Declaring My Independence

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one [individual human being] to dissolve the [financial] bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that [he] should declare the causes which impel [him] to the separation.

I am announcing today my Declaration of Independence from Financial Institutions To-Big-To-Fail. Henceforth, I shall have no further dealings with J.P. Morgan Chase, Citicorp and the others that have betrayed my trust and nearly destroyed my country.

I have no vote in Congress to raise their taxes or limit their bonuses. And it seems as if Congress has no courage to do so either. So, therefore, I shall use the only power I have available as one individual: I will stop doing business with these people.

Goodbye, Chase Bank (successor to that other pillar of integrity, Washington Mutual). I am closing my account and transferring it to my community bank, which actually funds mortgages and makes loans in my community. Imagine that!

And goodbye, Citibank MasterCard. You're toast. No more 21 percent APR and threats of 29 percent if I'm one minute late on a payment. And who cares about the Frequent Flyer miles that you can't use because the airlines have limited the seats to an occasional red-eye to Dubuque. Your card just went through my shredder. From now on, I'm using my Visa from a local bank.

Farewell, you gluttonous, self-interested porkers. All your fancy derivatives and credit swaps have only served to make you rich. You have done nothing to create wealth for the rest of us.

My Happy Heart

I was in the hospital last week for a procedure to help stop my heart from racing. Every so often it would take off and act like I was running a sprint or climbing twelve flights of stairs -- as if! This procedure is an amazing technological feat in which a laser-fitted wire is inserted through your groin into your heart and then the naughty nerves that are misfiring are zapped. And, if all goes according to the medical textbook, my heart starts taking it easier so I don't have to. So far, so good.

I have to think that decades of intense deadline pressure in the newspaper business followed by decades of intense pressure in the corporate world made my heart a little cranky, just like it did the rest of me. Like Howard Beale in the movie "Network," I think my cardiac chamber decided it was mad as hell and not going to take it any more. So it staged a protest and I don't blame it. Fortunately, the protest was short-lived.

Since I retired, my heart has been quite happy. It loves beating on Whidbey Island, where the air is clean and the climate is mild and everybody's nice as can be and only a few folks try to shove their disagreeable opinions down your throat. Washingtonians are an interesting breed. Quite progressive on political and economic issues and quite libertarian on social issues. An electrician who worked on our house wore a baseball cap that was embroidered with the words "Leave Me Alone," which sums up a lot of attitudes here. Having been away for more than 40 years, I had forgotten all that.

I left Washington in the late 1960s to find my fortune and figure out who I was. My wanderings took me to Vietnam, California and Texas, with sojourns in Japan, New York, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Venice and other fabulous spots. Now I'm back where I began. Hopefully wiser, definitely older, comfortable, but still feeling an urge for adventure.

When you hear your doctor tell you that you have a "heart ailment" that "needs attention," it does give you pause. And anytime you spend a day or two in a hospital, you get an in-your-face reminder of how fragile and temporary our physical lives are. "Start by admitting, from cradle to tomb, it isn't that long a stay," as the lyrics of the song "Cabaret" sum it up. The other thing that a diagnosis and heart ablation procedure do is make clear an irony of life: Just when you get pretty good at this job, your machine wears out.

I've never been afraid of what comes after all this. In fact, I await it with a journalist's curiosity and a believer's confidence. But, as I sit here on this beautiful morning looking out at Penn Cove while the clouds lift off Mount Baker in the distance, I'm especially enjoying the gentle beat of my heart.

The Fraught Aughts

I am so happy that the first decade of the 21st Century -- the Aught Years -- is over. Aren't you? It would be better if we just not talk about it and let the historians chew for awhile. But before we shove it in a file and forget about it, let's wallow for just a minute, shall we? It won't cost much -- just a few tears.

I've read the macro versions of what happened: Median family income is below what it was in 1999. There was no job growth -- nothing, nada, zip -- from 2000 to 2010. The average net worth of the American family is less than it was 10 years ago. Two wars launched, more than 4,000 Americans dead so far -- not counting almost 3,000 on 9-11-01. The national debt has more than quadrupled in the past decade, and the Chinese could foreclose and take possession of us if we fall behind on the mortgage.

Add it all up and I'll have say this out loud: The American standard of living has declined. We can't really brag about the world's strongest economy right now. The free enterprise system gaveth but now hath taken away. Sorry, Glen Beck, but I don't feel very much like waving the flag of Capitalism at the moment. If fact, I wish some of those Capitalists were behind bars making flags.

Yes, the Aughts were fraught, and my own fortunes testify to that. During the Aughts I made more money than I ever had before, but I paid more income tax just for 2007 than I made from 1985 to 1990 -- combined! My retirement nest egg is smaller today than it was in 2003 and the bank basically now charges me to keep my savings because interest rates are below the inflation rate. We sold our house in 2005 and made a killing; but the house we have now is worth less than we paid for it.

And, adding insult to injury, I have more than 200,000 frequent flier miles from all those business trips I took during the Aughts, but I can't really use them because the airlines don't give away many seats any more. Or else they want you to take a trip around the world and change planes to get from Point A to Point B. So much for all that free travel I expected during my retirement. But who wants to travel any way with people putting explosives in their underpants?

Did anything good happen during the Aughts? Well, yes. There were the IPhone and Kindle and texting and Twitter and Facebook. And they started letting us use our cellphones as soon as the plane lands, so we call people to tell them we just landed and we're waiting to get off the plane and we'll see them in an hour or so depending on traffic and we love them. We added at least 40 more channels to our cable menu, so we always have lots more infomercials and shopping networks and reruns of "Law and Order" to numb our brains. And we got to see and hear Beyonce and Rihanna and Kanye and 50 Cent . . . everywhere, all the time. Meantime, both Rosemary Clooney and Perry Como passed from our midsts during the Aughts, leaving me musically bereft.

All in all, the Aughts were a lost decade -- sound and fury signifying nothing, to quote The Bard. We all enjoyed the orgy of house refinancing while it lasted. Who didn't like seeing the value of their home going up $1,000 a day? Don't be left out! Refi today! Do it online! Buy two more houses with your equity! You'll be rich and you won't have to work for it!

But it was a fluff decade, based on borrowed money without enough ingenuity and innovation. We got fat both physically and intellectually. We had a President who had trouble putting words together, yet too many of us actually admired his inability to be articulate. The entire decade was built on a false expectation: What goes up can't come down. That canard is at least as old as Tulip Mania in Holland 400 years ago and as new as the Tech Bubble that burst as the Aughts began. Where have all the flowers gone? When will they ever learn?

The last Aughts -- from 1900 to 1910 -- were a different story. We had a President, Teddy Roosevelt, who used his bully pulpit to bust trusts, spread the wealth and articulate an optimistic vision of our country. He ended wars (the Russo-Japanese conflict) instead of starting them. He formed the national park systems, which is why Yellowstone and the Everglades and so many others aren't condo developments today. Meantime, entrepreneurs like Henry Ford were starting companies that changed how we live, and innovators like the Wright Brothers were lifting us into the sky. Ragtime was blending Anglo settlers' music with the rhythms of former African slaves; an original American culture was forming. It was a magnificent time, full of hope and change.

I think I'll take my Teddy bear and go to bed.

Remembering Aunt Bertha

Bertha Emma Freudenstein Carter (1889-1993) was my great aunt. She was also the moral center of our family the entire time I was growing up. Born the eldest of six children, she only made it through the fourth grade. Her handwriting always looked like that of a fourth grader, but it never stopped her from sending letters and cards to her family and loved ones on every occasion. While I was in the army in Vietnam, she sent me packages of cookies, with a note and a few Oral Roberts religious pamphlets. She was an avid Oral Roberts fan and watched him every week on her 14-inch black-and-white television.

She and her husband Alonzo "Curt" Carter married in 1907 and homesteaded a dairy farm near Mount Rainier; they ran it almost until Curt died in 1951. Aunt Bertha never had children of her own but was surrogate mother to dozens of us, especially the children of her brothers and sisters. After Curt died, she sold the farm and, even though she was then in her 60s, she opened what today we would call a board-and-care home for the elderly. She operated it until she was well into her 70s, cooking three meals a day for as many as 10 people, doing massive amounts of laundry, and cleaning -- always cleaning. Until 1965, she drove the 1940 Ford V-8 that Curt had bought brand new while they were living on the farm. But by the mid-1960s, she had decided she needed a new car with automatic transmission. So she traded the Ford in on an American Motors Rambler, four-door with push-button radio and electric windshield wipers. (If only I had been smart enough to buy that Ford from her back then. It only had 60,000 miles on it in 25 years of driving, and the original grey-green paint and felt upholstery were still in good condition. Sigh.)

Aunt Bertha would pull up to our house, usually on a Saturday morning, just to see how we were doing. She'd usually bring us something she'd baked or picked out of her garden. Her baked goods weren't the most elegant, but they were always tasty. My mother, however, wouldn't let us eat her pies because she used lard in the crusts. Mother also tossed out a lot of the apples Aunt Bertha brought because they were too bruised from falling off the tree. Bertha never wasted anything.

She was very religious, but in a way that I wish more people would be today. She attended two different churches, one in the city and one out in the country where she used to live on her farm. She never preached or proselytzed. Instead, she showed what she believed by what she did. She cared about people and didn't judge them. She laughed with us when we were happy, grieved with us when we were sad. When my dad died at the age of 47, she was a rock of strength for my mother, sister, brother and me. She had a big painting of Jesus on her wall everywhere she lived -- the Euro-centric kind that showed him with light brown hair and blue eyes. But she never spent any of her precious time trying to convert others. You just knew what she believed. This is the kind of faith I have tried to have. I hope I measure up to her example.

She never stopped doing or caring. Very late in life, when she was too frail to be helpful to others any longer, she grew increasingly impatient with God. She really wanted to leave this life and get on with the next. It took longer than she wanted it to, but she endured the wait and called it the price she had to pay. She died in 1993 at the age of 104.

Two of my most treasured possessions today once belonged to Aunt Bertha. When she was well into her 90s, she began giving away her possessions to those she loved. When I paid her a visit one afternoon, she told me what she wanted me to have. She walked over to her old curio cabinet and took out a tarnished silver cup and saucer. Her father brought it back for her when she was 10 years old from his time as a failed prospector during the Yukon gold rush of 1898. She had kept it all those years, and decided I should have it now because I was interested in history.

My other prized possession from Aunt Bertha is a Packard-Bell table radio in a red bakelite case. For years, it sat on her kitchen counter. She would listen to music and the news while she cooked. When I got it, it had been stored by my mother for years and no longer worked. Fortunately, I found a man while we were living in Dallas who repaired old tube-style radios. Today, Aunt Bertha's radio plays just fine. While I cook or wash dishes, I listen to it. It's usually tuned to KIXI-AM in Seattle, which plays music of the 40s, 50s and 60s. And when I hear a tune by Tommy Dorsey, Jo Stafford, Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald, I smile.

Biting The Hand That Used To Feed Me

I worked for five different shareholder-owned, private corporations for nearly 40 years before I retired last year. I was fortunate enough to work in close proximity to top management most of that time, and I saw the internal workings close up. I made a good living and managed to save a decent nest egg for retirement, although my definition of "decent" has changed dramatically since the economy melted down in September 2008. So what I have to say now probably won't sit well with some of my former colleagues.

I think American capitalism has gone terribly wrong in the past couple decades. Companies have grown "too big to fail," to use the term that became popular a year ago to justify government bailouts. In my opinion, however, "too big to fail" is simply a convenient cover to hide the self-preservation instinct that seizes corporate managements when the economy heads south. "Too big to fail" has given too many companies an easy means to protect senior management and almost nobody else.

I'll give you an example. I am investor in a company (I'll be polite and not name it) that sold "auction-rate notes" secured by municipal bonds. Easy redemptions were supposed to be readily available at any time to small investors like me because the company simply went to the credit markets every week for short-term borrowing to fund them. "Nobody expected all credit markets to seize at the same time," was the explanation I got when suddenly none of the company's investors were able to redeem any notes. Now, almost 18 months later, "market conditions" still aren't good enough for investors to get most of our money out. But when I read the fine print in the company's regulatory filings, I found another reason for the problem: During the boom years, the company had borrowed massive amounts of money under its bank credit lines to fund an ambitious growth strategy. So much borrowing, in fact, that the banks have refused to extend any further loans, leaving the company at the mercy of the "credit markets," which is code for billionaires, foreign banks, hedge funds and other shadowy fat cats. And these "credit markets" will only invest if they're comfortable that a company has the wherewithal to survive. Smart of them. I wish I had that option right now.

I add all this up and here's what I get: This company's knows there are ways other than the mysterious "credit markets" in which it could raise capital and take care of its investors. But its managers also know that those other ways -- acquisition, merger, sale of assets, etc. -- would jeopardize their own jobs, bonuses and future employability. So management's solution has been to stall the small investors with reassuring gobbledygook while it finds "other solutions" that will "facilitate investor confidence." Um....right, sure. But let me suggest that if any lower-level worker in any American company tried to stall this long to cover a problem, she or he would pounding the pavement right now and their kids might be using food stamps to eat.

This is just a small example of what's wrong with American capitalism these days. We have allowed an entitled class of executives to take control. These folks refuse to accept responsibility for what has failed us. In Japan and elsewhere, managers usually resign when things go badly -- even if they are not directly to blame. But not here. Our entitled executive class holds on with with a clueless ferocity that would make Marie Antoinette proud. The delusional explanations take my breath away: the scope of the crisis was "unanticipated," "market conditions beyond our control" created the situation, "external factors" affected results. They ought to add that the dog ate their homework. What do shareholders pay executives for if not to anticipate crises, plan for changing market conditions and stay ahead of external factors?

Wouldn't it be refreshing if a company "too big to fail" owned up to the fact that its management borrowed too much, took too many risks and blinded itself to the dangers ahead in order to boost executive perks and rewards? Refreshing indeed, but it'll never happen. Just consider the lawsuits that would be filed! The personal liability that might be incurred! You'd have to be crazy to say that! The lawyers would never let us do that!

To be sure, American capitalism has always been about who could clobber the competition and grow bigger, faster. It has also always been about greed -- which Gordon Gecko memorably told us is "good." Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan were hardly warm and fuzzy guys. But I can also remember some better angels of corporate nature in my own career. When I started with Times-Mirror Company in the early 1970s, the Chandler family of Los Angeles considered the company a reflection of themselves. It was their patrimony for generations. When you went to work there, you knew the company would take care of "its people." Of course the Chandlers grew fabulously wealthy because of "its" company, but there was always a feeling that they cared about us. Most importantly, bonuses at Times-Mirror Company were based on performance. Nobody ever got several times their annual salary, which became almost a norm in some Wall Street firms.

That's what missing today. Few shareholder-owned corporations have institutional memory any more. New management comes in, cuts costs, boosts revenue, gooses the stock, makes huge salaries and bonuses -- and then cashes its chips and leaves the poker table. Then the next management arrives and the cycle starts all over again.

No heart, no soul.

Turning 65, Part Two

I will turn 65 this Sunday at 5:24 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, according to my birth certificate which is also stamped "legitimate." (They cared about such things in 1944; how old-fashioned.) But, for Medicare purposes, I have been 65 since November 1, 2009 at 12 a.m. That's how it is, now that I am a ward of the dreaded thing we've been hearing so much about: a government-run single payer health plan. Yipes! Does this make me a socialist?

But let's begin at the beginning. In preparation for the Big 6-5 (and also to free myself from the $1,104 per month I had been paying for COBRA coverage since I retired), I studied the Medicare web site -- which is really good, considering it's put together by socialists. To assure that Medicare coverage begins on your 65th birthday, which is the earliest it can begin unless you're disabled, you need to start the official process 90 days before. But even before that you need to know what you want, and you have to have a passing knowledge of the lingo: Part A, Part B, Part D, MAGI (modified adjusted gross income), MedAdvantage (with or without Rx). You get the idea.

Medicare used to be pretty simple after it was passed in 1965. You turned 65 and you automatically got Part A (hospitalization coverage) free of charge, courtesy of the taxpayers of the United States. Fortunately, Part A hasn't been fiddled with too much, and it's still free for everybody. Part B (doctor visits, labs, outpatient procedures, etc.) was added a bit later and required you to pay a premium, but everybody paid the same amount. About a decade ago, Congress decided to means-test the Part B premium ("means-test" is code for "pay more). As a result, the IRS sends your MAGI to the SSA (Social Security Administration), which sends you a letter saying you made too much money two years ago and therefore must pay more than the Part B premium you thought you'd be paying when first started thinking about Medicare. Because I was a corporate fat cat two years ago (as opposed to the senior citizen on a fixed income I am now), I will pay the maximum until my lower MAGI on my tax return catches up in a couple years.

Part B only covers some things, therefore leaving you in jeopardy of getting gigantic bills you didn't expect. So, to alleviate that stress on us oldsters, the government permitted private insurance companies to offer Medicare supplement policies to cover things Part B doesn't cover. So-called MedAdvantage policies go a step further by relieving the government of the burden of paying my Part B bills by covering everything HMO-style. The government then rewards MedAdvantage carriers by paying them a stipend for taking my bookkeeping off its hands -- a situation that has come under considerable, and in my mind justifiable, scrutiny and criticism in the current health reform debate.

Part D (prescription coverage) was added in 2005; I have no idea why they skipped the letter "C" in adding a new Part -- another of those Don't Ask, Don't Tell government things, I suppose. Since Part D is handled entirely by private insurance companies (thus eliminating the socialists from the process), you have to spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out which carrier to use for prescriptions, which to use for Part B supplements or which to trust with both Part B and Part D. It's enough to give to you rheumatism or at least stigmatism.

Here's what I learned in the process: you have to be observant as an owl and opportunistic as an eagle to make the system work for you. The Medicare web site lets you compare Part B and Part D private plans in your area. It's a good system, but it doesn't protect you from the downside risks. Part B and Part D plans only guarantee your premium rate for one year. But what's particularly worrisome is that they may eliminate services they cover at any time, provided they send you a notice well in advance. Prescription drug plans use a formulary to decide which drugs they will pay for and how much your co-pay will be. They are free to raise the co-pay of any drug or to drop it altogether from their formularies at any time, once they give you advance warning.

Of course, you are free to change plans once a year during open enrollment. But what this means for most seniors is that they must engage in a guessing game each year: How sick do I expect to be? (If not very, go with the plan with the lowest premium.) How many prescription drugs -- especially the expensive brand-name types -- do I think I'll need? (If more than a few, it pays to check the formularies in advance of enrollment and pay a higher premium to get a lower co-pay.) And, after the first year on a plan, you're likely to get a hefty premium increase from just about any private carrier. No matter how much research you do in advance, registering for Medicare is a crap shoot.

I must say that the socialists have made the basic registration process pretty easy. I called a toll-free number; waited on hold for about three minutes; got transferred to a Social Security agent in Chicago; and completed the initial registration by phone in about 20 minutes. (The socialists have done an interesting thing: calls from the toll-free line are routed to any available Social Security agent anywhere in the country. I was so very, very happy not to be talking with a person at a call center in India. And I was pleased that no American jobs were sent overseas to achieve efficiency in Medicare.) At the end of the registration process, I was told I'd receive my official confirmation my mail and that my benefit would begin the first day of the month in which I turn 65 (November 1, 2009). And I was told I should sign up for a Part B supplement and a Part D prescription plan as soon as possible to make sure they are in effect when my basic Medicare benefit begins.

So, here I am today. Turning 65. A Medicare and supplemental plan beneficiary, and also a survivor of the registration process. To protect our free-enterprise system and prevent encroachment of socialism we have made the process more complicated than it needs to be. It's full of tricks and traps. I wonder how my dear mother, of fond memory, would have dealt with this process in her frail mental state. My guess is she wouldn't have. Just ignore it until you're broke.

Turning 65, Part One

I am not a Baby Boomer. I cannot be blamed for the failures of what I hope will be our only two Boomer Presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Nor for the Boomers' greed, selfishness, materialism and excesses of the flesh. OK, so maybe I dabbled around the edges of those things, but I was born too soon to indulge in all the hedonistic pleasures. I didn't result from my parents' long wartime separation and lack of sex, followed by an immediate post-war pregnancy. I am a War Baby, born five months after D-Day, two weeks after Franklin D. Roosevelt won a fourth term, and five months before the Germans surrendered. With my birth, my father was hoping to avoid the draft. He didn't. He left for basic training a couple months after I was born and didn't get back from occupied Japan until September 1946.

And next month I will turn 65, well ahead of the Boomers. What's left of my hair is turning gray. My joints hurt and I complain about it. I just can't seem to sleep beyond 7 a.m. or stay awake past 10 p.m. (OK, maybe more like 9 p.m.) Most new movies, music and TV shows don't interest me much. I listen to oldies on AM radio that I once bought on 45 rpm records. I have started clipping grocery store coupons. I eat raisin bran with skim milk. I mix Metamucil into my orange juice. I get junk mail from people trying to sell me raised toilet seats "contoured for comfort" and Total Body Cleanse "to eliminate unnecessary toxic build-up." (See above). Sigh. I have become my grandfather.

Of course I know that, considering the alternative, turning 65 ain't so bad. Problem is, I wasn't expecting to get this old. I went to Vietnam and didn't think I'd come back. I watched a lot of friends die of AIDS. My college roommate was murdered at age 34 for no reason by a crazy guy with a handgun. But I'm still around, now approaching the traditional boundary of Old Age. I do wonder, sometimes, why I made it and so many others didn't.

Being on the cusp of the Boomer generation, I know I have been infected by the Peter Pan syndrome so common to the 1946-64 group. "I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up!" But, then, why get old when you can have Botox, a nip or tuck, and knee-replacement surgery, and feel great? Why wear glasses when you can have laser surgery and "look years younger"? Why get fat when you can staple your stomach and pretend you're back at your "fighting weight"?

There are any number of indignities associated with reaching 65. Younger people call me "sir." I hate that. The well-behaved ones even open the door for me. That's not so bad. I enter cars butt-first now because it's easier to drag my legs in behind me. It also takes me longer; I no longer "hop" into a car. Two glasses of wine put me to sleep; double bacon cheeseburgers give me gas. Peeing takes longer during the day but happens too much in the middle of the night. My feet get cold if I don't wear warm socks. My doctor, my preacher and my broker are all younger than I am.

My Aunt Bertha, who lived to be 104, once told me that "old age is bunk." She hated the loss of vigor, the death of her friends and siblings, and the gradual narrowing of her world. However, she managed to drive until she was 90, live independently until she was 98 and enjoy a glass of sherry "for medicinal purposes" until she was 102. I intend to follow her example, God willing.

It is true that, just when you start getting good at this thing called life, your machinery wears out. But, if I follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule diligently, rotate the tires and occasionally buy a new battery, maybe crossing the Old Age boundary won't be so bad.

Part Two: The joys of registering for Medicare