It will be interesting to see what happens at the state levels. This is where I always get screwed. Between property and state income, I pay far more for that than federal. Don't get me wrong - I would love for fed to go bye-bye, but I can also see the states trying to make a grab (cough, California) with some lame excuse.
Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn did an extended breakdown of Bernie! which was very interesting. You can argue he is a sellout, but that's not quite right. From the podcast:
Walter Kirn: Well, at a superficial level, that might have to do with belief in the party, but at a fundamental level, it has to do with one of the flaws in human software that goes back to the ancient times. And that’s this. We want nothing more than acceptance by those who’ve rejected us. That’s why the pretty girl at the prom doesn’t accept the proposal from the guy who carries her books and so on and is always telling her how pretty she is.
Matt Taibbi: No, it’s the guy who’s a jerk.
Walter Kirn: Yeah. It’s the guy who’s the jerk, who nags her, who ignores her.... We’re fatally attracted to redemption with those who have criticized and hurt us in the past. And what I see in Bernie is a little boy, frankly, who’s got very gray hair and yet is just like me and you in the sense that those who ignored him and those who punished him are going to give him the chance now to say, I told you so. Because they have a very tactical reason to do so.
Matt Taibbi: Right.
Walter Kirn: They need to rehabilitate him because right now, every single one of their demagogues is in disgrace or so stupid like Jasmine Crockett, that they can’t command more than three news cycles in a row until America’s sick of them. Gavin Newsom looks like somebody from a band who’s trying to still resemble using every trick of hair color and makeup. The guy who had the hit singles. AOC, she just doesn’t wear well, she kicks around. She doesn’t seem serious.
Matt Taibbi: No. It’s like nails in a blackboard.
Walter Kirn: Yeah. Yeah. Their old hands like Chuck Schumer and Schiff, the old foxes, the old fixers are of a politics that America is utterly over. And so Bernie, will you come back? Will you play a solo? You were right all along.
They go on to talk about how happy he is.
It is Garden Party but Bernie doesn't have the guts of Ricky Nelson.
Look into Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. He was on Tucker not too long ago and approaches cancer as an immune system issue. Thinks outside the box of the traditional paradigm of oncology and understands the issues of dogma that influence much of modern medicine.
https://immunitybio.com/founders-vision/
🙏
I had a good friend who had ALS. He was diagnosed in 2008 and passed in 2011. Up until the very end, he used something called EyeGaze - he even wrote a blog up until about a month before his passing. I am sure the technology has improved.
Walter Kirn said this to Matt Taibbi in their podcast last week when addressing this very issue. "Why are you focused on old stuff? Well, I’ll tell you, for the same reason then, when I want to pull a tree out of my yard, I don’t pull the top branch. I pull the root."
What would be interesting would be to take another class from the same school - day the class of 1970 - who had both a 40 and 50 year reunion before CV and compare. Don't know how you could come across that info unless the school has records of who organized the reunions for 2010 and 2015
There is an uptick in deaths in the 60s, but these numbers seem awfully high.
Somewhat on-topic: I was listening to a hospice nurse share stories. (IIRC, it was about the difference between older and younger people as they approach death). She had one patient who was at the end. He wasn't particularly religious and, on the younger side, so he was having a harder time of it. She said her goodbyes and was in iher car, when she very clearly heard this guy's voice in her head telling her he didn't know how beautiful it was going to be. She has to pull over because she got so emotional. Sure enough, she got the call that the guy had just passed.
We have the ability. We just need to listen to it.
Overview of 2024 finances - PDF of full report in the link.
https://finance.harvard.edu/financial-overview
Of note:
Total assets, $76 billion. Net assets, $64 billion. Endowment, $53.2 billion.
(Keep in mind, the endowment grows tax-free, and donations to it are also tax-free.)
Allocations: 39% is in private equity and 32% in hedge funds. Over 70% in financial vehicles to which the average person does not have access.
But they are a 501(c)3. A non-profit with an investment team that earns multi millions that just happens to generate multi billions every year (yet underperformed the S&P index last year).
With student loans, it's a giant taxpayer subsidized hedge fund - that's tax free to them. Harvard will say "it's for the greater good," but is it? If this entity were a person, a corporation, hell, even a trust - that entity would have to pay taxes. Harvard takes, but does not give back.