gone out of business.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LENDERS?

What happens when the owner of a largely empty office building doesn’t have enough rental income to make the payment on the mortgage? Quite often, the owner will just walk away from the property. Then, the bank that holds the mortgage will take possession of the property and look for a buyer. In these situations, the lender will usually have to sell the building for less than the loan balance and eat the loss. No one knows how much commercial real estate debt will never be repaid. That’s because we don’t know how many of these largely empty office buildings will eventually be foreclosed upon. In March, JP Morgan Chase’s bank analyst estimated that 21% of all U.S. office loans are destined to go bad, with lenders losing 40% of the loan’s principal on average. These are staggering numbers, numbers that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression.

WHY NOT JUST CONVERT EMPTY OFFICE BUILDINGS INTO APARTMENTS?

We are hearing this suggestion from politicians all over the country. It seems like a no-brainer. Many of the cities with a glut of empty office buildings also have a housing shortage. So, it seems like the obvious solution to both of these problems is to simply convert empty high-rise office buildings into apartments. A few conversions like that are going on, but very few. That’s because this is much harder to do than most people realize. First of all, apartments have to have windows so that sunlight can come into every unit. That can be a big problem, depending on the shape of the building, how it was built, and what’s around it. Putting kitchens and bathrooms into buildings that weren’t designed to have them is hard to do and very expensive. Also, a lot of empty office buildings are not completely empty. I was recently in a high-rise office building in Oakland. The building is 75% vacant, but 25% of the offices are occupied. They are scattered throughout the building, and some of the tenants have low rent, long term leases and don’t want to leave. Location is another problem. Empty office buildings are often located in places where people don’t want to live, like industrial parks or downtown in cities where the downtown turns into a ghost town at night. Only 42 office building to housing conversion projects were completed in the entire United States last year. These projects get a lot of publicity, but there’s not a lot of them going on.

THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON.

Here’s another one of Mark’s improbable-but-true history stories. It’s also one of my favorites! As every American schoolchild knows (or should know), the first presidential assassination occurred when John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. However, the first attempted presidential assassination happened in 1835, when Richard Lawrence tried to kill Andrew Jackson.

On January 30, 1835; President Jackson went to the Capitol to attend the funeral of a congressman who died in office. Richard Lawrence came to the Capitol that day as well. He came to kill Jackson. Lawrence hid behind a pillar, and as President Jackson was leaving the building, Lawrence came out from his hiding place, pointed a pistol at Jackson, and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. Pistols in those days could only fire one shot, but Lawrence had a second pistol. He pulled out the second pistol but was attacked by Davy Crockett, the famous frontiersman. Crockett was a congressman from Tennessee at the time. Crockett and a naval officer held Lawrence down until policemen arrived and took him to jail. However, that is not the end of the story. That is just where things get interesting!

The Trial. Richard Lawrence was charged with the attempted murder of the president of the United States. It seemed like the government would get a quick conviction. There were lots of witnesses to the attempted assassination, including senators and congressmen. The government had an excellent legal team. The prosecuting attorney was Francis Scott Key, the author of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. Key was a famous lawyer, and he wanted a conviction. The courtroom was packed with spectators from Washington’s elite. No one had ever tried to kill a U.S. president before, and many famous people testified at the trial. Lawrence pleaded ‘not guilty’. Richard Lawrence took the witness stand and told the court that he was justified in killing President Jackson because Jackson was a thief and a usurper. Lawrence claimed that the money being collected by the Treasury Department should have been going to him. That was because Richard Lawrence believed that he was King Richard III of England – and said so – and that he was entitled to the tax revenues being collected by the U.S. government.

King Richard III. It might help to know a little something about King Richard III. Richard III of England died in 1485, almost 400 years before Richard Lawrence’s trial began. Richard III was killed in battle, and his body had never been found. Richard Lawrence felt that this was evidence that he was King Richard III. Interestingly, in 2012, the body of Richard III was found. It was found buried in the garden of the English poet Robert Herrick.

Richard Lawrence came to his trial dressed like an English aristocrat. He wore a shooting jacket, a cravat, and polished boots. While that kind of dress was very English, no real English aristocrat would come to his trial wearing hunting clothes. Lawrence repeatedly interrupted the trial. He demanded that the judge and Francis Scott Key address him as ‘Your Majesty’, but they refused. Lawrence told the judge that he resented the fact that the jurors were “commoners”. He told the jurors that they were his “subjects.” He said to the jury: “It is for me, gentlemen, to pass judgement on you, and not you upon me.” Francis Scott Key suspected that Lawrence was just putting on an act, pretending to be crazy to get acquitted on grounds of insanity. However, when Key and his legal team began questioning people who had known Lawrence for a long time, they concluded that he really was just as crazy as he appeared to be.

Richard Lawrence. Richard Lawrence was born in England around 1800 and came to the United States when he was around 12. As a child and young man, he appeared to be quite normal, but when he was in his late 20s, he began to imagine that he was King Richard III and told people so. Some people humored him. Others ridiculed him. As boys walked past his window on their way to school, they would take off their hats and say things like: “Good morning, your majesty.” Lawrence was pleased by this, not realizing that the boys were making fun of him. The jury only took 20 minutes to decide that Lawrence was innocent by reason of insanity. He spent the rest of his life in mental hospitals in the Washington DC area.

ANDREW JACKSON (1767-1845). Seventh President of the United States. The attempted assassination of President Andrew Jackson by Richard Lawrence on the steps of the Capitol building at Washington D.C., 30 January 1835. Contemporary lithograph. Granger, NYC

Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson was not convinced that Lawrence was crazy, but that he was a paid assassin. Jackson said that he suspected that Senators John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and George Poindexter of Mississippi were behind this. They were both old enemies of Jackson, and Jackson had reason to be suspicious of both of them. A few days before Lawrence tried to kill Andrew Jackson, Senator Calhoun delivered a speech in the Senate in which he said that Jackson was “a Caesar who ought to have a Brutus.” However, Jackson believed that the chief conspirator in the attempted assassination was Senator Poindexter. Poindexter had made specific threats against Jackson and his vice president Martin Van Buren. Poindexter denied knowing Richard Lawrence; however, a newspaper revealed that a few months before the attempted assassination, Senator Poindexter had paid Lawrence to paint his house. Poindexter claimed that he didn’t remember Lawrence, but nobody in Mississippi believed him, and he was defeated in the next election. (I think this story would make a good movie!)

I would appreciate your comments. If you want to comment on any article in this newsletter, you can do so at: Mark Tarses Newsletter

GLOBAL WARMING AND PROPERTY INSURANCE.

Everyone in California has heard that global warming is going to have terrible consequences, but most people here haven’t personally seen any of those consequences, but if you are a homeowner, you will, and soon. In 2022, several major insurance companies stopped selling property insurance in California, including Chubb, AIG, and Allstate. They cited the growing wildfire risk as the principal reason for their decision. In April 2023, State Farm (the nation’s largest property insurance company) announced that they too would no longer accept applications for property insurance in California.

Because of global warming, wildfires are becoming bigger and more frequent in the West and construction costs have been rising much faster than overall inflation. But – instead of pulling out of the California market, why don’t these insurance companies just raise their rates? Because they can’t. In 1988, California voters passed Proposition 103. This law requires that insurance companies get permission from the state’s insurance commissioner before they can raise rates, and the law requires that the insurance commissioner base his calculations on past experience, not future projections. As a result, insurance companies are only allowed to raise their rates slowly while their payouts have been rising rapidly. State Farm requested a 28% rate hike for property insurance from the state’s insurance commissioner. Allstate requested 40%. They didn’t get it, so they left the state.  There is a lesson in this – government price controls lead to shortages. (That is something that the advocates of rent control will never understand.)

Because the West is getting hotter and drier, big increases in property insurance rates in California are inevitable. As painful as that will be, it will have positive consequences. High insurance rates will create political pressure to end price controls on insurance which would bring competition back into the market. More importantly, higher rates will pressure homeowners and landlords to spend big bucks on things that will reduce their insurance bills, things like replacing wood shake roofs and exterior siding with fireproof materials. Things like that are expensive, but homeowners will do these things if it lowers their insurance bills enough to make it worthwhile.

We know that the fire risk in California is growing, but what are we doing about it? Very little. We gripe about it and elect politicians who gripe about it, but not much more. What should we do? First of all, we need to stop thinking about global warming as a partisan political issue. Global warming denial is not just a problem in red states, although listening to some politicians and Fox News commentators, you might get that impression. It’s a blue state problem too. Berkeley is a very liberal city, but when I take my daily walk, I see construction going on right now up in the hills where it doesn’t appear that any thought was given to the area’s considerable fire risks. Many of the streets in the Berkeley and Oakland hills are too narrow and twisty for fire trucks to get on, and the area is heavily wooded. Nevertheless, people are building and remodeling houses up there right now with wood exteriors. redwood decks, and fire-prone vegetation planted right up against their houses. Would people be doing these things if insurance companies were free to set their own rates and offer discounts based on their assessment of the fire risk?


FLORIDA. Things are even worse in states where people are in denial about global warming. Florida has the highest property insurance rates in the United States. Nationally, homeowners pay an average of $1,700 a year to insure their homes. In Florida, homeowners pay an average of $6,000 a year to insure their homes, almost 4 times the national average. Because of global warming, hurricanes and tropical storms have become more destructive in Florida, and because sea levels are rising, the porous limestone on which most of the state is built is eroding away, undermining foundations and creating sinkholes. Like California, Florida’s insurance laws and regulations have made selling property insurance in the state unprofitable. However, unlike California, many of the most powerful politicians in Florida say that they believe global warming is a politically-motivated hoax. Florida Senator Marco Rubio recently said: “The climate’s always changing” and “global warming is simply the Left’s catchall for anything that goes wrong.” Even worse, Florida politicians are passing new laws to encourage greater use of fossil fuels and discourage the use of renewable energy. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a new law prohibiting local governments from banning the building of new coal-fired power plants in their communities or from committing to the development of renewable energy in the future, including wind and solar.

DENIAL. I had a couple of very good friends who drank themselves to death. I know from my experience with them that if someone is in denial that he has a problem, nothing will work. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of people in this country are still deeply in denial about global warming.

THE STRANGE STORY OF THE 1910 HALLEY’S COMET PANIC.


Well, here is a more entertaining story. Halley’s Comet is visible from the Earth about once every 75 to 80 years. It is the only comet that is regularly visible from the Earth with the naked eye. Often, the comet is not easy to see, but in 1910, the comet came remarkably close to the Earth, so close that the Earth passed through the comet’s tail.

Cyanide Gas. Long before the comet arrived, using spectroscopic analysis, astronomers were able to determine that one of the gases in the comet’s tail was cyanogen, a cyanide gas. That started a panic. Most people were aware of the fact that cyanide gas is very toxic. In World War 1, tens of thousands of soldiers were killed with cyanide gas. In World War 2, millions of Jews were murdered with cyanide gas. Nevertheless, most scientists were unconcerned about the cyanogen gas in the comet’s tail because once the gas entered the Earth’s atmosphere, it would become too diffuse to do any harm.


The Newspapers. For 3 years prior to the comet’s arrival, newspaper reporters sought out respected academics who were making the most  frightening claims about the comet. One of the people newspapers liked to quote was Edward Booth, a chemistry professor at the University of California Berkeley. He told reporters: “We’ll all be snuffed out!” and that “The world is coming to an end.” Headlines like that sold newspapers, and Booth had an interest in selling newspapers. He was the editor of one of San Francisco’s daily newspapers in addition to being a professor of chemistry. Booth’s quotes were reprinted in newspapers around the country. (Note: In the newspaper article below, it incorrectly refers to Edward Booth as Edwin Booth. Edwin Booth was an actor and brother of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.)

Making Money From The Panic. A lot of companies found ways to cash in on comet panic. In the United States, insurance companies sold comet insurance, promising to pay up to $1,000 for every $1 paid in premiums if the comet ‘snuffed out’ all life on Earth. Some people bought this insurance, apparently overlooking the obvious problem – if the comet killed everyone on Earth, who would collect on these insurance policies? In Germany and England, a number of companies made comet-protecting umbrellas. I don’t know what these umbrellas were supposed to do or how they differed from regular umbrellas, but they were sold in department stores all over the world, and they sold a lot of them. Comet pills were sold in many countries as well. Some comet pills claimed to neutralize the cyanide gas in the comet’s tail. Other comet pills promised that they would repel the comet itself. Many companies put Halley’s comet in their ads, comparing their product in some way to the comet. Below is a magazine ad from 1909 for Pear’s soap.

Pope Pius X. As the comet came closer to the Earth, churches filled up. There were long lines at confessionals at Catholic churches all over the world. In an unusual move to allay the panic, Pope Pius X issued a Papal letter and ordered that it be read in Catholic churches everywhere in the world. It said that Halley’s comet would not destroy the Earth and that there was no cause for alarm. Other religious and political leaders issued similar statements. Nevertheless, some people committed suicide as the comet approached. Other people spent all their money on ‘end of the world’ parties, and in some places, human sacrifices were made to ‘appease the gods.’


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IS A COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE CRASH COMING?

I recently visited a lawyer who does occasional work for me. His office is in a high-rise office building on Lake Merritt in Oakland. When I last visited him 4 years ago, the building was fully occupied. This time, I felt like I was walking through a ghost town. There was no one in the halls or in the elevators. I could hear the echo of my footsteps as I walked through the halls. The building is over 80% vacant even though it is well-maintained, and the offices have wonderful views.

Right now, over 1/3 of all the office space in downtown Oakland is vacant. Things are just as bad in San Francisco. Some iconic office buildings in San Francisco are now completely vacant. This isn’t just happening here. This is happening in big cities all over the U.S. Many of the people who moved from office jobs to remote work at the start of Covid never returned. Over the next 2 years, almost $2 trillion in commercial real estate loans will come due, more than in any previous 2-year period in American history. When these loans come due, they will have to be refinanced at interest rates that are much higher than they were 2 or 3 years ago. What interest rate will lenders demand on an office building that is 50% vacant – if they are willing to lend money at all?

Retail space. And what happens when the mortgages come due on the tens of thousands of vacant stores and shopping centers all over the U.S.? In April, Foot Locker announced that they are closing 525 stores. Bed, Bath, and Beyond announced they are closing all 900 of their stores. Tuesday Morning announced they will close all 500 of their stores. That’s almost 2,000 store closings in just 1 month and from just 3 retail chains!

Apartments or Maybe Pickleball? Desperation has led to many to consider simplistic, harebrained ideas. Politicians in San Francisco, New York, and other cities are saying that the solution to the empty office building and retail store glut is to turn them into apartments. I don’t think they don’t understand what is involved in doing that. It is very difficult and expensive to convert buildings that don’t have plumbing, ventilation, or wiring for kitchens or bathrooms into apartments. Some politicians in San Francisco are now talking about converting empty stores into  pickleball courts, beginning with the recently closed Nordstrom stores in downtown San Francisco. Again, they don’t seem to understand what’s involved in doing that. Pickleball courts require a lot of space and 20-foot high ceilings. How many stores or offices have 20-foot high ceilings? I think a commercial real estate disaster is looming, and I don’t see how it can be avoided.

CALLING ME ON THE TELEPHONE.

Before I answer my phone, I check my Caller I.D. screen first. If my Caller I.D. does not identify the caller or says that the call is from ‘Wireless Caller’, ‘Private Caller’, ‘Unknown’, ‘Blocked Number’, ‘Unavailable’, ‘Toll Free Number’, ‘Out of Area’, etc.; I will not answer the call. If you are calling me from a telephone that does not identify you, just leave a message on my voicemail. Do not hang up and call me back later. That won’t do any good. I check my messages frequently, and I will reply to legitimate voicemail messages. I am sorry if this seems rude, but I get a lot of robocalls and calls from scammers, and this is the only way I can control the problem. You should do the same thing that I do about this. When you answer a robocall, you are telling the computer that called you that your phone number is active and that you answer robocalls. Doing that just gets your name put on the sucker lists that crooks sell to other crooks.

BEWARE OF CALLER I.D. SPOOFING.

Caller I.D. spoofing is not as funny as the name sounds. It is the practice of deliberately falsifying a caller’s identity and/or phone number in order to disguise his true identity from the person who is receiving the call. It is a common method of scamming people, and it is easy to do. I got a caller I.D. spoof call a couple of years ago. My Caller I.D. said the call was from ‘Superior Court.’ A recorded message said that I failed to show up for jury duty and unless I paid a $1,000 fine within 24 hours, a bench warrant would be issued for my arrest – and this fine could only be paid with Walmart gift cards!

THE GRANDPARENT SCAM.

I also once got a ‘grandparent scam’ phone call. My phone rang. My Caller I.D. said the call was from: ‘Sheriff’s Office.’ The caller said he was the sheriff of Guntown, Mississippi. This ‘sheriff’ said that my grandson was in jail, arrested for possession of marijuana and that unless I paid a fine of $2,000 immediately, he would be sent to the state prison. The ‘sheriff’ said that I had to pay this fine with Bitcoin. I could hear a young man’s voice in the background pleading with me to pay the fine and not let his parents find out about this. I thought about telling this so-called ‘sheriff’ that I had just seen the episode of The Simpsons in which Grandpa Simpson fell for a grandparent scam just like this one! I also thought about telling this ‘sheriff’ that his fake southern accent was just awful and that my fake southern accent was a lot better than his – but I didn’t.

P.S. – There really is a city in Mississippi named Guntown. I checked that out online, and they have a sheriff and a jail; however, since I have no grandchildren, I doubt that my grandson is in the Guntown jail.

P.P.S. – Southern states all used to have very harsh penalties for possession of marijuana, but now, it’s a hodge-podge. In Mississippi, the penalty for possession of a small quantity of marijuana is a $100 fine with no jail time. In Florida, the same offense can get you 5 years in prison, a $5,000 fine, plus loss of your driver’s license and government job. Plus, as a convicted felon in Florida, you will also lose the right to vote until you pay the fine.

Florida’s Disenfranchisement Law. In 2018, voters in Florida voted to repeal the state’s felony disenfranchisement law, but politicians found a loophole that allows them to continue to prohibit an astonishing 1.5 million people in Florida from voting, including 24% of all black adults in the state. Think about it – nearly 1 in 4 black adults in Florida are prohibited from voting because of a law that the voters thought they repealed 5 years ago. (Yes, I know that I trash Florida politicians quite often, but they do some really terrible stuff there.)

THE GRANDPARENT SCAM – WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

Right now, you are probably thinking that you would never fall for scams as obvious as the ones above, and you are probably right, but what about this one — Your phone rings. The caller says he is your nephew, and you recognize his voice. He says that he is in Mexico and has been kidnapped. The kidnappers are demanding $5,000 in Bitcoin, and if they don’t get it in 24 hours, they are going to cut off his thumb and send it to you “to show that we are serious.” What do you do?

This is probably an updated version of the old grandparent scam, but now using A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). All crooks need to pull this scam is a short sample of a person’s voice, which can often be found on Facebook or other social media websites. They can then run that voice clip through easily available A.I. software to create a duplicate voice that says whatever they want. They can also duplicate images and videos using similar tools. This isn’t just a theoretical problem. It is already happening. Last year, consumers lost over $2 billion to A.I. fraud, and that amount is rising rapidly. What should you do if you get a call like this?

1. Verify first. Call a trusted phone number and see if your nephew really is in Mexico. If he is in Mexico but not answering his phone, that isn’t evidence that he’s been kidnapped. He could someplace out of the range of a cell phone tower.

2. Listen for red flags. In this kind of scam, the caller will typically tell you not to tell anyone about this call, especially the police. Telling you to keep the call secret is a typical red flag. Listen for other signs that something is wrong. For example, suppose your name is ‘Stephen’, but the caller keeps calling you ‘Steve’, something that he has never done before.

3. Resist pressure for urgency. Slow things down. Scam callers almost always stress the need for immediate action on your part. No legitimate organization demands money within hours. Be suspicious of threats, stating or implying that something bad will happen if you don’t send them money immediately. You need to verify what’s going on first.
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