Students Of Success

A bipartisan committee has made two recommendations to President Bush regarding tax reform. In this article, we take a look at the second option.

Tax Reform

A year ago or so, President Bush decided to spend his political capitol on tax reform and fixing social security. Social security reform went down in flames, so now it is time to see if tax reform is an option.

In an effort to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, the committee was charged with coming up with alternative revenue sources. The biggest deduction on the books is the mortgage interest deduction and the committee has offered two plans. The first puts a cap on the deduction and would be a disaster. The second option, however, is very interesting.

The committee on tax reform has recommended a unique approach to eliminating the mortgage interest deduction entirely. Before you go ballistic, consider what they are replacing it with.

In this second option, a homeowner would be unable to deduct any mortgage interest. They would, however, be able to claim a tax credit equal to fifteen percent of the interest paid up to an undefined mortgage cap. While that is a lot of jargon, the key is the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit.

A tax deduction is reduced from your overall income. If you earn $80,000 and pay $10,000 in interest, your taxable income will be reduced to $60,000. It looks good, but it doesn’t make as big a difference in the actual tax you pay. A tax credit, however, is a different story.

A tax credit is an amount deducted from the actual amount of tax you have to pay each year. Assume you whip together your taxes and owe $10,000 to the IRS after claiming all your deductions and checking the tax owed chart. Under the tax reform plan, you would total the interest paid for the year and then reduce your tax owed by 15 percent. If you paid $10,000 in interest during the year, you would take a tax credit of $1,500 against the tax owed. In short, this would reduce the check you have to send in from $10,000 to $8,500.

The tax credit plan offered by the tax reform committee is very interesting. It could be windfall for some people. Apply the numbers to your 2004 taxes and see how you come out.

Sergio Haros is with Great Western Mortgage - San Diego Mortgage Brokers - providing San Diego home loans. Great Western Mortgage is a San Diego mortgage company writing San Diego mortgages and San Diego refinance and home equity loan.

I got an email recently from someone whose mother died. She knew I’d suffered the loss of my mother and wanted some insight on how to deal with it. Unfortunately for her, I had no advice…shit…I’m still dealing with it.

Every single day I think about my mother. I think about her living and breathing. Talking to me, laughing with me, yelling at me. But I never, ever think about her death. This email made me think of that so I began resenting that email. I began resenting that someone else had to deal with a mother who was dead. And I really resented that someone thought I was an expert on dealing with dead mothers. If you get to be an expert on anything…the last thing you want to be is an expert on dead mothers.

When I clean my home, I remember doing the same with my mother. Saturday was cleaning day and I always equate lemon fresh Pledge with her. I think of my mother often. I miss her every single day. I find myself wondering…I wonder what my mother would think of this duvet cover. Or I wonder what she would think of my efforts to create a beautiful home. I know it’s weird that I know she’s gone but I don’t wonder about her as if she’s dead…I wonder about her as if she’s still in Louisiana wondering what I’m doing too. I know…crazy me.

Death is pretty permanent. It’s as permanent as it gets actually. It’s the end. I like to think of my mother being everywhere. I don’t like thinking of her as a skeleton in a casket under 6 feet of dirt on the side of an old church in the country. That’s too permanent.

I didn’t have much to offer she-whose-mother-just-past. I don’t know her that well so was unable to infer much. I offered what I could. A place to come and rest and just be without the responsibility of dealing with death. Granted, with her in my home, in my space, in my world I…would have the responsibility of dealing with death. With personal death. With my own permanent tragedy.

I invited her into my haven where I am safe from all things painful and I helped her in a very small way deal with her mother’s death at the expense of my peace. She left yesterday and I turned to my guy and the normalcy of my life to bring me back from my abyss.

I, Monica Lenay Pattan Mingo, a self-professed, uptight, prude bitch, allowed someone to hurt me without knowing because I knew how badly she was hurting. I didn’t feel a kinship with her. I just felt renewed in my own personal, permanent pain, in my infinite grief. And I left knowing only one sure thing…I’m not cut out to be a hero.

http://www.MonicaMingo.com

Food history has always interested me. We can learn a lot about our present eating habits from what our ancestors ate. I’ve read up on the subject and I’ve even hosted a few parties serving period foods. Today we’ll talk about the Vikings. With the help of our friends the archaeologists, food finds have been made. The Scandinavian people of the 8th through 11th centuries were not as limited in terms of their diet as some might think. They were masters of the sea and ate everything from oysters to whales. They were much more than just avid anglers feasting on a variety of fresh and saltwater fish. They were farmers as well. In the Danish settlement of Jorvik, now called York in Great Britain, finds of both wild and domestic meats were found. Among those were venison, beef, mutton/lamb, goat, pork, chicken, goose, duck, grouse, and wood pigeon. The Vikings cultivated grains such as barley, wheat, rye, and barley. They grew vegetables and fruit like carrots, parsnips, turnips, celery, plums, apples, raspberries, elderberries, and much much more. To top that off, they were not opposed to using spices and herbs other than salt for a little extra flavor.

Honey was the big sweetener in the Middle Ages. The Vikings used a lot of it to make mead. You can read my article “The Stuff of Poetry Mead” (http://onlinecooking.net/output_story.php?ID=1038) for more information. The Vikings drank more than just mead. They had access to ale and even wines brought back from Italy and France. Bread would have been a staple, since it is filling (it also keeps you pretty regular). I recall a class assignment back in elementary school where we had to prepare a food from our respective cultures. Being proud of my Scandinavian ancestors, I picked something Viking related. I found a recipe in an old issue of Skalk, (http://www.skalk.dk/) an archaeological periodical published in Denmark. It had a lot of different grains in it, and unlike some of the breads we are use to today, this stuff hit your stomach with a “thud”. (One of the things I enjoy doing is making improvised dishes based on ingredients found in the Viking and Medieval ages.)

Here is a recipe that translates pretty well even to modern times. It will keep you going on the coldest of winter nights. Drink a couple horns of mead and you’ll be really happy.

Paul’s Viking Stew

A large piece of meat cut into cubes
One large onion (chopped)
One carrot (chopped)
A few stalks of celery (chopped)
One Parsnip (chopped)
Some cabbage (chopped)
Pearled barley
Beef broth or stock, you can use chicken stock as well
Oil for cooking
Salt and Pepper

Put your vegetables into a big pot and cook on low heat in a little oil. If you want to stay authentic, do not use corn oil. Corn as we know it in the Americas was not used until much later. Olive oil might have been used if some Norwegian traveled to Italy and picked up some.

When the onions and cabbage look translucent, then add the meat and barley. Cover everything with your stock and bring it to a boil. Reduce it to a simmer and stir it occasionally to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom.

Cook until the barley is cooked and the meat is done all the way through. You can also thicken this with a little flour in water.

So there you have it, an interpretation that would probably be a little better than what the standard Viking would have. The point is that this is a dish that would have been made with ingredients that were available at the time. Stay tuned for more medieval recipes.

Paul Rinehart is classically trained and is the founder of Online Cooking.