Vineyard Update: Reversal of fortune

Birds wiped out my Malbec crop. 

Skip this post if you come for the politics, not the agriculture. 

"Monday morning (bah da, bah da-day da)
It was all l hoped it would be
But Monday morning, Monday morning couldn’t guarantee
That Monday evenin’ you would still be here with me. . . .

     John Phillips, "Monday, Monday" sung by the Mamas and the Papas, 1966

My Malbec crop disappeared. It was there on Sunday, October 12. Wednesday, October 15, it was gone.

The Malbecs had done so well that at the end of August I needed to drop fruit so that the vines could better ripen the remaining fruit. This August 30 photo shows grape clusters on the ground.

Malbecs normally ripen behind Pinot Noirs. The sweetness report I had two weeks ago indicated that the Pinot Noirs were ready to harvest and that we might wait a week for the Malbecs.

We picked the Pinot Noirs on October 6. There was no bird loss at all. My Malbecs looked fine on Sunday. We were waiting for a break in the rain and an available picking crew. It turns out that that wait was a fatal mistake.

Yesterday this. Sometimes picked clean: 

Sometimes half-picked: 

The bees were going crazy with the free sugar on the grapes the birds hadn't gotten to yet:

The grapes that are left aren't worth picking. 

This third year in the vineyard was intended to be a grow-healthy-vines year not a marketable-harvest year. This harvest was going to be a bonus. I chalk this up as a valuable lesson. In the future possibly I have a window of a few days after picking the Pinot Noirs when the Malbecs are ripe and pickable, but before the birds discover the vineyard. I probably could have picked the Malbecs on Saturday had a crew been available. Or maybe, by chance, the birds would have discovered the Malbecs a week earlier and the real solution is stringing up nets to protect the Malbecs and Cabernet Sauvignons. It will take work and money, but I can do that.

We will live and learn. And try to have a happy heart. 

The first popular song that came into my teenage consciousness back in 1962 was a rock instrumental by the Surfaris. It began with a three seconds of laughter and then a drum solo. It was my first glimpse into teen culture and music as a member of that generation. The title is "Wipe Out." If you are lucky enough to have been young in 1962, you will remember it. In surfing, if you are wiped out, you laugh about it and get back onto the board and try again.

https://youtu.be/p13yZAjhU0M?si=uv6Sc7GLNsHZ0-gC

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A warning. Not a prediction

"Tiny bubbles (tiny bubbles)
In the wine (in the wine)
Make me happy (make me happy)
Make me feel fine (make me feel fine)"
     Leon Pober, popularized by singer Don Ho, "Tiny Bubbles," 1966

Things could go wrong.  

I am talking about the economy and your retirement, not Trump.

It is an enormous relief not to feel responsible for the financial and emotional well-being of my investment clients. I loved my work, but I felt a relentless sense of responsibility. Ten years ago, a week after I retired, I sat at this desk and read the financial news and realized that the weight on my shoulders was gone. I had my own money to consider, but no one else's. When one retires from Morgan Stanley, as I did, one is forbidden to give investment advice for five years, lest former clients think they are getting advice from a Morgan Stanley agent when they are not. 

I am retired, a private citizen. I am free to say that the stock market isn't cheap and that it gives me the willies.

I feel like we have been in investment crazyland twice before. One crazyland was the internet boom years of the late 1990's, culminating in March of 2000. And again in 2006-2007 period in mortgage lending when TV ads advertised 110% cash-out financing on new home purchases. 

My personal experience in the financial markets is that about every decade it all goes to hell all over again. People chase opportunity and they forget. It doesn't go to hell from a starting point of discouragement and caution. It goes to hell from a starting point where people all around you got rich, quickly and easily, buying something that seemed to have perfect logic. In the 1990s we knew that the new internet thing would change everything, so buy tech stocks. In the mid 2000s banks saw that mortgage loan packages converted high-yielding mortgages into AAA-rated supposedly risk-free bonds and that they could put generous margin in them. Quick money. 

Enthusiasm and optimism worry me.

Reading John Hussman's analysis of the risks to stock investors will give you the willies. He says the stock market is at the highest, craziest valuation in history. Higher than 1929. Higher than March 2000. He anticipates the market return over the next decade to be negative. How negative? Six percent a year compounded negative. Whew!

Notice that we are far in excess of the valuations at the beginning of the chart in 1929, and higher than the 2000 peak. Notice one more thing, that big M-shaped price line toward the right, showing the price from 1994 to 2008. I lived through that one. People who bought stocks in what turns out to be the market peak in the leadup to the year-2000 top did not get even for over 15 years. It is a long time to be under water. If one was age 30 and saving through the period, it was an opportunity. For someone in her 60s, counting on investment earnings to fund a retirement lifestyle, it was life-changing.

This scattergram of historical valuations and returns puts the current status at the bottom end of expected returns. The stock market is not cheap.

But relax. John Hussman has been worrying for a long time and he has been wrong, even as markets have gone up, notwithstanding his warnings. He is a worrywart. 

In the long run, I expect the U.S. economy, and therefore the stock market, to be OK. People adjust to circumstances. People are inventive and ambitious, and life will go on. There are lots of catalysts and tripwires for the economy but eventually things will resolve themselves. Just have patience; buy and hold and keep adding money.

The problem is that no one lives a life "in the long run."  We don't get "average." We get the hand we are dealt at that moment of our life.

The "Magnificent Seven" stocks trade at some 33 times earnings -- high -- but maybe well worth it because their growth potential is so high. Investors think these stocks are special. That is what people think at points of enthusiasm. The rest of the 493 stocks are high but not crazy-high, with a PE ratio nearer 23. Average is about 16. Stock market prices embed a lot of optimism. 

Ignore me. I suspect I am just an old fart full of the worries and cautions that arise from looking backward too much. It is easier for me to see past hazards than new opportunities, because I won't be around for much of the wonderful potential world of the next half century. 

I don't know if things will go wrong. I am not predicting. But this I know: Sometimes things go wrong. 

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Can anyone say anything at all nice about coal??

"You can't understand Pennsylvania unless you understand coal."

A Washington Post article describes a modern coal mine in Western Pennsylvania coal country.

The article is eye-opening about coal and the people who mine it. It is also a heads-up about the new Washington Post.

Coal rolls by on a conveyor belt 

I am sharing the article so it bypasses the paywall. The Washington Post adds this note to the article link: "You can't understand Pennsylvania unless you understand coal." Click here: link at Washington Post

Democrats can blow off reading this, and I expect many will. Damned if they are going to read anything that makes coal look like anything but a crime against humanity and the Earth. Democrats sneer at coal, calling it 18th-century technology in a world of high-tech renewable solar and wind. God help a Democratic politician who forgets the simple truth that coal is evil.

Democrats almost certainly cannot win the White House without winning Pennsylvania. Twice Pennsylvania's coal country voters overwhelmingly voted for Trump and tipped the state's vote to him. The consequence of Democrats not understanding coal is that America elects an authoritarian president who reverses every green energy policy achievement beloved by Democrats. 

The message of the Post story is that coal is highly automated, that it grinds out and conveys thousands of tons a day of coal from deep underground to railroad cars to power plants. The people doing this work get paid some $100,000 a year. It is a "single worker" job, a coal executive explains. A man can support his family, and the wife can stay home with the children. 

The article normalizes coal. It describes safety equipment and safety procedures. It describes the elevator that brings miners 800 feet down to the worksite as similar to the large elevators one sees in modern office towers. It describes second, third, and fourth-generation coal miners. It quotes people who are happy with their work. It describes coal as an important part of the country's energy mix now and for decades to come. 

What it does not do is treat coal as a stinking embarrassment to be held at arm's length by decent people.

I note a similarity to the Portland story, but in partisan reverse. Democrats treat the coal industry the way that people in the Fox News-MAGA-Trump bubble treat Portland. They hear nothing of Portland except "Democrat run city" burdened by antifa, riots, and misery. Even Oregon Republicans who should know better are blinded by the orthodoxy. They ignore or discount any sign of a normal city functioning normally. They would be kicked off the team if they expressed a neutral view of Portland.

My sense is that Democrats generally treat the coal industry the way that Trump and MAGA voters treat Portland.

I consider The Washington Post feature article to be neutral and descriptive -- and for that reason I consider it noteworthy. I don't believe The Post would have published this article two years ago, back before Jeff Bezos re-aligned his newspaper to become more Trump-compliant. Two years ago a coal industry article would show photographs of toothless people with blackened faces on ventilators living in unpainted dilapidated houses. This is different. The article describes the coal industry the way that people living in western Pennsylvania coal country see themselves, as people making a life producing something the world wants.

I am not trying to persuade Democratic readers to remove their rooftop solar panels and install coal furnaces in their homes. I do think that Democrats need to have a better understanding of how people in red areas understand the world. A neutral article on coal country will feel weird to Democratic readers. They may resist every sentence, but it is a worthy endeavor in political empathy.

Republicans in my area complain bitterly about how Oregon has a Democratic supermajority and that Republican candidates cannot win statewide offices. How unfair! They respond by spending more money on campaign ads. They need to wise up to the fact that leaders in their party lie about Portland and express open contempt for it. Metropolitan Portland has about half the state's voters. There should be no surprise that they reject Republican candidates by four-to-one margins.

Democrats, for their own part, need to wise up, too, about Pennsylvania. Or not, and keep losing elections.

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Eyewitness: The Portland "War Zone"

"It's anarchy out there."

"A burning hellhole."

"The radical left's reign of terror."

"War-ravaged. On fire. Bombed-out."

President Trump's description of Portland matters.

It is the factual basis to justify a major constitutional showdown. Maybe all that matters is a president's claim of his state of mind. If a president says there is an emergency the courts may feel required to give deference to his determination. The executive is presumed to operate in good faith, even if he does not. 

Is pretext enough? Can a misinformed opinion or a bald-faced lie be the basis for replacing state authority with federal authority? If so, it allows a profound change in our federal system. Do facts on the ground matter at all? They mattered to a Trump-appointed district court judge. She said there was no insurrection, but she may be overruled on appeal to a Supreme Court that is inclined to give this president whatever latitude he wants.

There is also the court of public opinion. Trump may appear dishonest and silly claiming "insurrection" in the face of protesters costumed as dancing frogs and unicorns. If those troops come across as thugs it may persuade a few more voters that Trump is an out-of-control tyrant.

Stine, with finishers medal

Kevin Stine traveled to Portland to run in the Portland Marathon. While there he did workout runs from his hotel to the ICE facility. He sent me a report. Stine is a Navy veteran. He has been a member of the Medford City Council for over 10 years. He is a substitute teacher in the public schools and is currently earning his masters degree in education at Southern Oregon University. If incumbent State Senator Jeff Golden chooses not to run for re-election, I expect Stine to file for election to succeed him.

Guest Post by Kevin Stine

I was on site at the most famous Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in the United States, the one located in Portland, Oregon. I was in the city for a multi-day conference, and took the opportunity to go to the ICE building on October 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

Locals were posting up wholesome videos across Portland of the supposedly "war-ravaged" city. Even daytime photos of the ICE building showed few people protesting, and definitely not anything on fire, or chaos. A popular response to these images was that if you go at night, then you'll see how crazy it is out there. Great. I'm a night owl and I run every day. The ICE building was a nice 1.5 miles away from the hotel, a perfect distance for a daily down-and-back.

I didn't know what to expect.

What I saw when I first got there was --  not much. On Wednesday night around 8:30. I saw about 30 people at the ICE building. Are these people trying to burn down the ICE building? No. Are they blocking traffic? No. Does it seem the least bit dangerous? Also, no. What I see is a bunch of people like me, just standing around looking.

I take photos. There is graffiti and a large "Abolish ICE" banner. The banner was gone when I came back on Thursday. I saw a memorial with flowers that says "Remember the Taken." Every night I was there, a few people with megaphones were randomly shouting at the ICE personnel who were standing on the roof of the building. It's a one-sided conversation.

There are counter-protesters as well. A guy with a Charlie Kirk "Freedom" shirt and a MAGA hat was live-streaming the first two nights I was there. He was loud and was baiting others to engage with him. In the digital age this is like a sport. If the man were to be attacked in some way, he becomes an instant celebrity. For the protest side, the guy in the chicken suit was there every night. I briefly spoke with a friendly woman in a Stitch costume. She said she is friends with the guy in the chicken suit.

Thursday and Friday are mostly the same, although the Friday crowd was bigger. I posted a video of the three nights on YouTube. https://youtu.be/hoc2VXbhujU

There are news crews live-streaming. Some set up tripods with their phone attached and recording, and just left them there unattended while they walked around. I'm not saying that nothing noteworthy is ever happening, but this isn't urban mayhem. Video cameras get a few good clips, like the guy who allegedly put paint on the building and was caught, and then was videoed having some sort of breakdown. This video action is like crack for conservative news, and it keeps the story humming along. 

Finally, on Friday, I saw Portland police near the building. Two sets of police were stationed in locations outside of where the protesters were, but visible and prepared. Nobody was bothering them. Many of the comments from Trump and his supporters are about the Portland police refusing to do anything. It's a touchy subject because there aren't major crimes occurring, and over-policing matters like violating a noise ordinance by using a megaphone might make the situation worse. I don't believe giving a bunch of municipal code violation tickets would improve the situation.

The claims of Trump and others about a war-zone Portland are false. I see no reason for troops. 

My exploration of Portland included the 26.2 miles of the Portland Marathon on Sunday. I was able to escape the chaos, death, and destruction, but that hill at Mile 22 was murder.

 

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Easy Sunday: The Portland Marathon.

Portland hosted a marathon last weekend, same as ever.

Last weekend's marathon steered runners through downtown and around the neighborhoods of Portland. Police were available to block the streets for the runners. Highschool bands and street musicians played at intervals along the 26.2 miles. Aid stations supplied water and banana segments. Bystanders lined the streets shouting encouragement. Children slapped "high-five" to runners as they passed by.

Another good marathon on a good October day.

A marathon stresses a city's capacity to keep order because it consumes police resources to block off streets, redirect traffic,  and control crowds for several hours over a 26.2-mile route. Only a city with spare capacity can pull this off. 

The Portland Marathon holds a special place in my heart. It was the first of 10 marathons that I ran, starting when I turned 54 years old, 22 years ago. I was slow in that race. It took me four hours, 37 minutes to finish. Slow. And then I got slower as I aged and found other marathons to run. In those races I was toward the back of the pack, slogging away, sore and tired. We slowpokes tied up streets for five hours and more.

It is a great way to see a city, and I saw some wonderful ones as I did "marathon tourism" for a decade. I combined training for a marathon with the payoff of a run in a world class city: Paris, Athens, Rome, Barcelona, Istanbul, Hong Kong, and others. 

Medford City Council member Kevin Stine reminded me of the Portland Marathon. He sent me a report on Portland for a guest post, which I will publish tomorrow. He explained that he was in Portland to run that marathon. He finished in three hours and 23 minutes.

Kevin Stine

Sometimes the most important things happening are the hardest things to notice, and that is what does not happen. What did not happen was that Portland needed to cancel the marathon because the police are overwhelmed dealing with the chaos and mayhem caused by armies of antifa arsonists and murderers. Things are OK in Portland. Portland is managing just fine without federal troops.

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Guest Post: The hypocrisy of Christian Nationalism

     "They want to tear down crosses where they can, and cover them up with social justice flags. But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you.”
          Donald Trump, speaking to the Association of Religious Broadcasters, February 2024

Christians got themselves a winner. A fighter. A kick-ass, look-out-for-number-one Golden Boy.

It turns out that the U.S. president that Christians admire isn't Jimmy Carter. It's Donald Trump.  This Kingdom of Heaven, love-your-neighbor, self-sacrificing, help-the-poor stuff Jesus preached goes against human nature. Trump understands human nature. Triumph is gratifying; social justice is hard. Trump leads a team and it carries the Christian flag. The team is running up the score.

Bruce Van Zee reflects that the Christianity of his youth has been hijacked. Christians are in thrall to a golden calf idol.

"I show you a God of gold!" The Golden Calf scene in the movie The Ten Commandments, 1956

Van Zee is a retired physician living in Medford, Oregon. I subscribe to his excellent Substack blog. He writes two or three times a week. This article appeared there earlier this week: https://bvzcvz.substack.com 

Guest Post by Bruce Van Zee

A little personal history. I was raised in a strongly conservative protestant home. My father was a Presbyterian minister, and we had a strong background in Christianity and Christian ethics. Both my parents were kind, loving persons – generous and caring, honest and responsible. I feel fortunate to this day to have had them as parents. And I would like to think that I embody and practice the values they taught me in my daily life.

But I find it profoundly unsettling to see the behavior and apparent values of Christian Nationalists and MAGA types that claim to be Christian displayed in ways counter to the values and ethics I was taught.

The first mind-boggling leap is that so many of them accept Donald J. Trump as a leader who reflects their values. Some of them actually believe that Trump was “sent by God”. My observation is that Trump is about as far away from Christian ethics as I can imagine. Instead of humility, he demonstrates unbridled narcissism. Instead of love, he exudes hate. Instead of helping the disabled, underprivileged, and poor, he demonizes them. Instead of truth, he tells countless lies. Instead of responsibility and accountability, he blames others and never admits a mistake or apologizes. Instead of serving the nation, he serves himself. Instead of opposing despotic, authoritarian regimes, he emulates them.

And then there is the matter of Scripture:

Luke 10:30-37 “Jesus had compassion for a man who was robbed, beaten, and left half dead.” (Parable of the Good Samaritan). Compassion for other ethnicities and one’s fellow man.

Ephesians 4:32 “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you“ A far cry from Trump’s, “I hate my enemies.”

Corinthians 13:4 “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude”. Needs no further explanation.

Matthew 25:35 “For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Contrasts strikingly from MAGA’s demonization of immigrants.

John 13:14 “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet” Christ teaching humility.

Matthew 19:24 “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Trump and MAGA’s adoration of wealth runs contrary to this and other scripture.

We could go beyond Christian Ethics and values to other religions. Almost all the world’s religions have something analogous to the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The universality of this ethic runs counter to almost everything Trump and MAGA do.

I don’t know about you, but I think the evidence is pretty damning.

 

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Senator Ron Wyden tries to retain Congress' power over trade and taxes.

Trump claimed the power to set tariffs. He had a pretext: We have an "emergency."

Senator Ron Wyden (D. OR) and Senator Rand Paul (R. KY) are trying to put a resolution on the Senate floor that would end the pretext.

Wyden, in Medford for meetings with constituents, May, 2025

This is Senator Wyden's second try at stopping Trump's power grab. Six months ago he introduced a motion that would have terminated the national emergency cited by President Trump to justify taking over the tariff authority. It failed 49-49. Such a motion can be made only every six months. He is trying again.

The Resolution is short and simple. It says Trump's so-called emergency is terminated:

The motion needs Republican votes to win a majority. Rand Paul has both an ideological and practical reason to want to reclaim Congress' tariff authority. He is a libertarian-style Republican, not a big government populist Republican of the re-made GOP. This is the schism in the GOP that I described in yesterday's post about The Wall Street Journal's report on Portland. The small-government, anti-regulation WSJ sided with Portland, not the Department of Homeland Security, when it described a generally peaceful city being provoked by ICE.

Kentucky is especially vulnerable to the reciprocal tariffs that other countries imposed on the U.S. in response to Trump's tariffs. Alcohol is prominently labeled by place of origin. Presumably, Kentucky bourbon is different from, and better than, bourbon produced in a factory in New Jersey or Rotterdam, so it is sold as being from Kentucky.  

Wyden made two arguments: the practical one that Trump's tariffs were hurting Americans and the Constitutional one that tariffs and taxes are Congress's prerogative to set. He said:

Trump is driving our economy into a recession, killing farming and ranching jobs and bankrupting small businesses with his reckless global tariffs. Every Senator who values Americans’ jobs and economic prosperity should join our bipartisan legislation to eliminate these poisonous tariffs. No matter who is president, Senators should stand up for Congress’s Constitutional role as final word on trade.

Wyden is full-throated in his criticism of the tariffs. So are the other Democrats who signed up as sponsors. Paul was careful here. He has a delicate political problem, since Trump remains popular in Kentucky, and Trump is watching Paul for signs of apostasy. He needs to acknowledge that Trump is right about something before reversing direction and criticizing Trump's  power grab. Here is how he does it:

I am alarmed by the Brazilian government’s persecution of a former president and authoritarian repression of freedom of speech, but that has no bearing on the constitutional limits of our own executive. The President of the United States does not have the authority under IEEPA to unilaterally impose tariffs. Trade policy belongs to Congress, not the White House.

Paul is taking Trump's side on the Bolsonaro issue, calling it a "persecution" before reversing course with the "but." Paul uses a subordinate clause to show Trump and his Kentucky constituents that he hasn't become a RINO. (See, Mr. President, I am really on the team! Don't be mad at me! If you support a coup d' état in Brazil, then so do I!) Like Trump on January 6, 2021, defeated Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro incited a mob to take over his country's capitol to prevent installation of the election winner. Tariffs on Brazil are a loyalty test for Republicans, proving that you support Trump, even when he supports the leader of a coup d'état against a democratic election. Rand passed the test.

The amicus brief that my attorney, Thad Guyer, prepared for me in the case in front of the Federal District of the U.S. Court of Appeals focused on the constitutional issue. Whether the tariffs are the right or wrong amount is nearly irrelevant to me and our brief. The issue is presidential over-reach. Congress was being steamrolled. Our form of government is at stake. Maybe the Supreme Court, recognizing the dangerous precedent it sets for itself the next time a Democrat becomes president, will limit this president's ability to declare an emergency on a pretext.

But the best way for Congress to reclaim its power is to do it itself because they insist on staying relevant. They got elected to do a job and setting taxes and spending are central duties of that job. They aren't a rubber stamp marked, "Yes, Mr. Trump."  The problem for Republican officeholders is that anything other than "Yes, Mr. Trump" risks his wrath.

Wyden's resolution is an attempt to reclaim Congress' relevance. The question is whether four or more Republicans will dare do so.

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