End of Fossil Fuels? Winter is coming

Been hearing a lot of silly talk from Democrats about eliminating fossil fuels.  Chilly.  We have a long cold heating season up here and I burn quite a bit of furnace oil every winter.  The house would be uninhabitable without the furnace.  And I need gasoline to get to the grocery store.  Mac's Market is only four miles away, but it is down at the bottom of Three Mile Hill, and I am too old to walk that, lugging groceries.
   If the Democrats gets elected and outlaw fossil fuel I need to think about relocating to the Carolinas.    
   Vote a straight Republican ticket.

Budget Committee hearings

House and Senate Finance Ad Hoc Committee on the Budget met at 10 AM in Concord.  I went down mostly to lend morale support to the Republican side.  We heard testimony from representatives of Claremont, Senate Ed and Workforce Development committee, New Hampshire Judicial Council, Office of Chip Advocacy, Nursing Home Family Council, NH Legal Affairs, DES, American Cancer Society, NH Dept of Safety, and the NH Dept of Revenue.  Everyone complained about spending plans put on hold by the Governor’s veto of the budget.  None of the complaints sounded all that desperate to me.  The committee chairperson repeatedly stated that the purpose of the hearing was to chastise Governor Sununu for vetoing the budget. 

   Nearly everyone mumbled and spoke too softly.  We need to have a public speaking requirement in New Hampshire high schools.  At my old high school, public speaking was required of all seniors, and was taught by the school headmaster.  Class was in the school theater, we had to speak from the stage.  The headmaster sat in the last row of seats.  Occasionally some unlucky senior would hear “I can’t hear you!” shouted from the back row.   I repressed the urge to do the same today.  We learned quickly under that threat.  Debate and testimony in Concord would be vastly improved if New Hampshire required public speaking in the public schools.

   I left the house at 8:45 AM and didn’t get home until 3 PM.  Cat was pleased to see me when I got home.

Is "white supremacy" real? or just a Democrat slam on Republicans?

Democrats have been talking up "white supremacy" lately.  I wonder what it is, and how you tell who is one?  For an ideology to be dangerous, it needs an organization, with a name, pushing it.  Last two names I remember were the KKK and the American Nazi party.  That was years ago.  I suppose there might be a few of 'em still around, but there cannot be all that many.  And neither name has been mentioned in this latest  burst of "white supremacy" talk on the MSM.  And to be dangerous, an ideology needs a book, like The Communist Manifesto, Rules for Radicals, Mein Kampf.  I never heard of such a book from the KKK.
   Back in the 1950's you could tell the Communists by their party cards.  Do "white supremacists" carry cards?  Is there a modern Joe McCarthy to call them out?
   In short, I think the latest burst of "white supremacy" slams in the MSM is just another way of calling Republicans racists. 

Why does NH education cost $16-$18 K per kid per year?

Assume we put 25 kids in each classroom, and assume we pay the teacher $50K per year.  That's $2K per kid to pay the teacher.  Double that to pay janitors and principals and what ever.  Double it again to pay for building maintenance, heat, light, etc.  We are still only up to $8K per kid.  Yet all the NH town officials I talk to say they need double that to put a kid thru public school.  I never hear just where all that money goes.   I hear the charter schools actually do get by on $8K per kid and everyone agrees the charter schools do a fine job.  They have waiting lists of kids who want in to them. 
   I am all in favor of educating our children.  I am not in favor of paying useless mouths.  Used to be, back when I was going to school,  teachers and janitors were the only people on the payroll.  Headmaster at my old high school taught public speaking to seniors every week all year long.  Miss Blinstrube ran St Mary's parochial school in Melrose with nobody on the payroll except teachers.  How many administrators do we have on NH school payrolls today?  What do the "SAU"s do for a living, other than drawing their pay?  How many bureaucrats do we pay in the Department of Education down in Concord?  

Words of the Weasel Part 50

"gun violence".  The proper word is murder, an old English word, understood by all.  People use "gun violence" to stir up political support to outlaw private ownership of firearms.  Calling the hateful act murder stirs up support for punishing the murderer. 

The British are Coming Rick Atkinson 2019

It's new.  I had the Village Bookstore order it for me.  Only took a couple of days to come in.  Atkinson is writing military history,  little to no discussion of politics, diplomacy, homefront morale, and all the other things that happen in a country at war.  He opens his history with Lexington and Concord, and takes the story up to Trenton and Princeton.  Two more volumes are planned to finish up the Revolutionary War.  He writes about the American army, its maneuvers, its battles, victories and defeats, morale, leadership, Washington and his generals.  Atkinson quotes extensively from soldier's letters, giving his work a fine authenticity.   He writes of the high points (victories) and the low points (defeats, prison camps, looting of civilians, casualties).  The British came close to winning in 1776 at New York.  Washington started with 30,000 troops defending New York from a British force of roughly the same size, backed up by total naval supremacy, important in a well watered place like New York, where everything is close to the water.   Sailing ships could move faster than troops could march, allowing the British to land forces anywhere they chose.  By the end of the battle Washington's forces had been whittled down to 5000 men, close to annihilation.  Had those survivors given up hope and gone home, the British could have won.  They didn't, they stuck around long enough to fight Trenton and Princeton that winter.  Washington managed to  throw superior forces across the Delaware River against unwary British detachments and wipe them out.  As you might expect, these victories did great things for American army morale.    
   A good read.   

Jericho Lake ATV Festival

I attended the annual Jericho ATV festival today.  It is held in the Jericho Lake state park, a bit north of Berlin.  State route 110 from Berlin took me right there.  It’s big.  Roads were crowded with ATV’s for miles around Berlin.  At Jericho Lake they had tents selling ATV’s, ATV parts and accessories, NH Fish and Game, and food and drink.  They were holding mud races between ATVs and an ATV jumping contest.  The jumpers could soar 30 feet in the air, do some acrobatics, and land safely.  Quite a show.  I didn’t get an attendance count, but I figure there must have been at least a thousand ATVs, and four or five times that number of people.  Weather was perfect, sunny and nice.  Everyone looked happy and enjoying the show.  They had big ATVs that could seat 4 (driver and three passengers) and medium (two seaters) and small ones (single seaters), plus off road motorcycles. 

Justice delayed is justice denied; and lawyers bill more hours

The Garner story, from New York, an over weight and out of shape black man, arrested by NYC cops  for selling loosies, (single cigarettes) who died during the arrest, crying " I can't breath" as cops put him in a choke hold.  The case has been enraging NY citizens and paying  lawyers billable hours for FIVE YEARS.  That  is outrageous.  The NYC law against selling loosies which gave to cops the excuse to hassle and then kill Garner is outrageous.  They are just cigarettes, it isn't like Garner was selling heroin or even pot.  The law against selling loosies was pushed by the brick and mortar merchants who did not want street vendors competing with them.
  As of right now, the NY courts have FINALLY rendered a verdict against the cop.  The NY police commissioner has a chance to confirm or overturn the court's verdict.  This is outrageous too.  The cop should have been charged with murder, and the verdict of the court should be final.  Allowing an employee of the city government to overrule a court verdict is ridiculous.
   Note to NH.  We don't want to do anything the way New York does it.   

Democratic Presidential Debate, late July version

I watched both nights.  Fell asleep during the second night.  First night, Warren and the Bern, was amusing to watch, but I don't think any of 'em said anything that will win them votes.   And they all said a lot of things that turn voters like me off.  Government run health care, higher taxes, the Hiawatha life style (Green New Deal) open borders. 

Democrats want to kill American's health care

Most Americans get their health care thru their company or thru their union.  It's provided by private insurance companies.  It's good stuff.  I had company health care for better than 40 years.  It paid to deliver my three children, paid for the wife's back problems, paid for yearly physicals.  I am still in decent health in my seventies.  Most US citizens feel the same way.
   Last night we had the Democrats calling to abolish this decent health care system and throw us all onto the tender mercies of a government health plan.  Do we want to give up very decent private health insurance for the likes of the VA, or Obamacare?  I think not.

Massive leak of customer data caused by "mis configurated firewall"???

Hmm.  Capitol One?  Firewall?  Did they have their customer database machine[s] on the internet??  Exposed to every hacker in the entire world?   Did they flunk computer security 101?  Can the American surplus of unemployed lawyers sue them down to their socks?
Basic rule.  Machines holding critical data should never be connected to the internet. Or the phone network, or anything else.   They should be kept in a locked room, with the number of key holders restricted as much as possible.  Three is about right.  They must be backed up to optical disk once a week, and the backups stored off site, in case of fire.  (or flood, had that happen once)  Windows machines are swiss cheese, important data should be kept on anything more secure, and every thing ever manufactured is more secure than Windows.  Use Apple, use Linux use anything but Windows. Know that bad guys can stick a flash drive into a USB port and download every byte off the hard drive[s] onto the flash drive in a few minutes.  Hands off too.
  I hope these yo-yos get sued into oblivion. 

The Social Security Scammer called again

This pitch starts off telling me my social security number will be trashed somehow.  And asks me to call back at another number.  They called me yesterday and again today.  I hung up both times.  US guvmint operations don't telephone, they send letters. 

Advice to the class of 2023, frosh this fall

That's you frosh entering college this fall.  College is fun and parties. I enjoyed it all immensely.  It's also serious stuff.  We are talking serious money for a 4 year bachelor's degree, like $100K, which either your parents put up, or you take out US guvmint loans for.   If you take out guvmint loans, know that you are stuck with the payments, declaring bankruptcy doesn't get you out of paying them off.  You are stuck.
   First thing you need to decide that you are gonna graduate, on time, no matter what.  If you give up and flunk out before getting your degree, all the money spent is wasted, you don't get squat for it, but you still have to pay off your student loans.
   Second thing you need to decide is what you want to do to make a living after you graduate.  You have to make a living somehow.  You will spend much of the rest of your life after college making a living. Best to find something that you like to do.  Selling used cars or waiting tables can get old, fast.  At this stage of your life you may not have a clue.  Talk to your parents, talk to your family, talk to friends, do some reading of biographies.  You need to have something in mind by Christmas freshman year.  Given you have chosen a career field, pick a college major that makes you employable in your chosen field.  Colleges and universities offer many majors that are totally worthless in the job market.  Avoid any major with "studies" in the name.  Gender studies, black studies, environmental studies. Avoid art history, sociology, archeology, and political science. Nobody hires graduates in those majors.
   Think about STEM majors.  Those are valued in the job market.  For you kids entering high school, be aware that STEM majors require integral calculus.  The subject matter is taught using calculus and if you don't have your calculus, the courses won't meant anything to you.  Figure you have to take integral calculus freshman year.  To do which, you have to have taken trigonometry and algebra in high school.  A high school course in geometry is extremely helpful, although not mandatory.  Plan your high school courses accordingly.
  Finally, beware, colleges have all sorts of obscure graduation requirements.  You have to have so many credits in a bunch of strange subjects.  If you lack ALL the required credits you don't graduate with your class.  Get a current copy (last year's copy may be obsolete) of the college catalog and research all the credits needed to graduate in your major.  At my school engineering majors needed 15% more credits to graduate than education majors.  Make a spreadsheet and print it out.  Bring it to your appointment with your college counselor.  Ask him if it is correct.  Remember that counselors have about 100 other students to counsel, and papers to grade and classes to prepare for, and don't have much time to help you.  Plus they see their mission as recruiting more students to their academic departments.  Listen to counselors but don't trust them much.

That Mueller hearing yesterday

I watched it with maybe just one eye.  The hearing  was long, very long.  Each congresscritter in two committees got 5 minutes to question Mueller or just make speeches.  The Democrats would read aloud from the 400 odd page Mueller report and get Mueller to agree with it.  This served to get points from the report before the public.  Few people have bothered to read the Mueller report.  I haven't and I don't plan to.  It is too long, written in lawyer's gobble de gook which can mean almost anything depending upon who is reading it.
   Republicans seized on inconsistencies in the report and grilled Mueller about them.  Mueller did not look good answering.  In one case he admitted ignorance of the Steele Dossier, which has been headline news for months.
   A lot of talk about "obstruction of justice".  Early in the report they state that there is no evidence of "collusion" between the Trump campaign and bad guys.  If there is no crime, how can there be obstruction of justice?  That was never explained.  

Looking for Global Warming.

NASA at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)  has posted their temperature data base.  It goes back to the invention of the thermometer back in the later 1600's.  I downloaded the whole thing some years ago.  The records were fixed length, 80 bytes long, no separators like comma's.  Clearly showing their origin on IBM punch cards.  I last used punch cards on a Raytheon job in back 1972.
  I wrote a C program to convert the ancient data format into something modern that Excel could read.  I plotted number of records vs date.  As expected, there are few records from the late 1600's.  The number grows over the years to a million or so.  Then in the early 1980's, a great weeding out happened, and the number of records per year drops to a third of its peak in 1980.  You have to wonder which reporting stations were dropped, with no explanation.  Where I live, it is 5 degrees cooler in summer and 5 degrees warmer in winter than it is down at the bottom of three mile hill in the village.  If a Franconia Notch reporting station was axed, it would increase global warming.  If a Franconia village reporting station, only three miles away, was axed it lower global warming.  When they axed two thirds of the reporting stations I wonder which ones got the axe.  The warmer stations or the colder stations? 
  Next I plotted the reported temperature data going back to the beginning in the late 1600's.  GISS furnished two data sets, a raw data set and a "corrected" data set.  The raw data set plotted out properly, a smooth line, obviously real data.  The "corrected" data set had a problem starting around 1860.  Data before 1860 was obviously bad, it had vertical jumps, bumps and discontinuities.  Just looking at the plot I could tell that something in the "corrected" data was wrong.
  So,  working with just the raw data, I  subtracted the average temperature from each year's temperature, yielding temperature rise or fall going all the way back the the late 1600s.  Temperature rise peaked back in 1990 and has been flat ever since.
   I believe in things you can measure, far more than I do computer models.   

Trashing Donald Trump

TV has been full of unhappy talk about the president's tweets concerning "the squad", four lefty democrat congresswomen.  They have been calling the president racist (the all purpose democrat epithet) and I forget what else, but they are clearly unhappy with the president's tweets.
   With so much smoke, there ought be some fire down there somewhere.  I  logged into my Twitter account and read the last week of Trump tweets.  He came down pretty hard on the squad, but I didn't see anything racist or  out of line.  Trump was trashing his political opposition for their political ideology, which is a perfectly legitimate thing for a sitting president to do, IMHO. 
   From the loudness of the squeals I think he hit a sore spot. 

Riding High. What could bring down America's economy?

Cover story of the Economist this week.  Clever front page cartoon based on that old 1930's photo of ironworkers taking their lunch sitting on a steel girder way way up in the air.  They only mention Democrats, the most severe threat to the American economy, once in the very last paragraph of the article. 

Anyone know how to clean up Win 10 Explorer???

Used to be, back with Win XP, explorer would display one and only one icon for each file and folder on the drive.  Which is the way it ought to be. 
Win 10, thru a bug or a ding-a-ling design choice, shows multiple icons for the same file.  Some of this is "libraries", an unexplained concept, for which I never found a use (or an explanation).  I turned off the " library" icons in explorer.  Click on View, click on "Navigation Pane".  Click on the arrow of Navigation pane to expand the sub menu, and uncheck libraries.  That cleans up a decent amount of clutter. 
   Some of the clutter is a bunch of busted shortcuts invented by Win 10.  When clicked upon they yield error messages rather than taking you any where useful. I delete them when I find them.
   There are still too darn many cases of multiple icons which point to the same file.  I don't dare delete the icon, fearing that it might delete the file instead.  Dunno what to do about trimming back  that clutter. 
   I would welcome any advice. 

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.