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In recent political campaigns, we’ve seen the net used quite effectively as a campaign tool. Politicians now know they can reach millions of people easily by using Internet marketing techniques that have worked so well for the business sector in selling their products and services to Americans. Now politicians are using those same techniques to sell their candidacy and their points of view on the issues of the day.

It started with email campaigns. Obtaining lists from various sources, savvy politicians send unsolicited emails to as many email users as they can, introducing themselves, their issues and positions, while also providing an option for the reader to join the politician’s mailing list. If you happened to join Al Gore’s mailing list when he was running against George W. Bush, you received email after email from him, written by him, as if you and he were old Harvard buds keeping in touch. While it didn’t help him win the election, it did initiate a new way of conducting political campaigns. Other politicians, such as President Obama, have followed Al Gore’s example with greater success. Email changed the way political campaigns are conducted, but more was yet to come.

In the recent national election, politicians discovered the power of Internet video, and specifically, YouTube. This site allows anyone to upload video and anyone who has net access to view them. It’s like getting on television without the hazard of having a reporter like Katie Couric asking you embarrassing questions, questions that don’t let you communicate your positions, that challenge your veracity (that’s for your opponent’s video to do), questions from the devil’s advocate, or the devil himself. With Internet video you stage the event yourself. There’s no pretense at being unbiased. That’s a mass media technique.

Take note of Michele Bachman and Alan Grayson. Last year they came out of obscurity and onto the world stage of YouTube to become ‘viral sensations’, as Time magazine called them in an article announcing YouTube’s entry into the toolkit of political campaigns. The two were at opposite ends of the health care issue that has since been resolved, but now anyone following politics knows them by sight, and also knows their social and political views. No longer dependent on traditional media to get their messages out, politicians can depend on YouTube to make them and their views available to millions of voters, who can watch and listen to them as often as they like. No reporter is leading you to a conclusion about the candidates and their views. You get to lead yourself.

You only need to consider how our current president was able to fund his campaign through Internet appeals for contributions to recognize the tremendous power the net now plays in political campaigns. This is a radical change to the ‘old’ way in which Americans have been presented political debate. Up to now, both politicians and voters have relied on the mass media to present the political issues and choices. Their decisions determined which political campaigns would receive attention, when and how often they would be heard, and, to a large extent, what we, the voters, would hear. This amounted to a few people defining reality for the rest of us, a sort of dictatorship of the media.

Their ownership of the means of communication was their power over us. Now, the net has wrested that power from them and placed it in our own hands! Shocking indeed. Now, we can choose for ourselves what, when, and how often we will hear and watch politicians express their views. Thanks to the net, we are freed from having to trust a few media ‘elites’ to shape our social and political reality. We only need to give both sides a fair hearing to get that balanced view mass media tells us they give us because they say they do. With the net in the hands of the people and freely available to all politicians, we are enabled to set our own destiny. The dictatorship of the mass media has been overthrown. The prospect of free and responsible political campaigns is born. Shine on, Internet, shine on.

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Until recently, March 23, 2010 precisely, when the Health Reform Law of 2010 was signed into law by President Obama, most health insurance plans provided by employers covered your children until they were 18 or 21. The logic was simple enough: your child is under your care until they become adults, at which time they are old enough to enter the work force and obtain health insurance for themselves. Until then, health insurance for children was covered under most employer-provided health insurance plans. This approach seemed fair enough, but recent events have left thousands of our children without health care coverage.

While this arrangement previously seemed just enough, its deficiencies became clear in the recent economic collapses we’ve endured since 2008. Children reaching the age of maturity, 18 to 21, depending on the state, are normally no longer covered by the health insurance for children portion of the insurance plan their parents have from their employers. If jobs were available for our children – they are always our children, no matter what their age – then they could simply find a job in which the employer offers health insurance coverage, and get their own. The fact is that today we are experiencing the highest level of unemployment among teens and first time job seekers in the history of our economy. Even adults are having trouble finding work. Without a job, there is no insurance for these children, and waiting until they find work is not always a viable alternative. Some of these children have ongoing diseases, such as diabetes 1, which doesn’t go away just because you’ve turned 18. The inability of the economy to provide jobs for these fledgling adults is causing pain, debilitation, and death for many of our children, dropped from their parents health care plan, that had provided health insurance for children of the employee.

The framers of the Health Reform Law were well aware of this crisis when they wrote the legislation. In a stroke of utter brilliance, they stipulated in the law that children with pre-existing conditions cannot be automatically dropped from their parent’s coverage when they turn 18 or 21. Its urgency won the stipulation first place among what portions of the law must be implemented immediately. In 2010, insurers may no longer drop a child from a policy that includes health insurance for children, not until they turn a whopping 26 years old. Countless children are being saved from misery and death by this act. If the child is 18, that child is being given 8 more years of coverage. Perhaps eight years from now, that child, then an adult, might be able to find a job and ease into an employer provided health care plan without any problem.

By the enactment of the Health Reform Law of 2010, health insurance for children has gotten the boost it needs for our times. Some believe this is still not enough. The urgent problem seems taken care of, but what of the millions of children who do not have some sort of health insurance for children because their parents cannot afford it? What is the law doing to assure they are not excluded?

The Health Reform Law is remarkable in that it has provisions for making insurance available even to the poor. Even families making up to $88 thousand a year will be able to receive help from the federal government, in the form of subsidies. The poor may select their own plan, which may include insurance coverage for children, and the feds will pay the insurer what the family cannot pay. 24 million Americans are expected to benefit by this provision, at a cost of about $350 billion a year. Remarkably, this provision, along with the others it contains, is expected to reduce the federal deficit by $124 billion over the next ten years.

This law is a powerful expression of America’s love for their children. Changes are inevitable, so pay attention to what is going on with the law. We must never let the love of wealth replace the love of our children. If movement begins to go against any benefits to our children, oppose it. It’s human nature to defend and die for their children if necessary. Let nature be your guide. Keep health insurance for children a top priority by urging your congressperson to stand for children first. It’s only human.

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During President Obama’s campaign, as he went throughout the country extolling the virtues of health care reform, a plumber stood up and declared he could not possibly do business if he were forced to buy one of the packaged health insurance for small businesses then available. The plumber, who was actually an unlicensed plumber (in my state, if you’re not licensed, you’re not a plumber), said he had obtained funding to start his own plumbing business, but if he were required to buy health insurance for his employees, he couldn’t afford to go into business after all. The Republicans latched on to this character’s story to argue against Obama’s proposals for universal health care coverage, but the argument went nowhere, Obama won, and by 2010, a health care reform bill was signed. As it turned out, unless Joe the plumber intended to have 50 or more employees, he would not have to provide health insurance for his employees.

Joe the plumber wasn’t trying to deny the responsibility of business to supply health insurance plans to the employee. It’s been an acceptable practice for decades and embraced by conservatives and liberals alike. Business itself has met their responsibility with exuberance and dignity all these decades, taking lesser profits in order to do it. Currently, 98 percent of companies with 200 or more employees provide health care insurance plans for their employees. About 150 million Americans are employer insured, and that number is expected to grow to 159 million by 2019. The new Health Reform Law continues to rely on business to provide working Americans with the health insurance they need.

Health insurance for small businesses is not as inexpensive as health insurance for businesses with 200 or more employees. This is because insurers give discounts based on the number of people to be insured. Naturally, a larger organization will be able to obtain those hefty discounts while smaller businesses can’t. This gives something of a competitive advantage to larger business: because they can offer prospective employees health insurance as a benefit and the small businesses can’t, the best talent goes to the bigger guys. The small business, unable to offer health insurance, also suffers a greater turnover of employees as they tend to leave the business for larger ones able to provide health insurance. Lacking what other workers of equal caliber get, small business employees are more demoralized. Being unable to afford health insurance for small businesses makes doing business as a small business a hard proposition indeed.

Now, small business is in luck. The Health Reform Law is enabling small businesses, with as few as 25 employees, to get health insurance for small businesses this year (2010) by providing taxes credits for those who do. In addition, the law provides for the building of medical insurance exchanges throughout the country. These exchanges will represent hundreds, thousands, or millions of individuals and small businesses as a group to insurers. It’s the large numbers that have given large corporations leverage to get those lower premiums for their employees. Now, individuals and small business owners with their employees will be counted as a group under the exchange and be eligible for those nicely affordable group rates.

The exchanges are still in the initial stage of development – not ready yet. Expect to see them functioning by 2014. Then, small businesses with 50 or more employees will be required to provide insurance to their employees. Hopefully, these exchanges will make health insurance for small businesses as cheap as it is for the big guys, and give the small businesses an opportunity to attract those valuable, highly skilled employees. There’s an answer for most social issues, Joe the Plumber. All you have to do is seek and you’ll find.

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Before, during and after the colonial period, American women were mostly socialised within the domestic sphere. American women history before the 20th Century depicts them in subversive roles most of which are within the home or immediate community. In these roles, women are simply care givers for their husbands and children. The colonial tradition held women in the Christian perspective, as subversive to men and charged with the sole responsibility of managing their homes and raring God-fearing children.

It is therefore understandable why the American women history lacks any spectacular accounts of women shaping the political events of the time. Indeed, women’s participation and inclusion in national politics remained very low for years after they gained the right to vote in 1920. By 1994 (only two and a half decades ago), only two women had served in the United States Senate. Less than 12 had been Congressional Representatives prior to 1955. Today, we have 16 Senators and 67 Congress representatives, which translate to around 15% of the total United States Congress.

As yet, no woman has entered the annals of American women history as a presidential nominee for any of the major parties. At least four, however, have run either as Vice President Nominee or gone as far as seeking their party’s. Among the most notable women in the American women history as regards holding leadership positions in the nation include Belva Lockwood, who in 1879 became the very first woman to ever practice law in the US Supreme Court. Over a century later in 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor attained the honour of the first ever female member of the US Supreme Court. Sandra was to be joined later by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor as the second and third Supreme Court serving member respectively.

On 4th January 2007, another first in the American women history was achieved, with Nancy Pelosi becoming the first ever female Speaker of the US House of representatives. This was closely followed by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s first, during the 2008 presidential campaign. Clinton’s achievement is in itself among the most significant in the American women history, having won over 1,896 delegate votes against Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential Nomination. In the same year, Sarah Palin, an Alaskan Governor of repute became the first ever female Vice Presidential Nominee from the Republican Party.

A surface look at these statistics cannot capture in full the complex nature of women integration in national politics. The American women history constitutes of a tale in which women have had to overcome overwhelming challenges, override great opposition, satisfy awesome expectations and bear delimiting social responsibilities.

The last two generations of American women have triggered a remarkable social shift in the integration of women politicians within mainstream national politics. The American public has stated its willingness to support and vote for an American woman as their leader. Consequently many opportunities are opening up for the female gender to join the decision making tables around the nation and make an impact in forging an American future.

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Yes, the cost of health insurance continues to rise every year, currently rising at twice the rate of inflation. Even with fiscally responsible health providers, costs have not been contained. Any major health crisis is costly; the state of the health arts employs technology and medicines that are expensive to build and produce. The cost of research has to be covered, and the dividends investors earn for taking risks on pharmaceutical products in development must be paid. It’s thanks to them and the researchers that many life threatening diseases have met their match. While we can expect these costs to continue, the hope is that all diseases humans encounter may be defeated. We do not necessarily have to accept continually rising costs, reflected in health insurance costs and the taxes we pay each year. The Health Reform Law of 2010 that was passed on March 23rd is designed to diminish rising costs.

One of the major factors that raise our health insurance costs is that many citizens, especially the poor, are uninsured. Without insurance, they are not able to get medical treatment at the early stages of their ailment. By the time they do see a doctor, it’s at the emergency ward where the cost is highest. Unable to turn these people away, either because of medical ethics or state and federal laws, these hospitals will treat the patient and turn to either the state or federal government for compensation, or increase the charges for people who are able to afford health insurance costs.

It is for this reason that the recent Health Reform Law has, as its centerpiece, universal health care coverage for all U.S. citizens. By helping the poor cover health insurance costs, it will be virtually impossible for a poor person to abstain from getting health insurance from whatever insurer they choose. The law will now subsidize the poor, covering the insurance costs they are unable to cover on their own. 24 million of our nation’s poor will be subsidized, with the $350 billion the law allocates to this effort.

Although the law will also prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, and will curtail lifetime caps, thus requiring insurance companies to pay for more than they previously did, the increase in policy holders, including those 24 million people backed by the $350 billion allocation, should offset these new expenses. If the poor are now able to seek treatment earlier, emergency room costs will go down, saving even more money. Theoretically, the savings will reduce health insurance costs across the board.

This Health Reform law also stimulates the health insurance industry and may bring down health insurance costs for everyone. An increase in demand and an adequate supply of insurers means insurers will be competing with each other to provide the most robust product at the lowest price. With an increase in competition, more insurers will become transparent. Their administrative costs will decrease as they rid themselves of wasteful policies and procedures in order to price their products competitively.

Other projects are also being explored to reduce the cost of health insurance, and this law should be considered just the first step. What is certain in the debate is that whatever efforts succeed, medical costs will continue to rise. The goal, then, is not to curtail the rise, but to diminish it and keep it under control. The benefit to the consumer is that they will be able to get health insurance and be able to afford it, even if it means being subsidized by the government. Health insurance costs may continue to rise at a slower rate, but the overall health of America should reach an all time high. A healthier America is the true promise of the law, and who wouldn’t welcome that?

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We won’t even address the presidential elections George W. Bush won. (Aberrations belong in Ripley’s). Suffice it to say that those elections were a green flag to the political class to think creatively when it comes to getting their candidate elected – never mind the theory of universal democratic elections, where all the citizens are expected to vote. Sure, there are always mistakes in any human endeavor, but we’re not talking about mistakes here; we’re talking about outright, intentional attacks on the democratic process with its cornerstone, the democratic election, that legitimizes any government in power. ‘Government by consent of the people’, the phrase goes. Recent elections world-wide are mockeries of this noble ideal, and poses an unimaginable threat to all the world.

Take this June’s elections in Arkansas. Oh, yes, they held one alright. All 6 million of that state were invited to participate in the elections of their representatives of this 10,000 square miles of a U.S. state. Arkansas has 500 cities and towns. The land of Arkansas is diversified, ranging from forest to farmlands, to the hills and mountains in the north. Always a patriotic state, the home of presidents, Arkansas boasts of thousands of young men who have died on the battlefields, so that the people of Arkansas might rule themselves, but, on the night Arkansas opened the polling stations, no one seemed to remember them. It seems some Washington operatives appeared just in time to force the closing of all but four ballot stations. For most Arkansasians, voting that day meant driving for hours to get to a ballot box. The definition of “the people” was amended to mean people with cars. Frankly, no one should care what the excuses are. The boys of Arkansas gave no excuses when their state and country called them to fight and die on the battlefields for democracy’s sake, for the sake of a fair election that they and their progeny could enjoy as the guarantee of liberty for the people of Arkansas.

The perversion of the election is tantamount to treason, a betrayal that sickens every veteran that made the sacrifice of home and family for the American way of life. It is the harbinger of the fall of the United States, that once ideal democracy that gave hope to all the nations of the world. We should not forget that as recently as the last century, our fathers and grandfathers offered their lives that we might be free. It is our responsibility to pass on to our children the democratic election in pristine form.

What will it take for Americans to be outraged by such practices as we have seen in the Arkansas ‘democratic’ election? Must we wait until our elections fall to the level of the election we saw in Afghanistan? That election has been condemned as a fraud by key U.N. officials who monitored it. Karzai, then – and still – president, gave all the appearances of a democratic leader. He appointed an election commission that reported to him alone, that made decisions that promoted him alone. Karzai used a reverse strategy of the Washington group that got Arkansas to close down all but four voting stations: Karzai’s lackeys opened up 25 percent of the polls in Taliban territory, knowing they would not be used, but used they were, to stuff the ballot boxes with Karzai votes. When 1.5 million votes, a third of all votes, were questioned, all of them Karzai votes, the U.N. creatively determined that Afghanistan law did not permit the tossing out of fraudulent votes. This was fortunate for Karzai. If these votes had been tossed out in this so-called democratic election, Karzai would have had to go through another election. The U.S. wanted Karzai to win, and apparently the U.N. held the same sentiment. Thanks to those fraudulent votes, Karzai is the “duly” elected president of Afghanistan today.

The democratic election is new to Afghanistan. What is Arkansas’ excuse? American citizens, don’t let this happen here…again?

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Don’t expect to see a sudden drop in health insurance prices as a result of the enactment of the Health Reform Law of 2010. Our best hope at this time is that health insurance prices will start to stabilize. Although the 2,400 page law specifies a number of changes to health insurance policies and practices, the law is by no means a ‘finished’ product. At best, it’s a broad guideline that opens a multiple lane highway leading to a health industry available to all citizens. Along the way, opportunities for experimentation will present themselves, including efforts to reduce costs, streamline administration, while increasing quality of health care. Still, efficient and effective procedures and processes have yet to be devised. Amendments are certain to be proposed. The law is recognized by economists and health care scientists as a first step, the beginning of what will be a somewhat long journey to universal, affordable health coverage for all Americans.

What’s affordable health coverage? Affordable is a relative term. The rich can afford what the poor cannot. A poor family may be able to afford a used, stark naked Yugo, while a rich family can certainly afford the same automobile, but they can also afford a Mercedes, which the poor family cannot. Health care plans come in the same sorts of varieties as automobiles. Some offer basic medical and prescription benefits, (the Yugo of health care), while others are complete in coverage, providing maximum coverage, from chiropractic treatment to catastrophic illness coverage, replete with coverage for organ transplants, unlimited lifetime coverage with no cap, and VIP hospital rooms. Our personal family budget and the income we may reasonably expect to earn, thus becomes what is affordable for us. If you’ve got the money or expect to earn it, you can afford it.

The problem then is to buy an affordable health coverage plan that fulfills both our basic and specialized medical needs. The various insurance plans are ‘packages’, consisting of covered services. In choosing the package, naturally, you want it to consist of every possible service coverage – there’s no telling what the future might bring – but, each component raises your total cost. Getting every possible service naturally raises the price. The problem for you is to put together a package that will cover all the essentials and any special needs your health condition may require. Insurers put together packages for you to choose from. Look at several of them; remember, they are not all the same.

When you’re young, a basic affordable health coverage plan will do, but as you age, more services will be required. As you get older, your income should increase, such that, what was not affordable when you were young, is affordable when you’re older. Sit down with your chosen provider’s agent and plan for the extensions you can expect to need as you age. The new law prohibits discrimination against the sick. A pre-existing condition no longer precludes you from getting the insurance you need to cover the treatment for a condition your policy did not cover. Waiting until a condition arises is not smart, however, because you can expect to pay higher rates Speak with your doctor about what he or she anticipates for your health, given your family history. Your doctor may be your best adviser.

Let us hope for and work towards bringing down the cost of medical insurance, but until then, if ever that day comes, your best bet is to get an affordable health coverage package that will cover conditions you can expect at each stage of your life. One delightful benefit of the new law is the promise of the nation to subsidize the poor who cannot afford insurance. Up to this point, people have been going bankrupt in their efforts to pay off medical bills their insurance didn’t cover. If you are making less than $88,000 a year, the government will subsidize your health care. You no longer need to become destitute to stay healthy – and alive. In this sense, affordable health coverage is available to everyone now.

Keep abreast of the ongoing changes to the law. Be involved. The law is a broad road towards universal health care coverage for everyone, but the vehicles to carry us to that goal are being built as we proceed. Perhaps, in time, the ‘Mercedes’ of health care packages will finally become affordable health coverage for everyone.

The author has been writing articles online for 4 years now. Come visit his latest site Rapid Automated Income review that discusses Rapid Automated Income by Matt Benwell.

There are some things in life you simply cannot avoid. One of these is health coverage. It does not matter if you are married, single, or have a large family, you need a health insurance coverage plan for a number of reasons. First and foremost, you never know when something might go down, and you need to be rushed to the hospital. Maybe you break your wrist or get into a fender bender and have to get an MRI done. Regardless of what the issue is, there comes a time when health coverage is imperative. And just imagine if you were facing a serious medical condition. At this point you would be seriously dependent upon a stellar health care plan. It can keep you from going bankrupt.

For single men and women, there are affordable individual health insurance coverage plans. Any time you deal with health coverage, you can expect to get a better deal based on two factors. One is your age, and two is your current health. Therefore if you are 25 and very healthy, you can get an affordable individual health insurance policy without much effort. The key is to take care of your health as best you can, and acquire a good coverage plan at a young age if possible. This way if you break your nose, need to visit a dermatologist, or have to go on for a minor operation, your health insurance will cover you; at least to some degree. It is worth the monthly payment.

A few websites that will help you find out more about affordable individual health insurance coverage are goldenrule.com, aetna.com, affordable-health-insurance.org, and ehealthinsurance.com. Be sure to take a closer look at these helpful websites in order to learn more about current health insurance coverage plans. Even if you are not searching for an affordable individual health insurance policy, it is wise to review these helpful sites. You can additionally learn more about family insurance coverage, policies for married couples, and low-priced insurance plans for individuals with pre-existing health problems. The key is doing your research beforehand.

On the flip side, it makes no sense to avoid decent and affordable individual health insurance plans. If you are aware how life works, then you already know that you will need health coverage when you do not have it. This is pretty much how it always works. Therefore it is prudent to look into a variety of affordable health insurance policies, and make a decision about which one is right for you. This way you will at least be prepared if something does happen. As for parents of children, it is basically imperative to acquire a good health insurance plan to be on the safe side.

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The first effort to avoid paying taxes occurred soon after the Revolutionary War in the United States. It took George Washington and a contingent of the United States Army to quell the tax revolt. These forefathers of the tax avoiders had actually believed the revolution was about over-taxation by their English King and that George and the forefathers of a taxing government were betraying the cause that led to U.S. independence. Just as they did then, today’s tax avoidance advocates agree with former first lady, Nancy Reagan: “Just say no!” And, just as George Washington responded with a heavy hand – no one was actually killed and not a single shot was fired – today’s government is ready to take you tax rebels down. Of course, they have to catch you first, and that’s the point in the program the Feds have enhanced, bounty hunting for tax evaders – no degree required.

Tax avoidance snitching is built on the old communist method of discovering non-conformists and party dissidents. The Kamer Rouge used it well. Hundreds of children gave up their mothers and fathers for the glory alone. If you turn in anyone you know is evading taxes, the Feds will pay you a nice percentage of what the offender owes. That’s right, mom, dad, your trusting employer, priest or pastor, your husband or wife, even your children, it doesn’t matter, the IRS doesn’t discriminate. They’ll express their gratitude with a nice fat check. With dollars, that is, not a bag of silver coins. It’s not a betrayal of trust, they’ll tell you. It’s patriotism.

The IRS has been paying this kind of bounty for years, so the paying isn’t new. For the first half of this decade, 428 ‘patriots’ were paid $12 million dollars (that’s $28K each on average), a pretty good take for a few hours of snooping, your report, and a trip to the bank. That $12 million was for $168 million the IRS recouped. Still, most Americans valued their jobs and families more than one year of low income earning. So the U.S. Congress thought, increase the bounty and you’re sure to get more players. You’ve got to make it worth their while. That’s why, in 2006, Congress ordered the IRS to increase the bounty from 7 percent to 15 percent. If the IRS collected more than $2 million from tax avoidance reports, the payouts work out to about 30 percent, amounting to about $600 thousand in total. You could retire off of that! If you’re young, with smart investing, you could get yourself an island in Dubai ($30 million, probably less, what with the cash shortage around the world).

Gone are the days when the unscrupulous rich parent who practiced tax avoidance could easily cut the prodigal son or daughter out of the will. Gone, too are the days when, for a key to the executive’s bathroom and an all-expenses-paid trip to Aruba, a junior accountant remained on the tax evading corporation’s good old boys list. In 2008, the IRS received 1,246 tax avoidance tips; in 2009, these leads tallied to 1,600. Congress sure is smart.

There is one caveat: the IRS is slow to pay. So slow, that, they’ve haven’t paid anyone under the new program yet. It seems we need a new program from Congress, a bounty payment avoidance informants program. Of course, the taxpayer will have to pay for that too. We’ve paid for bridges to nowhere, for hundred dollar hammers and toilet seats, and billions of dollars in cash give-aways to unknown persons in Iraq. It’s our patriotic duty to pay taxes. Tax avoidance is a crime. Don’t think they won’t catch you. They’ve got eyes all around. Care to join? Me, I mind my own business!

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Everyone knows someone who is like this – a certain kind of overcautious person who’ll leave nothing to chance; you’ll see in their closets or in garages or in perhaps paid storage, bags of neatly-organized files with old telephone bills from 30 years ago, tax records, umpteen receipts, every notice or office memo they got, every receipt for groceries they bought, bank statements and, of course, guarantee cards for 30 year old VCRs. Is there a reason why they do this? When any family member confronts them about why on earth anyone would need to do this, they usually have a cautionary tale about what happened to a friend once who got audited, and didn’t have the receipts she needed to back her story up. At a time when we entirely live our lives on computers, is there a point to saving receipts and paper records anymore?

Maintaining a little proof that you actually paid for the things you purchased and that you never failed to pay your taxes actually makes a certain amount of sense. There is no legal limit to when an audit can take place. Three years from now, when you think that your taxes are all paid for and nothing’s been contested, the IRS can pull your records and haul you in to ask for receipts. If the IRS figures that you made a major mistake in your IRS tax filing – that you understated your income by 25% for instance – they can ask you to produce records from six years ago. There is just no limit to the amount of joy that the IRS can bring into your life. So the rule of junk collection should be that you keep all your receipts and check stubs for at least seven years, and keep records of your tax returns for ever. Those would be your 1099 forms, your W-2 forms, and your year-end bank statements.

If you have brokerage statements, you probably need to keep your entire cache of records of what you spent on your investments, and what you received from them. Basically, any kind of investment that brings you a profit or loss that you would need to show on your IRS tax filing in any year, you need to save records of. However there are ways in which you can go too far with the record-keeping, unless you run your own business, and you need to claim your cell phone bills and your gas bills as business expense deductions. Business owners will need to keep their monthly bank statements and credit card statements to be able to prove how much they earn, should the IRS not be happy with what they claim in their IRS tax filing.

What do you do with documents to do with your loans and your insurance? This might have nothing to do with an IRS tax filing, but it will be good practice to hang onto them until you’ve completely paid your loans off. Who knows when they’ll claim that you never paid the installments? Brokerage firm statements and bank statements are easily available on the Internet for free forever. Do you still need to hang onto them? Well, the IRS needs to see paper records. So it looks like the filing cabinet still sticks around.

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More and more over the years, working people in this country have found that the laws have been actively shifting responsibility for American workers’retirement survival away from the companies that employ them, onto the workers themselves. Apparently, the fact of the change hasn’t really sunk in yet, because there are far too many people who are still providing inadequately for a retirement income, come the day they need to step out of the workforce. It’s as if they still think that they have a comfortable pension to look forward to. My father, in the middle of the cratering of the stock market two years ago, was just 60, and freshly retired. He had no pension, and his Social Security benefits were still years away. He had nothing to go on but his savings. He wanted to exercise the option of cashing out his stocks, but he was worried about how he would then have nothing to turn to if he lived to be 90.

When all these newly-retired people all around who had just been set free of a life of hard work watched their entire life’s work disappear as the stock market went up in smoke, the general advice they got back then, what my father got too, was to withdraw less each month to preserve their capital, and then to go work at Wal-Mart. Now my father did not want to do that; and his reasons were novel. He felt that he would only need to see his investments differently in his mind. He visualized having two sets of investments – one was cash and bonds that could see him through the first half of his retired life; the other part was the stocks he held that had taken a beating in the recession. He thought he would leave his stock funds untouched, and believe that they would bounce back one day so that they could fund the latter part of his retirement.

Believe it or not, this plan that my father has picked for himself is exactly the thing that experts recommend these days; in fact, it’s been bandied about for about two decades now. As long as you had a stock market that’s treating you well in retirement, the 4% rule, the undisputed benchmark in retirement planning, applied. The rule says that as long as things are going well, you’re supposed to invest your retirement nest egg about 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds. You can start out withdrawing 4% a year, and go up on a sliding scale from there to keep up with inflation. They said that you had a 90% chance of staying solvent up until your last day this way. The rule however, does not really hold together in severely difficult times such as these.

The main spanner in the works in finding a way to fund retirement income is inflation. If it weren’t for it, you would just need to invest in bonds to be set for life. But with inflation, you need to invest in something that will grow your fund because even with very low inflation, in 20 years, your dollar will buy you just half of what it does now. A great way to guarantee a decent retirement income would be to divide into five-year periods the time you have after your retirement, and adopt a different strategy for each five-year period. In the first phase, as soon as you retire in a time like this when interest you get approaches zero, you put your money in an immediate payout annuity for a five-year period. Once this is done with, you’ll need to find a deferred annuity or a bond ladder to generate your retirement income. The idea is that each phase of your retirement asks for a slightly more risky investment strategy to make up for your falling capital, and for rising inflation.

Of course there are some who say that this kind of measured response will do nothing through a difficult financial period such as this. They say, invest in mutual funds as aggressively as you can, because trusting in the markets is your best chance.

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So, you have just paid your taxes. Having bitten the bullet, though, you still don’t feel inclined to describe your contribution to the national effort in particularly generous or charitable terms. You would never guess it but you have a corner of sympathy with the economists and the government accountants of the country. They point to the tax laws of the country that often reward people with tax breaks for no reason, and make that up by taxing you, the taxpayer, a lot more than they would otherwise have to.

Let’s say that 30 years ago, you saw a bunch of computer makers with a dozen different computer designs, the Atari, the Commodore, the Apple, and you bet that that last one would probably make it big. You bought in on the ground floor, and today you find that your shares have appreciated ten times. If you sell them today, you’ll make a killing, and so will the IRS, because you’ll pay capital gains taxes. But let’s say that you don’t sell them today and you leave it to your heirs. Whoever inherits your Apple investment is going to cash in for free; financial advisors even recommend that if you’re pushing it a bit, that you don’t sell anything now and just write it off on your will. This really makes no sense if you think about it; a person who is 90 today and wishes to sell his stock portfolio will be hit by the tax laws as far as possible. If he had not sold anything, and he died the following day, his grandson who inherits it could sell it the very same day and he would not pay a dime in taxes. Over the next five years, the government will lose in a third of a trillion to this tax exemption.

It’s about the same way with the energy policy in the country. The government always has various incentives and high taxes to try to encourage or discourage one or the other kind of energy consumption behavior; people get so mixed up over these pretty soon, they give up on trying to understand anything, and do what they would have anyway. Or like some unscrupulous manufacturers, they try to game the system. Five years ago, President Bush signed in a new energy policy that really went for ethanol; and the tax laws were amended to hand out lots of credits and tax breaks to any farmer or manufacturer who helped with the ethanol effort. Ethanol has been a nonstarter, though; it’s been using up so much corn that food prices have shot up, and the production of ethanol uses up so much gas and puts out so much pollution, that it hasn’t been worth it. And still, tax laws have handed manufacturers of ethanol about $12 billion of tax credits in the past four years alone.

You’ve been hearing about those Cadillac health plans for a while and the whole lead-up to the new health care plan, haven’t you? Consider one of the best perks you get at working a regular job – health insurance. Employer-provided health insurance, though, is tax exempted. In the beginning, that tax exemption didn’t really cost the government much, as healthcare was cheap. Healthcare now, though, is rising in cost in such a fearsome way that in about 100 years, it will be using up almost all our national income. Granting a tax exemption on this costs the government $1 trillion right now every five years. So what do employers do, but keep wages frozen, and choose to compensate workers with very pricey health insurance plans. If they compensated workers with regular salary increases, they would pay payroll taxes on them. And part-time workers who don’t have insurance anyway, just suffer in both ways – no salary increases, no free insurance either, and the need to pay a tax when they go out and buy their own personal health insurance.

When employers are so willing to buy the pricey health insurance schemes, insurance companies have no incentive to lower their prices either. There are a bunch of tax laws that work like this – punishing the poor and rewarding the rich. For instance, the mortgage interest deduction plan will give you a better break if you have a really large house. Sometimes the tax laws get so complicated, even the drafters of those laws get mixed up like this.

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We are friends with this young family that lives close by; they have three little daughters, all under 8, and it’s a family that anyone would want to model theirs on. To me, the most remarkable thing about them is not just that they are perfect; it is how they are perfect right down to their sense of financial responsibility. Their daughters are young and they don’t need to start worrying yet about being ready with a fat endowment when they decide to get married or anything; but the time that they will need to pick a college is maybe only 10 years away, and it’s already making them nervous. For about 6 years now, they have been socking away $500 a month in 529 plans for college (it’s been built up to $30,000 already). They had the foresight to look up college costs perhaps three weeks after their first daughter was born, and they right away got around to it without putting it off.

There is no other savings channel that could possibly give them all that 529 plans do. They lock in their college costs at today’s prices, their money grows – and everything is tax free. They won’t be able to cover all the costs of their kids’ education by the time they grow up; but they have the right idea, and they’re doing the best they can. 529 plans certainly seem to attract a great deal of fierce loyalty from families with young children. According to the Financial Research Corporation of Boston, 529 savings plans are going to attract about $250 billion of investments by next year. And that is up from practically nothing just 10 years ago.

Here’s a quick rundown of what makes a 529 plan what it is. To begin with the curious name, as you would expect it, comes from the section of the tax code that sanctions the plan. These plans come in two flavors: college savings plans and prepaid tuition plans. Depending on the state, you’ll get an option in one or the other, and sometimes you’ll get both. Prepaid tuition plans are the ones that will allow you to lock in your college costs at today’s prices. For instance, if you live in Florida and have a child who will need to be in college in five years, the belief is that a four year degree at a University of Florida college will cost about $48,000 then. With your prepaid 529 plans now though, you could freeze it at today’s prices, which would be $35,740.

If you go with state-sponsored prepaid 529 plans, they ask that you sign up right away to one of several major established state institutions. If you pick an independent 529 plan, you get your pick of several smaller independent colleges. Prepaid plans can be somewhat bothersome. Most states don’t offer them, and when they do, they require that you be a citizen of that state to be eligible to apply. And they can be expensive too – not entirely suitable for people who want to save slowly, or just a part of what is needed. The most popular 529 option lies in the savings plans. These let you begin to save for admission to colleges in every state of the country today. And they are pretty easy to set up too. The great thing about these plans is, that it’s completely up to you when you make your deposits and how you choose to see your money invested.

If you worry that sort of thing, with a 529, your child gets no say over how to spend the proceed when it finally comes due. When they have no legal funds to their name, they become eligible for financial aid. And also, in some cases, the fact that the child has no right over how the money is spent keeps me safe from careless choices (say, spending the money on a week at the Bahamas). 529 plans can be real winners in other ways too. Over the years, you can make deposits that amount to as much as a quarter million dollars; in states like Colorado, the state will contribute up to $500 each month to your account, and you get all kinds of tax breaks as well.

Of course 529 plans can be a bit of a pain for the number of choices they give you with all kinds of features (like how they will invest your money). And if you happen to use the money to not pay for college costs, there’ll be a penalty. The way they invest your money can often become an area of serious disagreement. For instance two years ago when the markets plunged, ahead of the recession, some 529 plans tried to follow their normal plan oblivious of the economic environment. For accounts that were nearing maturity, they tried as usual to shift investments from low-risk mutual funds to more conservative investments (like income securities). In doing this, they went and sold their mutual funds on the market when it was very low. Everyone tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen. They sold at the bottom of the market.

529 plans, like anything else you trust others with, depend on how bureaucratic their administrators can be. Even if you’re completely enthusiastic about investing in your child’s future in this way, you need to be aware that if you are hoping for Hope and Lifetime Learning tax credits, paying your child’s entire college education bills with a 529 bounty can disqualify you. Well, nothing is without the downside.

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I am always amazed at the popularity of Oprah Winfrey and how many loyal viewers her show seems to receive. She is routinely among the wealthiest Americans and her show seems like it has been on forever, which I think begs the question – what is it about Operah Winfrey that appeals to so many different people?

I have a friend who watches the Oprah Winfrey Show every single weekday. If she knows that she is going to be out at the time the show comes on, she will make sure that she tapes it so that she can watch it later. I asked her one time what it was about Operah Winfrey that she liked so much and she said that her show was just so interesting.

She could not elaborate on why she liked the talk show’s host so much, but said that she always enjoyed watching her shows and learned a lot as well. She said the topics varied, but a lot of them were very informative in terms of health issues and crime trends. She said that Oprah also had the most interesting guests on her show.

I have watched a few Operah Winfrey episodes and thought that they were interesting, but not to such a degree that I would rather watch her show than any other talk show on television. I started to think that it had to be something to do with Operah Winfrey herself, so I started to investigate.

Oprah Winfrey grew up extremely poor and had a difficult childhood. She struggled to get an education and started out as a TV journalist. She eventually got her own talk show and really never looked back.

She is very involved in charities, has established schools in Africa, and has contributed to numerous causes. She also helped provide aid to people on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina hit and has donated generously to other programs as well.

Oprah Winfrey has also struggled with her weight, and that is something about which she is very open and honest, which I think a lot of people really appreciate. The fact that she can share her own problems and talk about them on live television is something that I think a lot of people admire.

When I look at it from an objective point of view, I think that what most people find appealing about Operah Winfrey is her integrity. I think that people respect who she is and what she made of herself, and it is really a prime example of the American dream.

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Some of the biggest uproar in the war of words between Democrats and Republicans came to an exploding crescendo last Friday when Arizona governor Jan Brewer (Republican) stood in front of a packed news conference to announce the new law. The new laws require police to get identification from the people that they stop showing that they are here in this country legally. The law, which is named the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” gives police the power and authority to arrest and detain those without proof of residency or citizenship.

Many civil rights watchdog groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and others began to vehemently protest the law, calling it racist and unconstitutional. Many lawmakers see this not as a fight against Mexican illegal immigration but as a racially motivated hate law that discriminates against any person that looks brown or foreign. They are asking, “How will the police be able to tell if a person is illegal or not?” The answer is obvious and that is that the law encourages racial profiling. Opponents of the law, and there are many of them across the country and not just liberals, claim that the law gives officers permission to detain, arrest, harass, and in some cases, abuse people of a different color simply for being different.

Certainly the Obama Administration, along with moderate and leftist Democrats in both the House and Senate have been vocal in their opposition to this legislation. The President came out almost immediately denouncing the law and saying that it will hurt their current proposed immigration legislation, which proposes to give general amnesty to illegal immigrants that have been in the United States for long periods of time. Mexican illegal immigration is certainly a problem but not one that will be solved by racial profiling but rather by tougher border control.

The issues of Mexican illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border are of staggering proportions. People in poverty-stricken countries like Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador have been crossing the border illegally for many years. Border patrols have been beefed up by Homeland Security but the border is such a vast area that it cannot be patrolled effectively at all times.

Another big problem is that American companies are hiring illegal immigrants now more than ever. These companies cannot find legal American workers who are not willing to do the type of difficult jobs that the immigrants will do gladly. Mexican illegal immigration accounts for many of the workers that work the agricultural fields of California and New Mexico. These people work long hours for very little money under extremely tough conditions.

The actual solution to Mexican illegal immigration does not belong in the hands of a few police officers. The solution needs to come from an understanding between the United States and Mexico itself. Until poverty levels in Mexico are controlled, people will always want to cross the border and build a better life for themselves and for their families. It is only natural to want to do so.

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They’ve been pointing for years to how healthcare and pension responsibilities bankrupted General Motors. And they’ve said that it is only a matter of time before it happens to the Social Security System as well. Perhaps we stand at the dawn of that day. The terrible financial turmoil of the last two years, the cratered housing market, the unemployment, the recession, have all been really hurting Social Security to the point that finally, this year, there is so little coming in in taxes, that there is going to be less money going into the system than getting paid out. Nobody thought that this day would come for another five years. Of course, there is no immediate cause for worry; even if in this very year, the system starts to go into the red. But why this year of all the times it could have happened?

It’s for two reasons. To begin with, the Social Security system is funded on payroll taxes. With fewer people drawing any real salary, there is far less coming in. The people who are not drawing a salary today, can’t starve; they just apply for their Social Security support far sooner than they ever thought they would. So there is more money going out than anyone expected. And the Social Security program is finally on its way to bankruptcy. The only thing that’s being done to protect it now, is to tax the country more, to find new sources of income.

The last time that the Social Security System seemed to be in dire straits was 30 years ago. The system was left with funds enough for a mere few months at the time. But the country has had great economic performance for all the years since then, and the coffers are full enough that there won’t be any bankruptcy for another quarter century. But what does all this mean? What happens when the country’s population actually falls as it is doing in Europe, where there are more old people than young in the population? Whose paychecks will they tax to fund the system? Very nearly 50 million families claim those Social Security checks each month, even today.

The basic thing you need to understand is that the money paid out as Social Security is not free mercy money from the government. This is money each worker sets out of his salary each month during his work life. If the Social Security goes bankrupt, it doesn’t mean that people have been dipping into it for free money. It only means that people have taken out what they paid in, working their whole lives. One way to deal with the problem would be to do what we did once before – you raise the retirement age. You can’t have people retiring around the same age today as they did 50 years ago. Life expectancy has risen, and people could expect to spend perhaps 15 years in retirement. Today, people expect, often, to spend 25 years in retirement. That is clearly unsustainable. To make the Social Security system solvent like it was 50 years ago, people would have to be allowed to work until 70. That would go down a lot better with people than raising taxes.

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For lots of large businesses, the opportunity to make use of non-commercial aeroplane enabling them to go to conventions or appointments across the world is a must, and not an extravagance. In spite of this, the cost of running or maintaining a fleet of private jets is prohibitive and as such, a lot of business conferences have the possibility to be missed.

Yet, with something known as fractional ownership plans, a corporation can get full access to a large selection of executive jets across planet whenever you require at a fraction of the expense and devoid of the crucial mechanical maintenance that is associated with private aircraft ownership.

If you want to book an executive jet for a swift flight to get to an important business meeting or require a business which allows you or your business team to work, hold a conference call or hold a meeting whilst travelling to a meeting in a different country, fractional ownership presents you with the options you need. Find out which private plane
is right for you by searching online.

Functioning with substantial collections of aircraft of various levels of service, size and range, fractional membership business jet corporations give a different opportunity for any corporation looking to arrange a private jet or helicopter charter.

The selection of aircraft and combined with their assured international availability gives companies unrivalled access to an extensive fleet of private jets, devoid of the usual costs and crew requirements that often puts numerous businesses off. Simply arranging the air charter service with a fractional ownership business, they can present an organisation with the most suited private plane; coordinate any organising and staffing matters, so all one needs to do is simply turn up.

Making use of fractional ownership plans has proved an attractive to many organisations as they receive all of the positives of flying privately, yet simply pay for the hours a passenger uses.

All aspects of any flight is planned and organised by the fractional ownership company, ensuring the swiftest, well organised journey is organised for you. And with a wide ranging range of private jets, any company will have a wide choice of corporate jet charter options, so if one week a passenger requires a smaller aircraft and the next journey you or your company need to fly your team from Manchester to New York for a seminar, the flexibility of fractional ownership is there to present you with just the right jet aircraft you require.

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