I would like to mount a campaign once again to encourage people not to go anywhere.

Travel is still so expensive that I think people ought to stay home. People pay fortunes for their homes and then leave them to go someplace else.

"Away" seems to be our most popular destination. Why are we crowding our highways and airports? I was looking at all the ads in newspapers and magazines for places to go.

One of the best ways to save money these days is by staying home and doing things around the house.

Is everything done around your house? If you don't like it, sell it, otherwise stick around on vacation and take your pleasure doing the things that need to be done.

Sometimes, travel is quite unpleasant.

There's nothing good about going to an airport, waiting an hour and a half for your flight and then squeezing into a space half as big as you are next to someone twice as big. When you land, half the time it isn't anywhere near where you want to be.

It's hard to know whether it's better to have a friend or a stranger in the seat next to you. I always hope for a small, pretty woman, but I usually end up with a big, fat guy. My opinion is that they ought to let the smaller people on board for half price.

If you enjoy waiting on the runway, the airport's the place to go.

The runway is a great place to rest. I've made a dozen trips in the last few years and in the time it took me to get where I was going, I could have walked. They tell you about the flight time as though that was the actual time it took to get from departure to your destination.

The actual flight time is often the least of the time it takes to get there. You're on the plane for twice as long as you're in the air. The only thing good about flight is the flight attendants. I'm surprised that the attendants seem as good as ever. I don't know where they get them.

Airfares vary widely depending on your destination, when you book your trip, and the day and time of departure. If you really want to go somewhere, here are some sample airfares:

New York to St. Louis: $591

Buffalo to San Francisco: $482

New York to Los Angeles: $428

Newark to Anchorage: $819

Newark to Florida is about one third the distance from New York to L.A. but it's the same price, $428. I don't know why it's that much.

In many cases, of course, I'd be willing to pay NOT to go to wherever it was. You probably have a list of places you never want to go back to. I can think of half a dozen cities I hope I never have to visit again. I won't mention my old hometown because it may be on your list.

Once you've landed at the airport in the city you've flown to, you have to find a way into town.

It usually costs about the same as your airfare to get there, and if you're lucky the taxi driver has heard of where you want to go. More often, it seems as if it's the cab driver's first time there, too.

If you're staying at a hotel, it may be almost empty, but your room is down at the end of the hall. The biggest thing in it is the television set. Whatever the window looks out on is the same in Chicago as it is in Dallas, and it's seldom anything you want to see.

Many hotels still have the shower in the bathtub, which I dislike, but hotels are great about towels. The towels are usually big and there are several of them. I take soap home.

A hotel room in Sidney, Australia, is about $50 less than one in New York City. It costs around $2,470 to go from New York to Sidney and back, though, and I'd go, but I don't want to save the $50 and it's a very long plane ride.

ALSO from andy rooney:

(Write to Andy Rooney at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or via email at aarooney5@yahoo.com)

(c) 2009 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

About Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney born January 14th, 1919 is a writer, humorist, radio and television personality.

Rooney became most famous as a humorist and political commentator with his weekly broadcast on the CBS News Program "60 Minutes" since 1978.

Recent Commentary

I'm Hedging Today
Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney sees the phrase "hedge fund" in the newspaper every day now and does not really know what a "hedge fund" is. A hedge fund has something to do with money. He was surprised to find "hedge fund" in one of only six dictionaries, but then read the definition.

My Wish List
Andy Rooney

In an idle moment, trying to come up with an idea, Humorist & Commentator Andy Rooney decided to make a list of things he should do but has not.

Obama Economic Team's Flawed Cosmology:
Still Believing Universe Revolves around Banks
Arianna Huffington

A series of recent meetings with members of Barack Obama's economic team leading to a spirited back-and-forth that made me feel like I was back at Cambridge, debating the smartest kid in the class), left me with a pair of indelible impressions:

First, these are all good people, many of them brilliant, working incredibly hard with the best of intentions to solve the country's financial crisis.

Second, they are operating on the basis of an outdated cosmology that places banks at the center of the economic universe.

Greening My House
Arianna Huffington

Ever since I saw the Green light, thanks to my friend Laurie David, and traded in my gas-guzzling SUV, I've tried my best to up my eco-awareness.

On the Road to Buenos Aires
Even the United States can Manage Itself into Irrelevance
Chris Thomas

America has been the greatest of all nations for a long time. But we should not forget, especially at a crucial juncture like this, that with enough bad decisions and enough political incompetence, we can indeed manage ourselves into decline. Even we can become Argentina.

Larry Summers: Brilliant Mind, Toxic Ideas
by Arianna Huffington

According to most commentators, the president's press conference went a long way toward taking the spotlight off the roiling anger over AIG, bonuses and Wall Street abuses -- and putting it back where the president wants it: on the imperative need to pass his budget.

But the best laid plans of our remarkable president may be laid to waste by a bank rescue plan that is the product of exhausted ideas put together by men far too beholden to Wall Street.

To understand why a man as brilliant and accomplished as Summers can be so wrong about what to do with the banks and Wall Street, it would be useful to turn to "The Innovator's Dilemma," by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen.

What if Jon Stewart, Instead of John King,
Interviewed Dick Cheney
Arianna Huffington

Jon Stewart's Jim Cramer interview was a pivotal moment -- not just for Stewart, Cramer and CNBC, but also for journalism. Stewart kept popping into my head as I watched John King interview Dick Cheney three days later.

King opened the interview by showing clips of President Obama saying that his administration had "inherited an economic crisis" and "inherited a big mess." He then asked Cheney: "Did you leave him a mess?"

"I don't think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances," responded Cheney. "It's a global financial problem. . . . So I think the notion that you can just sort of throw it off on the prior administration, that's interesting rhetoric but I don't think anybody really cares a lot about that."

Tim Geithner, CNBC &
The Second Coming of Known Unknowns
Arianna Huffington on Tim Geithner, Economic Crisis & Obama Budget

Besides being awash in toxic paper, credit default swaps, and collateralized debt obligations, we seem to be drowning in unknowns.

Only, I get the sense that there are fewer unknowns than we're being told. Instead, we're greeted with a wall of manufactured complexity by the people whose job it is to make known unknowns into known knowns.

Rove Pontificating on Economy Like Madoff Pontificating on Investing

Although anointed as "the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party," Rush Limbaugh is just a massive shiny object that distracts our attention from the real intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party, Karl Rove.

Time to Treat American Homeowners as Well as Wall Street Bankers
Arianna Huffington

"The banks are too big to fail" has been the mantra we've been hearing since September. But when you consider the millions of American homeowners facing foreclosure, aren't they also too big to be allowed to fail? So why hasn't the foreclosure crisis gotten the attention it deserves? A combination of perverse priorities and flawed thinking.

Bipartisanship vs What's Best for America:
President Obama Needs to Choose

The first question at President Obama's primetime press conference should have been: "Mr. President, what is your priority -- bipartisanship or what is best for America? And when the two are in conflict, which are you going to choose?

Although the answer should be obvious, the president's actions over the last couple of weeks have left many wondering.

America's Best Bet: Municipal Redemption Fund (MuRF)
Stopping Foreclosures & Protecting Investors

An original economic stimulus plan developed by a real estate agent in New Jersey that is currently in the hands of the House of Representatives and every Senator in Washington D.C. The Federal Government purchases NO interest in any private property and may take NO assignment of any lien under this plan. This plan is strictly a transparent "time-out" and "reset" of the national tax lien industry for the sake of stopping foreclosures while simultaneously protecting investors by shoring up the absolute bedrock of the capitalist economy which emanates directly from real property values and the taxes thereon.

Stimulus Package: If You Jump Halfway Across a Chasm, You Fall Into the Abyss
Arianna Huffington

Here's a thought: If we are going to spend $2 trillion trying to deal with the economic crisis, shouldn't we do it right? The price of getting it wrong is, after all, extremely high.

John Thain, Poster Child for Era of Irresponsibility
Arianna Huffington

There is plenty of debate about what President Obama's stimulus bill should look like -- as well there should be, given all that is at stake. But there is a growing consensus that the guiding principle in that debate should be Obama's call for a "new era of responsibility."

Helping fuel that consensus is the saga of the rise and fall of former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, the poster child for the Era of Irresponsibility. The condemnation of his behavior is completely bipartisan.

Barack Obama Sober Sermon on the Steps
Arianna Huffington

The new president and the throng that turned out to cheer him and hear him on Inauguration Day were on two very different missions.

The crowd had come to celebrate. Obama had come to deliver a sober sermon.

Inaugural Address By President Barack Hussein Obama
President Obama's Inauguration Speech in text & video

President Barack Obama gives his inaugural address after taking the oath of office in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2009. The presidential inauguration is a tradition dating back to George Washington's 1789 inauguration. President Obama's Inauguration Speech in full in text & video.

Laissez-Faire Capitalism Should Be as Dead as Soviet Communism
Arianna Huffington

The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking.

Does the Madoff Debacle Finally End the 'Who Could have Known' Era?
Arianna Huffington

An ambitious and risky undertaking carried out with hubris, and featuring the weeding out of anyone who raises alarms, little-to-no transparency, an oversight system in which no central authority is accountable, and the deliberate manufacturing of ambiguity and complexity so that when it all falls to pieces, the excuse who could have known can be used

Rewarding Those Who Got It Right
Arianna Huffington

Among its myriad failings, the Bush administration has repeatedly gotten it wrong when it comes to getting it right.

Over the last eight years, there has consistently been no penalty for those who have gotten things -- even the most important things -- wrong, and no reward for those who have gotten things right.

Call it Bush Darwinism: Survival of the Unfittest.

The Economic Meltdown Will Be Blogged
Politics Arianna Huffington

Losing your job -- or even fearing that you might -- can make you feel powerless. But at the same time you are looking for work -- or learning a new skill -- you can take up blogging. It doesn't require anyone's permission, there is no application process. You just need blogging software (some of the best is free) and the will to express yourself.