Cliffs Riffs - Stuph n Nonsense

  I am sure you have all seen the news. Walgreens is poised to "move" their corporate address overseas. The reason: Tax savings. To simplify it - this large Corporation wants to increase their bottom line at the expense of the Nation that CREATES their bottom line in the first place.   Walgreens started in 1901 with a single store, now they have 8,678 stores scattered across the country in every one of the fifty states. In 2013, their sales were a reported 72.28 BILLION dollars.   Now they want to "move" to save paying taxes to the nation from which they made their fortune.   Why do I care? Why am I taking it so personally?   Well, I can remember as a kid when my mom would take me to a Walgreens - back when they had a soda fountain and served food. It was a real treat for us to go there and get a sandwich and maybe a chocolate milkshake.     Fast forward to last year when I battled throat cancer - all of my medication was...

%^&$ing Comcast keeps billing me for equipment I returned months ago, so I decided to have a little fun with Albert with whom I chatted about the problem. Here is the transcript: Session connected! Font Size Transcript Sound user CLIFF has entered room analyst Albert has entered room Albert:  Hello CLIFF_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Albert. Please give me one moment to review your information. Albert:  My pleasure to have you on this chat! I always remain committed and focused to provide you quality customer service at my fullest effort. Please allow me to assist you with your concern for today. I hope you are doing well today. CLIFF_:  My Issue: You are billing me $9.95 for an additional outlet AGAIN. I do not have an additional cable box - I returned it t...

This story originally ran in the Lowell Ledger and Buyers Guide . As part of our annual Pink Arrow effort, the local paper(s) publish stories of Lowell folks who have been affected by cancer. (They also have stories of other people who are dealing with grief at Gilda's Club.) Anyway - they were nice enough to let me tell my story - here it is: The Pink Arrow Project was the brain child of one Noel Dean, the varsity football coach at Lowell High School. He noticed how many families in the community were being hit with cancer and he decided his team, the Red Arrows, could turn their uniforms and name to pink for one game in the season and use the money raised to help local people in the fight. If you want to appreciate what "Pink Arrow" has done, spend a few minutes doing an internet search on the subject. Be prepared, get a box of tissues. The results in Lowell are fantastic and the concept has been copied and modified all around the country. Our week...

I have been riding motorcycles on and off for 37 year and have never joined the AMA. At this point I have no plans to ever join the AMA. Why would I want to join an organization that spends a good deal of its time and resources in making the practice of riding a motorcycle more dangerous? Why would I support a group that considers it a job well done when the aftermath of one of their major concerns results in the death of more motorcycle riders? Spend some time on the AMA site and their rhetoric regarding helmets will remind you of your favorite, or least favorite, politician. They are masters of the double message: "The AMA believes riders should wear all the safety gear all the time" sounds like a pretty strong endorsement for helmet use, doesn't it? Especially when you consider the results of pretty much any study of helmet use demonstrates that they reduce death rates, reduce serious injury rates and thereby reduce the costs associated with motorcycl...

  A while ago, I looked into oatmeal and decided I should be eating steel cut oats because they are the LEAST processed oats in oatmeal. I have always loved cereal in the morning and I knew that it ws time for me to move away from Honey Nut Cheerios to something better for me. So, I snooped around the net and read stuff and tried Flahavan's. Loved them so much, I wrote about them on this here blog:   Here is my blog post about Flahavan's.     I happily consumed Flahavan's for a number of months. Then one day when I went in for a refill, the store was out. A helpful staff member suggested that if I liked Flahavan's, then I would probably like McCann's equally. Hmmm, I actually liked them just a wee, wee bit better. So for the next several months I was a McCann's man.   Well, then I was in the flour aisle on Sunday morning  and I spied the package of Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oats .  I decided to give them a try - I REA...

Mister Cliffy goes to Washington - a 48 hour adventure.     The Alliance for Main Street put us up at some nice digs - The Liaison Hotel is just a couple blocks from the Capitol Building.     This was NOT a funsy tourist trip - the schedule was pretty packed. That being said, I did have a couple hours to wander around when I got there Tuesday afternoon. Hot and Humid - uhm, I thought I was skilled in humidity being from the Mitten. Well, DC has us beat. Above you can see one of two worker bees who were restoring/repainting a fountain in the heat.   Anyone with a lick of sense KNOWS the best place to get out of the heat and humidity is to go into a Botanical Garden, right? Well, I was thinking of Julie Claire when I went in - she would have loved it. Some of the rooms were cool -but some of them, like The Jungle and a room full of orchids were about what you would expect heat wise, but they were gorgeous.   ...

I received an interesting phone call yesterday. A nice lady named Karen invited me to fly to our nation's capital to lobby elected officials in favor of taxing internet purchases. I am to be a part of the Alliance for Main Street Fairness DC Fly In - other small business owners from around the country are being brought in to tell our stories to legislators. At first I thought it was a gag because Karen told me all my expenses would be covered, (you know like when you WIN a cruise but they need your credit card # for "verification" and "port taxes"?) She convinced me it was legit and I told her I would talk it over with Julie. That decision took us about 52 seconds - I have never been to DC and this is an opportunity for me to share my strong opinion on an issue near and dear to my heart. The Issue Should Michigan and every other state with sales tax require Amazon.com et al to collect and pay sales tax? (NOTE: something like 15 states already have legi...