2226 The Meathead Economics

That's what the WSJ is calling the universal preschool tax which would cost Californians $23 billion over the next 10 years, if Rob Reiner's Proposition 82 passes. Rob Reiner, for those of you too young to remember, was the flaming liberal son-in-law of Archie Bunker in the TV series, All in the Family. He left Gloria and she raised their son alone (in another short lived series). Now he's just another limousine liberal from Hollywood, making money off poor schmucks who buy movie tickets.

First of all, there is no evidence whatsoever that sending poor kids to preschool puts them ahead in elementary or high school. It doesn't get them into college and good jobs. Billions of dollars spent on Head Start over 40 years have not shown any permanent gains, because when the lights have been turned out and the doors of the school locked at night, these kids go home to the old environment and the parent (usually just one, ala Gloria Bunker). When California preschools are universal, you can bet your bippy that Hollywood moms will be sending their little darlings to a private school or jet setting them around the world with nannies and tutors in tow. The middle class and the working poor will be footing the bill, not the rich.

Second, California already has confiscatory taxes, and long time permanent (and wealthy) citizens are moving out of state. They love their sunshine, but they love their wealth more. According to one pundit, you can buy a home in Nevada just with the the tax savings by moving out of California. When the rich leave a state, who is going to pay the bulk of the taxes? Well, the middle-class, of course, since the poor don't pay anything.

Third, Reiner is using tobacco tax money (intended for children) to promote his latest Meathead scheme, and it has been funneled into the pockets of the public relations firms who got those contracts to sell his scheme.

"Beware of liberals promising to tax someone else to help children" they really mean you.

November story from Orange Co. Register on the Meathead tax

Wall Street Journal article

2225 This calls for a bag of Fritos

Some of you munch chocolates when under stress; I scarf down Fritos.


I just finished looking over our income tax forms before they are mailed--federal, state, RITA (our suburb), and Columbus. Even with all the eyes we've had looking this over, we've had the wrong address for our business for four years! No one seemed to care.

I have a pension and my husband has Social Security but is finishing up a few jobs for long time clients. His income is negative, so that offsets our interest income; even with a negative income he still owes taxes on his Soc. Sec.; the auto expenses for business still have to be claimed, but the record doesn’t have to be submitted; medical expenses were well over $10,000 (more than half my income) because of insurance and Medicare costs and we had no illnesses--it‘s been one of our healthiest years; we have a small house on the east side (considered a rental for us) which on paper shows up at $420,000 for depreciation (!) and the reasons are just flat out bizarre, but I assume it is so you never get to zero like we did back in the 60s when we owned a duplex. Must be very beneficial to people who own acres of apartments. But this is little house.

Here's a rerun from what I wrote on Feb. 8, but nothing has changed.

In 1995 the total pages of federal tax rules were 40,500; in 2004, 60,044.

In 2000 the number of IRS tax forms were 475; in 2004 they were 529.

In 1994 there were 16 loopholes for education and training; in 2004 that had risen to 28.

In 1995, 50% of taxpayers used paid tax preparers; in 2003, 62%.

In 1995 Americans spent 5.3 billion hours filling out tax forms; in 2004, 6.5 billion.

In 1995 there were 84 pages in the 1040 instruction book; in 2003 there were 131.

To complete the 1040, A,B, and D schedules in 1995, it required 21.2 hours; in 2003 it took 28.5. [figures from CATO Handbook on Policy, p. 120]

Monday Memories: Did I ever tell you about: When my letters turned into a memoir?
When my children left home about 20 years ago, I was suffering from empty nest syndrome big time. I decided to gather up the letters I’d written to my mother and sisters and the ones they’d written me and excerpt the “crazy” time in our year--from about Halloween through January so I would have a written record of our family life. Both children have November birthdays, so that’s about the time things really heated up at our house.

After looking through the letters (which my mother had saved), I pushed the time line back another 10 years and started with my years in college until I had about 30 years worth of letters. And I added in letters from girl friends, cousins, and in-laws. (I never throw away a letter). It was hours of typing (at the office after work since I didn’t have a computer then) and careful editing out really personal stuff. My husband designed an artistic cover, and I had the little book reproduced and bound at Kinko's.

Although the collection recorded all the cute and interesting things about my children’s growing up years, it also inadvertently became a story about a group of women--with a few men around the fringes--who were keeping things going by following a few familiar holiday traditions. At the beginning, I'm a college student and my mother is 47 years old with three children in college, a married daughter and two little grandchildren. My niece and nephew are 3 and 2 in the first letter and then are parents of their own children at the end, and repeating many of the same traditions, questions, and yearnings we letter writers had. Some people who didn’t write letters are in the collection anyway--their health and well-being and activities reported by the women who tell the stories year after year.

These letters recorded the ordinary events of our lives to the faint drumbeat of the cold war, the civil rights movement, space flight, the VietNam war, political campaigns, Watergate, economic growth and slowdown cycles, the rise of feminism, employment crises, career changes and family reconfigurations. On and on we wrote, from the conservatism of the Eisenhower years, on through the upheaval of the 60's, the stagnation of the 70's, then into the conservatism of Reagan/Bush in the 80s. National and international events are rarely discussed in these letters as though we were pulling the family close into the nest for a respite from the world's woes. If you were to read the letters, you might miss that we were even aware of world events. Or maybe because, as one of my sisters noted in a letter, when you're struggling on the home front sometimes there isn't much left to give to others.

The edited letters became the rhythm of women's lives--nursing a dying parent, holding a sick child, putting up the tree, playing the old records, going to the post office, baking favorite Christmas cookies, helping with school work, going to holiday programs, creating crafts with the children, shopping for gifts, checking the sky for some sunshine, wallpapering the hall, folding the laundry, looking for that just right job.

E-mail and blogging will have an effect on family memoirs--it will be interesting to review this phenomenon in 30 years. Digital is much less permanent than paper. Print out what is worth keeping--your children will be grown and gone the next time you turn around. And when they ask you why you printed them out for safe keeping, tell them, "Because Norma said so."

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2223 Rising college costs

As tuition goes up and more students take on the burden of loans, perhaps it's time to ask some questions about the courses, and how they will help a young person's career? The Young America's Foundation identified 12 courses on college campuses that make the people pushing for the 10 commandments or creationism in the classroom look like sound, sensible thinkers worthy of our support just for some balance.

1. Princeton: "The cultural production of early modern women" which examines prostitutes, cross-dressing and same sex eroticim in 16th and 17th century England, France, Italy and Spain.

2. Occidental College, California: "The unbearable whiteness of Barbie: race and popular culture in the United State."

3. Johns Hopkins University: "Sex, drugs and rock n roll in ancient Egypt."

The whole list here, but you can probably find more examples at the college of your choice by going on-line and searching "bulletin" or "courses."

I just quickly glanced through some women's studies course descriptions at Ohio State, but they are sanitized so as to reveal nothing, but I did find it odd that in women's studies, teaching middle school students is called "peer education." So the fact of biology makes the teacher and student peers? Or have I misunderstood this jargon and it means teaching students to teach their peers about sexuality?

2222 What would we do without committees?

Although I love being retired, I'm ecstatic about not being on committees to earn a paycheck. They truly made potholes in the road to a wonderful life and career. And things have always been so, I think. The committee gets a charge, works hard, battles for every concept and sentence in the report, brings it to the larger body (none of whom have done an ounce of research on the problem), only to get a bazillion "what ifs" and "why didn't you do" comments. Librarians can spend 15 minutes placing a comma. I used to envy the guy who sat in the back and slept.

Yesterday I checked out a black Lutheran hymnal published in 1930 from the church library. I wanted to examine it to determine if it was the edition used in the 1940s-50s at little Faith Lutheran Church in Forreston, IL when my family attended. We weren't Lutherans, but this little community of believers took us in and treated us like we were one of them (we were Church of the Brethren).

I'm a preface and index reader (it's a Librarian thing), so I got quite a chuckle out of the prefatory remarks on the book's history.

". . .representatives of eight synods. . . met in Chicago, May 3, 1921 and organized the Lutheran Intersynodical Hymnal Committee. . . In 1928, after the Committee had devoted much time and labor to a careful selection of hymns to be included in this hymnal and to a thorough revision of hymns from other languages as well as to the making of new translations when those hitherto used were not deemed satisfactory. . .[provisional was printed] with a view to the solicitation of criticisms and suggestions. . . The Committee again revised its work, also eliminating one hundred and thirty-two hymns, mostly translations, and including ninety-three other hymns."

The origin of the hymnal committee was the Iowa Synod, so I'm guessing there were some improved translations of Scandinavian and German hymns in the provisional text, but I can't be sure since it doesn't say.

Ah, committees. You gotta love 'em.

2221 The sun is setting on a busy day

Today we had the artists' reception for the Digital Artists of Central Ohio (DACO) Spring Show at The Church at Mill Run, 3500 Mill Run Dr., Hilliard, OH. It took about 4 hours to get it hung yesterday. Then the young man who arranged for us to show it did the typing of the program, but he was apparently a 2 finger typist, so I didn't get it until about 8:30 last night. Between church services this morning I ran off about 50 copies in the church office.

When I got home from church about 11:30 our son was here. He brought over his Midi so I'll be able to practice the choir music. I finally found a good spot for it in the guest room. It's sort of fun--I'd never played one before. It will be awhile before I sound like The 2nd Chapter of Acts (retired, 1988), but with all the drums, guitar and cymbals, I think I could do it (if it drowns out my voice). It even has applause if I get discouraged!

Hear the bells ringing

They're singing that we can

Be born again

Joy to the world!

He is risen!

Hallelujah!



We had a very good turn out at the art show, and some of the people I invited this morning at church came by. This is a relatively new art group and many had never seen our space before. We recruited one of our own to help with hanging the next one. It's a lot of ladder climbing.

Now I'm sort of vegging out on the couch watching "Gone with the Wind," one of my all time favorite movies. The costuming and sets never cease to amaze me. I'm too tired to make a joyful noise.

2220 Net Asset Creep

Big news these days. The gap in assets between the top and bottom is growing. Wait a minute! Weren't we told 10 years ago that this was going to happen as the "greatest generation" which struggled through the Depression and World War II and scrimped and saved and invested in America began dying off and passing along their assets to the boomers? Weren't we told years ago that there would be an unprecedented amount of wealth, trillions and trillions, changing hands in this country in the early 21st century?

We're not rich by any means, but if my husband's step-father hadn't withdrawn his RCA pension and invested it in the stock market back in the early 1990s, and if he hadn't died first leaving it all to my mother-in-law, his wife of 52 years, I would've worked until age 65 or later instead of retiring at 60. And now we have money to invest for our older years which we wouldn't have had. He was just a poor kid from Indianapolis' south side who worked his way up in management, but we are the benficiaries of his hard work and the stock market boom of the 90s.

An estimated $12 trillion will be passed along to heirs in 2017 just about 10 years from now--and in the next 50 years, $41 trillion. Will there be a widening gap? Yes, unless someone in Washington decides it isn't fair that our fathers and grandfathers worked so hard, and it should be stripped away and given to someone not in the family.

The wealthy can afford the advisors and lawyers and accountants to help them work their way through the tax code. The rest of us can't. As the media starts ginning up the music on "unfair," "poverty is growing," and "it's Bush's tax breaks for the wealthy," just keep in mind your dad and mom who rarely went to a nice restaurant, or travelled, or bought new clothes. Then turn off the TV.

2219 It's an odd war

says Victor Davis Hanson. "It is an odd war, because the side that I think is losing garners all the press, whether by blowing up the great golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, or by blowing up an American each day. Yet we hear nothing of the other side that is ever so slowly, shrewdly undermining the enemy."

Read his latest assessment of the insurgency, what our media area ignoring, what is our will to win and see this through here.

"Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq — mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of the state-run Arab media, and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them. Iraq may not have started out as the pivotal front in the war between democracy and fascism, but it has surely evolved into that. After visiting the country, I think we can and will win, but just as importantly, unlike in 2003-04, there does not seem to be much of anything we should be doing there that in fact we are not."

2218 White guys can't write copy?

Gannett/USAToday has a poster ad promoting job fairs in McLean VA, Anaheim, CA and Atlanta for positions in advertising. In the mosaic of photos in the ad are eleven women--all Asian in appearance, some more so than others. There are five young men in the ad, one clearly African American, three sort of multi-racial featured, and one with delicate, male-model/dancer features who could be a NAMBLA poster child. Just what is the exclusion message here?

job fairs
advertising

2217 What doesn't respond to antibiotics?

This is a quiz, a useful one, and it is from USAToday. Actually, it isn't a quiz, it is the answers to a quiz.

Which ailments/illnesses do not respond to antibiotics?

• cold
• flu
• chest cold
• bronchitis

These do, with caveats

• pneumonia (if it is bacterial and not viral)
• whooping cough (if diagnosed early)

So why do 50% of people with bronchitis receive an antibiotic--the overuse of which is a major health threat?

KidsHealth

antibiotics

2216 Wild boars are extinct in Scotland

therefore it can't be against the Dangerous Wild Animals Act for farmers to raise the hairy ugly things. Story here.

2215 Facing extinction?

"Today . . . the library is relinquishing its place as the top source of inquiry. The reason that the library is losing its supremacy in carrying out this fundamental role is due, of course, to the impact of digital technology. As digital technology has pervaded every aspect of our civilization, it has set forth a revolution not only in how we store and transmit recorded knowledge, historical records, and a host of other kinds of communication but also in how we seek and gain access to these materials." Educause Review

2214 Creepy, crawly computer words

Wine words are prettier than "Observed Web Robot Behavior on Decaying Web Subsites" nerd words.

• Robot Behavior
  crawling patterns
  contents decay at predetermined rates
  decaying subsites
  Spidering Hacks
  populating each with HTML
  words that are often labeled "pornographic."
  tar-zipped
  lowest-common-denominator
  Googlebot
  log rotation process
  pruning and cross-checking
  percentage of crawls
  non-resolving IPs
  most frequent single crawler
  a mix of human and robotic crawls
  we ignored crawls from unknown robots
  a host containing robot, crawler, spider or some similarly identifiable robot-style title
  log-resolve and whois databases
  final arbiter
  static bar graphs
  The green portion
  deep-crawling
  Wayback Machine
  resource decay
  begin a deep plunge
  research on live systems
  the vagaries and foibles
  

2213 Sorry, we gave at the church

These all dropped through the mail slot today. Looks like they used the same direct mail provider.

2212 Should illegals receive

• in state tuition help with my tax money? NO
  
• scholarships? NO
  
• well, how about a public school education on my real estate tax dollar? NO
  
• surely emergency room services and hospital beds on my medicaid state money? NO

What about making it easier for them to become legal workers? I'll certainly consider any idea or program that is legal. Nothing while they are illegals.

2211 The days of wine and phrases

Wine critics write the most wonderful words. Today's wine column in the WSJ was about wine bars, and I just had to share with you these phrases. They are just so--I don't know--earthy, robust and unstoppable. Most are reusable in other stories.

• explosion of wine bars
  
• passion for wine
  
• a demographic of time-starved people
  
• a sophisticated retreat from airport madness
  
• a place of fun and wonder
  
• a menu of "4 pages of wine and 2 pages of food"
  
• opened too long--if flat, listless, stale, metallic, or oxidized
  
• take a chance on something new
  
• flights of wine--4 chardonnays from around the world
  
• the bartender/wine server should be passionate
  
• be honest with your budget
  
• stunning stuff not on the list
  
• it's not geeky to take notes

I know nothing about wine--I drink "three buck chuck" (Charles Shaw, $3.30 at Trader Joe's), and I stagger after one glass of Merlot, but I love tasty words. One recommended wine was $25.99 a bottle--a sparkling Shiraz. "It was delightful with some seriously dark, herbal and earthy tastes leavened with languid bubbles. It would go well with chili, hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches and barbecue."

2210 Greed, Lust, and Sex

Or as my friend Vox Lauri would say slyly, "that should bring 'em to the site." WSJ says a new network (My Network TV) will feature greed, lust, and sex.

I don't know who did their marketing research, but hasn't that already been done to death?

2209 Readers pound on Nancy

Readers of Nancy Pelosi's Wall Street Journal article on research and development thoroughly thrashed her in the letters column yesterday. John Rogitz, Thom McKee, John Wallace and Steve Cardana made these points:

• Pelosi thinks USA has R & D leadership because of federal bureaucrats.
  
• Pelosi thinks spending more money on public education would produce more engineering graduates.
  
• Pelosi is all wrong about who and what country contributed to scientific achievements she notes.
  
• Pelosi thinks our status as a world leader has never been challenged before the Bush administration. Was she OTL during the space race and the battles of fuel efficient automobiles in the 70s and 80s?

Her grasp of history, politics and technology makes you wonder after reading her article if she (or her staff) is a victim product of the public school system.

2208 Mickey's joke this week

Mickey sent along this joke today. Maybe you've seen it, but I got a chuckle.

"George W. Bush and the Pope are taking a cruise of the Potomac and the Pope's hat blows off and lands in the water. Secret Service men scramble to retrieve it, but George says, "wait a minute guys, I'll handle this". The President proceeds to step out of the boat, walks across the water, retrieves the hat and walks back to the boat.

The next morning the Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC and NPR Top story/Banner headlines read: PRESIDENT BUSH CAN'T SWIM!!!! "

Actually, I know the President doesn't walk on water. Mostly he's floating along on an out of control domestic spending program that makes him appear to be a Democrat.

Update: Two more from Mickey. He's really flying today.

"A White House source stated Wednesday that Congress is considering awarding Vice President Dick Cheney the Congressional Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, for his act of bravery in shooting an attorney. The source was quoted to say, All Americans have wanted to shoot a lawyer at one time or another and Cheney actually had the guts to do it."

"In a related story, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which issues hunting licenses, said that it will start requiring hunters who wish to bag a lawyer to have a new "lawyer's stamp" on their hunting license. Currently Texas hunters are required to carry stamps for hunting birds, deer, and bear, at a cost of $7 annually. The new "lawyers stamp" will cost $100, but open season will be all year long. The department further stated that although the "lawyers stamp" comes at hefty price, sales have been brisk and it is believed it will generate annual revenues in excess of $3 billion dollars the first year. Other states are considering similar hunting stamps."

Apologies to my niece Julie who is a lawyer, and has probably heard more lawyer jokes than she'd care to admit. Only librarians laugh at librarian jokes--they are so obtuse no one else would laugh.

Thursday Thirteen

13 topics NORMA writes about in this blog
1. Current events. I read three newspapers and a number of political, technical and social blogs and web sites. I check out 3-4 magazines a week from the public library on business, health and politics. I occasionally listen to talk radio and I enjoy C-Span, particularly Book-tv. I’m a neo-conservative who would lean Libertarian if it weren’t for abortion. Even as a Democrat (most of my adult life), I was always pro-life. I grew up pacifist. I know nothing about fiction, popular music, sports, gaming and entertainment.

2. Libraries and librarianship. There are strange goings-on and wonderful technological advancements that I try to keep up with. A side issue is education, but it’s not a field I follow although I think it’s an important issue for everyone to know about. I leave that to other bloggers better informed.

3. Parenting. My children are adults (37 and 38) and have been on their own since they were 18, but I still remember the good, the bad, and the delightful. I am not a grandparent, so you’ll find no cutesy photos on my site. Our two oldest sons died, and occasionally I’ve mentioned it in blogging, but not often. Life if full of losses, and those were definitely defining events in our lives.

4. Finances. We’re living on pensions. It’s amazing how your vocabulary changes to Social Security, 403-b, 401-K, IRA, Wall Street, taxes, real estate, bonds, REITS, etc., when no one is handing you a paycheck for showing up. Neither one of us had any retirement plan until we were in our mid-forties. People coming up are much better informed about this than we were.

5. My family. I grew up in 2 small towns with three siblings, and lots of relatives near-by. I like genealogy and family stories, so I’m the keeper of the tales for my siblings and nieces and nephews. Also I write about my immediate family--husband of 45+ years, two adult children in town.

6. Travel. I’ve blogged about our Frank Lloyd Wright architectural tours and our trip to Germany and Austria, but I’ll blog about anything that takes us on the road or puts us in an airplane, train or bus.

7. My church and my faith. Most of this is at Church of the Acronym. I’m a Lutheran (ELCA), but always test high as a Calvinist (about 100%) if I take a theology quiz. I have zero interest in “end-times” stuff--Jesus is coming back and that’s all I care to know. Everything else is sheer speculation. I grew up in the Church of the Brethren, a tiny, Anabaptist denomination with a strong pacifist and outreach ministry. Now I like traditional services and liturgy and gripe a lot about current trends in music and worship. That’s probably either my age, or because I came to appreciate liturgy late in my life. I joined the choir 2 weeks ago. I could read Martin Luther all day--I think his published work runs to 55-60 volumes. Imagine if blogging had been available!

8. My interest in art. Sometimes I post my paintings here or those of my husband (who is a much better painter). We are both watercolorists, doing more now that we are retired, and are members of a Visual Arts Ministry that works out of our church.

9. My activities with friends. I loved my job as veterinary medicine librarian, but retirement is just plain fun. We're still in touch with our friends from grade school and high school through U.S. mail, via e-mail, and face to face visits when we return to Illinois and Indiana. Work friendships really are hard to keep going, so I’m always looking for new, interesting people to meet, but I hate to be busy so I‘m a careful scheduler.

10. Lakeside, Ohio. We have a summer home in a Lake Erie community on the Chautauqua circuit, so there are lots of activities and events to write about. During the summer months I write a lot of reviews of the entertainment. We’ve been vacationing there since 1974 and bought a home in 1988. A great place for children and for soaking up some art, music and lectures just by walking out the front door.

11. Pets. My cat, a Calico shelter cat, and my grand puppies Abbie and Rosa. My children have a tiny Chihuahua who just recently joined us, and a huge chocolate Lab, a forever-puppy. Growing up I had mostly dogs, and also a horse. I like to paint and draw animals, especially horses. I really enjoy the photos of animals I see on other people’s blogs. Especially cats. Most of them need to lose weight, however.

12. Health issues and research. Some of this is covered at my other blog, Hugging and Chalking. About half of my journal collection in the Veterinary Medicine Library was human medicine or hard sciences, so I got hooked on that topic. Did you know that many doctors write poetry and beautiful essays and publish them in boring medical journals?

13. Writing. Also the wonders and peculiarities of the English language. In addition to writing seven blogs, I’m in a memoirs writing group and occasionally participate in poetry readings using my own poetry. I’ve always written letters to my family and friends, to editors of magazines and government types; also essays and stories, and as a child I also illustrated them. I am an extremely fast typist, which certainly helps in the blogging business. I’ve published in journals you’ve never heard of unless you’re a librarian. I have boxes of half finished research that will never be published because scholarly publishing is a two way street, and the fast lane is intended to advance a career, which I no longer have.

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