Constitution does NOT require "Separation of Church and State"

First Amendment reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"  That is the first sentence of the first amendment, so we can believe that the issue was important to the founders.
   In the eighteenth century, when the Constitution was created, establishment of religions was a fairly common practice in the world.  In England the Church of England was established.  You had to be a member of the Church of England to receive important government jobs like judgeships, commissions in the army or navy.  The royal family was required to be Church of England members. In France you had to be catholic to hold just about any job, public or private.   In short the established church received benefits at law and favored treatment. 
   America had a lot of different churches in the eighteenth century, Congregational, Quaker, Episcopal, Catholic, and others that I don't remember.  All of which would have been proud to become established. 
   First amendment says that no church gets the bennies of establishment, all churches get treated the same in the eyes of the law.  Which surely ended a lot of jockeying for position and fear that some other church would gain the bennies of establishment.  In short it was a good political compromise.  Second clause about the free exercise thereof means that churches are free to put up church buildings, conduct services, pass a collection plate, marry people, operate schools, send out missionaries, bury parishioners in the church yard, and do all the other churchly things.  Including putting up a cross as a memorial to WWI dead.
   The Supremes just ruled that cross legitimate.  They mentioned a number of good reasons, such as it had stood for close to a century, but they did not come right out and say that putting up a cross is free exercise of religion, which they should have done. 
    The phrase "separation of church and state" I believe comes from Thomas Jefferson, not the Constitution.  Granted, Jefferson was a heavy duty founder, for whom we have a lot of respect, but he didn't get separation of church and state into the Constitution. 

Comprehensive Immigration Reform on Beat the Press

Lot of unhappy talk, lamenting the lack of comprehensive immigration reform by the talking heads this morning.  No description of just what comprehensive might be. But you got the impression that a whole bunch of stuff would be changed.  I don't think our current Congress can actually pass controversial laws  any more, and changing everything in immigration is surely controversial..  Congresscritters just sit around trash talking Trump.  That's amusing and all, but it doesn't get the public's business done. 
   I think instead of comprehensive, we might be able to pass some simple changes that everyone agrees are good.  For instance, a large majority is in favor of doing something for the dreamers, illegals brought into the country as children.  Might be some discussion as to how much we ought to do, but I think some compromise could be reached.  This looks doable with today's low speed Congress, whereas comprehensive probably ain't doable. 
   For another measure,  we should declare anyone who serves in the US armed forces and obtains an honorable discharge is eligible to become a US citizen.  That worked for the Romans, it will work for us.  Or anyone who assists US forces overseas doing things like interpreting should be granted citizenship. 
   We need immigrants.  Immigrants and the children of immigrants make up our most loyal citizens.  The US is a super power for many reasons, one of them being our large, loyal, and well educated population.  With the fertility of  the US falling below replacement level, we need immigrants to keep our population up.

A couple of Win 10 Speed Ups

Zap as many installed apps as you can.  Games, stuff you have never used, Avast anti virus.  Windows won't let you un install anything it thinks essential.

In the search box on the taskbar type "programs"  Select Apps and Features.  Run down the list of installed applications and uninstall as many as you can.  I zapped 20 of so.  Sped things up perceptibly. 

Kill off CTF Loader.   Do Control Panel-> Systems & Security->administrative Tools->Services.  Find the Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Service.  Stop it.  Make sure it stays stopped.  It may pop back to life a couple of times.  Then set startup type to disabled.  That did kill CTF loader out of task manager. 

 

Woodsville NH 4th of July Parade

Woodsville, a small town north of Franconia Notch, has been running a decent 4th of July parade for as long as I can remember.  My brother was in the National Guard, which marched in the parade every summer, and so we took all the kids and watched the parade every summer.  Brother's unit was artillery, towed cannon, no tanks.  I am sure if it had been an armor unit, we would have had tanks instead of cannon.
  So. I am amused to hear whining on the TV over a couple of tanks moved into Washington DC for the 4th.  Whingers are complaining that tanks are too militaristic, too expensive, and downright un American. 
   Up here in God's country, we enjoy seeing the Guard, seeing every firetruck for miles around, and all the cop cars, the floats, and politicians like me with yard signs duct taped to the doors of our cars. And maybe a flyover.  It's the 4th.  Helova good day for a parade. 

New TV

Did some net searching for RCA jacks on Samsung TV's.  The word from the net is that new TV's don't have audio output RCA jacks at all.  Someone said the music industry objected to them claiming that they were being used to pirate music.  Someone said for TV's with optical digital sound output, (my Samsung has such a port) you can buy a converter box for $26, and an optical cable ($?) and convert the optical digital signal back to plain old baseband analog audio signal  that my stereo can handle.  I do want the stereo sound.  The TV speakers rattle and break up when I push the TV sound all the way up, and the TV isn't really loud enough, and I miss the sound playing in my workshop off a pair of fairly decent bookcase speakers mounted in the shop driven by the stereo amp.  
   VCR now works.  Dunno why it didn't work last night.  Loaded a tape, plugged it in and got pix and sound.  Stereo separation is weak, but then my test tape is Disney's Fantasia which was made long before stereo was invented.
   Now all I have to do is figure out what the password for my router is and I can take video right off the internet.  My Netgear router has a button on it, that when pressed  connects up to my computers, no hassle.  I'll see if that works on TV's. 
   One last trick.  When I hit "source" on the TV remote I get a choice of HDMI 1, HDMI 2 and AV.  I would like to relabel the choices as Cable Box, DVD, and VCR.  There oughta be a way but I haven't found it yet.  Manual is mostly worthless and Samsung's website just offers a downloadable copy of the same manual. 

The Sony flatsceen died yesterday, Bought a new one

I thought I needed a 32 inch TV, at least that is what the dead Sony was.  Came back from Wally Mart with a Samsung UN32M4500 for only $149.  The Sony cost $400 ten years ago.  I could have fit a new 40 inch into the living room, the entire TV is smaller.  The old Sony had a sizable bezel around the 32 inch screen.  The new Samsung has no bezel at all, and I could have fit the next bigger size into the .living room.
  New Samsung has nice video, two HDMI ports, one for the DVD player and one for the cable box.  Apparently Samsung doesn't offer audio outputs jack anymore so I cannot feed the TV sound into my stereo speakers.  It does come with  an internet connection.  The setup program asked for my router password.  I gave it the password from my address book, and that didn't work.  I will have to have a long conversation with the router about that.   Video is good, nice and bright.  VCR  sorta works, but the video is terrible, black and white, heavy checker board, no sound.  Might be the tape, but it probably isn't.  I'll try a known good tape later tonight. 
   It would be nice if  they would mold the plastic casework in something besides gloss black.  The black makes it hard to read serial numbers, model numbers, and connector designations, and to see screws and make fastenings.  

Democrat Presidential Debate

Strange affair.  I missed Wednesday night's warmup show, the TV cable was broken.  Thursday night I managed to get a roof antenna connected to the TV, AND I fixed the cable.  Then I feel asleep before the show started at 9PM.  So I didn't see the shows.  All I have to go on is the after action reports on TV, internet and Wall St Journal.  Since the MSM are all democrats, I figure the chilly reception given the event means it had some real problems.
   None of the two dozen candidates said anything memorable.  All of them came out in favor of medicare for all, free college, student loan forgiveness,  tax-the-rich, let everyone into the country.  Somehow, I don't think any of those ideas is a real vote getter.  In fact, I think they are a voter turnoff. 

NH Senate Session 27 June, Budget Day.

They presented the budget, parts 1 and 2, aka HB1 and HB2, from the last committee of conference.  We didn’t get a chance to amend anything.  Vote it up or down, that’s it.  We had 3 hours of oratory, praise from Democrats, objections to size and new taxes from Republicans.  Seldom did anyone mention a number, such as the number of dollars to be spent.   Democrats tacked a raise the smoking age bill onto the budget.  That is an old parliamentary trick; take something that would never be voted thru by the legislature.  Attach it to something that has to pass like the budget.  It will go thru because the pain of killing the budget far exceeds the pain of letting the rider go thru.  We did so, and the smoking age is now 21 in New Hampshire. 

   Everyone expects the governor will veto this budget on account of too much taxing and too much spending.  To guard against this we passed a continuing resolution that allows state operations to continue for three months or until we do pass a budget for real. 

   Then we went thru a bunch of last minute bills.  We knocked off a bunch with the fast track (consent) calendar.  And we did roll call votes, all 14-10, to pass the rest of  them.  Hopefully the governor will veto the worst of ‘em. 

Congress doesn't do health care anymore.

NHPR ran a long piece on health care yesterday.  They decried the cost and number of un insured.  It sounded terrible.  In this half hour (one hour?) piece they never discussed some things we could do to make things better. 

    First off, we could allow importation of drugs from any reasonable first world country, Canada say, and Britain and France and Germany and some others.  Somalia and Bangladesh need not apply.  Drugs overseas, often of American manufacture, are a lot cheaper than the same drugs in the US.  Why you ask?  Overseas health authorities bargain over price with Big Pharma, or in some cases have the authority to set prices.  Whereas here in freedom loving USA, Medicare and Medicaid are forbidden by law to bargain for a good price on drug purchases.   For that matter, we could rewrite those no-bargaining laws; all they do is increase Big Pharma’s profits. 

   Secondly we could allow health insurance companies to sell policies in all 50 states, no extra paperwork required.  Right now each state requires all insurance companies, in state or out of state, to submit endless paperwork to the state health authority.  The process is so bad that a lot of insurance companies just don’t bother with smaller states like New Hampshire.  This is why New Hampshire only has TWO health insurers.  Talk about opportunity for price gouging. 

   Both of these ideas require federal laws.  And Congress doesn’t pass federal laws any more, nowadays all Congress does is investigate (harass) Trump.   Which is amusing, but it does nothing to reduce health care costs.  Right now, the US spends TWICE as much on health care as any other country in the world and US health is no better than any other first world country.

Harley Davidson to produce motor cycles in China

This from the Wall St Journal.  Harley says the Chinese manufacturer will build the bikes for sale in China.  The piece had an artist's rendering, meaning they didn't have a prototype to photograph.  The Journal described the proposed Harley as " small" to suit the Chinese market.  They said it would have a 382 cc engine which isn't very small.  I rode a 250 cc Yamaha for several years.  The Yamaha had plenty of power, enough to scare me, even when I was younger and crazier than I am now.  Harley has been bemoaning a sales drop off in the US for years.  This is because the big Harleys are too expensive for all but the most well heeled bikers.  They are magnificent machines but they cost as much as a new car.  Which is a awful lot of money for a recreational vehicle.  Up here in snow country you cannot ride in winter, a motorcycle is strictly a summer toy. 

That US drone the Iranians shot down

The TV news shows a picture of a sizable airplane shaped drone,single engined,  jet powered.  I didn't catch the name.  Too big to be a Predator.  They say it has the wing span of a 737 jet liner, and a price, $180 million, that would buy us a new 737.  Seems a bit much for a single engine sub sonic aircraft, with no cockpit, no pressurization, no manual flight controls, no cockpit windows.  Granted such a beast needs an autopilot fancier than most, some high powered camera's and a telemetry transmitter to send the photos back to base.  But I would expect a photo recon drone to cost less than an airliner.  A lot less.

More Free Stuff party offers reparations for slavery

Reparations, cash given to blacks 'cause their ancestors were slaves, surely ought to get more black votes for the Democrat party of more free stuff.  Buying votes, much?  Ultimate identity politics? 

Single failure must not put every store down

Target has managed to hook every cash register in every store to somewhere central.  Somewhere center broke yesterday and the day before, locking up every single cash register all over the country, forcing customers to stand in line for hours, or, just leave their purchases and go home. 
  This should not happen.  A Target store is large enough to afford the computers to be stand alone.  Target didn't  bother to do this, and it will cost them.  Certainly I will think twice before doing business with Target, lest I get stuck in line for hours, or have my account information broadcast to every hacker in the world. 
   Target's disastrous cash register setup has to be the work of ignorant Target suits.  No competent engineer would design a system like that.  Engineers understand that things break every so often, and that to tie every cash register in the company into a central point is a company wide failure just waiting to happen. 
   For that matter, cash registers used to work just fine before computers were even invented.  And we managed to use credit cards for decades before the automatic approval systems we use today were installed.  Target would do well to revive these antique ways of doing business.

Han Solo. 2018.

   This is Han Solo’s origin story.  It came out in theaters last year and some how I missed it.  I am a long time Star Wars fan, I can remember catching the first Star Wars on opening night in Boston back in the 1970’s.  I have caught all the following Star Wars flicks in theaters, except this one some how. 

   First thing I noticed is the cameraman has a new shtick.  Instead of the blackout look, this guy has a new look.  The color is faded out to nearly black and white, contrast is way down, brightness is way down, and the studio air seems filled with smoke, blurring everything out.  Makes it hard to recognize the actors, they all look like fuzzy shadows floating thru the gloom.  Only in the last reel do we get some decent video.  To see what was happening I had to pull my chair up to within 4 feet of the TV screen. 

    Plot is indescribable.  IMDB took a whole page to summarize it.  WE meet a young Han Solo, played by an actor I never heard of before.  He did not look at all like Harrison Ford.  He carries a blaster in a low slung holster but somehow his blaster is not as neat as the one Harrison Ford used to carry. Han has a girl friend, and the relationship is intense enough that first thing they do upon meeting is an impressive kiss.  She is there for the whole movie but only in the last reel do we learn she is a traitor working for Darth Maul.  We have a repeat of the Moss Eisley bar scene, a train hijacking like the one in Firefly, the scene where Han wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian at cards and some others too.

    They do the really fat stereo bit so good that I could hear things coming from way off the screen.  Like when Beckett busts in on Han and girlfriend smooching in the clothes closet you can hear him coming from way off the screen. 

    All in all a meh movie. 

Senate Session June 13

Senate Session, 13 June.  We are getting to the bottom of the bill pile, finally.  For openers we sustained the Governor’s veto of SB 5.  All ten of us Republicans voted to sustain, which was just enough to do the job.  This bill would have increased Medicaid provider rates.  The governor’s stated reasons were that this bill was only good thru 1 July of this year, a date that is nearly upon us, and that this kind of funding ought to be part of the budget.  

   Then we did a lot of house keeping.   75 bills, previously passed by the Senate, had gone over to the house, and the house had made small changes in them.   Working off of 50 pages of spreadsheet we plowed thru all 75 of ‘em, approving the house changes by voice vote in nearly every case.  Six bills were controversial enough to get a roll call vote.  In each case the Democrats voted it thru, 14-10.  These were:  SB 99 and expansion of worker’s compensation to cover partial disability, SB 148 that allows union recruiters access to all new employees, SB 196 that allows non academic surveys on our school children, SB 168 that raises electric rates by requiring more renewable energy, SB2 which raided the business & economic affairs fund to more “workforce development”. And SB 263 which would allow disgruntled parents wide latitude to sue schools and school districts. 

   We were able to whisk thru all 75 bills by 12:30.  The house was still chewing over more bills, so we adjourned til 1:30 for lunch.  This was a picnic, hot dogs and potato salad out on the lawn.  Would have been more fun if it had not been raining hard.  My umbrella was in the trunk of my car, way off in the LOB garage.  I got fairly wet. 

   By 2 PM the house finished up, no more changes and so we adjourned for the week.  I drove home in the rain.  Sun did not show itself until I was going up into the Notch.        

WSJ says medical marijuana laws reduce opioid deaths

That's in today's Journal.  Funny, NH has medical marijuana and we have an opioid crisis of too many opioid overdose deaths.  What's different about NH?  Or is the Wall St Journal piece based on flawed research?  The Journal piece didn't give any numbers.  Is this a reverse New Hampshire advantage?

Pratt & Whitney to merge with Raytheon. WSJ

Front page of today's Wall St Journal.  They called it United Technologies and Raytheon to merge.  United Technologies is the holding company that holds Pratt and Whitney.  Pratt is one of the only three jet engine makers in the world.  The other two are GE and Rolls Royce.  That means they are making about a third of all the jet engines made in the whole world.  That's big. 
   Raytheon started up in the 1930's making vacuum tubes and cashed in on the invention of radar in WWII.  Raytheon had good connections with the MIT Radiation Laboratory where the American radar effort was centered.  A lot of Raytheon people were old MIT grads, they kept in touch, and when the Rad Lab needed something built, they had Raytheon do it.  By the time I went to work at Raytheon in the 1970's they were big.  They had the fantastic anti ballistic missile radar project which I got to work on.  They were doing SAM-D which became the Patriot anti aircraft and anti ballistic missile system in time for the Gulf War.  Raytheon was the go-to contractor for Navy ship borne radars and later the Aegis missile systems for Navy cruisers.
   Any how, the merger, if it goes thru, to be called Raytheon Technologies Corporation will be the second largest defense contractor, right behind Boeing, and be worth $100 billion. 
   This will reduce the number of defense contractors, reducing competition, which will raise the price of defense contracts to us taxpayers.  Was I Donald Trump (I'm not) I would have the anti trust department over at Justice object to this merger on the basis that it is anti competitive.  Anti trust hasn't done anything since they chickened out of supporting Netscape from predatory pricing by Microsoft back in the 1990s.  There has been some talk in recent days about breaking up the big tech companies, but I haven't since any real action on that front.  Fat as I can see, the DOJ antitrust people simply draw their pay and don't do anything.

Budget Day in Concord.

Senate Session, 6 June.  Budget day.  Plus 200 year anniversary of the Concord state house.  We had a small army of former Senators in the visitor’s gallery and the senate president introduced each one by name.  And a short joint session where nice things were said about New Hampshire history and the progress women have made in politics over the years.  No Fast Track calendar this week.  We ran thru the 8 bills on the regular calendar, mostly on roll calls, 14-10, all the Democrats voting for and all the Republicans voting against.  That got us up to lunch, sandwiches and cookies on the lawn outside.  After lunch we started on the budget and didn’t finish it until midnight.  The budget comes in two parts, part 1 (200 pages) and part 2 (180 pages).  Over than style changes it was/is not clear to me what the difference between them is.  Transparent they are not. Would you believe opaque?   No index or table of contents.  I never found any totals of spending or tax revenues for the whole state, or even of the various departments of state government.  I have been told that restoration of 100% stabilization grants is in there, somewhere, but I never found it.  The budget is started by the governor, who asks all his department heads how much money they need.  This list of goodies then goes to the house, which modifies it to suit them selves.  Then it comes to the senate and we make a lot of changes, or we try to. 

    We submitted 20 amendments.  The Democrats voted each one down, 14-10.  My amendments, one to fund renovation of the Hitchner building in Littleton to support White Mountain community college expansion there, and the other for expansion of the Coos County Family Health Services clinic in Berlin, both perished on party line roll call votes 14-10.  Anyhow, that makes this budget a Democrat budget.  Lots of new taxes.  Lots of expensive goodies like a 1.5% COLA for state retirees.   

   It was after 10 PM by the time our last amendment was voted down.  Then we got into a complex, and amazing bit of parliamentary quibbling than ran on till midnight.  We had originally voted to “divide” the budget into stuff we liked and stuff we didn’t like.  Senate president Donna Soucy had ruled the budget part 2 “divisible”.   In a voice vote the Democrats overruled the senate president (one of their own party!) and declared part 2 indivisible.  Very unusual to slap down your own senate president like that.   Which meant we could only vote the whole thing up or down, whereas we wanted to vote for the stuff we liked and against the stuff we didn’t like.  So we called a recess and waited for the Democrats desire to go home to override their desire to score an obscure political point.  It didn’t work, and at midnight we finally held a roll call vote to approve budget part 2.  All the Democrats voted for and all the Republicans voted against.  So the Democrat budget is off to the governor’s desk.  

Why Huawei should be no way

The US is campaigning to keep China's Huawei Technologies telecom equipment out of US and allied telephone systems.  We think Huawei is a security risk, that Huawei equipment contains secret back doors that allow Chinese intelligence services to intercept our voice and data traffic.  This risk sounds real to me. 
   One of Tom Clancy's techo thrillers has a CIA agent in Beijing securely emailing his intel reports back to Langley using a secret backdoor in US built telecom equipment installed in the Beijing phone system.  Clancy explains how the backdoor was slipped into the embedded computer code of the telecom switch by a few patriotic low level employees of AT&T and Microsoft at the request of CIA years before. Senior management knew nothing about it.  Although Clancy is writing fiction, that tale sounds completely plausible to me, an old embedded systems programmer.
   Huawei is a Chinese company and it is reasonable to believe that it is tied more closely to the Chinese government than US companies are, and that Huawei employees are as patriotic as US employees, perhaps even more so.
   We should work as hard as possible to keep suspect Huawei equipment out of our phone systems.  And out of our allies phone systems too.  

NH Senate activity 30 May

Senate Session 30 May.  A circus.  We voted on overriding Governor Sununu’s veto of death penalty abolition.  Vast excitement among the newsies.  In actual fact, the lawyers and the courts abolished the NH death penalty 80 years ago.  But the newsies found an appealing issue and have devoted yuge amounts of airtime and editorial words to it. The public would have been better served by air time and editorial words covering real issues like minimum wage, new taxes, transgender supremacy bills, and gun control.   Two big TV camera’s on tripods, five journals on laptops, two guys with big still cameras.  It was a roll call vote.  16-8 to override.  Just one vote over the two thirds majority needed to override.  I voted to sustain the governor’s veto and the death penalty.  There are some atrocious crimes, like school shooters who kill dozens of innocent students, or cop killers or traitors who pass secrets of the ultimate weapon to mortal enemies, who deserve death.   After the death penalty vote, the newsies all packed up and left.  We stayed in session until 7:30 PM.  I got home in the last of the daylight at 8:30 PM.  To the great joy of Stupid Beast. 

    We knocked off 21 bills with a quick voice vote on the Fast Track (Consent) calendar.  Then we bickered over 42 bills on the regular calendar for the rest of the day. 

   We kicked HB 186 the minimum wage bill into next year by re referring it back to committee.  That was a heavy duty jobs killer.   The Democrats rammed thru HB 105, which would allow people with out of state plates and/or out of state driver’s licenses to vote in New Hampshire.   Roll call vote 14-10, all Democrats for, all Republicans against.   Then they rammed thru HB 611 to allow everyone to get an absentee ballot, no questions asked.  And HB 651 that would allow campaign funds to be spent on child care.  Real politicians don’t put the kids in child care, they take them to their campaign events.  That’s what my mother did when she ran for the Massachusetts house many years ago.  We kids would have rather stayed home and watched TV, but Mother knew that voters love children and so she brought hers with her to all her events.  HB 481, the pot legalization bill got re referred to committee, which puts it off until next year.  And finally HB 608, a bill on Transexual rights was roll called thru 16-8.  This bill would allow boys to use the girl’s rooms, boys to compete on girls sports teams.

Black Panther 2018

   I missed seeing this in the theater last year.  After reading much hype I net flixed it and watched it.  Meh.   Opening credits scene showed a cool metal armored riding rhinoceros.  Never did see it in action in the movie but it looked cool in the credits.   The hidden black African kingdom of Wakanda needs a new king.  Wakanda possesses lots of high technology, anti gravity stretchers, Millennium Falcon style aircraft, futuristic cities and more.  The plot is obscure.  Many of the characters speak an African language which I don’t understand.  I never did catch the stage names for any character.  If the hero had a love interest it was never clear which chick it was. 

   The hero must win the kingship thru single combat with someone else.  This happens out doors in a small river leading to a mighty waterfall.  Of course, I expected the loser to get thrown down the waterfall.  Well that didn’t happen, this time.  Hero gets the crown, rules for a while, then suffers a rematch at the waterfall some time later.  This time he gets thrown over the falls.  He survives, and makes a comeback in the last reel. Not clear how. 

   The cast is all black, Wakanda is black, and Marvel ran Black Panther comic books for years.  That was after I had given up comic books so I missed out on much of the background of the movie.  Needless to say black fans just loved this movie. 

   Me, not so much.  They had Darkman working the camera giving us a lot of pure black scenes with only mumbled dialogue to clue us in.   Since the cast was all black, nothing showed up in the dark scenes. No even an eyeball.  At least in Game of Thrones you could see a white face or two barely visible in the black. 

NH arsenic limit in drinking water.

And I forgot to write about HB 261 concerning arsenic limits in drinking water.  It would establish a limit of 5 micrograms per liter for arsenic.  That’s really low.  I asked the advocates for this bill (Sen Feltes and Sen Sherman) where this limit came from.  Who or which organization recommended this VERY low limit. Neither of them knew where this VERY low limit came from. We are talking 5 parts per TRILLION here.  Back when I took chemistry in college it was felt than anything less than 1 part per MILLION (1000 parts per TRILLION) wasn’t going to hurt anybody.  Anyhow this cute little bill was adopted on a voice vote (all ayes, no nays).  Dunno how much it will increase everyone’s costs, first to make a measurement that delicate and second to reduce the arsenic content that much. 

NH needs to require public speaking senior year of high school

Down in Concord VERY few people can speak properly.  They mumble, they don't speak loud enough to be heard even from the front row of seats.  They slur their words, they talk too fast.  I sat thru a capital budget hearing.  I took a front row seat.  Of all the witnesses testifying, I could not tell what project they were advocating, where it was to be, how big it was gonna be.  All the witnesses were such poor public speakers that I missed most of their words.
   My high school required public speaking, a once a week course, of all seniors.  It was taught by the headmaster, old Daniel D. Test.   Held in the school theater, we spoke from the stage, Dan Test would sit in the last row.  And call out "I can't hear you" if you were not speaking loudly enough.  That course has stuck with me, and done me good over the years.  We ought to require it of all New Hampshire high schools. 

NH Senate Session 23 May

Senate session, 23 May.  Knocked off 17 bills on the Fast Track (consent) calendar with one quick voice vote.  Tackled 33 bills on the regular calendar. Took until 5 PM, even though we finally kicked half a dozen unlucky bills forward to next week’s session.  I didn’t get home until 7 PM.  Long day. 

    The Democrats passed four gun control bills on roll call votes, 13-10.  Democrat Fuller Clarke was absent, accounting or only 13 Democratic votes instead of the usual 14.  HB 109 demands a “universal background check” for all gun sales.  The “universal” check is some how different from the Instant Background Check that is current law.  HB 514 requires a three day waiting period between purchase and delivery of a gun.  That ought to kill off gun shows in New Hampshire.  And HB 564 allows local school committees to set up gun free zones and what ever else strikes their fancy.  Finally HB 696 which allows a judge to order confiscation of a citizen’s guns and ammunition upon a single complaint from just about any body, including live in girl friends.  No hearing, no pleading, and the government is under no obligation to return the seized firearms, ever.   Lesson: Democrats are the party of gun control.  If you want to keep your gun, vote a straight Republican ticket.  Contact governor Sununu and ask him to veto all three of these.   

   Then Democrats pushed thru a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) bill.  Retirees will get a 1.5% boost in their state pensions.  The $140 million cost will go onto local property taxes. 

    HB 628 will require some, a lot, they didn’t say, buildings to provide adult changing stations.  First I ever heard of that. Retro fit or new construction, didn’t say.  This “issue” should be dealt with by the state building code board. 

    HB 359 requires pharmacies to attach an orange sticker to all prescription bottles containing opioid.   The pharmacists are against the idea.  The prescribing doctor is supposed to inform his patients of opioid containing drugs.  Failure to do so is malpractice.  And the bright colored sticker will attract children looking for a high, thieves, and other problems.  Anyhow it passed on a roll call 21-1. 

   Bunch of other bills went thru, none of them very interesting. 

  And last of all we passed HB 706, the redistricting commission on a voice vote.  All ayes, no nays.  Like most voice votes.   This bill sets up a redistricting commission, even numbers of Democrats and Republicans, no elected officials, to draw new district maps after the 2020 census.   The commission is advisory, and the legislature can reject, redraw and otherwise do its own thing as the Constitution requires.  A lot of my constituents feel strongly about the Constitutional requirements.  In actual fact, the commission might do a better job that the Republicans did ten years ago up here.  Back then, they created a snake like district running from Franconia all the way to the Connecticut River, which was then held by a democrat, Rebecca Brown, for the next three elections.       

Congress is stalled out. And our New Hampshire delegation, Democrats all, ain't helping

I don't believe the Congress has passed much, other than the tax cut bill, since Trump got inaugurated.  They keep saying that passing anything, like immigration reform, would help Trump, and Democrats cannot stand that.  So they do nothing.   The only thing I can remember our congressional delegation doing is Anne Kuster voting against the Keystone XL pipeline.  With all here constituents needing furnace oil and gasoline to drive to work, she votes against a project that might lower the cost of both commodities.  Way to go Anne. 
   We need two new US reps and two new US Senators.  Steve Negron has declared against Anne Kuster.  Bill O'Brien was making noises about running for  Sheehan's Senate seat.  They need all the help we can give them.  

Is Socialism the same as the More Free Stuff party?

 Socialism is a polite word for Communism.  Karl Marx decried the capitalism of his time as exploitation of the workers.  Marx's solution was to have the government, Communist government, take ownership of all  the "means of production", basically the entire economy, and  to divvy up the proceeds of enterprises among all the workers.  Trouble was, after government take over, the enterprises stopped making money, and there was little or nothing to divvy up.  The revolutionary government of Russia in 1917 called themselves Communists and blackened the name of Communism so badly that future Communists decided to call themselves and their regimes Socialist rather than Communist.
   Today's  Democrats and/or Democratic Socialists are more interested in more free stuff than they are about government ownership of the means of production.  Or at least that's the way they talk.  We should remember that Communist or Socialist regimes inflict serious national poverty upon the nations stupid enough to embrace Communism or Socialism.  Examples are Venezuela, Cuba, and Russia.  So there will be little free stuff to hand out.
   Capitalism produces vast amounts of wealth and lifts countless people out of poverty.  Under capitalism all the means of production are owned and controlled by private individuals who operate them effectively.  The owners take a slice of the proceeds, in many cases a whacking big slice, but they produce  rivers of stuff, enough to fill our store shelves, and flood us with motor vehicles, aircraft, computers, gasoline, air conditioners, electronics, furnace oil, interstate highways, internet, and God only knows what else.  Better to have plenty of everything even if the owners get away with a great big slice. 
   You gotta wonder about those polls claiming that yuge numbers of people want "socialism".   What have our schools been teaching?