The American Dream still works

The Wall St Journal editors, speaking on Fox News yesterday brought up a cool US Treasury study.  Two economists, who work for the Treasury, did a ten year study of tax returns.  They found that filers in the lowest tax brackets, a full 70% of them moved up in income over the ten years.  A citizen born into the bottom of the economic ladder has a 70% chance of pulling himself up inside of ten years.  
   They also studied the "1%" that Obama has been bashing so heartily.  They found that 30% of the taxpayers in the 1% bracket, were no longer up there ten years later.   In short, the "1%"  are not guaranteed to stay there.  They have a 30% chance of slipping back down the income ladder. 
   Hmm.  70% odds of moving up from the bottom.  30% odds of slipping back from the top.  That sounds like opportunity ain't dead yet. 
   If Obama could stop screwing up the economy, so we could get some growth, things could get even better.

Would you let your son play football?

That was the topic on Meet the Press this morning. After the weekly Chris Christy bashing of course.  It went on, and on.  Some how in 10 minutes of talk, no one actually said what could be done to make the game safer and less concussion prone.  New equipment?  Rule changes?  Banning Astro Turf?   Nor did anyone show statistics on the dangers.  Is playing football really more dangerous than just driving to work?
   There were some vague references to "helmets" and "rule changes" but nothing specific.  For instance how well does a regulation football helmet stack up against a Snell approved motorcycle helmet?   What actions might be forbidden by rule?  Eye gouging?   Judo throws? 
   In ten minutes of blather, nobody said anything specific about changing the way the game is played.  Or anything specific about just how dangerous it really is. 
   As for me, my high school played soccer instead of football. 

You can never have enough clamps

Old woodworking cliche.  I've been building up my stock of clamps from yard sales, flea markets and the occasional special sale on the Internet.
I must be doing something right.  I'm making a wood case.  It's a two part case.  It took two pipe clamps, four C clamps and two F-style clamps (8 clamps total) to clamp the first part after I glued it.  Surprise.  I had enough clamps left  over to glue up and clamp the second part.  That's 16 clamps in all. 
I didn't own nearly that many clamps when I retired up here. 

Does anyone reach this blog from Google?

The few times I have tried Googling for something I posted about here, I get about a zillion hits but none of 'em are NewsNorthwoods posts.  Does anyone ever get here from a search engine?  Or are you just regular readers of my fine blog, enjoying my sparkling wit and eclectic subject choices? 

Is it the ads? Or the cars?

Was reading an automotive blog, the kind that talks cars and Detroit.  The writer (ranter) went on, and on, and further on, lambasting the advertising done by one of the big three.  He probably has a point, I have seen a lot of car company TV ads, which are so soft-sell, that I couldn't figure out who the car company was, let alone what the car was.  You know the ones,  the color has been faded out to black and white, soft focus, soft lighting, an empty road, some shrubs, and perhaps a Prius turning into sticks and leaves and blowing away in the wind.  Never give the company name or the car name in the voice over.  Never show the logos, or the car.  
   But.  Let's be real.   First you have to have a decent car before you can do a decent ad.  The cars coming out of Detroit's big three, are bland, bland, bland.  Plain melted jelly bean styling, painted light gray or mud color,  too high, too short, and all tilted forward on their noses.  Huge plastic bumpers.  Clearly styled by committee. 
   A good car is different from it's competitors.  In the cheapo econo-box class, we have dozens of look alike, over priced little go carts.  Then we have ONE outstanding car, the BMW Mini Cooper. The retro styling is far from original, but it sells like hot cakes, commanding a $25K price for a very tiny two adult/two children seating car.  Whereas the Chevy Sonic ( yes it's car, not a hedgehog)  only commands a $14 k price.   Coolness sells, the Mini Cooper is cool.
   The secret to success in the selling of cars, is coolness.  The cool cars sell.  The plain vanilla jelly bean cars don't.
   Detroit's challange is to produce more cool cars and less boring ones.

Women go for men driving black pickup trucks?

Just heard on Fox TV news.  They did not explain their research methods.  So you can believe as much of that as you like.
   What a comedown.  Back in the day, we guys really believed that chicks cared about what you drove.  American Graffitti pretty much covered this angle.  Cooliest cars were Ford, Chevy, or Pontiac, convertibles or "hardtops" (sedans with no center pillar between the side windows, giving the convertible look without the rag top).  Mag wheels, lotta chrome, lowered.  Pickup trucks were zero class.   Now Fox tells us that zero class has been promoted to first class?
   Later on in life, we began to think that girls were interested in you rather than in your wheels.  As long as said wheels were reasonably clean and looked like they wouldn't break down and strand them in the boonies, they didn't pay much attention to them. 
   So, tell us girls,  what's the real story?  Do a guy's wheels matter? 
  

Puddlejumpers to the boneyard

Aviation Week has a photo of 5  decent looking little regional jetliners parked out in the desert, the traditional place to store unneeded aircraft.  The dry sunny weather and lack of rain and snow preserves the aircraft for years.  These are small, 44 seat models, with a lot of flying hours left in them.  Apparently little jets don't make enough money to keep themselves flying.  Regular airliners, say a Boeing 727, will seat 150, and big airliners go up to 500 seats. 
   The small regional jets were developed and sold because passengers prefer jet aircraft and view propeller driven aircraft as old fashioned, noisy and high vibration.  But, apparently the very small jets don't earn their keep. 
   Aviation Week didn't say just why the small jets are getting scrapped.  Could be the propeller driven planes are sufficiently cheaper to operate than jets.  Could be air service to small air ports is being abandoned, leaving the passengers to drive to a larger airport.  Could be the small airports are actually big enough to land bigger jets, and the air lines are going for larger aircraft that can serve both small airports and larger ones too.