Love the War but Hate the Taxes?

Why aren’t these people branded as unpatriotic? A large part of our taxes goes to pay for the beloved military and Afghanistan/Iraq…

Report targets offshore tax havens

7/31/06
By Elliot Blair Smith, USA TODAY

Wealthy Americans avoid paying $40 billion a year in U.S. taxes through illegal offshore havens that could be tamed with mandatory financial reporting and stronger penalties, according to a Senate investigative report to be issued Tuesday.

The report, by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, proposes to change U.S. law to presume that offshore trusts and shell corporations employed by Americans are under the individuals’ control, and subject to U.S. taxation, rather than make the IRS prove the link.

That recommendation arises from investigators’ findings that offshore tax havens support a bustling economy of for-hire officers, directors and trustees who establish front companies under the explicit control of tax avoiders.

In one probe, Senate investigators alleged that U.S. citizens transferred assets to independent offshore entities that redirected the assets to a hedge fund under the Americans’ personal control. In another example, U.S. corporate insiders allegedly used offshore entities to trade their company’s stock, circumventing inside-trading laws.

The report also urges Congress to empower the Treasury Department to eliminate tax benefits in havens that do not cooperate with U.S. authorities. Americans have an estimated $1 trillion offshore in about 50 havens — including Belize, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Isle of Man, Nevis and Panama — that impose little or no taxes on non-residents, according to the report, which was a year in the making.

Tax Analysts, a non-partisan research organization, estimates that only about one-tenth of Americans’ offshore income is reported to the IRS.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the panel’s ranking minority member, said, “Outrageous tax haven abuses are eating away at the fabric of our tax system.”

The panel’s chairman, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said he was “particularly troubled by an industry of tax professionals, lawyers, trust specialists, bankers and brokers that … exploit loopholes in the tax code.”

At a hearing today, the subcommittee will examine six allegedly abusive tax schemes, including one in which five investors erased $2 billion in capital gains and about $300 million in taxes through an offshore stock portfolio that generated allegedly fake securities losses.

Martin Sullivan, a contributing editor to Tax Notes magazine, says, “The time is right” for legislative reform, citing the strain of a federal deficit on the Treasury.

“Before you can increase taxes, the first thing you have to do is make sure you shut down the loopholes. Otherwise, nobody is going to be receptive to a tax increase,” Sullivan says.

However, attorney Kenneth Rubinstein, an asset-protection specialist, is skeptical about Congress’ interest in tax reform. He says, “I wonder if the volume level of the outrage is in any way related to the proximity of elections.”

Pretty Electricity and Gasoline Pricing Maps

Here is a fancy interactive map that shows the Midwest Wholesale Electricity Prices, which can change on a minute-by-minute basis. On hot days or days where something goes wrong in a certain area (power plant or transmission failure), prices rise…

And here is one for gas prices (click on picture for an update)…

Separation of Church and State

Finally, someone in the fundamentalist movement can see the slippery slope to have a neo-conservative Christian theocracy in the government…

NY Times

July 30, 2006

 

“Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock”

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently to give his blessing — and the church’s — to conservative political candidates and causes.

The requests came from church members and visitors alike: Would he please announce a rally against gay marriage during services? Would he introduce a politician from the pulpit? Could members set up a table in the lobby promoting their anti-abortion work? Would the church distribute “voters’ guides” that all but endorsed Republican candidates? And with the country at war, please couldn’t the church hang an American flag in the sanctuary?

After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”

Mr. Boyd says he is no liberal. He is opposed to abortion and thinks homosexuality is not God’s ideal. The response from his congregation at Woodland Hills Church here in suburban St. Paul — packed mostly with politically and theologically conservative, middle-class evangelicals — was passionate. Some members walked out of a sermon and never returned. By the time the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which Mr. Boyd founded in 1992, had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members.

But there were also congregants who thanked Mr. Boyd, telling him they were moved to tears to hear him voice concerns they had been too afraid to share.

“Most of my friends are believers,” said Shannon Staiger, a psychotherapist and church member, “and they think if you’re a believer, you’ll vote for Bush. And it’s scary to go against that.”

Sermons like Mr. Boyd’s are hardly typical in today’s evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

At least six books on this theme have been published recently, some by Christian publishing houses. Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Barnard College and an evangelical, has written “Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America — an Evangelical’s Lament.”

And Mr. Boyd has a new book out, “The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church,” which is based on his sermons.

“There is a lot of discontent brewing,” said Brian D. McLaren, the founding pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and a leader in the evangelical movement known as the “emerging church,” which is at the forefront of challenging the more politicized evangelical establishment.

“More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right,” Mr. McLaren said. “You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people.

“Because people think, ‘Oh no, what is going to come next is homosexual bashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist judges.’ ”

Mr. Boyd said he had cleared his sermons with the church’s board, but his words left some in his congregation stunned. Some said that he was disrespecting President Bush and the military, that he was soft on abortion or telling them not to vote.

“When we joined years ago, Greg was a conservative speaker,” said William Berggren, a lawyer who joined the church with his wife six years ago. “But we totally disagreed with him on this. You can’t be a Christian and ignore actions that you feel are wrong. A case in point is the abortion issue. If the church were awake when abortion was passed in the 70’s, it wouldn’t have happened. But the church was asleep.”

Mr. Boyd, 49, who preaches in blue jeans and rumpled plaid shirts, leads a church that occupies a squat block-long building that was once a home improvement chain store.

The church grew from 40 members in 12 years, based in no small part on Mr. Boyd’s draw as an electrifying preacher who stuck closely to Scripture. He has degrees from Yale Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary, and he taught theology at Bethel College in St. Paul, where he created a controversy a few years ago by questioning whether God fully knew the future. Some pastors in his own denomination, the Baptist General Conference, mounted an effort to evict Mr. Boyd from the denomination and his teaching post, but he won that battle.

He is known among evangelicals for a bestselling book, “Letters From a Skeptic,” based on correspondence with his father, a leftist union organizer and a lifelong agnostic — an exchange that eventually persuaded his father to embrace Christianity.

Mr. Boyd said he never intended his sermons to be taken as merely a critique of the Republican Party or the religious right. He refuses to share his party affiliation, or whether he has one, for that reason. He said there were Christians on both the left and the right who had turned politics and patriotism into “idolatry.”

He said he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorus singing “God Bless America” and a video of fighter jets flying over a hill silhouetted with crosses.

“I thought to myself, ‘What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up with the cross?’ ” he said in an interview.

Patriotic displays are still a mainstay in some evangelical churches. Across town from Mr. Boyd’s church, the sanctuary of North Heights Lutheran Church was draped in bunting on the Sunday before the Fourth of July this year for a “freedom celebration.” Military veterans and flag twirlers paraded into the sanctuary, an enormous American flag rose slowly behind the stage, and a Marine major who had served in Afghanistan preached that the military was spending “your hard-earned money” on good causes.

In his six sermons, Mr. Boyd laid out a broad argument that the role of Christians was not to seek “power over” others — by controlling governments, passing legislation or fighting wars. Christians should instead seek to have “power under” others — “winning people’s hearts” by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did, Mr. Boyd said.

“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” he said. “America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.

“I am sorry to tell you,” he continued, “that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.”

Mr. Boyd lambasted the “hypocrisy and pettiness” of Christians who focus on “sexual issues” like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson’s breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He said Christians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public.

“Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act,” he said. “And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed.”

Some Woodland Hills members said they applauded the sermons because they had resolved their conflicted feelings. David Churchill, a truck driver for U.P.S. and a Teamster for 26 years, said he had been “raised in a religious-right home” but was torn between the Republican expectations of faith and family and the Democratic expectations of his union.

When Mr. Boyd preached his sermons, “it was liberating to me,” Mr. Churchill said.

Mr. Boyd gave his sermons while his church was in the midst of a $7 million fund-raising campaign. But only $4 million came in, and 7 of the more than 50 staff members were laid off, he said.

Mary Van Sickle, the family pastor at Woodland Hills, said she lost 20 volunteers who had been the backbone of the church’s Sunday school.

“They said, ‘You’re not doing what the church is supposed to be doing, which is supporting the Republican way,’ ” she said. “It was some of my best volunteers.”

The Rev. Paul Eddy, a theology professor at Bethel College and the teaching pastor at Woodland Hills, said: “Greg is an anomaly in the megachurch world. He didn’t give a whit about church leadership, never read a book about church growth. His biggest fear is that people will think that all church is is a weekend carnival, with people liking the worship, the music, his speaking, and that’s it.”

In the end, those who left tended to be white, middle-class suburbanites, church staff members said. In their place, the church has added more members who live in the surrounding community — African-Americans, Hispanics and Hmong immigrants from Laos.

This suits Mr. Boyd. His vision for his church is an ethnically and economically diverse congregation that exemplifies Jesus’ teachings by its members’ actions. He, his wife and three other families from the church moved from the suburbs three years ago to a predominantly black neighborhood in St. Paul.

Mr. Boyd now says of the upheaval: “I don’t regret any aspect of it at all. It was a defining moment for us. We let go of something we were never called to be. We just didn’t know the price we were going to pay for doing it.”

His congregation of about 4,000 is still digesting his message. Mr. Boyd arranged a forum on a recent Wednesday night to allow members to sound off on his new book. The reception was warm, but many of the 56 questions submitted in writing were pointed: Isn’t abortion an evil that Christians should prevent? Are you saying Christians should not join the military? How can Christians possibly have “power under” Osama bin Laden? Didn’t the church play an enormously positive role in the civil rights movement?

One woman asked: “So why NOT us? If we contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politics and setting laws?”

Mr. Boyd responded: “I don’t think there’s a particular angle we have on society that others lack. All good, decent people want good and order and justice. Just don’t slap the label ‘Christian’ on it.”

Fusion of Church and State

Is this really the United States?

NY Times

July 29, 2006

 

Families Challenging Religious Influence in Delaware Schools

 

By NEELA BANERJEE

GEORGETOWN, Del. — After her family moved to this small town 30 years ago, Mona Dobrich grew up as the only Jew in school. Mrs. Dobrich, 39, married a local man, bought the house behind her parents’ home and brought up her two children as Jews.

For years, she and her daughter, Samantha, listened to Christian prayers at public school potlucks, award dinners and parent-teacher group meetings, she said. But at Samantha’s high school graduation in June 2004, a minister’s prayer proclaiming Jesus as the only way to the truth nudged Mrs. Dobrich to act.

“It was as if no matter how much hard work, no matter how good a person you are, the only way you’ll ever be anything is through Jesus Christ,” Mrs. Dobrich said. “He said those words, and I saw Sam’s head snap and her start looking around, like, ‘Where’s my mom? Where’s my mom?’ And all I wanted to do was run up and take her in my arms.”

After the graduation, Mrs. Dobrich asked the Indian River district school board to consider prayers that were more generic and, she said, less exclusionary. As news of her request spread, many local Christians saw it as an effort to limit their free exercise of religion, residents said. Anger spilled on to talk radio, in letters to the editor and at school board meetings attended by hundreds of people carrying signs praising Jesus.

“What people here are saying is, ‘Stop interfering with our traditions, stop interfering with our faith and leave our country the way we knew it to be,’ ” said Dan Gaffney, a host at WGMD, a talk radio station in Rehoboth, and a supporter of prayer in the school district.

After receiving several threats, Mrs. Dobrich took her son, Alex, to Wilmington in the fall of 2004, planning to stay until the controversy blew over. It never has.

The Dobriches eventually sued the Indian River School District, challenging what they asserted was the pervasiveness of religion in the schools and seeking financial damages. They have been joined by “the Does,” a family still in the school district who have remained anonymous because of the response against the Dobriches.

Meanwhile, a Muslim family in another school district here in Sussex County has filed suit, alleging proselytizing in the schools and the harassment of their daughters.

The move to Wilmington, the Dobriches said, wrecked them financially, leading them to sell their house and their daughter to drop out of Columbia University.

The dispute here underscores the rising tensions over religion in public schools.

“We don’t have data on the number of lawsuits, but anecdotally, people think it has never been so active — the degree to which these conflicts erupt in schools and the degree to which they are litigated,” said Tom Hutton, a staff lawyer at the National School Boards Association.

More religion probably exists in schools now than in decades because of the role religious conservatives play in politics and the passage of certain education laws over the last 25 years, including the Equal Access Act in 1984, said Charles C. Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, a research and education group.

“There are communities largely of one faith, and despite all the court rulings and Supreme Court decisions, they continue to promote one faith,” Mr. Haynes said. “They don’t much care what the minority complains about. They’re just convinced that what they are doing is good for kids and what America is all about.”

Dr. Donald G. Hattier, a member of the Indian River school board, said the district had changed many policies in response to Mrs. Dobrich’s initial complaints. But the board unanimously rejected a proposed settlement of the Dobriches’ lawsuit.

“There were a couple of provisions that were unacceptable to the board,” said Jason Gosselin, a lawyer for the board. “The parties are working in good faith to move closer to settlement.”

Until recently, it was safe to assume that everyone in the Indian River district was Christian, said the Rev. Mark Harris, an Episcopal priest at St. Peter’s Church in Lewes.

But much has changed in Sussex County over the last 30 years. The county, in southern Delaware, has resort enclaves like Rehoboth Beach, to which outsiders bring their cash and, often, liberal values. Inland, in the area of Georgetown, the county seat, the land is still a lush patchwork of corn and soybean fields, with a few poultry plants. But developers are turning more fields into tracts of rambling homes. The Hispanic population is booming. There are enough Reform Jews, Muslims and Quakers to set up their own centers and groups, Mr. Harris said.

In interviews with a dozen people here and comments on the radio by a half-dozen others, the overwhelming majority insisted, usually politely, that prayer should stay in the schools.

“We have a way of doing things here, and it’s not going to change to accommodate a very small minority,’’ said Kenneth R. Stevens, 41, a businessman sitting in the Georgetown Diner. “If they feel singled out, they should find another school or excuse themselves from those functions. It’s our way of life.”

The Dobrich and Doe legal complaint portrays a district in which children were given special privileges for being in Bible club, Bibles were distributed in 2003 at an elementary school, Christian prayer was routine at school functions and teachers evangelized.

“Because Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, I will speak out for him,” said the Rev. Jerry Fike of Mount Olivet Brethren Church, who gave the prayer at Samantha’s graduation. “The Bible encourages that.” Mr. Fike continued: “Ultimately, he is the one I have to please. If doing that places me at odds with the law of the land, I still have to follow him.”

Mrs. Dobrich, who is Orthodox, said that when she was a girl, Christians here had treated her faith with respectful interest. Now, she said, her son was ridiculed in school for wearing his yarmulke. She described a classmate of his drawing a picture of a pathway to heaven for everyone except “Alex the Jew.”

Mrs. Dobrich’s decision to leave her hometown and seek legal help came after a school board meeting in August 2004 on the issue of prayer. Dr. Hattier had called WGMD to discuss the issue, and Mr. Gaffney and others encouraged people to go the meeting. Hundreds showed up.

A homemaker active in her children’s schools, Mrs. Dobrich said she had asked the board to develop policies that would leave no one feeling excluded because of faith. People booed and rattled signs that read “Jesus Saves,” she recalled. Her son had written a short statement, but he felt so intimidated that his sister read it for him. In his statement, Alex, who was 11 then, said: “I feel bad when kids in my class call me ‘Jew boy.’ I do not want to move away from the house I have lived in forever.”

Later, another speaker turned to Mrs. Dobrich and said, according to several witnesses, “If you want people to stop calling him ‘Jew boy,’ you tell him to give his heart to Jesus.”

Immediately afterward, the Dobriches got threatening phone calls. Samantha had enrolled in Columbia, and Mrs. Dobrich decided to go to Wilmington temporarily.

But the controversy simmered, keeping Mrs. Dobrich and Alex away. The cost of renting an apartment in Wilmington led the Dobriches to sell their home here. Mrs. Dobrich’s husband, Marco, a school bus driver and transportation coordinator, makes about $30,000 a year and has stayed in town to care for Mrs. Dobrich’s ailing parents. Mr. Dobrich declined to comment. Samantha left Columbia because of the financial strain.

The only thing to flourish, Mrs. Dobrich said, was her faith. Her children, she said, “have so much pride in their religion now.”

“Alex wears his yarmulke all the time. He never takes it off.”

Oil Price Gouging or Addicts Complaining?

 

 

In trying to get from point A to point B, we have a few options:
1. Car, truck, SUV fueled by petroluem
2. Transit fueled by petroleum
3. Bike/walk

For all intents and purposes, the choice for Americans is to drive, generally alone. We often talk about businesses having a monopoly on a certain market. Microsoft, for instance, has long-dominance on computer platforms. We continue to buy it even though we know it’s a monopoly, thus reinforcing its dominance. Similarly, Americans are giving a monopoly to petroleum and in a capitalist society, what are we complaining about? It’s a voluntary choice to use oil and we’re telling the market that we’ll buy it at any price. They can take as much profit as they want to until we stop using it – profits aren’t illegal…until they hit our pocketbook where we don’t want them.

Posted on Tue, Aug. 01, 2006

PAYING AT THE PUMP

Big Oil blames the crude market for record gas prices, but refineries are taking a big chunk of ‘downward sticky’ profits.

BY JEFF DONN

Associated Press

While U.S. oil companies blame the global oil market for high gasoline prices, a close analysis of pricing suggests it’s not so simple: The run-up at the pump also comes from domestic refining, which is largely controlled by Big Oil.

In consultation with several economists, the Associated Press examined pricing trends since 1999, which was the starting bell for the modern era of pricier gasoline. It found evidence that:

• The portion of gas prices tied to refining has ballooned all on its own, apart from oil.

• The suspicion of frustrated drivers is correct: After upward spikes, the price of gasoline drops back more slowly than the price of oil — and someone pockets the difference.

The country’s average price for self-serve regular gas climbed to a record high at just over $3 a gallon in July, according to the Lundberg Survey research firm. The petroleum industry knows many drivers are steamed about both its record prices and profits.

In a recent television commercial by the industry’s American Petroleum Institute, a driver wonders “why world demand for crude oil determines what I pay at the pump?” The industry wants Americans to know that the price of gas tracks the price of its chief ingredient, crude oil. Why? Oil prices are set on a world market, often beyond direct control of American petroleum companies.

The group has a point. Crude oil does account for just under half the price of gasoline, the government says. And oil prices are subject partly to supply decisions of foreign oil powers and stiff demand in Europe and Asia.

However, many Americans remain dubious, even contemptuous, of industry claims.

“It’s a bunch of bull. It’s just to cover their behinds,” said Fernando Reas of Hartford, Conn., who was saving on gas this summer by vacationing nearer home at a trailer park at Falmouth, Mass., on Cape Cod.

Consumers like Reas are right, at least, to suspect there’s more to the story.

A big chunk of gas prices — almost a fifth — pays refiners who make gasoline from oil, and America’s refineries have been hiking their prices, too.

Charges of refineries can be detected in what’s known as their “margin” — the difference between what they pay for crude oil and what they collect for the gas they refine. Service-station costs and taxes add to the final retail price of gas.

In a competitive market, when raw material gets more expensive, margins typically shrink, economists say. Not so in the oil business, these days. Refiners have somehow managed to fatten their margins through years of rising oil costs.

Since 1999, their average margin has jumped by 85 percent, reaching 43 cents for June, according to AP’s analysis of daily data from the New York Mercantile Exchange. That margin increased by just 20 percent in the seven preceding years.

Rayola Dougher, who oversees market issues for the American Petroleum Institute, says today’s margins are helping refiners bounce back from leaner times of the 1990s. “They’re still as a sector struggling, but certainly the last few years have been looking good,” she acknowledges.

Refining groups say they are doing their best to bolster supplies, which would ease price pressure. The industry has announced plans to expand domestic refining capacity by at least 8 percent in the next several years.

In fairness, the margin rise hasn’t been all gravy for refiners. Refining costs have escalated from environmental mandates, such as special gas blends mandated in particular places. Wild price fluctuations have added risk — and thus financing cost — to business projects. Last summer’s hurricanes also temporarily took out some operations.

But refining margins also reflect profit. Some economists and consumer advocates suspect refiners have intentionally bottled up supply to buoy prices, margins and ultimately profits.

A 2002 congressional study found some evidence it happens, but that doesn’t necessarily mean refiners huddled in a back room somewhere, hatching conspiracies. They don’t need to. They can each simply decide to crimp output or hoard supply. Such margin goosing is a permissible bid “to maximize their profits,” federal trade investigators said in a 2001 report.

“It’s simple economics,” says Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute. “They understand that putting more supply on the market drives the price down.”

Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, blames high gas prices on high oil prices “which are frankly out of our control” — not decisions by refiners to hold back on gas. But he also says, “There is no law that says you can make people in an industry invest and expand capacity.”

Why wouldn’t other refiners simply ramp up their own output and claim a bigger slice of unmet demand?

That has become harder to do, as big refiners have built up market muscle through mergers. The top five now control more than half of U.S. refining capacity, and the top 10 account for three-quarters, according to an AP review of federal data. Most are petroleum powerhouses like ConocoPhillips Co., Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC, which influence prices with operations across the supply chain, from drilling to pumping gas into cars.

“Your refining business — because the market is more concentrated, you have far more control — is going to be more profitable,” says Tyson Slocum, an energy expert with the consumer group Public Citizen.

There’s another way to fatten your take: Once prices are up, you can keep them there.

An examination of gasoline prices relative to those of oil shows this tendency: Gas prices shoot up along with oil’s — but sputter down slowly, lagging behind drops in crude prices.

The AP analysis looked at weekly federal pricing data since September 1999. It found a gallon of retail gas rose an average of 6 cents for a 10-cent rise in oil but dropped only 4 cents for a 10-cent decline in oil — suggesting that gas temporarily resisted downward shifts more strongly than oil.

Economists call the phenomenon “downward sticky” prices. “When costs go down, there’s a margin there that people are happy to hold on to as long as they can,” says economist Richard Gilbert at the University of California, Berkeley.

Slaughter, of the refining group, suggests “downward sticky” prices are more illusion than reality, perhaps reflecting “a human tendency to notice higher prices quicker than it notices lower prices.”

However, refining groups also suggest that gas stations may be offsetting losses they suffered earlier, when their margins were squeezed by the spiking cost of wholesale gas.

On the other hand, gas stations — backed by some market studies — say their skinny margins are hard to pad.

“It’s tough, because people are yelling at you all the time, but we really don’t make that much of a profit,” said Laura Milner, manager of an independent Falmouth station selling regular unleaded Mobil that day for $3.24 a gallon.

Then who would pocket “downward sticky” profits? Economists suspect it’s more likely the businesses that set wholesale prices charged to gas stations: the refiners.

The Pepco Energy Bill Shuffle

[Update: We've lived in the house for almost a year now and our bill averages $30-40 per month, even with the rate increases we've seen, which is obviously much less than $168 and gives credence to something strange happening (since we've moved in, it's basically been a flat-line, even in the summer with air conditioning).]

I moved to Maryland and after trying to understand electricity deregulation and why I should switch to someone other than the default company, also known as the ironic “SOS” supplier, took the default, Pepco Energy. Click here to read why I didn’t switch.

We bought the house August 1, 2006 and moved in August 28, 2006. We got the August 2006 bill (August 1 – September 1) and apparently used 1130 kilowatt-hours (kWh) at a cost of $167.91, while we werent’ living there.

I paid 14.4 cents/kWh to Pepco and 14.9 when you add in the taxes (the average price in Minnesota is 7.7 cents/kWh). This was an “actual meter reading” (5351 to 5464 on the meter, with a meter multiplier of 10).

I just about choked because:

• I used that much electricity at my Minnesota home in a whole year;
• We weren’t living at the house and the only things running were 2 lights on timers, the refrigerator, the dehumidifier, and potentially the central AC (but the thermostat was set at 85 F);
• When I checked the meter to estimate September’s usage (about half-way through September), we were on track to use about 25% of that…

 

I metered the fridge and dehumidifier using a Kill-a-watt and estimated their monthly use to be 140 kWh. The lights used about 21 kWh. The AC should have stayed off most of the time because of the high thermostat temperature. Somehow I had to find five times that electricity use to make up the difference.

 

In the process of calling Pepco, the automated system said the last bill under the old owner was $392 (choke again) and was paid July 18 (presumably the June bill). I wondered if maybe in the transition between the old owner, me, and the meter reading was messed up. I thought I’d contact Pepco and ask to see the July 1 and August 1 meter readings to clarify what’s going on.

So I called Pepco and left my number on their automatic call back system, since I didn’t feel like waiting 4 hours on hold (literally). Nothing. A week later I called back again, doing the same thing (2 hour wait). Nothing. I emailed them. Two weeks later, nothing. I emailed again. Nothing. I sat on hold on a Friday for 30 minutes and got tired of it. I think it’s reasonable to think that 3 phone calls and 2 emails over 3 weeks should produce a reply.

So I contacted the Maryland Public Service Commission and filed a complaint about not being able to contact them. This isn’t a complaint about my metering issue, which is the actual problem, but a complaint about being able to talk to someone about my problem. Within 2 hours, I had a complaint resolution number and the PSC forwarded my complaint to the utility. That was 3 weeks ago with still no response.

I emailed my state representative to express my displeasure at electricity deregulation and that maybe some performance standards should be met by Pepco. He concurred that deregulation and my problem with Pepco wasn’t ideal. He might be able to contact someone he knows at Pepco. What has a company come to when I have to contact a legislator to get to talk to customer service?!

Mysteriously, a replacement bill arrived today that is for the same time August 1 – September 1 time period but is dated October 6. They now indicate that I used 900 kWh in August and gave me a credit of $32.95 from what I paid before, also based on a “actual meter reading” from 5374 to 5464.

 

My September bill also arrived online and I used 240 kWh for the month we were actually living in the house, an 890 kWh reduction from bill #1, and a 660 kWh reduction from bill #2. Which bill should I believe? These “actual meter readings” seem fairly subjective. It’s a mystery how the use reduction was calculated – they haven’t told me and appear to prefer communicating by revised bills.

Should I request a third?

UPDATE: What you can do if your electricity bills seem too high…

1. Get data on your electricity use through a home energy audit. You can do one yourself or hire a professional – the Kill-a-watt listed above is an easy tool to use in the process. Plug in an appliance for 2 days and record its electricity use, correcting for seasonal variations, i.e. refrigerator use is fairly constant (a little higher in summer) but a dehumidifier runs more in the summer. Never underestimate the potential of things you don’t think about to use energy when they are off – anything with a remove control, anything with a black or white transformer box on the cord (chargers of any kind for electronics), etc. Big things: dehumidifiers, refrigerators, electric water heaters, and air conditioners (summer).

Resources: a. State of Maryland Energy Information, b. Alliance to Save Energy Online Energy Audit, c. Electricity Audit Spreadsheet (scroll up on both sheets)

2. Reduce your electricity usage. If you don’t have fluorescent bulbs and you’re still complaining, you’re an idiot. Since the questionable August meter reading, we have used 240 kWh in September and 210 kWh in October.

3. If you still have a problem, contact the Maryland PSC to file a complaint using the data you find. f you don’t have data, you don’t have a case – it’s anecdotal.

 

Europe Trip Report: Bowling Moses and the World Cup

Here is my 15 word summary of Europe for those in a hurry:

- France: smells like urine/museum overload
- Italy: smells like sewer/church overload
- Croatia: smells like ocean/hiking overload

Now you can look at all the pictures here (click on Slideshow to get the descriptions).

For those interested in the details, read on…

We went to Paris first after an uneventful flight where I didn’t get enough sleep because of the free movies that I’m intent on watching to maximize my air travel experience. Not too long ago, all you got was a movie screen 30 feet away and sound only if you paid $5 for headphones. Now you get your own TV screen with movies, games, flight data – the whole nine yards. It’s great for inducing more jet-lag than necessary by making you tired when you arrive because you didn’t sleep.

We arrived around noon, an hour late because our plane had to turn around in Detroit on the runway – they forgot some “paperwork.” And of course, there was a heat wave in Paris and of course, the subways aren’t air conditioned. So we sweated for an hour – drip down the inside of your shirt kind of hot. We got to the suburbs where we were bumming a free place to sleep with a friend of a friend but shortly we set off again for “downtown” Paris to march around until dark – to fight the jet lag you’ve got to reset your clock by staying up. It’s painful. I fell asleep outside of a bar on some steps near the Notre Dame while the World Cup was going on. And then someone woke me up to ask for a cigarette in French – I don’t get that logic…”Hmm. Bar full of people. People on the street. People sitting in tables. I know, I’ll wake up that tourist dude who’s sleeping.”

So we marched around Paris for 4 days, seeing museums and monuments and eating some food.

I’m just not a big city museum-type I don’t think. I made it through the Picasso museum in 10 minutes.

We took a picture of a lady laying out for a frisbee at the Louvre…

Karin imitated a fat baby at some famous museum…

I fell asleep at Notre Dame…

Karin partied with the gazpacho in a cup lady…

…and then we flew to Italy.

Italy…Pisa…Tuscany…It was busy and not as rural as I expected, and it’s easy to get lost, while trying to avoid hitting eighteen wheelers coming at your on razor thin curvy roads. The small town we stayed in was fine, if you enjoy a dog barking at 5 am on the dot for 10 minutes, followed by roosters…also included for 2 of the 6 nights was a local rock band practicing the Rolling Stones really really loudly. I’m not sure how the others in the town of 10 stand it…So we marched around to churches in all the small towns, eating gelato like fiends, enjoying the heat again, and to amuse myself, looking for bowling Moses in the churches. Seriously. Moses goes bowling consistently in paintings in churches in Italy and Croatia (top center).

Here’s a funky bridge that you might recognize from a NY Times article earlier in the year…

I think I like seeing how the average people live. Grocery stores are fun. Italy has superior shopping cart engineering – very smooth push with more lateral movement ability. They enjoy lots of things in bags (beets in a bag for instance), have about a million kinds of fresh mozarella that will knock your socks off, and have fun little machines for weighing your produce…

So then we took a train to the other coast of Italy and signed up for a 9 hour ferry to Croatia. They didn’t have any rooms (after we spent 15 minutes figuring out whether we wanted a bathroom and a shower with our private bed) so we bought “reclining chairs” rather than deck chairs. Deck sounded too much like sitting on top of the boat in the cold wind. Save the upgrade…We boarded 2 hours early to get our choice of chairs and ended up snagging 2 full length couches. We ate, I popped some dramamine and the next thing I knew, it was Croatia. I couldn’t have written a better voyage experience.

Croatia was hot as well. We arrived at 7am and started looking for a place to stay, bailing on a guy with smoky rooms who was referenced by the NY Times around the same time (the tradition in Croatia is to either look for a “sobe” sign, which means room, or go to an agency and they can find one for you – hotels are expensive and not as common). Instead we headed out of Zadar and straight for a national park on the ocean. A nice dip in the Adriatic and then we went hiking (did I mention that it was hot?).

Croatia is an eastern block hybrid of Greece and Italy with coastal mountains – olive trees, grapes, islands, heat, ocean, etc…We took a hike…10 miles horizontally and a mile vertically. We also got a surprise tour of a cave that was supposed to be closed by a nice park ranger with some German tourists…

…and then I convinced Karin that it was manageable to tackle another peak starting at 4pm. It was a tough hike – hot, steep, bad trails, rock scrambling – perhaps the most ambitious hike I’ve ever done. Did I mention that Karin was hesitant to start it? She had good reason but was a trooper. We made it all in one piece, but it was tough, and we were sore and tired afterward.

We then decided to go to an island off the coast of Croatia after riding the world’s hottest bus back to Zadar. There are tons of islands and we chose Silba, which the guidebook said had trees and was out of the way… (this is the north-central part of the coast)…

Unfortunately we didn’t heed the guidebook’s advice that the tourist agency closes at noon (we got there at 2pm) and it was somewhat incorrect in saying that there were plenty of rooms. We marched around for 3 hours trying to find a room. It was hot (have I mentioned that?) and about half the people we asked for help said “I don’t know,” and that was that. A waiter even made a bunch of calls for us in vain and we were preparing to sleep in the cemetary when we found one by the beach, where a German volleyball camp appeared to be going on…

The beaches in Croatia are great – crystal blue water…albeit with somewhat rocky shorelines…there are nice places to swim…

So after the island, we headed south to another national park with a bunch of waterfalls that got really really touristy after 10am. We had planned to take a series of boats up these lakes to see more and more waterfalls and get away from the tourists, but the park service at the south end didn’t know the routine for the north end and they weren’t scheduled so you could do it without a car…

We stayed with a lady in an apartment near the park ($40 for a 1 bedroom with a kitchen) who would talk our ears off for days if we let her…Her son plays basketball and volleyball for the Croatian national team “good good” but the pay is “bad bad.” Many of the small towns were affected by the war. About half are brand new renovations and the other half still have scars (these are bullet holes)…but it will eventually be paved over for tourists, who are mostly German right now…

And a bombed out church…

Croatia’s a funny place – there’s no real old school history like central Europe. But it’s neat in its own way. More people knew English than in Italy. It’s cheap. And Americans haven’t really discovered it yet (What did you think when I said we were going to Croatia?).

Another neat thing about the trip was going during the World Cup, which was going on in Germany. All of the cafes and bars would fill up during the games and it was fun to watch it with an appreciative crowd – I got kind of addicted to soccer and a coke…

Person-to-Person Loans

This Star Tribune article had another interesting twist on a use of the internet…person-to-person loans. They are unsecured, participant beware loans from me to you (or you to me). I type up my profile, credit history, references, jobs, etc and you decide whether to loan me money and at what percentage. Other people bid on me as well. The loan might end up being 25%+, which is a rip-off to people with good credit, but a gift for someone going to a paycheck place and paying 300%+…

It’s not secured and you should think of it as a portfolio – you might have 20 of these that you’re loaning out and perhaps 1-3 would default, but since you’re making such a high rate of return, that makes up for the inherent default rate…

Why I love ultimate frisbee…

I play ultimate frisbee. Not frisbee golf. Not frisbee tricks. Not throwing at the park for fun. Ultimate frisbee. (Would they really name it “ultimate” if you could walk to play it?)

Seven people trying to run, throw, and catch the disc in the endzone. The other seven try to stop you. No running with the disc. No fouls, picks, travels, or referees. Full sprints and long hucks. Quick cuts and layouts. Man-on-man and zone defense.

TBA, my men’s club team from Minneapolis, played in a Duluth tournament this weekend and got to the finals on Sunday (in an admittedly small pool). We were thrashed by the other team the day before. But we put it behind us and played hard, eventually losing 16-14. It was the greatest, most intense game our team has ever played. Other teams are realizing that we’ve got significantly better in the last year. It should be a fun summer.

But what makes this sport different? Everyone calls their own fouls and sometimes they even discuss it and change their minds. Sometimes they yell at each other. But everyone works through it. And at the end of the game, we cheer. On Saturdays of tournaments there is usually a party of some kind for the teams. And sometimes jumping in a lake too. We have over 10,000 of them after all.

After our heartbreaking loss, we threw off our cleats and sat down to make up a funny song recounting parts of the game to sing to the other team (to the tune of “Barbara Ann” in this case). And sometimes the other team cheers us back (”Burning Ring of Fire”).

Our team is kind of unusual that way because this “spirit” of the game is on a downward trend. But we like to keep the fire burning and sometimes it infects other teams. Nothing is better than a hard fought game that ends with two cheers. Nothing.