Extending Unemployment benefits, Pro and Con

I gotta say, cutting off unemployment benefits, in the depth of winter, is hard.  For a guy out of work, loosing benefits is a disaster.  I have to feel for them. 
  On the other hand, some of the justifications for extending benefits are malarkey.  Paying unemployment benefits does little or nothing to grow the economy.  If you are unemployed, you don't buy stuff.  You use your unemployment benefits to pay a little on the rent, pay a little on the utility bills, pay for heating oil, pay for gasoline.  You get on food stamps to buy groceries.  You don't buy anything (clothes, appliances, houses, cars, cable TV, Netflix, etc) that you don't absolutely have to have to stay alive.
   So the Republicans ought to come around and extend unemployment benefits.  But,  it's perfectly reasonable to take money to pay for them out of the mountain of pork in the federal budget.  
 

Obama wants to create a US Dept of Websites

That's how it came across on the TV news.  To hear the newsies tell it, if the government had possessed a specialized group of experts the adminstration could have brought Healthcare.gov smoothly into service.  The newsies talked about liberalizing government hiring rules so such a group could make a job offer to talented people in a timely fashion.  And some other stuff.
   It won't work.  Government departments are staffed with civil servants, lawyers, defeated politicians, and political cronies.  Losers.  This kind of people couldn't design a tic-tac-toe board.   No way can a government department do anything creative.  To build a website, you need engineers.  Good engineers don't work for the government.  Engineers want to work at places where they can do new designs, and see their designs get built and shipped.  All the government does is paperwork.  Engineers hate paperwork, and so they take jobs out in the real economy, where they get to do real work.
   When the government needs something designed, it needs to go out for bids to private industry.  Far as I heard, Obama didn't do that.  He retained control of the design deep inside HHS and did a no bid contract award to a Canadian firm with a dubious record.  The Canadians did what they were told to do by HHS and what they were told to do didn't work. 
   Moral of the story.  Go out for bids.  Get three bids.  Pick the low cost bidder, as long as he is qualified (you think he can do the job).  Even better, go out for firm fixed fee bids.  Cost plus bids will be expensive.  Only if you cannot get firms to submit  firm fixed fee bids do you accept cost plus bids. 

Google Image Search

So I'm making a model railroad car.  I google for some photos of such a car.  Get a lot of hits.  Most of 'em are photos of other guy's models, rather than photos of the real thing.  Conclusion.  There are more model trains than real trains.

Cannon Mt ski weather

It's warmed up today, high 20s.  My roof is melting off and the icicles are dripping heavily.  Dispite all the TV newsie talk about super cold coming, it's "seasonable" here in NH.   In actual fact, after all sorts of end-of-the-world-as-we-know it blather on the TV,  we got a decent snowstorm (9 inches) followed by a one day cold snap where it got down to -9 or -10 Fahrenheit.  Nothing unusual. 
  Unfortunately, the local weather forecasts are predicting rain tonight. 

US Defense Budget, The Aviation Week View

First some numbers.   Aviation Week is good on numbers, unlike the mainstream newsies.

Estimated 2014 Budget:  $612.5 billion. ($847 billion including non-Defense personnel costs) 
Percent of GNP               4.4 %
Personnel under arms       1.4 million active, 850,000 reserves
Deployments                    Major operations in Irag and Afghanistan. deployments in 90+ other countries.

A few comments.  Back when I was in high school, defense spending was 10% of GNP.  So 4.4% doesn't seem outrageously high to me.  Those 850,000 reserves have been called up repeatedly to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The regulars have been doing back to back combat zone deployments.  We ought to have a larger Army and Marine Corps to spread the burden out a little more evenly.

The Air Force is thinking about scrapping all the KC10 tankers, all the B1B bombers, and all the A10's.  And  the last batch of Global Hawk recon drones.   They want to keep the B52's, the KC135's and the F35 program. 

Cannon Mt ski weather

It's good and cold.  I had -9F earlier this morning.  But the sun is out, and it's warmed up to -5F.  No wind to speak of.  Cannon is skiable if you dress warmly.

Cannon Mt ski weather

It snowed all night.  I have 9 inches of fresh powder on my deck.  It's cold, like 5 below this morning. We have a little sun.  Forecast is for really cold tonight and tomorrow.