Urban Survival’s     Inside Report           # 1       October 19,2001

NOTICE:  All contents © 2001, George A. Ure, except other authors as noted.  This document is intended for the sole use of subscribers and may not be transmitted, reproduced, or in other way used without the prior express consent of the author.  This publication is by subscription:  $30/year for email delivery (price effective until January 1, 2002), and $100/year is delivered by U.S. mail within the U.S. and Canada.  Overseas subscriptions are US$ 250/year which includes postage.  Make your check payable to: George A. Ure, 2726 Shelter Island Drive, #322, San Diego, CA  92106.  Be sure to include your email address if you are ordering email delivery!  Address comments and correspondence to: george@ure.net.    Reade the disclaimer: http://www.urbansurvival.com/disclaim.htm

The Systems Perspective:

Thanks for being a subscriber!  Most of the weekly “Inside Reports” won’t be this long, but I want to get your subscription off to a good start, so here is lots of information and many things to think about.  I’ll start with the longest-term views and then work back towhat I’d expect next week.

 

If you have taken the time to wander through the archives of the www.urbansurvival.com website, you may have stumbled across the paper “The Personal Planning Guide”.  If you haven’t, it’s available at http://www.urbansurvival.com/guide.doc as a Word document.  Just save it to your desktop when asked, and then open it up with Word to read it.  The Personal Planning Guide is what started me on the path to publishing a regular newsletter that would focus on a different way of living in today’s “modern” world.  Regardless of whether you read that 24 page report, let me give you the “high level” view – the view of 30-thousand feet - if you will.

 

The first point that I made in the document was that there are two ways of living today.  One way is to live for maximum gain.  Leverage everything, have little cash, leverage the house to the max – and invest the equity – and even lease the car.  In other words – “Have It All – Right Now”.  The other way is to purchase and spend only what you can afford and avoid debt like the plague.  In other words, you get to make a choice whether you want to live your life for maximum potential gain, which brings with it a sizeable downside potential.  Or, do you want to live your life for minimum loss potential, but realize that living that way will prevent you from harvesting some of upside potential in certain cases.  You get to make the choice whether you want to live a leveraged life or an unleveraged life.

 

Once you’ve made the first call – leveraged or unleveraged, the next task seems to be assessing and tracking day-to-day risk to your style of living.  Initially, the planning guide identified seven major areas.  I’ll be referring to these as the major life support  systems.  These were:

 

 

Since the original paper was written, and to some extent, driven by recent terrorism here on American soil, I’ve added a couple of “lenses” through which we can look at these major life support systems to see how they are operating right now in the world before us.  These lenses are: 

 

 

These were added because with the attack on the World Trade Centers and the subsequent anthrax scare, we need to worry about the security and stability of the systems that sustain our lives.

 

As you may know, I’m writing a book titled “Victims of Process: How Unwritten Recipes Run Your Life”.  I make the point in this book that these seven major physical systems of your world, the food, shelter, communications, energy, transportation, environment, and finance systems, are all self-referencing as a circular or closed system.  Each system has aspects of all the other life support systems. If you take food, for example, there is a

 

 

I’ve used this “systems view” of the world since my working days as a journalist 25 years ago because it helps explain quickly, in an almost intuitive way, why a change in energy ripples through the economy.  Or why, more recently, a change in the economy ripples through housing.  These major “life support systems” are inextricably intertwined.  Not only are they intertwined, but also their impact on your life may vary from day to day, or year to year.  That’s where the “lenses” come into play.  If you look at one of these life support systems, you can rank how much attention you need to pay it based on whether it is stable or secure for the immediate future.

 

Let’s apply this kind of thinking to the food system.  We’ll do this by making up a simple scoring matrix to look at the aspects of food.  This matrix assumes you have money to buy food:

 

Aspect of FOOD

Stability

Security

Shelter

High – Safeway is OK

Moderate except grain elevators

Communications

High – Phone and web work

High – except for cordless phones

Transportation

Moderate – energy cost issues

Moderate – Trust pizza workers?

Energy

Moderate – Mid East variable

Low – obvious terror target

Environment

Moderate – Long term issue

High – too big a target?

Finance

High – except a system attack

High – as any other finance issue

 

 

What is today’s most important aspect of food?  Is it Transportation or Energy?  As my friend Jim Kunstler http://www.kunstler.com  has pointed out, we live in a world where the Caesar salad is flown 3-thousand miles to your table. With restrictions on air travel, do we need to plan on an alternative to Caesar salads?  Energy, on the other hand is implicit in almost everything that happens to your food – and so energy is today’s predominant “second aspect” of food if you will – the first aspect being its primary nature: nutrition and sustenance.  Attack energy and you attack food.

Now suppose that your frame of reference changes because of some major event in either your life, or the on-going operation of the country.  For the sake of discussion, let’s say that you just became unemployed – as I did recently.  Suddenly, the aspects of food change in the Finance domain:

 

Aspect of FOOD

Stability

Security

Shelter

High – Safeway is still OK

Moderate except grain elevators

Communications

High – Phone and web work

High – except wireless phones again

Transportation

Moderate – energy cost issues

Moderate – Trust pizza workers?

Energy

Moderate – Mid East variable

Low – obvious terror target

Environment

Moderate – Long term issue

High – too big a target?

Finance

Low – Need money to buy food

Low – again it’s a money issue.

 

This matrix approach shows how people who become unemployed – and are low on funds at the time – go through a definable re-ordering of priorities in their lives.  Yes, the concerns about energy and transportation of food are still there at the national level, but down at the personal level, there’s suddenly a huge focus on financing the next meal.  Not everyone can create a newsletter overnight.

 

If you’ve got any interest in it, I think I could develop an Excel workbook that might be useful in stepping you through the second and third ordering of these life support systems.  But I don’t think it’s so important that you enumerate all the rankings.  I think it’s sufficient as a “thinking tool” to recognize that this matrix approach can be helpful whenever you face decisions in life. 

 

Maybe you have been thinking about buying a new car.  You can begin your decision matrix by asking whether this is a “minimum loss” or “maximum gain” issue.  Then you can look at the other aspects of the “transportation” purchase decision.  What’s the food impact?  What’s the finance impact?  The environmental impact…well, you have the list now.  

 

This matrix approach will never suggest that you “don’t buy the car” but it is a tool that helps you assess your decision in an orderly way.  It’s even demonstrable that some folks need to buy a new car every so often just to keep up “appearances”.  I’ve got a number of friends that drive high-end European autos who, when no one is looking, prefer to drive their Toyota pickups.  But they realize that the high-end car is a communication tool – it communicates status and success to people.  Still, under it all, these sometimes “appearances-oriented” people enjoy being practical.  It’s a study of how advertising continues to sell us a lot of things we don’t need, but which make for high consumption which in turn breeds profitability for companies that sell status as much as their cars.

 

But, who am I to talk?  I still drive the old Porsche.

 


Valuations in Life

This matrix approach leads to more interesting – and useful – insights on a daily basis.  For example, this week, let’s consider how this logical way of looking at life support systems may be used as an analytical tool to size up the War on Terror.

 

This conflict, as we’ll discuss later in this report, is more between civilizations than just a few fundamentalists hiding in caves.  This conflict is much larger and has potential to grow and spread because it’s a collision of value systems.

 

I’d like to suggest that we could look at whole civilizations and make some generalizations about them by looking at how individuals in the West, or under Islam, value the things in their life support systems and this, in turn hints at why people behave as they do.

 

Here in the U.S.A., we live in what might be best described as a financially leveraged economy.  What this means is simply what matters in our lives – what determines our level of general happiness – is largely defined by denominating almost all aspects of our lives in financial terms.  If you think back to the seven-systems view, you can construct a model of how Americans look at their life support systems.  It looks something like this:

 

 

We can put this hierarchy in correct order by asking “If we are a financially ruled society, where do we spend the greatest amount of our money?”  The answer is shown above.  Most folks spend more on Shelter (housing) than they do on Food.  And, then spend less on Transportation than Food.  They spend less on Communication than Transportation, and really very little on the Environment.  I think if you look at the average household budget, you’ll see this pretty much holds true.  But when we look at the mountainous back country of the Islamic militant’s world, we have a much different expenditure pyramid.  To begin with, in their rugged and inhospitable area of the world, the Environment determines their behavior.  If you’ll indulge me on this point, and accept that time is how they denominate their lives, you can get a perspective into the clash between our way of life – and theirs.

 

In the militant’s rugged economy, let’s call it an “Unleveraged Economy”, life is denominated in the time domain of Environment.  This is done to the same degree that American’s denominate needs in the dollar domain of Finance.  So as you look at how much time these people spend in a week, you’ll find they spend more time getting Food than they do Energy.  They probably spend less time on Shelter than Communications. 

 

With this way of denominating life, there are two important implications for our future.  First, because there is so much emphasis on the time domain in daily living, that may explain why Eternity and achieving Eternal Bliss in the afterlife are central to the militant brand of fundamentalism.  The second point is that in a confrontation between these two ways of denominating life, there is asymmetry built into any potential conflict.  For a financially denominated economy to prevail over a time denominated economy, we would need to attack their environment in its time domain.  For a host of reasons, this is taboo in our society.  For the other side to prevail, they need only attack our financial aspect and unfortunately there seems to be no hesitancy in taking up that task.  They can attack the communications aspect of Finance (the mail) or the Shelter aspect of Finance, the Twin Towers with little regard.

A Clash of Civilizations?

Cyclical Aspects of Major Religions at 1,000 to 1,500 years.

The development of the early Inquisition and Crusades in Christendom followed Christ’s death by about 1,100 years.  Given the age of Islam, that faith may be undergoing similar “growing pains”.

 

In the late 11th century, there were two major issues facing the Church.  One was simony and the other was celibacy.  Celibacy is widely discussed in the history of the Church.  Little discussion exists today of the other issue, then contemporary: Simony – the buying and selling of spiritual things, associated with the practice of allowing people to essentially buy their way into significant positions within the Church.

 

By the time Gregory VII became involved (1073-1085), simony had evolved to a disagreement over investiture - whether officials appointed to Church offices should be appointed by royalty, or appointed by laypersons.  The debate, settled with the Concordat of Worms (1122) paved the way for the Church to run independent of royalty.

 

So, the first point I’d make is to suggest that we might be seeing in Islam today, is something parallel.  A church breaking from political control and coming out from under the auspices of various tribal and royal governments to establish its own power base.

 

Next is a possible parallel to the Crusades. The way these got started in 1095 was simple: Emperor Alexis Comnenus asked for Church help in battling Seljuk Turks, and Pope Urban II gave this blessing, in a speech at Clermont, France in November of 1095.  These earliest Crusades that followed led to the rise of Orders, such as the Franciscan’s Dominicans as military-religious orders.  More Crusades followed and in 1204 Christian Crusaders breached Constantinople.

 

Consider this: Christian Crusaders, who were knights of various orders, were active as late as 1396 in opposing the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans.  We see a range of rough 1100 to 1400 years after the founding of Christianity that Crusades occurred.  Is it possible that Islam is in a similar phase today?  Is the War on Terror the opening round of resistance to Islamic Crusades?

 

Look where Islam is:  2001 is 1,369 years after its founding date, marked by the death of the Prophet Mohamed in 632. Today Islam may be facing similar internal developments.  Another parallel is that in both cases, an underlying socio-economic revolution was underway and a re-ordering of the secular world in the religion’s sphere of world influence. 

 

Also of note are the relative growth rates of these religions 1300 years after their founding. Christianity experienced high growth rates from 1100 – 1600 A.D. as the world’s fastest growing religion - thanks in part to the Crusades.  The great cathedrals of Europe were built to house the growing Christian congregations and stand as evidence of rapid growth in that period.  I’d suggest the high growth rate of Islam today is akin to the Christian growth in the 11th through 16th centuries.

 

A focus on religious purification that could be called “fundamentalism” seems to occur in both faiths at around the same time. We learn from the MS Encarta 2000 that “The Inquisition properly so called did not come into existence until 1231, with the constitution Excommunicamus of Pope Gregory IX.”

 

Hold the phone.  If we apply a little arithmetic here, adding 1231 (A.D.) to the date of the passing of the Prophet Mohamed, we get 1862.  So, if there was anything like the Christian Inquisition beginning in Islam, it should be evident by 1862.  Was it?  Well, a web site with a good quick overview on the history of Islamic Jihad suggests this about the Wahabi sect of Islam: “This sect, founded by Abd al-Wahab (1730-1791), preaches the doctrine of 'back to the Quraan' as interpreted by al-Wahab. The publisher summarizes the burden of the article thus :"Jihad is regarded as the best thing one can offer voluntarily. It is superior to prayer, fasting, zakat, umra and hajj (the five pillars of Islam as mentioned in Quraan”.

 

The same site notes that there are presently several lesser jihads underway in the Islamic world, not the least of which is “The proxy jihad being waged between the Sunni (Wahabi) Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran to capture the leadership of the Muslim nations.”  This is an important point to note as you read news articles that are not well informed on the political situation within the Islamic religion.  What this implies is that in the future development of conflict, we should look not so much to Shiite Iran as to the Wahabiites in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

 

Ref URL http://www.armyinkashmir.org/articles/jihad.html

 

As I was preparing this report which I think demonstrates some contextual similarities between the Inquisition and earliest Crusades of Christendom, and the current conflict both within Islam and in a potential polarization of the world into a massive class of civilizations divided along religious lines, I was struck by what happened much later in Christianity and what may be many years in the future for Islam.

 

There have been some “not-very-well-researched” calls from some newspaper columnists for an “Islamic version of Luther” to step up and begin a moderating reformation of Islamic beliefs that are presently fractured in a world-endangering way.  Such speculations, unfortunately, are of little use, as Luther’s 95 Theses came about 300-years (1517) after the purification and expansion phase of Christendom. Islam’s reformation is more likely at least 100 years to perhaps 150 years in the future, provided the world hangs together enough to make that a meaningful event.

 

Just as real estate changed ownership several times in cities like Constantinople during the Christian expansion period, we will likely see real estate “turn over” between Islamic and non-Islamic interests in the present period, beginning with the inflow of Islamic beliefs into many former European colonies in the Middle East and Asia.  Unlike the Church of Rome, Islam’s expansion will be a more localized affair, as the faith has no central authority figure like the Pope.  A series of “wise men” make interpretations of Islamic law and this gives wide latitude for local interpretation.  That’s a good thing in terms of growing a belief system, and adapting it to the local situation, but it’s very difficult to deal with from a U.S. policy perspective.

 

Let’s look at issues of central authority in government and religion.  Take communism:  It could work to a certain extent if implemented locally, but the central planning that made it a workable concept at the national level, fouled the works at the local level.  Communism of a simple form works in thousands of small villages in the hinterlands of the Third World, but central control of a nation as large as Russia was never in the cards except at gunpoint.  This brings me to observe that in some areas, Wahabi  followers - distinctly named from more traditional Muslims - offer radical and often violence-promoting interpretations of  of scripture, at the local level.  Other sects of Islam, with less divergences locally, and promoting more unity, are likely to be more suitable to large scale governance.

 

Although some distinction might be made within Islam between Sunni and Shiite groups, the distinction is not dissimilar to the various branches of the Church in European, and particularly Germanic states during the similar historical period of the Christian Churches expansion.

 

Bin Laden and Hitler Compared

It is against this broadest of interpretations that we could profitably look at the kind of leader Osama bin Laden may turn out to be.  Before we get into that, let me remind you that because of advances in the velocity of our Communication aspect, something I call the velocity of history has changed.

 

One of the underlying assumptions I made with the notion that we’re replaying the period from 1928 through the earliest parts of the Second World War, is that things would play out in approximately the same sequential order.  However, recent events seem to suggest that instead of having a simple event-to-event flow, we’re seeing the speeding up of some events before others have had a chance to run their course.

 

If you see how we are still “replaying” the early part of the Depression, then it has undoubtedly struck you as peculiar to note that during the days immediately following the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, that this event was called a “Modern Pearl Harbor”.  But, if you internalize an understanding that time has become somewhat elastic, and that this is the dominant aspect of our adversaries, this phenomena - “events piling up” - should not be surprising.

 

Now a few points about bin Laden and Hitler to consider:

 

Bin Laden lost his father when he was 13.  Adolph Hitler’s father also died when he was 13.  But here, we begin to see that bin Laden actually is running ahead of Hitler by about 5-6 years if we consider timelines.  Bin Laden, like Hitler, is very bright. 

 

As a young man, Hitler had joined the German Army in 1914 and served through 1918 at age 25. The First World War ended when Hitler was 29. 

 

Bin Laden, born in 1957, gradually became more and more deeply involved in the Afghan resistance to the Soviets between 1979 and 1984, when he was between the ages of 22 and 27.  So we might generalize that bin Laden was moving about three years ahead of Hitler at this point.

 

Interestingly, both men served in positions under someone else’s authority in their respective wars.  In the case of Hitler, he was reportedly decorated several times for bravery, but never advanced beyond Private First Class in the Bavarian German Army.  It was while in hospital, after being blinded by mustard gas, that Hitler is believed to have gelled his anti-Semitic feelings.

 

In similar fashion, it seems reasonable that bin Laden’s anti-Western views were gelled during the Afghan conflict.  In fact, it was while under the command of others (in the MAK) that bin Laden most likely saw how the West was fomenting war through the CIA’s involvement.

 

Hitler began espousing his anti-Semitic views in public in1928 at 29 years of age.  By November of 1923, Hitler had formed a band of “true believers”.  On the 9th of November, Hitler and 600 of his followers in the sturmabtielungen marched in Munich in what was to become known as the Beer Hall Putsch.  Sixteen followers of Hitler died, but they were turned into martyrs and served as grist for the Nazi propaganda mill. 

 

With the end of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in sight, and at age 31, Osama bin Laden was busy in 1988 founding al Qaida.   In the few years following, some of bin Laden’s core “true believers” died, but as in Hitler’s example, they were used for propaganda purposes.

 

We come now to a major divergence in thinking.  Osama bin Laden doesn’t seem nearly as concerned about securing a stable industrial base from which to attack the Western world.  Instead, he has focused on working the “religious side of the aisle”. 

 

One of the calls that punctuated Hitler’s rise to power was for “Lebensraum”  (or, “living space”) as a right of the German people.   Bin Laden’s game plan has been an ongoing series of verbal attacks on the West and his view that all American’s should be killed in some way rhymes with Hitler’s “final solution”.  It should come as no surprise, then, that the Taliban suggested that Hindus in Afghanistan be forced to wear a yellow ribbon at their shirt pocket, not unlike the reign of Nazi terror.

 

When Hitler’s SS attacked Poland in September of 1939, he was 50 years of age and believed he could rule the world.  When bin Laden’s al Qaida attacked the World Trade center in September of 2001, he was 44 years of age and apparently believes he can rule the world. 

 

With links to various Middle East governments, bin Laden has been able to skip about six years of fund raising that Hitler had to go through. 

 

The similarities between the two men are not complete.  They have different agendas, but seem to share a lack of regard for human life that doesn’t to their belief system. 

 

Economic Impacts

Of course, all the study of history would be pretty much meaningless if we couldn’t find some way to apply it.  Fortunately, a perspective is useful if it “slaps us on the head” and suggests some economic and social trends that present both opportunity and challenge.  There is also no guarantee that the viewpoint, “history being replayed” will continue to be a good forecasting tool.  However, as the viewpoint has evolved, I’ve been amazed at how well it works out most of the time.

 

As we slide all of the pieces into place, I think we can see how the events in the U.S. are replaying the 1930’s era, while in the Middle East, something more like Europe sliding into World War Two may be taking place.  It would only take a flashpoint, like a Pakistan-India nuclear exchange, or a militant Islamic (Saudi Wahabi sect) incursion into areas, such as the southern tier of the former Soviet Union, to set off a major ground war with global implications.

 

The question we need to ask ourselves now, are things like “How do I make a buck?” and “How do I preserve it?”  Let’s talk about specific strategies.

Options

Although I’ve traded options in the past, I have never used them for their intended purpose, namely risk protection.  I have made a lot of money (and lost even more) trading options without dabbling in the underlying security, and I would never encourage you to go down that road.

 

However, if you see a major market decline ahead, and you wish to insure a position, the easiest way to do this is with an option.  Suppose, for example, you have 100 shares of Mightyfine Company that you paid $50 a share and intend holding for 6-9 months.   You can buy or write options to lock in some profit.

 

If you see $60 in the cards in six months, you might want to sell a covered call for the expiration six-months out for (about) $10/share.  When the stock goes over $60 any additional gain goes to the option holder.  If Mightyfine closes at $65 a share, you would already have your $10/share gain and the option holder would get the other $5.  The price you pay is limiting your gain to $10/share ($60 - $50).

 

On the other hand, if you write a $60 covered call, and Mightyfine closes at $45 six-months out, you not only get to sell at $45 (if you care to) but you also got that $10 for writing the call option, you your net (ex transaction fees) would be $55.  Your gain on Mightyfine would be 10%.

 

If Mightyfine really tanked, and went to say $30, you would have still netted $40. 

 

Now suppose that you’ve had Mightyfine in your portfolio since 3-years ago.  Even if the company doesn’t pay a dividend, you can in effect pay yourself one by writing covered calls on all the stocks you think are nearing their peak, or are headed down.  By working with a sharp broker, and watching what you’re writing covered calls on, you can substantially increase your trading returns.  But remember:  Don’t write uncovered calls or puts.  Uncovered means you skip the part where you actually own the stock.  This is incredibly dangerous and you can lose more than your investment.

 

If you sold an uncovered Mightyfine $60 call for $10 when the stock was at $50, and if the stock skyrockets to say $100 a share, you are required to buy at $100 – so that piddling $10/share from selling the uncovered option starts to look like one of the dumbest things you’ve done in your life.

 

See what I mean, writing covered calls can limit risk and lock in gains but playing with uncovered options is like playing with anthrax?  Trading in just the options (buying & selling listed options) limits your risk, but you can still lose the entire amount of your investment plus brokerage and exchange fees – and believe me, I’ve done that more than once!

 

Still, options have their place and consulting with a good broker (or reading a whole bunch of books) is the right thing to do before you even stick your toe in the water.

Gold? 

We’re still buying it.  While I haven’t put the results up on the “public” side of Urban Survival yet – although I may do that in a week or so, but so you know the answer, here’s the kind of feedback I’ve been getting to the question about the availability of gold coins both in the U.S. and elsewhere.

 

From a Pennsylvania reader: “Called local coin dealer  (Robert Charles Coins) in Williamsport PA.  He advertises in various coin magazines.  They only had 3 one ounce America Eagles available - Price $322”.

 

From a Houston reader: “Canadian Maple Leafs (1oz) are currently available in Houston at about a 15% premium above spot price. I checked on Thursday (10/04) and they were selling for $335.00 (spot was $292)”.

 

Another Texan reports: “This summer (July-August) I added to my gold holdings and I wanted to buy locally using cash.  I live on the Texas-Mexico border. No local coin dealer on the US-side had had any gold bullion coins available and on the Mexican side of the border there was a very limited supply of bullion coins (U.S. and Mexican) available at 30% above spot.  I ended up buying by mail from a dealer in the interior of the U.S.  I don't expect to have a surplus of FRNs until December to buy gold and I have serious doubts about my ability to buy anywhere close to spot.”

 

Out in Hawaii: “I called up A-1 Foreign Exchange in Honolulu and asked about buying some Eagles.  They said they had none.  They would have to be ordered from NY and that it would take a minimum of two weeks (his voice did not sound confident of this time frame).  He said that supply on both coasts was diminishing and that physical goal was in short supply.  He mentioned that the U.S. mint had stopped minting 2001 Eagles because they were out of  'blanks" - he thought they might actually be out of bullion.  I will be subscribing to your newsletter soon. [He’s a genius! - GAU]  I look forward to the October issue.

 

Reader, whereabouts unknown: “One week before 9/11, I ordered 20ozs from Monex.  They wait 12 days, after receipt of check, to ship the merchandise.  They informed me that they shipped 9/21 (registered, insured, return receipt).  So far, I have not received the merchandise [as of 9/30-GAU].  I have, however, received all sorts of ordinary first class mail.”

 

The summary seems to be that gold is available, but the number of stocking dealers is declining and deliveries are stretching out.  The ODD part is the lack of price movement due to demand!

From the Poop Deck:

Elaine & I are settling in to life here in San Diego – we love the place so far.  It has the kind of weather people only dream about.  Lows at night dip into the 50’s and days generally soar in the mid 70’s along the coast, but the sea breeze kicks up in the afternoon keeping things from getting too hot.    Food:  Elaine sent me to the store this past week and I noticed that chicken drumsticks were on sale at Von’s (Safeway’s local division) for only $0.67 a pound.  Heck of a deal.  I love ‘em – grilled on the BBQ for about two bits worth of propane, they’re a great – cheap – meal.  Speaking of which:  Safeway’s “Club Card” looks more and more like a used car dealer “mark up then mark down” scam.  Elaine brought home a $7.99/pound New York, weighed 1.18 pounds, “normally $9.43” but with our ”club card” it was $5.30.  That’s $4.49 a pound, so why not come out and tell us it’s 50-cents more than the $3.99 specials of last year? Transportation:  We also noticed in our travels around the city that gas is $0.10 a gallon cheaper down by the Mexican border than it is on the north side of town.  You might want to snoop around your own backyard to see if there’s a cheap part of town.  On the other hand, I have found that the same store (Safeway) has better meats in the high end of town than on the wrong side of the tracks.  Buy meat where the rich do! Shelter