USPS

Why does USPS give junk mail a cheaper rate? Why should not junk mailers pay the same rate I pay to mail my bills? The junk mail travels the same routes, gets delivered by the same mail carrier and travel just as fast, which means it costs USPS just as much to deliver junk mail as first class mail. So why should junk mail get a nice cheap rate? Why should my first class stamps subsidize junk mail that just goes into the fireplace.

Franconia Notch Parkway

The NHDOT called a meeting about the Franconia Notch Parkway last night. A couple of dozen folks showed up at Peabody Slopes base lodge, most of them fire and rescue team people, along with some police and sheriff’s deputies. All of whom have vivid memories of trying to reach the sites of automobile crashes at night during blizzards and whiteouts. The DOT people all regret that the Parkway is not built to Interstate Highway standards, but were under instruction by the legislature to stick with the agreement hammered out thirty years ago between the DOT and the hikers, campers, conservationists and environmentalists back when the current parkway was built.
The outdoors people look on Franconia Notch as a beautiful and well loved wilderness area for hiking and camping. If they had their way there would be no road at all, and no ski resort at Cannon. The highway people and the rescue first responders want four lanes and a good big shoulder so they can get thru to an accident scene with a fire truck.
Thirty years ago the hikers and campers forced a the current deal, a two lane road. It took years of fighting to resolve the issue and memories linger. Nobody wants to re open that particular can of worms.
Making life difficult is the centerline barrier. Thirty years ago when the road was widened, there was no centerline barrier. Old US Route 3 thru the Notch was just an ordinary two lane blacktop country road. When the new road was blasted thru, it had no centerline barrier. Then they had a number of horrific crashes, and the existing centerline barrier was installed to prevent them. Trouble is, with the barrier there is no way to get a rescue vehicle turned around. Franconia rescue vehicles can only reach accidents in the southbound lane, North Woodstock can only reach accidents in the northbound lane, and there is no way to get past the line of cars that back up behind a bad accident scene.
There was a lot of discussion about snow removal. Someone asked about getting a big snow blower to toss the snow well clear of the road and keep the snowdrifts from encroaching upon the road. The guy from DOT replied that snow blowers were high maintenance. Everytime they suck up a rock or an unlucky road sign they break.
After a lot of discussion the meeting broke up with nothing decided or revealed. The DOT’s plans for the Franconia Notch Parkway are known only to DOT.

Ron Paul and the Gold Standard

Ron is still into the gold standard. He talked about it last night. After quite a bit of discussion it seems that a lot of folk need a quick refresher on monetary thinking. Consider the modern economy. Technological improvements allow it to create more "stuff" every year. Compare the number of automobiles, stereos, computers, foodstuffs, alcoholic beverages, books, etc, etc produced in this year 2011 with the quantities produced back in say 1945. Obviously the the amount of stuff to available buy increases every year.
Consider that money is easily printed, how much money should we have in circulation today. Should we keep the amount of money fixed? Suppose there was no more money around today than there was in 1945. In that case, a fixed amount of money would be spread over more goods and services, so less money would be available to buy any one of them. Put another way, prices fall and money becomes more valuable.
Bankers love this. It means their loans get paid off with more valuable money. Borrowers (most of us) hate this. It means we have to work harder to pay off mortgages and car loans contracted in the past when money was cheaper.
Ron Paul's gold standard, means the amount of money is fixed, because the amount of gold in the world is not large, and ain't getting larger. Gold never wears out, humans have valued it and searched for it since First Dynasty Egyptian times. Most of the gold in the world has been discovered. If we make a rule that the amount of money in circulation is fixed by the amount of gold in Fort Knox, we are saying that the amount of money in circulation will never change. That's good for bankers and bad-to-terrible for the rest of us, industry, jobs, and just about everything.
Have you looked at Mitt Romney or Herman Cain?

Ron Paul comes to town

Littleton to be precise. We only got advance notice on Monday of a Wednesday evening event. Nevertheless I summarized the poster and put it out to the Grafton Country Republican email list, the Tea Party list and the North Grafton Republican list. Word must have got around. By 6:30 the Littleton Opera House was pretty full. Ron Paul started speaking on time. He sounded good, spoke with substance, not fluff, unlike the average politician, and took questions from the floor. The crowd was supportive, no hecklers, and applauded repeatedly. Youngest son, who used to refer to Paul as "Crazypants", came away impressed.
We had reporters from the Union Leader and the Littleton Courier. I got interviewed by both of them. Dunno why me, except maybe my bright red ski parka and white hair. The Union Leader put the story on page A3. Byline of Sara Young-Knox, she quoted me and then misspelled my name. She also lowballed the crowd estimate at 80 people. I counted better than 200.

Glass Steagal lives

After the great stock market crash of 1929, Congress passed the Glass-Steagal Act which forbid banks from playing the stock market. FDIC deposit insurance had just been invented, and nobody wanted to see banks playing the market with tax payer guaranteed money.
Banks hated Glass Steagal, and they spend 50 years lobbying the Feds to repeal it. They finally succeeded under Clinton and starting in the 90's banks jumped back into the stock market. They made barrels of money out of the market, and lots of capital that should have been invested in economic expansion was frittered away playing the market.
Now after Great Depression 2.0, the Feds are pushing "The Volcker Rule." which is Glass-Steagal brought back to life. Banks may not play the stock market.
This time the proposed "rule" is 294 pages long, and they estimate it will take 6 million man hours on the part of banks to fill out the paper work. Each year.
Can you say "Welfare for lawyers"?
They could just re instate the Glass-Steagal act which worked fine for 50 years. But that would be to easy, and be a confession that repealing Glass-Steagal was a mistake.
By the way, our old buddies Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were cheerleaders in the repeal of Glass-Steagal 20 years ago.

Thr Great Debate

It wasn't on cable TV. My broadband isn't broad enough to watch it over the internet. Long irritating pauses while the compute makes excuses. Then I listened to it on internet radio for a while but that croaked too after 10 minutes. Apparently not much blood was shed, at least not enough to make it to the car radio as I drove into Littleton for a doctors appointment this morning. Nothing in this morning's Wall St Journal, probably because they must start printing before 8 PM in order to get it up here in time for the morning mail.
For tonight's political entertainment I am going to see Ron Paul, live at an Town Hall meeting in Littleton.

Terra Nova disappoints

Monday's show was dreadful. The outpost in the past is overwhelmed by a virus that gives everyone deep and serious amnesia. They don't remember being married, being in Terra Nova, nothing. It makes a bunch of characters do and say really dumb things.
Apparently all the Hollywood scriptwriters have died or gone on strike or moved to New Zealand to work for Peter Jackson. In Terra Nova we had a plot generating device nearly as good as the Starship Enterprise. We can hunt dinosaurs, open mines, start farms, fight the rebel Sixers, distill moonshine, race dirt bikes across the plains and have every sort of love affair. And yet, with all these possibilities for interesting plots, the scriptwriters decided to make everyone in the Terra Nova settlement do stupid things. Arrgh.
Plus, they need new camera's. The color is broken on the camera's they use. Everything comes out in black and white. Makes me think my TV set is failing. Which is irritating. And the actors mumble too much and I fail to catch the dialog.
Not sure if I will bother to watch it again.