Work and Shop Tax Free

Many moons ago, I suggested shopping in another state as a way of avoiding sales taxes—I believe it was something like, “Live in Washington, shop in Oregon.”

Why THAT particular combination? Washington State has no income tax, and Oregon has no sales tax. Plus, I’ve had personal experience on the west coast. The only thing I’d avoid here is getting gas in Oregon, because it’s against the law to self-serve your own gas there…in other words, all pumps are full-serve, and you pay the corresponding price.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. There are other income/sales state combinations that may be beneficial to you. The income tax free states are:

• Alaska
• Washington
• Wyoming
• South Dakota
• Tennessee*
• New Hampshire*
• Texas
• Florida
• Nevada
*dividends and interest taxable

Now for the list of states that impose no sales tax:

• Oregon
• Delaware
• Montana
• Alaska
• New Hampshire

If you live in one of the income tax free states, and next to a sales tax free state, why not take advantage of it? Once a month or so, go over the border and stock up! That’s what I did when I lived in Washington and Texas, although in Texas, I literally went over the border and paid little taxes if any.

This is yet another way of stretching that shopping dollar—when times are good and gas prices low, head over the border and bring back truckloads of food and clothing for your family.

If you’re lucky enough to live in New Hampshire or Alaska, you don’t need to go anywhere except into town, it seems. Neither state imposes income or sales tax.

Skillet Match-up: Teflon vs. Cast Iron

We’ve all pretty much heard the buzz going around about Teflon skillets and how they’re supposed to be harmful to us, right?

Researchers at the Environmental Protection Agency have recently determined that those pesky PFOA carcinogens are of less threat to our health than the standard cast iron skillet.

In fact, the researchers themselves use Teflon skillets in their homes, and will continue to use them because the threat from PFOAs is so low. Cast iron, they say, is more of a health threat to us than Teflon.

When using cast iron cookware, iron bits flake off into our food. An overdose of iron isn’t good for anyone, especially those with autoimmune disorders.

T-Fal, a company that regularly uses Teflon in its skillets, says the release of trace amounts of PFOAs doesn’t happen unless the skillet is kept at a sustained temperature of 752 degrees, and that it “cures” it’s skillets at 572 degrees Fahrenheit, virtually eliminating the risk of PFOAs to be released under normal use temperatures.

Now I ask you: how often do YOU cook anything in a skillet at 752 degrees? I would think the skillet would melt before you got it that high! The spatula would DEFINITELY melt before then.

Go ahead and indulge in your Teflon skillets and stain-resistant carpet and clothing—none of it will kill you unless subjected to very high heat. It seems the only people at risk for this stuff is firefighters, and they have gas masks.

The Capitalism of Conscience

We’re slowly moving to a next big trend wave called Conscious Capitalism. If you‘re asking exactly what this is, I’ll give you some examples:

• Buying “green”

• Thinking before buying at all

• Buying “faith”

• Socially conscious investments

• Altering production methods and/or ingredients to do less harm to the planet

• Altering energy sources for production and/or manufacture

• Adjusting the work calendar/schedule to better serve workers’ needs

• Leading from the middle instead of the top

• Taking time for the spiritual self in spite of location

• Relaxing dress codes for maximum comfort

• Employer-sponsored classes for stress reduction, smoking cessation, etc.


Things like this are happening all over—in business, in school, in personal lives—and it’s going to get bigger. We’re all going to start doing well by doing better for ourselves, and it will start from the top down. CEOs will meditate on yoga mats in their offices, solar panels will become part and parcel of every new home, McDonald’s will offer flex-schedule workweeks, prayer will be conducted in cubicles, ties may become a thing of the past, and your boss will seek out ways to do business that harmonizes with the planet. They’ll have to.

To be “conscious” means to be awake and aware. To have “conscience” is to believe in doing no harm to others, even if the others are inanimate objects. We are slowly awakening to the truths about our society and what it’s doing to our world, and it’s starting to weigh on our conscience. We will do better for ourselves and our beliefs by voting with our wallets, and corporations will hear us (they’re hearing us already). To capture, and continue capturing, the almighty dollar from us, they will have to bend to our buying desires. If they don’t, they know the consequences—whether they come from shareholders or the consuming public. Simply put, there won’t be shareholders or consumers for their products or services.

Employers are already hearing the siren song of workers, in low wage jobs going unfilled by Americans, formerly-unreasonable demands for time off or special scheduling, and the coverage of such things as classes for stress reduction and smoking cessation.

I am human, hear me roar!

The fight to ignore or otherwise hold out until the very last second on adoption of the looming wave of conscious capitalism and conscientious consumers will go on until every last cent of cheaper alternatives and ideas has been spent. The foot-dragging will be fun to watch as soldier after soldier goes down in battle trying to protect the traditional, the has-been, and the refuse-to-be.

Meanwhile, the rest of us who’ve gotten the clue will be busy doing well by doing better for ourselves—through nutrition, whole self attention, and necessary purchases with more than one thought going into them. We will look upstream and down to see if harm will be done, then we will look within ourselves before making a casual purchase. We will demand that manufacturers produce with our interests and the planet’s in mind, and that company sales and marketing treat us with intelligence and respect.

For once, we will be in the driver’s seat with our hands on the wheel. This is what a consumer-driven economy is meant to be, and it will change the current face of capitalism as we know it.

By then, corporations will have gotten the hint that “green” and “God” sell to people as well as their wallets.

Seek and Ye Shall Find

I asked a rhetorical question about nutrition "truths" and was answered today: http://www.newstarget.com/017837.html

This link contains trans-fat truths in a nutshell. Now I know why I felt no hunger pangs for almost a full day--nut and seed fat (coconut milk) as opposed to vegetable or animal fat. Guess who's switching to coconut milk?

Another rhetorical question: why is the American Heart Association and just about every other cardio/nutro doctor out there pushing canola and olive oil when nut and seed oil is clearly more beneficial for us as a species? I expect my answer will be in the news somewhere tomorrow. :) The only thing canola's good for is high-temp frying. Nut and seed oils burn at high temps, so they're more suited to salads and soup pots. I add olive and walnut oils to commercial organic bottles of salad dressing (Omega-3 in every salad).

I had to inform the nutritionist at the local VA about walnuts containing Omega-3. She should've known, but obviously gets paid to tow the party line. Thank God researchers make their works available on the web--otherwise, we'd all be dead by now!

I've already switched to walnut oil, and plan to add coconut oil to my kitchen concoction array.

Hubby says, "Watch out-she's got a mortar and pestle, and she's not afraid to use 'em!"

One fine day in the kitchen...

...as I was mulling over the "shoot first, ask questions later" humor about Cheney's hunting accident, hubby comes home from work and tells me there are people who won't eat the muffins I sent in with him because they're dieting--not just run-of-the-mill dieting, but BIGGEST LOSER dieting.

This is way funnier than Cheney shooting a hunting partner.

Since I don't really know much about this TV dieting thing other than the previews and commercials on other channels, I went a-Googling to see what was what. That should've sent me a bladder control warning.

As I read through the basics of the diet, I laughed harder and harder until I had to make a potty run. There is absolutely NO structure or supervision to this thing, the participants get to choose their diet among several commercial ones in existence, and they basically play along at home with the TV show.

The common denominator among all the listed commercial diets is low-cal, low-carb, low-glycemic, yadda-yadda-yadda. I have no idea what the caloric content of my baking is, but I do know it's a lot healthier for them than the pre-fab crutch foods they're eating now--plus, it's from scratch!

Another Google session into low-carb cooking led me to some recipes for these poor misled fools, and every single one of them requires some sort of mysterious Atkins concoction (flavored syrups, artificial sweeteners, special flours, etc.) all in the name of substituting for the real thing. Let's replace real food with chemicals, shall we?

A third turn at Google led me to Paleo eating and the Neanderthin Diet. Of all the so-called "diets" out there on the market, this one seems to make the most sense by working with our biological genetics rather than the one-component-at-a-time diets so readily available. The Paleo way of eating allows us to eat AND eliminate carbs, sugars, and excess calories while maintaining a "species appropriate" diet.

As I looked further into the ingredients used, I thought, "Hey--this IS healthier than those other diets, as well as my current baking. I might give this a try."

After giving hubby the dietetic rundown on The Biggest Loser and my Google findings, I suggested that we switch to the Paleo method. He then told me not to bother, especially for the dieters at work, because there were only three of them vs. the 20 or so that gladly eat what I send in.

Just for fun, I made a cake with Paleo ingredients: coconut milk, nut flour, dried fruit and chopped nuts, arrowroot powder, honey, an egg, and dried unsweetened coconut. It didn't rise as high as normal cakes, but it was still good. After eating one 2x2 piece, I felt strange--no hunger pangs for the rest of the day. In fact, I didn't feel hungry again until the next morning!

Maybe there's something to this Paleo eating, in spite of the widespread information about fats, cholesterol, and heart disease. Could it be that we've all been led down the garden path when it comes to fats, fat avoidance, and harm to our bodies? What about grains and gluten?

Wow. All I wanted was a recipe or two that everyone at hubby's office could eat without worry. I think I found it, but I seem to have found a whole lot else, too.

To Big Pharma: Your Secret's Out

God help me for stopping to watch, but Jim Cramer (Mr. Trainwreck) said something today that I think reinforces the Bill Ford notion of "making what we sell." He said that our Big Pharma companies here in the U.S. are nothing more than sales forces, and that the small overseas companies that got acquired by our monolithic Merck, Pfizer, and the rest, are the ones actually making the drugs nowadays.

Also, he says if you choose to invest in pharma at all, look toward the foreign independents. I'd like to add the generic makers like TEVA.

Big Pharma is definitely ripe for a Bill Ford-style makeover. Instead of cranking out what they think MAY sell and MAY have a demand following, they should look into what people need NOW and are buying NOW. Simply adding their lot to an over-saturated market isn't profitable, as in the cholesterol and heart markets.

They seem to always be in search of the next blockbuster drug, yet never go the Star Trek route--"go where no man has gone before." This is where the little guys go daily, and they get rewarded handsomely for it. Big Pharma seems stuck in the "also ran" category--something else to sell in a crowded market.

Time to give the drug borgs something else to do, guys, and that's to survey their customers to find out exactly what sells, and make more. Whittle down the formulary and the sales staff, and get back to making what sells instead of selling what you make.

Bill Ford, Come Out of My Head--NOW!!

At the annual Ford shareholder meeting, which was televised on CNBC some weeks ago, Ford founder grandson Bill said something that I think now was rather earth-shaking:

"Instead of selling what we make, let's make what we sell."

Sounds so simple, it's completely astounding.

I've been applying it to a whole lot more than just cars--just think if we adopted that mantra and added it to other industries, like food, clothing, furniture, houses, etc., the world would definitely be a different place...possibly a better one.

Applying this to everyday purchases: let's buy what we use, not use what we buy.

Another astounding thought: Bill Ford may end up turning around a lot more than just a car manufacturer if many stop to think how profound and impactful his words truly are. By applying this thinking to your own life, just how much "turning around" can you do for You, Inc.? Can you restrict yourself to buying or making what you actually use, rather than using or making stuff out of what's sold to you?

Sometimes it takes a major crisis, like the possible loss of a car manufacturer, to enact profound and beneficial change. Why hadn't these guys though of this before? Perhaps this is the crack in the armor of mass production. I guess someone needs to be in the boardroom of corporate America, willing to ask the one vital question: why? Where has the logic challenge been all these years, especially for Ford?

It makes me wonder.

It also makes me wonder if there won't be a chain reaction in the corporate world as they try to hang onto what they have in these reduced-spending times. Reality hit Ford pretty hard, and it will hit others, too, with equal force as they finally FINALLY choose to face economic realities.

Good News on the Outsourcing Front

Hot off the CNBC news waves: Paul Hemp, senior editor of the Harvard Business Review, says that outsourcing is NOT the big money-saver that businesses thought it was, and that many businesses are starting to refrain from outsourcing—especially to China.

The reason: A huge bottleneck and backlog at our Pacific coast ports. Our port processing speed is so slow that it causes a cascading delay to the final destination, and this is racking up some major costs to the originating corporations in the form of ground transportation and penalties for missed arrival deadlines.

One can infer that it’s entirely possible that jobs will be returning to this country at some point in the future, when the costs of outsourcing fully come home to roost, and more and more corporations find it cheaper and easier to do things right here at home.

For now, though, all we can do is wait and continue our frugal ways.

Another Paradox of Choice

This is going to be a big diversion from the normal subject matter around here, and I apologize. I won’t be gone long.

Something about the President’s State of the Union address bugs me, still, after a few days: our fearful leader wants immigration, expansion of the H-B1 visa program, to cut entitlement spending, a reduced student loan program, and to preserve tax cuts for the rich, yet he gives no clues as to where we Americans already here are supposed to make a living of any sort.

How are we supposed to MAKE this living with inflation, escalating energy prices, reduced job opportunities through offshoring and outsourcing, real wage decline, even the reduced chance for loans for retraining and education?

We’re supposed to compete, but the tools have been taken away. It’s almost as if we’ve been reduced to the human equivalent of cockfighting.

Tell us, Mr. President, exactly what your vision of a stronger, bolder America looks like—browned skin covered in sores, clothed in tatters, picking lettuce out of the fields, our spouses and children cleaning houses day and night, dying in the streets when we get sick or injured, and scavenging city dumps when we’re too old and frail to work? This almost sounds like Iraq or some sort of Save the Children-type country, except for the lettuce-picking.

I presume his vision of America is a fully-surveilled, unfunded, do it yourself, part-the-Red-Sea type of division between wealthy and poor, the line being drawn between those who get their hands dirty and those who don’t. Those who get their hands dirty are supposed to want nothing, have nothing, and be grateful just to be alive each day—sounds like Hillary (gag!) had it right when she mentioned Uncle Sam’s plantation at a recent public appearance.

Here’s where I blow my whistle and throw down my flag: why are we putting up with these so-called “powers that be” who carefully construct this dire vision and direction of our country? By that, I mean ALL of them, not just one party or another.

We can either choose to sit back and accept (loudly, with lots of kicking) our pre-drawn fate, courtesy of some damned think tank, or we can jump out of the cockfighting ring and start assaulting the ringmasters (with votes, of course). It will take time, and it will take effort, but we can push back if we choose to.

Have you ever seen a Mexican or Indian slum? This is what our country will look like if we don’t, because it’s all we will be able to afford to live in—shacks made of whatever we can scrounge from the dump.

In the halls of Congress, there’s plenty of representation for those who make $200k or more (the Republicans), and those who make $100k or more (the Democrats), but nobody to represent the interests of those who make less than that. We can change that with our votes—the one tool they haven’t managed to remove from the woodshed.

Okay, my political diatribe is done—back to the regularly scheduled programming.

From the e-Mailbag: What It's All About

Snipped from an e-mail sent by a friend:

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"

You go, girl!

A Paradox of Choice

First, I’d like to pay quick homage to the author of the book The Paradox of Choice—Barry Schwartz.

Now, I‘d like to lay out a few paradoxical problems, starting with the whining voice on Lou Dobbs’s show last Tuesday.

Whiny voice: “It now takes a high class income to live a middle class life.”

Me to TV: “Oh, really? What’s your definition of middle class?”

Then she went on to singsong about a mortgage, two car payments, two children with another on the way, and no possibility of saving a penny. Obviously, there is room for cuts here.

Another side of the paradox: the elderly Social Security recipient who, along with her husband, takes 11 prescription drugs. The new Medicare Drug Plan hit her with a $250 co-pay when she was trying to refill one of her drugs, and now she splits the pills she and her husband have left. She doesn’t know how she’s ever going to come up with the co-pay money—it would eat up her entire check. Depending on what these drugs are for, there may be no room for cuts here.

One simple question from each of these parties would go a long way to solving their dilemma of choice: What else can I do instead?

To the whiny voice on TV—re-think that third child, that mortgage, that second car, and your definition of middle class. We are, after all, the only country on the planet that has one.

To the short-sticked in the drug store: re-think the need for some of those pills, and seek out a doctor willing to use foods and supplements instead. For the same $250 you’d spend on a co-pay, you could have a year’s supply of over-the-counter supplements for your ailments.

The one choice these two situations have in common is the choice to regress to the mean—in other words, the choice to sink to the common denominators of mainstream and dependence—and it’s causing problems for them (some even life and death). This is all part and parcel of a bigger paradox that is currently being faced by Uncle Sam and business leaders—they can no longer afford to carry us through the world on a lap of comparative luxury. We whine and fuss over the loss of “benefits” that we considered normal for American living, yet we are the only ones to have this type of lifestyle—the rest of the world laughs as they watch us cry and mourn our petty losses. The smoke has dissipated and the mirrors have shattered; let's learn to move on.

We are in this corner because we put ourselves here with our choices. Merely having choices is supposed to mean freedom, yet there are countless who have painted themselves into corners by giving up freedoms for ease and convenience. Pushbutton autopilot lifestyles have finally come home to roost for many, and they are learning the hard way that less is more. Those of us who already learned the lesson aren’t hurting or suffering for our loss—conversely, we are reveling in it, and so will they when they learn to let go.