HinesSight

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For a long time I've written about local Salem, Oregon political issues on this blog. Recently I started a new blog, Salem Political Snark. That's where new posts about Salem politics can be found. If you're a Facebook user, give the Salem Political Snark Facebook page a "like." Then you'll get new posts in your Facebook feed. Scroll down for new HinesSight posts.

Damn you, GM. I wanted more plug-in hybrids, not none.

General Motors has announced that it won't be making any more plug-in hybrids. It has killed off the Chevy Volt as of March 2019.

Our 2018 Chevy Volt

My wife and I have owned (well, leased) three Chevy Volts, as described in these blog posts I wrote about them:  a 2012 model, a 2015 model (which our dog bought!), and a 2018 model.  

So we're disappointed that General Motors is only going to have pure electric and pure gasoline cars/trucks -- no more plug-in hybrids. Here's an excerpt from a Green Car Reports story, "GM president dashes hope of another Volt, says no more hybrids."

Fans were hopeful that the company planned to replace it [Volt] with another plug-in hybrid with similar technology based on GM's Voltec system, in which it invested most of a billion dollars a dozen or so years ago.

However the message could hardly be clearer, that GM plans on focusing on pure battery electric cars in the future, and not "waste" resources building plug-in hybrids.

Hopes for a replacement for the Volt that might be somewhat larger—perhaps a crossover or something with more rear-seat room—sound likely to go unfulfilled, despite the fact that GM is planning to introduce exactly such a car in China this year: the Buick Velite 6 plug-in hybrid. The Velite 6 is also expected to have a fully-electric option when it goes on sale.

Yes, as that story says, us Chevy Volt fans were hoping that if GM discontinued that car, it would introduce Volt technology in a crossover or SUV. That seemed like a no-brainer, but apparently GM executives are lacking in the cranium department.

Look: my wife and I are avid environmentalists. We've owned an all-electric Nissan Leaf (briefly), several Toyota Prius'es, and a hybrid Toyota Highlander. But the Chevy Volt has met our needs better than any other green car. 

We live in the country, about six miles from the Salem, Oregon city limits. My wife is the primary driver of our Chevy Volt. It's gasoline engine, which is better termed a generator, rarely is used. Almost always the 45 miles or so of all-electric range is all that's needed for driving into and around Salem.

But if my wife needs to go to Portland, or on longer trips locally, the Volt transfers almost imperceptibly from battery to gasoline power. That's a big plus for us. Range anxiety was one of the reasons we sold our all-electric Nissan Leaf and leased a Chevy Volt back in 2012.

My wife absolutely loves the Volt. It's like her favorite thing ever, with the exception of me and our dog (I think). The Volt has improved over the years, with the 2018 model we have now considerably more attractive both inside and out than the previous models we've leased.

Yet GM has decided to say bye-bye to the Volt.

That makes no sense to us. Most other plug-in hybrids have a considerably lower all-electric range, the Honda Clarity being an exception. Or, if they have a higher all-electric range, the gasoline backup is so puny, the total range is much less than the Volt's (BMW i3, for example).

I'd been hoping that GM would have a plug-in hybrid SUV or crossover if the Volt was discontinued. However, a Chicago Tribune story has the right-on title, "Where are the plug-in SUVs? Automakers ignore what buyers want." 

The world's automakers are asleep at the wheel.

While customers clamor for more SUVs like the Toyota RAV4, Ford Edge, Chevrolet Traverse and Honda HR-V and as electric-drive technology advances rapidly, it's virtually impossible to find an electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle in the fast growing urban-utility vehicle segment.

Mitsubishi builds the world's best-selling plug-in hybrid SUV. Mitsubishi, for crying out loud.

That's no knock on the Outlander, but it demonstrates a shocking bankruptcy of imagination at Chevy, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota and Volkswagen. Each of those brands literally builds millions more vehicles than tiny Mitsubishi.

But the little brand with the triple-diamond badge was the only one that understood: At the intersection of growing environmental awareness and soaring SUV sales lay a new class of vehicles that deliver the height and room of an SUV and run on batteries at least some of the time.

Yet the Mitsubishi SUV only has 22 miles of all-electric range. That isn't very much -- about half of what the Chevy Volt offers. Thus my wife likely will hold on to our 2018 Volt for quite a few years.

Maybe one day we'll feel comfortable getting another all-electric car. However, we really like plug-in hybrid technology, since it works so well in the Chevy Volt. Hopefully some brand other than GM will realize that there's a fairly large number of buyers who want to go more green than a gasoline car, yet aren't attracted to an all-electric car, or a typical hybrid.

Plug-in hybrids hit the sweet spot for us and many others. It's just too bad that GM has given up on this market.

Dr. Vinay Prasad zaps fellow physicians at provocative Salem City Club talk

"Maybe 40% of what doctors do is mistaken."

That was one of the first of many OMG! zingers medical provocateur Vinay Prasad, MD MPH, flung at us at today's Salem City Club presentation, rather drily titled Evidence Based Medicine: Weighing the Evidence for Effective Health Care.

But not one moment of his talk was boring. In fact, it was one of the most interesting and entertaining City Club talks I've experienced. And I've been to many of them. Prasad is a great speaker: funny, caustic, informed, blunt, spontaneous.

I found what appears to be a very close version of his talk on You Tube. So if you find my summary of what Prasad told us today piques your interest, check this video out. His talk starts at about four minutes in.

Later in his talk Prasad noted that there's no way to know exactly what percentage of medical care is ineffective. So it could be less or more than 40%. Regardless, it's a lot. 

If you're thinking that this makes him less than universally popular among his fellow doctors, you'd be correct. After his talk I asked him how his presentation is received by other MDs. He told me that in Europe and Canada he gets a standing ovation. But in Texas, say, speaking to cardiologists, Prasad said he'd get boos.

Which speaks volumes about the sorry state of our American health care system. Or more accurately, non-system. As is well known, we spend way more on health care than other comparable countries yet have health outcomes that are worse. 

There are many reasons for this, but paying for costly medical services that don't provide any real benefit is a major contributor.

Prasad noted that we have a bias toward believing in continual technological process. He showed a slide of an old Model T next to a Tesla Model T. Now, this was the only error I recognized in his talk, since I couldn't find any sign via the Great God Google that a Tesla model with that initial actually exists or is planned.

But it is conjecture, so some apparent Prasad literary license is fine with me.

His point with the auto analogy is that we can see how much cars have progressed since the Model T era. Ditto with computers, cell phones, televisions, and so much else. But with health care we can't discern progress with the naked eye. Controlled studies are necessary.

And these frequently demonstrate what the title of a book he's co-authored refers to: Medical Reversal. This is when doing something is found to be no better or worse than a prior standard of care.

Examples: routine hormone replacement therapy for post-menopausal women and steroid injections for certain spinal problems. Regarding the latter, a a controlled study where half the patients got a salt water injection revealed that both groups felt better.

Which points to the power of placebos. And a question I asked during the Q & A period.

It went like this: "If both steroid and salt water injections benefit patients with back pain, please comment on the ethical issues surrounding placebos, since doing away with ineffective treatments seems like doing away with a witch doctor a tribe believes in, and who makes them feel better."

Prasad's answer made sense, though it raises additional questions. He said that a medical treatment shouldn't be more costly than a placebo, and also shouldn't be any riskier than a placebo.

And he correctly pointed out that bottles of pills marked "Placebo" can be bought on Amazon, since it has been found that even when people know a treatment is a placebo, it still provides benefits to many.

Publication bias is one reason why ineffective treatments get so much attention. Journals like to publish reports of positive findings involving new forms of medical practice. So studies that show something doesn't work, or is a review of the effectiveness of an established medical practice, don't get as much publicity.

Prasad said about doctors, "A lot we learn because someone senior to us taught that it works." In other words, doctors believe in their own experience -- much of which surely shouldn't be trusted, because it isn't based on solid science. 

Again, the 40% figure is just a guesstimate. But Prasad told us that the actual percentage of ineffective treatments in medicine is much more like snow in Chicago than a massive California earthquake. Meaning, it happens frequently, not rarely.

Even randomized clinical trials came in for some criticism, since companies funding them often hope to make billions of dollars by getting a new drug, device, or whatever approved. So they put considerable effort into increasing the odds that a clinical trial will show that their innovation is effective.

I'm vague on how this is done. But if you peruse Prasad's impressive web site, you'll find countless (almost) papers, articles, and other material to read on a wide variety of subjects. The News and Media page has some profiles of Prasad.

I enjoyed "Did he really just tweet that? Dr. Vinay Prasad takes on Big Pharma, Big Medicine, and his own colleagues -- with glee." Here's how it starts out:

Dr. Vinay Prasad is a professional scold: He takes to Twitter each day to critique this cancer drug as ineffective, or blast that one as overpriced, or dismiss the clinical trial of another as completely irrelevant.

So it’s a bit of a surprise to catch him at the bedside of an elderly man with lymphoma, laughing gently with his patient as he inquires about his day — and painstakingly explains a potent drug’s unpleasant side effects.

Prasad’s empathic bedside manner — and generally affable mien — is at stark odds with his digital persona as a caustic crusader for the principle that solid scientific evidence, not hope or hype, should guide how we as a society spend $700 billion a year on health care.

Just 34, Prasad has become an influential voice in the medical community through his prolific, high-impact publishing, a steady stream of media cameos, and — of course — his vociferous Twitter presence. Among his main arguments: Drug costs have spiraled out of control. Conflicts of interest run amok in health care. We don’t have any idea how well new cancer drugs and diagnostics work, thanks to ill-designed clinical trials. And more than half of all practiced medicine is based on scant evidence — and possibly ineffectual.

Needless to say, such positions haven’t won him many close friends among pharma companies — or even among some fellow doctors. He doesn’t much care.

2019 Salem Women's March is January 19 on Capitol Mall

People of Salem and surrounding areas, here's my strong advice for what you should do from 11 am to 3 pm on Saturday, January 19. Attend the 2019 Salem Women's March on the Capitol Mall. 

My wife was an organizer of the first 2017 Salem Women's March. We loved it.  In 2018 we went to the rather weirdly named Salem Womxn's March. We loved it also.

(See below for the photo/video web pages I made of the events.)

Here's how the 2019 Women's March is described on a Facebook event posting:

The Third annual Women's March in Salem is scheduled. There will be educational and promotional booths from 11 AM to 3 PM. The Rally with speakers will start at noon and the March at 1 PM. There will be food and coffee trucks available.

Salem-News has a story about the march, "Salem Women's March 2019 is coming up." 

Thousands of women from Salem, Eugene and surrounding areas will rally and march in Salem, along with thousands of women in cities across the country and the globe on Saturday, January 19, 2019 as part of the third annual Women's March.

“The Women’s March is not just a March, it is a movement and it has shown its power to change political outcomes and the direction our society is going,” said Debbie Miller, President of the organizing Board for this year’s Women’s March in Salem.

The event is from 11 a.m. through 3 p.m at the Oregon State Capitol Steps/Mall on Court Street.

Women will march in support and solidarity with other women and supporters to remember and solidify the power and the influence that women built by taking to the streets in 2017 and 2018, bringing particular attention to equity in healthcare, wages, and power.

“Not only are a large portion of national leaders ineffective, but they are also destructive to the welfare of their constituents.

"We must make sure they never feel we think their selfish, greedy and amoral behavior is seen as normal. So, we take any and all opportunities to rise up, making ourselves visible and heard all the way to D.C.,” said Joan Warnock, Secretary of Women's March Salem.

SPEAKERS:

-- Professor Wendi Warren Binford: Director of Willamette University Clinical Law Program
--  Danielle Meyer: Chair of the Salem Human Rights Commission and KMUZ Community Radio program host
--  Shelaswau Bushnell Crier: lawyer, teacher at Willamette University, member of several state advisory committees and served as VP for Salem-Keizer NAACP
--  Jennifer Hofmann: Americans of Conscience blog creator and writer
--  Sarah Bennett: Homecare Worker-activist in campaign for care workers rights

For more information or questions on logistics, including accessibility, email: [email protected]

If you missed the 2017 and 2018 marches, or even if you attended them, live (or relive) the great spirit of those days via these Adobe Spark web pages I made of the events.

I'm loving JournoPortfolio. It's a writer's dream.

I'm a long-time writer. Yesterday I easily fashioned a JournoPortfolio site to showcase a selection of my blog posts, the three books I've authored, and a few of the videos and photo essays that I've created. 

Below is a screenshot of the top of the home page. Click on "Behold!" to, not surprisingly, behold my JournoPortfolio masterpiece.

Behold!

JournoPortfolio is a unique Internet animal.

It's sort of a cross-fertilization between a blog and a web site. I've been blogging since 2003, and I've used several web site builders, so I understand how difficult it is to find the right balance between lots of features and ease of use.

My experience with JournoPortfolio is that it has masterfully found that balance -- with the proviso that if you're looking for a dedicated blogging service or full-featured web site builder, probably you should look elsewhere.

But JournoPortfolio excels at what it's home page bills it as: 

Create a customisable writing portfolio without branding or ads. Writing portfolios for Bloggers, Authors, Journalists, Copywriters, Content Managers.

In case you're thinking, these guys can't spell customizable, you're probably (1) an American like me, and (2) unaware that JournoPortfolio is based in Great Britain. However, this makes zero difference to those who use JournoPortfolio, aside from the fact that questions sometimes get answered in accord with a distant time zone.

Regarding questions, I had quite a few at first. JournoPortfolio has an excellent help/messaging service that's just a click away from the Dashboard where a site is created and managed.

My initial interest in JournoPortfolio sprang from a need for a platform to host a multi-author online opinion site that a group of us here in Salem, Oregon wanted to create. So I was pushing some boundaries with JournoPortfolio, since it is geared toward showcasing the work of a single writer.

Still, I was convinced that JournoPortfolio would work for us, so long as we kept the site simple. However, other members of our group wanted a more complex web site. That argued for WordPress, or something similar, so I took over our trial JournoPortfolio site for my own use.

What impresses me the most about JournoPortfolio is its intuitive look and feel. Yes, it takes a bit of time to become familiar with how articles are uploaded and arranged on a site. But help topics are clearly written, and like I said, questions are answered promptly.

Someone did a marvelous job with JournoPortfolio. If you look around my site, you'll see that I have five pages, two of which feature videos and photo essays that were easy to share via "embed codes" from You Tube and Adobe Spark. 

I really like how JournoPortfolio handles page design.

Basically, this is done by adding a content block of a particular type, as shown above. Then placement of the block can be adjusted by clicking on up or down arrows. For example, on my Video page, I'd add a video content block, then follow it with a text block where I described the video. 

Give JournoPortfolio a try.

You can do this for free. I believe a multi-page site can be played around with for a week before it reverts to a free one-page site. Believe me, given the ease of using JournoPortfolio, a week is plenty of time to decide whether you want to spring for a Pro account.

That's $10 a month, or $90 for a year if you prepay for the 12 months. Which I did, because I was confident that as a writer/author/blogger, JournoPortfolio was perfect for me.

Old photos make me realize life is way more complicated than photos show

Today, December 25, I decided to use my free time (since my wife and I no longer celebrate Christmas, or accept presents) by going through a box of photos that's been sitting on a shelf in a mostly unused closet for, I don't know, forever. Or close to it. 

At first it was bittersweet to pull out old photos from the envelopes that contained prints and negatives, which, young'uns, was how people got what their camera had taken back in the distant days when rolls of film had to be developed.

Having turned 70 a few months ago, it was both pleasurable and painful to see how much younger I looked when, not surprisingly, I was much younger. 

Pleasurable, because many photographic memories brought a smile to my face. For example, this photo helped grease the skids for my relationship with Laurel after we started dating in 1989 following my separation, and then divorce, from my first wife. 

The initial time she came to my house Laurel saw this photo sitting on a shelf.

She said, "Oh, you used to have a beard! I like men with beards." I instantly resolved to grow it back, having shaved it off, leaving a mustache, after believing that attracting women in my newly single life would be easier if I didn't have a beard, since I'd read somewhere that most women don't like them.

But Laurel did, so this photo helped jump-start our relationship, since she later told me that when we first met, she thought I looked too conservative.

Which was true. Letting my hair grow longer, adding the beard back, and allowing Laurel to choose (or strongly advise, pretty much the same thing) my clothes dealt with that potential problem.

Other photos, though, got me to thinking that my life must have been much better -- happier, more carefree, more interesting -- in the past as compared to now. 

After all, now I have a chronic  bladder problem that makes it difficult for me to travel long distances. So looking at photos of trips to Washington, D.C., Fiji, Hawaii, and other far away places caused me to long for the younger Brian. Until...

On a dog walk late this afternoon, when getting out in nature tends to settle my mind and see things more clearly, I realized that the photos I'd spent hours sorting through and putting into albums all showed me (and others) smiling, doing fun stuff, looking like we didn't have a care in the world.

But obviously this wasn't the full picture of what my life was all about back then. 

I didn't have any photos of arguments with my first wife, nor of the tense times following our separation. I didn't have photos showing me bitterly disappointed when a reorganization at work left me demoted, supervised by someone I thought was incompetent. And I found zero photos memorializing my anxieties over whether we'd been raising my daughter correctly, when she veered off course several times in high school and college.

(I'm pleased to say that fairly soon after graduating from the University of Arizona, she got on the right track that has brought her much success and happiness in her adult life.)

This realization that the photos I'd been pouring over were nowhere close to an accurate portrait of my life from high school up to 1990, when I got married to Laurel and she took over our photo album duty, doing a much better job than I ever could, produced a big sense of relief in me.

It's a frequent criticism of Facebook and Instagram that most people only post photos that make their life look oh so wonderful. However, this applies to old photos as well, taken long before modern social media came into being.

Doesn't someone taking a photo almost always say "smile" to their subject? How often have you heard, "Show me how you're truly feeling right now." In my case, never. Thus photo albums almost always contain highly selective vignettes from our past. 

Which probably is as it should be, and will always be.

I doubt people will run and get their camera, or smart phone, to create a photographic record of their suffering, disappointment, pain, despair, and such. Or even of ordinary moments, where nothing special was going on other than daily life.

Maybe this would be good to do. It's just human nature to want to look on the bright side, even though this provides an incomplete view of what life is all about.

Today someone told me they are going to kill themselves

It's a first. And not a pleasant first. About three hours ago I got an email from someone I've never met, but who I've communicated with via email about topics on one of my blogs. 

He said he's decided to kill himself. He told me that he wasn't sure why he was writing me, but he wanted to thank me for sharing his ideas and participating in some interesting discussions.

Early on in our correspondence this person told me that he has a genetic condition that leaves him in constant pain. He told me that his illness is getting worse, the suffering is unendurable, and he doesn't see any point in living any longer.

My initial reaction was, I've got to do something. 

Then I realized, there was nothing I could do. All I had was this person's initials, and an email address. There was no way for me to know how to reach anyone where he lives.

And a few moments later, after some reflection, I realized There's nothing I want to do. 

This person is highly intelligent and self-aware. He has struggled to find meaning in what seems to him to be a meaningless world. He has endured more pain than most people could put up with. If he wants to kill himself, he has some very good reasons.

All that I did was reply to his email, briefly.

With tears in my eyes. I told him that I was the one who should be thankful, because I'd been inspired both by his courage and his wise way of looking upon the world. I said that I cared deeply about him, and knew that others did also.

What I didn't do was try to talk him out of killing himself.

Sometimes suicide is the only way out of impossibly bad suffering. I believe in assisted suicide at the end of life. I also believe people have a right to take their own life when all other avenues of relieving suffering are closed off to them.

That said, I want to speak to others for whom this doesn't apply -- those who are feeling really crappy right now, with the holidays upon us and talk of "good cheer" permeating the airwaves and conversations. 

If you feel that life isn't worth living, that suicide is the only option, talk to someone. Anyone.

But preferably someone with a mental health background. Don't make the mistake of diving into the deep pool of suicide before you are absolutely sure there's no way to move into the shallows of suffering. 

The person I heard from today is a special case, someone in intractable pain. Most people have some hope, even if life seems hopeless at the moment. 

Behold! Laurel and Brian's 2018 Christmas Letter

Once again, we defy the trends of the times by writing a Christmas letter that -- gasp! -- gets printed out and inserted into Christmas cards that are -- double gasp! -- mailed.

Well, that "we" really means me, Brian. But after I cobble together a letter, Laurel reads it and has the opportunity to change it. This year she said, "Should we really talk about our health problems?" 

To which I replied, sure. The problems are as much a part of our life as is our joy at the Democrats taking back the House in the midterms, which is how our letter starts out. 

I strive for both honesty and humor.

Some years one or the other dominates. It depends on the mood I'm in when I decide to write our annual Christmas letter. Today I was feeling pretty good. So if the letter feels a bit dark, hey, it could have been even darker!

Our previous Christmas letters are preserved here. Here's our 2018 letter.
Download 2018 Christmas Letter PDF

Men's "locker room talk" not conducive to openness about health problems

I had my annual physical today, Medicare variety, since I'm 70. I'm fortunate to have a family physician who is caring, compassionate, and willing to talk with me for as long as is necessary when I have a concern or question.

Oh, the physician is also a woman. Which almost goes without saying from the description I just offered up.

I'm not saying that male doctors always are businesslike and brusque. But most of the physicians of my sex I've gone to have been quite a bit less pleasant than my current family doctor.

She and I talked about my only significant health problem -- a bladder that went on strike about a year and a half ago, and never returned to work. So I've had to pee via a catheter, currently about five times a day.

This isn't the worse possible medical problem, not even close. But it isn't fun, to put it mildly. And a bladder problem isn't something I feel comfortable talking about with most people.

Why? In large part because I'm a man. Men don't share as much intimate information with other men, compared to how women talk with other women.

Today my doctor spoke about a colleague, a male doctor, who she is treating for a prostate problem.

She told me that according to him, it's tough for him to talk about that problem because of "locker room talk."  What she meant by this was how men put a lot of emphasis on the macho functioning of their genitals. So since the prostate is connected to the penis, as is the bladder, problems in these areas get associated with impotence, weakness, unmanliness.

Which is bullshit, of course.

I'm trying to be more open about my bladder problem, but it's tough to do, because I'm going against the grain of 70 years of being a man.

Here's a typical locker room conversation that I overhear at my athletic club:

"How's it going?"
"Great, couldn't be better. And you?"
"Tremendous. Hey, good talking with you."
"Yeah, good to see you, man."

Not much space in there for vulnerability, transparency, openness.

Now, my doctor did wisely advise me to choose with care those who I talk with about my bladder problem. Baring my medical soul to the grocery store clerk who asks me how my day is going isn't appropriate. However, I certainly can be more open with friends than I typically am.

This just requires some rethinking of what it means to talk like a man. There's a time and place for locker room talk. And also a time and place for unbridled honesty.

South Salem grocery store shopping carts rated

First off, please resist the temptation to think, This blogger guy has too much time on his hands.

That thought denigrates the important subject of this post -- how I feel about the shopping carts at three stores in south Salem (Oregon version, not to be confused with the copycat Salem in Massachusetts; sure, the Massachusetts Salem came first historically, but we Oregonians consider ourselves superior to every other state because... well, just because).

Yes, there are more important issues in the world.

But I'm the designated weekly grocery shopper in our two-person household, our dog being incapable, or unwilling, to perform any useful chore other than lying on her back and wagging her tail in a Pat Me signal.

And I consider that a quality shopping cart is an important contributor to the quality of my shopping experience. So I've taken photos of the carts at Trader Joe's, Fred Meyer, and LifeSource Natural Foods -- my habitual three grocery store stops -- and will comment on my feelings about each.

(Strangely, I Googled "grocery store shopping carts rated" and didn't find any hits on the first few results pages similar to this post. So either I really do have too much time on my hands, or people who care as deeply about the quality of shopping carts as I do don't have blogs.)

Trader Joe's has excellent medium size shopping carts. I like the energetic color. There's very little difference between the carts. Meaning, none I've used has had a bumpy wheel or other deformity. And there's zero problem pulling them out of the stack of carts, unlike the carts at the next store, which would go nameless if it wasn't called Fred Meyer. 

Also, I've never found a used napkin, grocery list, plastic bag, or other leftovers from a previous shopper in a Trader Joe's cart. Either shoppers at this store are more neat and considerate than shoppers at other stores, or an employee clears debris from the carts (I'm guessing the former).

This is a Fred Meyer shopping cart. I was kind of disappointed that it looks so good, because until recently Fred Meyer had some horrible carts. I was looking forward to insulting them, but it appears that Fred Meyer has replaced the bumpy, squeaky, misshapen, disgusting carts that used to irritate me. 

That said, there's still some things that irk me about the carts at Fred Meyer, though maybe the new carts don't have this particular drawback: getting stuck in the line of carts. Usually this was due to a strap on the fold down thingie at the back of the cart getting attached to the cart in front of it. 

After yanking on the handle of a cart and finding it stuck, often I'd move on to another row of carts because I didn't want to take the time to unstick it (needed to save my time to write a blog post about how this irritates me).

Also, Fred Meyer has more stuff left in its carts than any other store I visit regularly. I'll throw away an advertising circular, but I draw the line at a used facial tissue or other obnoxious leftover. So even with the new carts, Fred Meyer is at the bottom of my ratings. The gray color is too utilitarian for my taste (cheapest color, though, according to a purveyor of shopping carts).

LifeSource Natural Foods has my favorite shopping cart. It is very similar to the Trader Joe's cart, but I prefer the calming green color. Nice fit for a store that has "natural" in its name. 

The carts are high quality with no discernible problems. I feel good pushing one around, using my non-patented "leave it and walk" technique that I also use at Trader Joe's and Fred Meyer.

It doesn't make sense to me to push a cart down the length of an aisle just to pick one item off a shelf and put it in the cart. Instead, I prefer to leave my cart at the end of an aisle, then walk to get the item and bring it back to the cart. This keeps the aisle free of one more cart, though I have to admit it leaves another area filled with an extra cart.

So overall my shopping cart ratings are:

(1) LifeSource Natural Foods
(2) Trader Joe's
(3) Fred Meyer

Arcimoto's current financial situation: facts and my opinion

I'm an early Arcimoto backer with an early pre-order reservation number of #129. There's a lot that I like about the company's effort to design, manufacture, and sell an innovative electric three-wheeled motorcycle, which they call a FUV (Fun Utility Vehicle).

But there's also a lot to be wary about.

Notably, initial purchasers of the FUV have to make a bet on two things: (1) the quality of the final design of the FUV that will be used in retail sales (the design isn't finalized yet), and (2) the ability of Arcimoto, a start-up company, to stay in business through the three-year/36,000 mile warranty, and to be able to handle local repair, servicing, warranty, and recall needs that FUV purchasers have.

Regarding (2), I've been paying closer attention to Arcimoto financial reports as the projected date of the first retail sales draws closer. A November 2018 video indicates that this will happen in the first quarter of 2019. (Screenshot above; video is below.)

So here's my take on the company's recent third quarter 2018 earnings report, and the stock offering that following immediately after the report. 

Earnings report. I'll repeat an excerpt from the 3rd quarter earnings report that I included in a November 17 blog post:

"The Company incurred an operating and net loss of $3.2 million, or ($0.20) per share in the third quarter of 2018, compared to an operating and net loss of $0.7 million, or ($0.05) per share in the third quarter of 2017.

The Company had $2.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and $0.8 million in short-term investments as of September 30, 2018, compared to $2.1 million cash and cash equivalents and $5.2 million in short-term investments as of June 30, 2018. As explained in more detail in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the periods ended September 30, 2018, our current resources are only sufficient to fund our intended operations through the end of November 2018."

Since Arcimoto only had $8,000 of revenue in July-September 2018, the loss of $3.2 million in the third quarter is all due to expenses incurred by the company, which averaged about $1.1 million per month.

Above is a more detailed look at Arcimoto finances, which I found on a GuruFocus.com page. It shows that total operating expenses for the 3rd quarter were indeed $3.2 million. Expenses have gone up markedly from the year before in all three areas, R&D, sales/marketing, and general/administrative. 

Another way of looking at how quickly Arcimoto is burning up cash (not literally, obviously) is the fact that at the end of June, 2018 the company had $7.3 million in cash and short-term investments, while at the end of September, 2018 the company had $3.2 million in cash and short-term investments. 

So the company had $4.1 million less in cash and short-term investments at the end of the 3rd quarter, compared to the end of the 2nd quarter. This decline in cash isn't a surprise as the company made progress in 2018 on the design and promotion of its FUV product, which involved increased expenses. 

Still, since the 3rd quarter earnings report was released on November 16, a month and a half into the 4th quarter, it is easy to see why the company said that current resources were only sufficient to fund operations through the end of November -- given that only $3.2 million was available at the beginning of the quarter, and expenses in the previous quarter were running at about $1.1 million to $1.4 million per month. 

(Expenses also may be running higher in the 4th quarter, given the ramp-up toward retail sales.)

Stock offering. On the same day as the earnings report, November 16, Arcimoto announced a public stock offering of 2,500,000 shares priced at the higher of $3/share or the closing price as of that day, which was $2.94/share. So $3 turned out to be the price.

It's a bit confusing as to how many shares actually were offered for direct sale via wiring money to Arcimoto by 5 pm EST on Monday, November 19. Here's how I understand what happened, which may not be totally correct. 

The October 17, 2018 prospectus spoke of 2,500,000 shares being offered. But a "Subject to Completion" note dated November 16 says that "the information in this preliminary prospectus is not complete and may be changed." This fits with a BusinessWire document (partial screenshot below) that says 504,900 shares were being offered at $3 per share. Note: the offering date is wrong. Friday was November 16, not the 18th.

It appears that the company decided to offer less than the maximum number of 2,500,000 shares. I've been curious about how the stock offering went, but hadn't been able to learn how many shares were sold. The email address for the media/public relations person listed on the Arcimoto website isn't working, something I've pointed out to Arcimoto staff. 

[UPDATE: It turned out that while Donahue's email address was correct on two Arcimoto web site pages, the underlying "mailto:" link had a typo in her last name, so I got the wrong address when I clicked on the email link. Arcimoto has corrected the problem, and I've re-emailed Donahue with my question about how many shares were sold in the stock offering.]

So at the moment I'm having to assume that information posted on the Arcimoto SRK "FUV" Club on Facebook is accurate, though I'm not sure how the person who posted this knew that $1.5 million was raised through the public offering. That appears to have been the goal, but I'm not aware of any public documents confirming that amount.

Well... damn, when I clicked on the post to generate a link to it, Facebook told me that the post had either been deleted or I don't have access to it. Since I'm still a member of the Facebook Club, I'm assuming that it was deleted. Fortunately, I'd made a screenshot of the post before it disappeared. 

Again, I don't know how Colverson learned that $1.5 million was raised by the recent stock offering, or if this information is accurate. If he got the information from Arcimoto personnel prior to it being released publicly, that might be a violation of SEC rules.

At any rate, it does appear to be correct that Arcimoto insiders/executives bought 274,247 shares of stock in the offering on Monday, November 19. At least, that's what the GuruFocus link says. CEO Frohnmayer -- 139,903 shares. CFO Campoli -- 800 shares. COO Becker -- 210 shares. Director Eisler -- 75,000 shares. Director Scherer -- 33,334 shares. Director Curl -- 25,000 shares. 

That brought in $822,741, at $3 per share. So Colverson was off a bit, when he said that company insiders put down $750,000 of their own money. Actually it was a bit more. 

Now that I've re-read Colverson's post, one reason he deleted it might be the mention of Arcimoto directors heading off to Mexico and assuming new identities if they thought the company was just weeks away from going under. Sure, the remark was made in jest, I'm pretty sure, but it is a strange remark nonetheless. 

For one thing, it was the company itself that said in the 3rd quarter earnings report that Arcimoto would run out of funding for current operations by the end of November 2018, given current resources. It wasn't "naysayers," which might have been a reference to me. Or to people on the Facebook forum who think like me.

Like so many others, I want Arcimoto to succeed with its FUV. I sure need more fun in my life. But I'm also a big believer in doing as much research as possible before making a significant purchase. I poured over VW GTI reviews and company information about the car for weeks, maybe months, before deciding to buy one in 2017. 

And I believe I've got the 7th generation GTI, which has a long track record, as does VW, obviously. So research is way more important when considering a purchase of a new vehicle from a new company, which is the case with the FUV/Arcimoto.

Regarding the outcome of the stock offering, if all of the 504,900 shares put up for sale sold at the $3 price, that's great. Arcimoto now has $1,514,700 to keep the company operating. But as I noted above, this amount would only pay for about a month of a half of expenses, at best. 

Which gets the company through the end of the year, or thereabouts. Again, assuming that all of the 504,900 shares were sold, something the company hasn't reported itself so far. 

There are different ways to look upon the purchase of 274,247 shares by company insiders. In his Facebook post, Colverson thought this was a great endorsement of the company's prospects by people who know the most about what is happening with Arcimoto. OK, that's one perspective.

Here's another one.

All of the shares were bought on November 19, the last day of the stock offering. The reason might simply be that this was the first business day after the earnings report, and the insiders weren't able to wire money for the share purchases any earlier. (Assuming they were required to wire money, like other purchasers were.)

It also could be that the Arcimoto insiders knew that few "retail" investors were biting on the $3 share price, since the price of Arcimoto stock dropped dramatically on Monday. See above. I'd be surprised if anyone outside of the company was willing to pay $3 a share for FUV stock that was trading well under $2.50 a share soon after the opening bell on November 19.

Maybe only a few people were willing to do this. And maybe when company insiders realized the stock offering wasn't going to meet its $1,514,700 goal, they stepped in with share purchases of their own. After all, these insiders have the most to lose if Arcimoto were to cease operations, and the most to gain if the company hangs on and becomes a success. 

Maybe. What I've just said is opinion, based on some facts. Here's another fact: CEO and founder Mark Frohnmayer's shares in Arcimoto were worth about $39 million after the first stock offering in 2017. So Frohnmayer and other insiders have good reason to invest more money in Arcimoto, if this is necessary to preserve the value of their stock holdings.

Question is: Will more money be needed by the company in addition to what was just raised by the stock offering? And if the main source of additional funds is company insiders, to what extent will they be willing to continue to buy shares of Arcimoto, if this is needed?