Uncle Sam

Today, you can insert a coin or card in the appropriate machine and get candy, gum, drinks, telephone service or even cash. The idea of a coin-operated machine has been around for quite some time, however.The first was used to dispense holy water in ancient Greece. In the 1850s, tobacco boxes were kept on tavern counters; the smoker inserted a coin and was able to fill his pipe with tobacco or buy a cigarette.Machines later dispensed stamps, gum and perfume. Fortune-telling, strength-testing, picture-show and gaming-skill machines soon followed.

Washington. -- Well, they've finally made me an advocate of ruthless welfare reform -- I mean for wiping out total programs without tears. I'm talking about the myriad federal schemes in which outrageous and incredible subsidies are given to the richest people and companies in America.Sharon LaFraniere reported in the Washington Post about the Agriculture Department's Market Promotion Program, which spends hundreds of millions of dollars helping some of the most prosperous businesses in America to hawk their wares overseas.

Uncle Sam has gotten much better at collecting the taxes we owe. But better isn't good enough, says a General Accounting Office report.The IRS pulled in about $1 trillion in 1989. But as of Sept. 30, 1990, taxpayers still owed about $72.2 billion, plus an additional $24 billion in interest and penalties.In 1983, the IRS introduced an automated collection system, which uses phones and computers to settle claims. It replaced a manual system that depended on written notices.The system worked so well that 21 ACS centers now do the work of 73 manual offices with half as many people.

AND YOU always thought that money races through your fingers faster than you can earn it.Actually, Uncle Sam says that it takes an average of 18 months for a $1 bill to run its course of useful circulation.A $5 bill has an average life of two years, a $20 Federal Reserve Note stays around for almost four years.The frayed greenbacks are then retired by the Treasury, shredded into long, thin spaghetti-like strips, compressed into bricks and buried in landfills.The federal government disposes of nearly 7,000 tons of worn-out paper money each year.

Savings bonds have been a part of the American tradition for more than 50 years. A popular birthday gift, a payroll-deduction habit, a prudent nest egg for the future.Beginning in 1941 as war bonds, and then as part of the national effort to build U.S. strength during the Cold War, saving bonds came to be accepted as a safe and productive way for the average person to invest. "Help yourself by helping Uncle Sam" was a longtime slogan.But this month, Uncle Sam decided not to be so grateful.

Rob Tyner, lead vocalist for the rock group MC5, died Tuesday of an apparent heart attack. He was 46. Mr. Tyner, whose legal name was Robert Derminer, was the lead singer of the group that critics called a precursor to punk and heavy metal. The Detroit-based band played the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago to raise money for the revolutionary White Panther Party. MC5's biggest hit was "Kick out the Jams," from their self-titled 1969 album. Many record stores initially refused to stock the album because of its incendiary lyrics.

The concept of "Players" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) isn't new. A group of convicts is rounded up and given a shot at redemption. The catch is they have to work for the good guys by doing the jobs too dirty for the good guys to do, like "The Dirty Dozen" or "The A-Team."But producer Dick Wolf ("Law & Order") wraps that concept in some of the freshest and brightest packaging of the fall season ** by casting rapper Ice-T as one of the convicts. His presence helps give "Players" a young, urban feel as well as a puckish sense of humor that should play very well with the teen-age audience at which this series is aimed.

Think twice before you tell Uncle Sam to charge it on April 15. You could be paying more than you bargained for. It's tempting to put your tax bill on a cash-back rewards card, but you could lose ground. Most of those reward cards return 1 percent or 2 percent of your purchases, but you'll pay a 2.49 percent convenience fee to pay your taxes with plastic. That's $24.90 on a $1,000 bill. Compare that with the 37-cent stamp you'd use to mail a check to the Internal Revenue Service. If you're the type who carries a balance and pays only the monthly minimum, it would take 13 years to pay off that $1,024.

Near the peak of the housing frenzy four years ago, 75 percent of homes sold in the Baltimore metro area went to buyers with conventional mortgages - loans not insured by government agencies. Now such deals are much fewer and farther between. Thirty-five percent of Baltimore-area buyers got conventional loans last month, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. The share of buyers turning to Uncle Sam - particularly for Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgages - is way up in these post-bubble, post-subprime times.

Most Americans are happy at this time of the year to think that they're done paying taxes for a while. But if 2005 was any indication, fund investors are only just beginning to pay Uncle Sam, and the damage is about to get a lot more noticeable. According to a study from Lipper Inc., estimated taxes paid by fund investors in 2005 were up 58 percent from 2004, with investors losing more than $15 billion to the government due entirely to mutual fund payouts. When next tax season comes around, Lipper senior research analyst Tom Roseen believes that taxes will be an even bigger drag on fund performance than expenses are, especially in fixed-income funds.