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 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. 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

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.’

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

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

There are free USB charging stations everywhere now. You can find them at nearly every airport and hotel. They are in thousands of restaurants, coffee shops, shopping centers, and public libraries. Don’t use them! Crooks have figured out how to infect cell phones and computers with malware and steal your data through USB charging stations. It is known as ‘juice jacking.’ How many charging stations are infected? No one knows. All we know for sure is that it is going on and is becoming more common. However, there is a safe way to recharge your device while you are away from home. Take a USB wall charger and plug it into an electrical outlet. It doesn’t appear that crooks have figured out how to infect cell phones or computers through electrical outlets, at least not yet. Most charging stations have electric outlets nearby. Keep a wall charger in your luggage while you are traveling along with your own charging cable. Criminals intentionally leave infected cables and wall chargers plugged in at charging stations and give them away as promotional gifts.

2 WIDELY BELIEVED MYTHS FROM HOLLYWOOD.

Myth #1: THE IRISH WERE ROOTING FOR HITLER IN WORLD WAR 2. I recently saw the movie ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ on TV. In this big-budget movie, an Irishman goes to England to help German commandos who are there to try to assassinate Winston Churchill. The Irishman is not risking his life for money but out of a hatred of England. Another movie on TV that same week was ‘The Man Who Never Was’. This movie takes place in England in 1943 and is based on a true story. In this movie, an Irishman goes to England to spy for the Germans. At the beginning of the movie, the Irishman lets the audience know that he too is doing this because he hates the English. At the end of the movie, just as he is getting ready to send a message to Berlin that he thinks will help Hitler win the war, he looks at his radio transmitter and makes the sign of the cross. This is to let the audience know that he is working for Hitler not only because he hates England, but also because he is Catholic. There are other movies and TV shows with this same theme.

As I said, this is a myth. Although Ireland was neutral during World War 2, the country was always pro-Allied. While Ireland had very contentious politics at the time, all political factions in Ireland were deeply committed to democratic government, and they understood that Hitler was a threat to democracy everywhere. Plus, Hitler did things during the war that enraged people in Ireland. In 1941, hundreds of German bombers dropped bombs on Belfast in Northern Ireland, killing large numbers of people, setting the city on fire, and damaging or destroying over 30,000 homes. Eamon de Valera, the Republic of Ireland’s head of state, delivered a radio address after the bombing titled: “They are our people.” It reflected the shock and anger of the country.

The Irish government helped both Britain and the United States throughout the war, although there wasn’t a lot they could do. Today, Ireland is one of Europe’s wealthiest countries, but in the 1930s and 1940s, the Republic of Ireland was very poor. The country had a tiny army. They had no navy, no air force, and no air defense. They didn’t even have one military airplane. Not one. Although the government of Ireland discouraged its citizens from participating in the war, over 50,000 Irishmen enlisted in the British army and navy during World War 2. They served in every theater of the war. I know of only 2 Irishmen who joined the German army. (How they came to join the German army is a long story. I think they were shanghaied.) In addition, over 100,000 Irish men and women volunteered to work in British war industries. Many of them were killed by German bombardment.

In many small ways, the Irish government made it clear that they wanted Britain to win the war. For example, when German Luftwaffe pilots crashed in Ireland or when German sailors were rescued by Irish ships at sea, the Irish government put them in internment camps and kept them locked up there until the war was over. On the other hand, when RAF or American pilots crashed in Ireland or when British or American sailors were rescued at sea, the Irish government drove them to Northern Ireland. If you want to learn more about how the Irish government helped the Allies, look up ‘The Donegal Corridor” or “Irish D-Day Weather Stations” on Google.

I have never seen a World War 2 movie in which the Irish were helping the Allies. They are always working for Hitler. I am surprised that Irish-American politicians don’t complain about this nasty myth.

Myth #2: PEOPLE WERE STILL DEBATING WHETHER THE EARTH IS ROUND OR FLAT IN THE MIDDLE AGES. ‘A Man for All Seasons’ is a wonderful movie. It swept the Academy Awards in 1966. The movie is about Thomas More, Henry VIII’s chancellor. It takes place in the 15th Century. In this movie, Thomas More says that people were debating whether the Earth is round or flat, and he wasn’t sure which side was right. That’s ridiculous. While illiterate peasants may have believed that the Earth is flat, educated people everywhere knew the Earth is round. Christopher Columbus was not trying to prove the Earth is round and neither was Magellan, although that is mentioned in many movies as well. The reason why you can see farther from the top of a watchtower or a ship’s mast than you can from the ground is because the Earth is round, and people have known that for thousands of years. Around 250 B.C., a Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth. His calculations were remarkably accurate. He was off by less than 1%.

About ‘The Four Corners of the Earth.’ This expression can be found in numerous places in both the Old Testament and the New Testament; however, this doesn’t mean that the people who wrote the Bible believed that the Earth actually has 4 corners. The ‘four corners of the Earth’ is a figure of speech, one that we still use today. It means ‘from all over the world’ or ‘from remote places’. I sometimes see people on TV who identify themselves as ‘religious conservatives’ who don’t seem to know what a figure of speech is or that the Bible is full of them. Perhaps the best-known Bible metaphor is: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” It was written by King David, who undoubtedly knew that he wasn’t literally a sheep.

The Flat Earth Society. Many years ago, I got an application for an apartment from a U.C. Berkeley physics student. He was a member of the Flat Earth Society.  At first, I thought this organization was a joke, but then I went to their website and realized that it is definitely not a joke. These people believe that the Earth looks like the map in the United Nations flag. See below. They have dozens, maybe hundreds, of papers and articles ‘proving’ that the Earth is flat as a pancake. There were 2 articles on the website that were written by the applicant for my apartment. They included math and geometry that was way over my head. After this guy left, I wondered – How could someone who believes that the Earth is flat get into Berkeley’s physics department?

MINT NEWMAN-O’S REPLACES MINT OREOS.
Dark chocolate and mint is a great combination. I have been making chocolate-covered mint Oreos for a long time, but I have switched to mint Newman-O’s. The only difference most people notice between them is the color of the filling. Mint Oreos have a green filling, but mint Newman O’s have a white filling. The first thing I noticed when comparing the ingredients of these products is that mint Oreos lists sugar first and flour second, whereas mint Newman-O’s lists flour first, and sugar second. Also, Newman-O’s don’t contain some problematic ingredients that are in Oreos, like corn syrup and artificial food coloring, which explains their green filling. Mint Newman-O’s definitely seem to be a healthier product.

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

WHO WAS AMERICA’S WORST PRESIDENT?

We have had quite a few bad presidents. There will never be an agreement among historians as to which one was the worst, but my choice for worst U.S. president has always been Warren G. Harding.

Incompetency. First of all, Harding was incompetent. He knew it and said so frequently. While he was running for president. Harding said: “I am a man with limited talents from a small town and should not be president.” That isn’t the sort of thing that a candidate for president normally says at a campaign rally. After becoming president, Harding said: “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.” At press conferences, Harding told reporters that he did not understand how the federal government worked. When he was asked a question about the income tax, President Harding answered: “I don’t know what to do or where to turn in this taxation matter. Somewhere, there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it all out in my mind. But I don’t know where that book is, and maybe I couldn’t read it if I found it.” Strangely, the more often that Harding said that he was incompetent, the more popular he became. People thought Harding was just being modest.

How Did Harding Get the Nomination?  If Harding was so incompetent, how did he get elected? Most Republicans assumed that their candidate in 1920 would be former president Theodore Roosevelt, but he died suddenly in 1919, and none of the other potential candidates had enough support to get the nomination. The convention was deadlocked. They needed a dark horse candidate, and Harding seemed like a safe choice. His speeches were inoffensive and vague. In 1920, the most controversial issue was whether the U.S. should join the League of Nations. In his speeches on this subject, Harding gave a list of reasons for joining the League and a list of reasons for not joining the League. Harding left people who supported joining the League feeling that he also supported it, and he left people who opposed joining the League feeling that he also opposed it.

Teapot Dome Scandal. Warren Harding was not only incompetent, but he was also corrupt, and he filled his administration with other corrupt politicians. A number of Harding’s appointees were caught taking bribes from oil companies in a scandal known as Teapot Dome. The scandal was exposed in 1921 and by 1923, the Congressional bribery investigation had led to Harding himself. That summer, Harding left Washington for a long trip out West, ostensibly for his health. A few weeks later, President Harding checked into the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. That night, Warren Harding died suddenly in his hotel room. There was no agreement among his doctors as to what was the cause of death. Some people suspected that Harding had been poisoned. He was only 57 years old. Florence Harding, President Harding’s widow, refused to allow an autopsy to be performed. She had the president’s body embalmed one hour after he died, so we will never know what he died from.

Palace Hotel. In addition to President Harding, several other famous people have died in the Palace Hotel’s presidential suite, including King Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii. I would like to see the inside of this suite, but you have to rent it for a minimum of one night to see it, and it rents for $7,000 to $10,000 a night. Whenever I walk past the hotel, I look at the window of the presidential suite. It’s Room 8064 and faces Market Street.

Prohibition. Warren Harding was a heavy drinker and kept a well-stocked bar at the White House. Prohibition went into effect in 1920, the same year Harding was elected president. Although Harding had run for president as a strong supporter of Prohibition, while he was president, Harding had Prohibition agents bring truckloads of confiscated top-quality liquor to the White House for his ‘examination.’ When Harding’s friends came to visit him at the White House, he gave them liquor to take home for their own ‘examination.’

Poker. Warren Harding was a compulsive gambler and hosted frequent poker games at the White House. One of the people President Harding played poker with was Louise Cromwell Brooks, a Washington socialite. She later married General Douglas MacArthur. At her elegant dinner parties, Miss Brooks often served food to her guests on White House dinnerware. When she was asked how she got the dinnerware, Miss Brooks candidly told people that she won it in a poker game with President Harding. Below is a picture of one of the plates. They sometimes pop up for sale on eBay. Other people who played poker with President Harding told similar stories. After his death, the White House staff started keeping an inventory of White House property, which they still do. It is illegal, of course, for presidents to gamble away White House property. Warren Harding was always popular, but most historians rate him as one of our worst presidents.

HEALTHIER STUFF IN MY CHOCOLATE ROOM.
I am making some changes in my chocolate room. A lot of people have asked for healthier products; products that contain less sugar and that are made with healthier ingredients. This is something that I have been thinking about for a long time. To begin with, I have stopped making chocolate-bottomed Rice Krispie Treats. I’ve had them in my chocolate room for a long time. A lot of people won’t eat them because they contain a number of unhealthy ingredients, including pork by-products. Kellogg’s Rice Krispie Treats are made with marshmallows, and the marshmallows are made with gelatin extracted from pigs. (That’s on Kellogg’s website.) I am not going to tell you what parts of pigs are used to make marshmallows. You might be happier not knowing, but you can find out through an internet search if you want to know. I have replaced the Rice Krispie Treats with chocolate covered Rice Chex. Rice Chex is gluten-free, lactose-free, vegan, and has very little sugar in it. The ingredients list is short and understandable. Even better, chocolate covered Rice Chex is a lot tastier than Rice Krispie Treats. I was surprised at how good it is! Other changes are coming.

THE DESPERATION OF THE WORKING CLASS.
When you look at the history of countries that were taken over by demagogues, you almost always find that the people of those countries were in a state of economic desperation when the demagogues took over. The working class had reached the end of their rope. Does this explain the rise of political extremism in the U.S. today? Just consider these 2 statistics:

1. Almost half of all Americans are broke. Every year, the Federal Reserve conducts a national survey in which they ask people what they would do if they had an unexpected expense of $400. An example of an unexpected expense could be something like a car that stops working and that needs a $400 repair. It could be any expense that is unplanned but that needs immediate attention. 32% said they could not pay an unexpected $400 expense with cash or from savings. An additional 14% said they would be able to pay such an expense, but only by selling something they own or by borrowing the money. That means that nearly half of all Americans have virtually no savings.

2. Half of all the new stores opening in the United States this year will be dollar stores. Half of all the new stores that opened in 2022 and 2021 were also dollar stores. A lot of people find this hard to believe, but it’s true. 1 in 3 new stores opening up in the U.S. in 2023 will be Dollar General stores. Dollar Tree, Five Below, and Family Dollar make up the rest. The rise of dollar stores mirrors the decline of the middle class in America. These stores pay low wages and have little, if any, fresh food. Most of the food they do sell is highly processed and unhealthy, and dollar stores quickly drive local stores out of business in poor neighborhoods as soon as they move in.

History has shown that when the working class of a country becomes economically desperate, they turn to politicians who appeal to people’s fears and passions and offer simple solutions to complex problems. Would Hitler have come to power in Germany if the people weren’t desperate? The same was true when Mussolini seized power in Italy and when Lenin took over Russia. I knew a woman who lived in Germany at the time Hitler came to power. I asked her why so many Germans supported him. Hitler made no secret of what he intended to do. She said that the unemployment rate in Germany at the time was 35%. Her father hadn’t worked in years. Her mother sold her wedding ring and her winter coat to buy food. They thought things couldn’t get any worse. Unfortunately, history has shown that when people are thinking that way, things usually do get worse.

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

There has always been a lot of hypocrisy in the United States about racism. One of my favorite stories about this is the Pocahontas Exception. It’s a great story, but few people have ever heard it.

Who Was Pocahontas? Everyone has heard of Pocahontas, but most people don’t realize that she was a real and historically important person. She wasn’t just a cartoon character in a Disney movie or a nickname that Donald Trump uses to taunt Elizabeth Warren. Pocahontas was born in 1596 in Virginia. She was the daughter of an important Indian chief. When the first English settlement was established in Virginia, Pocahontas quickly learned to speak and read English. In 1614, she married John Rolfe, one of the English colonists. They had only one great grandchild, a man named John Bolling, but he had a lot of children, and they had a lot of children. Today, there are tens of thousands of living descendants of John Bolling, and therefore, Pocahontas.

The ‘One Drop’ Rule. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation laws were constitutional. This led to many states (and not just in the South) to pass laws defining who was white and who wasn’t. That was important, because in many places, the best stuff was reserved for white people only. Only white people could attend many state universities, eat at restaurants, stay in hotels, go into theaters, be admitted into hospitals, drink from water fountains, get government jobs, etc. Nearly all of these race laws were based on the ‘one drop’ rule. The ‘one drop’ rule said that a person was white if all his ancestors were white. That meant that if even one of a person’s ancestors was not white, then he wasn’t white.

Virginia. Virginia was one of the last Southern states to pass a law defining a white person. Many people in the state legislature wanted to pass a race law based on the ‘one drop’ rule, but they had a problem, and the problem was Pocahontas. Pocahontas was not white. Nobody disputed that. While most white Southerners with an ancestor who wasn’t white tried to hide that fact, Pocahontas’ descendants were different. By and large, they were proud of the fact that they were descendants of Pocahontas, and Pocahontas had many famous descendants, including Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush, Martha Washington’s first husband, and the wife of Robert E. Lee. Thomas Jefferson’s older sister Mary Jefferson married John Bolling and had 10 children with him. Many politically powerful people in the Virginia state legislature at the time they were writing their race law were also descendants of Pocahontas. That included Harry Byrd, who later became governor of Virginia and was the father of U.S. Senator Harry Byrd, Jr. They were both overt racists, staunch segregationists, and white separatists. I have never understood people like that, people who supported white supremacy even though they had non-white ancestors themselves.

Woodrow Wilson. One of the people who was closely watching the race law debate in Virginia was President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was a white supremist, and he was the last president to publicly admit it. His wife felt the same way. They were both Virginians. President Wilson was not a descendant of Pocahontas, but his wife was. Her name was Edith Bolling Wilson. (Notice her middle name.) President Wilson let Virginia state legislators know that he was carefully monitoring the ‘Pocahontas problem.’ So, how was Virginia going to pass a race law? How could they pass a law that said that the wife of the president and many other members of Virginia’s ‘first families’ were not white? It took them years to figure this out.

The Pocahontas Exception. Finally, the Virginia legislature passed a race law in the early 1920s. It included the ‘one drop’ rule but with an exception, the Pocahontas Exception, which was designed to give legal cover to all the living descendents of Pocahontas. Without going into the details, essentially what the Pocahontas Exception meant was that a person was white if all of that person’s ancestors were white unless one of those ancestors was Pocahontas, in which case, it didn’t count. So, under Virginia law, if all your ancestors were white except for one great grandmother, who was an Indian, then you weren’t white; but if all of your ancestors were white except for Pocahontas, then you were white. Think about the hypocrisy of this law. The Pocahontas Exception was enforced and remained the law in Virginia until 1967, when the Supreme Court reversed the Plessy v. Ferguson decision.

GONE WITH THE WIND.

Have you ever seen ‘Gone With the Wind?’ It’s a great movie, one of the best ever made. This movie is about the lives of wealthy slave-owning aristocrats in Georgia during and after the Civil War. When I was a kid, I believed that this movie accurately depicted what slavery was like. If you haven’t seen the movie, in ‘Gone With the Wind’, all the slaves are content with their lives. None of them want to be free. Violence is never used against them. When the Civil War comes, none of the slaves care which side wins. Their loyalties are to their owners. Once the war is over and they are free, none of the former slaves are glad the north won the war. They were happier and better off when they were slaves. In ‘Gone With the Wind’, the Ku Klux Klan is depicted as a secret organization of chivalrous gentlemen who restored law-and-order in the South after the war was over. Well, I believed this version of history when I was a kid partially because I was a kid and because this is the way slavery and the Civil War were always portrayed in movies and TV shows. It was only when I was in high school that I figured out that this version of history is a myth, a myth that white Americans wanted to believe was true. Sadly, I hear many politicians and commentators on TV today who apparently still believe the ‘Gone With the Wind’ version of history.

HAMPTON MANSION.
If you would like to see a great example of what the lives of wealthy slave owners and their slaves were like and you are near my hometown of Baltimore, visit the Hampton Mansion. At the time it was built in 1790, the Hampton Mansion was the biggest private home in America. The Hampton Mansion is so large that you could fit both Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, plus Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home, inside with room to spare. Plus, it is one of the few big plantation houses of that era where the original slave quarters are still there. Many of the rooms in the mansion still have their original furniture. Admission and the tour are free, but reservations are required.

Prussian Blue. One of things that impressed me about the mansion is that the dining room is painted in Prussian blue. Back in those days, Prussian blue paint was made by grinding up lapis lazuli, a blue semi-precious stone, and mixing it in the paint. Painting a room Prussian blue was a way to show off your wealth. Lapis lazuli pigment, also known as ultramarine, was more expensive than its weight in gold. The Prussian blue dining room illustrates just how profitable slavery was (but just for the slave owners, not the slaves.)
I would appreciate your comments. If you want to comment on any article in this newsletter, you can do so at: Mark Tarses Newsletter

I was recently at a Trader Joe’s store. They were giving away crackers covered with blue cheese. The woman I was with picked up 2 of them. She handed me one. I declined and said: “I don’t like blue cheese.” She said: “Neither do I, but it’s free!”, and she ate both of them. I know a number of people like this. You probably do too.

VIDEO TAPES. The thing that I see most often in ‘free boxes’ on the sidewalks here in Berkeley are video tapes. No matter how many video tapes are in a ‘free box’, they are always gone within a few hours. Why do people take video tapes? Very few people own video tape players, and video tape players are no longer sold in stores. Also, video tapes deteriorate with time. If you have video tapes made in the 1990s, the odds are that some of the footage is already distorted. Most people who take old video tapes take them just because they are free.

URBAN ORE. What should you do with old video tapes? Most charity thrift shops won’t accept video tapes anymore as donations. Urban Ore here in Berkeley does accept video tapes as donations, providing they are in good condition and are in their original boxes. They have hundreds of video tapes for sale at Urban Ore, but who buys them? It turns out that there are people who make a living buying and selling old video tapes. Most video tapes are worthless, but a few of them are worth serious money. A factory-sealed video tape copy of ‘Top Gun’, shown below, recently sold for $8,600. A used copy of ‘Barney and Friends Practice Makes Music’ sold for $10,900. Very few copies of this video tape were made, but nevertheless, I can’t imagine why anybody would pay $10,900 for a Barney video tape. Many used Disney animated movies on video tape sell for $100 to $300 on eBay, even though millions of them were made. You might find a valuable video tape at Urban Ore, but you will need to know which ones are valuable. Urban Ore is a huge and unique store. It is worth a visit.

IRISH & JEWISH CORNED BEEF.
St. Patrick’s Day will soon be here. Come early March, every supermarket will have pictures of corned beef surrounded by shamrocks and leprechauns on the front page of their advertising circulars, and restaurants will be featuring corned beef platters on their menus.

Have you ever wondered why Irish corned beef looks and tastes exactly like the corned beef that you get in Jewish restaurants and delis? Even the spices are the same. Is this just a coincidence? No, it isn’t. In the 19th Century, large numbers of poor Irish immigrants came to the United States. About the same time, large numbers of poor Jews came to the U.S. from eastern Europe. A lot of employers in the U.S. wouldn’t hire Irish immigrants or Jews, and landlords wouldn’t rent apartments to them either. As a result, Irish and Jewish immigrants often wound up living in the same neighborhoods, and as a result of that, Irish immigrants often wound up eating at Jewish restaurants, where corned beef was a staple.

Poor people in Ireland could rarely afford beef in the 19th Century. Jews in eastern Europe did eat beef, but because they were poor, they could usually only afford the toughest and cheapest cuts. Beef brisket, from which corned beef is made, can be very tough, which is why it is cooked for hours. Like a lot of things that Americans think come from Ireland, corned beef is actually Irish-American in origin. In other words, corned beef didn’t come to America from Ireland. It came to Ireland from Irish-Americans, who in turn, got it from European Jews. The first U.S. president to serve corned beef at the White House on or just before St. Patrick’s Day was Abraham Lincoln. Now they all do it – especially in election years.

There are a lot of things that Americans think are Irish, but which are actually Irish-American. It was Irish-Americans who changed St. Patrick’s Day from a religious holiday into a public celebration of Irish culture and identity. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade held anywhere was in New York City in 1762. Throughout the 19th Century, St. Patrick’s Day parades got progressively bigger in the U.S., but the first St. Patrick’s Day parade in Ireland was held in Dublin in 1931. Most people in Ireland are aware of the fact that all of the fun stuff they do on St. Patrick’s Day comes from the U.S., like drinking green beer, singing Irish-American songs, and eating corned beef.

James Cagney. Like many other Catholic Irish-Americans who grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan, James Cagney could speak Yiddish. He could also read Yiddish. He speaks in Yiddish in several movies. Here is a clip from the movie ‘Taxi’: James Cagney Speaking Yiddish.

DON’T SAVE MONEY.

You have probably heard that saving money is a virtue. It’s in sermons. It’s in popular literature. Benjamin Franklin, Charles Dickens, and many other famous authors wrote about the virtue of saving money. Saving money used to be a virtue, but not anymore. It took me a long time to figure that out. The reason is inflation. Up until the 20th Century, inflation was not a problem. In 1900, a 1-pound loaf of bread cost 5 cents. That was about the same price that it sold for in 1800. Up until World War 1, most money was gold and silver coins or paper money that was redeemable for gold or silver. Now, our money isn’t tied to anything. The Federal Reserve can increase the money supply with just a keystroke on a computer. In 2020, it cost $7 to buy what $1 bought in 1970. In 1970, a Hershey bar sold for 10 cents. Look at ads below from the San Francisco Chronicle in 1972 for apartments for rent. Rents in Berkeley and Silicon Valley were even less than this.

Warren Buffet. Most people don’t see any connection between the kind of companies Warren Buffet invests in, but they do have something in common – the ability to raise prices along with inflation. For example, Buffet owns a lot of stock in Coca Cola. How much would the price of Coke have to go up before people stopped buying it? It’s the same with nearly all of the companies Buffet invests in.

Cryptocurrency. Warren Buffet is also right about cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is far too volatile to ever be accepted as money. It is not unusual for a cryptocurrency to quadruple in price or lose 3/4 of its value in a year. Also, no major government is going to make cryptocurrency legal tender. Legal tender is something that must be accepted as payment for debts. Cryptocurrency is also not an investment. If it was an investment, how would you determine its value?  Cryptocurrency pays no dividends or interest, it has no utility, and it is certainly not scarce. There are literally thousands of cryptocurrencies, and 2 guys in a garage can create a new one with little or no capital.

GETTING RID OF ANTS WITHOUT POISON.

The reason why you are most likely to see ants in your home when it is cold and wet outside is because ants do not like being cold and wet any more than you do. When people see ants in their homes, it is most often in the kitchen, and when people see ants in their kitchens, they usually spray them with ant poison because they don’t know what else to do. You should be very reluctant to use ant poison in your kitchen, and you shouldn’t use ant poison at all if you have small children or pets in your home. I don’t know which, if any, of the ant sprays that you find in supermarkets are safe to use. Nearly all of them are illegal for use in commercial kitchens.

However, there is a very simple way to get rid of ants in your home and without poison. Get a spray bottle. Put in a cup of regular white vinegar and a cup of water. Follow the ant trail to see where the ants are coming from and spray the trail and the source of the trail. It sometimes helps to do this with a flashlight. Once you spray the ants and their trails, the ants will not immediately die as they would if you used ant poison, but they will very quickly vanish, and they will stay away longer than they would if you used ant poison. Ants hate vinegar. Vinegar not only repels ants, more importantly, it destroys the chemical trails left by other ants. The area you spray may smell like vinegar for a short while, but that odor will fade away as the water evaporates. Vinegar and water is not just a cheapskate’s alternative to ant poison. This mixture really does work as well or better than any product you will find in a supermarket for getting rid of ants.

Mold is a common problem here in the bay area in the rainy season. Mold is not dirt. It is a living organism. To prevent or kill mold:

1. Remember that mold needs moisture. Use your clothes dryer to dry out towels, especially if you have a lot of them in a bathroom. Mold can grow quickly in wet clothes and towels.

2. Let in sunlight! Sunlight kills mold. I know people who have not opened their curtains or venetian blinds in over 20 years. They live in rooms that have never seen natural sunlight. You may know people like that too. There are many unhealthy micro-organisms that thrive in dark places. Living in a perpetually dark room is unhealthy. If you don’t believe me, ask your doctor.

3. Don’t overheat your house.

4. Let in fresh air, particularly in high humidity areas, such as the bathroom and kitchen. Keep a window ajar or use an exhaust fan, if there is one, to allow the air to circulate.

Tenant Freebie of the Month: Mold Remover. You can pick up a free bottle of mold remover from me anytime. Just ask for it. If you prefer to buy your own mold remover, make sure that the product says that it disinfects. Be sure that you are not buying soap scum remover, which is often placed next to the mold remover in stores and often comes in very similar containers. Don’t use bleach to remove mold. Bleach is much less effective in preventing mold from returning than mold remover. Bleach may also damage the walls, and your room will smell like an over-chlorinated swimming pool when you are done. That smell can hang around for a long time too.

HOT STOCK MARKET TIPS AND FORTUNE COOKIES.

My uncle, Maurice Levie, was a stockbroker for a long time. Back when he was a stockbroker, I used to ship Maurice fortune cookies 2 or 3 times a year. I printed out paper fortunes and took them to the Kar Mee fortune cookie factory in Oakland’s Chinatown. 1/3 of the fortunes said ‘BUY’, 1/3 said ‘SELL’, and 1/3 said ‘HOLD.’ After the factory put my fortunes into their cookies, I would ship the fortune cookies to Uncle Maurice in Baltimore. He put the fortune cookies in a bowl that he kept on his desk.

Maurice was a conservative investor. He was not a speculator or a day trader; however, he had clients who were. Clients often came to Maurice with questions like: “I just got a hot tip from my brother-in-law. I want to buy 10,000 shares of the Stanley Steam Car Company on margin, but I need to know – Is it going to go up this week?” When Maurice got a question like that, he would push the bowl of fortune cookies forward and tell the client to take one. The initial reaction of people when they opened one of my fortune cookies was to either laugh or look befuddled. Maurice would then tell the client that this method of predicting what a stock was going to do tomorrow or over the next few days was as good as any other. Sometimes that got a client to rethink what he was doing. When the bowl was empty, Maurice would let me know, and I would send him more fortune cookies.

I felt the same way as Maurice about this. The fortune cookie method of predicting what a stock or the stock market is going to do tomorrow is as good as any other. The Kar Mee fortune cookie factory is now out of business, but you can still get custom-made fortune cookies at the Oakland Fortune Factory or Golden Gate Fortune Cookies in San Francisco.

FTX Fortune Cookies. In 2021 and 2022, FTX paid fortune cookie makers to put fortunes into their cookies promoting the cryptocurrency exchange. On one side was the company’s logo. On the other side was an ad promoting cryptocurrency. Millions of these FTX fortune cookies were made. They were distributed to over 20,000 Chinese restaurants across the U.S. FTX is now bankrupt, and its CEO is facing criminal charges. I wonder – Did people actually buy Bitcoin because a fortune cookie told them to? I feel pretty sure that nobody bought or sold stock because of the fortune cookies they got from my Uncle Maurice.

IS THERE LEAD IN CHOCOLATE?

People are talking about an article in Consumer Reports this month stating that their tests found lead in all of the 28 chocolate brands they tested. I am sure that’s true. However, this is not news. All foods that grow in the ground absorb minerals from the soil itself. There is a long list of fruits and vegetables that contain measurable amounts of lead. In an article in Consumer Reports back in April, they stated that: “Tests done by Consumer Reports have shown that fruit juice – especially apple and grape – can contain worrisome levels of heavy metals, such as arsenic and lead.” 

The Consumer Reports article stated that their tests showed that some brands of chocolate contained far less lead than others. I wouldn’t rely on that when buying chocolate. Major chocolate makers don’t get all their cocoa beans from one place. They buy beans from many places and mix them together. The beans that went into the Hershey bars that Consumer Reports tested may have come from a different place than the beans that went into the bars that you see in your local supermarket today.

WORST MAJOR TOURIST ATTRACTION IN PENNSYLVANIA – THE LIBERTY BELL.

I hope to cover all 50 states. I have already covered Washington – the Seattle gum wall; Massachusetts – Plymouth Rock; and California – any drive-through tree. Admittedly, my list is personal and subjective. My message is this – don’t waste your time visiting these places. Although these tourist attractions are visited by millions of people; there are other, better, and more interesting things to see nearby.

The Liberty Bell is the most famous tourist attraction in Philadelphia and probably in the whole state of Pennsylvania. The Liberty Bell is the symbol of Philadelphia. It is incorporated into the logos of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams. Over 1 million people visit the Liberty Bell every year. Unfortunately, everything that people think they know about the Liberty Bell is wrong. The Liberty Bell had nothing to do with the American Revolution. The Liberty Bell did not ring out on July 4, 1776 to announce that the Declaration of Independence had been signed, although you often see that in movies and TV shows. Besides, the Declaration of Independence was signed over a period of several weeks, not on a single day. The quote on the bell “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land” is not a reference to the Declaration of Independence. The bell was made in England more than 20 years earlier.

The famous crack in the bell did not occur while the bell was ringing after the death of George Washington or Chief Justice John Marshall. No one is sure when a crack first appeared. At first, it was just a hairline crack. The crack you see today is not a natural crack but the result of a botched repair job made by incompetent repairmen. They thought they could get the bell to ring again by creating a much wider crack and then bolting the 2 sides of the bell together. It didn’t work. The bell is also not as big as it looks in photos. The bell is only about 3 feet tall. Most people visiting the Liberty Bell stay only a few minutes. There is no point waiting for the bell to ring. The bell has not rung since the 1840s.There are a lot of great things to see in Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell is not one of them. Visit the Franklin Institute instead.

MARK’S PETTY PET PEEVES.

BLISTER PACKED SCISSORS. Last month, I went to Walgreens to buy a pair of scissors. They had several brands of scissors. Unfortunately, all of them were in plastic blister packages. In order to open any of these packages, you needed a pair of scissors. I bought a pair of scissors and took them to my nephew’s house where I was able to open the package and get the scissors out by using a pair of his scissors. It is just plain stupid for manufacturers to put scissors in packages that require scissors to open the package!

TAIL-ON SHRIMP. It annoys me when a restaurant serves me a dish like garlic butter shrimp with tail-on shrimp. The only way to get the tails off is by getting your fingers covered with garlic butter. Even if you wipe the butter off your hands with your napkin, your hands will still smell like garlic and shrimp. They should use tail-off shrimp.

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