Egypt Part 3

Listening to NHPR this morning and I heard this from "an administration spokesman".
"Our objective in Egypt is to secure free and fair elections."
Oh really? That statement is guaranteed to raise hackles across Egypt. All Egyptians hear that as "The United States wants to impose a government upon Egypt." Not diplomatic, to say the least.
The United States should be saying "We respect the right of the Egyptian people to choose their own form of government". That is the only proper thing for a democracy to say about foreign governments.
Now, you know and I know that the United States really wants a stable, decent, secular government in Egypt, one that will maintain the peace treaty with Israel, co-operate with the US, and improve the lot of the mass of Egyptian people. It would be nice if elections caused this to come about, but we cannot be fussy. Last time we did "free and fair elections" over there we got Hamas (offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood) in charge of the Gaza Strip. We certainly don't want Egypt taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood. Remember, the Muslim Brotherhood is the outfit that killed Anwar Sadat 30 years ago. Today the Brotherhood is the only political organization in Egypt, if elections were held today, they would win. In fact if elections are held in September, the Brotherhood may well win.
If the Egyptian power structure (mostly the Egyptian Army) can cut a deal and make it stick without too much breaking of heads, we are happy. We care about results more than we care about process.
Let's hope the Obama administration understands this.

County medical insurance

Back to the county commissioners meeting. The HR guy said that the county's medical plan was up for renewal. And the insurance company was talking premium hikes. I asked the HR guy how many bidders he had. "Just one" he replied. "It's a sole source procurement. One company didn't even submit a bid when we asked." Which means we taxpayers are about to get robbed again. The way you keep costs down is you have multiple bidders and go with the low cost bid. When there is only one bidder, hold onto your wallet.
This is something Concord could fix. We could pass a NH law allowing health insurance companies with a valid license from any state in the union to sell insurance in NH. That would give us more bidders. The few New Hampshire insurance companies would bitch and moan, but Grafton County could get a better deal.

Right to Work

The state legislature held public hearings on a New Hampshire Right to Work law yesterday. A LOT of people attended, so many the hearing was held in the legislature's hall, the biggest room in the state house.
The Union people were out in force. Even without the buttons, you can kinda tell who the union people are. Beer bellies are the giveaway.
Testimony was intense. The union people see right to work as destruction of their unions and get very passionate about it.
Over the course of the hearings a figure of 7 to 10 percent union membership in the state was offered and everyone seemed to accept it.
Industry likes right-to-work states. In New Hampshire, we need more industry. Our young people are leaving the state to find work. We have a terrible unemployment problem. We have a tax revenue shortfall. More industry would solve all these problems. Becoming a right-to-work state will bring more industry into New Hampshire.
Right to work will bring industry to offer good factory jobs. The benefit of more jobs in the state far outweighs a small inconvenience to the small portion of New Hampshire citizen who are union members.

The $1 million water tank.

The other juicy tidbit from the country commissioners meeting is the water tank. Back in 2009 the county let a $1 million contract to install a big water tank to insure plenty of water at the county complex in case of fire. Said tank was built and plumbed in. After which, one (or more?) tests of water quality at the complex failed. In short, good drinkable water from the Woodsville system, after passing thru the county's $1 million tank was no longer drinkable, or at least not all the time.
Fingers have been pointed in lots of directions. However the county has no plans at present to sue the contractor until he fixes it. We have a county attorney on staff, and even a county court in which to try them. You'd think they would want to work at their trade.
I fear the fix will be at county taxpayers expense.

Grafton County Commissioners, weekly meeting

The rabble rousing started on Sunday, at the Grafton County Republican committee meeting. Newly elected county commissioner Omer Ahern invited a bunch of us to attend the commissioner's weekly meeting. "Just to see what's going on" Omer said.
So I drove over. Meeting started at 9AM. Various department heads reported results, issues, and actions taken to the commissioners. With one exception the department heads all mumbled and faced away from the audience, making it quite difficult to hear them. They also spoke in bureaucrat code words making it even harder to follow the drift. Occasionally a commissioner would rephrase what was said for the benefit of the audience.
The county attorney reported on a project to acquire new case management software. The county already has such a system, but the state of NH was offering $35K of free money to buy a new and web based one. This would allow county attorneys to do PowerPoint presentations in court. Cool. There was no discussion of security of the web based system, such as what would keep hackers from posting every county case file on WikiLeaks.
Note to Concord. I think we might have found somewhere to cut $35K from the state budget. In fact make that $350K (10 counties times $35K).

To fund or not to fund, Public Broadcasting

In principle, a government run broadcaster gives the government in power a mouthpiece to win votes and influence citizens. It has for sure given the liberal greenie leftie segment of the population a place to push liberal greenie leftie ideas. As a conservative this is slightly offensive to me. But, offensive or not, I listen to public broadcasting quite a bit. In fact a lot. The liberal greenie leftie slant is much less offensive than the non-stop barrage of ads on commercial broadcasting outlets.
Public Broadcasting's lineup of shows, Nova, Sesame St, The Newshour, Masterpiece Theater, All Things Considered, is strong enough to stand on their own two feet, to go out and get sponsors just like real TV shows do. On the other hand, having Big Bird brought to you by the number 9 is amusing. Having Big Bird brought to your kids by Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, PopTarts, and Ronald McDonald is distastful.
So, continue to fund PBS, to bring me and mine some decent programming. Keep the pressure up to make it non-partisan, but don't have a conniption when the liberal greenie leftie viewpoint comes thru.

WashPo reviews the Chevy Volt

Click here to read all about it. The writer is one of those hopeless klutzes who has difficulty changing light bulbs. He knows squat about cars, and spends several paragraphs telling us so. Just what we all wanted to learn. For reading the entire article we learn zip about the Volt. We do learn quite a bit about this guy's feelings about the car (he likes it), the evils of electric power generation, and assorted fluff, but zilch about the car. He doesn't even tell us how many doors it has.