Life Is Not a Business April 16, 2002February 21, 2017 SCORE ONE FOR A USER FRIENDLIER IRS Larry Taylor: ‘Well, I took your advice and called in my Form 4868. Got them on the first ring and it was very well done, i.e., easy to follow and to confirm.’ CARROT JUICE Have you ever even tried ice-cold carrot juice? I didn’t think so. You will be surprised. TWANG My computer Scrabble nixed ‘twanger.’ But that can’t be right. ‘Froggie,’ children of 1950’s TV may remember, ‘pluck your magic twanger!’ (No cracks, please.) So, determined to validate my word and and guiltlessly override the objection (without going so far as to ‘ADD’ twanger to computer Scrabble’s memory for use against me at a later date), I went to Google and got this. I have no idea what it is, but it’s fun. Click on the twangers. A HANDY BOND SITE If interest rates have bottomed, this isn’t the best time to buy long-term bonds (other than, perhaps, within a tax-sheltered portfolio, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, such as the 3.375% issue maturing in 2032). But a good site for learning more is investinginbonds.com. Of particular interest may be the ability to get a sense of municipal bond prices, along with the spread between buying and selling. LIFE IS NOT A BUSINESS You may well have seen this one already – it flies around the Internet, as usual, unattributed – but it always brings a smile. Thanks to Bill Dunbar, most recently, for sending it: A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them. “Not very long,” answered the Mexican. “Well, then, why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more?” asked the American. The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family. The American asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs…I have a full life.” The American interrupted, “I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy! a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge enterprise.” “How long would that take?” asked the Mexican. “Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years,” replied the American. “And after that?” “Afterwards? That’s when it gets really interesting,” answered the American, laughing. “When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!” “Millions? Really? And after that?” “After that you’ll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take siestas with your wife, and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends.”
A Look Back at November 27, 2000 April 15, 2002February 21, 2017 COUP 2? As I post this at 1 a.m., it still doesn’t seem to have hit the wires – VENEZUELA PRESIDENT BACK IN POWER reads the CNN headline – so in case you day-trade oil stocks or have relatives in Venezuela: I am told that President Hugo Chavez is in an undisclosed location, and may or may not remain in power. Sunday, he allegedly rounded up 120 generals, along with journalists who had criticized him, including four women – the Venezuelan equivalent of Woodward & Bernstein – who may have been tortured. Unverified rumors were that one had died. The Navy may be fighting the Army. Fuerte Tiuna has been fired upon. The American Embassy is the site of angry protests. It is totally chaotic — which is why it’s hard to be completely sure what of all this is accurate. My source was aware of the first coup plans, but says they went badly awry – the good guys were not where the TV cameras were; instead, and at the last minute, their long-planned coup got, in effect, hijacked by an ultra-conservative group. And now it is a huge, tragic mess. Add to the mix thousands of Cuban advisors and – well, chances are this story will not quietly fade from view. FILE Today’s the last day to file Form 4868 requesting an automatic extension to file until August 15. (A good estimate of any money owed is still due today, just not the return.) Supposedly, you can do it over the phone by calling 888-796-1074. I wouldn’t place a large bet on getting through on the first ring. If you do get through, have last year’s tax return handy. ESTIMATE For those with significant income not automatically subject to withholding tax – a large taxable gain, say, or income from self-employment – your first quarterly estimated tax is due today, also. TAKE STOCK – NOVEMBER 27, 2000 It was on that day that I predicted Al Gore would be president – wrong – and that I offered three ‘income’ situations. With the NASDAQ down from 5000 to under 3000 (it is around 1750 today), some people were ready to consider investments that promised actual income. Free advice is worth what you pay for it, but on that day, we could have done worse. The ‘Criimi Mae preferred G’ – CMM_G – I suggested has fallen by about 20% but paid out stock dividends that would have largely covered the drop. The B.F. Saul real estate investment trust – BFS – has risen from $16 to about $23.50 and paid nearly $1.95 in dividends, for a total pre-tax return of about 60% in about 16 months. Better than a CD. The Ameritrade (AMTD) 5.75% bonds, then 56, show up on my last month’s brokerage statement at 82, up about 45%, while yielding about 10% in cash on the original purchase price. Combining the three, it works out to about a 40% gain. The S&P 500, meanwhile, has fallen about 15%, after allowing for dividends. If taxes and sloth were no factor here, I might sell the BFS shares and AMTD bonds; not because I know anything, but because the big fun is over. Then again, BFS seems to have improved its financial situation over the last few years, so that its $1.56 annual dividend is no longer quite the cliffhanger it once was. And if Ameritrade doesn’t default on its bonds before they mature in August, 2004, then even from today’s price of 82 the yield to maturity works out to around 15%. That is both a reason to consider holding on and a warning that the market regards these as very risky bonds. As to CMM and its various preferred series, I have long since given up trying to figure these out – as have, I think, most other investors. Which is one very small, entirely non-analytical reason to hang on. Because when investors get so fed up with a stock they don’t even want to think about it – which is exactly how I feel about CMM – that sometimes . . . sometimes . . . signals an opportunity. (On the bearish side, I’ve been no fan of AOL, even as, to the derision of many of my faithful readers, I have been its happy customer. Several times in April, 1999, with the stock at 80, and most recently last November, with the stock at 38, I suggested you stay clear. Today, at 20, it’s obviously a lot less overvalued, if overvalued at all. A similar success was GE. Thanks to Joe Cherner for prompting me to suggest that short this past July at 52, now 34 nine months later.) But if I have been lucky with some of the individual stocks, I seem to be living proof that humans can’t ‘time’ the market. Over and over in this space something bad has happened that’s led me to urge caution at the very moment when – at least with hindsight – you should have been buying. One savvy reader even e-mailed to thank me for my most recent gloomy missive, back when the Dow was around 9000, saying that I had proved a highly reliable counter-indicator, and that, based on my gloomy column, he planned to plunge back in. If he did, he made good money and I am pleased to have been so reliably of service. PS – It is in the nature of things, as any seasoned investor will confirm, that I remember primarily the recommendations that have done well, while you would remember primarily the ones that did not. So if there’s one particularly bad recommendation I made that you’d like to remind me of, use this site’s ‘search’ feature to find it (bottom left) and then by all means send me an e-mail to complain.
Your Wife, Your Copyright, Your Professional IQ April 12, 2002February 21, 2017 My (very happily married) cousin-in-law Paul sent me this. As usual, I apologize if you’ve already seen it; and I lament the lack of attribution. (See below.) I would also like to point out that it applies almost equally well to life-partners as to wives, even though we have a different tech support number to call. Dear Tech Support, Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of new space, valuable resources and monetary funds. No mention of this phenomenon was included in the product brochure. In addition, Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialization, where it monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Drunken Boys Night 2.5 and Saturday Football 5.0 no longer run, crashing the system whenever selected. I cannot seem to keep wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run some of my other favorite applications. I am thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall does not work on this program. Can you please help me!!!??? Thanks, A Troubled User + + + Dear Troubled User, This is a very common problem men complain about, but is mostly due to a primary misconception. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 with the idea that Wife 1.0 is merely a UTILITIES & ENTERTAINMENT program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and designed by its creator to run everything. It is unlikely you would be able to purge Wife 1.0 and still convert back to Girlfriend 7.0. Hidden operating files within your system would cause Girlfriend 7.0 to emulate Wife 1.0 so nothing is gained. It is impossible to uninstall, delete, or purge the program files from the system once installed. You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is not designed to do this. Some have tried to install Girlfriend 8.0 or Wife 2.0 but end up with more problems than the original system. Look in your manual under “Warnings- Alimony! /Child support!”. I recommend you keep Wife 1.0 and deal with the situation. I suggest installing background application program C:YESDEAR to alleviate software augmentation. Having installed Wife1.0 myself, I might also suggest you read the entire section regarding General Partnership Faults (GPFs). You must assume all responsibility for faults and problems that might occur, regardless of their cause. The best course of action will be to enter the command C:APOLOGIZE. In any case avoid excessive use of C:YES DEAR because ultimately you may have to give the APOLOGIZE command before the operating system will return to normal. The system will run smoothly as long as you take the blame for all the GPFs. Wife 1.0 is a great program, but very high-maintenance. Consider buying additional software to improve the performance of Wife 1.0. I recommend Flowers 3.1 and nothing less than Diamonds 2K. Do not, under any circumstances install Secretary with Short Skirt 3.3. This is not a supported application for Wife 1.0 and is likely to cause irreversible damage to the operating system. Best of Luck, Tech Support Now, before I go steal the next person’s work, I would like to repeat my suggestion of June 20, 2000 – which I am annoyed to see you have not yet fully implemented. Namely: whenever you receive something clever that is unsigned, ask the sender to ask whoever sent it to him to find out the source. You will not, likely, find the source this way. But fairly soon, if this becomes Internetiquette, we will become more source-conscious and stop chopping off attributions when we forward e-mail. Those who initiate these little gems will either get the credit they deserve or, if they choose not to take credit, perhaps tell us why they have worked so hard to create something anonymously. Fair enough? ‘So it is written, so it shall be done.’ — Yul Brynner Ok. Have you seen this one? I don’t know if it really came from Andersen Consulting (now ‘Accenture’), but I do know that they split off from Arthur Andersen not a moment too soon. Thanks to Rick Adler for sending it to me: Test for Professionals The following short quiz consists of 4 questions and will tell you whether you are qualified to be a “professional.” Scroll down for each answer. The questions are NOT that difficult. 1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator? The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator put in the giraffe and close the door. This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way. 2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator? The answer is: Open the refrigerator put in the elephant and close the refrigerator. Wrong Answer! Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions. 3. The lion king is hosting an All-Creatures Conference. All the creatures attend except one. Which creature does not attend? The answer is: The Elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. This tests your memory. OK, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities. 4. There is a river you must cross. But it is normally inhabited by crocodiles. How do you manage it? The answer is: You swim across. All the crocodiles are attending the Creatures Conference. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes. According to Andersen Consulting Worldwide, around 90% of the professionals they tested got all questions wrong. But many preschoolers got several correct answers. Anderson Consulting says this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals have the brains of a four year old. * Please note that the title of this website is, at long last and thanks to web master Marc Fest, no longer ‘Demystifying Finance.’ So if you don’t feel today’s column profited you in any way – tough.
Help! My Home’s Getting Too Valuable! April 11, 2002February 21, 2017 Chip: ‘With the recent run-up in real estate prices, my Center City Philadelphia townhouse has appreciated significantly since I bought it in 1991. The house is in my name alone. Therefore, I can only exclude $250,000 of capital gains. According to a real estate agent friend of mine, the value of the house is now at that point. It seems like this tax law penalizes people who do not move. I realize that moving has its own costs, not to mention that I would probably buy a bigger house. So, once the tax exceeds the moving costs, should I move just to avoid the future tax? I know – we should all have such issues. I realize that I am fortunate. Although my home is my largest single asset and it has gone up in value, I don’t necessarily think of it as an investment.’ ☞ Life is not a business, and one should not live it primarily to avoid paying taxes. I don’t think it’s a mistake to think of your house mainly as a home, not an investment. But financially, leaving aside any other considerations (like a sane, balanced life), it would be wise to move – and to the smallest, cheapest house you can find. Use the profit to buy a rental property or stocks or bonds. The less you spend on your own housing costs, the more you’ll have to invest.
Pedal, Please April 10, 2002February 21, 2017 Peter: ‘Seven years ago I started using a financial planner, on the recommendation of a friend. I told her I planned to retire in 7-10 years and that I was willing to trade some upside gains for some protection against downside losses. [One must be particularly wary of downside losses – they are even worse than regular losses, let alone upside losses. – A.T.] Seven years later, she has delivered one of my two requests – my upside gains for 5 years averaged about 8%. However, during the last two years, she did not protect against losses. Now I find myself pretty much back where I started 7 years ago. I have decided to look for other help. I find my friends are not using advisors, but I don’t feel comfortable investing on my own or spending the time to do so. One friend has suggested that I use Vanguard, which does the investing for the Washington Post where her husband was an editor. She says that I can get some initial advice and then do it on my own. What I found appealing is that she says they use a lot of index funds which I know you are a big advocate of. What do you think of this approach? Do you have any other suggestions?’ ☞ It is the right approach. For most people, anyway. My incredibly self-serving suggestion is that you read The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need. If you should choose to buy your own copy at full price and pay local sales tax, you will be set back the better part of a $20 bill. But that’s not much compared to the $25,000-plus you would have paid your financial planner if she took 1% a year and you started with $300,000. (The S&P 500 index funds have more than doubled in those same seven years. If you had gone that route, you’d have more than $600,000 instead of $300,000.) And it’s fine with me if you buy it used or borrow it from the library. This is not to knock all financial planners. My friend Less Antman, for one, makes a good case for his services in some situations. Indeed, when he reads this he will probably write me an e-mail making that case, and I will happily post it. But my view is that ultimately you do best if you really understand your plan and if – whether you have come to it with the help of a $14 book or a $3,000 planner – you ‘own’ it. Much of it has to do with making a budget and spending less than you earn and living beneath your means and socking the dough into the Roth IRA at the start of each year, if you can, and never paying credit card interest – pretty basic stuff. But you have to do it. As I have written elsewhere, it’s like exercise equipment. It’s not enough to buy it; you have to pedal.
Vision Warrior April 9, 2002February 21, 2017 Even nice kids can have their lives ruined by drugs. But how do you prevent that? One man who has made an impact is actor and former drug addict Scot Anthony Robinson, whose shoestring effort is called Vision Warrior. He makes his case at rich kids’ schools and in the ghetto. He’s been featured by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and the New York Knicks. You should consider getting him to spend a day at your kid’s school. Hello Scott, reads one of the dozens of e-mails he got after a typical day’s performance recently. (I haven’t copy-edited it, lest you think the typical American high schooler has any idea how to punctuate a sentence.) My name is Bobby, I attended your assembly at Walter Panas High School. I shouldn’t call it assembly, those are boring, your performance was amazing. I’m 17 years old and I’m currently a junior. I’d like to say that i give you all the credit in the world for being able to pull out of such a horrible addiction. You deserve a lot of credit. I would also like to say when I heard we were having an assembly on drugs I said to myself ‘Great another one of these’. Most drug talks are useless to kids and I’m sure you’re aware of that. Your performance touched me, deep inside. I’ll be honest, I smoke weed once in a while, probably once a week or so. I also drink once about once a month. I should say used to, after watching you give your heart to us to make us understand, I feel I owe it to you and to myself, my friends, family, and all loved ones to stop that garbage. I plan on staying straight, I’m very into sports and after realizing how weed can get me into other things no matter how strong I think I am menatally, I decided that stopping it all right now is the only way to get the best out of my life. My vision: to get through the rest of life drug free, graduate college and become a teacher. Along with that I would like to start my own family and keep a strong friend base. I plan on being the warrior that you taught us about and I am going to fight for my vision. My ship will stay strong, unsinkable. Thank you for teaching me what many others could not. Sincerely, your friend Bobby His name actually isn’t Bobby. Just to be safe, I changed it, lest someone who knows him see this and put two and two together. Here’s what Scot got from the young man who organized his visit: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Today was a very strange day. People that I haven’t talked to in years.. teachers that have disliked me.. came up to me and thanked me.. Kids told me that they really got a lot out of it. A bunch of teachers got together and went to the principal and told her how we should have you back next year for the younger kids.. (I was also able to get the superintendent to watch some of the presentation) I know that this happens wherever you go– But I just wanted to thank you for trusting me since the day we met. Acting is still what I’m passionate about But I often hope that I’ll find a way to help people as much as you do. You’re my light-house, bro Jeremy Redleaf J-dawg ‘Hey Scott,’ writes a third . . . I am from Walter Panas High School and I just want to really thank you for changing my life today. You made me think of life in a whole new prospective. Thanks for caring about use because I know from talking to a lot of my peers that you caring for use that much changed their lives as well as mine. I was not goin to go to the assembly but I am sure happy I went because I would have never gottin the plessure of meeting you and knowing your story. I was going to tell you after but you were surrounded by kids. I just wanted to thank you again for changing my life. God Bless. Jaime 11th Grade I e-mailed Scot for his own report. He wrote: It was fantastic. The audience was very engaged and the spirit in the auditorium was inspiring. I spoke to a few classes afterwards and those sessions were very valuable to help them process some of their feelings & challenges. I got 59 emails that night and they continue to trickle in. They wound up paying me $900 with another $300 on its way. Jeremy did some extra soliciting as he said he felt bad…..I told him not to worry about it but he insisted…..He is truly representative of the very best of what his generation has to offer…he will be and already is a model citizen, I am proud to know him! Anyway, some other things on the horizon, I will film the second part of the Science Times Documentary for National Geographic today at 4pm…..they will ask me questions about addiction and add that to snippets from what they filmed from Vision Warrior at Friends Academy last month. Things are flowing and a lot of potentially exciting stuff is coming up. So how does this all work? Well, it’s certainly not the solution to the drug problem, because Scot is just one guy, and not easily replicated. But if he could present to 150 schools a year, that might touch 100,000 kids. And in the course of a four-year high school cycle, 400,000. To maximize his effectiveness, he might one day be able to hire a staffer to handle logistics and help with the e-mail, referring kids with special problems and requests to the right resources. In the meantime, people go to his website and send him e-mail. Those who can, pay him $2,500 plus expenses (or contribute it tax-deductibly through a 501c-3 he’s affiliated with). Those who can’t, pay less. Those who really can’t, pay nothing. This is, of course, no way to run a railroad, but Scot is not running a railroad. He does most of his presentations in and around New York and Los Angeles, but with enough planning could make efficient visits elsewhere – e.g., a week in Cleveland to visit four different schools. * Everyone has his or her own views on drugs. Personally, I don’t think tobacco or alcohol – or marijuana – should be illegal. Prohibition doesn’t work, and in a free country, adults should be allowed to pick their poison. But I don’t think we should promote their use, especially not tobacco, a highly addictive carcinogen that, when used exactly as intended (i.e., not abused, as alcohol often is) causes widespread illness and premature death. I’m glad NBC dropped plans to run liquor commercials. I sure wish Rolling Stone would stop running tobacco ads. If marijuana ever were legalized, I would favor making it OK for adults to grow and give to friends, but not to sell or store in large quantity – let alone advertise with cartoon characters on billboards. Giving or selling it to minors would carry significant fines, as would ‘giving’ it as part of any commercial promotion or transaction (‘free with every mocha latte!’ ‘free with every pack of Marlboros!’ ‘free with every manicure!’). The one exception would be nonprofit cooperatives formed for the purpose of supplying medical marijuana to patients unable to grow it or get it from friends. As I say, everyone has his own views. You – and Scot, for that matter – may not agree with mine. What most of us would agree on, though, is that high school kids shouldn’t smoke, drink or – worst of all – do drugs. Vision Warrior seems to be effective in getting kids to agree.
Miles for Tax Payments (and Other Pressing Matters) April 8, 2002February 21, 2017 Got kids in middle school or high school? Tomorrow: Vision Warrior! Today . . . YOU MENTION ONE LOUSY X-RAY . . . . . . in passing, no less! I mean, I wasn’t even writing about X-rays, I was writing about mint Diet Coke; and suddenly, this becomes the History of Science. (And I must tell you: I love it.) Mike Broderick: ‘The bit about Nikola Tesla discovering X-rays is an urban legend at best. Röntgen discovered the X-ray accidentally, published two papers on it, and never worked with X-rays again. Röntgen received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901 (very first Nobel Prize for physics!). Don’t take my word for it, check it out! The simplest way is probably the Encyclopedia Britannica. A telling bit of evidence is that ‘Röntgen’ is still a well-known measure of radiation exposure to this day, whereas Tesla’s name is attached to an obscure measurement (I believe of magnetic fields) that even I, with a degree in physics can’t explain without looking it up! “Nikola Tesla was a very brilliant man and outstanding scientist. He did most of the preliminary work leading to alternating electrical current before a guy named George Westinghouse marketed it and made ‘AC’ a household name. For some reason over the past twenty years or so, there has been a movement to give Nikola Tesla credit for inventing essentially everything but sliced bread. I’m not sure of the motivation behind this. In any case, for X-rays, it is Röntgen who deserves and receives credit, not Tesla. “Some minor asides: Röntgen took a number of X-ray pictures, the most famous being of his wife’s hand, including a huge (wedding?) ring. You can see it on the internet here. Thomas Edison saw big bucks in inventions derived from X-rays, and put his ‘top assistant’ to experimenting with an X-ray machine. Because the hazards of radiation were not understood at the time, doses to X-ray machine users were massive. As a result, Edison’s assistant quickly got cancer and died. Edison was no dummy, and had all work with X-rays stopped in his research lab. “Last bit of trivia: It is generally accepted that at least one researcher observed the effects of X-rays before Röntgen did (ten years or so ahead), but he didn’t realize he had anything new, didn’t do anything with it, and even he agreed Röntgen should receive credit. I forget the name of the fellow now, but he’s not well-known even to science history geeks like me! “The reason I can spew out emails about all this stuff, and even care about correcting the record, is that I am an avid history buff who needs to make a living, so works in a technical field – which just happens to be radiation safety! I don’t have any beef with Nikola Tesla at all. But the historical record is solidly clear that he didn’t discover X-rays.” ☞ Thanks, Mike. YOU MENTION ONE LOUSY FLAT TAX . . . Eric Delph: “All concepts I have heard about a flat tax include a generous income deduction, like $30,000 for a single filer and $50,000 for a joint filer. No one making under those amounts would pay any taxes. So if the flat tax is 20%, than someone making $30,000 has an effective tax of 0%. Someone making $60,000 has an effective rate of 10% . . . $120,000 is 15% . . . $240,000 is 17.5% . . . $480,000 is 18.75% . . . and $1 million is 19.4%. This looks progressive to me. Unless your definition of progressive is different from mine.” ☞ You’re right. And for someone making $154 million (e.g., Cisco’s CEO last year), it’s 19.996%. I just don’t think the incline from 10% on $60,000 to 19.996% on $154 million is steep enough. To me, the 39.6% top bracket established in 1993 (without a single Republican vote) struck a good balance. The best-off still saw their after-tax income rise faster than everybody else, yet we raised enough revenue to balance the budget, get interest rates down (a terrific “tax cut” for business and consumers), and do things like increase the earned-income credit for the working poor. I do totally agree, however, that we should lean toward simplifying the tax code wherever possible. That’s why, for example, raising the floor on taxable estates from the current $1 million to perhaps $3.5 million (and then indexing that to inflation), is so appealing. It would exempt nearly everybody, yet still raise a lot of money from the few fortunate enough to have to deal with it. For them, I’d like to couple a modest reduction in today’s 50% top rate with a significant tightening of the loopholes designed to avoid it. (Congress closed no loopholes that I know of, but did cut the old 55% rate to 50% this year and slated it to fall gradually to 45% in 2009, by which time the $1 million exemption is slated to hit $3.5 million. The law then drops the tax rate to zero in 2010 . . . and snaps it back up to 50% in 2011. Presumably, there will be some very hot debates in 2009 or else a most macabre Palm Beach social season in 2010.) YOU MENTION FREQUENT FLYER MILES . . . The push is on to have you pay your income tax by credit card, via an outfit called Official Payments (800-2PAYTAX), in order to get your card’s frequent flyer miles. The TV pitchman describes “his friend” who paid his $100,000 tax bill on his credit card and used the 100,000 miles it brought him for a business class ticket to Australia. Yes, there is a 2.5% “convenience fee” for doing it this way, but, the pitchman concludes, “My friend got a heck of a return on his taxes, I’d say.” A female voice-over drives the point home: “Official Payments. The proven way to make paying taxes pay.” Well, yes and no. The 2.5% fee means you’re paying $2,500 for 100,000 frequent flyer miles. It’s true that you may be able to get a business class ticket to Australia for 100,000 miles, which is a lot less than the full fare. But a couple of things to think through first: Do you really need the miles? You don’t have a lot already? Will your card’s mileage program allow you to earn this many in a year? Check first to be sure you aren’t already near the limit of how many you can earn? Could you suck it up and fly coach? If so, it costs a lot less than $2,500 to go anywhere in the world. Basically, give the choice of spending $600 in coach or $2,500 in business, which would you choose? (This is not a trick question. Those readers in the wealth-accumulation stage would be well advised to choose the $600 fare. Those relative few who have achieved financial security have only an opportunity cost in this – the opportunity to do something even more enjoyable, or even more meaningful with the extra money. I have one dear friend who was United Way’s Man of the Year not long ago – for the entire country, not some small town – and who has given away millions. He flies coach. Doesn’t bother him.) Are the miles really worth 2.5 cents each to you? The basic award these days, a domestic round-trip in coach, is 25,000 miles. Paying 2.5 cents a mile, that works out to $625. If you normally pay less than that for a ticket, think twice about paying $625 to buy for 25,000 miles. Will you have time to take the trip – and at a time when the miles will do you any good? If you think you’re going to use the miles around the holidays, forget it. Would it be smarter to buy the miles direct from the airline, if and when you actually need them? American, for example, well sell you up to 15,000 miles per year for the same 2.5 cents. Finally, is there any chance you have accidentally run a balance on your card? If so, in addition to the 2.5% fee, there’d be interest to pay as well.
Feedback April 5, 2002January 25, 2017 IT WASN’T ROENTGEN, EITHER Lawrence Andraschko: ‘Actually, Nikola Tesla Discovered X-rays a full year before Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen. The first X-ray was a picture of the inner workings, (springs, shutter, screws) of a camera that was being used to take a picture of Mark Twain in Tesla’s lab in 1894. During 1895, dozens of x-rays were made in Tesla’s lab. An X-ray of Tesla’s foot and Mark Twain’s hand still survive. Unfortunately, Tesla’s lab burned down soon after, during experiments on liquefying gasses. When Roentgen announced his discovery on December 28th, 1895, Tesla immediately congratulated him – and sent him a few X-rays! The reply Roentgen sent to Tesla asking how they were made still exists.’ ☞ As usual, the most interesting parts of this column come from the readers. FLAT TAX FLAK Jan Colcom: ‘How long does it take you to do YOUR taxes? Or do you just delegate it all to a trusty accountant and affix your signature in 5 seconds?’ ☞ A week. But not because the tax rates are graduated. Bob Sanderson: ‘The flat tax is a dumb idea that I’m sure almost everyone would dismiss if they understood its dirty little secret: it requires almost every taxpayer to pay more taxes! You can argue that it would be cool if the government could be run on half as much revenue, but that’s a different subject entirely. An honest discussion of the flat tax requires that it raise the same amount of tax revenue as our current system. And since our current system is progressive, the only way to have a flat tax is to lower taxes for the wealthy, while raising them for everyone else. No wonder Steve Forbes is so in love with this concept!’ ☞ Precisely. Although I’m quite sure that Steve, being human (no, really!), has persuaded himself of nobler motivations. STUDENT LOAN CALCULATOR Jacki Stirn: ‘Look at this calculator. Its salary estimates are for Colorado, but I think it’s a great idea.’ THE TEACHER HAS ARRIVED For those who tuned in yesterday, it seems as if the teacher may have finally stepped in to stop the fighting. I’m keeping my fingers tightly crossed. Have a great weekend.
Oy. April 4, 2002February 21, 2017 I asked my brother, the scholar and anthropologist in our family, ‘Who is a Jew?’ He replied with many definitions (‘anyone whose mother was Jewish’ was only the first) and concluded with my favorite, which he said is attributed to Golda Meir: ‘A Jew is anyone who if you call him a Jew he doesn’t throw a chair at you.’ Would that they were only throwing chairs. Do most of the teenagers enraged at the US and Israel – who want to kill the Jews – even know that less than 60 years ago 6 million were killed? My guess is that this detail doesn’t make it into the madrassas. My guess is also that, like two schoolboys fighting (only horrendously worse), neither one wants to back down but both hope a teacher comes along to put a stop to it. In this case, that teacher would be us. And the Saudis. The bigger the coalition, the better. One hopes it could demand behind the scenes that Sharon and Arafat both step down in favor of more moderate leaders, and then, once they have agreed, demand it publicly and have them accede. And then have the coalition step in between the two sides – heavily armed (but also with lots of relief supplies) – while UN resolutions are being sensibly interpreted and agreed to. Add in $25,000 or $50,000 to each of a million Palestinian families paid half by the US and Europe, half by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – what’s $25 or $50 billion to avert World War III? – and maybe there’s a way to get the toothpaste back into the tube. But what do I know? Herewith three pieces I found particularly interesting. The first, by John Derbyshire, a Brit, I believe, comes from the National Review. It concludes by referring to the second, a column Peggy Noonan did for the Wall Street Journal. If you have any wind left after those two, the third is a letter to Nashville’s Jewish paper, the Observer. (Thank you, Peter and Pris, for bringing these to my attention.) March 22, 2002 The National Review Kill a Jew for Allah By John Derbyshire I recently got a long, carefully composed e-mail from a reader, who begged me to circulate it among “other opinion-formers.” It laid out a plan for peace in the Middle East. The writer, obviously an intelligent and well-informed person, had composed the e-mail with great care. With some passion, too – he really wants to find a solution to the Israel-Arab problem. Here was a public-spirited person doing his citizenly best to promote an idea that, he fervently believed, would put an end to the horrors. And what was that idea? In a nutshell: The U.S. should lean hard on Israel to abandon the Jewish settlements in Arab land – i.e. beyond Israel’s pre-1967 borders. These settlements (my reader argued) were the root cause of all the strife. Closing them down would remove the main casus belli; and the good faith shown by this act would open the eyes of the Arabs to the fact that peace with Israel is possible. The logjam would be broken. I don’t know what to say to people like this. Obviously they are decent, good citizens. Obviously they are trying their best – trying to be constructive, to give some hope to the world. How do I tell them what I feel? Which is, that they are floating in orbit between Uranus and Neptune – inhabiting some place that does not touch the real world at any point. Look: Possibly there would be some abstract justice in closing down the settlements, I don’t know. I don’t see it myself, I must admit. Why should Jews not live among Arabs? Lots of Arabs live in Israel, and do very well there. There are rich Israeli Arabs; there are Israeli-Arab pop stars and comedians; there are Israeli-Arab intellectuals, teachers, writers, businessmen, athletes. Why, when the whole thing gets sorted out, should there not be Jews living in Arab territory – as there were for centuries past? What, exactly, is wrong with the settlements? I don’t see it. But, okay, let’s suppose there is some valid moral objection to the existence of the settlements; and let’s suppose my reader’s plan were to be carried out, and all the settlements were removed, their populations transferred back to metropolitan Israel, their buildings razed, their fields ploughed with salt. Does anybody think it would make a damn bit of difference? There was no such thing as settlements, no such thing as “occupied territories,” before the 1967 war. There were no such things in 1960, for example, when Adolf Eichmann was abducted from his hiding-hole in Buenos Aires by Israeli secret agents, an event recorded by Saudi Arabia’s principal government-controlled newspaper as: “ARREST OF EICHMANN, WHO HAD THE HONOR OF KILLING 6 MILLION JEWS”. The problem of the Middle East is not the settlements. It is not this piece of land or that piece. It is not the Golan Heights or East Jerusalem or Temple Mount. It is not oil, or land, or water, or history, or geography, or metaphysics. The problem is in plain sight. You know what the problem is, and so do I. The problem is that the Middle East hates the Jews. I say “the Middle East” because I don’t know any more precise way to say it. You can’t say “the Arabs” (though of course the Arabs hate the Jews more than anyone), because the Iranians and the Pakistanis and the Berbers of North Africa hate the Jews too, and they are not Arabs. You can’t say “the Muslims”. That is a lot closer, I think, and there surely cannot be much doubt that institutional Islam is riddled with Jew-hatred. Still, Malaysia is a Muslim country, and they don’t hate the Jews, except in a go-along, pro forma sort of way, to keep on good terms with the Saudis and Gulf Emirs. And I am sure, before you write to tell me, that lots of people in the Middle East don’t hate the Jews. Lots of Arabs, millions probably, don’t hate the Jews. Probably lots of non-Arab Muslims don’t hate the Jews, either. Yet it’s hard to avoid the impression, from reading the MEMRI translations, from looking at the kinds of things taught in schools all over the Middle East (and in Islamic schools here in the U.S.A. – see below), from listening to the pronouncements of Middle East politicians (remember the Syrian foreign minister explaining to the Pope – to the Pope! – that: “When I see a Jew in front of me, I kill him”?) and from random conversations with New York cab drivers, that visceral, murderous Jew-hatred is awfully widespread among Arabs, Pakistanis, Iranians, and North Africans. Awfully widespread. In between getting that e-mail and answering it, I did two unrelated things, by way of my daily work. One was to prepare an editorial snippet for the print National Review about Islamic schools here in the U.S., based on a long study in the Washington Post of February 25th. There are estimated to be between 200 and 600 private Islamic day schools in the U.S., with up to 30,000 students in attendance. They use textbooks imported from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. One in use at the Islamic Saudi Academy in suburban Virginia instructs readers that a sure sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say: “Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him.” School authorities did some fast damage control when the Post confronted them (as the Saudis are doing over the now-famous Blood Libel article). The textbooks are in process of being replaced with special versions more suitable for American students, they assured us, with the kill-a-Jew-for-Allah stuff left out. Presumably that stuff remains untouched back home in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Libya,… Their kiddies will get the right message, you can be sure: “What do you mean, you don’t hate Jews? Look, even the blessed trees hate them!” The other thing I did was read Jeffrey Goldberg’s article about Saddam Hussein in The New Yorker (titled “The Great Terror” in the 3/25/02 issue). “Iraqi dissidents agree that Iraq’s programs to build weapons of mass destruction are focused on Israel. ‘Israel is the whole game,’ Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, told me. …. “[Saddam] thinks he can kill one hundred thousand Israelis in a day with biological weapons….’ Students of Iraq and its government generally agree that Saddam would like to project himself as leader of all the Arabs, and that the only sure way to do that is by confronting Israel.” Seems to me, from what I read and hear, that those students are quite right: That by “confronting Israel” via killing a hundred thousand Israelis in a day, Saddam would win the hearts of the entire Arab world, and of the Iranians, Pakistanis, Afghans and North Africans, too. (Does Hamid Karzai, Washington’s new darling, hate Jews? Has anyone asked him?) I am sure Saddam himself believes this to be the case, and he is, with all his endearing little character flaws, a man who knows something about the Arab mentality. It is not too difficult to envisage a plan by which the spoken grievances of the Arabs against Israel could be addressed, and some compromise struck. The chancelleries of the world – including Israel’s – are in fact full of such plans, drawn up with loving care by legions of diplomats, experts, politicians, ambassadors, scholars and private do-gooders like my reader, across decades of time. In an atmosphere of goodwill, and genuine desire for a solution, the Palestine circle could be squared. You’d just have to pull one of those plans down from the shelf, blow the dust off it, and say: “Let’s take this for a starting point, shall we?” The circle is not going to be squared though – not by George W. Bush, not by my e-mail pal with his elaborate scheme to shut down the settlements, not by another round of “shuttle diplomacy,” not by any amount of work on a “peace process”. It isn’t going to be, because there is no goodwill, and no real desire on the part of Israel’s enemies for a solution. Or rather, there is a widespread desire for only one solution – the extinction of Israel and the driving out, or mass killing, of the Jews. That’s what they want, the Middle East; that’s all they want. I don’t think we should be sending diplomats to the Middle East. I think we should be sending teams of psychiatrists. This is a diseased culture, a sick culture. Go back to that disgraceful recycling of the Blood Libel in the Saudi press. Do you think anyone in that newspaper’s readership thought there was anything odd about it, anything deplorable about it, anything untrue about it? I don’t think so. To the newspaper readers of Saudi Arabia, it was routine stuff, a statement of the obvious. If MEMRI hadn’t brought it to the attention of the civilized world, do you think the Saudi authorities would have bothered about it? Do you think, even now, they really have a clue what all the fuss is about? Of course the Jews use gentile blood to make their cookies. Doesn’t everyone know that? We’d best pretend to be shocked, though. Those Americans are so-o-o sensitive! We are dealing here with people who are, not to put too fine a point on it, nuts. The Arabs, the Iranians, the Pakis, the Libyans: they are nuts, the great majority of them. Nuts. Not playing with a full deck. Not too tightly wrapped. One brick short of a load, one coupon short of a toaster. The smoke not going all the way up the chimney. Not quite 16 annas to the rupee. Nuts. Is there anything we can do about it? Only what Peggy Noonan told us to do in her brilliant Wall Street Journal piece last week: Do what you do when you find yourself in a roomful of glittering-eyed lunatics down at the local funny farm. Keep smiling, talk softly, don’t make any sudden moves, keep nodding and smiling, and keep a tight hand on the stun gun in your pocket. The Middle East contains three hundred million people, and most of them are crazy as coots. Glad I don’t live there. March 15, 2002 The Wall Street Journal PEGGY NOONAN Quiet, Please, on The Western Front Some of our enemies are crazy. We don’t want to excite them. I have a small thought. I would like to speak of it in a low-key manner. My thought is that we are all talking too much, or rather too dramatically–too colorfully, and carelessly–about things that are really quite dreadful. And we should stop it. I will start with this: I have been thinking about hospitals for the psychologically and emotionally unwell, and how they run. Now, there are many wicked people in the world, and some of them are stone evil, but some are also not at all sane. They are frighteningly obsessed or delusional; they have illusions of omnipotence, or no control over their impulses and desires; they hear voices, are unhinged by fantasies of rage and revenge, imagine that they are the reincarnation of Napoleon, or Saladin. You can ponder whether Saddam Hussein is more evil than crazy or crazy than evil, but anyone who’s seen him on the news would likely conclude that Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber who failed to blow himself and 400 other people out of the sky, is quite clearly unstable. And there are of course many Richard Reids. The problem in this age of weapons of mass destruction is that we don’t have one Saddam to worry about but cells of Saddams, rings of Reids, scores, hundreds of independent operators, some of whom are trying to create their own weapons of mass destruction, their own obliterates aimed at obliterating life in this place or that. And many of them are not fully sane. Which is a problem. Which is why I’m thinking about mental institutions. If you have ever worked in one or visited a friend in one, you’ve probably observed some things about how the unwell are treated. For instance: It is always wise when speaking to the unstable to speak softly if you can, and soothingly if possible. It isn’t good to be loud or theatrical in your subject matter or usage. It is wise not to speak with heightened drama, because for the unstable things are quite dramatic enough. They have storms going on inside them. They don’t need your howling verbal gusts. So, a general rule: Never excite the unstable. At the same time some of the unstable are dangerous or potentially so, and this cannot be ignored. So it’s always good to be planning ahead. It is wise to be preparing restraints, to have areas in which the dangerous can be segregated from the general population, to have security guards who speak softly but, as they say, carry a big stick. It is wise to have serious plans for treatment, wise to make sure that they cannot get their hands on, say, the ingredients to build a bomb. Nurses and doctors in such hospitals know all this, especially the part about not bringing unneeded drama to their patients. They do not tell someone who may behave violently, “We hate you and plan to do terrible things to you. The next time you are bad we’re going to kick you, punch you, push you in a hole and put a large cover on it. Then we’re going to cover you with Italian dressing, let you marinate overnight, and cook you.” That kind of language would less likely discourage dramatic action than summon it. And that’s what I think we all ought to be keeping in our minds these days, how not to summon dramatic action from the marginally stable. We are at war. This is a grave time. And yet in some ways we are being quite careless in what we are saying and how it might be received. We are being too colorful, too vivid, and unnecessarily so. We are acting as if we are not fully aware of the gravity of the moment. One gets the sense, reading the newspapers and columnists and Web sites, and listening to news conferences, that we are talking too much these days, saying too much and saying it too graphically. We are being noisy and clamorous. We are frightening the inmates. This is not good. “Let’s Nuke Em All!” Britain’s Daily Mail headlined this week. The story was about the U.S. government review of its nuclear capabilities. Someone–Mary McGrory wondered in her column if it was “doomsday planners” or “a subversive showoff”–leaked the news that the U.S. may be re-evaluating its nuclear posture, strategy and potential targets with an eye to breaking the taboo on tactical nuclear weapons. The New York Times, one of the great newspapers of the world and received by some in the world as a voice of the West, ran an editorial in which it likened America to a “rogue state.” A columnist in the Boston Globe said President Bush is “as frightening as al Qaeda.” All of this of course followed the previous week’s story of secret plans to invade Iraq. On Wednesday, President Bush took to the airwaves in an informal news conference and refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in the war, explaining that his position was “a way to say to people who would harm America: Don’t do it. . . . There’s a consequence.” Indeed there is, and it would no doubt be terrible. But one wonders if this subject is not better confined to a grave and formal speech to the nation from a somber president, and not served up along with teasing of the press–“That you, Stretch? Oh, it’s Superstretch”–and jokes about the length and complexity of follow-ups. Perhaps this is the White House’s way of showing the president is utterly unrattled by the facts of the new world. But there are other ways to show that he is unrattled, if that has to be shown. Why are we being so careless and colorful, so offhand, at a time when what faces us is so somber? Maybe we in the media are not thinking of the impression we make en masse, all together, on the world. We think of the impression we make individually, not as part of a media wave that rolls over the globe each day. And people, even the most sophisticated, tend to project some of their inner world on the outer world around them. The unstable see themselves surrounded by threats, or secret signs. But the stable have illusions too. People who are sane tend to project sanity onto others. Those who, like the writers at great Web sites and great newspapers, are fully stable, imagine that their thoughts and words are received by the stable. And of course that is true. Except when it isn’t. What they think and write and say is also disseminated throughout the world of America’s enemies, and is not always received in a way that is sober and measured. Some of those who see, on the computer in their home outside Tehran, the headline “Let’s Nuke Em All!” will take it quite literally. They will receive it as yet another reason to get back to work packing the dirty nuke into the backpack. The man who leaked the nuclear review story perhaps thought he was making the world safer–that everyone would understand it as he did. But not everyone will. “Children will listen,” the old song says. But so will the fragile and mad, and it’s not good to excite them. We should not be leaking that we are reviewing our nuclear capacity; we should be quietly reviewing it. We should not be reporting in hyperventilated tones the review of nuclear policy; we should remember that this only feeds the sickness of those who mean us harm. We should be very quietly debating in the offices of government what an appropriate response would be to the bombing of America; we should reach conclusions, create a plan, and very quietly tell the leaders of the real rogue nations exactly what will happen to them, and to the terrorists who slumber within their borders, if they should dare to bomb an American city. Our words should be blunt little bombs whispered in the ears of Arab leaders in a manner that leaves them with the kind of ringing headache you sometimes get when you’re told terrible news that is true. But we should probably not be having chatty conversations about whether or not it would be a good idea to take out Mecca. This is not censorship, it is using judgment in a time of war. It is awareness that projecting stability and sanity onto others, while polite and even touching, is not always warranted. We should lower our voices, and be chary with words. As if we were well-meaning professionals in an asylum who want to keep everyone safe, and help the sick, and keep them safe as possible too. Peggy’s new book: When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan. March 10, 2002 A letter to The Nashville Observer LIBBY WERTHAN Last night as I lay in my comfortable bed in my lovely home planning a pleasant night’s sleep, I could hear the guns in Gilo. And I couldn’t sleep; not because I was fearful for my safety but because I couldn’t help but think of all those people living in Gilo (two neighborhoods away from us) and how terrified they must be—especially the children. Thank G-d only three people were injured but fifty-two apartments were damaged by terrorist machine gun fire. I would like to try to convey to you what life is like here right now. I have told you long before that I thought the “Peace Process” was just that, a process . . . that it wouldn’t lead to peace. And unfortunately, it has turned out that way. At best, it was a holding period, a badly needed respite. In the years following Oslo, we had a kind of freedom . . . a green light, if you will; we could travel almost anywhere, enjoy the country in relative safety. After Arafat rejected the best deal he would ever get and the “Peace Process” came to a halt, we found ourselves under constant attack . . . suicide bombers (whom one expert said was a misnomer, that they should be called Islamakazes), mortar attacks, knifings, murders, and drive-by shootings. Every morning, we open our newspapers and tally up how many people were killed (about 350 to date) and how many more people were permanently damaged . . . losing limbs, being burned so badly that they will never leave home, seeing loved ones murdered . . . they and their families will never be the same. I am talking about thousands of people in the last 16 months, mostly children and young people under the age of thirty. What happened in America on 9/11 was horrifying. Over 3000 people lost their lives in the World Trade Center. America has a population of 278 million. Israel has a population of 6 million. If you were to compare deaths per capita, Israel has experienced almost 5 World Trade Centers in the last year and a half. And that’s only the deaths, not the thousands permanently injured. The majority have been civilians going about their lives . . . mostly women and children. It’s pretty devastating when you think about it. You can imagine what this has done to the psyche of our country. But what I find even more incredible is the response of Israel to this assault. The Israeli Army, has the power and ability to go in and take over the whole Palestinian entity in a matter of days. But they haven’t done it. Instead they have targeted the ringleaders, the bomb makers and their installations (and been criticized for it). They have isolated Arafat, the Father of Terrorism, (and been criticized for it). They have bombed the installations of the Palestinian Authority, but not without first telling them that they are going to do it. So when they do bomb buildings, they are empty. They make every attempt to avoid injuring any civilians. When the army entered the two refugee camps (which by the way are so vicious and independent that the Palestinian police won’t enter them), they gave the civilians three hours to leave the camp, to get out of harm’s way. In view of the horrors perpetrated against us, ours is the most measured of responses. And yet the media doesn’t report it that way . . . they can’t if they want to continue to have access to the Palestinians. So they talk about Israel’s heavy-handedness, they talk about occupation, when 98% of the territories are under Palestinian control, they highlight the Palestinian deaths and overlook many of ours. The media, when being even-handed, will interview both a Palestinian and an Israeli. But the Israelis they pick are either to the far Left or the far Right and are clearly not representative of mainstream Israel. Last week they ran a story about a Palestinian woman coming into Israel to give birth and being wounded in the shoulder when her car ran a roadblock. They don’t follow it up with the fact that she was taken quickly taken to hospital where she give birth to a healthy baby and recovered from her wound. Nor do they tell you that the very next day a pregnant Israeli woman was ambushed on the highway and shot in the abdomen as a “gift” to the Palestinian woman. We go after those who are killing us. We do not respond by targeting civilians. I said earlier that for ten years we had a green light. We no longer have that green light. It has been replaced by a flashing yellow light. We still live our normal lives . . . go to work . . . go to the mall . . . go to the movies . . . make gourmet dinners . . . have weddings and bar mitzvahs . . . work out . . . plant gardens . . . go to lectures, concerts, and plays . . . all the normal things one does. Except that flashing yellow light makes us more aware of where we are and who’s around us. When we hear more than one siren, as we did last night, we run and turn on the news . . . another suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded religious neighborhood. When we hear an explosion, it could be something on a construction site or a car backfire, but we think bomb. You might expect us to go around with long faces and sometimes we do, but mostly not. Nevertheless we are always hurting inside. We know so many are grieving. We see the pictures of the beautiful young people who have been killed and our hearts are breaking. The hardest part for me and, I think, others, is that there is no end in sight. How long can this go on? What will happen next? The talk is always, “let’s achieve calm, let’s get back to the negotiating table.” But with whom are we going to negotiate? Arafat? Arafat, the inventor of terrorism; the consummate liar! A man who prays for “the peace of the brave” on the New York Times Op Ed page and at the very same time shouts “jihad, a million martyrs on to Jerusalem” to his own people in Arabic. A man who has not only abused the opportunity offered him for peace but has brutally abused his own people by manipulation and lies. He is every bit as vicious as Bin Laden. Would America negotiate with Bin Laden? With whom then are we going to negotiate? And if we do find someone, how meaningful will a signed piece of paper be? There are three generations of Palestinians here who have learned to hate Jews from birth; who’s greatest mitzvah is to kill a Jew. How can that change with a piece of paper? We are at a terrible impasse here. How do we protect ourselves and at the same time create a Palestinian entity that is self-sufficient and independent of us. This is it. This is what every Israeli wants. And what about you? Where do you fit into this Jewish world of ours? I have told you about Israel, but what about Argentina where over half of the Jews there are now living under the poverty line, or France where Jews are experiencing a huge upsurge of anti-Semitism. And what about America? I don’t know that much about America; but what I do know disturbs me. I hear very little raised in the way of protests against the biased media and little rallying in support of Israel coming from the Jewish communities in America. What I do know is that the Arab propaganda is so strong and effective in the US that on the college campuses your children and grandchildren have never been more distanced from Israel and are in fact ashamed of her. American Jewish visitors are so few here that we can practically thank each one personally for coming. Our hotels and restaurants are closing. Our tour guides and bus companies are out of work. Where are you when we need you? Are you writing to the Congress to thank them for their support? Are you writing to the President? What about letters to the editor? Are you countering Palestinian propaganda on the college campuses? Are you writing to CNN and NPR when their reporting is clearly biased? Are you letting people here know that you care? Have you contributed to a victim relief fund? What’s happening, folks? When I was in America last month, I saw a lot of hand-wringing and got a lot of sympathetic comments. Mostly, people wanted to know why I didn’t come back and live there. And what did I answer? I told them that we have had the most fabulous twelve years of our lives here. Grant you the last months have been painful. But when I think about why I am here, what it boils down to is that living here is the most important statement that I can make with my life. Since I began this letter, the situation has become increasingly worse. While we apprehend and thwart countless attackers, we cannot catch them all. Some slip through. On Thursday, I sent Moshe down to the grocery (here the grocery is so close you can walk) to pick up a few things I had forgotten. When he arrived, the whole area had been blocked off, all traffic stopped. And police everywhere. Just minutes before, a suicide bomber had entered a very popular outdoor cafe but had been noticed by a customer who alerted a waiter and together they pushed him out of the cafe and at the same time ripped out the wires of the bomb . . . and saved the lives of scores of people. These were just ordinary people, but they performed an extraordinary task. On Friday the cafe was again packed. Saturday night a bomber entering another packed cafe in the center of town was not detected in time . . . 13 were killed and over 50 wounded. In about an hour, Moshe and I and many of our neighbors are going to take a walk in the Jerusalem Peace Forest . . . a part of the Promenade that looks out over Jerusalem. Perhaps you have been there. It is a popular tourist spot. Some weeks ago in this place, a young Israeli college student, a girl, was attacked by a gang of Arab teenagers and stabbed to death. Our walk is symbolic. It’s our way of saying you can’t take our favorite places away from us. We won’t give in to your terror. I could tell you many, many stories but I think you get the picture. This is a war that is difficult to win; if you defeat your enemy, you wind up with a captive hostile population and territories that you must occupy; if you make an accommodation with the enemy, it won’t assure you of safety or that attitudes will change. It will only put you in an even less secure situation. If you believe in prayer, please pray for us. Both the Israeli and the Palestinian populations are victimized. We are going through a living hell. ☞ And this letter, sad to say, was written four weeks ago. Since then, as you well, know, it’s gotten much worse.