Who's the Bigger Spy?

There's much discussion and, in some quarters, consternation about the U.S. Government tracking people's emails and telephone calls in the proclaimed interest of defeating terrorist plots. The debate usually centers on personal privacy and liberty vs. the need for the government to protect its citizens and non-citizens alike. Perhaps this same kind of scrutiny should be applied to looking at what private firms do with your emails and internet transactions. Google takes keywords out of every email you write (at least on gmail, but perhaps elsewhere too), and uses it to tailor the advertising that you receive during your online interactions. Two days ago, I ordered flowers online for commemoration of my sister's anniversary. Within an hour, I noticed that just about every online site I visited had advertisements for the flower vendor from which I had ordered. The same thing happens if you search for a product which you may someday want to buy or which about which you want information. A few months back I went on Google to look up the dimensions of a faucet, and immediately afterward, I was deluged with faucet advertising, both from the manufacturer in the inquiry and from others. If you are signed in to Google, they document everything you do online.

We learn to live with private firm invasions of privacy. Why is it so shocking when the government does a version of the same thing for national security purposes. The important thing to remember is that you shouldn't say or do anything online that you aren't willing for someone to see. I'm in a particularly bad situation. I write murder mysteries (See https://www.amazon.com/author/richarddavidson ), and I frequently search for poisons and other devices for causing mayhem in my books. I wonder what all of the internet spy organizations are saying about me? The fact is that your computer leaves records or footprints with every click and search and scan. Get used to it, or completely disconnect yourself from the internet forever. Isn't it amazing that mankind survived without the internet until twenty years ago? Can we do so again?

Background Checks and Knowing Your Neighbor

Two major things happened last week. Two brothers, twenty-six and nineteen years old, bombed the Finish Line of the Boston Marathon, and the United States Senate failed to pass expanded background checks for people wanting to buy guns.
In the case of the two bombers, who also had assault weapons and fired them at pursuing police, their neighbors and family members all said that they were good kids and had shown no signs of violent tendencies. Doesn't this sound just a little bit familiar? So many times we hear of someone committing a violent crime and find that neighbors and people who knew him or her casually thought the individual to be a pleasant quiet person. For all you know, there might be such a pleasant quiet person in your neighborhood right now. Would you want that person to be able to purchase an arsenal of firearms without a background check? The Senate would...The problem is that Senators think that it will never happen to them, and they think that the votes and contributions from the NRA are more important than the votes of the rest of us.
Last week the violence from presumably innocent people hit my home town, Boston. A campus policeman was shot to death at MIT where I went to school. The FBI had already interviewed the older brother a few years ago. They may or may not have caught his desire to purchase assault weapons if the expanded background check system had been in place. With that system, they would have at least had the chance to spot his moves. Those two brothers were not the only ones among us, perhaps in your neighborhood, who have hidden violent tendencies and reactions to circumstances. Look at all the instances of someone being fired from a job and then returning with weapons to kill former supervisors and coworkers.

Expanded background checks won't catch every potential monster, but they would definitely keep some undesirable people from purchasing weapons. Even the NRA says we need better mental health treatment and need to detect people with mental problems. If someone who has been fired is angry at his or her former supervisors and coworkers, but doesn't own a weapon, they will be delayed in acting upon their anger and will have time to cool down. That's why background checks are usually accompanied by a cooling off period. Expanded background checks won't solve all of our violence problems, but the people they save are just as valuable in the sight of God as you or I. We have laws that identify sexual predators in our neighborhoods. Why shouldn't we keep felons, potential terrorists, and people with mental problems from stockpiling weapons in our neighborhoods too?

Chicago Bears - What Are the Odds?

Yesterday, when the Chicago Bears played the Jacksonville Jaguars, two of their defensive players, Charles Tillman and Lance Briggs, intercepted passes and ran them back for touchdowns. Not only that, but these same two players intercepted passes and ran them back for touchdowns in the Bear's previous game against the Dallas Cowboys. I'm told that this is the first time that the same two players have ever done this in two successive NFL games. What makes the tandem of Charles Tillman and Lance Briggs even more unusual, is that they both wear double integer numbers (33 for Tillman and 55 for Briggs), and they both have double consonants in the spelling of their names. All of these extremely unusual facts suggest that whenever we are facing a task with the odds stacked against us, we should remember that even when the odds of success are very small, they are never zero. If you have enough priority and incentive to warrant tackling such a task, go for it. Charles (Peanuts) Tillman and Lance Briggs have shown that ridiculous odds can be overcome. Maybe they'll even do it again!

Heroes and Villains

One of the things you have to learn if you want to write successful fiction, especially mystery novels, is that people are complex. Your heroes will have flaws, and your villains will have positive aspects to their personalities. In real life, your opponent in sports, politics, or war will look like a villain to you as you gear up for competition or battle, but he or she will look like a hero to supporters of the other side. The trick is to avoid branding the opposition as an inhuman villain but to learn to appreciate the opponent's strengths. Only by objectively evaluating these strengths can you plan a successful strategy to overcome your opponent. The saving grace in all of this is that by appreciating the opposition's good points, you may learn to live and work together effectively even while you are competing. Always remember that successful interactions with others follow the basic rule of negotiations - you have to give something up in order to gain something. It works best when what you give up is of higher value to your opponent than it is to you.

The First Ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day

June 6, 1944…

D-Day…

0600 hours / Six o’clock in the morning…

Omaha Beach…

Easy Red Sector…

Hell was about to happen!

          I was a Pharmacist’s Mate in the Sixth Naval Beach Battalion. They assembled and trained our unit under hush-hush conditions. The reason for all the security was that our only mission was to be the first regular unit to land on the beach. They started training us before anyone even knew where the invasion would be. We certainly didn’t know when it would happen.

Our job was to support the assault troops with medical aid, communications, and boat repair. We were trained in the use of all kinds of weapons, but most of the fighting would be left to others. We were supposed to be the traffic cops on the beach, trying to land the troops and their equipment safely. Later, we would shift over to evacuating the wounded and the dead.

The invasion was a deep dark secret, so our unit had to be secret too. If the Germans knew about us, they could have tracked us to get advance info on the invasion. We trained for about fourteen months in the States, and then we were shipped to England a few months before D-Day. They put us under the command of the Army’s 6^th Engineer Special Brigade. We were sailors dressed like soldiers except that we wore black T-shirts under our field jackets, and our helmets had a blue/gray band around them and a red rainbow on the front.

          The weather had been terrible that week. It cleared enough at the last minute for the ships to proceed, but we had very limited use of air power. We headed for shore between 0600 and 0630 in the Easy Red sector of Omaha Beach. We were right behind the demolition teams that landed in inflated boats to try to clear some of the obstacles and mines that the Germans had set up. One set of obstacles was a series of telephone poles set into the beach angled toward the sea. They had mines mounted on their top ends set to detonate on impact by a landing craft or other vessel. The Germans discovered the demolition teams at work and threw everything they had at them. Those poor guys suffered about seventy percent losses, and there was no one else yet ashore to help them.

          Our final approach to the beach was by LCI(L). That was the designation for a Landing Craft, Infantry (Large). It was about half the length of a football field with a ramp on each side of the bow that could be lowered to discharge troops and equipment. They were manned by Coast Guard crews.

          One of the other landing craft, LCI(L)-85, that came in a bit after ours at 0735 was hit twenty-five times and later sank. Only six people got off its ramps unscathed. One of them was a friend of mine who told me later how, after a couple of the artillery hits, he had to take the fire hose and wash clusters of small body parts overboard. That violated all of his medical training, but it had to be done.

          By comparison, we were lucky. Our LCI(L) got off course because of the weather. We reached shore about four hundred yards east of our designated landing spot. Because of this, we came in under a cliff where the Germans couldn’t target us with their guns. We didn’t quite make impact with the beach, and the water was very choppy, so three of us had to swim for shore with a heavy line. We secured it to one of those tilted telephone poles that had a mine on the top end, and our men had to wade through the surf with full packs of equipment by clinging to that line. In most cases the water was up to their armpits. Most of our people made it safely to shore even though we had incoming fire from anti-tank guns and machine guns. We lost a lot of equipment when the waves knocked people over, and only two of our radios were still working when we reached the shore.

          For about six or seven hours we were pinned down at the high water mark where the beach sloped down at about forty-five degrees into the water. This area was covered with large water-smoothed multi-colored pebbles ranging from the size of a chicken egg to about four inches diameter. Whenever an artillery shell came close to us and hit in this area, the stones would start flying at high velocity. More of our people were wounded or killed by the flying stones than by the artillery shells.

          Only one tank made it safely to shore in our area. He set himself up on that slope of pebbles, and moved forward up the slope each time he wanted to fire on the German positions. Then he backed down the slope to hide from incoming fire. We thought we would be safest hiding behind the tank, but we soon realized that he was drawing a lot of fire, and we moved away from him.

          As more and more troops and equipment made it to the shore, the Germans stopped pinning us down because they had more important targets elsewhere. Then we started to do our best to tend to the wounded and get people ready for evacuation. Along the way, we saw two of our people crouched behind a half-track vehicle for shelter. A German shell hit the vehicle, lifted it into the air and dropped it on one of them. He died instantly.

          During the initial bedlam of that first day, we were so tired and the wounded had been hit so badly that all we could do was give most of them morphine shots to ease their pain. At one point a buddy and I found our battalion commander lying on the beach with an unexploded shell in his shoulder. It had entered his body through his right collarbone and now protruded through his left shoulder blade. We managed to flag down a truck and took him to one of the few field hospitals that had been set up. Only the use of penicillin, which was a new breakthrough, saved his life.

          Incoming Landing Craft and other ships were being hit by artillery and machinegun fire. Because of this many of them discharged their troops too far from shore for them to wade in. A very small number of men who tried to swim the rest of the way managed to get ashore safely. Those who did only made it by discarding their heavy packs. Most drowned, and we fished as many bodies as possible out of the water. We had to drag the bodies beyond the high water mark to be sure that they wouldn’t be reclaimed by the sea at high tide. This meant dragging the bodies beyond any hope of cover, directly toward the German guns.

          During the first day of the invasion I saw one soldier frantically signaling to me for help by waving the arm he had lost. Another had his leg blown off, and in his shock, he crawled to get it back in the hope that somehow he would walk again.  We found our Beachmaster lying shell-shocked next to boxes of burning hand grenades, but managed to get the boxes away from him before they exploded.

          The original plans called for the landing craft to evacuate the wounded on their way back out to sea, so that no craft left empty. Because of the heavy German bombardment of incoming vessels during the first couple of days, the ships were ordered away from the beaches for safety without taking on any wounded, and we ended up having to care for large numbers of wounded for a lot longer than expected.

          There were so many killed during the first day that we had to move the bodies with a bulldozer. We did this, both to keep the dead out of sight so they didn’t demoralize the fresh assault troops as they landed on the beach, and also to clear a path for the new troops to follow toward the German gun emplacements. The infantry finally managed to clear the extension of that path of mines, and they climbed up a ravine to get to the top of the cliff. Then they circled behind the German beach defenses which were all aimed toward the sea. Most of the Germans surrendered without resistance, and the troops were able to move inland off the beach.

          We didn’t join them. Our job was to handle the evacuation of the wounded and to direct traffic inbound and outbound from the beach. I was on that bloody beach nineteen days before I was evacuated back to England.

          For years afterward, I saw those beach landings and all the accompanying bloodshed in my dreams. I survived in some of those dreams, and in others I had a painful lingering death. That’s why I’ve refused to talk about it until now. I didn’t want to rouse my demons…

(Excerpt from Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread by Richard Davidson, The Lord's Prayer Mystery Series, Volume II. This is a composite memory of various members of the Sixth Naval Beach Battalion, and is historically accurate. In the book it is related by my fictional character Rob Slovitch.)

Enough! I Need a Change!

I haven't been posting regularly on this blog because I allowed myself to get involved in too many things at the same time. No matter how capable you think you are, you have to face up to not being a comic book superhero. We all have our limitations, and the key to success is to either avoid over-committing in the first place or to recognize the problem and develop a step-by-step plan for reducing your load to a manageable level. This also involves determining which of your commitments are to be eliminated or minimized.
Eliminate a commitment that is:

• Not satisfying to you, even if you accomplish it.
• Too demanding, because you could do several alternate things for less effort and/or time commitment and with a higher total reward.
• Not rewarding, in terms of either immediate compensation (may or may not be monetary) or in terms of long-term payoff through the opening-up of new opportunities.
• Goal-less. Some tasks are done, in juggling terms, for the sake of keeping the balls in the air. You don't want to keep running on the treadmill in order to stay in the same place.

What are the consequences of saying "No!" to a new or ongoing task? Sometimes you can stop doing something, and nobody will even notice. In other cases, you have to find and train somebody else to replace you, because the task must be done by someone. Occasionally, you can simply walk away, forcing someone who otherwise would never have volunteered, to step up, because the lack of a reliable person doing that job threatens the organization. You may be perceived as weak or unreliable for quitting your task, but if you can take that criticism, you may consider yourself a hero for forcing someone else to take responsibility and for giving yourself new found freedom to consider other directions and opportunities. The future starts right now. Re-assess your obligations and, if you feel overburdened, continue only those you deem worthwhile.

Third Quarter in America

There have been a lot of discussions about Clint Eastwood's Super Bowl Chrysler commercial, "Halftime in America" having had political overtones. I definitely disagree that any political message was intended. The point was that American manufacturing can and should come back to an energetic and vibrant status. Our past interest in short-term profits led to sending many jobs and capabilities overseas so that our corporate revenue statements looked good. It's time to take a longer term point of view. Forget those quarterly reports and rebuild our technical capabilities. Encourage college students to take technical courses and majors again by telling them that American manufacturing can and will grow so that they'll have good jobs. When you shop, look for that Made In U.S.A. label and give it priority over products from other countries. Encourage those who start small American manufacturing businesses. Start being proud of the things we can make instead of seeking dollars regardless of the source. If this sounds too much like patriotic cheerleading, that's too bad...It is OK to be patriotic and proud of your own team. Try it; you might like it.

The Abuse of Power

Power can be defined as the ability to exert one's will over another. Power is addictive, and those who have it seek to maintain it or keep it for as long as possible, regardless of the personal or material cost. One of the problems of the possession of power throughout history has been the "might makes right" syndrome. People who have the power to control others believe that they are right because they have the power to control others. Hence the old adage: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Anyone who thinks he or she is wielding power for the sake of good rather than evil needs to be willing to accept a check and balance system that allows others to alert the person in power of a deviation from the path toward societally approved goals. Is power assumed for the sake of efficiency justified? Sometimes, but only in pursuit of very limited and well-defined goals. The problem often lies in determining what goals are worthy of granting power to a leader, and whether that leader feels that the end justifies the means. One who assumes power should take a sunset pledge to agree in advance to yield that power when the approved limited goal has been achieved or when a designated date has been reached. The addiction of power causes a leader to feel unique and irreplaceable, a situation that causes other viable leaders to protest and rebel.

Stop Sending Your Money to China

I frequently advocate that people in the USA should Buy American products and services. It's time for outsourcing to end, and everyone in the United States, citizen or not, has a vote in this process. We vote with our purchasing decisions. Whether you are buying a tube of toothpaste, a household product, or a new car, buy something that is made in USA or has the maximum amount of US content. We have to break the cycle of sending our money overseas to China and others so that they can lend our money back to us at high interest rates. Every time you buy a US product you keep money in circulation within the USA; you increase demand at US companies which creates jobs for US workers; and you give incentives for those companies to invest in new equipment and learn how to make better and more competitive products. The economy started downhill when American companies started having products made overseas to enhance short term profits. It's time to think long term and rebuild American manufacturing capabilities. The one and only solution is your looking for the Made in USA label. The government in Washington can't fix the situation, but you can, one purchase of US goods and services at a time. Each US purchase is a vote for prosperity. Read those country of origin labels...Vote early and often.

How to Handle the U.S. Debt Deadline

Enough, already!
The USA has to get the two houses of Congress and the President to agree on measures to avoid a debt default next week. Don't look now, but the NFL Football owners and players managed to solve their lockout fiasco and save the football season. I suggest that the politicians, who obviously don't know how to do the jobs for which they were sent to Washington, should act more like athletes, albeit flabby ones. Let's just get this all over with a tug-of-war between the Fat Cats on one side and the Pompous Pigheads on the other. At this point all we need is a mechanism to get them to stop talking and do something. Just line them all up and let either side drag the other across the line that wins the tug-of-war. The country will survive whatever is decided; just demonstrate the ability to make a decision. I know that the voters will know how to decide that we need two entirely new tug-of-war teams when the next election comes. That's an easy decision.

Peace Between Palestinians and Israelis - Maybe?

President Obama in his speech this week said that peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis should be based on pre-1967 borders. Such a stand is completely unacceptable to the Israelis, but it serves a very important purpose as a negotiating ploy. There has been no progress toward peace because there has been little incentive for the Israelis to move in that direction. They know that they will have to give up some valuable and sentimentally priceless things such as some portion of Jerusalem and feelings of having control over the situation. Obama's talking about pre-1967 borders may just be the straw that breaks the camel's back and makes Israel realize that eternal delays may lead to a less satisfactory outcome in the negotiations. (See my book, DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life for negotiation techniques and stages http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/60929.)
Perhaps Israel will respond to the threat of a less-desirable border outcome by moving toward earlier resolution of the negotiation stalemate on the condition that current or compromise borders are the end result. President Obama is not a party to the negotiations, but his words automatically influence the negotiation stances of both sides.

Jobs and the U.S. Economic Recovery

According to the Bureau of the Census data (Click on the title of this piece.), there are only 17047 firms in the United States that have more than 500 employees. There are 19,523,741 firms that do not have any employees at all. These are one-person operations that may be run on a full or part-time basis. There are also 5,885,784 firms that have payrolls, 4,980,165 of which have fewer than 100 employees. The most direct path to economic recovery lies in a combination of more people starting their own businesses and a significant percentage of small businesses adding a single employee. The Federal Government would do well to encourage entrepreneurship and to take steps to make it easier for small businesses to hire one additional person. The leverage of small businesses on the economy is huge, and their employees tend to stay with their companies for as long as those businesses remain economically viable. Add to these choices the fact that the government is finally starting to encourage the manufacture of products domestically, and we may find the light at the end of the tunnel.

Priorities and Checklists

I've been away from working on this blog for a while, mostly because my competing time obligations said that something had to give, and this blog turned out to be it. All jobs that compete for your time should be assigned priorities. When I do this, I find that one of two things happens. Either I do the right thing and tackle the top priority job, or I do the wrong thing and tackle lower priority jobs that are easier to accomplish. Recently, I have been doing the right thing - working on my latest novel. In my book DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life, I discuss the importance of setting priorities, but I overlooked the self-satisfaction priority of accomplishing something. Sometimes it is important to your ego to be able to check some tasks off of your long list. At these times it is natural to do a few easy and short things so that you eliminate any feelings of guilt and feel free to tackle the high priority difficult and long job. Writing in general, and working on my next book in particular, is usually my top priority. However, I find that I do better writing if I take some steps to clear a few tasks off of my list first. You have to strike a balance that suits your own personality. Procrastination should not be an option. Do something; it's better than nothing.

You Should Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

The old adage is Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth. In my mother's view, it meant that if someone gives you a present, you should accept it graciously, even if it is something that is not exactly what you want. My view is that the economy fell apart because greedy people failed to examine that steed. Too many people jumped at the chance to get homes, cars, and other luxuries they couldn't afford with loans and cheap credit they knew they couldn't repay (at least not in this lifetime, based on minimum payments). I'm old-fashioned enough to be suspicious whenever someone offers me something that sounds to good to be true. Read that fine print and you'll find that it almost always is. The size of our economy is a function of how much credit is being used. The quality of our economy is a function of how much we save, how much we keep spending within our means, and how frequently we buy products that are manufactured here rather than abroad. Don't always look to cheat the system, or you may find that there won't be a viable system at all in the future.

Why Would Anyone Want to Be President?

Anyone wanting to be President of the United States defies logic. First, the job pays a lot less than it costs to get elected. Second, you have to endure large groups of people doing everything they can to destroy your reputation and ability to achieve your goals (Whether your name is George W. Bush or Barack Obama, your position on the issues will anger a large portion of the electorate.). Third, you are speaking fervently to people who don't want to hear what you have to say and who are speaking more loudly than you are. Fourth, you are trying to address the needs of the country as you see them, and many people are only saying, "Don't make any changes that intrude on my comfort zone."

President Lyndon Johnson wanted to keep track of poll results on how people thought he was doing. If you worry about what others think of you all the time, you will never get anything done, and you will have trouble sticking to your principles. This applies even to those of us who will not ever try to be elected for anything. If you are comfortable with the decision you make, stick with it, at least until someone comes up with a logical modification of that decision that makes even more sense to you. Our outlook has been influenced too much by the media. Ratings really don't matter. If you follow your principles and feel comfortable with your decision, then go ahead with it. As Commander David Farragut once said, "Full speed ahead! Damn the torpedoes!"

Heroes Are People Too

I just returned from the big EAA Airventure Airshow and Convention in Oshkosh, WI. This is an annual trip for me, and I am always impressed by both the technology and the people. One of the best parts is that you get to have personal conversations with people who have been through ordeals you will probably (hopefully) never have to face. Last year I spoke briefly with Dick Cole, co-pilot with Jimmy Doolittle in the April 18, 1942 payback raid on Tokyo by sixteen B-25 bombers. This year I met Jeff Skiles, First Officer of US Airways Flight 1549 that made a safe emergency landing in New York's Hudson River. The common thread in my conversations with both of these heroes is that while talking with them, you feel as though you are talking with an old friend from down the street. They feel as though they were just doing their jobs, although doing them very well under very trying circumstances. There were a lot of other just plain folks there, too: the airmen and soldiers of World War II and all the subsequent wars. It is always a privilege to meet them and talk with them. They are heroes, although you'll probably never learn of their individual exploits. The nice thing about the Oshkosh Airshow is that you also meet a lot of young people who are growing up to appreciate aviation and the heroes that came before them and walk among them.

Unintended Consequences

Whenever you make a decision that will affect your future, you should remember that unintended consequences may result. Here are a few societal and personal examples that come to mind:
Desire: Use computers more to eliminate files of papers. Result: More paperwork as people back up their computers with paper versions because of mistrust of computer reliability or rapid computer obsolescence.
Desire: Pass more laws to control crime and regulate society. Result: More lawyers.
Desire: Visits to fast food restaurants to save time in busy schedules. Result: Obesity and poor nutrition balance.
Desire: Get the best cable or satellite TV package. Result: Lack of exercise and obesity; no time for other tasks.
Desire: Hire landscapers to have a more appealing lawn and grounds. Result: Lack of exercise.

I'm sure you can think of other similar cases.

Saving Money Made Easy

Americans are known for saving very little of their income. Many think they just can't do it; others think that saving just a little bit would be insignificant. The truth is that the best thing about saving is that it gets you into the habit. Try this approach: Open up two accounts at the bank. One should be a savings or money market account. The other should be a checking account. Every time you get paid, deposit the whole amount into the savings or money market account. This account becomes your capital formation resource. Every time you receive any payment, deposit all of it into your capital account, and transfer only what you need for immediate expenses and current bill payments into your checking account. Some weeks you may even have to transfer out more than you put in that week, but the important thing is that you get into the habit of following the deposit-and-transfer procedure. After a while you will start to see the residue amounts that you left in your capital formation account increase significantly. Save just a little, but do it over a long period of time, and it pays off. Even if your bank account for capital accumulation doesn't pay much interest, it will soon let you start to pay some bills from cash instead of charge cards, and that will save you plenty of interest. You may even find that you will be able to reduce or eliminate your past balances on those cards.

What Are You Doing? Nothing...

This blog, my book, and a lot of my writing is about making decisions as you go through your day-to-day journey through life. It is a blessing that on some of those days you won't have to make significant decisions. Every once in a while it is great just to coast for a while. People think of such times as coming when you are on vacation, but I find that the planning of a vacation frequently requires more decisions than you have when you are in "home" mode. It's not a matter of goofing off. It's more a sense of staying within the "comfort zone" that we all establish through routine and repetition of activities at which we have achieved a good level of capability.
This is all part of the slower pace of life that our society used to have. Even if your normal day is a complete rat-race, you should periodically do nothing, smell the flowers, or read for the sake of reading rather than achieving - just to prove that you still can. If you can't relax enough to do nothing, you may have a problem.

Gas Prices and Improved Cars

As the price of gasoline continues to rise, many people start to think about trading in their existing car for one that goes more miles per gallon of gas. When you do get such thoughts, make sure you look at the actual mathematics of the gas cost vs. car cost situation. Assume you are an average driver who might drive 12,000 miles per year. If you are consciously trying to limit your driving miles by such tricks as making many planned stops on a single trip rather than taking many individual trips, 12,000 miles per year is quite reasonable. Assume that your current car goes 20 miles per gallon of gas. If we assume that gas soars to a price of $5.00 per gallon, you would use 600 gallons per year for a cost of $3,000 per year. If you were able to trade in your car for one that has double the fuel economy, that goes 40 miles per gallon of gas, your annual gas cost would drop from $3,000 to $1,500. That's a good bit of savings. Now if you are going to keep your new car for five years, you have to find a new car that you can buy for the five-year savings, or $7,500 in order to spend the same for gasoline plus car costs as you would by continuing to drive your old car. Go ahead, enjoy your $7,500 new car if you can find it. If you want to pay even less than you are now paying, your new car would have to have an even lower price...And don't forget, this calculation was based on $5.00 per gallon gasoline. Perhaps "rusty but trusty" is the better solution until your current car has to be replaced for functional reasons.