Neff Zone Column -- January 5, 2008

Print Edition: January 5, 2008

WHAT HAPPENED WHILE WE CELEBRATED

The holidays are now behind us so it’s back to work for this column. While we were devoting our thoughts to holiday themes the real news marched on. Now it’s time to catch up on the important developments that occurred during our hiatus from reality.

Our intrepid Flint correspondent, Big Rob, now reports that the thieves who had been stealing walnut trees from front yards in Flint have been apprehended. You may recall in a previous column we detailed how the tree-nappers had been cutting down mature walnut trees in broad daylight (when the trees’ owners were away and even as neighbors looked on assuming the harvesting was on the up-and-up). It turns out that the thieves were from companies based in both Brighton and Kalamazoo. Geez, it’s not enough that home-grown crooks in Flint have been absconding with manhole covers, sewer grates, catalytic converters, and copper tubing – now criminals from other cities are picking on Flint.

News about families was big over the holidays and prime among them was the lovely Spears family. You know what a responsible parent Britney has been, especially since a court took her custody rights away. Now her 16-year-old unmarried sister, Jamie Lynn, is pregnant. The bad part is that this has put a damper on the book about parenting advice by Lynne Spears, the mother of Britney and Jamie, which was to be published by a company that specializes in printing Bibles. Not to worry, though, because Lynne waited to announce her teenage daughter’s pregnancy until she could sell the story to the highest bidder, OK magazine. Isn’t it nice that the Spears’ have found a way to do things together as a family?

There was bad news and worse news over the holidays in the technology sector. The bad news was that AT&T will get rid of all its pay phones by the end of 2008, which takes away a major source of income from kids who like to check the return change slots for coins left behind. The worse news is that Air France is going to experiment with allowing people to make cell phone calls from airplanes, which will add to the already thoroughly enjoyable ambiance that is modern air travel. You think those ultimate fighting cage matches are something? Wait until you get 200 tense travelers screaming into their cell phones and locked in a metal tube for several hours. I predict flight attendants will eventually be issued striped referee shirts and cattle prods.

As you might expect, the government has been hard at work on your behalf. U.S. House members have been busy spending over $20 million of your tax dollars in what’s the governmental equivalent of junk mail – mailing you tips on car care, lists of road improvements and just plain bragging. The biggest spender was Thaddeus McCotter, a Livonia, Michigan Republican who spent $133,053. Well, at least there were 35 Republicans and 24 Democrats who spent absolutely nothing on junk mailings.

Meanwhile, some soldiers have been asked to forgo part of their enlistment bonus because their tour of duty was cut short due to war wounds. One National Public Radio report told of a soldier with a brain injury who was asked to return $3000. Pentagon policy says that enlistment bonuses should be paid in full within 30 days of an injury, but it’s not consistently implemented, so there’s a move in Congress to make the policy law. The sad thing is that we need a "law" for this.

President Bush approved a compromise energy bill. The word "compromise" is ironic in that the main beneficiary is the oil industry which was able to maintain its tax breaks in spite of record earnings. Ethanol production also got a boost in spite of evidence that it is distorting food prices. Corn prices have doubled, soybeans are at a 30-year high, wheat is triple the price of two years ago and reserves are at a six-decade low, and there have already been food riots in some countries. There’s even a shortage of hops, a key beer making ingredient, because traditional hop acreage in Europe is now half of what it was ten years ago and the land is being used to grow corn for ethanol. The good news is that at some point we’ll have plenty of ethanol to fuel our cars as we drive from store to store to store trying to find a loaf of bread.

In a somewhat odd legal development, it seems that lesbians who got married in Massachusetts when that state legalized same-sex marriages, now are having trouble getting divorced in their home states. In a Rhode Island case, when a lesbian couple applied for a divorce they were denied because under Rhode Island law they were not legally married. Law experts say that at least one person from the couple would have to move to Massachusetts to legally get a divorce. With all the legal maneuverings employed to get the same-sex marriage law enacted, it’s sort of humorous that none of the proponents thought about how to get out of these marriages. It turns out that what happens in Massachusetts has to stay in Massachusetts – literally.

Keith Richards, lead guitarist for the Rolling Stones, turned 64 over the holidays. Richards is a chain smoker, drinks copious amounts of alcohol, has ingested and injected virtually every narcotic known to man, and has had the blood from his body completely drained and replaced on a couple of occasions. Will some scientist please study this guy! He either has the best set of genes of any human being who has ever lived or he’s a vampire. Either way he’s a scientific marvel. Oh yeah, the Stones 2006 tour grossed over $450 million.

Maybe Richards’ secret is that he lives just one day at a time and gives no thought to the future. After all, the British economist John Maynard Keynes once said: "The problem with worrying about the long run is that in the long run we’re all dead."

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