3915

The retirement experts

Jonathon Clements reports that "Experts offer all kinds of advice. Mostly it's ignored." [WSJ 6-20-07] I know how you feel, Mr. Clements! I give such excellent advice, yet everyone is hell bent on making their own mistakes!

Actually, we did pretty much what he suggests the experts tell you to do in planning retirement, except the one about saving diligently from a young age. All experts agree on that one. We didn't save a dime toward retirement until our kids were gone from home. But since I was 46, that gave me some time before retirement. He suggests three things experts advise that most workers ignore (I didn't, but I also didn't know they agree on these three).

1) Rereading an old 1999 letter to my children I refreshed my memory that I had notified both my OSUL and Prior Health Library bosses that I would retire in the fall of 2000--about a year in advance. (I don't think that's such a great idea, but you can squirrel a date away in your head. You are a lame duck from that time forward if you let your employer know.)

2) From 1986, when I went back to work full time, through 2000 I put the maximum allowed in my 403-b tax shelter, and fortunately, when I took out my retirement money after leaving to have a family, I had tucked it away with interest so I could buy back my retirement time (it would not have grown if left in the system because I wasn't vested).

3) When my stocks began faltering in 2000 (before Bush, BTW, if that economic myth is important to you), I changed my investment mix, from aggressive to low risk/moderate risk. Apparently the experts suggest retirees need to do this, but it was really instinctive for this lily-livered investor.

However, I could have never guessed ahead of time how expensive retirement would be--actually I'm still surprised. Our "retirement condo" is bigger than the house we lived in for 34 years. Need a bathroom? I've got one where I hang our winter clothes in the shower stall. Travel? For years we went nowhere; now we get 10 brochures a week from travel companies.

I thought our second home on Lake Erie, purchased in 1988 and paid for since 1998, would be a nest egg because home values absolutely soared in Lakeside--moreso than in Columbus. Of course, we all know what's been happening in the real estate market, especially vacation home areas.

I couldn't have imagined what would happen to the cost of health care. My pension plan spent like crazy in the 90s on real estate and fancy offices for its employees, and then had to do some serious cut backs on health benefits for retirees in the 21st century. For some reason, those boomer staff people had never heard of a bust and were way overinvested in high tech. And we're healthy!

And cable. Our cable bill is higher than our gasoline bill for 2 cars--and we lived for the first 26 years of our marriage perfectly happy with 3 broadcast and 1 public channel, and no computer broadband. In order to get our phone service deal and a digital box, we just added about 50 new channels. More ways to sleep in front of the TV.

And taxes! OMG! Was I stupid to think that once we were on pensions the government wouldn't want so much of our money? Apparently. Do you know if every American had to write a check to the government each April instead of having taxes sneakily withheld by their employer, we'd have a tax revolution immediately? We pay quarterly, and even that is a huge reminder of how our government mismanages our money just because we aren't paying attention.

Clements says the most important rule to remember is save diligently. Everyone agrees on that.

3914

Fill in the blank

"It seems incomprehensible that authorities in a scientific discipline would be unaware of the wealth of data in the scientific literature that contradict the basis for its official position on"

dietary fat intake

global warming

global cooling

malaria control

acid rain

market forces

ethanol for fuel

alar

HRT

stem cell research

gender differences

fossil record

human behavior

safety

and so forth

Comment extracted from the Ottobonis' article in Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, vol. 12, no. 1, Spring 2007, p. 12 concerning the WHI low fat diet study.

You will waste hours

at Little Splurge, but it is such fun finding things you didn't know you wanted or needed, like this terrific shoe organizer.



HT Knowledge Problem

3912

Why big business opposes market-based medical care

Craig J. Cantoni used to earn his living making corporations more competitive and productive. He was the go-to guy who would figure out how to reduce costs in health care--higher co-pays and deductibles, second opinions, etc.--although he says the one problem he never could solve was how to stop employees from thinking they were spending other people's money. He admits he was slow to ask himself some painful questions about how he earned his living.

Corporate executives in high tax brackets benefit the most from getting employer-provided medical insurance with pre-tax dollars. But millions of lower-paid rent seekers also benefit from employer-provided medical insurance, including employee benefits managers and administrators, benefit consultants, tax consultants, actuaries, ERISA attorneys, producers of record-keeping software, and publishers of benefit forms and booklets. . . Many are Republicans who in the privacy of the voting booth would never vote to give up their regulatory rice bowl. . . Many others are Democrats who bemoan the plight of the uninsured and deplore the growing wage gap. But in the voting booth, they would never vote to give up their regulatory rice bowl, which drives up the cost of medical insurance and lowers wages by subsituting medical insurance for wages."

Read his article , published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, based on his address to the AAPS in 2006.

3911

25,000 wounded: they will need a lot more help

Josie at Life in a Cracker Box tells about her wounded husband's recovery and their life at Walter Reed. It's an important story being repeated in many families.

3910

The use of scare quotation marks

Annoyed Librarian is commenting on the use of scare quotes by the American Library Association (ALA).

"So it's not a debate on non-library issues, but "non-library" issues. I've noticed ALA always likes to use the scare quotes to poison the well on any debate before it even starts." Check it out. The comments alone are well worth the visit--just in case you thought librarians sit around selecting books to put on the shelves.

3909

Beyond hot here in Columbus

Yesterday it was 95 degrees in Columbus, OH. I was on duty for the mail run between our church's Lytham Rd. campus and Mill Run campus in the afternoon. There was road construction everywhere, even turning around after discovering I was blocked was difficult. At the intersection on our road I think I waited 4 lights to turn left.

I was surprised to see a number of people driving with an open window. They were all smokers. Inhaling hot smoke in a hot car, waiting at an even hotter, semi-stalled intersection, to creep along onto fresh hot asphalt, and drive behind trucks spewing more heat and pollution. Now how smart is that?

Smoking. It doesn't just damage your lungs and heart--it must destroy your brain cells too.

3908

The new media

Yesterday we got some sort of cable upgrade--not only does it now ring our phone, but we have more channels to not watch. I haven't yet read all the instructions and am just learning to use the new remote.

There is no reason in today's world of cable, broadcast TV, radio, satellite, wireless, iPod downloads, internet, usenet, blogs, digital archiving, on-line library collections, creative commons, etc. for anyone to be information deprived or only informed on one or two topics or viewpoints. An article, The Media Cornucopia in the Spring 2007 City Journal by Adam D. Thierer will show you the pictures, if you're tired of reading. We have somewhat of a free market in the media, and that drives the democrats crazy. They want more restrictions, not less.

So what's the problem? Well, the biggest one is that conservatives are able to get their message out (and so are radicals, anarchists, marxists, libertarians, pedophiles, polygamists, pornographers, pianists, go-fers, gamblers and golfers) unincumbered by the mainstream media's control. They see this diversity, which liberals usually try to cram into our thought world as positive, as a negative because some conservatives, like Murdock who owns Fox Network, owns more than one information source. Like ABC, NBC, CBS and AP aren't all clones of Twiddle-dum and Tweedle-dee despite the ownership?

Theirer gives an example of a "a lesbian feminist African-American who likes to hunt on weekends and has a passion for country music" who can program her television tastes to exactly suit her. But it also means that when PBS does a half hour bio on Ruth Graham (Billy Graham's wife) they can leave out any mention of Jesus. This also gives us hours of Paris Hilton in jail and who was the father of Anna Nicole's baby.

The latest hoop-la has some Democrats and Republicans united in efforts to close the ears and mouths of the people. And that's the immigration issue. We know too much because we have too much information and we're calling and writing our president and congress. For shame!

"When Rush Limbaugh has more listeners than NPR, or Tom Clancy sells more books than Noam Chomsky, or Motor Trend gets more subscribers than Mother Jones, liberals want to convince us (or themselves, perhaps) that it’s all because of some catastrophic market failure or a grand corporate conspiracy to dumb down the masses. In reality, it’s just the result of consumer choice."

Monday Memories of my town

Actually, it's not "my town" and never was--I haven't lived there for 50 years. But after I started a new blog about what's on my bookshelves, I was reminded again of my connection to print. At my new blog, I'm mostly transferring, copying, or revising other entries about my books, but am eyeing my bookshelf of books printed in or about the county in Illinois where I grew up. So I'll quote here from Don Smith's privately published memoirs (1997):

"Mt. Morris has been more cosmopolitan than its size alone would dictate, partly because of the presence of the seminary and then the college but largely because of influences associated with the publishing trade. Printing is an inherently literate business; and Kable's emphasis on magazines--rather than wallpaper, food cartons, or oilcloth--meant that editors from Chicago and other cultural centers regularly visited the Mount on business. Similarly, management people from Kable's, as well as Watt and Kable News, often visited major cities on business. All these contacts with the outside world helped create a small oasis of sophistication amongst the corn and soybean fields. . .

One of my classmates [class of 1946] followed his father and his father's father there [Kable's], and the tradition was extended into the fourth generation when both of his sons joined the printing company's ranks. . . Mt. Morris attached considerable important to intellectual and cultural concerns as reflected in the excellence of the schools, the public library, and the town's near-professional concert band. . . few homes were in disrepair, and there was no real slum or shantytown. Most residences were handsomely landscaped one-and-a-half or two-story structures, and a certain amount of house-and-garden one-upmanship and peer pressure kept even sluggards in line. . . [there being] generally no substantial difference between the home of top Kable executive and that of a pressman."

Smith does a nice job of weaving together his family and personal memories with the town's considerable history, even mentioning some sources I've never seen, like Kable Brothers Company, 1898-1948, and the late-1980s Memoirs of H.A. Hoff, the school superintendent, both of which I assume are on someone else's bookshelf. Don Smith taught journalism at Penn State, State College, PA for 33 years.

3906

Happy Fathers' Day, pt. 2

Today at the coffee shop I was standing at the condiment table with a man in plaid, baggy bermudas. "Happy fathers' day," I said while we mixed cream into our coffee. "Thank you, but I'm not a father," he replied. "But you had a father," I said. "Oh my goodness, I never thought of it that way. Thank you so much." Another happy customer enjoying the holiday.

But some people aren't responsible. Read what else happened in the coffee shop.

Happy Fathers' Day

to all of you bloggers who are fathers or who had fathers. We're having the family here today, which caused some phone calls between my children who wondered what I was up to. But inviting someone for dinner is a good excuse to clean the house and get out the nice china. Unless something happens before noon, here's the menu

pork boneless roast with cranberry glaze tossed salad (supplied by lovely daughter) served in Grandma's painted bowls fresh, tender crisp broccoli fresh fruit--strawberries, pineapple, white grapes mixed home made bread (supplied by handsome son) brown rice tossed with mushrooms and red pepper (still not sure about this one--I'm making it up) lemon fluff with cherry topping (no sugar, low fat) served in Grandma's dessert dishes

Yesterday I wandered around Macy's looking for a gift, but at our age, we have everything we need or want, so I suggested to him golf lessons, but he didn't seem too excited about getting hot, sweaty and out of breath. Enjoy the day.

3904

Contact your Senator and Member of Congress

Here's a handy link provided by the WaPo which will tell you how often your guy misses votes (John McCain ought to be ashamed of himself!), and how they voted. Also links to their e-mail, and you still need to be writing about the immigration/amnesty plan. I've written Rep. Pryce and Sen. Voinovich (R-Ohio) saying I'm against amnesty for people who entered the country illegally to work, attend school or have babies. I know there are other reasons, but that should cover most of them. We know President Bush isn't going to back down, so you've got to contact your representatives and senators. Don't forget; do it today If we can't control our own borders, we sure can't do it in the middle east.

3903

It's probably easier, faster, and cheaper to hire an illegal

I'm trying out my new toolbar from the National Science Digital Library using the keyword "immigration," so after a bad link to the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, I came across the list of instructions, guidelines and regulations for the Office of Business Liaison. I read somewhere that government regulations cost each household $8,000 a year (don't quote me--it's just a vague nightmare). So this is part of that. It says the form hasn't been revised since 1991, but later says it might be available in 2005. Isn't this 2007? How long since this page has been revised, I wonder? I don't envy employers trying to do the right thing, do you?

Office of Business Liaison
The primary function of the Office of Business Liaison (OBL) is to educate the United States business community on employment, business, investment, training, and employer education-related immigration issues. We have a home page for this Office, which writes Employer Information Bulletins published on our website.

OBL is receiving inquiries regarding a revised Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification. Please be aware that a revised Form I-9 has not yet been released to the public. The current version of the Form I-9 and the Handbook for Employers, M-274, are dated November 21, 1991.

Both the Form I-9 and Handbook are undergoing revisions to reflect subsequent changes in U.S. immigration law and procedure. A revised Form I-9 may become available in 2005. However, a release date has not been determined. USCIS will conduct outreach and make education materials available to employers when a revised Form I-9 is available.

The Form I-9 can be downloaded from this Web site (see the Related Link). Additionally, for the most current information on the Form I-9, please review the OBL Employer Information Bulletins. These Bulletins are designed to educate employers on employment-related immigration matters. For questions or more information, please call the toll-free Employer Business Investor and School Services Hotline (EBISS) at 1-800-357-2099.

3902

What he saw in Iraq

In the WSJ yesterday (6-15-07) Joe Lieberman tells "What I saw in Iraq." You remember that Joe was abandoned by his party when he chose to support Bush on the war, but he won reelection anyway. I'm not sure what happened to his committee status. But I think he reports things we won't see in the regular news sources. It helps to have been there, I suppose, rather than sit in air conditioned studios and opine or read what someone else wrote.

90% of suicide bombings are the work of non-Iraqi, al-Qaeda terrorists

al-Qaeda's leaders say Iraq is the central front of their global war against the U.S.

al-Qaeda wants to use the Sunni-Shia bloodshed to collapse the Iraqi government and radicalize the region (it has certainly worked with the American leftists)

Iran is doing everything in its power to drive us out of the region

al-Qaeda has shifted its focus because the surge is successful, not because it isn't. Democrats have it backwards.

Why do Democrats and some wimp-Republicans want a failed state in the middle east brought down by al-Qaeda and Iran?

3901

On my Bookshelves

I know this will be a big shock to my regular readers, but I have a new blog, On my bookshelves. So far, I'm just rearranging or moving things. There are many ways to organize your own library on the internet, but I didn't want to learn one more program.

3900

Who buys the food in your household?

Kellogg's is going to stop marketing to children under 12. Excuse me? They never sold a thing to my kids when I was in charge of my kitchen table. I didn't take them to the store--hey, it was my only time to be alone! I've never stood in a check out line with a 10 year old holding the check book or credit card with promises to pay off with their earned income.

It's the parents responsibility to choose the food, pay for it, prepare it and serve it.

Disclaimer: No matter how healthy your little family eats (fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy products, whole grains, etc.), once they are on their own and start eating with friends as teens, all health benefits are off the table. Literally. They will joyfully chose junk. Both of my children are good cooks, one is even a gardener who gives me fresh produce in the summer and bakes home made bread, and the other tries Martha's recipes and sets a fabulous holiday table, but there were many years as young adults that they violated everything they learned at home about good nutrition.

You don't need legislation or law suits by special interest groups like Center for Science in the Public Interest who need to find a steady supply of victims to maintain an income stream. Parents with young children just need some common sense, a back bone, and a book or two from the public library. They also need to send the kids outside to play more often and turn off the TV and computer.

BTW, yesterday I ate a bowl of Kellogg's Raisin Bran for breakfast. I was hungry the entire day.

Friday Family Photo

This photo of my brother was taken just about four years ago, June 2003, in our cottage at Lakeside, OH. The photo has been scanned from an album, so is a bit fuzzy. I wasn't blogging then (started in October 2003), but I did write letters, otherwise I probably wouldn't remember the details of his visit.

He is a stockbroker and lives in Florida, but has many clients in the midwest, and at that time, one was in Columbus. He needed to visit her and had planned to come alone, but his wife's father was in the hospital in Detroit, so they decided to come together (driving) and she would fly back to Florida from there as he continued on to Illinois to visit other family and clients. When they got to Columbus on Friday, my husband had already left for the lake on Wednesday. I broiled steaks, fixed corn on the cob (which my husband hates), salad and fruit and we had a lovely dinner on the deck--one of the prettiest evenings of the year. He met with his client that evening and on Saturday morning we all started out for Lakeside. The trip took longer than usual because I was navigating, and we were chatting, so we missed the turn on Rt. 4. Instead of 2.5 hours, it took almost 4. We walked around the town, went out to eat at Abigail's, and then my husband rented a golf cart and we drove around looking at the different homes and remodeled cottages he had designed or worked on. We actually have a map and a "tour" t-shirt of my husband's projects.

At Lakeside, which is a Chautuaqua community, the "week" starts on Saturday afternoon, so the big program is Saturday evening. The program that Saturday night at the auditorium was Red Hot and Blue, a group of three men and three women from Branson, Missouri singing and dancing to the songs of the 1930s-1960s. Very high energy and nice costumes. On Sunday morning we had breaksfast at the Patio, after which they continued on to Detroit to visit my SIL's dad.

It was a very nice visit, and if he's reading this, "Hope you'll come back soon, little brother!"

3898

Joe Klein is just wrong about where the venom originates

In my opinion, left wing bloggers are the most vicious and much more plentiful, so Klein is giving them a pass when he writes for Time about his critics on the left that, "Some of this is understandable: the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered." They aren't aping, Joe, they aren't imitating; they invented the sneer, smear and shout campaigns. Or are you too young to remember the 60s? I've never heard Rush or Hannity or Laura or Malkin say anything as vicious as what I can read on any leftist blog--or particularly their commenters. They have way more class than the left--for starters, they provide information instead of name calling.

And if I were a hard hitting, commie blogger, I sure wouldn't appreciate being compared to Rush Limbaugh as my inspiration!

3897

The Correct Thing

I have a book from my grandparents' library titled, "The Correct Thing in Good Society," by Florence Howe Hall (Boston: Page Company, 1902). It also gives advice on what is not correct. For instance, if you are providing a luncheon for your lady friends, it is not the correct thing

for the butler to wear evening dress

for the hostess to be disappointed or troubled if her guests fail to do justice to an elaborate lunch, since "dieting" has become so general that it bids fair to overthrow the elaborate and indigestible ladies' lunch

to talk gossip or scandal at a ladies' luncheon

to serve chocolate alone after an elaborate luncheon

to omit providing each guest with a silver butter knife

for guests to "grab, gobble and go," taking leave before the luncheon is over

for the guests to carry off the decorations.

I've let my butler go--just too many slip ups at my luncheons, like forgetting the butter knives.

3896

Thursday Thirteen--Out damn'd spot, out I say

Thirteen things about spots in Norma's world

1) Lady Macbeth was hallucinating when she said that, but I wasn't. There definitely were rust-colored spots on the front of the on-sale, pale yellow, pants suit that fit me perfectly.

2) It sort of looked like small drops of blood! Just like Shakespeare!

3) A friend was in the store at the same time and I showed it to her. She suggested Tide to Go--said she'd had good luck with it.

4) I reluctantly put the suit back, but that day I bought the little instant stain remover that looks like a pen and is small enough to sit on the bottom of your purse and sneak back into the dressing room.

5) I returned to the store, went into the dressing room and applied a little to the smallest, least noticeable spot. Wow. It disappeared, and left no outline on the fabric!

6) I took the suit to the cash register along with a moss green blouse with yellow petal appliques.

7) The first time I wore it (pale yellow) I brushed up against something and got a much larger spot on the knee. I sat down with my little Tide to Go, and poof it was gone.

8) For several weeks I've had my eye on a pair of brown stacked heels at Meijer's. They were on a mark-down table because (I think) the right shoe had some really odd spots on the leather--maybe a mold.

9) Each week I looked at them when I shopped for groceries. I had the exact pair in black and they are the most comfortable shoes I own.

10) So yesterday I dug around in the laundry room and found some brown shoe polish. I put a small amount on a piece of cloth, put that inside a plastic bag which I placed in my purse and went back to the store.

11) The table had been moved and at first I thought the shoes were gone, but after walking around awhile, I found them. I slipped the piece of cloth out of my purse and wiped it on the spots. They did not disappear, but they did blend into the texture.

12) Because I had shopped there the day before, I had a coupon for shoes and jewelry (not cat litter which I really needed or a digital camera that I really wanted). So I bought the shoes that fit and look nice (and shiny) for $5.40.

13) Shoe polish doesn't come off your fingers quite so easily, so I probably looked like I'd just changed a diaper when I got to the check out, but I keep alcohol gel hand cleaner in the car, and that took care of my newest spots!