Today is tax free day

I got that in an email from Senator Sununu this morning. According to someone's calculation as of today you have earned enough to pay your income taxes, the rest of the year your are working for yourself.
Now that the pain of doing my 1040's has faded somewhat, let's talk tax simplification. I'd be willing to give up all deductions, tax credits, dependent allowances, and other loopholes in return for a lower tax rate. Over the years, after days of staring at the forms, the rules, J.K. Lasser, and oceans of canceled checks, in th end, I wind up paying 17% of my real earnings. It would save me a sentence of hard time at the 1040, if all I had to do was multiple my earning by 0.17.
All those tax loopholes are in there cause we use the tax code to subsidize home ownership, raising families, oil companies, stock brokers, and any body who hires lobbyists to get a special tax break written into law.
It would be fairer to all if we dumped all the special rules. It would sure ease the pain of filling out the forms.

The search for XP

Youngest son needs a new laptop for Brooklyn Polytechnic, where he will be starting in the fall. Polytech offered a Lenovo T61 with Vista thru the student union for $1900. The Lenovo website offered the same machine for $1080. Some searching found a Dell with XP on it for $1100. XP was the deal maker, neither son nor I wanted to touch Vista with a ten foot pole. Thinking that Microsoft may drive XP off the marker completely, we ordered now, before the last XP machines are gone.
How Microsoft managed to bungle Vista is a story that needs telling some where.
The effort to retrofit XP into a Vista machine is unknown. The drivers, tiny bits of software that pass intructions down to the hardware, had to be rewritten for Vista. So a Vista machine will have Vista drivers, that probably won't work under XP. In principle the necessary XP drivers can be found on the Internet, but that is not guaranteed.
This is the second time this year that a child has needed a laptop and managed to avoid Vista there on.

Rupert Murdock reshapes the Wall St Journal

Yesterday's WSJ had the editorial page all revised, fewer editorials, letters to the editor moved onto the editorial page and taking up half the page, and an op-ed by Murdock himself. Today's front page story announces the "resignation" of the Journal's editor. According to the story Murdock wants less long in depth stories and more quick snappy news bites. I don't think he has ruined the paper yet. Lets see what happens next.

The Russians are coming

How does NASA plan to get astronauts up and down from the International Space Station after the Shuttle is retired in 2010? Simple. The Russians fly them in the Soyuz capsule.
NASA has been buying space transportation services from the Russians under an exemption to the Iran, North Korea and Syria Non proliferation Act. The congressional exemption expires in the fall o 2011. NASA wants Congress to permit continued purchase of rides for U.S. space station crew members on Soyuz vehicles.
Wow. We passed a law lumping the Russians in with the most unsavory regimes on the planet and then we authorize an exemption. Does that improve our relations with Moscow or what?
Only in America.

Pricey Choppers

The President is getting a new helicopter, the VH71, to fly him from the White House to Andrews AFB, where he can board Air Force 1. The program is going to cost $11.2 billion dollars. They will buy four test aircraft and 23 operational aircraft at a price of $414 million dollars per aircraft. Wow. $414 million will buy TWO brand new 747's. That's one pricey helicopter.
And of course we need 27 aircraft standing alert just to fly one president out to Andrews.
The choppers will be hardened against electromagnetic pulse and directed energy weapons, and have every kind of radio ever invented. The comm system is spec'd to allow the president to talk to any federal agency at any time with secure data and voice. The republic might fall if the president has to wait til he boards Air Force 1 in order to talk to the White House travel agency.
Could this be military-industrial welfare?

Paul Valar, old man of the mountains, put to rest today

Paul Valar, the grand old man of New Hampshire skiing, was put to rest today. Paul was a ski racer, who married another ski racer in the 1940's. Since then Paul and Paula ran the Cannon Mt and Mittersill ski schools, run a ski shop, bought and operated a Vermont dairy farm, authored the American Ski Technique book, started the Professional Ski Instructors Association, and raised four daughters.
Services were at the White Mountain School, at which he and Paula had taught. The crowd was huge. All the Franconia skiers showed up, the school grounds were parked up solid. Weather was perfect, good eulogies from the four daughters and some old friends.
Paul was a serious builder of the New Hampshire ski scene, a decent gentleman, and a fine teller of stories. We won't see anyone like him for a long time.

Bethlehem dump feud

Another twist in the long standing Bethlehem dump feud. By a one vote margin (3 to 2) the Bethlehem selectmen voted to support passage of House Bill 1429. On the surface this is an anti dump state law that would require host community agreements between private landfills and towns, and more permits for landfill expansion. There are only two private landfills in the state, one of them being the Casella operation in Bethlehem. HB 1429 is sponsored by State Rep Martha McCleod, in response to widespread citizen desire to close the landfill. Looks like the pro dump faction in Bethlehem still has some life in it.