Al's Morning Meeting

The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reports:

Petroleum shortages may get most of the attention, but the world's supply of helium -- a byproduct of the extraction of natural gas -- is dwindling, too. Last month, two events caused an unexpected but significant decline in production: regularly scheduled maintenance at some U.S. facilities and launch delays at forthcoming plants in Algeria and Qatar.

Balloon sculptors are by no means the only parties at risk.

MRI machines depend on cold liquid helium to cool their magnets. NASA uses helium to flush the fuel lines on its shuttles. The element is used by superconductors and semiconductors, scuba divers, cryogenists and nuclear fusion reactors. Mark Kinsley, operations director at helium supplier Tri-Tech in Tampa, said welders are a major consumer.

Fortunately, suppliers have shown better sense than to rank party balloons highest on their ration lists. Most helium distributors give hospitals first dibs, for example.

Some balloon purveyors have been lucky. John Penuel, general manager of a Party City store in St. Petersburg, said he hasn't been forced to ration supplies, despite reports that an Atlanta franchisee saw his inventory sink by one-third. The city of Chicago was able to float giant balloons at its recent Thanksgiving parade, but only after an alternate supplier made a 4 a.m. helium delivery.

NPR reported on this topic last month.

The American Chemical Society has been warning about this since as far back as 2001, when it said:

Conservative estimates of the helium remaining indicate that the U.S. private reserves may run out by 2015.

Wired foresaw the problem even earlier, in 2000, when it reported:

Nearly all of the world's helium supply is found within a 250-mile radius of Amarillo, Texas (the Helium Capital of the World). A byproduct of billions of years of decay, helium is distilled from natural gas that has accumulated in the presence of radioactive uranium and thorium deposits. If it's not extracted during the natural gas refining process, helium simply soars off when the gas is burned, unrecoverable.

How to Get an Easy $30

Get even more if you have dependents. Every month for the last gazillion years, Americans have been paying an excise tax on their phone bills that, get this, actually pays for the cost of the Spanish-American War.

The Motley Fool reported in February:

If your monthly bill amounts to around $100, at the current 3 percent rate for the tax (which has been as high as 25 percent in past years), you'll be paying $3 per month for this tax, or $36 per year. Heavy phone users might pay $100 or more per year. All to pay for the Spanish-American War?

Ah, but now you can get a refund for all you have paid. You can take the automatic refund and provide no documentation or, if you are a heavy phone user, you might be able to claim a bunch more.

A follow-up article published last week by The Motley Fool quotes refundphonetax.com and the Internal Revenue Service as the originators of these tips:

• You are to claim the refund on the 2006 tax form that you file in 2007.

• You can opt for a standard refund of $30 (if you have one exemption), $40 (if you have two), $50 (if you have three) or $60 (if you have more). This option requires no documentation from you.

• If you have (or want to go through the trouble of procuring) your telephone bill statements from March 2003 to July 2006, you can get a refund based on amounts you were actually charged. In most cases, this can amount to a lot more than the standard refund -- perhaps as much as $100 to $300 for many of us. You'll need to fill out IRS Form 8913 for this.

For further reading, visit references from the Department of the Treasury and the IRS.

Teachers Absent in the Toughest Schools

The Chicago Tribune recently examined the absentee rate of school teachers and found that, in the toughest schools, teachers were absent a lot.

The Tribune reports:

A Tribune analysis of six years of teacher absences shows that chronic absenteeism is clustered in certain schools and among a minority of teachers. The victims tend to be the district's most vulnerable students -- children in failing schools who desperately need the stability of a regular, dedicated educator.

Though Chicago Public Schools officials knew there were problems, they had done little to spotlight teacher absences until now.

For the first time this year, the district is publishing each school's average teacher absence rate in directories handed out to parents. Officials say the information will help parents gauge the quality of their schools, while spurring schools to better manage absences.

The average number of teacher absences varied dramatically last year at the city's 500 elementary schools -- from a low of about two days per teacher at tiny Suder Montessori Magnet to about 35 days per teacher at Bouchet Elementary, a 1,300-pupil South Shore school, district payroll data shows.

The story adds:

The district's generous leave policy gives employees three paid personal days and 10 to 12 sick days a year, depending on seniority. Any unused days can be banked and used when the employee needs them, or they can be cashed in at the end of a career to sweeten pension payments.

At 22 elementary schools, average absences topped 20 days per teacher. Of those 22, 15 are struggling schools in South or West Side neighborhoods where nearly all the students are African-American.