Michael Brown shooting.

The death of Michael Brown is terrible.  By all accounts he was unarmed, a decent boy, had been admitted to college, was looking forward to starting his freshman year next month.  His death has angered his neighbors, the residents of Furguson MO, resulting in several nights of rioting and violence. 
   I'd like to get into this tragedy deeper.  Trouble is, I am a thousand miles away, I've never been to Furguson, I don't know anyone in Furguson, or for that matter in the entire state of Missouri.  All I know is what the media tells me. And, I don't really trust anything the media tells me.  I fear they are either ignorant, or biased, or stupid, and always looking to tell the most sensational story to sell newspapers or TV time. 
   The local newspaper just asked for comments and thoughts about the Furguson situation on Facebook.  I didn't answer, but if I had, I would have said, "I don't know what to think, 'cause I don't know what's going on.  You are the newspaper, you ought to be telling me what happened, rather than asking me what I feel about it." 
   My sincerest sympathy to the family of Michael Brown.  To loose a  boy/young man is the most painful loss I can imagine. 

Personal Income Tax Reform

I unloaded my thoughts on the corporate income tax a few days ago.  Might as well have a go at personal income tax too.  America is unique in that her citizens voluntarily pay their income tax.  We grumble, but we fill out our form 1040 to the best of our ability and write our checks to Uncle.  Or, since the rules have become impenetrable, we lug everything down to H&R Block, pay Block, and then pay Uncle.   In Europe, tax evasion is a national sport, and so the Europeans have to use a harder to evade Value Added Tax.  VAT is a national sales tax so it hits lower income taxpayers harder than the wealthy, but it can be collected by enforcement upon the nation's shop keepers, easier to target than the entire population.  
   A major beef with our personal income tax is it is so extremely difficult to comply with.  Every year I had to devote an entire weekend in March to doing my taxes.  When I started figuring my taxes, all I had for tools was a #2 pencil, they hadn't invented hand calculators yet.  As time went on, we got calculators and spread sheets and Turbo Tax but the IRS complicated the tax laws faster than computer assistance could help us out.  It still takes a whole weekend of cruel and unusual punishment to get my taxes done. 
    Let's go for a system where income is income, now matter where it comes from.  Income from sale of stock is just plain income.  Eliminate the concept of "capital gains".   Every one, man or woman, married or single, files their own tax return.  One single tax rate, or maybe three (one for most of us, one for the really wealthy, one for the really poor).  No deductions, exemptions,  kickbacks, mortgage interest deductions, solar panel subsidies, earned income tax credit.  Doesn't matter what you spend it on, you pay income on your income, at the same rate. Make life simpler, no loopholes in return for a lower tax rate. 
   Everybody has to pay something, especially the poor.  Rates for the poor should be quite low,  say 4%, but it is important that everybody pays something, just so everyone understands that Uncle's money comes out of everybody's hide. The wealthy ought to pay twice what regular people pay.
    Remove the IRS power to grab money out of taxpayer's bank accounts.  Let the IRS go to court and win an jury verdict against the tax payer.  And have the court handle fining the taxpayer. 

NTSB disagrees on Asiana Flt 214 Crash last year

Asiana Flt 214, a Boeing 777, hit short of the runway coming into San Francisco last year.  The pilots attempted to go around at the last minute, but it was too late.  They hit the seawall at the approach end of the runway, ripping off the landing gear, and sending the aircraft skittering down the runway on its belly.  Due to good luck and a very rugged airframe, the plane did not catch fire, and nearly all the passengers and crew survived the accident.
   The accident was caused on the approach, when the crew assumed the autothrottle system would maintain a commanded airspeed, hands off.  The autothrottle decided it had been turned off, and allowed airspeed to decay, leading to a higher sink rate, and coming in too low.  The three man crew failed to notice the loss of airspeed (no one looked at the airspeed indicator).  This was kinda surprising.  Back in the 1960's, the first autothrottle system in the C-141 transport was hardly ever used.  The crew preferred to hand fly the C-141 into a landing.  After an exciting six hour flight on autopilot, the pilot and co-pilot used to squabble over the only bit of real flying they got to do on the whole trip,  making the landing.  They weren't about the give the autothrottle a share of the fun.
   Boeing, maintained that the autothrottle was supposed to go off line because of some very complicated mode changes that had taken place a few minutes before.  They pointed to obscure instructions in the autothrottle manual.  It's not a bug, it's a feature, saith Boeing.  I read the explanation and it made little sense to me.  It's too complicated to repeat here.
   NTSB staff wrote the accident investigation report, which just got published.   Staff wanted an investigation of how the autothrottles were supposed to work, and a complete redesign to make it more goof proof.  One board member supported this viewpoint.  Another NTSB member dissented, arguing that the existing 777 autothrottle has been flying for 30 years, with an excellent safety record. The entire board voted 3-1 not to require Boeing to redesign the autothrottle, over ruling staff recommendations, a very unusual event.
   The majority clearly felt that the crew was on the flight deck to land the plane especially if the autothrottle broke, and the real cause of the accident was a crew that placed too muich reliance on automation.  The crew essentially let the autopilot make the landing while they supervised.  They supervision wasn't good enough to keep the plane safe when the autothrottle dropped off line. 

Robin Williams, Farewell

Wonderful actor.  I will miss him. 

Are experimental drugs ethical for treating Ebola?

Believe it or not, I heard this discussion on NPR this morning.  Some international outfit (not our FDA) was questioning the use of experimental untested drugs in Ebola cases.  Wow.
   A patient has a disease with a 90% death rate.  Nothing anyone can do can make the patient's chances worse than that.  It's always ethical to do anything short of euthanasia to try and cure a patient who is that gravely ill.  It is indeed possible that experimental untested treatments have side effects and risks.  But compared with the 90% chance of dying of Ebola, nobody cares about side effects or risks of experimental treatments. Certainly not the patients.

Americans never want to go to war.

A civilized and rational viewpoint.  It goes back to our Civil War, which was so terrible that the survivors swore "Never again".  That attitude has been passed down to the present day.  America stayed out of WWI for three years.  It took a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor to get us into WWII.  Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan did nothing to make war seem useful, practical, moral, or desirable.  Americans are against war.
   Obama keeps saying that Americans won't support action in Iraq (or anywhere else) as an excuse for doing nothing.  In actual fact, while no American is real happy about getting into anything, we will do it, if we perceive our cause is right, and the enemy is despicable. Perceive is the key word here.  Public perceptions are strongly shaped by the President, and the media.  We have a President who doesn't want to act, backed up by a media that supports the President no matter what.  If we had a President who wanted to save Iraq, and a media that supported him with atrocity stories about ISIS, things would be different.  Using American reluctance to go to war as an excuse for turning Iraq over to Islamic terrorists is shameful. 
    It takes a lot to get Americans to mix it up in "military action",  "police action", "peace keeping" or plain old war.  Last time we went to war with a will was after Pearl Harbor.  When we did finally get into WWII, within two years we turned that war around.  The Axis was on a roll in 1942.  By 1944 we were rolling 'em back. 
  In recent history, it takes presidential leadership to get American to go to war.  Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan happened because Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Bush decided these wars had to be fought.  Without those presidents leading, we would not have fought any of them.  And there was significant political opposition to all four of those wars.  Those presidents were able to overcome said political opposition.  Lacking presidential leadership, modern America will not go to war.  When Obama says public opinion will not support action in the Middle East, he is really saying that he does not support action. 
           

Let's fly it in.

I'm hearing that the Kurdish Peshmerga has been losing to the IS terrorists cause they run out of ammunition.  We oughta fix that.  The Kurds still control some decent airports, big enough to take a C17.  One C17 can fly in 85 tons of cargo.  Make that all rifle ammunition and you bring in 4.7 million rounds in a single flight.  That oughta hold 'em for a few days. 
   We could easily make 10 flights a day.