Printed in the High Desert Advocate Edition August 27, 2021.

Give Our Guns To The Afghanistan Women 

       Afghanistan has guns but they are in the hands of the wrong people.

      Television news reports have confirmed the Taliban has our helicopters, our tanks, our trucks, along with billions of dollars of our American tax payer bought military weapons and more. 

      Afghanistan already had a strict gun policy. The Taliban’s is stricter. You aren’t allowed to own automatic weapons or handguns. Thus, while the Afghan citizens have struggled for defense weapons, the Taliban and other terrorists have had access to any and all they have wanted. The bad people have guns. The good people do not have guns. The bad people have taken over the country, murdering and raping as they do what they want to do without anyone interfering or fighting back.  

      We can only imagine the pain and heartache of the Afghan women. The previous Taliban rule enforced a strict fundamentalist style of Islam religion that confined women to their homes, banned television and music and held public executions. Women were relegated to a dress code that required a burka or similar clothing that covers the woman’s face. Women were treated as slaves and sex objects.  Their every move was controlled by the Taliban’s interpretation of an oppressive Islam religion. The Taliban has not changed their ways. Why would you think they have? They continue to kill, plunder weapons and take over government buildings or whatever they want for their own use. 

      In a nation where guns are restricted the Afghan women have no way to protect themselves. They have no one to protect them.  

      The Taliban has the finest American tax payer bought weapons in the world. The everyday citizens of the country and the helpless women of the country aren’t allowed to own guns. This means they aren’t allowed to protect themselves. Attackers, rapists, evil men can come and go as they please assaulting the average citizen, the women and children and no one has access to guns to utilize for protection. 

      What if all the women in Afghanistan had access to automatic rifles?  Our military should assign our guns to the citizens including all the women of Afghanistan. Their army won’t protect them, they have no one to protect them. Give the women of Afghanistan a fighting chance. 

      Can you imagine if America begins to restrict our guns? What happens if we aren’t allowed to have guns or it becomes so restrictive that people give up trying to own guns? We become as vulnerable as the Afghan people. We have zero ability to take care of ourselves. 

      It’s very troubling and America hasn’t made it any better. Equipping Terrorists with guns only breathes more years of life into their evil mission. 

      Give our guns to the desperate citizens of Afghanistan and make sure every woman and teenager has a gun. The young girls of Afghanistan do not want to be raped and married off to men to become part of a slave harem. They have a right to fight.

     Glenn Mollette is the author of 13 books including Uncommon Sense, Grandpa’s Store, Minister’s Guidebook insights from a fellow minister.

My Social Security Income Hurts When I File My Taxes

Printed in the High Desert Advocate Edition August 6, 2021.

Dear Rusty: I am getting hammered with taxes on my Social Security (SS). I am retired and draw a meager work pension and SS benefits. When my wife and I filed our joint tax return we owed the IRS a substantial amount of money – they took 85% of my SS in taxes. We are just barely over the minimal amount of income allowed for SS tax exemption. Is there anything I can do so I do not have to pay all this money at once at the end of the year? I didn’t get any tax advice when I started drawing my SS and the guy who prepared our tax return couldn’t have cared less. No one ever told me that I would get double-taxed on the SS that I worked so hard for. Any help or advice is appreciated, I cannot take another hit like this again. Signed: Double-Taxed

       Dear Double-Taxed: Unfortunately, taxation of Social Security benefits has been law since 1983 when the law to allow 50% of benefits to be taxed was enacted. In 1993 they added another threshold to allow up to 85% of SS benefits to be taxable. Just to clarify the way it works (not that it will soften the pain), they don’t take 85% of your SS benefits away in taxes – but 85% of your SS benefits becomes part of your overall taxable income at whatever your normal IRS tax rate is for your income level. So, if your IRS tax rate is 10%, that percentage is applied to 85% of your SS benefits received during the tax year (at your income level). 

      As for whether there is anything you can do, short of lowering your overall income the answer is no. The IRS determines taxability of your SS benefits based upon something called your “Modified Adjusted Gross Income” or “MAGI” which is your normal Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) from your tax return, plus 50% of the Social Security benefits you received during the tax year, with any non-taxable interest you may have had added back in. With an IRS filing status of “married-filing jointly,” if your MAGI was more than $32,000 then 50% of your SS benefits are included in your taxable income; if your MAGI is more than $44,000 then up to 85% of your SS benefits becomes part of your overall taxable income. And unfortunately, there’s no way around that. FYI, the thresholds for single filers are $25,000 (above which 50% of SS is taxable) and $34,000 (above which 85% of SS is taxable). Below those minimum thresholds for both single and married filers, Social Security benefits aren’t taxable.

       To soften the income tax burden when you file your taxes each year, you may want to consider having taxes withheld from your SS benefit payments. That’s easy to do by submitting IRS form W-4V to your local Social Security office. Here’s a link at which you can download and print that form: www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4v.pdf. You will see that you can choose to have any of the following percentages of your SS benefit withheld for Federal Income Tax purposes – 7%, 10%, 12% or 22%. To find the mailing address for your local Social Security office, go to www.ssa.gov/locator.

       This article is intended for information purposes only and does not represent legal or financial guidance. It presents the opinions and interpretations of the AMAC Foundation’s staff, trained and accredited by the National Social Security Association (NSSA). NSSA and the AMAC Foundation and its staff are not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other governmental entity. To submit a question, visit our website (amacfoundation.org/programs/social-security-advisory) or email us at ssadvisor@amacfoundation.org.

Beware the Plastic Clamshell

Printed in the High Desert Advocate Edition August 6, 2021.

         Consumers are victims of a packaging industry so focused on protecting the goods they’re selling that they are ignoring the needs of buyers, particularly seniors. Perhaps they are ignorant of the fact that shoppers of all ages are fed up with the agony of struggling to cut through the plastic wrapping used to protect goods such as razor blades, toys and even medications. They’ve had it with child-proof pill containers. And they reel against those directions and warnings on packages that are so tiny you need a magnifying glass to read them.

       Surveys show that the packaging crisis is real. One such poll of 2,000 consumers found that a large majority — 66% of them — say they “suffer from wrap rage” when they get home and try to open over-packaged goods. Forty percent of them reported that they have hurt themselves in the process and 25% say they have had to use scissors, knives, screwdrivers and even hammers to get through the packaging. Another survey found that 75% of respondents believed that packaging these days is harder than it needs to be and that 67% are downright “frustrated” by modern-day packaging.

        It’s no contest. Plastic clamshell packaging takes the cake when it comes to the “hard-to-open” category. Consumer Reports magazine used to have an annual feature focused on packaging. In one of the last such articles it published were invariably those wrapped in clamshells: a toy that took more than 15 minutes to open; a cordless phone that took nine minutes to unpack; and a toothbrush “housed in a sealed, hard-plastic clamshell package and has such a tight fit between the plastic skin and cardboard that it was all but impossible to open with scissors. When the tester finally succeeded in opening the packaging her worktable was littered with sharp plastic shards.”

        So why doesn’t the packaging industry heed the message and do away with clamshells? It’s all about shoplifting. Razor blades are packed in those plastic bubbles for that reason, notwithstanding the fact that most retailers keep them locked up, requiring store staff to personally hand over the merchandise. After all, razor blades are small and easy to hide, they are expensive and, thus, are easy to sell in the black market.

         There are other reasons plastic clamshells are preferred by retailers. They are see-through and allowing a potential customer a chance to take a peek at what they are buying makes it easier to make the sale. And then there is transport. Clamshells help protect sensitive products in the shipping process.

        Okay. But what about hapless consumers who risk injury and frustration trying to open their purchases when they get home?

         Perhaps the trade publication Plastics Today answered that question when it made this suggestion to the makers of plastic clamshells: “While it might seem a bit unlikely to envision people hurting themselves with packaging, I have to say I’ve resorted to using scissors before when trying to open clamshell packaging. Luckily, I haven’t received an injury (yet) as a result of using a ‘weapon.’ But it might just make good business sense for packaging designers to come up with a package that still utilizes the clamshell design but is just easy to open. Now that would be a great display of innovative packaging.”