Monthly Archives: July 2006

The image above is the little weather widget that lives on my desktop. That’s what it looked like when I woke up this morning. I wept into my raisin bran when I saw it. Then I put on a swim suit and loaded junior into the bike carrier thing and pedaled over to Linden Hills park to spend the morning soaking in the kiddie pool. Genius.
Later this afternoon we lost power for a few hours. As soon as the lights went off I ran to the freezer to eat save all the ice cream. Then I ran downstairs to shut the computer down before the battery backup thing ran out of juice. I’d never actually been home when the power has gone off, so today was the first time that I realized that while my computer is backed up by battery, my monitor isn’t. Whoops.
The hot debate [ha!] in the neighborhood this weekend started when neighbor.dave yelled “at least it’s not twenty below!” as he happily sweated through his yard work routine. I said I’d prefer the cold to the heat. I’d probably say the opposite if it were 20 below out, but whatever. Several of the folks mingling around agreed with my take, but a couple of others just smiled and said they love days like today. Doofs.
In other weather news, Libby mentioned that the newest WCCO weather map program that Paul Douglas uses on TV doesn’t support 3 digit temperatures. Burn.

Today’s opinion based on garbage math brought to you by the Strib’s letters to the editor page.

William Cooper owns over 3 million shares of TCF stock, which paid a 97-cent dividend last year. That would be almost $3 million in dividends.
As outlined in his opinion piece with Michael Wigley, taxes on dividends dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent. That means Cooper netted over $700,000 in tax savings on his dividends alone. Add in the capital gains from his sale of TCF stock and other holdings and he has a million reasons to promote the president’s tax cuts. It also gives me a million reasons to question his credibility.
[REDACTED], BLOOMINGTON

Data Errors
- The tax rates on dividends didn’t drop from 30% to 15%, it dropped from being taxed as “ordinary income” – which could be as high as 35% – to being taxed at a flat 15% for everyone. [duh]
- There’s no such thing as a 30% tax bracket. [src]
- TCB paid-out $0.85/share in 2005, not $0.97. [src]
We’ll do the math both ways, just for fun.
Bad Data Math
3MM shares * $0.97/share = $2,910,000
Tax owed (30%) = $873,000
Tax owed (15%) = $436,500
“tax savings” = $436,500
Good Data Math
3MM shares * $0.85/share = $2,550,000
Tax owed (30%) = $765,000
Tax owed (15%) = $382,500
“tax savings” = $382,500
I have no idea where the letter writer’s $700,000 in “tax savings” came from, but his math gives me 328,000 reasons to question his credibility. Or maybe I’m wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Full Disclosure: I’m no fan of TCF Bank, but I do maintain a small account there so I can use their ATM’s without being charged a fee. (Genius.) I also don’t like that they might be naming the new Gopher stadium after a stupid bank with a crappy website.
Letters to the Editor – 7/30/2006 [strib]
Tax cuts are benefiting our economy [strib] – I think this is the original article

Hey check it out, it’s almost an entire half a pint of homegrown raspberries. Woo hoo. And there are tons more of them out back in the garden. Woo hoo again. Get me some ice cream or something, I’m ready to eat.
Those of you keeping score at home may recognize the significance of such a bountiful harvest, as these would be berries picked from plants that Libby planted way back when we first cleared space for our backyard garden way back when we first got a backyard to clear space in. For those of you who don’t remember that particular time in doodlehistory, I’ll just put it this way: these are berries from plants purchased from a pre-IPO Garden.com. Yes, that Garden.com. If I remember correctly we had a coupon and we ended up getting 12 live plants shipped overnight for like $8. 1999 ruled.
The story goes that Libby planted her raspberries in our garden and then a couple of days later I planted like 6 huge tomato plants and a ton of beans and zucchini and herbs and stuff and more or less hogged all the sunlight and water and nutrients and – go figure – all but like 3 of her plants died after that first summer. That’s what we in the business like to call a “whoops”. At the time I had also purchased a ton of lumber and wire and stuff so that I could build this killer industrial strength raspberry trellis thing that Libby had found blueprints for on the internet. (“Mmm… Ambitious this one is.” – Yoda, that afternoon). Go figure, all that crap is still up in the rafters of my garage, waiting to be built. Whoops again.
But now I don’t garden as much as I used to – mostly because I’ve finally come to terms with my super shady backyard – and Libby and her raspberries have somehow managed to claw their way into dominance. I’d estimate they’ve taken over a good half of the garden, and are actually producing quite a bit of fruit. Not enough to jam or jelly or anything, but certainly enough to enjoy as a snack, and certainly way more than they’ve produced any other year. Who knew?
Berrylicious indeed.