I am an impatient person. And I hate having unfinished
projects staring me in the face. So when work began on
an 800 square foot addition to our home last November, I
had no idea how these two character traits of mine would
be tested to the limit in the months ahead. Initially
the contractor promised it would only take three months
to complete the project. “You’ll be in there for the
Super Bowl” he said, exuding confidence from behind his
laptop last August. When the foreman showed up in late
October to size up the project, he estimated five
months. It has been six to date and it’s still
unfinished.
Assuming my readers are
of the same ilk as I, here are a few codas to recent
columns that should bring a sense of closure.
Whining liberals
continue to bash Exxon Mobil for its swashbuckling price
gouging in the face of $3 per gallon gasoline. But I did
some research on Yahoo’s business pages and discovered
that the ratio of net income to sales isn’t all that
high for the gas giant.
Exxon Mobil’s ratio of
net income to revenue was 9.7% for its last fiscal year.
Compare that to McDonald’s (12.8%), Intel (22%) and
Microsoft (31%) to gain some perspective. Critics will
argue that since we are all forced to buy gasoline, this
is not a fair analysis.
But if you live in New
Jersey, there’s a lot worse piracy going on. It’s called
taxes. By combining federal, state, social security,
sales, property and gasoline taxes, you may be close to
the 50% bracket.
Think about it: For
every dollar you earn, half goes to some government
entity. And much of it is taken from your paycheck
without you ever seeing it by the modern, 20th-century
miracle of withholding.
Property taxes are so
ridiculous in some counties, even if you are fortunate
enough to have paid off your mortgage you still have a
“mortgage” payable every quarter at your local tax
assessor’s office.
We’re all forced to pay
taxes or walk the plank. So don’t whine to me in an
e-mail about $3 per gallon gasoline if you live in New
Jersey and voted for Jon Corzine, who has plans to
extract even more tax revenue from the state’s
government-impoverished masses.
New York Rangers
Jaromir Jagr underwent surgery for a dislocated shoulder
and after rehabilitation “the team expects him to be
ready to play in time for next season.” Maybe he’ll be
ready to play, but how much of a factor he will be and
for how long he will be healthy enough to suit up
remains to be seen. He’s 34 years old and for a sport
such as hockey, that’s old. A shoulder dislocation will
become his weakness. He’ll never be as strong as he was
before injuring it in game one against the Devils last
month when he took a cheap shot at Scott Gomez. I fear
his best years are behind him. If I am right, the
Rangers are in serious trouble. But we waited 54 years
for the team to win a Stanley Cup in 1994. What’s
another 54 years for Ranger’s fans?
Earlier this year I
wrote about the misleading statistics reported by the
Department of Commerce showing Americans are not saving
money and have in fact negatively saved. The skewed
numbers result from ignoring the wealth many investors
have accumulated in their investment portfolios. Only
“new money” deposited into a bank account counts as
“savings.” But now the Wall Street Journal reports that
“Americans are increasing the size of their retirement
nest eggs at a good clip, despite concerns that the
country as a whole isn’t saving enough.” Retirement
savings rose to $14.3 trillion in 2005. This is good
news. We should all go out and celebrate and spend some
money.
And speaking of good
news, why can’t George Bush get any credit for the
red-hot economy? The US is basically running at full
employment. Wages are up, productivity is up, the stock
market is up and all liberals can do is find some new
twist to make it seem like the economy is actually
rotten and it’ll just be “a matter of time before it all
collapses,” as one of my readers warned in an e-mail. In
April, the Christian Science Monitor reported it like
this: “Unemployment is at 4.7 percent, lower than the
averages of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. The economy is
showing strong, consistent growth, without significant
inflation. And the stock market is roaring along.” The
reason of course is an economically-challenged media
bent on making the president look bad no matter what. By
focusing on the bad news like Iraq, high gas prices,
FEMA’s failure to adequately handle the Katrina
aftermath, and blurring all lines of distinction, the
average American thinks it’s all bad. While not all the
news is rosy, the economy is the best it has been in a
long time. And the miracle of that is we had to dig
ourselves out of a high-tech bust in the late 1990s,
9/11 and a series of natural disasters to get to where
we are now.
A fossil of a “walking
fish” was recently discovered and touted by
evolutionists as evidence of a transitional form. I
wonder how Clarias batrachus feels about that.
Clarias batrachus is a
species more commonly referred to as a “walking
catfish.” They are alive today in places like Thailand
and Florida where specimens were imported years ago.
They have the ability to walk between bodies of water
during wet seasons.
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