Author: A.T.

Earth Day has come and gone, and what did you do about it? Me, too.

But here’s something you can do:

Step #1: Grab a copy of the April Atlantic Monthly at your library, or if you can still find one at the newsstand.

Step #2: Read the article by two Energy Department deputies called “Mideast Oil Forever?”

Step #3: Send copies to your Senators and Representative with letters urging them not to sacrifice our long-term well-being for short-sighted, short-term gain.

The article makes a strong case that, while not all alternative energy projects make sense, to be sure, we’re on the verge of throwing away our lead in viable energy solutions that will bring jobs, cleaner air, less dependence on foreign oil, a lower trade deficit, a stronger dollar, and greater prosperity.

Not all government programs are good, by any means. But neither are they all bad.

Tomorrow: GEICO Redux

“Moreover, despite the low 5.6% unemployment rate, wages remain relatively stagnant, and polls find many Americans worried about layoffs, job security and a perceived stagnation in living standards.” — Wall Street Journal April 10, 1996

It’s tough out there. Nothing I’m going to say is meant to minimize that.

But the perceived stagnation in living standards may be more quantitative than qualitative — and not just because the crime rate is down. (And the Los Angeles air and much of the nation’s water is cleaner.)

Here’s a letter I just got written by Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind, in 1949 (I collect stuff like this). I bought it because, ironically, Margaret Mitchell was killed in a car crash with a drunk driver a few months after writing it. Gone Through the Windshield. But it makes another point as well:

February 3, 1949

Dear Mr. Jones:

Here is our thought about the matter of a new car. The four-door car just will not do for us. It appears to have less leg room for John than the two-door and it would cramp his legs on a long trip. The steering gear on the four-door surprised me by being set at a different angle, so odd an angle that even with the heavy driving pillow behind me I could not reach the brakes. I can’t tell you how much this surprised us and disappointed us too. Mr. Mullin was as surprised as we were. He very obligingly said he’d bring us out the next two-door you had to try again. But John and I have talked the matter over and have decided we do not want the two-door either. We nearly got killed in an accident once when a drunk drove into the back of our car and we were sitting in seats which swung on hinges such as the two-door Mercury has. That type of seat will sling the passengers into the windshield. John felt, too, that the wheel of the two-door Mercury was in my ribs and that any slight accident might cause me serious injury. I also had the problem of lowered vision.

Cordially

Margaret Mitchell Marsh
Atlanta, Georgia

She goes on at some length — they’ll just put a new coat of paint on their old Mercury and hope it holds up a while longer . . . if not, they’ll take the train. If only Mercury would come out with a car that combined the virtues of the Mercury engine, the 1918 Piece-Arrow limousine and the 1920 T-Model Ford, she laments.

So here was a wealthy celebrity in 1949, who would have killed for a car like yours or mine. I have an airbag (an airbag could have saved her life). I have adjustable seats and seat belts. You, too? There’s a good chance you have air conditioning! And — now, this is truly incredible — a radio and possibly a telephone in your car! Power steering! Anti-lock brakes!

We have computers ten times as powerful as the ones we could have bought for the same price just a few years ago. That’s stagnation?

For $300, I have a scanner smaller than a hero sandwich that will stick the original of the Margaret Mitchell letter onto my screen in seconds, then optically transcribe it from a photo to an actual word-processing document I can edit and stick into the text above, saving all that mindless retyping. I can then shoot all this over the phone lines up to a satellite down to a computer where it gets fed into the computer from which you’ve just retrieved it.

Stagnation?

We have Caller ID and Prozac and not-from-concentrate orange juice year-round with little bits of real home-style pulp floating around in it. We have electronic banking, laser surgery, and $12 AM/FM clock radios* with snooze alarm that receive music digitally recorded on compact disc. We have Friends and the Internet and fat-free cheese!

Excuse my enthusiasm (and let’s be quick to acknowledge not everyone has the cash or education to enjoy these things). But this is not stagnation. This is wondrous progress quickly taken for granted.

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*I also have one of those $300 Bose radios you see advertised everywhere, but its clock broke — the big digital read-out always says 3:21 — and the sound is not worth the extra $288 to my ears.

Tomorrow: Energy:Crisis and Opportunity

The last couple of days I’ve been touting the Diners Club card.

This despite the fact that I own no stock in Citicorp, its parent (I sold too soon!), but do own stock in American Express, its competitor. And despite the fact that American Express, bless its heart, gave me a card my senior year in college. I’ve been a loyal “member” ever since, and plan to remain one.

The new Diners card is appealing. In addition to the plusses mentioned a couple of days ago, it provides $350,000 free flight insurance when you charge your tickets to the card, compared with $100,000 free from American Express.

Of course, this is kind of silly, because you only get to enjoy this benefit when you’re dead or dismembered . . . and because you’re not going to die on a scheduled airline — any more than you’re likely to be struck by lightning.

But you could be killed in the cab on the way to or from the airport — in New York or Moscow that is a very real possibility — so having this coverage can’t hurt, because it covers you in the cab, too. And, unlike Amex, it covers you when flying on free tickets.

(More details: lose sight in both eyes, you get the full $350,000. Likewise, an arm and a leg. One eye only: $175,000. One hand or foot: $87,500. But not cumulatively. And not if the accident was caused by an act of war, declared or undeclared, or suicide or attempted suicide while sane.)

Using the card to charge a rental car saves money, because you can decline the expensive collision waivers. If there’s an accident (or theft or fire), the Diners Club coverage should pay without your having to make a claim against your own auto insurance policy first. (Some restrictions apply to New York State residents.) That’s good, because making claims often leads to higher premiums. With Amex and others, your own insurance coverage has to be exhausted before the Amex coverage kicks in.

And then there’s “excess baggage insurance.” I’ve had some fun in years past writing about the coverage Amex sells. Well, the Diners Club coverage is not exactly something you need, either, but at least it’s free: $1,250 to supplement the airline’s own coverage. So if your $2,000 set of golf clubs is lost or stolen, you’d get the first $750 from the airline and the rest under this coverage.

The Diners card has its pitfalls. The first is late payment. They invite you to take a second month to pay, if need be, with no interest or penalty. Swell. But if you don’t, then you’re hit with a $20 fee plus 2.5% of the balance. Another not-so-good-deal is their cash advance program, that turns your Diners card into an ATM card — but with a 4% per transaction fee. Hey, it can take a year or more to earn 4% on your money, after tax. Why pay it to Diners Club parent Citicorp for having use of the money for a month or two?

The last thing to say about all this is that if I’m right, and Diners is offering a bit more than Amex these days, then one of two things is likely to happen fairly soon. Either Amex will up the level of its own benefits somewhat, or Diners will gradually lower its level (well, it’s already $15 more expensive: that pays for a ton of excess baggage insurance right there!). But for now, I guess Diners will be the top card on my deck.

I don’t know whether they’ll extend the 10,000-miles-free introductory offer to people who call them, but if you’re interested in learning more, call 800-2-DINERS.

Tomorrow: Stagnating Living Standards & Margaret Mitchell

Yesterday I described the virtues of the current Diners Club deal. Today, compare two diners at Bice (pronounced “beach-A”) on Miami Beach (a spin-off of the same restaurant in midtown Manhattan).

One diner folds his napkin neatly and pays the $80 bill with a plain old Visa card on which he perennially runs a balance. It costs him $80, including tax and tip — plus 18% interest that begins accruing right away. Because this guy, like so many millions of Visa holders, makes just the minimum payment each month, he’ll be paying interest on this meal for years. Net net: “dinner for $80 plus 18%.”

The other diner hands the waiter his Diners Club card. He, too, pays $80, but will have an average of 75 days or so before any late fees would accrue. (His bill comes once a month, but this charge is as likely to have been at the beginning of the month as at the end, so it’s an average of 15 days old even before he gets his bill — and then he has up to 60 days or so to pay it.)

Having 75 days’ free float is a gift worth at least 1% to most people.

And, far from having to pay an extra 18% in interest, because Bice happens to be one of the restaurants participating in the Diners discount program, this second diner will automatically get 20% off.

And he’ll earn frequent flier miles on the 80% he does have to pay, which themselves are worth at least 2 cents each to him — another 2% or so. So all told, he gets “dinner for $80 less 23%.”

Get it? Dinner can carry an 18% surcharge or a 23% discount.

Not that going out to expensive restaurants is a good way to save money no matter how you slice it. But for those who do, that’s quite a swing.

Tomorrow: A Few More Diners Club Pros and Cons

Competition is heating up in the discount-dining field. I’ve previously recommended the Transmedia card and the IGT card (In Good Taste). When you can get them without the $50 annual fee, as you sometimes can, you have nothing to lose. And if you use the cards at restaurants that honor them, in parties of six people or fewer, you get 25% off everything but the tax and tip. (For parties of more than six, you have to get an okay first.) I won’t go into the details here (call 800-422-5090 to see what Transmedia is currently offering, 800-444-8872 for IGT).

But now comes the offer many of you have gotten for the Diners Club card. I resisted it the first few times, even though they were dangling 10,000 frequent flier miles in front of me to sign up. The last thing I need is another credit card. But I finally broke down. (You can apply the Diners miles to almost any major airline frequent flier program — including American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest, TWA, United, US Air.)

To me, 10,000 miles are worth $200-$400 and the card costs only $80. So right there, at least in Year One (when you get that 10,000-mile bonus), they’re paying you for the nuisance value of having yet another card.

So I got one. And in addition to a mile for each dollar I charge, there’s an automatic 20% discount at more than 1,500 restaurants. That’s just as good as the Transamerica and IGT 25% because it applies to tax and tip as well as the meal. (On a $100 meal if the tax is $8 and the tip is $17, the total bill is $125. You save $25 either way — 25% off the meal-only, 20% off the whole bill.)

It’s even a tad better, because it applies to parties up to eight. If you’re the guy who pays the bill for eight people at $40 each including tax and tip — $320 — you’ll get $64 knocked off your Diners Club statement. And you’ll earn frequent flier miles for each dollar you do pay.

There’s no interest charge on the Diners Club card, which you’re expected to pay off on time. Indeed, they even give you an extra month’s grace period. (But don’t miss that, because if you do, hefty charges kick in — a $20 delinquent fee plus 2.5% on your entire balance.)

I hate to say it, because I own stock in American Express. But right now, the Diners deal appears to be even better than the Amex deal.

Tomorrow: A Tale of Two Diners

The last two days I “reviewed” Jim Stewart’s #1 best-seller on the Clintons, Blood Sport. What Stewart found, basically, was that there was very little “there” there.

• Vince Foster really did kill himself.

• Whitewater was the most passive of investments for the Clintons — a dumb one, but who of us has not made dumb investments?

• Hillary’s $100,000 commodities profit was not a scandal after all.

• The travel office really did seem to have been mismanaged (even though the White House handling of it was at least as badly mismanaged).

Blood Sport is by no means a white wash. The Clintons must hate it — examining only their flaws, as it does, with little mention of their achievements. But the bottom line of the book is really quite positive. This terrible thing called Whitewater that taxpayers have spent tens of millions of dollars investigating is about as minor and petty a deal as you’ll find. Dislike the Clintons for their stand on abortion or free trade or civil rights or the Brady Bill, if you will; or for raising taxes on the rich and pushing through the earned income credit for the working poor; or for attempting to make health insurance universal — or for whatever reasons you choose. But Whitewater? Please.

All this brings to mind another supposedly anti-Clinton book from a couple of years ago, Bob Woodward’s The Agenda. Like Blood Sport, the talk-show impression you got was that it was a knock against the Clintons — that it showed the amateurishness and disorganization of the Clinton White House (especially in that first year). But it’s worth pointing out that book’s bottom line: that when all was said and done, the President came through with the right decision. At the expense of some projects he dearly wanted, he did what he had to to lower the budget deficit enough to satisfy the bond market, turn interest rates around, and rejuvenate the economy.

And guess what? Interest rates did fall sharply, millions of new jobs were created, and the stock market flew to the moon.

A record to “build on, not sit on,” the President will be quick to acknowledge — big problems remain. But The Agenda recounted the budget-making process that set us on the course toward smaller deficits and a stronger economy long before anyone was talking about a Contract with America. A sloppy process . . . contentious. But the bottom line is that the job got done.

It’s the negative spin that sells, and all the better if it involves something easy to grasp, like the First Lady’s hair, or the President’s haircut. But on the big stuff — the economy, civil rights, world peace, world trade, education — it’s harder to find grounds to criticize (though I feel confident this series of comments will generate some).

Tomorrow: Diners Club: Good Deal

Yesterday I said a few words about Blood Sport, my friend Jim Stewart’s meticulous examination of the charges against the First Couple.

It turns out, for example, that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s $100,000 commodities profit was really not rigged after all. She did nothing wrong. One wonders whether George Washington would have fared as well with a meticulous examination of his famed expense accounts.

But what of Whitewater? When all is said and done, on page 430, Jim concludes that although the Clintons were subsidized in this investment by James McDougal (mostly without their knowledge) . . . the amounts of money were minor; the investment — unlike the events that triggered Watergate or Iran-Contra — did not take place while Clinton was President . . . and (quoting the book) “there isn’t any conclusive evidence that Clinton, as governor, bestowed undue favors on McDougal in return for being subsidized.” Indeed, one of McDougal’s persistent gripes was that he got no special favors.

Nor, Jim goes on, “is there any evidence that Madison Guaranty funds were siphoned from the S&L to Whitewater or the Clintons. Despite all the concerns in the Treasury Department and White House, the Resolution Trust Corporation concluded its investigation of Madison Guaranty [the McDougal S&L] at the end of 1995 and recommended that no action be taken against the president or first lady. Persistent allegations that Vince Foster was murdered, even that the Clintons may have been involved, are preposterous. The evidence is overwhelming that Foster committed suicide.”

Clinton foes will find lots in this book to like. It recounts embarrassing personal details and the Clintons’ sometimes unfortunate attempts to deny or deflect them. But the bottom line is that unlike so many public officials, the Clintons did not abuse public office. They did not enrich themselves at taxpayer expense. They really have worked 30 or 35 hours a day, between them, trying to make the economy strong, the world peaceful, the environment safe, the children literate, the society tolerant.

It’s too soon, and beyond the scope of Jim’s endeavor, but one day there will be a book about the Clintons that talks about all the good stuff. It won’t be juicy, but it will be long.

Tomorrow: The Agenda — Reprise

I’ve just finished reading Blood Sport, my friend Jim Stewart’s latest #1 best-seller that meticulously examines “Whitewater.” (Whitewater, needless to say, has become a metonym* for all alleged Clinton wrongdoing.)

According to Blood Sport, the Clintons are not perfect.

But it also turns out, as regards the substance of the attacks against them, there’s very little there.

To me, the most interesting example of this was Hillary’s $100,000 profit trading cattle futures. After all, I’m the guy who for decades has been advising people to steer clear (pun sort of intended) of commodities because “you’ll lose your money.” And you will. I’ve certainly always lost mine when I’ve tried it. So how did Hillary do so well?

It turns out to have been even more innocent than I had assumed. Her mistake was in not coming right out, from the start, and stating, simply: “The truth is, I knew nothing about commodity trading. My good friend Jim Blair hooked me up with a broker who had an amazing run for all his clients, and I was very lucky to be one of them. I haven’t a clue how he did it.”

Because it turns out that’s really all it was. Yes, the broker in question had an inside track with a huge cattle magnate, which gave him an edge (insider trading is not illegal in the commodities markets, which is one reason why, as an outsider, you’ll lose your money).

I had always assumed that, unbeknownst to her, there had been an arrangement to make the future First Lady lucky, putting the successful trades in her account and the losers elsewhere. But Blood Sport makes it clear that even this — which, so long as she hadn’t known what they were up to, would not have been wrongdoing on her part — did not happen. She really did nothing wrong in making this $100,000.

So why didn’t the First Lady just tell all from the outset? I suspect part of it was just a knee-jerk “it’s none of your business” reaction, from someone grown deeply resentful of public prying into her private affairs.

Part may have been worry that maybe there had been something wrong about the trades that, although she hadn’t known about it, might reflect badly on her and be yet another distraction from what she and her husband were trying to accomplish, like health care reform.

Part may have been the desire to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest: Jim Blair was counsel to the Tyson chicken people, and to be perceived to owe him a favor could look bad.

And part may simply have been pride: a brilliant woman’s reluctance to acknowledge that her big score was just dumb luck on her part.

The details of all this make for interesting reading. But the bottom line of the $100,000 commodities “scandal” is: There’s nothing there.

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*And “metonym” has become my new favorite word. Sort of a combination metaphor and synonym. Metonymy is the device of using a part of something, or a related something, to represent the whole. When you say, “counting heads,” you mean “counting people” — and heads is a metonym. When you say “it vexed the crown” you mean it vexed the monarch or the government. And so on. Was this on the S.A.T.’s and I just forgot?

Tomorrow: Whitewater

I just finished doing my taxes with what is now called Kiplinger TaxCut, and once was called Andrew Tobias’ TaxCut, but has really always been Dan Caine’s TaxCut (Dan is the guy who conceived and wrote and slaved over it).

I no longer have any stake in it — I bought my copy — but I must say I took double satisfaction in using it this year. It is so spectacularly good, I had the satisfaction of doing my elephantine taxes easier than ever, and the satisfaction of knowing that those who got hooked on TaxCut over the years on my recommendation (back when I did have a stake in it) were not steered wrong.

Naturally, I’m only a sample of one. I’d appreciate — and share — any horror stories you may have. But for me, this has been a superbly useful, friendly software program.

It’s really pretty exciting to see how far software has come in the mere decade and a half “the public” — folks like us — had any reason to think about it.

If you haven’t yet done your taxes (for me, August 15 usually winds up being the real deadline, because of late-arriving K-1s or other problems), and if you’ve never tried a tax program, you should really pick up a copy of TaxCut and see what I’m raving about.

Tomorrow: Blood Sport — Hillary Rodham’s $100,000 Commodities Profit

“It is fairer to tax people on what they extract from the economy, as roughly measured by their consumption, than to tax them on what they produce for the economy, as roughly measured by their income.”—Thomas Hobbes

Not just fairer: smarter.

(And speaking of fair: “Why shouldn’t the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.”—Edward A. Filene)

Tomorrow: Doing My Taxes with TaxCut