Print Edition: September 30, 2007

CONJUCTION JUNCTION AND GOAT JUSTICE

Outta the Zone…Remember those Schoolhouse Rock ditties you enjoyed while watching Saturday morning cartoons as a kid? Well, thanks to that newfangled Internet thing you can enjoy those catchy and educational tunes all over again. Just go to www.schoolhouserock.tv  and click on your favorite title. A page will appear with the lyrics for that tune and a link to the video. Very cool. "Conjunction Junction what’s your function…"

*This just in. The Seattle, Washington City Council voted this week to allow residents to keep pygmy goats as pets. The only restrictions are that the goats must be dehorned (much to the relief of mail carriers) and they must be confined to the owner’s yard. The only wiggle room in the new ordinance is that you can loan your goat to a neighbor for grazing. All this was negotiated by a Seattle group called the Goat Justice League, which I think is a league with its own television package that no one can watch, sort of like the Big Ten Network.

Anyway, this got me thinking. I’ll bet Cadillac has no anti-goat ordinance. I’m going to look into getting a goat so I don’t have to mow my lawn any more. I’ll lease the goat to my neighbors so they don’t have to mow either. We’ll all save money on fertilizer because as the goat mows the clippings get processed and deposited back on the mowee’s turf. It’s quite an all-inclusive package deal and oh so very environmentally correct.

But wait, there’s more. When the goat returns to my yard I’ll milk it and make cheese and sell that to local pizza parlors. Wow, is this a genius idea or what?

*Speaking of genius ideas for making money, last week an internal audit of U.S. Justice Department conferences found that just ten of these meeting cost taxpayers a cool $7 million. One expenditure was for meatballs at $5 per ball.

Now, my father-in-law, Dominic, makes what any human being with even a single taste bud would classify as the world’s greatest meatballs. In his life he’s made maybe a zillion or a zillion-an-a-half meatballs. If he had worked for the Justice Department he’d have so much money now that Bill Gates would be coming to him for loans.

I told him last Sunday, as I consumed about $100 worth of meatballs (at Justice Department pricing) that it’s never too late to seek your fortune, especially when government bigwigs are involved. I’m going to be his agent and as soon as we can find someone at a government agency stupid enough to pay $5 for a meatball we’ll be on our way to easy street. I figure it will be simple to find such a govern-idiot. I’ll just go to Washington and roll a meatball into a public trough and nab the first bureaucrat who comes up oinking.

*While I’m in Washington there is one person whose hand I want to shake. U.S. Representative Dan Lundgren, R-California, is co-sponsoring a bill which would add a clause to the 14^th Amendment, according to a report by the McClatchy Newspapers service.

As it stands, the 14^th Amendment says that anyone born in the United States and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is a citizen. What this has come to mean is that any baby born in the U.S. has automatically been granted citizenship, even though Congress has never passed a law saying so, no president has ever ordered it and no court has ever ruled on it.

Lundgren’s bill calls for defining what "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means. His clause would define it as any person born to a parent who is a citizen, a legal alien, or an alien serving in the military. Just the fact that you were born on U.S. soil would not make you a citizen. Thus, babies born to people in this country illegally would not be citizens.

The key words here are legal and illegal. Bravo to a legislator who wants to make the difference crystal clear.

*One thing Washington is watching is the housing market. It’s no secret that housing and mortgages are good indicators of what our economy is really doing. Do you wonder where the housing is the most expensive and inexpensive?

According to a Coldwell Banker Home Price Comparison, the average price of a home in Beverly Hills, CA tops the most expensive list at $2.2 million. That’s followed by: Greenwich, Conn. at $2 million, La Jolla, CA at $1.8 million, and Santa Monica, CA at $1.8 million. Those are average prices.

The good news is that you can find less expensive housing, with the least expensive homes in Killeen Texas at $136,000 on average and Minot, ND at $139,000. The bad news is you’ll then have to actually live in Killeen or Minot. Don’t despair, though, because Graying, MI was ninth on the least expensive list at $155,000.

*Finally, as long as we’re in the home market, the October issue of Consumer Reports has a list of ten things you can do to save money on energy costs this winter. Perhaps the easiest one to accomplish is to lower you home’s temperature 5 to 10 degrees at night and when no one is at home. The magazine says doing that can "slash your heating costs by up to 20% per year." You might even save enough cash to buy a goat in the spring. It’s win-win all the way around, isn’t it?

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to neffzone@gmail.com.  Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews. 

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