Economic Growth in Northern NH

Maggie Hassan, incumbent Democratic governor, seeking re election, came to Littleton the other day.  She got decent coverage in the freebie local paper, The Littleton Record.  They quoted Maggie waxing rhapsodic about Littleton's economic improvements.  She cited a multimillion dollar expansion at the hospital, and a second, smaller but still multimillion replacement of a public school building, and the famous Littleton main street rebuilding (they tore up all the paving on main street, rerouted a lot of sewer and water pipe, and then paved it over)  
  All this is cool, and needed to be done, but Maggie doesn't seem to understand that all this money spent is money spent on maintenance and services.  Where is the money spent on new manufacturing plant, new mines, new farms, new electric generation, new ski areas,  investment that makes stuff we can sell to pay the bills, to pay for new hospital expansion, and nice new school buildings?  You have to make stuff to sell before you can afford health care and education and well paved streets. 
   Manufacturing and farming and mining and recreation create wealth.  Hospitals schools and roads consume wealth.  If you don't have the wealth, you cannot afford the goodies. And that is why our children, after graduating high school, leave the area to find jobs.
   Maggie, like the average Democrat, doesn't understand the difference between weath creation and wealth consumption. 
   Vote for Walt Havenstein.

The Economist ignores Scotland secession vote.

The Economist, London based,  naturally has taken the Scotland secession vote of last week much more seriously than the American media.  They had been running articles on it nearly weekly, editorializing that secession would be bad for everyone.  Scotland's economy would be weakened, and British morale would be torpedoed.  In the last weeks before the vote, when the polls started to show secession could win, they did a lot of hand wringing. 
   After the vote, where secession was voted down by 10%, a solid win, the Economist had nothing to say.  No "Thank God they came to their senses" editorials, no letters to the editor, no post election vote counts, zip zippo zilch.  Not  a word.  I expected at least a sign of relief.  Maybe the whole topic was so distasteful to the Economist that they were glad to drop it?  The Brits have not been happy about their loss of empire, prestige, and world leadership over the past 60 years.  To have Scotland, pull out of the United Kingdom after 300 years would have been totally demoralizing to the Brits.
   One thought I saw some where.  The real driver behind the secession voters was the takers against the makers.  The secessionists promised far more socialism than the UK parliament would ever do.  Parliament has been on an "austerity" kick trying to bring the UK budget deficit down.  Perhaps the Scottish makers realized that secession would make them poorer to do more handouts to the takers. 

Leaves are turning up here.

Color will be fair to good this weekend.  Next week end ought to be very good.  Two weekends from now may be past peak.  If you want to see the leaves in fall, now is the time.  It doesn't last long.

Mini Coalition

Obama managed to get Saudi and the other little Gulf states, to fly some missions into Syria.  That's a good move, probably the best he has make.  But it would be more effective with some video of aircraft with Saudi and Kuwaiti, Qatari markings bombing up, taking off, flying formation with USAF aircraft, landing.  And maybe some interviews with some dashing Arabic looking fighter pilots, wearing flight suits, talking about how they put the bombs in a pickle barrel, and perhaps a few words on the rightness of the cause. 

What do the Greenies have against cell phones?

For last weekend's greenie rally to support climate change, they filmed at least two greenies being challenged to give up their cell phones to save the planet. 
Cell phones?  The chargers pull a measly 10 watts and the battery charges up in an hour.   I buy electricity for 25 cents a kilowatt hour.  That's enough for 100 cell phone charges, about a year's worth.  This is wrecking the planet?  You gotta be kidding me. 
   Let's talk real energy use.  Like my oil burner.  Each fill of the oil tank is 200 gallons, at $4 a gallon, $800 a tankful.  I need five fillups, to make it thru the winter. I keep the heat down to 60, I wear a sweater in the house, I have good tight Andersen windows, and decent insulation.  That's $4000 a year for oil.  Who cares about a cell phone?  That's greenies for you.
  Other amusing item.  All the demonstrators interviewed on TV looked old, like they had been doing peace marches in the 1960's.   Could it be that they just like going to demonstrations?  Doesn't really matter what the demo is about, they just enjoy getting out and putting on a show for the TV newsies.
  

All plastic lawn mower

Here we have Husqvarna all plastic lawn mower after three summers of grass cutting.  I bought  it new  from Lowes back in 2012.  Note the handle is crooked.  That's cause this plastic piece broke while pushing the mower across the lawn.  The bright metal patch is my attempt to glue it back together with epoxy.  Didn't work.  The epoxy failed at first push.

 I was able to find the  users manual and the sales slip. Kudos to my home filing system.  Even found  the illustrated parts breakdown showing the broken piece and giving a part number.  Manual gave a customer service number.  Reached a robo answer machine which asked me to leave my number, they would call back.  Haven't heard from them.  Tried the web.  The Husqvarna website doesn't sell parts and didn't even show my model number.  The dealer finder on the site didn't find any dealers, anywhere at all.  A disti website offered parts, but never heard of my model number or part number.
   Moral of the story, Stick with steel for lawn mowers.  There is no future in plastics. 

My Swiss Army knife has a 3 inch blade

The TV newsies now describe the White House fence jumper as being armed with a knife with a 3 inch blade.  That has become a "deadly weapon".  So what was the jumper carrying? Really?  Just a pocket knife?  a switchblade?  A lock blade knife?   I keep a short lock blade knife in my desk drawer to open the mail. 
   Was this jumper really carrying a real weapon?  Or are the TV newsies making a big deal out of a pocket knife like most Americans carry all the time?