Retirees moving to be near the grandkids

Forget all those "best places to retire" lists: For some retirees, the top retirement destination is the place where their grandkids reside.

• BY BETH BROPHY , 
• KIPLINGER 
• – 04/28/2016

90% who voted found this helpful

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Nancy Kilgore, 68, and her husband were happy living in Thetford, Vt. But three years ago, they moved 90 minutes away, to Burlington, to help their divorced daughter raise her daughter. Because it was difficult to move her psychotherapy practice, Kilgore still commutes to see patients two days a week and sleeps at a friend's house. "My choices are usually about doing what I love, not making money," says Kilgore. "Family is the most important thing to me."

For many grandparents, pulling up roots to be near adult children and grandchildren is "the last chance to focus on family and to leave a legacy of special memories," says Christine Crosby, editorial director of Grand magazine. In a magazine survey in 2014 of 1,000 grandparents, 10% said they had moved to be closer to their grandkids. Of those, 60% said "their main reason was to help their adult children by providing child care," says Grand publisher Lori Bitter.

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But as Kilgore discovered, be prepared to make sacrifices if you move to be near the kids and grandkids. Before you make the move, check out opportunities to meet new people, through religious institutions, volunteer and cultural groups, college classes, and part-time employment. Also be sure your destination has access to high-quality hospitals and doctors, and the specialists you may need will take on new patients.

Establish the ground rules

You and your children should set boundaries ahead of time. Grandparents must understand that their children have final say. "The parents need to run the show, and the grandparents should respect their rules," says Dr. Arthur Kornhaber, a psychiatrist in Ojai, Cal., and founder of the Foundation for Grandparenting.

Those boundaries work both ways. You should make it clear that you intend to lead an independent life and don't want to be a babysitter on command. "I love being a grandparent, even more than being a parent," says Allan Zullo, 68, co-author with his wife, Kathryn, of A Boomer's Guide to Grandparenting (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $13). "But you also have to live your own life, and have a balance."

Allan and Kathryn found a middle ground a decade ago by living most of the year at their home in Asheville, N.C., while spending winters in Tallahassee, Fla., where they built a two-bedroom house on their daughter's property. Their grandsons are now 19, 17 and 9. "It has worked out fantastically," Allan says. "Physically being there, throwing a football around in the yard, helping them with homework, driving them, eating dinner together often, strengthens the bond."

Jeff Rose, a certified financial planner with Alliance Wealth Management, in Carbondale, Ill., says grandparents who are still working should look for comparable employment before they make the move. The new job, though, may not be exactly what you want. Rose says that one client in her sixties moved from Illinois to Nashville, and her new job offered one week of vacation compared with three weeks at her former employer. Another couple moved from Connecticut to San Diego, Cal., where the cost of housing was so high that they had to buy a considerably smaller home than they had. "It's a psychological decision, even if it doesn't always make sense monetarily," Rose says.

Such a move doesn't have to be forever. Edie Iles, 65, moved with her husband, Gerald, from Florida to Colorado in 2008 to spend more time with their daughter's family. Their two granddaughters are now 10 and 8. Despite the cold winters and the higher cost of living, it was a positive experience. "My memories of special moments, of helping my granddaughters learn to walk and talk — you can't put a price tag on that," Iles says.

After six years, Edie and Gerald moved back to Florida, but she has only one regret. She wishes they had rented and not bought their house in Colorado. They lost a lot of money on the real estate transactions, between closing costs and a year's worth of carrying expenses on the Colorado house.

MLP's

MLPs are rallying—but they're still risky

• BY AMEY STONE , 
• BARRON'S 
• – 04/23/2016

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Investors who bought master limited partnerships years ago, thinking they had found a high-yielding bond substitute with tax advantages, have been sorely tried. Those who held on through the 18-month downturn have gotten some welcome relief these past 10 weeks as the sector rebounded from its staggering 60% plunge from 2014 highs.

MLPs are now up 45% off mid-February lows, but the sector is still fraught with risk. MLPs continue to trade as if joined at the hip with crude. That has been a plus lately, but could turn negative just as quickly. Bullish trends such as shrinking U.S. production and the start of summer driving season could turn bearish if foreign producers boost production, which they've hinted they may do. Oil, now at $44 a barrel, is "likely to remain within a broad trading range," according to U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

We do not think the current MLP model is going to be the model of the future."

JOSHUA KOHN, CENTERSQUARE

MLP earnings season is just starting, and so far it's not a pretty picture. Pipeline giant Kinder Morgan ( KM I

, technically no longer an MLP, cut guidance and capital spending and indicated that robust growth wouldn't resume until 2018. NGL Energy Part

Meantime, more oil companies are going bankrupt, and MLPs are renegotiating contracts to provide more favorable terms. The ill-fated proposed merger of Williams ( WMB 

) and Energy Transfer Equity ( ETE 

) could come undone at any time. There are pockets of overcapacity in the U.S.' pipeline infrastructure, while new development is needed in others.

"Not every MLP is going to be a winner," says Libby Toudouze, portfolio manager at Cushing Asset Management, which runs the Mainstay Cushing MLP Premier fund ( CSHAX  | Get Prospectus 

). She sees this as a great time to buy, but says investors need to understand this not a fixed-income play. "Still, a 10% distribution is a pretty nice cushion to handle the volatility of equity markets," she says.

MLPs need two conditions to prosper, says Richard Daskin, who subadvises an MLP portfolio for Cumberland Advisors: "Capital markets have to be open, and energy prices have to be stable." Since MLPs pay out the majority of their cash flows to investors, they need to access capital markets to grow. Daskin is "reasonably confident" that MLPs will be higher in three years, but says "you have to go in with your eyes wide open." He recommends sticking to larger firms with strong sponsors and stable customers.

"We do not think the current MLP model is going to be the model of the future," says Joshua Kohn, portfolio manager of CenterSquare Investment Management's Dreyfus Global Infrastructure fund ( DGANX  | Get Prospectus 

), which has about 10% of its assets in pipelines. "Companies are going to need to retain more cash flow to have the flexibility to fund projects internally." His fund, which also invests in income-producing assets like utilities, airports, and toll roads, has a 3% yield and is up 6% this year.

A diversified infrastructure fund may be a better way for income investors to gain exposure to the commodity price rebound, suggests David Wright, manager of Sierra Strategic Income ( SSIZX  | Get Prospectus )

		, up 7% year to date. Closed-end funds that focus on infrastructure are trading at wide discounts and have higher yields. Jim Robinson, of Robinson Capital Management, has a position in Cohen & Steers Infrastructure ( UTF

), which has an 8% yield and a 15% discount.

Toudouze believes that investors who go with a broader infrastructure fund will miss out on future growth of the still immature U.S. pipeline industry. "Infrastructure has a very different risk-and-return profile," she says. But for beleaguered MLP investors, less risk may be just what they're looking for.

Setting the Record Straight on Britain, America, and World War II - VDH

Setting the Record Straight on Britain, America, and World War II

April 30, 2016 12:42 pm / Leave a Comment / victorhanson

By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

While in London last week, President Obama waded into the upcoming British referendum about whether the United Kingdom should stay in the European Union.

Controversy followed his lecture about the future of the Anglo-American relationship should Britain depart the EU. Obama also implied that without an EU, the United States might again be dragged into European squabbling, as it had been in the prior world wars.

Americans might take this occasion to reflect on Britain’s role in World War II.

Before the war, the League of Nations had done nothing to deter the future Axis powers from invading or annexing Albania, Austria, China, Czechoslovakia, and Ethiopia.

Britain’s alliance with France might have deterred Nazi Germany had Winston Churchill, not Neville Chamberlain, been prime minister in 1939. Or an isolationist United States might have helped had it been willing to conclude a defense pact with the Western European democracies.

What ensured a war were the appeasement of Nazi Germany by Britain and France, the isolation of the United States from global responsibilities, and the collaboration of the Soviet Union with Adolf Hitler. All three developments combined to convince Hitler that he could bully or invade his neighbors without consequences.

America entered the war on Britain’s side in late 1941, after more than two years of war that saw Hitler consolidate a continental empire larger than the present European Union. The United States declared war on Nazi Germany and fascist Italy on December 11, 1941 — but only after the two Axis powers declared war on us first. Had Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini not declared war after Japan’s December 7, 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, America may well have concentrated on defeating Imperial Japan and stayed neutral in the European theater.

Great Britain was the only major power to fight for the entire duration of World War II, from its beginning after the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 until the surrender of the Japanese in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.

In late June of 1940, after the fall of Western Europe, Britain was the only major power in the world still resisting Nazi Germany. Otherwise, all of Europe was either occupied by Hitler, neutral, or supposedly neutral but surreptitiously aiding the Third Reich with shipments of supplies.

Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union had become a de facto ally of Nazi Germany in August 1939 with the signing of a non-aggression pact. The Russians supplied Germany with key resources that helped the Luftwaffe bomb a solitary Britain during the Blitz of 1940-1941. Nearly 50,000 British civilians were killed by German bombers, cruise missiles, and rockets — while America’s continental homeland remained all but untouched.

Britain, along with soon-to-be-defeated France, was also the rare major combatant that entered the war on the principle of aiding a weaker ally. Germany, Italy, and Japan all surprise-attacked neutral nations to instigate war.

The Soviet Union flipped sides to the Allies, but only when Nazi Germany turned traitor and attacked its former partner on June 22, 1941. And the United States entered the war only after Japan hit Pearl Harbor.

In terms of population and territory, Great Britain was the smallest of what became known as the “Grand Alliance” of America, Britain, and Russia. Yet its military, research, and leadership proved essential for the Allied victory.

Britain mobilized its industries in astonishing fashion, similar to the U.S. wartime economic miracle. The British Empire built more warships, military and transport aircraft and vehicles, and artillery pieces than did Hitler’s Third Reich.

Landmark British advances in radar, sonar, cryptology, aeronautics, and nuclear physics empowered the Allied effort.

Some of America’s iconic World War II weapons were, in fact, vastly improved by British engineering, from the up-gunned Sherman Firefly tank to the P-51 Mustang and its superb Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.

When the U.S. entered the European theater in 1942, the British offered advice about how best to fight the German war machine. Some of World War II’s most astute war planners and strategists — Admiral Andrew Cunningham, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, and Marshals of the Royal Air Force Charles Portal and Arthur Tedder — were British.

Winston Churchill was the first major Western statesman to warn about Hitler and the first to predict the Cold War that would follow the Allied victory in 1945.

Britain helped America in World War II as much as America did Britain. We should keep that contribution in mind in speaking softly and preserving our long and mutually advantageous partnership.

The Nihilism of Sanctuary Cities - VDH

The Nihilism of Sanctuary Cities

May 2, 2016 11:33 am / Leave a Comment / victorhanson

By Victor Davis Hanson // Works and Days by PJ Media

There are an estimated 300 or so jurisdictions — entire states, counties, cities, and municipalities — that since the early 1980s have enacted “sanctuary city” laws, forbidding full enforcement of federal immigration law within their jurisdictions.

Most of these entities are controlled by Democrats in general and liberals in particular. Sanctuary officials feel that federal enforcement of the southern border is either unnecessary or immoral, and thus they have decided that there is no real crime in entering and residing in the United States unlawfully. While the majority of illegal aliens are no doubt law-abiding and have avoided public dependence, the pool of unlawful immigrants is so large at over 11 million that even small percentages of lawbreakers can translate into hundreds of thousands of criminal aliens.

The liberal Migration Policy Institute conceded that there are over 800,000 illegal aliens with criminal records, nearly 700,000 of them with felony arrest records.

Those numbers, of course, reflect only those who have been arrested and faced trial, not the unknown number who have committed crimes without being apprehended or charged. In some sanctuary cities, lawlessness among undocumented immigrants has reached epidemic proportions.

Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute found that two-thirds of all outstanding felony warrants in the city of Los Angeles involved illegal aliens — as well as 95% of outstanding murder warrants.

Sanctuary cities are on record as having released over 10,000 known criminal aliens into the general population whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were attempting to deport. In addition, hundreds of thousands of criminals are currently protected from deportation as they await trials and sentences. Among them, most infamously, is Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a seven-time convicted felon and five-time deported illegal alien who was not turned over to ICE by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department that held him in custody on a drug charge. He was instead released just weeks before he murdered Kate Steinle.

 In this July 7, 2015 AP file photo, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez is lead into a the courtroom for arraignment. More than 1,800 immigrants that the federal government wanted to deport were nevertheless released from local jails and later re-arrested for various crimes, according to a government report released last year. Lopez-Sanchez pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and other charges in the death of Kate Steinle, 32.

The apparent principle of sanctuary cities is akin to roulette. The odds suggest that most illegal aliens detained by officials are not career felons and thus supposedly need not be turned over to ICE for deportation. On the chance that some of their 10,000 released criminals will go on to commit further crimes in the manner of Juan Lopez-Sanchez, officials then shrug that the public outcry will be episodic and quickly die down, or will at least not pose political problems as great as would come from deporting aliens.

Yet the idea of a sanctuary city is Confederate to the core, reminiscent of antebellum Southern states picking and choosing which federal statutes they would abide by or reject. Even before the Civil War, the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33 pitted South Carolina against a fellow southerner, President Andrew Jackson, as the state declared that federal tariff laws were not applicable within its confines. Jackson understood the threat to the union, and promised to send in federal troops before South Carolina backed down.

The problem with legal nullification is always the enduring principle, never just the immediate landscape, of its implementation.

Sanctuary cities are careful to employ euphemisms rather than explicit references to illegal immigration. But not labeling San Francisco as an “illegal alien sanctuary” or even an “immigration sanctuary” only institutionalizes the idea of any city becoming a “sanctuary” from any federal law it finds convent. If sanctuary cities continue to flaunt federal immigration laws and if the federal government does not cut off federally earmarked funds to such offenders — or if ICE does not, in Jacksonian style, threaten to use force to arrest and deport illegal aliens — then the concept will spread, and spread well beyond matters of immigration law.

Much of the rural West opposes the Endangered Species Act. Can Wyoming declare that federally protected rats and bugs are not protected inside its state borders, when such pests obstruct construction of dams or highways? Many conservatives oppose federal restrictions on gun sales. Could Oklahoma City declare hand-gun purchases within its city-limits free of federal firearms statutes? Perhaps Little Rock could ignore a Supreme Court ruling and announce that gay marriage is not legal within its jurisdiction. On what rationale would liberals in California object to such nullifications — that neither state nor city had the right to ignore a federal law or to obstruct the law enforcement duties of federal officials?

As a remedy to such reactionary nullification of liberal federal laws, would San Francisco or Los Angeles advocate cutting off federal funds, sending in federal agents, or nationalizing the local or state police? All of these are proven remedies from when recalcitrant southern states refused to abide by federal integration and civil rights laws in the 1960s.

What if the border between California and Nevada was nullified?

The theory of sanctuary cities is entirely hypocritical and self-serving. The idea of sanctuary from immigration law is predicated ultimately on the belief that there are or should be no national borders and thus no legal right to prosecute those who ignore them. But if California is a sanctuary state and Nevada is not, how is that distinction articulated and maintained?

Obviously California believes it has a clearly demarcated border with Nevada and that such a line is a good thing, allowing the Golden State a quite different approach to politics, economics, culture, and society within its own confines. Furthermore, if an illegal alien were speeding over Interstate 80 and crossed the state border into California, the state would object if any non-state law enforcement agent likewise crossed that line to turn him over to ICE for deportation. In other words, a sanctuary city or state is predicated on its ability to create borders not only to establish enforceable jurisdiction, but also as a reification of difference. Sanctuary cities, then, would insist that they have a right to create and enforce borders, and to create unique places within them that differ from other cities.

Nullification now thrives because our “pen and phone” president has decided to suspend federal immigration law enforcement in the manner that — on over 20 occasions before his reelection — he had warned was unconstitutional. But Obama has also ensured the next Republican president that he will have ample liberal precedent to create or neglect laws as his ideological whims dictate. Donald Trump, were he to be elected, might have a very different idea of what qualifies as a sanctuary city or what executive orders are needed to see through agenda with dispatch.

Forget about principles, because there are no consistent principles: sanctuary cities would never allow their precedents to apply to other jurisdictions that did not share their own liberal pieties. They believe federal law is omnipotent for everyone other than their own exalted classes, and they believe that borders, jurisdiction, and the sovereignty of laws are a good thing — but only to the degree that they enhance their own utopian worldview.

The intellectual pedigree of sanctuary cities is not 1960s one-world ecumenicalism, but 1850s Confederate nullification. Their logical consequence is not a wide-open transnational continent, but utter disunion among the states and a second confederate attempt at destroying the primacy of the federal government.

Their politics are not exalted, but parochial, tribal, and demographic: sanctuary cities are predicated on the emergence of a large and politically potent Latino liberal demographic. Otherwise San Francisco or Los Angeles would be willing to turn over to ICE, for example, a lone Serbian illegal alien who had disrupted an environmental rally, or an Australian who overstayed his visa and began participating in “Trump for President” rallies. If thousands of Hungarian atheists were apprehended for committing crimes in Los Angeles, the Catholic archdiocese would stay mum about their deportation.

Nullification, neo-Confederate, tribal, and cynical are the proper epithets for such cities, which are best summed up as “cities of nihilism.”

A view of the progressives

From Glenn Reynolds at USA Today:

Because political leaders’ chief concern is their own power and position, they’re willing to do almost anything to stave off a collapse, except reduce their own power and  position. Kicking the can down the road usually just makes the problem worse in the end, but politicians would rather do that than make any sacrifice up front.

This sums up my view of the progressives.  Their power — and possible accumulation of power — comes first before anything.  

I will never forgive these people for what they did over Iraq, trying to legislate a defeat that would have put al Qaeda on steroids, the cost of which would have been horrendous.

And then there are the vegans:

The news has come as a shock to many vegans, who have been regular customers of the restaurants and claim the Engelharts have built their brand on not just serving vegan food but clearly wrapping themselves in the righteousness of the vegan cause — which they argue has now been undermined. “The reason we’re so upset is that veganism is a belief system,” says Carrie Christianson, who started the Facebook boycott group. “You are patronizing a restaurant that you think has that philosophy, and it turns out it doesn’t. Vegans should know that this restaurant has a farm that slaughters animals.”

That’s the key line in this article: “The reason we’re so upset is that veganism is a belief system” — in other words, like radical environmentalism and radical feminism, veganism is one of many alternate religions that are subsets of the holistic New Age Left. (Nietzsche killed God, but man is hardwired to believe in a cause higher than himself. When traditional religion is rejected, the odds are pretty good that something cultish will be chosen to replace it.)

The restaurant owners chose to cater to the faithful, apparently without pondering the jihad they would face if and when their core customers discovered that they were apostates. Or as a wise social critic once described the nihilistic alternative lifestyles of California, “You can checkout anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

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Has Dennis Prager been reading my blog? For how many years have I been saying that the Left hates the Judeo-Christian tradition because it’s predicated on justice, morality, and grace? I don’t know how many myself, although I was already making the argument back in 2011. I’ve made it fairly recently too, but can’t locate the darn post.

Why am I waffling about past posts? Because Dennis Prager makes much the same point I’ve been making when he asks “Why the Left loathes Western Civilization?”

So, then, the Big Question is, Why? Why is the Left hostile to Western civilization?

After decades of considering this question, the answer, I have concluded, is: standards.

The Left hates standards – moral standards, artistic standards, cultural standards. The West is built on all three, and has excelled in all three.

Dennis Prager’s discussion, of course, is more learned and in-depth than mine, but it’s gratifying to me to see that we’re thinking along the same lines.

America and her politics are in dire straits

America and her politics are in dire straits — but we can’t give up

MAY 3, 2016 BY BOOKWORM 10 COMMENTS

As the world seems so deranged that the earth appears to wobble on its axis, it’s increasingly hard to look at the news, let alone contemplate it deeply. However, I have two articles to recommend. If you read only one thing today this is the one to read:

As of tonight, we might know whether Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential candidate. And barring unforeseeable events, it is certain that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Those are two reasons (of many, unfortunately) why — other than the first years of the Civil War, when the survival of the United States as one country was in jeopardy — there was never a darker time in American history.

The various major wars — the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars — were worse in terms of American lives lost.

The Great Depression was worse in economic terms.

There were more riots during the Vietnam War era.

But at no other time was there as much pessimism — valid pessimism, moreover — about America’s future as there is today.

Among the reasons are:

Every distinctive value on which America was founded is in jeopardy.

According to Pew Research, more and more young Americans do not believe in freedom of speech for what they deem “hate speech.” Forty percent of respondents ages 18 to 34 said they agreed that offensive statementscould be outlawed.

According to a series of Harvard polls, 47 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 believe that food, shelter, and health care “are a right that government should provide to those unable to afford them.” That means that nearly half of our young believe they have a legitimate claim on the labor and earnings of others for life’s basic necessities.

More than half of young Americans do not support capitalism — the source of the prosperity they enjoy and the only economic system that has ever lifted mass numbers of people out of poverty.

When young Americans see pictures of the Founders, they do not see the great men that most Americans have seen throughout American history. They see white males who were affluent (now derisively labeled “privileged”) and owned slaves.

The belief that certain fundamental rights are God-based — a view held by every American Founder and nearly all Americans throughout its history — is reviled outside of conservative religious circles and held by fewer and fewer Americans.

The view that male and female are distinctive identities — one of the few unquestioned foundational views of every society in history — is being obliterated. One is deemed “a hater” just for saying that one believes that, all things being equal, a child does best starting out life with a married father and mother.

The ideas that America should be a “melting pot” or that all Americans should identify as American are now unutterable in educated company. Indeed, many college campuses do not have an American flag on their campus because some students regard it as “offensive” — representing imperialism and capitalism.

In addition, virtually every major institution is in decay or disarray.

Read the rest here. Dennis Prager warns that we can’t give up. You’re not really fighting if you’re already winning. You’re only fighting when there’s something at stake and you think you might lose irrevocably if you don’t give it your all.

And if you have the time to read two things today, read Victor Davis Hanson on the fact that Donald Trump is the true post-modern candidate:

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