Keeping consumer spending alive and well

Consumer spending is 70% of American GNP.  That's a lot and it is what keeps the US economy humming.  And consumer spending has its ups and downs.  When it is up, things are good all over.  When it is down people are thrown out of work, business profits disappear and gloom covers the land.  The financial pundits at least understand this, and they have devised theories to account for swings in consumer sentiment and even indexes of consumer sentiment that claim to predict consumer behavior. 
   Most things consumers spend money on are discretionary.  They don't have to buy a new car, at least not this year.  They can postpone buying a new house.  They can put off home maintenance projects like new siding, remodeling the kitchen, or reroofing.  They can skip back to school buying and send the kids to school in hand-me-downs.  They can put Santa in the closet and put the Grinch in charge of Christmas buying.  About the only things consumers absolutely have to buy are groceries, utilities, and the rent.  When consumers feel stressed, they cut back spending as much as they can, which sends the larger economy into a tailspin. 
   A powerful driver of consumer spending is the job market.  If the consumers fear loosing their jobs, they will cut back everywhere they can.  If they feel their jobs are safe and secure, then they are willing to spend on stuff.  Obama and Obamacare made everyone fear layoffs which kept GNP growth down around 1%.  With Trump everyone feels secure in their jobs and we have GNP growth up around 3%. 
    Not to panic the American consumer.  Bad things happen if you do.

Effective new car advertising

They been running this one on Fox News several times a day.  Beige SUV pulls up a steep driveway and stops at the front door.  Scene has the color canceled out for a nice arty black and white look. Woman gets out, opens front door , enters her house to find it is a mess.  All the children are in the living room playing mess making games.  Room is super untidy.  Woman backs out the front door, gets back in her SUV and reclines the driver's seat. Closes eyes.
Message to us car buyers, our SUV interior is more comfortable than your child infested house.  And, you Mom get little pleasure from your children and you don't like keeping house.  So buy a Lincoln SUV to get away from it all parked in your driveway. 
   I think it might have been a Lincoln Navigator but they never mentioned the product name on air. 
   This ad is REALLY going to motivate me (a guy) or any chick I ever knew to buy a Lincoln Navigator.  Or any other Lincoln SUV. 
   Can you say "Turnoff"?

Bipartisan means everybody gets lots of money.

The house needed both Democratic and Republican votes to pass the federal budget and avoid yet another federal government shutdown.  So, the Republicans got a big boost (maybe $100 billion) in defense spending, and funding for the Mexican border wall.  Democrats got $75 million (chicken feed really) for a gun control study group.  At least that is all I have heard about.  I daresay a good look at the budget will find more spending and a good helping of pork.  But the newsies are all hypnotized by the Great Impeachment Show (GIS) so we don't really know what all got slipped into the humongous federal budget.  Plus the entire budget is so big and complicated that the newsies would not understand it.  Few newsies can do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, even with a smart phone to help out. 
   We should not be passing great big fund everything bills.  Those are just to big and complicated for anyone the understand what is really going on.  We ought to pass one funding bill for every Federal department, defense, state, treasury, homeland defense, education, health and human services, and so on and so on.  The smaller one department spending bills are small enough for one person to understand and tell us voters what is really going down. 

Not impressed with Democrat debate

Timing was not ideal, coming as it did while the smoke was still settling from the Trump impeachment.  They were all eloquent, spoke well (except maybe Biden).  They all supported far left ideas, of the more free stuff sort.  Free college, forgive college debt, medicare for all, and a bunch of other stuff that I forget.  Some of 'em even talked about new taxes on "the rich" to pay for all that free stuff.  All of 'em claimed that the US economy was unfair to just about everybody while the Trump boom is in full swing.  At least the PBS anchors doing the questions were pretty good, the questions were tough and relevant. 
   Side issue.  Where does the impeachment go from here?  They say the Senate cannot deal with the issue until the House (Nancy!) submits the paperwork.  Which sounds reasonable.  Nancy adjourned the House, won't be back until after New Year.  So The great Impeachment Show (GIS)  goes on, and gets yet more TV coverage.  Could this be Nancy's plan, drag things out as long as possible?  Certainly the Senate would try to finish the impeachment off as quickly as possible.  Then it's gone and we could move on to real public business.

The gravitational constant is increasing

Gravitational Force F = G * (m1 * m2) / r squared.   In plain English, gravitational force is equal to the gravitational constant times the product of the two masses involved divided by the square of the distance between the two masses.
  When G increases, gravitational force increases. 
   Which is the only explanation I have for the increased number of thing I drop.  Must be the increased gravity is sucking them right out of my hands to crash on the floor.  Couldn't be that I am loosing my grip.

US House changes rules of debate on every single bill

The "Rules Committee" is doing the great impeachment show on Fox today.  The voice over explains the rules committee make up a new and different rule for every bill going to the floor of the House.  This ain't right.  Every bill ought to be treated the same, which means the same "rule" on every single House bill.  No Rules Committee greasing the skids for or against a bill.  Treat them all the same, that's fair.  This special-rule-for-every-bill scheme is clearly unfair. 

Representatives are supposed to vote their district

Discussion on Fox TV of all places about some 17 odd democratic reps elected from districts that Trump carried in 2016.  The tone of the anchor person implied that any true blue democrat ought to vote with the party, to impeach Trump.  Heaven forbid that they ignore the Congressional party and vote for what their district wants.  This from a Fox anchor person.  In case you are not following the great impeachment show closely, 17 House votes is probably enough to defeat impeachment in the House. 
   Speaking as an elected NH senator, I under stand my job to be voting for what my constituents want.  And if I don't vote my district, I expect my voters will vote me out of office, with the election just a year away.  Fortunately, in most cases, my own views match the views of my constituents.  That must have something to do with my getting elected in the first place. 
   Anyhow, the great impeachment show will probably run thru Christmas and into next year.

Democrats release 659 page "Impeach Trump" document

Ayup.  I am really going to read all 659 pages.  And should I do so (not likely), what will I know after reading that much lawyer gobble-de-gook.  I think the Democrats have missed something here. 

FISA court[s] is/are rubberstamps

The the cops, the FBI and the intelligence agencies submit thousands of requests to snoop on citizens and foreigners every year.  The FISA court[s] approve all but a half dozen or so.  In short, the cops and intel agencies get to snoop anyone they please, anytime they please.  And a FISA snooping license allows them to tap your phone, intercept your email,  see your Facebook page, and do other  stuff that we don't even know about.
   Since the FISA court[s] approve nearly all snooping requests why have them at all.  Just let the cops and the intel agencies get on with it.  The results are the same as we have right  now.
   What we really ought to do is require the cops and the agencies submit their snooping requests to real courts, the kind that do business five days a week and try real criminal cases, in front of real juries, and sentence real criminals.

I'm not impressed. Is anyone impressed???

The Democrats invented a new one "Obstruction of Congress" to throw at Trump.  First time I ever heard of this what-cha-may-callit.  They asked the administration for pounds of paperwork and live witnesses to grill in front of the TV cameras.  The administration refused the requests, probably citing executive privilege.  I did not catch just what reasons the administration gave for refusals.    For the other count they are going for "Abuse of power".  They cite the famous Ukraine telephone call. 
   No real crime (like breaking and entering) was cited.  Both counts are essentially government infighting counts.   When the US is passing out foreign aid we often ask the lucky recipient to do a few things.  If you want a handout from US taxpayers you need to be responsive.  The Congress always asks for a ton of documents, it's easier than doing their own investigating.  The administration always refuses to deliver papers except under court order.  Things have worked this way in the federal government for a long time.  I don't think we have enough here to impeach a president.  I'm thinking there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way.  I wonder if there are enough to stop it. 

Do-Nothing US House claims "Progress" on USMCA

The Democrats are saying they have made progress on the USMCA agreement. This is a NAFTA enhancement or replacement that the Trump administration managed to negotiate with Canada and Mexico last year.  It has been sitting in the US House for a year while the House plays around with fun and games and impeachment.  Everyone, even AFL-CIO, thinks it ought to pass. 

   The Democratic claim to have amended the bill and made it better sounds like fake news to me.  This is an international treaty, agreed to by Canada and Mexico.  I don’t think the US house has the power to modify a treaty without getting Canada and Mexico to say OK.  Which they probably won’t.  Any changes dreamed up by Democrats in the US House will make things better for the US and worse for our trading partners. 

   So to show that the do-nothing House is actually doing something, the Democrats now say they are "making progress".  I say they are do-nothings until they actually vote to pass the USMCA.  Which they should have done a year ago.

Origin of Species. House cats are a species.

Those small furry carnivores who chase mice really ought to be classified into two distinct species.  House cats have taken up with humans and get food and shelter from the humans, and alley cats who live out of doors.  Anyone can see that the house cats are doing better than the alley cats.  House cats are well fed, fur is nice and clean, they stay indoors, warm and dry during bad weather.  Alley cats are skinny and ill fed, their coats are in terrible condition, and they have to survive out of doors in snow storms. 
   We used to think that house cats adopted their first humans back in ancient Egyptian times, say 5 to 6  thousand years ago.  Lately a grave was excavated on Cyprus with a cat buried along with its human.  This site was dated to 9000 years ago.  But  either date is not all that long ago, compared to dogs who have been domesticated for 50,000 years. 
   House cats, in addition to having the right attitude about people, have a couple of things that endear them to us humans.  First of all, purring.  We find  a purring cat, sitting in our laps, creates a wonderful feeling of peace and warmth.  And cats have the finest, silkiest coats of any common animal.  It is a pleasure to stroke a cat, far more so than to stroke a dog which has a much coarser coat.  Just how cats managed to evolve both purring and their silky coats, thousands of years before they adopted their first human, is a mystery that evolutionary theory fails to explain. 

Pearl Harbor was a massive Japanese screw up

The United States was solidly isolationist in the 1940's.  We were determined not to get sucked into overseas wars, ever again.  Even Franklin Roosevelt, perhaps the strongest US president of the 20th century, could not move the country toward intervention.  He tried, and he could not do it. 
   Nothing the Japanese were doing in China and Southeast Asia could have caused America to do more than send them diplomatic nastygrams.  No way were we going to do anything of a military nature about Japanese aggression in China.  After the Germans defeated and occupied  the Netherlands and France in 1940, the French and Dutch colonies were pretty much up for grabs.  Japan could have kept on going after the American oil embargo by getting oil from the Dutch East Indies where the crude oil was so pure that it could be pumped into the tanks of warships without any refining. 
   Type 1 less provocative method, send a fleet of tankers with a strong (like really strong) naval escort and some bank guys with a good strong checkbook.  Send the bankers ashore to negotiate a sale of oil. 
   Type 2 more provocative method, send a fleet and land marines and take over the place.  We would have screamed and cried and threatened to hold our breath, but we would not have intervened militarily to save a Dutch colony.  We did not approve of colonies.  We still don't.
   As long as the Japanese did not mess with American possessions like the Philippines or the US Navy, they could have done pretty much anything they liked in China and Indonesia.  Japan's diplomats and intel people failed to clue the Japanese government into the real state of affairs in America at the time.  (Or the government failed to listen to their diplomats and intel people.)
   As it was, Pearl Harbor total destroyed American isolationism, we got good and mad, smashed the Nazis, and nuked Japan, after sending her fleet to the bottom.  Total defeat and occupation.  War outcomes don't get much worse than that.

"Identity Politics" is divisive and destructive of liberty.

A Democratic party speciality.  Appeal to any kind of minority group you can think of (or invent). Do pitches aimed at blacks, Hispanics, gays, men, women, union workers, Indians, non-union workers, anybody.  The essence of these tailored pitches is always "We will do nice things for you, at the expense of everybody else."  and "You deserve some nice things to make up for past inequities."  Identity politics violates Jefferson's statement "All men are created equal".  Identity politicians are advocating unequal treatment of each little identity group.
   Proper politicians advocate for things that improve life for everyone, not just some identity group.  "We are all Americans together" is a better thing to say. 

Shopping around for Cosequin for my cat

In was $30 for a white plastic bottle of 60 doses from a big pet store down in Concord.  It is $18  for an envelope of 84 doses of a product called Dasuquin from my vet in Whitefield.  Whitefield Animal Hospital on Rt 3, right on the steep grade on Rt 3 going north out of town.  It is still doing my cat good, she goes outside more often, can jump up on furniture that she hasn't been able to manage for years, less limping as she slinks around the house. 

Talking Politics at Thanksgiving dinner

NHPR has been running a piece on why you should not talk politics.  Polarization is mentioned.  And, the Number 1 political subject, impeachment of Trump, is all the MSM has been covering.  Fox news runs the Adam Shifty hearings live all day long.
   Watergate this is not.  Watergate started out with the arrest of burglars inside the DNC headquarters.  That was clearly a crime and ought to be investigated, everybody understood that.  And one thing lead to another until Nixon resigned before the House impeached him.  Now all we have is an unknown whistle blower claiming that Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden and both Trump and the Ukrainian president deny it.  Most of us voters out in the real world don't see a real crime here.
   So what's to discuss?  Lot of people want to impeach Trump, and a lot of people don't want to impeach him, but what's to discuss?   Adam Shifty hasn't given us any real evidence of anything so what can you say?  And what else is there to discuss?  As far as the MSM is concerned, the Trump impeachment is the only thing happening all over the world.  

Electoral College.

  What it is and why we care.   Back when the Founders were setting up our constitution they made a number of decisions to even things out between big states and small states.  They had to; otherwise the small states would not join up.  The concept of the Senate where each state got two votes was intended to put the smaller states on a level with Virginia and Massachusetts.  When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, the big states were all in favor of a legislature where big states got more votes than small states.  The small states came to Philadelphia planning on a legislature where each state gets the same number of votes.  After a lot of dickering back and forth they adopted our current bi-cameral (two house) legislature.  Neither side was completely happy, but the compromise was enough to prevent anyone from walking out.  

   The Electoral College was another such big state-small state compromise.  Direct popular vote would have made it impossible for anyone to win the presidency who was not a citizen of a big state.  In those days Virginia and Massachusetts were the big states, every other state was small.  The thinking was that any candidate from a big state (a native son) would of course take all the votes from his home state, which would be enough to win the election.  It was believed that candidates from small states would not stand a chance under a direct popular vote system. 

    So they set up the Electoral College system.  The college consists of electors, chosen by the states. Each state gets as many electors as it gets representatives plus senators in Congress.  We have 100 US senators, 435 US house members, and they give the District of Columbia three electors.  Which makes an electoral college of 538 electors.  Of which New Hampshire gets four, or ¾ of one percent.  Not much, but better than what we get in a direct popular vote.  New Hampshire’s population is 1.35 million.  The population of the entire country is 330 million, so New Hampshire’s popular vote is only 0.41 of 1 percent.  In short, the Electoral College system gives New Hampshire a bigger slice of the presidential vote than we would get under direct popular election.  As a resident of New Hampshire, I like the Electoral College system just the way it is. It’s been there since the Founding.  It makes the New Hampshire first in the nation primary work.  Every presidential candidate has to come to New Hampshire and pass muster with the New Hampshire voters, who are a conscientious, well informed, and fair minded bunch.  I like that.  Under a direct popular vote for president system only the primaries in the big states would matter. 

$2295.50 for a Z-scale briefcase layout

The Lilliput catalog come in amidst the usual shower of catalogs for Christmas.  Full of neat toys with scary prices.  The Z-scale (as small as they make) layout, nicely scenicked, Alpine setting, your choice of winter snow or summer leaf, is 22 inches by 17 inches.  You can close the brief case and take it with you, to work, to a party, whatever.
   It is EXPENSIVE.  I have a round the walls HO layout, and a collection of rolling stock that will not quit, but I didn't put anything close to $2295.50 into my entire HO layout and rolling stock collection.   

Regulating Facebook

There is talk about doing something about Facebook.  They complain that Facebook is canceling posts, and closing accounts of posters they object to.  I dunno what to make of this. Both right wingers and left wingers are calling out to do something. 
   Me, I am a medium speed Republican New Hampshire politician.  I created a Facebook page to support my campaign for NH Senate.  It was very useful, every post I made got read by nearly 100 people.  I got elected.  Facebook never interfered.  I did try to be fair in everything I posted, largely because I believe my voters want a fair minded representative.  It may be that my fairness kept Facebook from interfering.  Anyhow, I consider my Facebook page to have contributed my election.
   Should we decide to "do something" about Facebook, (I am not convinced that this is necessary, but you never know what CongressCritters may do) the only effective thing we can do is use the anti trust laws to break Facebook up.  What actually happens at Facebook is controlled by software.  Only a very few people who write the software really know what is happening, and these people are Zuckerburg's people.  Doesn't matter what a regulator might demand, the software programmers control what really happens, they work for Zuckerburg and will do what he tells them to.  And the regulator's people cannot read the code to know what is really going on.  For instance Facebook recently promised to stop logging some users data and selling that data.  I bet that somewhere in the software that data is still being logged out to some obscure disk file.  And I am sure they back up all their data onto CD-ROMs or flashdrives and store them off site, just in case of fire or flood. 
    A breakup would create two companies to compete with each other for advertisers and users.  We divvy up Facebook's computer centers, users, advertisers, workers, stock, office buildings 50-50.  Then users and advertisers would migrate to the company with the policies they like best.  Assuming both managements were competent,  both companies would adopt policies about privacy and political correctness and other things that the users and advertisers like.  Because if they did not, they would dwindle down and go out of business.  Like Yahoo did.

Lotta talk about thinking and feelz, little about doing anything of substance

I had the house impeachment hearings on all day.  A lot of yak.  Talk about influencing people's (mostly Trump's) thinking.  Emails and discussions and talk and yak.  Little to no talk about doing anything of substance.  Like sending rations or weapons or US advisors to the Ukrainian army,  broadcasting pro Ukrainian propaganda to Russian occupied Ukraine,  jamming Russian newscasts, you know real actions to tip matters against the Russians and in favor of the Ukraine.  In sort, a whole day of nothing burger on TV.  

Still Not Impressed

I caught the impeachment hearings on  the radio while driving up to Berlin, and back from Berlin this Friday.  About an hour each way, so I heard maybe two hours of chit chat.  The committee had Marie Yavonovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine, on deck.  She never said anything of substance.  Every statement was bland, and qualified, heavily.  She spoke in a voice so wimpy and indecisive that I judge her unfit to be an ambassador to anywhere, in fact unfit to push a broom.  Don't understand how she ever got appointed ambassador.  She felt (never said directly) that Trump forced her out of her ambassadorship.  For which I say, good work, badly needed housecleaning.  We don't need anyone that wimpy and indecisive representing the United States of America. 
   Bottom line, in two hours I never heard the witness said anything about Trump doing anything bad at all, other than getting her fired that is.

I watched the public impeachment hearing today. Not Impressed

They did a lot of talking, about process and procedures, and secret diplomatic back channels.  The diplomatic witnesses were questioned about their backgrounds, and they were impressive.  Top 1% of his class at West Point, infantry company commander in Viet Nam.  And a good deal of other stuff all good sounding. 
   They never got down to brass tacks.  Like reading the transcript of the famous telephone call aloud.  Or discussing other matters that might convince me, or others, that Trump has got to go.   Or testimony from the famous whistleblower (Eric Ciaramella???).   Chairman Adam Shifty was fairly objectionable.
   I'm thinking that the Democrats don't have anything on Trump, at least not anything that is all that serious.  Watergate this is not. 

DACA, Why didn't Congress deal with this years ago???

DACA, I forget just how the acronym works, but it was/is an Obama policy of leniency toward young adults brought into the US as small children, by parents who are/were illegal immigrants.  Obama asked Congress to do something but Congress doesn't pass laws anymore and the DACA bill never happened. 
  Me, I feel for kids brought into and raised in the US from early childhood.  They are now old enough for high school and college, old enough to enlist, and they are on Mr. Migra's hit list because they are not citizens, don't even hold a green card.  For the vast majority of them, who have stayed out of trouble with the law, are gainfully employed, paying taxes, married, raising children, hold honorable discharges from the armed forces,  they sound like solid desirable citizens to me.  Let's naturalize them.  We need more good solid citizens to keep the country running.  It takes many tax paying citizens to pay for just one druggie drawing welfare. 
   Anyhow, the Trump administration isn't behind DACA, and revoked much, maybe all of the Obama executive orders that created DACA.  And the matter is now going to the Supremes. 
    This should not be happening.  We should have insisted on the CongressCritters passing a DACA bill.  This kind of policy ought to be set in law by Congress, it should not set by presidential say-so (executive orders) or by the Supremes.  We need to get on the CongressCritter's cases and insist that they stop messing around, and pass a reasonable DACA bill. 

Let's hear it for paper ballots. Down with voting machines.

I have been saying this for years.  Here we have a computer scientist saying the same.  Voting machines are merely ordinary desktop computers running a "Look-at-me-I'm-a-ballot" program.  They are vulnerable to all the hacks and malware that Windows computers are vulnerable to.  Plus, since voting machines are all stored together at city hall in between elections,  a determined agent can get his hands on them and always crack them.  A patched ballot program that discards say 10% of the votes for one party can tip any election.  They don't leave a paper record, all the votes are recorded in their internal memory and can be erased.  There is no way to do a recount.
   Whereas the good old paper ballot is secure against hackers coming over the internet, or carried on thumb drives.  They can be saved and recounted.  If the poll workers whine about the effort to hand count them all, they can buy ballot reading machines that work like the test grading machines used in schools.  I remember the teachers using test grading machines back when I did elementary school, and that was a long time ago. 

Capitalism makes us all rich.

  America runs (mostly) on free market capitalist principles.  And it works.  We have plenty of food, fuel, clothing, new cars, electronics, housing, electricity, clean running water, movies, schools, roads, every material thing imaginable.  We have it.  The socialist countries go hungry. 

   Part of our plenty comes from the free market regulating how much of each thing should be produced.  If we don’t have enough of something, the price goes up, and people produce more of it.  If we have too much of something, the price goes down, and people produce less of it.  This works, and we have just the right amount of everything.  The Russians used to have a bureau in Moscow that set production quotas for the entire country.  They never got it right, and the Russians were constantly plagued with shortages or surpluses.  There are so many different things needed by a modern industrial economy, nuts and bolts, gasoline, corn, spark plugs, broccoli, automobiles, etc, etc,) that no bureau can keep track of all of them, let alone figure out how much of each to produce.  The free market system, working on supply and demand gets it right automatically, no central bureau required (or wanted).

    The second thing about capitalism is that it puts its money into the right things.  Society only has a limited amount of capital.  Just operating a business, let along starting one up from scratch, requires capital.  Here we raise that capital by borrowing from banks or selling stocks and bonds.  Investors and banks put their capital (money) into things that look like they will turn a profit, and refuse to loan to things that look like losers.  Being that we have a lot of banks, and a lot of investors, they mostly get it right.  Capital is available for successful enterprises like Apple and Amazon.  Losers like Sears cannot get any.  We direct our limited capital into the right things and don’t waste it on boondoggles. 

   And finally we offer incentives for hard work.  Starting up a new business is a lot of hard work.  The entrepreneur has to put in 60 and 70 hour work weeks for years and years before it pays off.  He has to work so hard that he endangers his marriage, looses touch with his children and his friends, develops ulcers.  People, guys mostly, only put themselves thru this sort of ordeal because they can see a handsome reward, maybe not as handsome as Bill Gates, but at least enough to put all their kids thru college.  And without all these entrepreneurs working their hearts out we would be much poorer. 

    I am hearing that the youngest generation wants to convert to socialism, which is just a nicer name for communism.  Those kids are either misinformed, or just plain stupid.

Good old daylight savings time. Set all the clocks, watches, VCR's, car clocks, clock radios, back one hour. I don't dare turn the hands backward on my 100 year old Tiffany mantle clock that was a wedding present to my grandmother. I stop the pendulum and wait one hour and then start it up again. Cable box set himself back all automatically. So did the clock radio. Laptop running Win 10 set himself back all automatically. Desktop, also running Win 10 did not. I had to set him back by hand. I wonder what made that happen.
   We ought to stay on daylight savings all year round.  Up here, in winter, there is not enough daylight to drive to work, work an 8 hour shift, and drive home all by daylight.  You either drive to work in the dark, or drive home in the dark.  Of the two, I would might rather drive to work in the dark, I am more awake in the morning, it gives me a good virtuous feeling being up before the sun. Driving home in the dark is a drag.  

New York has gotta be crazy

Donald Trump announced that he was changing his residency to Mar a Largo in Florida so he doesn't have to pay New York taxes.  And the New York governor AND the mayor of New York city got on TV to say "good riddance Donald Trump".  Dumb move.  Donald Trump was a maga tax payer. I haven't seen his tax returns, but he must have been putting serious money into New York, both state and city. 
   Say goodby to some serious tax money New York.  You ought to be sad to lose a prominent citizen who has a lot of money.  Even if you don't like his politics.

Congressional Democrats are bungling impeachment

Impeaching a president is very unusual and requires really strong evidence, shared with all the voters to succeed.  In all the long history of the American Republic we only tried impeachment three times, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.  Only the Nixon impeachment succeeded.  Nixon resigned the presidency before the Senate acted, but I will count that as a successful impeachment.  I surely do remember the build up to Nixon's resignation, hours and hours of Congressional testimony on TV, the Saturday night massacre, John Dean, the tapes, Judge Maximum John, and many more.  All this had me, and the rest of the country convinced that Nixon had to go.
   Let is look at today's impeachment against Trump.  Congressional hearing conducted in secret.  Unnamed witnesses, a highly unreliable committee chairman, no House vote to impeach or even to investigate.  Nothing that is gonna convince the average voter that Trump has to go.
   The voters need the strongest and clearest evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors" before they will go along with impeachment.  If the voters are not onboard, they will remember in November, and vote stupid Congresscritters out of office.  The more intelligent Congresscritters know this.
    The democrats ought to be doing Trump's impeachment like Watergate, lots of TV, lots of public testimony, lots of publicity everywhere.  All I can figure is that they really  don't have anything on Trump.  

Al-Bagdadi snuffed last night. Good show.

Actually, it is too bad that we didn't take him alive.  He doubtless knew a lot of things that we would like to know.  According to the TV news this morning Bagdadi wore a suicide vest which he detonated before he could be captured.  But the plan was good, helicopter in some troops to take him alive is better than using a Predator drone to snuff him with a Hellfire anti tank missile.   
   I like taking out the enemy higher ups.  Strikes me as more civilized than killing a lot of plain foot soldiers just because we can. 

Wood chip electric power plants in New Hampshire

The State of New Hampshire published “Study Pursuant to New Hampshire Chaptered Law 156:228 (2017), subtitled “Study on the economic viability of renewable portfolio standard Class III biomass electric generation resources in New Hampshire”.  Good lawyerly title to obfusticate understanding.  Dated 21/1/2018. 

  The executive summary contains a couple of just plain weird statements.  “these resources are less flexible than intermittent renewables.”  This is foolishness.  The biomass plants can come on line when needed, say after dark, or on calm windless days.  That’s flexible in my book.  Solar goes away at sundown, which is when most of us need our electricity, to run the lights, cook dinner, run the TV.  Wind goes away when the wind stops blowing, something that happens pretty regularly up here.

   “While biomass is a major market for low grade wood, it is not the only end use.”  Oh really?  And what might be another volume use for wood chips now that the paper mills are gone?  

  Interesting figures provided.  Each of the 6 bio mass plants used nearly a quarter million tons of wood chips a year, 1.36 million tons altogether.  That’s a lot of wood.   At 50 tons per truck load, that’s like 5000 truckloads per plant over the year.  Pretty heavy truck traffic for most places.

    Discussion of hit to the NH economy from killing off the biomass plants.  They only count the plant workers, say 500 men, as losing their jobs.  No mention of all the loggers who cut the wood chips.  I would expect at least as many loggers as electric plant workers to loose their jobs too.  Jumps the 500 job losses to at least 1000. 

   The report shows the New Hampshire wholesale price of electricity at $35 a Megawatt Hour.  Or $35 per 1000 kilowatt hours, or 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour.  I have to pay 20 cents a kilowatt hour at my home.  Somebody is making a killing.  I’m getting robbed.  It also drives industry out of New Hampshire.  Companies always check electric rates before moving to anywhere. 

Crapware comes back to life

I have been trying to speed up my Win 10 laptop.  I believe most software is evil and the machine will run better if unnecessary software is removed.  Unfortunately, good old Windows Update keeps reloading stuff I kill.  I keep a log of things I have done to Flatbeast, the laptop, just incase I need to do them again.  Couple of years ago I  killed of IaStorDataSvc, a RAID drive support some-thing-or-other.  Flatbeast is a laptop, doesn't have RAID drives and never will.  And I zapped Bonjour, an Apple network thingie the Itunes wants.  I don't have an Ipod, don't plan to get one, don't run Itunes and so it was adieu to Bonjour.
   Well, this morning I noticed that both of these turkeys were back and running.  Must have been Windows Update.  Thanks Micro$ofties. You make my day.  Fortunately both turkeys are easy to kill, Add/Remove Programs does them nicely.

The great debate.

  I caught it on CNN.  The democrats didn’t do themselves as much damage as they did last time.   The all came out for square for impeaching Trump.  None of ‘em gave any reasons, they just called him names.  They are all in favor of hiking taxes.  No discussion of why they might need the extra money, but they all want to hike taxes.  They all claimed only “the rich” would have to pay more.  They are all in favor of an “assault weapons” ban.  None of ‘em bothered to tell us what makes “assault weapons” so much more dangerous than deer rifles, or how one might tell the difference between deer rifles and “assault weapons” or why all this “assault weapons” ban talk when most shootings are done with handguns.  More talk about mandatory buybacks, voluntary buybacks, and mandatory background checks with out any discussion as to what these things might be.  Most of ‘em are in favor of “Medicare for all”.  None of ‘em talked about eliminating company and union (private) health insurance.  They all thought Trump did wrong by letting the Turks into Syria and abandoning the Kurds.  There was no talk about DACA immigration reform, border walls, or driver's licenses for illegal immigrants

   In short, I didn’t see much difference between any of them.  I think if Trump fails of re election, any one ‘em as president would put the economy back in the tank, outlaw private ownership of firearms, and stir up more domestic racial tension. 

   The TV moderators were fairly rude to the candidates.  They need to have a name sign on each of the podiums so we can tell who is speaking. 

Vote a straight Republican ticket.   

Words of the Weasel Part 55

Passed away, or just plain passed.  You ought to say died.  Passed is a euphemism intended to blunt the pain of  death and dying.  Death is painful, always has been painful. We ought to say what we mean, and we mean died when talking about someone who died or is dead.  Say it, died.  dead.   

What is California doing wrong that NH is doing right?

Out in Cali they turn off electric power, closing schools and businesses and putting the traffic lights out. That was supposed to prevent wildfires.  Then California just had yet another heavy duty wild fire that destroyed 85 houses.  We never do that here.  When the power goes out in NH it means a tree has fallen on the wires.  I never heard of an NH power company deliberately shutting off the power.  Nor do we have wildfires burning down houses.  We have plenty of woodlands, but they don't catch fire.  Is it better forestry practices in NH?  Is it more rainfall in NH?  Why does California burn down in the dark and NH goes about normal life and keeps the lights on? 

Cosequin for cats

I took my senior (14 year old) cat to the vet this summer.  She had been limping and gimping as she walked, or slinked around the house and I thought a visit to the vet might do her some good.  She is a good cat and I am fond of her.
   The vet said my cat was in good health and recommended I give her Cosequin for cats.  It has been advertised on TV and after a few weeks I think the stuff has done good things for my cat.  She has been able to jump up on furniture that she hasn't been able to handle for years.  She goes out more.  She doesn't limp as much.  The stuff is $30 a bottle but she is a good cat and I am fond of her and I can afford $30 a bottle. 

Drum beating for abolishing the electoral college

The electoral college is a deal in the US constitution concerning election of the president.  It's been there a long time, since the original ratification of the Constitution in 1789.  The founders intended the electoral college to equalize the power of large states and give small states (like New Hampshire) a stronger voice  in presidential elections.  There have been a few presidential elections, most recently 2016, where the winner in the electoral college received fewer popular votes than the loser in the electoral college did.  Trump for example.
   Since 2016 a push to dump the electoral college and go with a straight popular vote has arisen.  Even Youngest Son is in favor.  As a citizen of a small state, I am against the idea, because New Hampshire gets to exert a lot more influence in the federal government than it would in a straight popular vote deal.  For instance the NH first-in-the-nation  presidential primary is important, all candidates have to show themselves in New Hampshire and  pass muster with the New Hampshire electorate, a patriotic, well informed, and fair minded bunch.  In a straight popular vote setup only primary elections in big states (California, New York, Florida, etc) would count. 
   Anyhow the "popular vote is all" people got my address and mailed me an 8.5 by 11 inch, two inch thick, five pound trade paperback urging the "popular vote is all".  Massive it is.  I don't plan to read it, I am against the idea.  I wonder where this outfit got my name and address.  It was addressed to "The Hon. David Starr".  I only got elected NH senator less than a year ago, so they must have done some research fairly recently. 
   Anyhow, Long Live the Electoral College. 

We need to outlaw robocalling

We could do it with a state law.  Or a federal law if you thought the Congress would ever vote on anything. Many state legislatures are still interested in constituent service, unlike our noble Congresscritters. 
   Step 1 of such a law would be to require the telephone companies to implement a spoof proof caller ID system.  Today's caller ID can be easily spoofed by robocallers and spammers.  Making caller ID spoof proof would give us voters and small chance to not answer calls from numbers we never heard of.  Penalty of say $10,000 to the phone companies for each spoofed caller ID incident.
  Step 2 of such a law would define the felony of robocalling.  Placing a cold call to anyone and giving a pitch for any product or political party, candidate, or idea is robocalling.  Playing recording or speech from electronic devices to the victim is robocalling.  Uttering false hoods such as claiming to be calling from the IRS, Social Security, Microsoft, or any other  institution is robocalling.  Persons who place the call, who speak to the victim, who maintain or service the robocalling equipment are all robocallers and subject to the penalty of law.  People who support the robocaller[s] with workspace or money are guilty of robocalling.
Step 3 of such a law would spell out penalties for convicted robocallers.  I would suggest five years in jail for the first offense, and ten years for repeat offenses. 
  There is still a good deal of work to do, namely catching robocallers, after passage of an anti-robocalling law, but we must have the law making robocalling a felony before we can expect law enforcement to do anything about it. 

Who is that masked whistleblower?

The democrats want to keep the identity of their Ukrainian telephone call whistle blower secret.  They are talking about having him (her?) testify using an electronic voice distorter and wearing a mask. 
  That ought to give us all a good warm feeling that this whistle blower is telling the truth.  It will look really strange on TV too.
Rots of Ruck  Democrats.

Leaf Season in Franconia Notch

The Mittersill Inn from the lower part of Hubertus Ring Road

The Mittersill Inn driverway

A really red tree on Three Mile Hill Road

The Cannon M Peabody Slopes driveway.

Very bright tree at Peabody Slopes.

Bright trees on Three Mile Hill road

Bright tree at Mittersill.

Finding password. How deep can Windows bury something?

I managed to knock out my internet connection the other day.  I had been troubled by a wireless modem that failed to connect automatically upon power up.  I dug out the documentation on the wireless and found the CD with the wireless driver on it.  And a bright red label reading Stop!  Insert CD first!.  I didn't remember doing that when I just plugged the modem into a new-to-me Dell Optiplex 900. So I tried it, stuck in the CD, and all sorts of things happened.  And my internet connection went away. 
   Quite a bit of fiddling and running the Windows troubleshooters and clicking on every box on all the screens that showed up finally this morning got me to a screen that showed the router's password.  All the wireless routers come with a factory password burned into their PROMS.  I suppose the user can change the router password, but few of us do.  Anyhow, the password, smoothprairie295, was misspelled.  I fixed that and bingo, Internet came back.  Dunno how the misspell got into Win 10, but while trying to get internet back I went to a lotta places and typed in a lotta stuff. 
  Anyhow, this is what I had to do to reach the password screen.  You may want to do this when you bring home a new computer or want to get a house guest's computer to work on your internet.

Right Click on the network icon on the taskbar
Click on network and connections setting
Open Network to Internet Setting 
Click on Change Adaptor Setting
Right click on your network device icon
Click on Status
Click on Wireless Properties
Click on the Security Tab
Click on Show Characters.

And now we are deep enough.  Took me a long time to go this deep.  Should you need to know your password, and you forgot to write it down, that's what you have to do to retrieve it from Windows.

$2000 for Samsung Galaxy Fold Smartphone.

Wow.  My HP laptop was only $300 at Staples three years ago.  My lightly used Dell desktop was only $200.  $2k for a smartphone seems like a lotta money.  It is cool, I think.  The thing unfolds like a book, the screen has a fold in the middle.  Gotta wonder about screen life.  How long does it take for a fold line in the screen to become permanent? 

American Flag flies in Hong Kong

Wall St Journal had a photo of Hong Kongers waving American flags above a piece on "unrest" in Hong Kong.  I was touched that a people on the far side of the world, under attack by their communist government, would find inspiration in the American flag.  I guess what America stands for still has meaning around the world. 

Words of the Weasel Part 53

Accountable.  As in " hold him accountable".   In real life accountable means to express mild disapproval in cases that call for indictment, trial, and 20 years in slam. 

The great Ukrainian telephone call kerfuffle

The TV news has been talking about nothing else for several days now.  The Democrats are calling impeachment.  The Republicans are not saying much.  I have not seen a good believable write up of what really happened. I have seen a lot of highly partisan write ups, from both sides, and I have trouble believing any of them.   Impeachment is going to make it impossible for Congress to do anything else for months, maybe years.  Impeachment talk won't go away until November 2020.   I tend to think this is a tempest in a teapot, a revival of the Mueller report, but going for impeachment makes it more serious.  It ought to do Biden some harm, the stories of Hunter Biden taking a $50,000 A MONTH salary from a Ukrainian firm are disgraceful.   Far as I can tell public opinion is still out on this great telephone kerfuffle.  I have no idea where it will eventually settle. 

Another great business name, Night Line Legal

Night Line Legal, they are getting air play, for some lawyers advertising for plaintiffs.  Sounds as reputable as Midnight Auto. 

Congress finds a new out

They are going to impeach Trump, or at least talk about it even if they lack the stones to actually do it.  This will tie Congress up for the rest of this year, and maybe a good slice of next year.  They won't deal with any of the things they ought to be dealing with.  Immigration, copyright and patent reform,  passing spending bills before the end of this fiscal year, dropping the magical 50 mpg CAFE standard, allowing import of medicines, eliminating boutique gasoline blends that make it illegal to ship gasoline from one state to another,  allowing sale of health insurance in all 50 states, shutting down the highway trust fund now that the interstate highway system is finished, and rolling back political correctness on campus.  And probably more stuff that escapes my memory right now.
   Not that Congress was doing any of these things, they have more fun trashing Trump.  And, now they have the impeachment thing to occupy all their time and energy.  The excuse this time is a telephone call between Trump and the newly elected president of Ukraine.  Apparently Trump mentioned young Hunter Biden drawing $50K salary PER MONTH, in Ukraine and maybe it should be looked into.  Congress has been running an investigation on TV all day talking about procedural issues, like which computer system the transcript was saved on.  Apparently there is not much in the way of actual wrongdoing or unethical conduct, so they talk about procedure. 

Global Warming according to the Economist

Got my new Economist in this morning's mail.  Cover is a clever climate graph, so clever that I had to read the article to understand the graph.  Anyhow the Economist graph shows global warming only starting in the 1990s and getting really hot in the 2010's.  .  Everything is cool  from the beginning of time (of graph) (1850) until the 1990's.   Trouble is, that is wrong.  NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has temperature records going back to the invention of the thermometer ( late 1600's).  I downloaded the records some years ago and graphed them out with Excel.  Global warming flattened out in the 1990s and has remainded flat to this day.  Dunno where the Economist got their data, but there is a publicly available database from a reasonably reliable institution that does not support the Economist's colorful cover graph. 

Things Detroit ought to do

   They ought to put an outside thermometer in every car.  They are not expensive, the sensor can be had for a couple of bucks.  And some software to read the sensor, scale the answer into degrees F, and display it on the digital dashboard.  Software is free. 
   They ought to give us back a dimmer knob for the dash lights.  My current car, a Buick, has a daylight sensor that looks for sunlight and when it fails to find any it figures it is nighttime and dims all the dash lights.  It gets things wrong, a lot.  Just pulling into a parking garage is enough to make it think its nighttime, and then it makes everything on the dash, the clock, the radio, all the instruments, too dim to read.  A good old fashioned knob that you turn by hand to set the brightness of the dash would be a blessing.
   They ought to make the digital dash readable.  Mine shows everything in a single tiny display which hides behind one of the spokes of the steering wheel.  It has 5 push buttons to select which is displayed, oil pressure, battery voltage, coolant temperature, mileage, fuel economy, etc, etc.  The display is so small I cannot read it wearing my driving glasses.  Better would be good old analog gauges, the kind with a needle in them, all on the dash all the time.  And mark the dials with green for normal operation and red for trouble.
   Then it would be nice if they made a sporty car that can be driven in snow.  The current sporty cars, Camaro, Mustang, Challenger, are so bad in snow that people laugh if you turn up with one at a ski resort.  Or for that matter just in Littleton NH, the locals figure anyone driving a sporty car is a flatlander.   

Let's not get cocky, but...

I think the Democrats have shown enough crazy at their debates that Trump will get himself re elected.  We don't want "medicare for all" sucking down $10 trillion tax dollars and we like our good private or company or union health plans.  We don't want Beto taking our AR15s away, Hell, we don't want Beto taking our Daisy BB guns away. We don't want to give up driving our cars, we want to keep out houses heated.  Fracking has done us a lot of good and we want to keep on doing it.  The whole Green Nude Ell thing sounds like returning to the Hiawatha live style.  Who wants to go thru a New Hampshire winter living in a teepee?
   Now what we need to do is keep control of the Senate and regain control of the House.  To which end we have four democrat Congresscritters from NH.  None of them has done anything good for NH since they got elected.  We ought to vote them all out of office.  Both reps and one senator are up for re election.   We have Republican candidates and we ought to get out and support them.  We have Don Bolduc running for US Senate against Jeanne Shaheen.  We have Steve Negron running for one house seat against Anne Kuster.  We need someone to run for the other House seat, against Chris Pappas.
   If we could get out the votes and send a Republican delegation to Congress next year, that would really get New Hampshire some good publicity.  And help get some action out of Congress. 

Thoughts on gun control

Gun control, every one’s favorite topic since all those terrible shootings in the last few weeks.  Democrats in Congress are all hot to pass new gun control laws, whether we need them or not.  Remember that Democrats have wanted to outlaw private ownership of firearms for many years now.  This looks like their opportunity. 

   They are pushing an “assault weapons ban”.  Trouble is, there is no difference between “assault rifles” and deer rifles.  In short, an “assault weapons ban” would become a ban on all guns.

   And then they talk about the “gun show loophole”.  I bought a gun at a gun show a while ago.  I, and everyone else, had to wait on the “instant background check” which took about an hour and a half.   Background checks are required at gun shows except for antique black powder guns.  

   And they are talking about toughening up the background checks.  Dunno just what that means, but I suspect it could get really ugly.

    The gun control people are saying that some guns, “military grade weapons”, “AR-15’s”, are more dangerous than other guns and we can make progress by banning the more dangerous guns, hence the push for an “assault weapons” ban.  This is wrong.  All guns are lethal.  Deer rifles are just as lethal as “assault rifles” In fact many states won’t allow deer hunting with AR-15’s, they don’t think the AR-15 is powerful enough to kill a deer cleanly. 

9/11 eighteen years ago.

Does not seem that long ago.  I was at work, Analog Devices in those days.  I brought our lab TV out into the main aisle so everyone could watch.  We were stunned.  I remember later all the vehicles driving around with American flags flying off them.
We do need to remember that we, Americans, have enemies out there that want to kill us all.  They got 3000 of us eighteen years ago. 

Effective new car advertisement

I was web surfing and I bumped into a Cadillac ad on The Hill.  Curious to see what the new Caddies look like, I clicked on it.  They have about 5 or 6 models.  Hard to tell them apart.  Models don’t have names anymore, just numbers, all starting with XT.  They have an XT4 and an AT5 and some other ones.  The only model that still has its name is Escalade, the big SUV.  Escalade was the only model that gave a price, horsepower, and some other info.  The other XT models just had photos, except for XT4 and XT6 which lacked photos entirely.  Stylists worked at giving all the XT models a family resemblance, they all have the same grille, and the same fore and aft creases in the sheet metal, the same nose down fanny up in the air look.  None of them have much of a trunk anymore.  Most of them are higher than traditional Caddies.

   Who ever put this ad together just googled for luxury cars and put the search results in the ad.  So right below the Caddy listing we have listings for all the competition, Lincoln, Mercedes, BMW and so on.  That’s not how I would do a Caddy ad.  

  I am an old Caddy owner.  Had a 99 Deville sedan once.  It was a nice car, lots of power, plenty of room, 27 mpg.  I ran it up to 140 K miles.  At that point the NH road salt finally managed to rust the entire rear axle off the car, and nobody wanted to fix that, so I traded it.  None of the new 2020 Caddies looked very attractive to my eye. 

Wall St Journal ranks US colleges.

The Journal ran a long piece today listing the top 500 US colleges.  I looked thru the list of names, looking for colleges that I and my family attended to see where they ranked today.  Looks like we all attended pretty highly ranked colleges.  

1 and 2.  Harvard and MIT.  I lived 9  years in Cambridge MA , used to rent to Harvard and MIT students,  walked both campuses, very scenic.
7     Brown University in Providence RI.  I applied there, many years ago.  Did not get in.
9     Cornell in Ithaca NY .  My cousin Andrew graduated there.
12   Johns Hopkins, Baltimore MD.  My daughter graduated there.  Majored in international relations, minored in Russian, both stood her in good stead when she did a 2 year tour with the Peace Corps in Kirghistan.  
15   Columbia NYC  My brother and his daughter (my niece) both graduated  there.
24   Wellesley, Wellesley MA.  My mother graduated there.
30   Tufts, Medford MA.  My sister in law graduated there.  Her older daughter, my other niece also graduated Tufts.
35    Middlebury, VT  my other brother graduated there.
91    Franklin and Marshall, Lancaster PA.  I graduated there.  BA in history
148  University of Delaware, Newark DE.  I graduated there with a BS in electrical engineering after my 6 year tour in USAF. 
176  St Olaf College, Northfield Minn.  My brother in law graduated there.
217  Drew University Madison, NJ.  My oldest son graduated there. Majored in theater.
237  Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY.  My youngest son graduated there, BS in Mechanical Engineering.

North Grafton Republican host Bill O'Brien as speaker.

North Grafton Republicans had Bill O’Brien for their featured speaker last night.  Bill is running for US Senate, going up against Jeanne Shaheen, the democrat incumbent.  Bill has been around in NH politics for a long time.  Back about ten years ago, when the Democrats had driven the state budget $1 billion into the hole, Bill was speaker of the NH house.  He managed to cut the state budget 18%, bring it into balance, without hiking taxes. 

   He opened his remarks by saying that he was Trump before there was Trump.  He doesn’t support Planned Parenthood, saying that they are still selling body parts of aborted infants.  Bill sees “identity politics”, beloved by Democrats, as basically divisive, setting one group of Americans against another group.

  He is against Occasional-Castro’s Green Nude Eel; he sees it as imposing fantastic costs upon us citizens, as well as imposing harsh government controls on simple necessities like heating oil. 

   Bill is in favor of ending illegal immigration and sanctuary cities. He wants to fix the porous asylum system, and stiffen border defenses.  He wants a strong economy, because a strong economy creates jobs, the best thing we can do for people, and creates the wealth to deal with all the rest of our problems.  To which end he opposes red tape and regulations, and opposes government takeover of industries, and tax hikes.  He thinks US healthcare costs too much.  He opposes Medicare for All which would destroy Medicare and destroy private health insurance. 

   Far as I am concerned, Jeanne Shaheen has been a totally worthless Senator. She even wants to abolish the Electoral College, which was put into the Constitution to even things up between big states and small states.  New Hampshire is a small state and we would be crazy to give up the needed extra political power that the Electoral College gives us at the federal level.  In opposing the Electoral College Shaheen is opposing her constituents in New Hampshire in favor of the DNC. 

How did the 737 MAX get gounded, perhaps for ever?

It goes back to 2010 when Airbus announced a re engined A320, their workhorse single aisle air liner, that would save 15% on fuel.  Next year 2011, American Airlines told Boeing they better have a reengined 737 or else American would buy the Airbus 320 neo.  Boeing started the 737 MAX project a year later.  This project was a straight forward engine swap, replace the existing engines with newly designed engines that would give better fuel economy, leave the rest of the 737 alone.  It took Boeing four years, until 2016, to get the engine swap designed and built and get the first flight accomplished.  This is a rediculous length of time.  Back in the day, the British were able to swap out an anemic US engine for the 2000 hp Merlin engine on a North American fighter plane over a weekend.  The result of the British engine swap was the famous Mustang fighter.  You would think if the Brits could do it in a weekend, Boeing ought to be able to do the same thing in less than four years. 
   One of the constraints, was the 737 MAX had to fly like the preceding 737s.  And, the bigger engines of the MAX had a tendency to push the nose up when power was added.  So Boeing added code into the autopilot software to push the nose back down and make the new MAX fly just like the old 737.  Unfortunately for Boeing, the new code, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS for short,  could fail disastrously.  When things went wrong, MCAS could dive the plane into the ground.  This happened twice within a few months.  All on board were killed in both accidents.  Which caused the 737 MAX to be grounded.  It's been grounded for 5 months now. 
   Boeing hopes to present corrected autopilot MCAS code to the FAA for approval this month, September.  FAA, being a government bureau, can take as much time as they like to decide to OK the new code, or call for yet changes and/or testing.  When (and if) FAA ungrounds the 737 MAX then all the other regulators around the world will begin to unground the plane for their airlines and airspace.  At this point Boeing is hoping to get the 737 back in the air before the end of 2019.  This may be a vain hope.  

Solar Comes to Groveton NH

I attended a briefing up in Coos County about plans to build a 5 Megawatt solar power plant just outside of Groveton.  Present were Bennie Lamontagne from the department of business and economic affairs, Senator David Starr, Tara Giles from Salmonpress, and Barry Normandeau of Normandeau Trucking.   Tom Wemyss of Pure Point Energy gave the briefing.  He showed maps.  They already own a 600 acre site on the east bank of the river (Groveton is on the west bank) of which they plan to clear some 60 acres to make room for the solar panels.  The solar arrays will be mounted on solar tracking bases to improve power output.  The topography is such that the solar array will not be visible from the roads which will preserve the up country ambiance of the area.  There is a big Eversource substation close by to accept power to the ISO New England grid.  At one point Tom Wemyss mentioned selling power in Groveton for 8 cents a kilowatt hour.  That sounded good to me, since I am paying 20 cents a kilowatt hour in Franconia. 

    The project is waiting for the NH Legislature to authorize net metering for operations as large as 5 Megawatts.  Right now net metering is limited to plants no larger than 1 Megawatt.  Costs to install are roughly the same for large or small solar plants.  A five Megawatt plant can make enough revenue to justify construction, a smaller plant cannot.  There is a bill, HB365, to raise the net metering threshold to 5 Megawatts.  We passed it thru both House and Senate this spring.  Unfortunately the governor vetoed it.  A veto override will be voted upon in September. 

   Assuming a successful veto override, they have to do some more paperwork with DES and others.  Funding is in hand and construction could start next summer. 

That Federal Deficit, why it grows and what it means

The Wall St Journal and Fox News have been complaining about the federal deficit and debt this week.  They condemn both and let it go at that.  They never talk about fixes.  There are two fixes, both of them painful.  We could reduce federal spending or we could raise federal taxes, or both.  Do enough of this and the deficit goes away.  However any attempt to reduce spending will provoke howls of pain from those whose federal gravy train has been cut off.  Hiking taxes produces screams from taxpayers.  No congresscritter has the stones to brave either one, so nothing happens. 
   So, the feds continue to spend more than they take in from taxes.  How do they do this? Simple, they print more money and use it to pay the bills and meet payroll.  They do this every year, to the tune of trillions of new paper dollars.  And this works in a way.  Printing trillions of dollars makes the dollar worth less. 
  In my life time I have seen gasoline go from 28 cents a gallon to $2.80 a gallon.  New cars used to be $2000, now they are $20,000.  Comic books used to 10 cents.  Now they are $2.50.  In short, prices of everything are ten times what they were in my childhood.  Or put it another way, the US dollar is worth only a tenth of what it used to be worth.  This is a concealed tax on everyone  Over a lifetime, 90% of all the money everyone holds is sucked out by the feds. 
  How long can this go on?   Who knows?  We put up with a ten times devaluation of the dollar, we can probably put up with a lot more.