Does Money in Politics Really Matter?

Closing out an election year with unbelievable amounts of outside money up here in NH.  Never have I seen such a blizzard of TV ads.  Now they go Democrat, Republican, Democrat, back to back.  Mail box stuffed full of political ads, email box overflowing.  Even state reps can afford four color 5 by 7 mailers this election.  A whole lot of it is from out of state organizations, so stated right on the ad.  Besides, even if you took the entire state of NH, held it upside down, and shook it like a piggy bank, you wouldn't get a tenth of the money that has been blown on this election. 
   Question.   Does all that money really matter?  Or are NH voters more influenced by face to face encounters with the candidates?  Which are cheaper than TV ads.  And we have had plenty of face to face contact, at least with Republican candidates.  They have been turning up at small scale rural clambakes and cookouts and VFW halls and town and county party events.  Democrats not so much, and the Democrats tend to screen the attendees at their affairs to keep hecklers away.
   So, why all the hubbub about campaign finance laws?  It's a free country, or at least it used to be, and free means a man ought to be able to spend his money anyway he pleases.   Groups ought to be able to make political movies and show them.  The really rich donors tend to even out, Warren Buffet vs the Koch brothers comes out roughly even. 
I'm thinking the people in favor of "campaign finance reform" are more interested in making sure that the other side gets less money.  And they also like bossing people around, and setting up a Federal Election Commission to do the bossing suits them just fine.  These are the people who are up in arms about the Supremes and the Heller decision, which overturned a lot of restrictions on political giving.
   I now believe the whole campaign finance reform thing ought to go away.  Let everyone put as much money into getting their guys elected as they please.  
 

Who wants Windows on a phone?

Win 8 is clearly an attempt to make Windows work on a phone or tablet.  The Microsofties put a lot of work into the concept.  Trouble is, after they built it, nobody came.  Who in their right mind would want Windows to come within 10,000 feet of their phone.  We all know Windows, we know it's slow, flaky, fat, and insecure.  Who wants that in their phone?  And in fact, sales of Windows phones has been dismal. 
   To become phone worthy, M$ has placed their core market, traditional desktops and laptops in some jeopardy.  They blew away the start menu, confusing the bejesus out of users, bestowed the "start" name upon the new touchie feelie  screen to the confusion of documentation, and  spent a lot of time renaming things and hiding them. 
  It's so bad, that I, old windows user going back to version 3.1, am thinking about Linux.  The only reason I stick with Windows is to run Word and Excel.  I'm told I can get OpenOffice to work with all the M$ Office documents, and I suppose I ought to. 
  Essentially, M$ felt that getting onto phones and tablets was worth loosing their traditional business.  Had it been me, I would have produced a phone and tablet product, and a separate desktop laptop product and not tried a one size fits all product.  I guess all M$ is software guys, who will do anything to reduce maintenance by reducing the number of products.  This is why back in the late '90s M$ scrapped the popular Windows 9X line and moved everyone over to fatter slower Windows NT.  All the programmers working on 9X support could be put on other work. 

Vote for Walt Havenstein

I used to work at BAE, the old Saunders Associates in Nashua. They are a defense contractor. It was a pretty well run place. The shops all understood what they were making and took pride in doing it right. Most of the work force were veterans, and none of them wanted to ship substandard or defective equipment to soldiers in combat. Everyone was connected. Even the junior assemblers had a computer on their bench, on the network. The big project in house was the Common Missile Warning System, a rig of TV camera's and computer that detected the flash of a missile launch, and got on the aircraft intercom and cried "Missile, Missile, Missile", using a female voice. This got the pilot's attention. Most of the shops had pictures of big helicopters, with the full aircrew standing in front, and hand written letters for Iraq saying "Your equipment saved our lives".
I was at BAE after Walt Havenstein's time as CEO. But, Walt certainly left a high morale, efficient, competent company behind him. It speaks well for Walt's leadership and management.
   I am voting for Walt Havenstein for governor.  He is a much better leader and manager than Maggie Hassan.

Winter is coming. First Snow

Not much, it didn't stick anywhere except on the car.  Ground hasn't frozen yet.  In fact, this is our first hard frost of the season. 

Reconciling Darwin's evolution and the Big Bang with scripture

I have known the creation story from Genesis for a long long time.  It's a great story and I shrink from gainsaying it.  I have also known of Darwin, and of the Big Bang theory of creation for a long time.  There are a few points of difference between these stories  (to put it mildly).  I never was able to reconcile the stories in my own mind.  I simply accepted both stories as valid in their own place and time, and let it go at that.  The modern day attempt to blend scripture with Darwin, "creationism" never appealed to me.  Creationism didn't jibe well with Genesis, and was worthless as science. 
   So I was pleased the other day, to read that the Pope, a man far wiser and far more spiritual than I will ever be, had come out and said Darwin and the Big Bang were compatible with scripture.  I was unable to follow His Holiness's arguments, partly from the extremely brief Internet posting and partly from my lack of familiarity with philosophical concepts involved.  But it was pleasing to hear that I could continue to believe in both. 

Flying Car

They are really gonna build one.  The Terrafugia Transition, a two seat light plane with folding wings that can be driven on the highway.  The company is in Woburn Massachusetts, just down the road from me. Mostly carbon fiber,  410 mile range with 30 minutes reserve fuel, 100 mph cruise speed.  Price is $279,000.  Which is a lot, you used to be able to buy a used two place Piper or Cessna for $10,0000.  They have 100 firm orders.  Tooling is going to cost $20-30 million, of which half has already been raised. 
   Regulations seem to be as big a hassle to this product than any real technical issues.  Only an easier route to FAA certification open to low power two place sports aircraft made the product possible.  Conventional FAA certification is so expensive, and would add so much heavy "safety" equipment as to kill the design.  After tangling with FAA regulations, they had to deal with highway regulations, which hassled them over the windshield among other things.  Bureaucrats wanted to make the windshield from safety glass rather than polycarbonate plastic. 
   I wish them luck. 

Walt Havenstein vs Maggie Hassan

They were on TV last night "debating".  Both of 'em looked good, sounded good and talked past each other.  Neither of them made a newsworthy gaffe.  Half the reason for watching candidate debates is to enjoy the blood spilled on stage when one of 'em says the wrong thing.
  Walt missed an important point on right to work.  We need right to work to get investment, factories, assembly plants, in short jobs.  Fact of life.  Corporations won't invest in a state that is not right to work.  They do invest in right to work states.  Which is why Sturm Ruger is expanding in North Carolina, and Boeing is now building 787s in the same state.  If NH were to vote in right to work, we would be the ONLY right to work state in the whole northeast.  That would draw investment dollars from the moon.
   I know that right to work is tough on unions.  It's much harder to collect dues when you have to ask each man to write you a check.  It's easy street when the employer deducts dues from the paychecks and passes the money on to you.  But only 7 percent of NH workers are unionized, we ought to be able to vote in right to work in the legislature.  And, unlike last time, when democratic governor Lynch vetoed right to work, Walt would sign it.
   The other big miss.  Both candidates admitted that NH is suffering a loss of young people.  Maggie said this was due to a lack of educational opportunities and segued into more money for UNH.  Walt didn't contradict her.  Neither came out and said that young people leave NH 'cause there are no jobs for them here.  My own son had to travel to North Dakota to find work.   Right to work would bring us some jobs.