Offshoring to the US.

Why Bizjet makers are going stateside.  Cover article in Aviation Week.   Embraer, a Brazilian aerospace firm, opened a $52 million assembly, completion, and painting facility in Melbourne Florida.  Honda has a 500,000 square foot facility in Greenboro, North Carolina employing 700 people.  France's Dassault has a plant in Little Rock, Arkansas to make Falcon jets employing 1600 workers. 
   All this investment went to right-to-work southern states, rather than old union strongholds in Wichita Kansas and Seattle Washington. 
   Said one executive "Why in the world would you go to Wichita and take all that trouble. You'd be nuts."

   And this is why we need to pass a right-to-work law here in New Hampshire.   Industry won't invest in states that are not right-to-work.

This is job growth?

Early this week they announced a mere 360,000 "new claims for unemployment" i.e. people out of a job.  This morning they announced a "job gain" of 171,000 jobs.  Boy that sure sounds like a net loss of  360,000 minus 171,000 equaling  189,000 jobs. 
  This is good economic news?

Federal regulation of Cell Phone Carriers?

Good old lefty NPR was calling for this today.  They claim the FCC wanted to require each and every cell phone tower have enough backup power to keep it on the air for 8 hours after the electricity failed.  The cell phone carriers successfully sued to block this regulation, some time ago, like right after Katrina.  NPR  is obviously in favor of this, and speculated that the issue might be revived after Sandy blacked out NYC. 
   Hmm.  What do I think?  You can always spend more money to harden the cell phone system more.  How much  money should be spent  to keep every one's cell phone working during a future Hurricane Sandy?  Every buck spent on backup power, secure land links,  tree trim back and such goes right onto your cell phone bill. 
   Who should decide how much money to spend?  The government or the cell phone carriers?  The carriers have some incentive to provide reliable service.  Certainly carriers who stayed on the air thru out Sandy will attract  subscribers from carriers that died at the first raindrop.  We could let market forces control the level of backup, which will result in a leveling off between reliability and cost.  The carriers will put enough money into disaster proofing to give them a competitive edge, but not so much as to drive off subscribers thru increased fees.  And, knowing the business a whole lot better than any bureaucrat, they will put the money where it will do the most good. 
   That FCC proposed eight hour backup power rule wouldn't do New York much good now.  Power has been off for a lot longer than eight hours, and it doesn't look like it will be back on any time soon. 
   People who really care about uninterrupted phone service can get a land line. 

Demo Slams

   US representative race up here.  We have Anne Kuster (D) TV ads slammng Charlie Bass (R) for voting against the minimum wage act.  Hell, that might be the best vote Charlie has cast.  Minimum wage doesn't boost wages, it kills entry level jobs.  A whole lot of entry level jobs (life guard, pizza delivery, retail work, fast food) are just barely profitable to the employer.  Raise the pay and the jobs go away 'cause the employer starts to loose money on them.  These are the summer jobs for high schoolers, first jobs out of welfare, the no experience needed jobs. 
  Passing a law to raise the pay on these jobs just makes the jobs disappear. 
  So Charlie, I'll vote for you if you keep voting against minimum wage.

Christmas Catalogs

They ain't what they used to be.  Used to be, the Christmas season kickoff was the arrival in the mail of the Sears Roebuck Christmas Catalog.  Full color illustrations.  Full of toys, clothes, tools, Christmas decorations and fruitcakes.  As kids we used to go thru it page by page.   When we wrote letters to Santa Claus, my father demanded Sears Roebuck stock numbers.  Well, Sears dropped out of the catalog business 20 years ago.
   Today the Walthers catalog (model trains) arrived.  It's the Christmas issue, we have a picture of Santa in his shop, painting a train model.  Inside we have lots of train sets.  Train sets are strictly gift-for-kid items, the grownup hobbyists buy stuff car by car and locomotive by locomotive.  About half the train sets are steam engines, the other half diesel.  Times are changing.  Used to be, every kid knew that a decent road steam engine had pilot wheels and trailing wheels.  Steamers with just drivers were humble yard switchers, never seen on the mainline. 
   That's gone now.  Half the steam sets had just all all-drivers switch engine.  Probably 21st century parents and kids don't know the difference.  And the prices.  A G gauge (really big) set with just two passenger cars $500.  O- gauge (Lionel) $300 a set.  HO gauge $129 a set. 
  

Bye Bye Sandy

It's nice being far off the storm track.  My deepest sympathy for the Mid Atlantic states suffering power outages, flooded everythings, downed trees and 2 foot of snow. 
  Yesterday the wind picked up around mid afternoon and it started to rain, lightly.  That kept up all night.  Our power stayed on, phone works, internet works, no trees down.  We've done much worse in the past. 
    There was that mini tornado thru here five years ago that dropped a tree on the house, blew off a neighbor's roof, and put the lights out for a week.  Those were the days.  Sandy was nothing like that up here.

So far, so good

We are pretty far off the hurricane track, so we have no rain, no wind, about 50 degrees and overcast skies.  We are ready, the grill is secured for winter, grass mowed for the last time, sun brolly stowed away, deck clear of deck chairs, and stuff.  I'd put the car inside the garage, except there is still too much stuff left over from the bathroom remodeling project for the car to fit. 
  TV is on, yakking away about Sandy.  We finally have a story other than the election.