Economic Stimulus Plan

This is just some ramblings... I may work toward getting numbers documented and sources quoted, and submit it to some major newspapers...

It is my feeling that the "Occupy" movements across America recently rightly focused attention on big banks, Wall Street, and corporate executives, not to mention many government policies which seem to favor the top 1% of rich people and totally ignore the little guys...

And the Democrats and Republicans can't seem to agree on stimulus plans, or debt reduction, or anything else these days.

And President Obama is rightly trying to promote job growth and revenue growth... But it's not enough.

Do you want to know what can be done to reduce corporate expenditures, offsetting increased taxes on the rich and assisting the 'common man' at the same time as corporate America, potentially creating new jobs, creating much more cash flow, with almost no government intervention, no extra money being spent by the government?

Consider this headline:
Chevron Announces $7.8 Billion in Q3 Profits, 2011 Profits for Big-Five Oil Companies Hit a Staggering $101 Billion


While driving across the country this past Thanksgiving, I observed a wide range of gas and diesel prices, and considering how much I spent, it got me to thinking...

If I average 25,000 miles driven per year, at an average of 25MPG, and an average cost of $3.50 per gallon of gasoline, then my annual fuel expense for the year is 1,000 gallons or $3,500 in gasoline.

A 10% cut in the cost of the gasoline (to $3.15 per gallon) would reduce my annual cost to $3,150.00 – a savings of $350 dollars, which could be invested in other things.

Small fries… the payroll tax has potentially saved me more this year.  But it’s something.

And on our recent jaunt from Pennsylvania to Arkansas, we spent several hundreds of dollars in one trip to go see family.  I saw gas prices vary as much as fifty cents per gallon in a 200-mile range – the lowest I saw was $2.89 per gallon near Roanoke VA, while at home it was $3.39 per gallon.

Saving a bit on gas (the $2.89 fillup was great, saving me about $8 on one fillup!!) would probably convince me to take more vacations, so my spending, albeit only saving $350 in a year, would potentially go up by my eating out… so the 10% savings in cost up front would change my $350 in savings into perhaps, say, $1000 spent (in more travel, eating, hotels, etc).

Still small fries.  So what?  I save $350 but I am convinced to spend $1000… sounds silly, but it works.  It’s what makes the economy grow.

According to http://quickfacts.census.gov there are approximately 309,000,000 people in the USA as of 2010.  There are approximately 113,000,000 households in the US.  If only 10% of those households avereaged a $250 a year savings on fuel and spent just that savings and no more on other things (more travel, etc), that would be an injection of $2,825,000,000 into the economy.  If they were like me, they’d spend more than the $250 they saved, so potentially the 2.8 BILLION dollars spent on things other than fuel could be doubled, or tripled in its returns.

It’s just an example, for sure. 

But what about all those trucks stops across America, that are averaging $3.80 to $4.10 per gallon of diesel.  True, I don’t use diesel.  But Wal Mart does.  So does Target.  And Costco, and Big Lots, and Hobby Lobby.  What would a 10% reduction in fuel expense do there?

If my 10% savings produced 3-fold return in economic stimulus, what would their savings produce?  Really, if a company spends a million dollars in gas in a year (most of the above probably spend billions), and could save 10% on that cost, then they’d have another $100,000 to invest in something else.  What if they spent that on more goods to sell, or on R&D to create better products for consumers, or more simply, what if they passed the savings on to the consumer (Yee-haw!!), or what if they hired a new employee or two?

It might just be that a few new jobs would be created.  It might just be that I’d go into the store and buy a few more things (more interesting products, lower prices, etc).

Forget tax breaks for corporations OR consumers… Convince (by mandate if necessary) the Big Oil guys to do some profit sharing – by returning our pump prices to more reasonable amounts.  A 10% cut at the pump is NOT enough, but it’s a start, when the only people in this economy making record profits is Big Oil.

Dimpling

The word of the day is dimpling.

In particular, Apple Dimpling.

This is an action word (ie. verb).  It is the act of creating dimples.  Apple, in this case, is an adverb.  Dimpling is the verb.

Some of us were born with dimples, but a surprising majority were not.  No fear, though, for apples are near.

Kids roam the streets of America, hurling apples at unsuspecting friends and foes alike.  When they strike the face, in particular the cheek (a rather cheeky thing to do, if I say so myself!), they sometimes leave a depression, a lasting depression right there on the surface of the skin, near the edges of one's mouth.  Thus is born, the apple dimple.

The kids who roam the streets in packs, hurling apples?  They are called apple dimpling gangs (I think there may have been a Disney movie at some point about them).

My Favorite Color

Until recently, in fact, until today, I suppose I had no favorite color. If I preferred anything, it might have been some shade of blue… but really, colors are overrated. I have a dark green shirt that I prefer to wear to work, I’d probably have picked dark blue for a car, but I am happy with red. They are all just colors. None of them have any particular meaning, to me.


I was thinking a little bit about the divisions in our world. Everyone talks about right and wrong as if they were polar opposites. In a binary world – there are only two options. Off, or on. Right, or left. Democrat, or Republican. Black, or white.

For a long time, I lived in a gray world. Sure, there were lots of shades of that gray. But it was black, and white, and when you mix them, you get gray.

Somewhere in there, I discovered a rainbow. Imagine a world with no color. Just varying shades of gray. Years may go by, and you see all the details of your world in great clarity, you aren’t blind. But everything is black, or white, or somewhere in between. Then one day, you wake up, and there’s a rainbow. Imagine the awe, the surprise and wonder.

What can it mean? It’s something beyond comprehension. I wouldn’t have missed color because I never knew color existed. But what happens when you spy a rainbow, however fleeting that glimpse may be? It would turn your world upside down. You have discovered new - something that you never even knew existed.

But there’s a problem. A rainbow is not a color. Or is it? Actually, it is. It is light, as viewed through a prism. A million little prisms, a million little raindrops each acting as a prism. And black, or darkness, is simply the absence of light, of color.

I remember some of this from science class, and from art class, years ago. But all of that was just theory. Now I’ve discovered that it’s real.

From a grayscale world to a rainbow world. From the relative absence of light, to the reality of an abundance of light. Where darkness has its place but it doesn’t drown out all else.

Now, if only those right and left-oriented people, those politicians, the people too concerned about absolute right and absolute wrong, that believe it’s black and white, if they could only see the rainbow, they might come to realize that it’s all good. We do NOT live in a black and white world. Black and white DO NOT EXIST. Black is the absence of light, and white is just light that includes all the colors of the rainbow.

If they’d get off their duffs and quit worrying about ones and zeros, get out of their tunnelvision and grayscale economies, they might realize that it’s not worth all the bother and fuss and hype and they might learn to just BE. They might learn that it doesn’t have to be right or left. Black or white. Democrat or Republican. It’s ALL good. At least, there is some good, in all.

Imagine a world where the politicians would quit bickering about black and white, and take a breather, and look again at the rainbow that’s all around us, and see that there are other solutions to their problems besides infighting, back-stabbing, bickering, shouting. It isn’t about ones and zeros, it’s about 2’s, 3’s and 4’s, and A’s, B’s, C’s.

Roy G. Biv would understand. It’s all good.
 
BTW, Light (aka the rainbow) is my favorite color.

It's All Good

I am not an overly 'religious' person, in some ways of meaning... I believe that people are smart enough to follow Good for Good's sake, and Good will take care of them.  Good and God in this way are interchangeable, to a degree.  If you do Good, God will take care of you.  This doesn't mean that you have to be a goody-two-shoes, but you really should at least follow your own conscience. 


We've been studying Meister Eckhart, who was ex-communicated from the Catholic church for heresy, shortly after his death a few hundred years ago... Many of the things he said and did were contrary to the powers-that-be of the day... and made people angry.  He talked, as a priest, to the ordinary folks in their own tongue... In ways that they could understand... He said things like that they could find God within themselves...The Church didn't like that - their path was through the priest...

And truthfully, we can all look for God "out there" but .. he's "in here", and has been all along...  If we can't find Peace, how can we find Him?  If we can't look in the mirror and say I love you, I respect you, how can we expect Him to look at us and say those things?  I am not saying He wouldn't - I am saying that at some deep level, we believe that he couldn't or wouldn't.  I lived with it for years... He was Out There somewhere, and I couldn't even see myself, so how could He see me?

We have to set aside the concept of looking for that person or thing that's over there, invisibly watching us from the sofa, and take a few quiet moments and look deep inside our own selves.  Most of us are scared to death to do that, but hey - if you believe in the Man, you believe He doesn't make mistakes... and if he made You, then You are one of his perfect creations...  And if you are, then you can find some part of Him down in there - even if somehow life's buried it under many layers of 'stuff' that you may never hope to wade through.

When I grew to the point that I could look in the mirror with some semblance of self respect, I began to see the Good in me... that is, the God in me.  (side note - I am not a God... just an ordinary human... I am referring here to the spark of divinity that is present inside of us all - the good center of our soul that we bury very deeply underneath all the layers.  (Yes, Shrek fans, I AM an ogre)).

Anyhow, I am going off on a tangent, which I occasionally do.  I wanted to quote something from one of his sermons:

It is my custom to say - and it is a fact - that every day we shout and plead in the Lord's Prayer:  "Thy will be done!" - and when his will is done, we grumble and are not pleased with it.  Whatever he does, we should be glad, and those who are will always live in peace.  Sometimes you think or say "Ah - but it would have been so much better otherwise," or "if that hadn't happened, this would have turned out so much better."  As long as you see it that way, there is no peace for you.  You must take everything for the best. 

My son and I had a chat a week or so ago about 'something bad' in his past.  I made reference to what I supposed it might have been... and he said he couldn't believe he had made such a horrible mistake.

And I have this vision of a life that goes along, in a humdrum fashion, little ups and downs, but essentially neither good nor bad:

This could be called 'drifting along'.



Then one day when we least expect it, the nose-dive occurs:

Something happens to take us down a few notches... It could be our own fault, or someone elses, or no ones... but none of that even matters.  It is what it is.  It is life.  Life happens...  And usually, for a reason, even if we don't understand it.

So sometimes this 'Crash Boom' period may go on for hours, days, months, even years... We slowly but surely climb out of this pit... And if we earnestly try to do so, we'll be finding ourselves, maybe rather suddenly, in a new place:















As I told my son... If he hadn't done the 'crash boom' and learned a lot of stuff along the way, he'd never have reached the place where he is today.  He's still got a long ways to go, but then so do the rest of us.... But what happened then was then, it isn't today.  In his situation, that was past history.  It was dead.  Today is what today is.  Dwelling on the past accomplished nothing... Looking ahead to the future is practical.  But Being in today, with it's ups and downs, accepting that it isn't all your fault or anyone else's... it's just LIFE.  Part of being human.

That's what it's all about.  Accepting that "It's All Good."

Proactivity

I wrote this in the van the other day... waiting at the school for someone to come out... I had to search for a piece of paper, and settled upon a paint chip-type paper from Home Depot where we had been looking at paints... It was written around the margins of a table of different type of paints - I should scan in the original.  I went all the way around it by the time I finished.

These thoughts are raw and unfinished... Reflections on past and present and my own life experiences. 

There's something here, more to be said... but for now I'll say what I wrote there, in the cold car.

Living Reactively vs. Proactively.

Years of reacting to life events can leave one spent, utterly exhausted, in emotional or financial ruin.  Taking steps to live a proactive lifestyle can have many varied returns - chiefly, Peace.

Correcting the mistakes of the past is often painful and arduous - but in doing so, you (and all those whom you touch) can reap the rewards.  The trick to this lifestyle "change" is to take steps.  MOVE!!!

At times it will seem like you are taking one step forward and then two steps back - but you will be moving!

And keep track of what's going on in front, around, behind you... Take off the blinders.  If you can't change it, at least acknowledge it - that's the most important part.

At this point, I quit writing.  The margins on the paint card were covered and it was time to drive away.

I suppose the point of this rambling is pretty obvious... but I'll say that it is all too easy to get into a 'reactive' rut... Getting out is harder than it would seem.  As an example, I've spent the last two years paying every extra dime toward debt.  I haven't bought camera stuff...  I haven't bought computer stuff - except parts for my son's computer (that he paid most of).   I am using an old, old TV.  I have bought some shoes, in the past month or two - a 9.99 clearance K-Mart and a nice pair of hikers and Kohls that was half off... I've bought a couple of pairs of work pants and a few months ago I replaced some jeans that were ripping at the crotch. 

Compared to a year and a half ago, my monthly budget for dining out is half what it was then, and now I feed 4 to 6 whereas then it might have been mostly me, at lunchtimes... What do I have to show for all this?  Well, leading up to it, I started tracking my pennies... I figured out where every time was spent... after doing this for 2 or 3 months, I realized those two or three trips a week out to eat at lunchtime because I was too lazy to pack was adding up.  Sure the Buffalo Chicken Salad at Santos pizza with a drink is only  $7.20 with tax.  Or a $2 meal at Taco Bell is $2.30 with tax.  Or $5 or so at Wendys... But spread over a month's time, along with the occasional 'family outings' I was spending too much on those things.

I also started tracking how much I pay in interest every month, on debt... that one's interesting... and it is this subject that started this ramble... over a lot of years my household racked up a ton of debt.  Mind-bogglingly huge amounts of it.  To the point that in 2006, we had a house payment (balance of $121,000), a car payment (balance of $10,600), and a bit of other unsecured loan/credit card debt (about $65000).

I did not get there alone... I had a decent job but we spent way more than we earned... there were years where my paycheck was the only income - but we lived as if we made three times as much as we did.  I wrestled with the debt companies, and lowered interest rates where possible... but at that point, the three credit cards from Citibank were each charging more than 30% interest... Around $25,000 in Citibank credit cards...  That was about $625 in interest just on those three accounts every month.  We'd make a minimum payment and find the balance went down by $5.

I finally quit paying till they negotiated payments... then paid for a couple of years at 9.9% interest... Finally all the other debt caught up with us in 2008 and gas went up to almost $4 a gallon and income dropped... We quit paying the Citibank cards altogether... I figured I had paid them many times over anything that had ever been charged to them.  By the time they were charged off there was a bit over $18000 left on them.

I don't recommend this for other people, but at the time we risked losing our house... We had no money... When I separated from my then wife and took the lion's share of the bills as my own, I caught up everything and started paying them on time every time... except Citibank... they were dead.  I had no interest in paying them a dime, ever again.  I paid my debt down by over $20,000 in the past year, and managed to get some money into a Health Savings Account in case any future medical emergencies come up.  I paid off a zero interest orthodontics account, an almost 30% interest credit card, an American Express card that was in a bad way… a credit union loan (that I then replaced with a car loan after I remarried – the only new debt I have – a lower interest, lower payment, lower balance loan).  Early in that time, I withdrew money from my 401k and took a huge tax hit, but caught up the house payment, and later I paid off a 401k loan and then took a new one (borrowing from my retirement account means I pay money back to me instead of a bank).  I did everything I had to do to get rid of the beast… that nasty burden of debt.

Today I only have the house payment, and the two car payments, and the remaining smallish balances on a Discover and Dell account.  I have and need no other credit.

And, unfortunately, the skeleton in the closet – Citibank.  They’re evil.  The corporate giant that believes when people can’t pay their bills, you must punish them and make them pay even more.  Squeeze every last penny out of them.  I am lucky though, my accounts were at 35% and more in interest, but some people have had even worse experiences (ref this article that describes a customer paying 54%).  The government had to “bail them out” because too many customers like me defaulted… after paying hundreds of dollars per month for many, many months (two of the three accounts dated back to 1993). 

But here I am… home mortgage interest rates aren’t quite still at all time lows, but they’re still low compared to when I got my mortgage.  I have two bedrooms and a family room to finish downstairs, but little money each month to spend on it so after 8 months of marriage, my stepdaughters still have no bedrooms to sleep in each night.  I decided to pursue a refinance application.

I have a VA loan on my house, which makes refinancing relatively easy, although not particularly cheap (there are fees involved)... There's enough equity in the house to get some cash back... One ‘gotcha’ that they gave me was that Citibank had to be paid off. 

This is where one step forward feels like two steps back… I’ve worked so long and hard to pay down my debt, but here I go, looking to run it back up again.  I consider Citibank dead, but sooner or later they’ll come back to sue me or something… Or my kids will need student loans and we won’t be able to get them because of that.  So I am going owe more on my house than I paid for it ten years ago.  The end result:  Hopefully, I’ll have a house payment and two car payments.  The three Citibank accounts paid, the Discover and Dell paid.  The minimum house payment will be less than on my current mortgage, thanks to the reduced interest rates – but the 16 years left on the original mortgage will now be 30 again.  Evil Citibank will be gone… purged from my life for good. 

And at the interest rate of the new mortgage, if instead of paying my new “normal” monthly payment, I pay the amount I now pay to my current mortgage, plus the additional amount that I currently pay to Dell and Discover (which adds up to a hefty house payment BUT NO MORE THAN I PAY TODAY), the loan will be paid off in just under 15 years.

--- So in my prior reactive life, I’d be paying many thousands of dollars a year in interest and fees… In my newer proactive life, I am finding myself in better financial condition.

This ramble seems all about finances… but this story is only symbolic… symbolic of something much deeper. 

It is a lifestyle thing.  The sickness that was our finances was mirrored by the sickness in my soul.

Live within your means.  Pay the mortgage first, the car payments second, and everything else, then buy food and gas.  Yeah yeah yeah.  All well and good.

But it means nothing.  It’s just numbers. It’s just numbers. 

Down under it all, there’s a transformative change going on, one that may take a lifetime to complete.  I have found my soul, and my anam cara.  I have found that living is worth it.

I go to church, unashamed to look Him in the eye.  I sing when I feel like it, which is often.  I have learned to skip.

I have friends, true, deep, lifelong friendships where before I isolated myself behind walls of ice.


I love.  I live.  I breathe.  I feel.


I AM.

Matthew's Thorns

Editor's note:  I started writing this back in November, then got busy.  Jose aka 'Twomedicineman' prodded me because I haven't posted a blog in a while - and I remembered this, sitting unfinished on my laptop.  So here I am, picking up where I left off... 

This past weekend, we had a spiritual retreat, a “silent” retreat in which the folks participating are not supposed to talk from Friday evening till church at 11 Sunday morning.  This is the second such retreat I’ve been involved in, and, like  the first, there were some awakenings within.

Set the stage… Last Sunday evening, Pastor Bob met with us to give us a background…  It is a reading, a parable, from Matthew 13…

"A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

So Bob told us to consider these words, and then… don’t do the obvious – “Which ground am I???”  but instead consider that “I am… all of them”.  And what percentage of us are represented by  each one of us these things?  We were given fifteen or twenty minutes of quiet time to ponder this, to meditate, as it were... and then came back as a group to share (if we so desired) our thoughts on the subject.

For me, my initial short-term reaction was to quantify these things within me… Where I am today, but also, where I was, say, five years ago.  Some of the things, to me, meant things totally different than they did to other people…. We have the will and the freedom to interpret things our own ways… I won’t tell you what my answers were.  That isn’t important.  What is important is that the good things are growing once again inside of me.  (But why don't YOU share your thoughts, if you care to..)

Other people in the same group had very thoughtful answers, but so different from my own.  Obviously, the ‘fertile ground’ is the place for growth, and what grows there can produce “a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.”  But what signified ‘good soil’?  Or for that matter, what in our daily lives can be signified by the path, or thorns, or rocky places?

I would highly recommend this exercise… Take some quiet time, ponder it, think about what it means to you.  Quantify it… what percentage of you is fertile soil, vs. the other alternatives?

Back to this weekend’s retreat…  I had my camera with me and kept finding myself drawn to the oddest of things.  Like a thorn on a wild rosebush, with a bit of vine curled up next to it.  I took a photo of it, a macro closeup.

Thorns of a rosebush

Thorn of a rosebush with a little tendril of vine, complete with shadow!

There were other things I kept finding myself drawn to… But mostly, at that moment, thorns.

Funny thing is, I saw an ‘apple’ (or something that looked like one) stuck up in amongst some thorns in what appeared to be a locust tree…

Apple-like 'fruit' up in the tree... there were a couple of them, but I am not sure what kind of tree it was.

More thorns - definitely a locust of some sort.

I saw red berries, interspersed with thorns…

Hawthorn, I think?

There are those thorns again… all over the place… Much like the song, Every rose has its thorn.

But roses are beautiful, you say, and thorns are ugly.  I say, thorns are NOT ugly – they are a part of the natural beauty of the landscape. Much like life, there are things that cause us pain, but they can be accompanied by the roses, as well.  Sometimes we have to pay attention to what we'd ordinarily ignore to truly appreciate what we have.  That maybe doesn't make much sense, but I know what I mean.

So then… what of our parable?  It talks of seeds falling amongst the thorns (as if that’s a bad thing, and perhaps, it is… but the thorns CAN be nice…)  I won't continue my thoughts, here, now... but if you comment enough, and leave enough feedback to show me that someone is interested in the subject, I'll follow up this post with another one... delving into my initial reactions and answers to the problem posed... and then my very different reactions and thoughts that were reached at the end of the retreat.  

But that'll wait for another day... for now, I hope you've enjoyed sharing my 'thorns' with me.  :)