Why cannot American Steel and Aluminum compete?

President Trump wants to slap a 25% tariff in imported steel and 10% on imported aluminum.  He claims that foreign competition is so fierce that we need good stiff tariffs to preserve the American industry.  That American steel and aluminum companies will be driven out of business by the foreign competition.
  I'd like to know, just why the American industries cannot compete with the foreigners.  Is it the worker's wages? cost of raw materials, obsolete plant and equipment, outrageous pollution regulations, high taxes, stock buybacks, overly plump dividend payments, outrageous CEO pay, or what?  How plump were the last union contracts? Used to be, American industry was far more efficient than anywhere else on the globe.  What happened? Why do the US metals companies "need" tariff protection.  Protection that costs us consumers dearly.
   Another good question.  What gives the president the authority to raise tariffs on just his say-so.  I thought US tariffs were acts of Congress, not executive orders.
   The Journal and Fox News are running pieces against the tariff, but none of the MSM have investigated the national security ploy being used to justify a really stiff tax hike on everyone except the steel and aluminum industries.  

Thinking about going to college

It's that season, at least for high school seniors.  College is expensive as all get out.  A four year degree can cost $100,000.  Uncle Sam will loan you all that money, but you have to pay it back.  Declaring personal bankruptcy won't get you out of your college loan.  Most of us go to college to get a degree that leads to a good job.  This only works if you graduate.  If you don't graduate, you get nothing, except debts. 
    Time to ask yourself, do I have the stick-to-it-tivness to make it all the way to graduation?   How do you feel about schoolwork, really?  Does doing a term paper seem like fun?  Or a hateful torment?  Is reading a good history book fun? Or utterly boring?  How is your high school academic record?  College work is about like high school work.  If you are just scraping by in high school, college will be four more years of the same.
     Instead of launching into a doubtful college experience right after high school, think about doing something else after high school and then doing college later.  Think about enlisting in the armed services.  You will learn a lot of useful stuff, the GI benefits after I left the service paid for my electrical engineering degree, and employers like to hire veterans.  Think about getting a job, just about any kind of job.  After doing kindergarten followed by grades 1 thru 12 schoolwork can get old.  Try a change of pace by working.
   For that matter think about skilled jobs, welder, electrician, plumber, CNC operator, electronics tech, machinist, long haul trucker, lineman, heavy equipment operator.  They all pay well, as well as most college degree jobs.  If working with your hands in appealing to you,  give it a try. 

Senior Peacenik leaving the State Dept

The Wall St Journal calls Joseph Yun "Top U.S. Envoy for Pyongyang".   Sources are muddled on this story, but the Journal's take is that Joseph Yun is leaving the State Dept because he cannot get any support for negotiations with the NORKs.  They say his entire career at State was involved with relations and negotiations with Pyongyang.  
   Some how this guy manages to believe that the NORKS can be talked out of their nukes.  And he is miffed that the Trump Administration doesn't want to play the talks game.  As for me, I don't believe anything, talks, bribes, economic pressure, propaganda, even military action will get the NORKs to give up their nukes. 
   I wonder why we paid this delusional peacenik for so many years.  He clearly doesn't understand the situation.  But he drew his pay for many years. 

Interest rates going up against the Stock Market

Gospel at the Wall St Journal (and probably the other business publications too) is that raising interest rates hurts the stock market and falling interest rates help the stock market.  The Journal is the only business publication I read, so I don't really know if the rest of the business press follows the Journal's gospel, but it's a good bet that they do. 
   Why this link between market performance and interest rates?  Could it be that a lot of stock is bought for speculation, and on borrowed money?  Margin accounts with brokerages, where the stock broker loans the investor/speculator the money to buy the stock, and the investor/speculator pledges the stock as collateral to back the loan.
  Is this a good thing?  Margin accounts can really slam the market hard.  When the market goes down, like it did this month, the value of the stock pledged as collateral goes down.  And the broker calls the investor/speculator and asks for more money to back the loan.  A margin call.  The only way most investor/speculators have to raise the money is to sell the stock, which drives the market down further.
    The social good that the stock market performs is to make stocks into a very liquid asset.  I can buy stock with my extra cash, knowing that when I need the money for something, I can sell the stock, quickly.  Without the stock market, should I need to turn my stock into cash, it might take months to find someone who wants to buy my stock. And without the market doing deals and publishing the stock price, I would be hard pressed to get a decent price for my stock.  I might decide not to put my money into stocks, but rather such economy boosting assets as antiques, artworks, classic cars, coins, stamps, cyber currency, or betting on sports.  
   The social purpose of the joint stock company is to channel investor money into companies that use the money to build factories, build railroads, buy equipment, and grow the economy.   If the investor's money is just a loan, then the investor is sucking up loan money that could just as well be borrowed from banks by the company itself, rather than  giving the investor a cut.
    The stock market has a lot of gambling built into it.  Do margin accounts, and borrowing to buy stock make it easier for companies to raise money, or do they just support the gambling part of the market?  If we forbid borrowing to buy stock, would the market be steadier and more predictable?  
 

V-22 Osprey vs large Helicopters

A few numbers:
Chinook CH-47
Cost                   $38 million
Combat Radius 200 miles
Cruise Speed     160 knots
Payload             24,000 lbs

Super Stallion CH53
Cost                  $24 million
Combat Radius 621 miles
Cruise Speed     150 knots
Payload              30,000 lbs

Osprey V-22
Cost                   $72.1 million
Combat Radius  426 miles
Cruise Speed     275 knots
Payload              20,000 lbs

The Marine Corps loves the V-22.  Not sure why.  All the V-22 offers over the CH53 is much higher cruise speed.  The CH-53 has better combat radius and payload.  We could buy three CH-53 helicopters for the price of a single V-22.  

Taking Honest Work From Trial Lawyers

Yesterday's Wall St Journal had an op-ed piece headlined "Safety from Hackers -- and Trial Lawyers".  The author, Brian E. Finch is a lawyer working for a "cyber security" law firm.  He is advocating passage of the "Cyber Safety Act" thru Congress.  This  act would shield companies from law suits over security breaches.   
    Right now, companies can get sued down to their socks when hackers get thru their security and steal customer lists, with addresses and credit card numbers.  Mr. Evans thinks this liability is horrible and discourages innovation in the tech industry. 
   Me, I think fear of lawsuits is the only thing preventing companies from selling even more insecure products than they do today.  Suing Micro$oft for the uncounted security holes in Windows would improve world wide cyber security.  The hackers that cracked the federal Office of Personal Management got their hands on my old Air Force service records and records of security clearances that I held for years after leaving the Air Force.  Right now, any thoughtful company will take all the precautions it can think of to keep hackers out, for fear of dreadful law suits and market annilation when loopholes let the hackers in. 
   We got a lot of excess lawyers sloshing around the country, mostly causing trouble.  Let's put them to work suing companies that peddle insecure products or who fail to safeguard  their customer's records.

Meet Jane Walker

Big liquor company Diageo is launching a whiskey for women brand.  Called Jane Walker, with a snappy new label showing a sharp looking female version of Johnny Walker.  The scotch inside will be the same as what goes into Johnny Walker Black Label bottles. 
   Will it sell?  Consider that few guys will buy a women's whiskey, which cuts the new brand off from half the population, the harder drinking half.  How many women will buy a women's whiskey rather than the old reliable well known Johnny Walker?  Or old reliable Cutty Sark, J&B, or Ballentine for half the price of Jane Walker ?

Dr. Seuss is back on top

Wall St Journal, best selling books week ended 18 Feb.
Hardcover Fiction

Green Eggs and Ham                           Dr. Seuss   Number 6 in sales
One Fish Two fish Red fish Blue Fish   Dr. Seuss    Number 10 in sales.

Not bad for a couple of children's books that have been in print like forever. 

Alternate History: WWII Might have beens

Everyone agrees that Hitler's greatest mistake was to take on the Russians before finishing off the British. In 1940 the German army had shown it was lightyears ahead of every other army.  The Germans had occupied Denmark and Norway, invaded and conquered Poland, Holland, Belgium, and even France.  All the Germans needed to do, to settle Britain's hash, was to get their army, actually just a small part of their army, across the English Channel.  After Dunkirk the British Army was in no shape to stand off an invasion of Boy Scouts, let alone a couple of panzer divisions. 
   The only problem from the German point of view, was getting their army across the channel in one piece.  They had about 2000 Rhine river barges to make the crossing in.  These were seaworthy enough for a channel crossing in good weather.  Summer weather.  Trouble was, the British had a couple of hundred destroyers, fifty cruisers, and a dozen real battleships to oppose such a crossing.  When the British steam up along side a river barge in a destroyer,  that's the end of the river barge and all its troops, (or cargo).  The Germans only had about ten destroyers, some subs, a couple of cruisers, and a couple of light duty battleships.  The Royal Navy would have an enjoyable turkey shoot cleaning out that batch.   The only equalizer the Germans had was the Luftwaffe, and for that to be effective it had to defeat the Royal Air Force.  You cannot take out surface vessels when you have Hurricanes and Spitfires on your tail.  The Germans tried to take out the RAF in the summer of 1940, resulting in what we now call the Battle of Britain.  Unfortunately for Hitler,  the RAF out shot the Luftwaffe that summer. 
   One equalizer that the Germans might have obtained, the French Navy.  France was a great power, and had a sizable Navy, not quite as big as the Royal Navy, but far superior to what the Germans had in 1940.  The French were pissed off at the British, they blamed the British for their defeat by the Germans that summer.  According to the French, the British didn't send enough troops, enough aircraft, and they bugged out when the going got tough.  If the Germans had stroked the defeated French enough, they might have been able to get the French to join them in an invasion of England, and bring along their Navy.  This would have required a lot more diplomacy from the Germans than was usual for them, but it might have happened.  And if so, it would have been curtains for the Brits in 1940. 
This worried the British so much, that they sank a good portion of the French fleet in North Africa just to make sure they didn't join the Germans. 

Notes for auto designers

Let's talk about the driver on the interior of the car.  The dashboard has to be usable in full sun and in darkness.  Those dinky little digital displays, LED's usually, just aren't bright enough to see when the sun is shining in thru the windows.  Where as a good round dialface, with a nice bright pointer is readable day and night.  Even better would be the system we used in the Air Force.  All gauges were marked in green for their normal operating range and red for dangerous ranges.  Hence the term "redline". 
   And the cost cutters keep pushing the cheapest kind of control, a single pole single position push button.  And they make black buttons on a black control panel, with tiny little legends on the buttons.  Leaving us drivers fumbling in the dark just trying to change stations on the radio.  The radio on my car is so bad that Buick wired up a complete second set of radio controls on the steering wheel, to make it easier to use the radio.  Fine industrial design that, dual controls on a car radio.  If they just made the buttons a contrasting color to the control panel it  would help a lot.   And they could standardize those steering wheel stalks that work the wipers and washer, the lights, the turn signals, and the slushbox.   And important controls ought to be knobs that you can feel for in the dark, not pushbuttons.  For extra credit put different shaped knobs on different controls so you can tell them apart by feel in the dark. 

Arming school teachers?

Depends upon the teacher.  Most of my elementary teachers, Miss Shirley, Miss Gaudet, Miss Percy, Mr. Convery, Mrs Falby were courageous, determined, and cool under pressure.  Miss Coyne, not so much, but five out of six ain't bad.  Middle school we had Miss Macglaflin, Mr Davis and Mr Sanacandro who all would qualify as courageous and competent.  High school not so much.  It was a a Quaker school, with most of the faculty firm believers in the Quaker doctrine of non-violence.  Although I admired many of them, they were not the kind of people to draw a bead on a school shooter and let him have it right in center of mass. 
   But the public school teachers came from a tougher mold, at least back in those days.  I wonder how teachers are now a days. 

Effective TV commercials

They have been playing one commercial, for some kinda herbal supplement.   They explain it contains a miracle ingredient from jellyfish.  Well, I remember the jellyfish part, but I cannot remember the name of the product.  Effective that ad was. 
   Then there is William Devane, distinguished looking older guy, who pitchs silver and gold on TV these days.  One of his ads starts out on the deck of a retired US battleship.  Devane is standing in front of the main battery giving the pitch.  "When the US used battleships to make its points, things were better."  Although the US launched battleships starting when they were first developed, except for the Spanish American War, a tiny sideshow long ago, we never used them in combat.  By the time the US Navy became the world class force, it was WWII and the battleships had been replaced by aircraft carriers.
   And I still haven't invested in silver or gold. 

Parkland Shooter. What should have happened

This homicidal manic should have been confined to a mental hospital years ago.  But we didn't.  We don't have mental hospitals anymore.  Up here in NH, mental cases often spend days confined in hospital emergency rooms, hand cuffed to the bed, 'cause there is nowhere else to put them. 
   Everyone admits that this shooter showed plenty of signs that were ignored and not acted upon.  Resulting in 17 innocents dying.  
   The problem is homicidal maniacs allowed to run around loose.  If they cannot buy a gun, they will find other ways to do evil.
    We need a fair system to identify and confine these madmen before they do awful things. 

AT&T Last Company Standing

All the others have changed their names.  Marketing loves to change the name.  They think they are smart enough think up magic names that increase sales.  Right.
So here we are,
Company                       Old Name                          New Name
 Electric Company.         Public Service of NH          Eversource
Telephone company        Fairpoint Communicatons   Consolidated Communications
Cable company               Time Warner                      Spectrum

Only survivor

Long Distance Carrier     AT&T                                 AT&T

This ain't Chicken Feed

Alexander Soros, son of George Soros, donated $650 million to the Democrats.  Wow! That is a lot of money.  According to the Free Beacon. 

Congress critters blow it again

70% or more of the country wants to do something good for the DACA people.  Our Congress critters, Senate breed, were unable to pass anything today.  The Republicans lacked the votes to pass their bill, the democrats lacked the votes to pass theirs.  Neither side had the brains or the guts to find a compromise that both sides could vote for.  And so, the DACA people may all get deported beginning next month. 
Way to go Congress critters. 

Pentagon estimates $10-30 million parade cost

Chicken feed.  Wall St Journal carried this.  A single new jet fighter costs $80-100 million.  $10-30 million is nothing.  Remember Everett Dirksen's comment,  "A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money."

Anyone got examples of Russian meddling in the 2016 election?

I read a lotta talk about Russian meddling vie social media.  But I haven't seen any examples.  How about a website or two? or some posts on Facebook etc.  If it happened, let's see some of it. 

It's Horrible

And my deepest sympathies for the victims of the Florida school shooting yesterday.  And that's all I am going to say, the TV news has been saying everything under the sun since it happened yesterday. So I don't need to add my two cents worth. 

Imran Amed, WSJ fashion plate

"Some ideas for fixing the fashion industry" is the headline of a piece in the Journal's Life and Arts section.  It's an interview with Imran Amed, rated "No 1 in GQ India's list of Best Dressed Global Indians.  Big color pictures of Imran to go with the article.  If he is well dressed, I'd hate to see a real slob.  Hair is uncombed.  Unshaven. Wearing a low speed dark suit made from some strange fabric, not the proper woven wool of a real suit.  No necktie.  A salmon pink sweater under the suit jacket, with white T-shirt showing at the neckline.  No shirt. And he is wearing boondocker combat boots instead of low quarter shoes.  Not my idea of well dressed. 
   His comments on the fashion industry are super bland.  He likes Gucci because they are selling well.  He likes Attico because they have 124,000 Instgram followers and they are selling well.   Insightful that is. 

Cops work differently in Israel

The TV news is talking about Israeli cops accusing  prime minister Netanyahu of corruption and mopery and dopery.  They say the Israeli prosecutors now have to indict Netanyahu, which is expected to take a year or more.
   Wow!  Over here the cops don't have the stones to accuse powerful politicians of corruption.   US cops know that the politicians control their funding, their hiring, their promotions, and much else.  If the corruption charges don't stick, and in US courts anything can happen, the accused politician has plenty of time and power to take revenge on the accusers. 
  I guess things work differently in Israel. 

New flu medicine

Japanese pharmacy company Shionogi announced an new anti flu drug that cures all types of flu in 24 hours, with a single dose.  The Wall St Journal didn't mention a name for Shionogi's experimental drug but it is not a vaccine, it works by disrupting the flu virus' ability to take over human cells and reprogram them to produce more flu virus.  The article indicated a deep understanding of the biochemistry of the flu virus.  It also mentioned a fast track approval process in Japan might authorize the drug for sale as soon as next month.  They talked about submitting paperwork to the US Fuddy Duddy Administration (FDA) this summer and waiting til next year for FDA approval for sale in the US. 
   If this works out, it will be great.