Disfunctional Deadlocked Washington passes a Farm Bill

A farm bill.  Pure pork.  Corporations do the nation's farming now.  The small farmer is pretty much extinct.  So all the crop insurance, and price supports, and marketing orders, and sugar tariffs are pure welfare for corporations.  That's half the money in the farm bill.  Pork.  The other half is food stamps.  Corporate farmers love food stamps, it creates demand for their farm products.  The taker class loves food stamps, it's more free stuff for them.
  Congress still cannot deal with tax reform, defense spending, debt ceiling hikes,  NSA snooping, TSA groping, the deficit, or immigration.  All are locked in partisan squabbling.
   But they can get together, and be bi partisan, when it comes to passing more pork that the country cannot afford.
   By rights, we ought to cancel all handouts to corporate farmers, in fact to any kind of farmer.  I don't get a handout, and neither should they.  And we can reduce food stamps by half.  And we should never put handouts to corporate farmers and handouts to takers into the same bill. 
  The country would be better served if partisan fighting had stalled this farm bill.  Better to do nothing than to pour tax payer's money down a drain.

Congressional Budget Office sticks its neck out

CBO just released a damning forecast on Obamacare.  They predict 800,000 lost jobs, 2.5 million workers put on part time, and a drag on the economy equivalent to a 1% tax hike.  Ouch. 
I wonder where CBO found enough backbone to speak up.  When they were forcing Obamacare down our throats, CBO released several studies claiming that it wouldn't be all that bad.  While anyone of common sense knew Obamacare would be expensive as a medium sized war.  At the time, excuses were made for CBO, claiming that they were required to forecast based upon the presumptions passed to them by Congress rather than sure knowledge of what will really happen.  For instance Congress could ask for a forecast with the assumption that the federal deficit would shrink.  Everyone knows that is unlikely to happen.  But if it did, wonderful things might happen, and CBO would dutifully forecast wonderful things.
   Yesterday's forecast was a bummer for Obama.  The TV news reported a lot of huffing and puffing from the White House. 
   Is this a sign that Obama is a lame duck?  And CBO figures he will be ineffectual if he retaliates against them? 

California regulators attack computer programming schools

In Silicon Valley a half a dozen computer programming schools received scary letters from the Staties.  The Bureau for Private Post Secondary Eduation wants the schools to submit each and every curriculum change to the board for approval, and for all teachers to have three years of teaching experience. 
  Wow.  Talk about  killing off the goose that lays the golden eggs.  This is Silicon Valley, which has laid a lot of golden eggs over the years.  Silicon Valley runs on programming.  The schools the staties are harrassing are necessary,  private, costly ($10,000), and successful.  99% of their graduates are offered jobs.   Caltech doesn't do that well.  And yet, the staties cannot resist the urge to meddle. 
   The bit about requiring three years teaching experience is a killer.  The  schools are teaching Windows internals, and Internet programming.  To make anything happen in a Windows computer or over the Internet, the programmer has to call  specialized subroutines furnished by Microsoft or Oracle.  These vital subroutines are poorly documented, or not documented at all.  Only a few experts know what they are, where to find them, and how to use them.  And these guys aren't about to waste three years teaching grade school for $30K.  They can make 5 times that amount programming.  They teach in the programming schools largely as a labor of love.   Programmers love what they do, and want to enable others to get into programming just because they love programming so much.  If the staties really enforce the "three years teaching experience" bit, the schools won't be able to find qualified instructors.  The bit about  submitting curriculum changes  for state approval is less damaging, it only traps the schools in a web of paperwork that saps time and energy away from running the school and wastes it doing mickey mouse. 
   America used to be a free country.  In a free country you can start any business, and run it, without getting approval from the staties.  California is no longer free.  Maybe that's why the state economy is so bad.

Everything is sharp now.

A few days ago, knowing that I had a dull kitchen knife, I brought the oilstone and the 3 in 1 oil up from the shop.  Then I procrastinated.  Today, I planned to clean up my case project with a block plane.  I also knew I needed to sharpen the block plane, 'cause the case project  had mortise and tenon joints, and trimming them means cutting across the grain, which only works if the plane is good and sharp.  And I didn't want to carry the oilstone back downstairs to the shop without  dealing with the kitchen knives.
   So, first kitchen knife is a big 12 inch Gerber chef's knife from a yard sale.  Must have been a bad day at the Gerber plant when this one was turned out.  Gerber uses stainless steel bandsaw blade stock to make their blades, and this knife's blade came from a bad batch of stainless.  The stuff rusts on the sharpened edge and has little inclusions of crud that drop out leaving a ragged edge.  Dunno how that happened, Gerber is a quality name in knives.  So, a few drops of oil on the stone, it's a two grit silicon carbide stone.  Start with the coarse side.  Hold the knife, by hand,  at 15 degrees or so, for a good fine edge.  Work it back and forth until I can see bright fresh metal all along the edge from handle to point.  Add a drop or two of oil each time the stone looks dry.  Then flip the oilstone over to the fine side and repeat.  Inspect edge from time to time.  You will see when the fine side of the oilstone has polished out the scratches from the coarse side. 
   Now, as long I am on a roll, let's do the other knives  kicking around here.  My Swiss Army pocket knife gets sharp from just a bit of stoning on the fine side.  It's stainless, and a better batch of stainless than the Gerber, no rust spots, no little inclusions of crud.   A little two inch no-name lockback knife some child brought back from summer camp, and I use for opening bills,  sharpens up nicely with a few strokes of the fine stone.  An NRA knife needs more grinding on first the coarse side and then the fine side before it is as sharp as I like a knife to be. 
  So, now I can take the oilstone back downstairs to the shop and deal with plane irons.  I have a home made jig to hold the plane iron at 32 degrees while I slide the stone back and forth.  Keep at it until the iron shows bright fresh metal all the way across.    Then lay the iron flat on its back and stone the back flat, and as a side effect, stone off the wire edge from sharpening the bevel.  Repeat with the fine side of the stone.  After this treatment, the plane will cut cross grain without tearout.
  Anyhow, we are all sharp now.   

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.