CommenTerry

Classic Rants and Raves #68

Perhaps because I've been disappointed so many times during my life, I can now usually discern situations in which something is being over-hyped or when someone will not make good on their promises.       

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One thing that most people in our culture seem to lack is the skill of critical thinking. All too often, they just accept spoken or written material at face value without properly analyzing what is being said or written.

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No one can ruin your day in quite the way that your doctor can.

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My brother doesn't understand how I can drink vegetable juice. He's says it's gross. However, if I thought something was going help me live longer and/or healthier, I would drink it, even if it tasted like urine! 

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Despite what a certain popular match-making website seems to imply in its TV advertisements, long, healthy, and loving relationships are based on a lot more than just compatibility. 

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Have you ever noticed the optical illusion that makes a room that is full of furniture look larger than a room of the same size that is empty? 

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A few years ago, one of the leading cat food producing companies was sponsoring a contest to find the world's cutest cat. The grand prize was $1 million and anyone could enter their cat. I didn't have a cat then (and don't have one now), but if I did, for that kind of money, I would have thrown my cat into the ring!

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Never throw away old towels, as they make excellent cleaning rags. Around my house, cleaning rags are put into use almost on a daily basis.

All about IRAs

IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account. These types of accounts are personal savings plans. The best candidates for IRAs are those who are looking to save money for retirement.

An IRA works like this. You put a certain amount into an IRA. Only certain amounts are allowed under tax law. These amounts are known as contributions. Oftentimes tax deductions are given to people who invest in IRAs. Furthermore, any contributions you make to IRAs can accumulate in the account tax-free.

When you make a withdrawal from an IRA account, it is called a distribution. Distributions are taxed. If you withdraw money from an IRA account too early, the distribution is taxed more heavily. In other words, you will be penalized. The purpose of the IRA account is to allow a person to accumulate a large sum of tax-free funds in an account. A heavy penalty is put on the head of the person who tries to withdraw money from the account at the age of say 29 or 30, really anything earlier than the average retirement age which is somewhere between 59 and 65.

There are many types of IRAs. These include traditional, Roth, Simple, and educational IRAs. Traditional IRAs allow you to contribute up to 2000 per year. The tax deduction amount depends on a person’s adjusted gross income. Another factor is whether or not you are already covered under on employee sponsored retirement plan. In some instances, you may be able to contribute to a traditional IRA, but still receive no tax deduction.

In a Roth IRA, money can be contributed. However, no tax deductions are allowed. An advantage to using a Roth IRA is that you accumulate without taxes, and distributions are also tax free. This is perhaps one of the most popular IRA plans.

For this reason, many people desire to convert traditional IRAs into Roth IRAs. There are some things to take into consideration before doing this. You can only convert to a Roth IRA if your income is $100,000 or less and you are single or married and filing jointly. In most cases when the question comes up of whether or not a person should convert to a regular IRA to a Roth IRA, the answer is yes. However, you should consider whether or not you are able to pay the taxes that will be placed on the conversion. Converting to a Roth IRA means that you will be paying tax on any earnings or pretax contributions.

An Aversion to What's Good for Us

It seems strange that we, as humans, seem to be born with a built-in aversion to the things that are good for us. That's probably one of the root causes as to why many of us have chronic health problems and don't live to an optimal age. It would seem that, if anything would motivate us to live right, it would be the prospect of good health and long life. But that's apparently just not the case.

Most of us know we should eat more fruits and vegetables, get more exercise, cut down on fatty foods, and get more sleep, but, somehow, we can't bring ourselves to do these things. And that's in spite of the fact that we know that, whenever do them, we'll feel better both physically and psychologically.

We can't even do stuff that would be beneficial to our career goals. I know I should read more and write more, and I get a great sense of accomplishment from these activities. But sometimes the desire just to sit around and vegetate is too overwhelming, even though I know I'm going to feel guilty afterwards.

Ease, comfort, and pleasure just feel so good in the same way that junk food is oh so tasty. We are so willing to trade deferred but lasting good - that may be a little painful at first - for a little instant (and temporary) gratification. If we let reason (as well as our conscience) be our guide, we would never fall into this trap. What we do doesn't make sense from either a logical or moral standpoint. Yet we constantly concede to our self-destructive propensity. We never seem to learn our lesson.

While I've never been able to break myself of this tendency, I have come up with my own way of managing it. Whenever I finally get started on a positive activity, I try to keep the ball rolling as long as possible and take advantage of the momentum I've built up. That's because I know that, once I stop and give in to the temptations of the negative stuff, it'll be difficult to get started in the right direction again.

I'm like a heavy vehicle - it takes a lot to get me moving, but once I get rolling, I can go for a while. For example, even though I generally release one article or blog post per day, that is not the way I write them. Once I get started writing them, I'll do six or seven of them in a single day. But there are plenty of other days in which I don't write anything.

Anyway, that's all I can do to deal with my personal version of this flaw in the human condition. It looks like I'm going to have to get used to it.

Help the Needy, Not the Foolish

Despite what my more liberal-leaning Christian friends may believe, I submit that we (as Christians) are under no obligation to help people who foolishly fritter away their time or money. And I have Scripture to support this assertion.

In the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, here's what Jesus had to say:

"Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight a cry was heard: 'Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!' Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise answered, saying, 'No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.' And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut." Matthew 25: 1-10 (NKJV)

Please note that the five wise virgins never offered to help the five foolish virgins. Also, note that Jesus seemed to concur with their decision. Why? Because the foolish virgins had just as much opportunity to fill their lamps with oil as did the wise ones - but they chose to waste their time.

I suppose they believed that they would have plenty of time to acquire the oil they needed and could wait until the last minute if necessary. But then the bridegroom suddenly arrived and they panicked. They didn't have as much time as they thought, so they asked the wise virgins for help. But wise virgins did not have any oil to spare, so the foolish virgins were left behind while they scrambled to find oil.

And this is not an isolated incident in Scripture. Remember Jesus' parable of the talents? In summary, a landowner puts three of his servants in charge of large sums of money called talents in the King James English. He gives one of them five talents, another two talents, and another one talent - and then goes on a distant journey. When he returns, the servant with five talents has made five more and the servant with the two talents has made two more.

However, the servant with the one talent had dug a hole and buried his in the ground, having nothing additional to show for it. There was nothing preventing that servant from doubling his money, just as the other two had. Now, did the landowner demand that the first two servants help the third one? No, he condemned that servant for his disobedience and even took away the one talent that he had.

Clearly, we are to be good stewards of both our time and our money. When we come up short because we fail to do so, we should not expect God or others to compensate us for it.

We all remember Aesop's fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper from our childhood. We recall how the grasshopper frolicked and played during the summer, while the ant worked hard to prepare for the winter. Then, when winter came, the grasshopper had not stored up any supplies but the ant had plenty. What if Jesus had told this story? Do you think he would have had pity on the grasshopper? Do you think he would have instructed the ant to help him? I believe the answer to the two previous questions is no.

According to the Bible, foolishness and laziness have their rewards. Proverbs 3:35 says, "The wise shall inherit glory, But shame shall be the legacy of fools" (NKJV) However, I love the modern translation of this verse from the MSG that goes as follows: "Wise living gets rewarded with honor; stupid living gets the booby prize." And then we have this from Proverbs 24: 33-34: "A little sleep, little slumber, A little folding of the hands to rest; So shall your poverty come like a prowler, And your need like an armed man." (NKJV)

Of course, most of the people who are truly needy did not get way through foolishness, laziness, and any other fault of their own. Many of them were born into poverty in third-world countries. Even some of those born in the industrialized parts of the world have had few opportunities to better themselves.

Then others have been victims of circumstances beyond their control, like serious illnesses and long periods of unemployment. Some of them could not put any money away when they were in good health and working because they had jobs that just barely covered their cost of living.

But then we have others who are gainfully employed but refuse to plan for tomorrow. They live lavishly (often beyond their means), spending wildly, taking luxurious vacations, and always buying the biggest and the best, when they could be saving for a rainy day. Then, when they are hit with a major setback, they are no better off than those who were forced to live a hand-to-mouth existence.

The other day, I was talking to a co-worker about how I always look for bargains at the grocery store and other places in order to save as much money as possible. He responded by saying he did not do this, even though our salaries are nearly identical. He said he just buys what he wants and doesn't worry about trying to save money.

His rationale is that saving money is not necessary for him because he will always make more. Really? I wonder how he knows this. Proverbs 27:1 says, "Do not boast about tomorrow, For you do not know what a day may bring forth." (NKJV) Of course, this gentleman, although a person of the highest moral and ethical standards, is not a Christian and would therefore probably not understand that concept.

It seems to me that, since one does not know what the future holds, the wise person would prepare for all possibilities. But when people fail to prepare - although they could - are they not presuming on God? Isn't that a foolish thing to do?

Time and again, the Bible depicts foolish people as being punished. Perhaps this punishment is not such a bad thing, as it may convince some of them to change their ways before it's too late. There is much in the Bible about helping the needy, but nothing about helping the foolish. But if you still insist on helping the foolish, stick to the following guideline: Give to the obviously needy first, and then help the foolish - assuming you have anything left to give. Chances are, you won't.

We Should Demand Cable Choice

Back in the days when I had one of those big satellite dishes, also known as a big ugly dish (BUD), I was allowed to select, on an a-la-carte basis, the channels that I wanted. I used an over-the-air antenna to receive my local channels, so I generally selected only the news and sports channels for my satellite subscription. These were the only channels I paid for. I wasn’t required to pay for any channel that I wasn’t interested in. That kept my TV viewing costs within a reasonable range.

With the demise of the BUD, we are now stuck with cable, the small dish (which I call “cable on a stick”), or telco TV if we want more TV channels than those available over the air. All three of these options have one thing in common: they demand that we select our basic channels in bundles or packages instead of allowing us to cherry-pick what we want.

Therefore, in order in get access to ESPN, for example, customers must both pay for and allow into their homes channels like MTV, VH1, Spike TV, FX, TNT, Bravo, and others that amount to nothing more than a cavalcade of eye-rolling and mind-numbing nonsense. And much of what these channels offer is stuff that many – including myself – find objectionable.

The cable companies, satellite operators, and telcos argue that allowing channel choice would be economically and technically unfeasible and that it would cause many basic channels to disappear. However, this argument seems disingenuous to me. After all, they do it with premium channels like HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax – and I don’t see any of them going out of business.

And if a TV channel can’t survive on its own merits, too bad. That’s the way capitalism is supposed to work. It’s survival of the fittest. Business entities that can’t generate enough interest from potential customers are supposed to fall by wayside. It seems to me like these pay-TV providers have set up some kind of social welfare system for TV channels, in which those that draw few viewers get rewarded along with those that draw many. Or perhaps it’s a union mentality that long ago put its stamp on the world of pay-TV.

We have all come to expect cable rates that go up on a yearly basis – and sometimes more often. Almost every rate increase is blamed on the rise in the costs of carrying all the popular channels. Unfortunately, much of it is for the rising costs of channels that I never watch. How fair is that? Then the greedy channel owners take the money I pay them for stuff I don’t watch and use it to produce more programs that I have no interest in. It's a vicious cycle!

Some people are trying to get the FCC involved in forcing pay-TV providers to offer their basic channels on an a-la-carte basis. I disagree with them. This is not something the government needs to be intervening in. Consumers should force the issue by demanding cable choice, backed up with the threat of returning to over-the-air TV – an option the digital conversion has rendered much more intriguing than it used to be.

When their subscriber base begins to shrink to the point where their bottom line starts to suffer, the pay-TV providers will suddenly find the a-la-carte channel alternative a lot more doable.

Why an Upside Down Mortgage Isn't Necessarily Bad

Because of falling home values, many homeowners are finding themselves in an upside down situation with their mortgage, i.e., they owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth on the open market. People tend to look at this as a dire situation. But as the old song goes, “it ain’t necessarily so.”

Having an home with an “underwater” mortgage is a lot like owning a stock that has lost value – the problem exists just on paper until one gets ready to sell. As long as the person does not need to sell or refinance the home and he or she is able to make the mortgage payments, the so-called predicament is only imaginary. As is the case with most stocks selling at depressed prices, a house with a beaten down value will probably begin to increase in price – eventually.

Just as bear markets, in due course, give way to bull markets, the housing market will recover in the long run and home prices will again be on the rise. Homeowners just have to be patient and wait things out. There is no need to panic.

Classic Rants and Raves #67

Play defense with caution; play offense with reckless abandon.       

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Some people have a special talent for remembering stuff that never happened.

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I 've found myself asking, "Why couldn't I have waited?" a lot more often than I have asked, "Why didn't I act earlier?" Therefore, I have modified my behavior accordingly. Now, whenever I'm in doubt as to whether to jump now or wait, I wait. 

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How people act during setbacks or when things don't go their way speaks volumes about their true character. Pouting, whining, or acting like a sore loser or bad sport creates a very negative impression and most people consider it a major turnoff. 

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Have you ever acted very quickly to avert a potential collision with someone else, only to have them go on their way, totally oblivious to the near miss? I think we all could identify with that situation. It makes me wonder how many times someone (including God) has done similar things for me while I was completely unaware. 

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A man who had owned a house with an in-ground swimming pool once told me following: "The second happiest day of my life was the day I bought a house with a swimming pool; the happiest day of my life was the day I sold it!"

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No one should ever be required to provide an explanation or give an accounting for someone else's (other than one's own minor child) mistake or intentional misconduct.

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When you drop a small item on the floor and your eyes and hands can't find it, your feet eventually will.

Random Rants and Raves #140

Due to budget problems, Kansas has halted the sending out of state tax refunds. However, I doubt if those who owe taxes to that state will be allowed to just not pay up, no matter what kind of personal financial problems they are experiencing.       

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If you’re ever in need of a laugh, go to townhall.com or huffingtonpost.com and read some of their right-wing and left-wing propaganda, respectively. Both sites are unintentionally hilarious.

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The Weather Channel’s Forecast Earth has to be one of the biggest pieces of environmental propaganda that’s ever been produced.

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One proofreading technique that I use is to look at my writing in several different font formats. You’ll be amazed how different an article looks as it is displayed using various fonts.

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Why does rubbing alcohol have an expiration date?

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I thought Machu Picchu was a puppet.

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To do everything that the experts recommend, the average person would need 30 hours a day, 10 days a week, and a 500% increase in salary.

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Never let temporary inconvenience be an obstacle to affecting permanent good.

Judges Who Should Be Put Under the Jail

Two Pennsylvania judges have pleaded guilty to receiving more than $2.5 million in kickbacks for conducting kangaroo-style courts and sentencing youthful offenders to privately-run juvenile detention centers.

Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, who were removed from the bench when they were originally charged in January, will probably spend more than seven years in prison as a result of their plea agreements.

However, it is an outrage that there is a chance that they will ever get out of prison. Life sentences without parole would have been the appropriate punishment for such egregious conduct.

Many of the kids they sent away were first-time offenders who had committed minor offenses like possession of small amounts of marijuana, writing fake notes, and spoofing Web pages. For stuff like that, most courts would have sentenced them to probation and remanded them to the custody of their parents.

This is an appalling abuse of power and a complete breach of the public trust. Judges – especially those who are put in charge of juvenile justice – hold a delicate position in our society. The fate of a young person’s freedom and/or future is often in their hands.

Any violation of this trust, especially one in which it is compromised for personal gain, is a serious crime that must be dealt with severely. A mere seven-plus years in prison doesn’t seem like a kind of punishment that fits this crime. Nor does it appear to have much deterrent power against any such future perversion of the halls of justice. Those guys should be put under the jail and the keys ought to be thrown away.

An impartial justice system is one of the cornerstones of a free society. We must have zero tolerance for anyone – particularly those in positions of power – who would attempt to manipulate it for selfish reasons.

15 Things I Can't Seem to Get Enough Of

Here are 15 things I never seem to be able to get enough of. I would assume most of these are fairly common to 21st century adults.

1) Sleep.

2) Money.

3) Quiet/relaxing times.

4) Intellectual stimulation.

5) Movies/TV shows that are actually entertaining.

6) Days that are free of illness/pain.

7) Clean air/surroundings.

8) Quality time with family.

9) Opportunities to excel.

10) Politicians who cater to my point of view.

11) Food that’s nutritious, inexpensive, and great-tasting.

12) Time off from work.

13) Things that are built/made to last.

14) Warm, sunny days of late spring and early fall.

15) Freedom to be me.