Parallels

There is an interesting phenomenon taking place in the world. It is unique in that it involves four catastrophic events that have all occurred within the short span of five years, and how the people to whom they happened dealt with the aftermath.

Of course I’m referring to Hurricane Katrina, the El Nino brush fires in Southern California, the huge earthquake in Haiti, and the even stronger earthquake in Chile.

I have seen the messages that circulated after the fist two events that highlighted the difference in how the affected citizens responded to the disaster. But I haven’t yet seen any comparison of the two earthquakes that occurred within a few months of each other.

The numbers might be off, due to passage of time, but here is what I know about the earthquake-ravaged island nation of Haiti:
· The 7.0 earthquake hit on January 12, 2010.
· The death toll has risen to somewhere above 500,000, a highly suspect number.
· The nation is still in a state of turmoil and need nearly two months later.
· Hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated or provided for disaster relief.
· Dictators Castro and Chavez have called the troops sent in by the U. S an “occupation force”, implying that they are not welcome there.
· There is no end in sight to the misery and loss of the Haitian people, regardless of the continued aid, food and money being pumped into the relief effort.

Here is what I know about the earthquake-ravaged nation of Chile:
· The 8.8 earthquake occurred offshore in the Pacific Ocean on February 27, 2010. This caused, in addition to the quake damage, a tsunami that came ashore shortly after the quake and devastated low-lying villages.
· The latest death toll as of this writing (3/2/2010) is 746, but thousands are homeless, and the infrastructure of the country is in a shambles.
· Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said that though the earthquake devastated central Chile, she was not requesting international assistance. However, there has been some aid and assistance from (who else?) the United States. It has, however, been minimal, and has not included any people for rescue, only equipment.

Do you see the same parallels that I see in these two events and the earlier disasters in our country?

Does the Haitian earthquake resemble in scope and numbers the Hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans in 2005?

Is the response and reaction of the Chilean President similar to the word that came from the officials in the devastated areas around San Diego after the extent of the damage was learned.

Have we seen video and pictures of the looting taking place in Chilean cities like we saw in Haiti?

In a way, I feel sorry for the people of Chile, because the United States citizenry is pretty well tapped out on aid through donations. We have economic problems here that might prevent many of us who would otherwise donate generously to pull out our empty pockets and remark that we already gave what we could to the Haitian relief effort. We have nothing left to give.

It is a courageous thing that the Chilean President is doing, trying to cope with the devastation and not requesting aid. However, if it does become necessary, I wonder if some of the other South American countries will chip in and help the Chileans. Or maybe the African nations could lend aid and manpower to the effort to save Chile. Surely the Europeans can come to the rescue.

I know the Asians cannot help, because they are still trying to recover from the tsunami that hit in 2004 after the earthquake in the Indian Ocean.

Isn’t it sad that we seem to be the only country in the world capable and willing to lend a hand when disaster strikes? Yet, according to our president, the rest of the world despises us for our arrogance and waste and pollution?

I’m sorry for bringing politics into this, but isn’t every disaster that strikes, regardless of origin, used for political gain of one form or another?

Kangaroo Court

I watched some of the Congressional Hearings on the Toyota debacle this week, and I was furious with the Representatives who pilloried, harassed and humiliated the Toyota executives, especially Mr. Akio Toyoda, the CEO of Toyota.

Most of the “Gestapos” seemed to think that Mr., Toyoda should commit Hara-Kiri over the scandal, and the scene brought memories of the late Representative Tom Lantos’s remark to Craig Livingston, “Even Admiral Boorda committed suicide.”

As far as I can determine, there have been nineteen deaths attributed to the sticking accelerator problem, and while I am not insensitive to the loss of life it caused, I am not ready to boycott Toyota. I also do not think the “crisis” warrants prohibiting Toyota from selling their products in this country.

However, the best opinion I have read regarding the Toyota recall is that of one of my favorite columnists, Charles Krauthammer.

Instead of writing my usual column this week, I am going to provide a link to Mr. Krauthammer’s syndicated column from the Washington Post and let you read it. If you have already done so, than I commend you on your astute selection. If not, please take a few minutes to learn what this man, who himself was permanently paralyzed and almost killed in an auto accident, has to say.

I do not have permission to reprint the article in my column, hence my providing the link to it instead.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/25/AR2010022503115.html

The Ideal Solution

My wife and I have been discussing the gloomy prospects in the years ahead. We are avowed conservatives, and as such, we absolutely abhor the current actions of the idiots in Washington–both parties. Faced with healthcare reform (deform?), cap and trade, global warming legislation, and on and on and on, we are not happy citizens.

Since both of us are already on forced Medicare, we have to be very concerned about what the future holds for senior citizens. I planned ahead, squirreled away a nest egg for retirement, and managed my finances carefully. However, I don’t know that we are going to be able to keep it in light of the Obama/Reid/Pelosi conspiracy to redistribute the wealth.

I’ve taken stock of our savings and our health, and have come to a conclusion: Judy is probably going to outlive me by a couple of decades. My parents died at age 79 and 80, while her dad lived to 95 and her mom is in her 90s and still going strong. That doesn’t bode well for us to both live to a ripe old age.

I had a brainstorm the other day about how Judy can make it to 100 or more if she does it right. What’s more, it’s all perfectly legal in a very strict definition of the word “legal.”

I’m sure you’ve all seen that email message that compares the cost of a nursing home to staying at a Holiday Inn. In case you haven’t, the Holiday Inn at $60-a-day beats the cost of a nursing home by a long shot. Well, I’ve decided to go that one better. My alternate plan for my wife is free and includes meals and healthcare. Here it is…

If Judy outlives me—I’m reasonably certain she will—and she sees that the money is running out, I want her to go rob a bank. I don’t want her to use a real gun or do anything that dangerous. A mere note will do the trick.

The note should read, “I have a gun in my pocket, but it isn’t loaded–yet. I don’t want you to get hurt. The bullets are in my other pocket, so I can load the gun if I need to. NOW, GIVE ME ALL OF YOUR CASH!”

Not only will she get caught without any shots being fired, but she might also qualify for that list of “Dumbest Criminals” that circulates amongst my email buddies. She can get her “fifteen minutes of fame” to which Andy Warhol promised everyone is entitled.

No, no, the bank robbery isn’t meant to get any money. It is to get a jail sentence at a federal penitentiary, preferably a long one. Life without parole will do nicely. Have you seen what those federal prisons look like these days? They have 55-inch flat screen TVs, recreation rooms, great food, and hospital facilities to die for. (Well, maybe not to die for, but pretty neat and FREE!)

Oh, there is a slight inconvenience in that she won’t have her freedom, but then, those people in the nursing homes don’t have any freedom either. My mother-in-law is in one and she hasn’t been off the grounds in several years.

Relatives are much better about visiting you in prison than they are in nursing homes, mainly because the conditions are a lot better in the prison visiting areas, and there isn’t that nasty odor that usually permeates the nursing home. Not only don’t they have to bring gifts, mostly they aren’t allowed to do so, so there’s no need for excuses either.

All in all, I think I’ve hit on the ideal way to get around the Bulls**t the politicians in Washington are giving us. Judy can take advantage of the system and not even feel guilty.

Just in case you’re tempted to use my idea for yourself or your spouse, make sure to make the robbery a federal offense. Don’t go for convenience stores or home invasions. Those will only get you a state prison, and I hear the conditions in those places are terrible. Besides, convenience store clerks and homeowners are wising up and getting their own guns to shoot you if you try to burgle them.

Now, if bank robbery seems too dangerous for you, try counterfeiting. That too is a federal offense and will be worthy of a good long sentence. You don’t even have to make good replicas of the currency, since you want to be caught anyway. If you’re really nice, you can save the cost of a court trial and just plead guilty when arraigned. The judge will probably sentence you immediately.

Making Work Pay Credit

In March of last year, I wrote a column on the (then) new Stimulus Plan that congress and President Obama enacted. At that time I advised those of you who still have earned income that you would see an increase in your take home pay of about $13 per week. However, I also warned you that you would likely have a problem filing your taxes in 2010, because there was no provision to lower your tax rate in order to make the payment tax-free.

Now I have some good news for you. That additional money in your paychecks from April through December may be erased from your taxable income as a credit after you compute your federal tax. However, it won’t be credited unless you submit an extra tax form, Schedule M, with your federal tax forms.

The credit, which is titled the “Making Work Pay Credit”, is even better than a reduction of your taxable income. It is actually a direct reduction of your tax. I’ll explain that in a moment.

(At this point, if you are retired like I am, and have no earned income–an entry on line 7 of your 1040–then you may as well quit reading right here, because you already received your stimulus payment of $250 back in April of 2009, and it was already tax-free)

If you received that increase in pay back in April, then you have already received your stimulus payment in increments, but now you have to account for that extra money to deduct it from your taxable income. To do that, you must file Schedule M with your tax forms.

I am not a tax preparer–although I once did work for H&R Block in that capacity for several years–so I will not attempt to give you instructions on how to fill out Schedule M. It is, like most tax forms, comprehensive–a long erudite word meaning “complicated.”

The maximum credit is $400 ($800 if married filing jointly) and there are a lot of conditions and exceptions that must be met or overcome to get that amount. The good news is that whatever amount you are able to deduct comes off dollar-for-dollar from your tax. Hoorah!!!

Let me explain… There are three types of reductions to your income tax, deductions, exemptions and credits and all are good. However, one is better than either of the other two, and that is the credit. Deductions and exemptions reduce your taxable income, but a credit actually reduces your tax. That is why credits always are figured after you arrive at taxable income and compute the tax on that amount.

While deductions and exemptions reduce your taxable income by whatever tax bracket–or percentage–you are in, credits always reduce your tax liability at 100%, or dollar-for-dollar.

For instance, if you are married, filing jointly in the twenty-five-percent tax bracket–you pay 25% tax on your last dollar of income–and you use the standard deduction of $11,400 (2009 amount), then you are actually deducting $2,850 from your tax liability. Let’s say your total tax comes to $3,000 after you deduct and exempt all the legal amounts. If you get a credit of $800 for the Making Work Pay Credit on Schedule M, you get to subtract that entire amount from the $3,000, making your tax due only $2,200. That erases $3,200 from your earned income ($3,200 X .25 = $800). Pretty neat, eh?

I suppose I should complain here that my wife and I didn’t get $800 off our taxes, and we only received $500 tax-free from Social Security. However, we are no longer productive members of society (ie.-workers) so I will take what I got and be happy with it. Besides, we don’t have to fill out that Schedule M, and that itself is worth it.

Okay, now you know. Don’t forget to file Schedule M and take your tax credit. Oh, if you use a tax service like H & R Block or Jackson-Hewitt, they will do the calculations for you, and even if you use TaxAct or TurboTax software, that will also include the credit calculations for you. I recommend that you use TaxAct online anyway to check your work since it is a free service for the federal return.

Move Over Law

Here is another of those alerts that I receive in my email messages all the time. However, there’s a difference in this one, because it is mostly true. Failure to heed this one could cost you dearly, too.

The message I received told of a case in California where a driver was pulled over for not observing the “move over” law. The violator claimed that he was fined $754 and got three points on his license.

Well, the fine and the points seemed a bit excessive, so I went to the Snopes site to check out the veracity of the story.

There is a “move over” law in California–and in 47 other states as well, so that part was true. The law was passed in 2006, and took effect in January of 2007 in California, not on January 1, 2010 as was stated in the message. States that do not currently have the “move over” law are Hawaii, Maryland and New York, plus Washington D.C.

The law states (and I’m paraphrasing here) that when you approach a police car, or any emergency vehicle on your side of the road with the lights flashing, you must move over out of the lane closest to the vehicle. If traffic doesn’t allow moving over, or if it is only a two-lane road, you must slow down to 20 mph below the posted speed limit if the limit is over 25 mph. If the posted speed limit is 25 mph or less, you must slow to 5 mph before you pass the emergency vehicle.

The fine for an infraction can be up to $50, but I don’t know about the points. Since it is a moving violation, I suspect that 2 points would be about right, but it might depend on other factors.

According to Barbara Mikkelson, the Snopes answer lady, local police could add on some further penalty to the $50 fine, so a higher amount wouldn’t be unheard of, but not likely the $754 cited in the message I got.

In case you want to check this out for yourself–you can also watch a short video that shows what sometimes happens when the law is violated–here are two websites that you can visit:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/traffic/moveover.asp

http://www.moveoveramerica.com/

After watching the video, I think that even if I lived in one of the states that don’t yet have the “move over” law, I would try to observe it anyway.

Be careful out there!

David's Rock

Here is a feel-good story that has the little guy coming out on top, although it cost him the proverbial arm and a leg to do it.

My wife and I had breakfast at a local IHOP restaurant a couple of weeks ago. As we were leaving after our meal, I noticed a pretty good size rock alongside the sidewalk with a sign behind it. The sign identified the boulder as “David’s Rock” and a story was written below the title with a date of November 1, 2006.

The words struck a chord, since there had to be a good story behind them. Here is the sign.



And here is “David’s Rock” with the sign behind it, just as we saw it that day.



After seeing that, I just knew that I had to get the story behind it. I went to the restaurant last week with my camera to snap the pictures above. Then I went into the restaurant to inquire as to the background on it. The man I spoke with was very accommodating and used his cell phone to call Mr. Bill Downie, the man named on the sign. He handed me the phone, and I was captivated for the next ten minutes.

Mr. Downie related that the case of IHOP –versus—Kroger went all the way to the Supreme Court, (not the big one, but the local Columbia County Supreme Court) not once, but twice. It seems that the main tenant, Kroger, controlled the shopping center where the IHOP was to be built.

The owner of the shopping center had given the grocery store-the main tenant and the anchor-the right to approve any architecture for free-standing buildings in the complex. Kroger, for unspecified reasons, did not want IHOP to share their space, so they used the architectural plan as an excuse to delay the construction. Mr. Downie and his partner, Judy Kaye, then sued Kroger to block the delaying tactic.

The lawsuit was filed on or around December 5, 2005. A year later, with two Supreme Court Rulings, and a cool quarter million dollars in legal fees and loss of business, the IHOP partnership finally won their case and the restaurant was built. It nearly broke the franchisees to fight the case, but perseverance finally won the day, and the restaurant is now a thriving business.

What really made the whole case take so long was that the restaurateurs were under a gag order for the whole time. There might have been an earlier resolution if a boycott of the huge grocery store had taken place. I think that might have happened if people had been aware of the injustice that was taking place.

Well, the IHOP partners do have the satisfaction of flaunting their “David’s Rock” and the story that goes with it for customers like myself. Of course, the “Goliath” referred to is not named on the sign, but it is pretty obvious since the Kroger store is less than 100 yards away.

Now didn’t that make you feel good?

How to Forward Email

Someone suggested a few weeks ago that I repeat my column about how to forward an email appropriately. I covered the topic before, but not recently; it never hurts to revisit it.

Do you know how to forward emails? Most of us DO NOT.
Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail?
Do you hate it as much as I do?

Every time you forward an email there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their email addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every email address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel!

How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps:

(1) When you forward an email, delete all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, you should delete them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace over them, cut them, whatever you know how to do. It only takes a second. Click the 'Forward' button first to have full editing capabilities of the message. I particularly dislike having to scroll through email addresses before I get to the message.

(2) Whenever you send an email to more than one person, always use the Bcc: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. The people you send to will only see their own email address. This applies to all email, new, reply and forwards. ALWAYS USE THE Bcc: FIELD. You don't have to put any addresses in the To: or Cc: fields in order to send the message.

If you don't see your Bcc: option on your email template click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and then choose Bcc: in that window, and that's it, it's that easy. Click Okay at the bottom of the window when you have added all recipient addresses and they will be in a new field labeled Bcc: in your message template. Using Bcc: in your message will automatically say 'Undisclosed Recipients' in the To: field of the people who receive it. That way you aren't sharing all those addresses with every Tom, Dick or Harry.

(3) Remove any 'FW:' in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling. Any extraneous letters and characters from the prior email should be removed before you send them on as a courtesy to the next reader.

This one is very important, so please read and heed it.

(4) ALWAYS use your Forward button from the actual page you are reading. Ever get those emails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it? By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you relieve them of having to open any attachments just to see what you sent. Attachments often spread viruses and other malicious and harmful add-ons. That is why avoiding them is really important!

To clarify, once you have gotten to the page where the actual information or attachment is, click on the Forward button from there without closing pages back to the first one. In the case of attachments, where it is a video, or pictures, or any graphics, close the attachment and then immediately click on the Forward button. The attachment will still be on your forwarding email, and you can edit the body of the message before sending it.

(5) Have you ever gotten a petition email? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses. FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses they contain. Actually, email petitions are not valid in the first place. Valid petitions must include address or some form of identification that would enable the recipient to verify the signer exists.

If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address on a petition anyway.

(6) Then there are the emails that say that something like, 'Send this email to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen.' Or, sometimes they'll just tease you by saying something really cute will happen. It isn’t going to happen! Trust me, I'm still seeing some of the same ones that I waited on 10 years ago! I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either; they get deleted. If I really like the message and I decide I want to forward it, I always delete the reward/punishment lines at the end before sending it.

(7) Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some of the other emails floating around nowadays, check them out. Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for Years! Most will be inaccurate or completely false. Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be checked out at Snopes. Just go to http://www.snopes.com. It’s really easy to find out if it is real or not. If it's not, please don't pass it on.

So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses. Follow the seven steps above and clean them up prior to forwarding.