A Good Stimulus Package

Well, President Obama is in hot water with his party for caving to the Republicans on the extension of the Bush tax cuts. Now Congress is rewriting the bill to try to make it more appealing to both parties.

In the spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation, I’m going to propose a totally different tax package that could provide long-lasting relief from our current economic woes. It would be a two-step program, and I offer it to either party in Congress, though I already know which one would endorse it and which would not.

There is an unknown element in this package; the amount is indeterminate. The reason for this is that nothing we do is static. Any program that effects changes in behavior has that unknown element in it. Change in behavior is what any stimulus is intended to promote, so the cost is solely dependent on how much behavioral change takes place.

Okay, here’s the plan…

Step one: Put a 6-month moratorium on collection of personal income tax from everyone.

You might think that those at the upper end of the income scale should be exempted, but it is impossible to determine what constitutes “the upper end.” A person living in rural mid-America with an income of $100,000 could be considered rich, while a counterpart living in New York City or Los Angeles would justifiably laugh at the notion that they are wealthy.

That is only one of a host of reasons why means testing is silly. Besides, The wealthy people in our society are bigger spenders, and spending is what the stimulus is supposed to stimulate.

There is another reason why we cannot and must not exempt anyone from the tax moratorium. I want everyone to get used to not having any income tax withheld from his or her paycheck. It will make step two easier to enact.

Step two: Repeal the 16th Amendment, and institute the Fairtax.

What politicians in opposition to the Fairtax always fail to tell their constituents is that the 23% add-on to the price of everything you purchase replaces all of the current federal taxes that are levied in over one hundred ways including the dreaded income tax. In Fact, it also replaces the other income taxes that masquerade under the title, “payroll tax.”

Can you even imagine what your paycheck would be if the income tax and payroll tax were not withheld? It could add 30% more to your take home pay, and that in itself would more than compensate you for the 23% increase in prices. But that isn’t the end of it.

The base price of most items would fall. The taxes collected up the line before the product comes to market are also gone, so it will make it less expensive to produce and some of that difference will be passed on to the consumer. Those who have studied the effects of implementation of the Fairtax state that the reduction would be about 22%. If so, the prices should remain about what they are now, even with the 23% Fairtax added on.

Now, there is one more factor in the Fairtax that would come into play. You are currently given a reduction in your income tax liability for personal exemptions and deductions. The Fairtax has a built in “prebate” that compensates everyone for those same exemptions and deductions.

You would receive a check or a direct deposit each month based on the number of people you support. The more dependents, the higher the prebate., so the 23% tax you pay on everything—up to a reasonable minimum amount—would actually be refunded to you even before you pay it. I’ve seen estimates that the minimum monthly payment would be about $500 for a single person with no dependents.

Imagine that! Not only would you have a paycheck with no withholding, but you would also get at least $500 per month from the government. If you have some dependents, it would be considerably more than $500.

What could you possibly use all that extra cash for? Maybe to pay off some of those credit card bills? Or possibly to purchase some of those items you’ve put off buying for lack of funds? You might use it to pay down your mortgage, or to buy that replacement car or bigger house you’ve always wanted.

The fact is this stimulus would do more to help get our economy back on track than all of that prior stimulus money combined.

I know that I’m not the first to suggest a tax cut as a stimulus, but I’ll wager that there aren’t many who have combined it with the opportunity to institute a whole new system of taxation that makes 66,000 pages of the Internal Revenue code obsolete while leveling the playing field so that everyone pays their fair share of tax.

Divine Intervention?

A strange thing happened last weekend during the Pittsburgh Steelers/Buffalo Bills game,

The Bills managed to tie the game and send it into sudden-death overtime. Then, when it appeared that the hapless Bills would finally beat their jinx this season and win the game, a wide receiver named Steve Johnson caught and then dropped a perfectly thrown pass in the end zone.

The Steelers then went on offense and drove down the field, kicking a field goal to win the game.

After the game, Mr. Johnson sent a Twitter message, a tweet. Here is what it said: "I Praise you 24/7!!!!!! And this how you do me!!!!! You expect me to learn from this??? How???!!! I'll never forget this!! Ever!!! Thx tho..."

In case you live on a different planet than I do, or you are a modern day Rip Van Winkle, you’ll already know that the tweet was addressed to none other than GOD. I wasn’t even aware that God had a Twitter account, but apparently Steve Johnson believes he has a direct line to Him.

I didn’t get to watch the game on television, but I read that Steve also dropped 4 other passes in that game. This occurred in a season where he has been a fantasy player and probably the most renowned player on the Buffalo Bills squad. That he blames his dropped pass on God is, I guess, understandable if blasphemous.

Now, some would call me misguided, but I was born and raised in Western New York, and the Buffalo Bills have always been my favorite team. Heck, I even attended their first regular season home game against the Denver Broncos in old War Memorial Stadium, a.k.a. the Mud Bowl.

I moved away from Buffalo in 1976, so I’ve only followed the Buffalo Bills from afar since then. But in a lot of ways I have to agree with Steve Johnson that some of the fortunes of the Buffalo Bills have been guided by divine intervention.

Or maybe it’s the other way around; maybe old Lucifer is the culprit. How else can I explain a team that has accomplished the records the Bills have, and yet they’ve never won a Super Bowl?

The game-losing fumble last Sunday is definitely not the first time that misfortune has struck the Bills. There was the missed chip-shot field goal that cost them the win in Super bowl XXV. There was the sack and fumble by Jim Kelly in Super Bowl XXVII that led to the 52-17 Dallas rout. Then there was that 75-yard kickoff return in the playoff game with the Tennessee Titans that took away the Bills’ chance to go to Super bowl XXXIV.

Oh, I could probably list dozens of strange plays that have plagued the Bills over their entire 50-year history. However, it took a guy named Steve Johnson to actually blame God for the whole mess. I don’t think I’ll go that far, but I sure wish the team would someday prove themselves like they did in 1964-65 in the old AFL.

Moons and Planets

(Note: I originally published an expanded version of this column back in February of 2006. Therefore, even though we are not currently under a full moon it still has its own relevance. At least, I think it is interesting even at this time.)

We are currently under a full moon. It got me thinking about all the troubles we have when the moon is full. Oh, you don’t believe all that astrology stuff? Well, I can positively state that there is a very good reason for all the superstition surrounding the full moon.

In my many years in the airline industry, there were always strange happenings when the moon was full. My airline, American, even had a reference page in the computer titled simply “Moons” where all the dates of full moons were listed.

It was common knowledge among ground service people and pilots and flight attendants that when the moon was full, there were bound to be some odd things happening. Customers were more apt to complain, delays were more prominent, baggage was more likely to get misrouted or lost and communications were less reliable, mainly in the form of computer outages.

When I worked at the ticket counter—we actually had a staff of people at the counter in those days instead of those machines you encounter nowadays—we always knew that a full moon was imminent, even if it wasn’t visible due to cloud cover. The behavior of some of our passengers was weird during those times, especially those who were “white knuckle flyers.” Customers were more demanding and argumentative. Voices were raised in situations where people normally would be rational and patient. And there were always problems with reservations being dropped or cancelled for no apparent reason.

In that same AA informational page labeled “Moons” there is also reference to another event that seems to screw up communication and travel. The reference is to times when the planet Mercury is retrograde. Three times a year Mercury appears to be moving backwards for periods of about two weeks. When the planet appears to go forward again, it is said to be Mercury Direct. It has to do with the fact that the Mercurial year—its trip around the Sun—is 88 days long, while ours is 365 days. All of the planets exhibit the retrograde effect, but only Mercury does it that often.

Think of two trains on parallel tracks going in the same direction at different speeds. As the faster train passes the slower one, the slower train appears to be going backwards with respect to the faster one. Well, that is what the planetary retrograde effect is. When Mercury is retrograde it has an effect on activity here on the Earth. And when it occurs in conjunction with a full moon, you can just imagine the increased effects.

I didn’t give you this astronomy/astrology lesson for nothing. While I was doing my research for the column I came across a Web site that gave me a whole new outlook on what went wrong in the Presidential Election of 2000. We all know there are dozens of theories out there, but this one could be the grand prizewinner. The real problem with the 2000 election was that we had Mercury Retrograde and it was exactly at the end of its cycle (the worst time) on November 7, 2000. In other words, the election outcome was in the stars—or in this case, the planets.

Other Mercury Retrograde Examples:
· Titanic sinking, April 15, 1912 – communication confusion delays rescue, causing more deaths
· John F. Kennedy-Richard Nixon election, November 8, 1960 – confusion about winner in close election
· John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s plane crash, July 16, 1999 – pilot inexperience causes confusion about plane’s instrument panels
· John McCain’s campaign event on October 8, 2008 – calling his supporters “My Fellow Prisoners”
· Barack Obama’s presidential oath on January 20, 2009 – Barack Obama and Chief Justice John Roberts misspeak the oath, causing them to re-do it the next day

There are likely many other instances where either a full moon or Mercury Retrograde came into play in historical event and outcomes. Isn’t it fascinating?

Merchandise Return Policy

There is a special day next week, and I want to address that in this column. No, I’m not referring to Thanksgiving, and I won’t publish the gravy recipe for the fourth time (Hint: You can find it in the archives to the left side. The day I mean is called “Black Friday” and it signals the start of the holiday shopping season.

Personally, I wouldn’t shop on that day, but a lot of people apparently do so. Therefore, it makes this a good time for some advice on shopping.

This might be one of those columns you will want to forward to your family and friends. That is really quite easy to do, either by sending them the URL, or if they don’t like to open links or attachments, by simply copying the text and pasting it into your email. I don’t care whether or not you give me credit for the column, but I hope you will.

I received an email from a buddy this week that related an incident where a GPS unit was purchased at a big electronics store. It turned out to be less than satisfactory to the buyer, so he returned it with his receipt for a refund. Here is a shortened version of what then occurred:

· There was a 15% restocking fee assessed against the refund—in this case $45.
· Since the item cost over $200, no in-store refund was given.
· Even though the item was purchased for cash, the corporate headquarters would have to issue a check in 7-10 business days and mail it to him.
· If he wanted to purchase a replacement GPS immediately, he would have to start all over again with cash, check or credit/debit card.

When he complained to the clerk that he was never informed about the return policy when he bought the item, the response was what you would expect. The clerk advised him that “It is clearly printed on the back of your receipt.”

He asked to see the manager, and was given pretty much the same treatment, but was provided the phone number for the corporate office. He left the store in a very bad mood.

When he got home, he called the corporate office. The response from there was only a little better. He was promised a $45 gift card to use on a future visit to the store. He told the representative what he could do with the gift card, and promised that he would never shop at that store again.

Okay, there is a moral to the story.

Whenever you plan to purchase a big-ticket item, go online first and check out the refund policy of the store. The big chains all publish their refund policies on the Internet, but it is up to you to look at them before you buy.

In some cases, you might decide not to even go to that chain store due to the published policy. Restocking fees would be an excellent reason to boycott, since it is a silly and superfluous charge in the first place. Some stores seem to have a restocking fee that goes all the way up to 25% of the purchase price for certain items. If that becomes a reason not to shop a particular chain, and if you want to advertise the policy via your email contacts, maybe you can affect a store boycott that will cause them to change the policy.

If nothing else, you will at least alert your family and friends to what you consider an unfair business practice. They can then make their own decisions on whether or not to shop at that store.

Here’s another way of dealing with returns. If you are not sure of the specific item that will please your gift recipient, give them a gift certificate instead. Let them choose which brand and model to buy and avoid the return/refund dilemma altogether. There is nothing wrong with giving a gift certificate as long as you are certain that it will be used.

You’ll notice that I never named the chain or the store in this column. That is because I want you to take charge and do your own research on the subject. There are several stores that publish some pretty unfair refund policies, but it is up to you to find out before you patronize those stores.

Just remember that clichéd phrase, “Caveat emptor!” which translates to “Let the buyer beware!”

Travels With Tom-Tom

My wife and I went up to Chattanooga last week. I didn’t need a GPS to get there, but I took it with me anyway, since I planned a little side trip on our way home.

I got my GPS about three years ago, and on my first trip using it we wound up on a farmer’s field instead of at our hotel, so I have never completely trusted the unit. However, I used the GPS last year on my Northwest trip, and it performed beautifully.

Then I used it again this year on my trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and on my trip to Hells Canyon in Oregon. Again it did a good job of getting me around.

So when I decided to route us across Tennessee and North Carolina and down into the mountains of Northern Georgia, I figured it would get us there okay.

Well, it proved me wrong, and it made an approximate 5-hour trip into a 9-hour odyssey.

When I programmed the trip from Chattanooga to Tallulah Falls in, the GPS unit wanted to route me down to Atlanta on I-75, then up I-85 and I-985 to get there. Now, that might have been the shortest route time wise, but what fun was that? I wanted to see the wild country.

I took a more direct route across the mountains. Well, that was a big mistake.

Do you recall the movie Deliverance with Burt Reynolds and John Voigt? Well, we weren’t by the Caloosahachie River, but the Ocoee River looks like the one they used in the movie. Thank God we didn’t have any breakdowns, but we sure did get lost a few times. I kept looking for the snaggle-toothed hillbilly and the banjo playin’ kid.

First, I had to go “off route” to get the GPS to recalculate. Fortunately, my GPS doesn’t have that annoying voice that says, “ree-calc-u-lating.” Second, Judy can’t stand the voice commands anyway, so she mutes the sound.

Even so, once we went off route, the GPS screen kept pointing arrows at me to reverse direction. When it finally did a reroute to conform to the direction we were headed, it still didn’t like my choices, and continued to give me updates.

At one crossroads I turned the way the GPS directed, and was immediately off the map. We wound up executing three loops around the same roads before we got back on the right track according to the GPS. Then we went off route again on an open stretch of road—try that one—and finally pulled over at a gas station and general store in a little crossroads called Brasstown.

There was what appeared to be a dead possum hanging by its tail over the door, so Judy refused to go in with me. Come to think of it, I don’t know what possessed me to go in myself. I think the gas pumps were the old-fashioned crank type. There was one of those large mouth jars on the counter with some pink hardboiled eggs in it, too—probably pickled years ago.

I took my maps in with me and asked the owner for directions to Tallulah Falls. Of course, he had no idea where that was, so I showed him on the Georgia map—we were in North Carolina, by the way. He then gave me some directions, which his wife wrote down for me, based on one of their “Sunday trips in the country”. (What the heck did he think Brasstown is?)

It won’t make any sense, but the fellow got into some homespun tale about his last trip to “that state below Georgia.” I started to volunteer the state’s name, Florida, but he said his wife does not allow him to use the “f-word” so he refers to it only as “the state below Georgia”—I swear I didn’t make that up. Needless to say, I didn’t ask why.

Well, we got back under way and after several more near misses, including seeing a sign at another crossroad pointing to “Brasstown” after we had made two turns already, we arrived at the town of Clayton. GA. That was where we finally picked up the correct route down to Tallulah Falls. It took four-and-a-half hours to go the 170 miles from Chattanooga, and we got to our destination at about 1:30 in the afternoon.>

Tallulah Falls was a nice place to visit and we even went on to another waterfall that is on the campus of Toccoa Falls College in Toccoa, Georgia. Even that was an adventure—I had to walk through the college bookstore and out a back door to get to the waterfall—but we made it home to Augusta late in the afternoon.

What could have been an easy 5-hour drive from Chattanooga to Augusta became a full day of driving and used just about a full tank of gas. But what a fun trip it was! I took lots of pictures, too.

On Borrowed Time

I got another one of those Power Point slide show presentations this week that gave advice to senior citizens on how to enjoy the autumn of their lives. I read it, even though I’ve seen the same or similar messages many times. And I once again mentally nodded in agreement with the message.

We all live on borrowed time, but it becomes clearer and shorter as we get into our 60s and 70s. Myself, I’ve been on borrowed time for over thirty years. I was diagnosed with coronary artery disease in September of 1980. My cardiologist scheduled me for a coronary bypass, which he performed in October of that year. That was the beginning of a long line of hospitalizations and procedures for me.

I had a massive coronary infarction (heart attack) while staying at a hotel in Frederick, Maryland on the day after Christmas in 2005. I was transported by ambulance to a local hospital and then by helicopter to Washington Medical Center, where a team preformed a balloon angioplasty. I suspect that I “died” several times that night, but they brought me back.

I could trace my “borrowed timeline” even further back to 1941, when I was two-years-old. At that time, I was down for a nap in my second floor bedroom, but I stood up in my crib and somehow wound up falling out of the window, landing headfirst on the concrete driveway below.

I suffered a fractured skull, and the doctor who treated me in the hospital said that the only thing that saved my life was the window screen. I landed on that screen and apparently that narrow cushion of air was enough to break my fall before I hit the pavement.

There are probably not very many people who can recount the times they were at the brink of death and were brought back to enjoy many more years of quality life. For me, I don’t recall that early incident—we seem to lose most memories prior to age five—but I can remember in detail the two other times when I was a heartbeat away from eternity.

When the Jehovah’s Witnesses come to my door and ask if I’ve been born again, I can honestly say, “Yes, I have.” It has a different meaning from what they infer, but it does shorten the conversation.

One thing my experiences have sharpened is my appreciation for doing whatever I can do. Call it my bucket list if you want—I borrowed that from the recent movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan freeman--but I try to experience lots of what I love, and one of those is travel.

I don’t mind telling you that when I took my solo trip across America to Seattle and back last year, I fully expected it to be my last trip. Because of that attitude, I really worked as many places and sights into the itinerary as I could. In the fifteen days I was on the road, I visited about 40 places, and it was a tremendously rewarding trip.

Since that trip in June of 2009, I’ve taken five more trips. The last one this past week, when my wife and I went to Chattanooga to finally see the attractions that we had seen advertised on barns and billboards most of our lives—Rock City and Ruby Falls. (They were both worth the trip and the admission fees, as was the third one, the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway)

Most of you have been able to vicariously share my travels by way of my daily journals, and I will probably continue to write and send them out. However, I want to encourage you to get out there and make your own bucket list.. As I said at the outset, we are all on borrowed time, so whatever it is that “floats your boat” by all means do it!

American Exceptionalism

A miracle took place recently while the world watched. In Chile, 33 miners, trapped in a collapse that occurred way back in August, were rescued and reunited with their loved ones. Live television coverage was provided during the final stages of the rescue operation, but little was said in Washington about the near tragedy.

I wanted to write a column about the Chilean mine rescue, but another writer said it better than I could have. Therefore, I’m going to publish her column in lieu of my own meager efforts to memorialize those who played so important a part in the ”Miracle in Chile.”

While the White House may not believe in American exceptionalism, I do. And I'm thinking there's a whole bunch of people in Chile that would agree.

Regarding the mine rescue, did you know: The guy that designed the rescue module was a NASA Engineer? The Drill was made by Schramm Inc. from Pennsylvania? The Drill Bits were made by Center Rock, Inc. located in Berlin, Pennsylvania?

The lead driller Jeff Hart and his team are from Denver, Colorado. They are on loan from the US Military in Afghanistan where they are drilling water wells for our Forward Operating Bases. He spent the next 33 days on his feet, operating the drill that finally provided a way out Saturday for 33 trapped miners. "You have to feel through your feet what the drill is doing; it's a vibration you get so that you know what's happening," explained Hart.

Hart was called in from Afghanistan, "simply because he's the best" at drilling larger holes with the T130's wide-diameter drill bits, Stefanic said.

Standing before the levers, pressure meters and gauges on the T130's control panel, Hart and the rest of the team faced many challenges in drilling the shaft. At one point, the drill struck a metal support beam in the poorly mapped mine, shattering its hammers. Fresh equipment had to be flown in from the United States and progress was delayed for days as powerful magnets were lowered to pull out the pieces.

The mine's veins of gold and copper ran through quartzite with a high level of abrasive silica, rock so tough that it took all their expertise to keep the drill's hammers from curving off in unwanted directions. "It was horrible," said Center Rock President Brandon Fisher, exhausted after hardly sleeping during the effort.

Fisher, Stefanic and Hart called it the most difficult hole they had ever drilled, because of the lives at stake.

"If you're drilling for oil and you lose the hole, it's different. This time there's people down below," Stefanic said.

"We ruined some bits, worked through the problems as a team, and broke through," Hart said. "I'm very happy now."

Miners' relatives crowded around Hart on Saturday, hugging and posing for pictures with him as he walked down from the rescue operation into the tent camp where families had anxiously followed his work.

"He's become the hero of the day," said Dayana Olivares, whose friend Carlos Bugueno (wa)s one of the miners stuck below.

In a different day and age, Jeff Hart would be the most famous American in our country right now. He would be honored at the White House. Schoolchildren would learn of his skill and heroism. But because Jeff Hart works in an industry currently being demonized by (insert name for the clowns currently running our country) more people in Chile will celebrate this symbol of American greatness than in America itself.
- Michelle Malkin

Did you know these facts? I didn’t.