Year: 2001

CN, But First a Word About Bread

I have pointed out before that there’s no such thing as stale bread if you have a microwave – it’s a miracle! But today I want to point out now how much bread is wasted simply because we forgot the bread! Right? You come into the kitchen with the dinner plates, thinking about dessert and debating whether or not to make coffee . . . the place is a mess because cooking for eight people is no tidy affair . . . and off on the windowsill, or still in the oven, is this beautiful loaf of French bread.

We forgot the bread!

We turned off the oven that was heating it, we went to parsley the vichysoisse, we remembered the salt and to light the candles – doorbell! late guest! dinner’s served! great conversation, great chicken, what’s for dessert? how do you take your coffee? We forgot the bread!

An entire Seinfeld could be baked around this common human experience – you can just see Kramer brandishing a 30-inch hardened loaf, accidentally knocking something, and then himself, down with it. The banter over the French. And the crust. George would certainly have some insights to share. But Seinfeld is over, there will be no new Seinfelds, and I just have to get used to that.

So we got our $5-a-share dividend from CN Friday, and those of us who bought more of the stock in the last couple of weeks (see June 4 and June 25) at around $5.80 were pleased to see that our 80 cent investment (which is essentially what it was, less the extra $5 we had to put up briefly to play) closed Friday at $1.37, up 71%.

I’m not selling here, even though I love a quick 71% as much as the next guy, because Uncle Sam would take 40% of it and because it’s possible – possible – the stock could be $2 or even more a year from now when the shares I bought earlier this month go long-term. But neither would I rush to buy more at this price. Theoretically, I guess it’s still a good value, what with $2 or so a share in cash, no debt, an American Stock Exchange listing, and interests in some tiny, iffy, dot-coms.

After all, management owns a lot more of CN than any of us, so they have an incentive to make the stock grow. But they also just got a huge dividend themselves, so they won’t exactly starve if they fail – to them, as to some of us, this may be gambling money. And by now the cash horde is so small (around $10 million or so, I think), management could easily fritter it away over a period of years just by drawing large salaries and/or propping up the dot-coms. So it’s not a sure thing. I am fully prepared to see CN shrivel from $1.37 to nothing, and if you own it, you should be, too.

$65OOPS!
Susan Parkes: ‘In your 7/5 column you said that SIMPLE plans allow each employee to contribute up to $6,000 of earnings in 2001. It’s $6500!!!’

Some Other Good Things About The Tax Cut

Jim Ries: ‘What ever happened to the article about the new rules on retirement plans, promised in the one about education IRAs and 529 plans? It’s been more than a month.

☞ You’re right! That column was about the improvements in the college savings plans that were put into the tax bill, thanks largely to the efforts of the Chair of the Senate Education Committee, Republican … oops … Independent Jim Jeffords of Vermont.

(A Republican by birth and choice, Jim Jeffords lasted through the Republicanism of Richard Nixon and of Ronald Reagan and even of Newt Gingrich, yet made it through only four months of the Bush/Lott/Armey years.)

Those changes make saving for college far easier. But before you start spending all your money to fund college plans for your kids, make sure you’re taking care of yourself. As nice as it might be to pay for all their college costs, you’re helping your kids more if they don’t have to worry about YOU during your retirement years. Here’s the good news on that front, starting in 2002 (thanks to the estimable Less Antman for helping to pull it together for me – if it leaves you with specific questions, click at upper left to ‘Ask Less‘):

  • IRA limits have increased. The IRA contribution limit stayed at $2,000 through decades of inflation, so for starters, the new tax bill hikes it to $3,000 on January 1, 2002, which is ideally the day you should fund your 2002 contribution (although it would not be unreasonable to wait until January 2). For people over 50, for whom retirement looms, it’s $3,500. By 2008, the limit rises to $5,000 ($6,000 for those over 50) and is indexed for inflation from then on . . . until the end of 2010, when the tax bill expires and the limit goes back to $2,000. Presumably, Congress will in fact not roll back the limits, which is why the so-called $1.35 trillion tax cut this decade will be more like a $4 trillion or $5 trillion tax cut next decade. Which is why a lot of this tax cut will wind up being chopped way back. No way will the estate tax ever really fall to zero for families with tens of millions or billions of dollars, nor should it. But the new retirement-fund limits may well hold and, as one who believes in savings, I hope they do.
  • Employer-funded plan limits have increased as well. Happily for the average working man, defined benefit plans can now take into account annual wages up to $200,000 (versus a meager $170,000 before). And the annual funding of a defined contribution plan bumps up from $35,000 to a more compassionate $40,000.
  • SIMPLE plans allow each employee to contribute up to $6,000 of earnings in 2001. The new law raises that $1,000 each year until it hits $10,000 in 2005. Contribution limits on 401(k), 403(b), 457, and SARSEPs are rising to $11,000 in 2002, then increase $1,000 each year until reaching $15,000 in 2006. All these plans have higher limits for folks over 50, and contribution limits are indexed for inflation once the top number is reached. Until 2011, of course, when it all reverts to today’s levels, which is why it’s really a modest and fiscally sound $1.35 trillion tax cut that was passed.
  • Married couples previously earning too much to qualify to contribute to Education IRAs will now be able to do so unfettered unless their adjusted gross income exceeds $190,000 (at which point the contribution limit rapidly phases out for those whose incomes exceed $220,000). Another reason for the average guy-and-gal to cheer. (The $95,000 limit on single people and couples denied the right to marry remains unchanged.)
  • Single taxpayers with up to $15,000 of adjusted gross income (and joint filers with up to $30,000) are given a 50% tax credit for contributions of up to $2,000 to retirement plans (including Roth IRAs!). The credit phases out rapidly above $15,000 ($30,000), and there is no credit for singles with income above $25,000 (or joint filers above $50,000). The problem is that people who earn so little may have a rough time putting $2,000 away in the first place. And the tax credit is not “refundable” (meaning that if you owe no tax, you get no credit). And it doesn’t apply to anyone who is a full-time student or is a dependent on someone else’s return. And it expires after 2006, in part, one assumes, to help pay for the estate-tax cuts for the very wealthy. That said, if you have kids or grandkids recently out of school and in the work force (or you are such a kid, with parents or grandparents of your own), you might want to explore this. A parent might give $2,000 to a child fresh out of school and earning $30,000 while his wife stays home with the baby, which the child could then use to fund a Roth IRA and recoup $1,000 on their tax bill. At least up to 2006.

To me, the main deal here is the increased limits on Roth IRA’s. Everyone who can should put away the maximum each year. Roth IRAs will go a long way to providing a reasonable tax-free retirement income to supplement Social Security.

Sorry this column was posted late. Can we all agree to make this a very lazy week and skip a separate Friday column? Slather on your sunscreen (really! It’s important!) and have a great weekend.

Fuzzy Math

Paul: ‘I just read Fuzzy Math, The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan, by Princeton economics professor Paul R. Krugman. Easy, quick read that exposes the flaws of the Bush Tax Plan and the underlying political agenda that goes beyond just putting the government in a budget strait jacket to limit growth of government. The goal is to make the tax burden on the average voter greater than the benefits the voter perceives he/she receives from government, thereby creating an electorate sympathetic to small government and further tax cuts. By skewing the cuts to benefit a relatively few rich people, the tax burden on the middle class remains high in relation to the diminished government benefits they receive.’

Chris Ficklin: ‘I’d like to echo what Paul said about using the Internet to buy cars. I just bought a new Ford Truck but before even going to the dealer I researched what I wanted on CarPoint and Kelly Blue Book. I added a couple of hundred dollars to the invoice and that was my target price. I told the salesperson what I was willing to pay as if I were paying cash, which unfortunately I was unable to do, but my credit union was offering 6.5% so I’d have them finance it. They still tried to play their silly games on me. I stuck fast and got the price I wanted. Would have saved them some time if they would have just given me that price to begin with! In fact, they wanted my business so bad that they lowered the price even further to entice me to finance it through Ford Credit at 6.9% with the same payment. I figured that’d save me a trip to the Credit Union and since I’d likely pay the loan off early, I was glad they lowered the sales price for me.’

Tom Mathies: ‘You write: ‘Just remember that it’s still a lot cheaper to have Pepsi and pasta at home.’ But soft drinks have hidden costs. Aren’t you a tea man?’

☞ Yes! Yes! Demand your Honest Tea! One good place for an iced cold sample: Barnes & Noble cafés.

Did You Say . . . Tobacco? Or ‘To Backhoe’?

‘I’m no lawyer,’ writes Jerry Long in Monday’s Philadelphia Inquirer (thanks to Paul Lerman for this one, and many others), ‘but it seems that the only hope for the heads of R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and their fellow testifiers is somehow to prove that in their appearances before congressional committees, when they swore that ‘tobacco’ was not addictive, what they really meant was that ‘to backhoe, or any use of motorized excavating equipment’ was not addictive.’

Rob Meehan: ‘I think you may be missing something when you slam the Bush administration’s support of American business, namely, the tobacco industry. I completely agree with you that cigarettes are unhealthy, addictive, and frequently deadly. But I see the association between the Bush administration and tobacco as I see the administration’s support of any other legal business. And I can think of few people in recent years with closer ties to the cigarette makers than Al Gore. Here’s a man whose family business was growing tobacco! I think if Mr. Gore was in the White House, the policy could have been exactly the same.’

☞ I differ with you on two points. First, this isn’t just ‘any other legal business.’ It is, of course, legal – and should be – to sell tobacco to people of a certain age. Prohibition doesn’t work. But tobacco is the ONLY legal product – even including alcohol and chain saws and firecrackers – that when used EXACTLY AS INTENDED causes widespread disease and death. (Used with great care, as intended, chainsaws and even firecrackers are safe. And alcohol, its makers can credibly say, is intended to be used only in moderation and never before driving. But tobacco? Use it exactly as intended, and, no matter how responsible you are, disease and premature death frequently follow.) So tobacco is distinctly unlike any other legal business.

Second, I think you’re unfair to Al Gore. To begin with, it was not his choice to be born into a tobacco farming family. And at least until he was in college, a sense of the true health devastation tobacco causes was not widely understood. (The industry knew most of this, but covered it up.) Nor, by the way, are tobacco farmers the bad guys in this, in my view. Growing tobacco doesn’t encourage youngsters to become addicts; clever marketing and sponsorship of sporting events and handing out “loosies” to kids in malls and product placement in movies do. It’s one thing to grow up in a tobacco farming family, another to get an MBA and choose to work developing marketing plans designed to greatly expand smoking among women. (In Hong Kong, only 1% of the women smoked before our brave marketing lads landed to change the culture – now it’s closer to half.)

I don’t believe the Vice President was in any way soft on tobacco while he served with President Clinton in the White House, or that he would have softened the policies one whit had he taken office. Indeed, it is the ‘converted,’ in any cause, who often become its most ardent advocates. I think that watching his sister die of lung cancer made Al Gore just as strong a tobacco-industry antagonist as President Clinton.

Michael Joy: ‘I’m writing about the correlation between gay people and natural-disasters-sent-by-God-as-punishment. This may only be anecdotal evidence (as opposed to the statistics offered Tuesday), but I think it’s very apt. A Southern Baptist church in Florida burned to the ground after it was struck by lightning. However, in Columbus, Ohio, after the gay pride march last Saturday, where more than 20,000 gay people celebrated, there was a RAINBOW! Say what you will, but when God goes so far as to decorate the sky for us, I’m not worried about my sexual orientation causing calamities. Thanks, God!’

☞ Shortly after writing this, poor Michael was himself struck by lightning. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Try, Try Again

TRI-WEST

David Slifka: ‘In a past column, a reader asked you about the Tri-West Investment Club, and you said that it sounded like a Ponzi scheme that would end badly. Well, it has. Their web site contains the following notice, which is pretty funny as long as you didn’t lose any money:

…A Tri-West courier with investment checks and payroll experienced trouble en route for deposit in our Latvian payment account. The courier had to make an unscheduled layover and did not know he had to declare checks in excess of $10,000 USD. Airport authorities then confiscated these checks. We sent a notice to our members via e-mail and fax but a communications problem allowed only 5% of those messages to be received.

‘A new ‘payment date’ has been scheduled, but the web is aflutter with people desperately speculating what’s really going on. The answer, to most of us, is obvious.’

TRY THIS

When buying a new car, Paul Johns adds to his comment last week, another route to a no-haggle good price is Costco.com. They sort of bury this service – but up top, click on SERVICES and you’ll see it. If you’re not a Costco member, it may work anyway – just fill out the form without a Costco membership number. Or, of course, become a Costco member, either because you qualify, or because you find a local business (your real estate agent?) that is a member to get you a gift membership.

TRIFECTA

There’s nothing like the ability to spot talent. I can’t tell you who this is, but a man with a nose for shows – the kind of guy who might back a hit and shun a flop – also has a passion for ponies. He went to the Kentucky Derby this spring and, through some combination of analysis and instinct, decided that Invisible Ink, going out at 50 to 1, was the sleeper in the crowd. He bet $15,000 on Invisible Ink in various combinations, including $200 on a winning Trifecta combination (in which, if I got this straight, you need to predict the order of the first three horses). Each $2 bet paid $12,300, so he turned that particular $200 into $1.2 million. Like a fantasy from ‘Guys and Dolls’ (‘I got the horse right here, his name is Paul Revere . . .’), which, for all I know, he produced. There is no moral to this story, I just love it.

May you have the luck of the Irish and the electric bill of the Amish. And may all your horses, if you are fool enough to bet on any, run like there’s no tomorrow.

Cheap Eats, Cheap Sleep

SUMMER UPDATE

Summer is still here – I love it! I love it! I love it! – but have you noticed that the days are getting shorter?

HAVE YOU REGISTERED WITH iDINE?

This used to be called Transmedia, and, boy, have they ever improved. Now it’s this simple: visit iDine.com and register one of your credit cards with them. Your Visa, say. From then on, whenever you use that card at any of the 7,000 restaurants iDine has deals with, you get 20% off the bill – including tax and tip. Just hand your Visa card to the waiter the way you always did. But when the bill comes at the end of the month, not only have you gotten your frequent flier miles (if it’s that kind of Visa) – you see a credit for 20% of your dinner. So if you and your spouse wax romantic once a week over a $60 chateaubriand at participating restaurants (or chatofubriand, for the vegans among us), you save $600 a year. Go with nine colleagues to a $200 lunch, and you’ll see a $40 rebate on your next credit card statement – even if your company reimburses you, or your fellow diners insist on passing $20 bills to the head of the table. (Presumably, you’d pass the savings along to them.) A $49 annual ‘fee’ is paid out of your first $49 in savings.

It’s easy to see, on-line, which restaurants in your area are participating on any given night – and it can vary from night to night, which is really smart, because it allows the restaurant to attract people on slow nights without adding to the Saturday night crowds.

Even if you live 300 miles from the nearest tablecloth, it could still be worth registering for that occasional business trip or vacation.

How does iDine do it? The discount it wangles you is possible because a lot of decent restaurants have excess capacity, and – just like airlines that would rather sell seats cheap than see them go empty – are willing to sell meals ‘wholesale.’ (The economics of restaurants and airplanes aren’t actually much different. Restaurants are just slower.) The iDine folks get an even bigger discount off the price of the meal, so the more you eat, the more they make. For the restaurant, it’s a way to attract new customers and fill empty seats. The discount becomes a form of highly targeted advertising. Instead of giving the money to a radio station to get you to come, they give it to you.

Just remember that it’s still a lot cheaper to have Pepsi and pasta at home.

HAVE YOU TRIED PRICELINE.COM?

I have to be in Washington Thursday night and, though I usually stay at the wonderful Mayflower Hotel – sometimes for a small fortune, sometimes for the $149 triple-A (American Automobile Association) rate – I figured, oh, what the heck, and tried Priceline.com. I specified a four-star hotel (I know, I know – I actually love Courtyards by Marriott, but in Washington I feel as if I have to pretend to be somebody) . . . named $125 as my price (versus the $300 or so they usually charge) . . . and guess what? I’m staying at a four-star hotel for $125.

It was fun dumping on Priceline stock at $150 (now $7). Their idea of applying the Priceline concept to groceries was so dumb a six-year-old, if not a Wall Street analyst, could have seen through it. But for perishables like airline seats and hotel rooms, it can be a win-win.

Berlin Braces for Tornado Warning -- No Financial Content!

USED CARS

Robert Rogers: ‘Your comments on used cars were on target, but with all the flooding in Texas and the East Coast, everyone should be extra-careful. A lot of dealers may not tell you if the car has substantial flood damage.’

UNHOLY WEATHER

Speaking of all those floods Friday, I noted that it’s been awfully rainy around Houston lately. To which Bob Smouse responded by forwarding this analysis, by Janis Walworth of the Center for Gender Sanity, which I had not seen before. (My apologies to those of you who were hoping for financial stuff today – see you tomorrow.)

RE: Pat Robertson accidentally discovers the cause…

Do Unnatural Acts Cause Natural Disasters?

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, recently warned Orlando, Florida, that it was courting natural disaster by allowing gay pride flags to be flown along its streets. “A condition like this will bring about … earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor,” Robertson said.

Apparently he was referring to his belief that the presence of openly gay people incurs divine wrath and that God acts through geological and meteorological events to destroy municipalities that permit gay people the same civil liberties as others. (Robertson also warned Orlando about terrorist bombs, suggesting the possibility that God may also employ terrorists.) Before Pat and his Christian cronies get too carried away promulgating the idea that natural disasters are prompted by people who displease God, they should take a hard look at the data.

Take tornadoes. Every state (except Alaska) has them — some only one or two a year, dozens in others.

Gay people are in every state (even Alaska). According to Pat’s hypothesis, there should be more gay people in states that have more tornadoes. But are there? Nope. In fact, there’s no correlation at all between the number of gay folks (as estimated by the number of gay political organizations, support groups, bookstores, radio programs, and circuit parties) and the annual tornado count (r = .04, p = .78 for you statisticians).

So much for the “God hates gays” theory.

God seems almost neutral on the subject of sexual orientation. I say “almost” because if we look at the density of gay groups relative to the population as a whole, there is a small but statistically significant (p .05) correlation with the occurrence of tornadoes. And it’s a negative correlation (r = -.28).

For those of you who haven’t used statistics since 1973, that means that a high concentration of gay organizations actually protects against tornadoes. A state with the population of, say, Alabama could avert two tornadoes a year merely by doubling the number of gay organizations in the state. (Tough choice for Alabama’s civil defense strategists.) Although God may not care about sexual orientation, the same cannot be said for religious affiliation. If the underlying tenet of Pat’s postulate is true — that God wipes out offensive folks via natural disasters — then perhaps we can find some evidence of who’s on God’s hit list. Jews are off the hook here: there’s no correlation between numbers of Jews and frequency of tornadoes. Ditto for Catholics. But when it comes to Protestants, there’s a highly significant correlation of .71.

This means that fully half the state-to-state variation in tornado frequency can be accounted for by the presence of Protestants. And the chance that this association is merely coincidental is only one in 10,000.

Protestants, of course, come in many flavors — we were able to find statistics for Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, and Others. Lutherans don’t seem to be a problem — no correlation with tornadoes. There’s a modest correlation (r = .52, p = .0001) between Methodists and tornadoes.

But Baptists and Others share the prize: both groups show a definite correlation with tornado frequency (r = .68, p = .0001). This means that Texas could cut its average of 139 tornadoes per year in half by sending a few hundred thousand Baptists elsewhere (Alaska maybe?).

What, you are probably asking yourself, about gay Protestants? An examination of the numbers of gay religious groups (mostly Protestant) reveals no significant relationship with tornadoes.

Perhaps even Protestants are less repugnant to God if they’re gay.

And that brings up another point — the futility of trying to save the world by getting gay people to accept Jesus. It looks from our numbers as if the frequency of natural disasters might be more effectively reduced by encouraging Protestants to be gay.

Gay people have been falsely blamed for disasters ever since Sodom was destroyed by fire and brimstone. (We have been unable to find any statistics on disasters involving brimstone).

According to a reliable source, the destruction of Sodom was indeed an act of God (see Genesis 19:13). Its destruction was perpetrated because the citizens thereof were, according to the same source (see Ezekiel 16:49-50) “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned [and] did not help the poor and needy” — not because they were gay.

Now Pat would have us believe that gays are the cause of tornadoes (as well as earthquakes, meteors, and even terrorist bombs) in utter disregard for evidence showing that Baptists are much more likely to cause them.

I say “Kudos!” to Orlando. Despite Robertson’s warning that Orlando is “right in the way of some serious hurricanes” (hardly a revelation), note that it was not struck by the very destructive Hurricane Andrew a few years ago. And amid the recent conflagrations (that’s fires) in central Florida, which occurred just after Pat sounded his alarm, Orlando was spared. Keep those flags waving!

As any statistician will tell you, of course, correlation doesn’t prove causation. Protestants causing tornadoes by angering God isn’t the only explanation for these data. It could be that Baptists and Other Protestants purposely flock to states that have lots of tornadoes (no, we haven’t checked for a correlation between IQ and religious affiliation).

But if Pat and his Christian crew insist that natural disasters are brought on by people who offend God, let the data show who those people are.

Janis Walworth July 16, 1998 – Sources: Tornado Occurrence by State, 1962-1991 1990 Churches and Church Membership; Population by State, 1990 US Census; Gay & Lesbian Political Organizations, Support Groups, and Religious Groups from Gayellow Pages, National Edition, 1987.

Permission is given to all to reprint this article in its entirety on a not-for-profit basis.

Meanwhile, it turns out that not only is the Mayor of Paris openly gay, but that the likely new mayor of Berlin is as well.

BERLIN (AP) – With a single sentence, the man destined to be Berlin’s next mayor has spurred debate on whether the privacy of German politicians has
been obliterated by the increasingly aggressive press.

‘I am gay, and that’s a good thing,’ Klaus Wowereit said this week just before delegates of his Social Democratic party unanimously named him candidate for mayor.

It may be that, just as gay folks are awfully good at running hotels and stuff, we’re not half bad at running cities. (The mayor of a particularly large American city who did a terrific job not long ago may add credence to this view, but there’s no official word to confirm it.)

Ex-Dividend Date for Smokers on Santorini

CALTON

Well, and here I thought I was so smart about finance, but you’re never too old to learn something new. You will recall that our little Calton is paying a $5 dividend on July 5. On June 4, I wrote:

Incidentally, the dividend is ‘payable to shareholders of record as of June 20.’ That means the stock should be trading at least a little above $5, as it is now, until June 20. But that on June 21 it will be instantly worth $5 less, and will open approximately $5 lower than it closed the night before. Anyone who owned the stock on June 20 (even if they then sold it) would get the $5 dividend July 5 (or whenever it actually hit their brokerage account).

Oops. So how come it’s well past June 20 and the stock is still above $5?

It turns out that the ‘record date’ is sort of arbitrary, important only in the back offices of brokerage firms, but that the ‘ex-dividend date’ – the date after which the stock trades without the dividend – is different. In this case, I was told by a broker at Ameritrade, it is July 6. That is, the dividend is slated to be paid July 5 (and should hit your account shortly thereafter – it’s done electronically, not with postage stamps). Even if you buy the stock on July 5, before it goes ex-dividend, you would get the dividend. It’s at the opening on July 6 (assuming my guy at Ameritrade has the ex-dividend date right) that it will suddenly start trading $5 a share cheaper, without the dividend. Which is to say ‘around 77 cents,’ at today’s prices. Which is why even now it might be a good speculation if it drops a few pennies.

TRAVEL NOTE

Remember the old moniker, ‘Ceylon . . . Pearl of the Orient!’ No, you’re too young. Ceylon was what we now call Sri Lanka. Well, my friend Nancy Rosenzweig is just back from the Greek isles, one of the most beautiful of which (I’ve been told) – Santorini – she has dubbed, ‘Santorini . . . Stairmaster of the Aegean!’ Isn’t that great? You’ll come back tan and with great calves.

TOBACCO’S BONANZA

I wrote a little last week about the Bush crackdown on the people who would impede tobacco company profits. Two days later came news that the Bush administration would settle the government’s suit with Big Tobacco.

USA Today titled its editorial, ‘Big Tobacco’s Bonanza.’ It began:

‘The Bush administration should call it ‘How to Lose the Tobacco War in Three Easy Steps.’ First, say that you’re not going to spend much money on the fight. Then broadcast the opinion that your position is weak. Finally, after waving a white flag, invite your powerful adversaries to negotiate a peace treaty. That, in essence, is the White House’s strategy to end what once was a potent legal battle against the tobacco industry . . . Big Tobacco couldn’t have come up with a better strategy. And the Bush administration couldn’t have come up with one that’s worse for the public.’

It is a grand time to be wealthy and powerful in America. (While we’re at it, let’s slightly reduce the estate tax on a few thousand of America’s wealthiest families from 55% to, oh, I don’t know – zero? We can always make it up by cutting the budget for alternative energy, or for boys and girls clubs.)

Irish Need Not Apply

In 1999 and 2000, the president issued proclamations recognizing June as Gay Pride Month. This year, the practice has been discontinued.

President Bush doesn’t want to separate people that way, we are told.

Yet he has signed proclamations designating Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and Irish-American Heritage Month.

What may be worth remembering is how recently – in the greater arc of history – there were help-wanted signs commonly posted around New York and Boston with the addendum: IRISH NEED NOT APPLY. And the next thing you know, they were having St. Patrick’s Day Parades and one of them, for crying out loud, was being elected president!

Listen to Nancy Reagan (whose husband, now that you mention it, is half Irish): ‘Women’s liberation and gay liberation [are] part of the same thing: a weakening of the moral standards of this nation. It is appalling to see parades in San Francisco and elsewhere claiming ‘gay pride’ and all that. What in the world do they have to be proud of?’ (What have gay people ever contributed to the culture?)

But that was Nancy Reagan in 1981. She had a lot of company in those sentiments. My guess is she might want to soften them, at least a little, now.

Hey – the mayor of Paris is openly gay. Who cares?

‘I don’t believe in the gay movement….I think they should stay to themselves, just climb back into the cupboards,’ said Rupert Murdoch in 1980. He still likely feels that way, along with Trent Lott and Jesse Helms, and those at the White House who chose to discontinue the gay pride proclamations.

But most younger folks don’t see it that way – any more than they would agree with this, from billionaire televangelist and sometime Republican candidate for president Pat Robertson at the 1992 Republican National Convention: ‘Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.’

It’s a great quote, but it’s overdone. I know the Bible says that women should be obedient and that non-virgin brides should be stoned in the public square until dead. I know it says it’s an abomination to touch the skin of a pig (a football?). But times change. Archaic prejudices fade away. What should not change are love, honesty, fairness and a devotion to leaving the world a little better than we found it.

One notes that the hurricane Pat Robertson once intimated might hit Orlando in retribution for Disney’s non-discrimination policies curved around and hit Virginia Beach instead. And that it’s been awful damn rainy around Houston lately.