The uncoolest auto accessories money can buy

By By Leon Rochocco, Jr.

Published April 05, 2013

Hagerty

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Some things in life are just plain embarrassing, the clothes your mom made you wear in the sixth grade, walking around with a large stain down the front of your pants or sitting on a whoopee cushion, although in that case, it’s more embarrassing to be the perpetrator than the victim. 

And just as there are some things that are embarrassing to do or wear — like a polyester leisure suit  or white patent leather slip-ons — there are certain things that you simply shouldn’t install on your car. To try to save you and your loved ones untold embarrassment, here are five automobile accessories you should never, ever add to your car:

1. Curb Feelers: If you need these to keep from crashing into the curb, you should probably have a hospital candystriper push you down to the DMV office so you can turn in your driver’s license. 
2. Yellow Plastic Baby on Board Sign: These silly signs do not encourage the drivers behind you to be any more considerate. But they may encourage laughter at your expense, as in “Why would anyone want one of those signs?”

[Related: Five of the Silliest Automotive Features]

3. Pine Tree Air Fresheners: If you need these little puppies, you probably need to improve your automotive hygiene and not give other motorists the hint that you have a full ash-tray, a dozen empty pizza boxes, eight years of dog drool on the windows and rancid yogurt containers rolling around under the passenger seat of your classic Mustang.
4. Truck Nuts: These absolutely tasteless devices evoke what makes a bull a bull and sag from trailer hitches to make the kind of personal statement that few people should ever make.

[Related: Obsolete Automotive Accessories]

5. Oversized Rear Wings: Usually found on totally worn out and otherwise stock low-horsepower conveyances with nameplates such as Cavalier, Cutlass Cierra, Escort or Neon, doubling the horsepower wouldn’t create the need for the increased downforce that such laughable wings probably don’t generate. On top of that, any car with such an appendage is at risk of being pulled over by the good taste police.

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Russia's support for Cyprus' seizures of deposits may mean big money already out

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    Cyprus banks prepare to reopen

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    EU Parliament member: Situation in Cyprus is 'appalling'

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    Why should Americans care about Cyprus bailout?

As crisis-ridden Cyprus proceeds with a bank restructuring program that will take as much as 40 percent from large account holders, most of whom are Russian, the Kremlin has made an about-face and supported the plan.

Commentators wondered how Russia could go along with a restructuring that would cost its citizens an estimated four to six billion euros. The reason may be simple: The biggest Russian account holders already have gotten most of their money out of this island tax haven through a gaping loophole, according to some reports.

After a nearly two-week closure, Cyprus banks will reopen Thursday with limits of 300 euros ($383) per day on withdrawals. The European Union and the International Monetary Fund agreed with Cyprus on Monday on the conditions for a loan of $13 billion to the troubled country. The bank restructuring has sparked anti-austerity protests in Nicosia.

Under the terms of the loan, the island's second biggest bank, Laiki, will be closed down and accounts with less than 100,000 euros will be transferred to the larger Bank of Cyprus. A levy to raise billions of euros towards the bailout then will be placed on depositors with more than 100,000 euros, resulting in a an estimated seizure of 40 percent.

Most of the deposits of more than 100,000 euros at the Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank are ultimately owned by Russians, the Financial Times reported Monday. Russian account holders stand to lose a total of four to six billion euros in the deal and won't be able to remove their remaining holdings due to sharp limits on transactions, according to the Russian newspaper Vedomosti.

Cyprus traditionally has been a popular tax haven for Russian businesses thanks to lax rules on reporting the source of the money, which has led to accusations of money laundering. The ratings agency Moody's has estimated that Russian holdings in Cyprus banks have amounted to about $31 billion.

After some initial bluster, the Russian government has supported the Cyprus plan, albeit reluctantly. On Monday, even as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that Cyprus continues to "rob the loot," President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to restructure its 2.5 billion euro loan to Cyprus, according to an announcement on the official presidential website.

The announcement also said that Putin "considers it possible to support the president of Cyprus' and the European Commission's efforts to overcome the crisis in Cyprus' economy and financial and banking system."

The new, softer line on Cyprus puzzled some experts, who said that Russia easily could have bailed out the island nation, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

But the Kremlin's tacit approval may reflect a realization that Russian business will emerge from the Cyprus fiasco with less damage than previously thought: According to market watchers, the new tax on bank holdings won't impact the country's economy significantly, as sizeable Russian holdings there already have been removed, the BBC Russian Service reported.

The possibility of default in Cyprus has been looming for more than a year, and many Russian businesses registered there were prepared for such a turn of events, said Eduard Savulyak, director of the Moscow office of Tax Consulting UK. A majority of Russian businessmen worked through Cyprus-registered companies but kept their money in banks elsewhere, so the levy doesn't affect them, he added.

"I don't know one millionaire who would keep money in Cyprus," Savulyak said. "As far as private individuals, they have hundreds of thousands in accounts there, but not millions."

Furthermore, Russian oligarchs who still had large deposits in Cyprus likely withdrew most of it last week as Cyprus prepared to stop all unauthorized capital movements. On Monday, Reuters reported a major loophole that large Russian account holders may have used to jump ship while ordinary Cypriots lined up at ATMs to withdraw a few hundred euros: Uniastrum Bank, 80 percent of which is owned by Bank of Cyprus, did not place any restrictions on withdrawals in Russia in the week leading up to the restructuring decision.

Laiki Bank and Bank of Cyprus branches in London did not limit withdrawals that week, either. No one knows exactly how much money has been transferred out of Cyprus, Reuters reported.

Moreover, several solvent commercial banks, including a Cyprus subsidiary of state-controlled Russian bank VTB, will be left mostly unaffected by the restructuring, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

An editorial in the Thursday edition of Vedomosti concluded that the Russian authorities' accepted the Cyprus restructuring after it became apparent that mainly medium-sized businesses would suffer losses, not the large investors that are the Kremlin's first priority.

Now an exodus of all remaining Russian business likely is beginning, some in Cyprus say.

"Knowing the temperament of Russian investors, I'm sure they'll leave," an unnamed Russian businessman living on the island told the BBC Russian Service. "Right away (Russian businessmen) said, 'This is obviously a money grab, this is robbery. Forget Cyprus, there are a lot of other jurisdictions, like Singapore or Dubai.'"

Russian savers in Cyprus reported that funds had been frozen in their accounts already in mid-March, according to the BBC Russian Service.

Besides the imminent seizure of bank deposits, new powers granted to the Cyprus central bank by the restructuring deal have worried Russian investors and businessmen. In particular, the central bank will be able to convert current accounts to time deposits that will then be subject to the bailout levy, which could hurt even those Russian companies that had avoided time deposits, Vedomosti reported.

For those who haven't already taken their money out, the only way to get around the tax is to file a case in the Supreme Court of Cyprus, the BBC Russian Service reported.

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The end of life as we know it in Cyprus

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Was duck penis study an appropriate use of taxpayer money?

By You Decide

Published March 25, 2013

FoxNews.com

The National Science Foundation has been criticized for spending $384,949 on a Yale University study that examined, among other things, the particulars of male duck penises. Do you believe the study was a proper use of taxpayer funding?

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FAA to close 149 air traffic towers, senator calls for using untapped research money to save them

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  March 9, 2010: In this photo, an American Eagle flight waits for release from the air traffic control tower at Central Illinois Regional Airport in Bloomington, Ill.AP/The Pantagraph

The Federal Aviation Administration announced Friday that it will close 149 air traffic control towers, in a move one lawmaker said was akin to "removing stop lights and stop signs from our roads." 

That  lawmaker, Republican Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, also claims the FAA could save the towers by tapping into millions of dollars in unspent FAA research money. 

Yet the FAA moved forward Friday with plans to shut down the air traffic control facilities, describing them as a necessary cutback due to the sequester.

"These were very tough decisions," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a written statement. 

The cuts will affect small airports starting April 7. The closures will not force the shutdown of any of those airports, but pilots will be left to coordinate takeoffs and landings among themselves over a shared radio frequency with no help from ground controllers under procedures that all pilots are trained to carry out. The FAA decided to keep open 24 towers that were on the original list of possible closures. 

"We will work with the airports and the operators to ensure the procedures are in place to maintain the high level of non-towered airports," FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a statement. 

But the plan has raised concerns about the impact on safety and the potential financial effect on communities that rely on airports as key economic engines for attracting businesses and tourists. 

"The administration's decision to shutter these air traffic control towers is short-sighted and dangerous," Moran said in a statement "Closing control towers is equivalent to removing stop lights and stop signs from our roads. It is clear that this administration is putting its top-line message, that spending cannot be cut without severe consequences, before the safety and well-being of Americans." 

Moran is pushing an amendment to take $50 million from "unobligated FAA research and capital funds" from past spending bills and use that to save the air traffic control towers. The amendment did not receive a vote when proposed as part of the recently passed 2013 stopgap spending bill -- it's unclear whether it could get a vote Friday as an amendment to the 2014 budget resolution. However, any amendment to the 2014 budget package would have no effect this year, and the senator is considering introducing the proposal as a stand-alone bill. 

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association also blasted the decision announced Friday, while spreading the blame between Congress and the administration. 

"The closure of these air traffic control towers will reduce the overall margin of safety of our entire aviation system," association president President Paul Rinaldi said. "Ultimately, the partisan posturing in Washington that led to sequestration is the reason for today's decision and its destructive effects on aviation. The FAA made a bad situation worse by not utilizing a well-thought-out process for evaluating the value of air traffic control towers before ordering their closure." 

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., also voiced concern that "75 percent of the towers the Obama administration is closing are located in Republican congressional districts." 

Under the sequester, the FAA has to trim $637 million for the rest of the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. The agency said it had no choice but to subject most of its 47,000 employees, including tower controllers, to periodic furloughs and to close air traffic facilities at small airports with lighter traffic. The changes are part of the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, which went into effect March 1. 

All of the airports targeted for tower shutdowns have fewer than 150,000 total flight operations per year. Of those, fewer than 10,000 are commercial flights by passenger airlines. 

Airport directors, pilots and others in the aviation sector have argued that stripping away an extra layer of safety during the most critical stages of flight will elevate risks and at the very least slow years of progress in making the U.S. aviation network the safest in the world. 

Airlines have yet to say whether they will continue offering service to airports that lose tower staff. Any scaling back of passenger service could have major economic impact for communities. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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How to talk with your kids about the "M" word: Money

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For citizens living in the world’s wealthiest nation, Americans show surprisingly little knowledge of personal money management. Well over half of Americans live without the benefit of a household budget, and one out of five of us admit we have no clue how much we spend on such things as housing, food and entertainment.

Would so many of us be so loose with our money if we understood the potential for harm it poses to our children? The National Foundation for Credit Counseling’s 2012 Financial Literacy Survey recently revealed that 44 percent of Americans learned the most about personal finance from their parents. Clearly, the ability to handle money wisely is one of the most important lessons you can pass along to your children.

Parents can buy any number of “how to” books for teaching kids about money, but any of them worth their salt must emphasize the following 5 essential lessons. My wife, Ann, and I have taught these to our four boys and are pleased that our oldest sons have been self-sufficient financially since they left home. We still have two who are at home and in the process of learning these lessons.

1. Practice Delayed Gratification. This lesson is best taught from one year of age forward. To begin, parents must learn to say “no.” From almost the moment of birth, kids are in a “me, my, gimme” stage. Teaching them to wait for something they want is crucial. Adults who haven’t learned this lesson are likely to find credit cards irresistible. Try a simple rule to begin the learning process. At mealtime, insist that the child wait to begin eating until everyone is seated and a prayer of thanks is spoken. Consider the famed “Marshmallow Test,” that demonstrated which children had ability to wait for greater reward, a character trait with direct implications for future successes.

2. Teach Your Kids About Simple Allocation. This lesson, taught from ages three to five, is more visual than mathematical and it’s designed to help kids establish a routine with money. By now they are receiving monetary gifts from grandparents or other family members, and from the earliest age must learn to divide and distribute these resources. Use any three jars, piggy banks, envelopes, or other containers of your choice. Teach the child to divide all money received into the separate holders: giving to church or charity (10 percent), saving (50 percent) and spending (40 percent). Your child’s willingness to give to others may surprise you.

3. Teach Personal Responsibility. The very young child who wants to “help” a parent fold clothes or rake leaves is heartwarming, and that behavior should be encouraged. But by ages five to eight, a child should be taught to do routine chores simply for being a member of the family. Making the bed, picking up clothes (and perhaps even doing one’s laundry, depending on age and ability) become personal responsibilities and should not be “paid for.” An allowance should be earned for doing chores that benefit the entire family and are not personal responsibilities.

4. Talk About Earning and Spending Money. This is an extension of the earlier simple allocation lesson and necessary from ages eight to 12 because the child is able to earn money by doing a variety of tasks around the house. 

Post “jobs” on the refrigerator with the price you are willing to pay, but be willing to negotiate within reason. You’ll be surprised how quickly a young “contractor” bids on the work. “Hire” your children and teach them to complete jobs as if they are employed. Define each task, such as mowing the yard, cleaning the garage, raking leaves or washing the car. Set a fee, but pay only after a job has been inspected and done correctly.

Keeping your child's money in envelopes or in a binder with three vinyl zip pouches is now most useful for holding money that is to be given to others, saved and spent. When a folder fills up, transfer the money to a bank account. You can dramatically boost your child’s willingness to earn and save if you offer to match any amount that is deposited into a bank account. During this stage, you child is receptive to ideas about shopping for sales and ways to find the best prices on items they want to buy with their own money. Teach them about yard sales and thrift shops at this stage.

5. Let Your Child Get Some Work Experience. From ages 12 to 16, your child’s ability to earn money around the house and in the neighborhood dramatically increases. Once a skill such as leaf raking is mastered, the child can then offer the service to neighbors to earn additional money. By age 16 your child will know the value of working for someone else and earning money outside the home. It’s now only a short step to filling out applications at nearby restaurants and other businesses for part-time work.

Teaching these five lessons to your children isn’t easy and requires persistence, patience and love on your part, but no child should enter adulthood without them.

Chuck Bentley is CEO of Crown, a non-profit business and personal finance policy and educational organization, and author of “The S.A.L.T. Plan. How to Prepare for an Economic Crisis of Biblical Proportions” and “Root of Riches, What if everything you think about money is wrong?”

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Secretary Kerry, now is not the time to give money to Egypt's Muslim brotherhood

Secretary of State John Kerry has made exactly the wrong move. Releasing $250 million in aid to Egypt’s fragile Muslim Brotherhood government -- based on nothing more than hopes and promises -- is the worst possible course of action and gives a hostile and repressive regime a lifeline at precisely the wrong time.

In fact, given the Muslim Brotherhood’s recent record, it’s impossible to believe any promises of “reform.”

As Egypt’s economy continues to crumble, and periodic violence flares in Cairo and in cities along the Suez canal, and Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi’s consistent priority has been pressing his radical anti-American and anti-Israel agenda.  The list of the Muslim Brotherhood’s sins is long and growing:

- Egypt is violently persecuting its Coptic Christian minority, even going so far as arresting small children for allegedly defiling the Koran.

- Its security forces failed in their legal responsibility to protect the American embassy as protestors stormed the embassy, tore down the American flag, and replaced it with the black flag of jihad.

- Egypt is now becoming not just a source of terrorists but also a launching pad for terror attacks; deadly terror attacks have been launched against Israel from Egyptian soil and Egyptian terrorists were present in the 2012 Benghazi attack and in the recent attack and violence in Algeria.

- Despite getting credit for brokering the Israel/Hamas cease fire last November, Egypt loudly and publicly backed Hamas, a terrorist organization and a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

- Egypt has passed a Shariah-based constitution that restricts religious freedom and provides a legal basis for continued persecution of Egypt’s embattled Christian minority.

- Fox News recently reported that Egyptian authorities denied the U.S. direct access to a Benghazi terrorist suspect, a shocking act from an alleged “ally.”

- Finally, let’s not forget that Egypt’s president is a blatant and outspoken anti-Semite who calls Jews the “descendants of apes and pigs” and said that Egyptian children should be “nursed” on “hatred” for Israel. 

Egypt’s repressive failures have become so obvious that even the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman has begun to sour on Egypt’s version of the so-called “Arab Spring” (more like an Islamist Winter).  

The Muslim Brotherhood’s ruthlessness is matched only by its own economic incompetence.  As the people grow restless, the Morsi government is looking for something, anything, to validate and consolidate its hold on power. 

Fortunately for the Mohammed Morsi, the U.S. State Department is there to lend a hand.  

In addition to this recent infusion of cash – courtesy of the American taxpayer – the U.S. has given the Brotherhood something more valuable than cash: modern weaponry.  

Just as Egypt seethed with unrest, the Muslim Brotherhood and American embassy staff celebrated the delivery of four new American-made F-16 fighter jets, the first batch of 20 new jets – a $213 million gift from American taxpayers.  The celebration reportedly even included glossy American photos of the deadly and agile jets staged under a huge Egyptian flag.

Some have justified this delivery on the basis that the Egyptian military is a force for moderation, but it is now firmly under President Morsi’s control after he fired its Mubarak-era leadership.  

Others claim that we’re obligated to deliver the weapons under the terms of the Camp David accords, yet Egypt has breached the Accords repeatedly since the Arab Spring – even to the point of moving tanks into the Sinai.

Every new F-16 or tank delivered to Egypt is another weapon that can be used to consolidate the Muslim Brotherhood’s grip on power.  Every new dollar of economic aid buys the Brotherhood more time.  For Mohammed Morsi, this aid represents far more than a marginal increase in military and economic strength, it also represents an American seal of approval and a stamp of legitimacy on his repressive regime.  Every F-16 is a propaganda victory for the Morsi regime.

Egypt still has a chance for moderation.  After all, few things cure radical impulses better than the experience of radical rule, and the country does have a long recent history of peace with Israel.  But moderation will be infinitely more difficult to achieve if we arm and aid its most dangerous enemies.

As Egypt still struggles to determine its destiny, if we put our thumb on the scales at all, we must not do so in favor of jihadists.  The Muslim Brotherhood needs our weapons and our money.  We do not need the Muslim Brotherhood.

Jay Sekulow is Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

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