Apr 8
Jean and Ed Larose KS5V

Jean and Ed Larose KS5V

I received a text from Jean. Ed passed away this morning sometime around 3:00 a.m. She said “his pain is gone”.

Ed had been recently diagnosed at the VA Hospital with a very rare form of Stage 4 Cancer in his Bile Ducts (Gallbladder). Initially the doctors had given an estimate of 1-2 years, dropped this month to perhaps 6 months, all with proper medical treatment to extend to that date. Ed went on record to decline such treatment, saying he didn’t want to undertake expensive treatment just to prolong the pain another month of two.

Please keep the Larose family in your prayers as they say goodbye to a Husband, Father and Grandfather. Ed didn’t want a funeral service. I will keep you posted on how you may want to pay your respects.

Andrew Watson, K5NNN

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Apr 1

This from Jim, WB8AZP, via the ARROW mailing list:

FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT TELL THIS WAS AN APRIL FOOLS HOAX, I”M PUTTING THIS SPOILER UP FRONT!  Duh!

Buried in the middle of the 1200-page Health Care Reform package is something that should be disturbing to all US amateur radio operators. Embedded in the funding guidelines section 415, paragraph 27, line 45, are details on one of the mechanisms that the government intends to employ to help pay for the staggering costs of the new plan.

To put it simply, the new health care guidelines support the notion of creative funding from untapped resources, and from other government agencies, like the FCC.

This puts the burden on funding on other agencies, and therefore the health care reform pundits can claim that “they” didn’t introduce any new taxes to pay for everything.

Lurking in the depths of the new health carecare package is a time bomb waiting to affect all US Amateur Radio Operators; The new Talk And Pay (TAP) Tax.

What does the TAP Tax do? Well, just as it implies, it adds a tax on to each amateur license, based on usage of the bands.

The FCC knew it was going to be troublesome to enforce this kind of regulation, so they came up with a clever scheme – taxation by license class. All Technician, General, and Extra Class Licensees will be taxed at a different rate. Any holdover licenses from different classes will be taxed at the next higher rate, so novice license holders will be taxed as technicians, advanced holders as extra class licensees and so on.

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