Sunday, October 9, 2016
So I listened to the Trump audio tape.
Well, I've heard worse, actually a lot worse. I was in the service once upon a time. I played varsity sports in high school and heard a lot of crude remarks in the locker room. But it's still kinda gross. And the MSM are giving it all the air play in the world, hoping to sabotage Trump's campaign.
The Odyssey of Humanity on Nova
Two hour show this Sunday. Lots of good video. Lots of inane commentary. Lots of astounding conclusions presented without any of the evidence to support them. For instance, the voice over says that Neanderthal man lacked projectile weapons (bow and arrow, throwing spears) that Homo Sapiens possessed. The voice over fails to mention any evidence for this bold claim. Were there counts of flint arrowheads from Neanderthal sites and homo sapiens sites? How does one tell the difference between a flint spearhead from a thrusting spearhead from a throwing spear? It's an important issue. Hunting with a bow and arrow is one helova lot more effective than hunting with just a flint knife or a thrusting spear, merely because the hunter doesn't have to stalk as closely and risk spooking the game. With a bow and arrow the hunter only has to get within 50 yards of his prey. Which is a lot easier than stalking to within touching distance ( zero feet).
Then the voice over goes into the old Bering Land Bridge theory, the idea that man crossed over from Asia to America when the oceans were low and the Bering Straits became dry land. This is a land lubber's idea. In real life Alaskan Eskimos used to cross the modern day Bering Straits in skin boats (Umiaks) until the Soviets made life impossible for them after WWII. The umiaks were covered with walrus hide, a quarter of an inch thick, tough as fiberglass. Eskimo umiaks are strong enough to take the thrust of a 40 horsepower outboard motor.
They did show a umiak on video, but the voice over clearly doesn't under stand the difference between rowing and paddling. If your boat is strong enough to take the thrust of the oarlocks, rowing will take you much further and faster than paddling. Indian birch bark canoes were paddled because the birch bark isn't strong enough for oarlocks.
Then we see a truly impressive Pacific ocean catamaran. Two masts, cabins, big crew, very impressive vessel. It's a modern replica. No discussion of ancient catamarans. Do they have pictures? rock carvings? a salvaged wreck? or what? I'd love to believe that Polynesians reached Hawaii in such a craft, but I'd like a little evidence. Plus no details of the impressive modern replica, like length, displacement, speed, how high she could point up into the wind, what each of the twin hulls was made of. Or what the sails might have been made of. The replica's sails looked like modern Dacron to me.
Nova had a lot of dramatic flashy video, made a nice TV show, but the voice over displayed so much ignorance as to discredit the whole thing.
Then the voice over goes into the old Bering Land Bridge theory, the idea that man crossed over from Asia to America when the oceans were low and the Bering Straits became dry land. This is a land lubber's idea. In real life Alaskan Eskimos used to cross the modern day Bering Straits in skin boats (Umiaks) until the Soviets made life impossible for them after WWII. The umiaks were covered with walrus hide, a quarter of an inch thick, tough as fiberglass. Eskimo umiaks are strong enough to take the thrust of a 40 horsepower outboard motor.
They did show a umiak on video, but the voice over clearly doesn't under stand the difference between rowing and paddling. If your boat is strong enough to take the thrust of the oarlocks, rowing will take you much further and faster than paddling. Indian birch bark canoes were paddled because the birch bark isn't strong enough for oarlocks.
Then we see a truly impressive Pacific ocean catamaran. Two masts, cabins, big crew, very impressive vessel. It's a modern replica. No discussion of ancient catamarans. Do they have pictures? rock carvings? a salvaged wreck? or what? I'd love to believe that Polynesians reached Hawaii in such a craft, but I'd like a little evidence. Plus no details of the impressive modern replica, like length, displacement, speed, how high she could point up into the wind, what each of the twin hulls was made of. Or what the sails might have been made of. The replica's sails looked like modern Dacron to me.
Nova had a lot of dramatic flashy video, made a nice TV show, but the voice over displayed so much ignorance as to discredit the whole thing.
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Peak of Leaf Season
This weekend is as good as it's gonna get up here in the Notch. I was going to add a couple of photos but the software weenies at blogger seem to have broken the photo upload code, again. Way to go software weenies.
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Sorry about Gretchen Carlson, but Britt Hume is cool too.
Gretchen disappeared off Fox's 7 PM news show. I assume that she was caught up in the Fox News/Roger Ailes sexual harassment affair, although I don't know that for sure. I watched Gretchen's show for a long time. But, I gotta say that old pro Britt Hume does even better than Gretchen did. Britt makes the same show (same time slot) even more interesting. Way to go Britt.
International Tax Scams
Want to avoid US corporate income tax? If you are a corporation, open a branch or a subsidiary in some really low tax country. The Bahamas and some other Caribbean island-nations are notorious. Apple chose Ireland, a reasonable EU country that let Apple pay 12% instead of the US 35%. Apple got such a good deal that the EU got on Ireland's case and demanded Apple pay a whole bunch more. If the EU finds it was a scandal, where was the American IRS? Uncle Sam was loosing out bigtime on the Irish-Apple deal. More so than the EU was.
Once an overseas subsidiary is established, it's easy for the company accountants to direct all sorts of earning to the subsidiary. Just running the bills thru the subsidiary can be enough. Even if the product is made in the US, shipped in the US, delivered in the US, but the bills go to the Bahamas, it's income in the Bahamas, not the US. We could tighten this up with some rules in our tax code. Call it inverse domestic content, if say 50% of the product's content is US content, then income from selling said product is US income. And we could ban transfer of intellectual property, say the rights to Disney films like Peter Pan, out of the United States. Between movies and music and computer programs, and books and suchlike, the US earns a lotta money, probably more than we do exporting automobiles and steel.
We probably need a world wide tax agreement, setting corporate tax rates the same all over the world. This would reduce the incentives for US companies, cursed with the highest tax rate in the world, to move abroad. To make this work, we would have to bring our corporate tax rate down to match places like Germany, Japan, and England. And once we have the first world on board, we pressure the tax havens like the Bahamas to shape up. We tell 'em if they want to do business in the first world, they gotta adopt first world corporate tax rates. If they don't listen, we tighten the screws on 'em.
Wanna bet nobody running for president ever talks about this?
Once an overseas subsidiary is established, it's easy for the company accountants to direct all sorts of earning to the subsidiary. Just running the bills thru the subsidiary can be enough. Even if the product is made in the US, shipped in the US, delivered in the US, but the bills go to the Bahamas, it's income in the Bahamas, not the US. We could tighten this up with some rules in our tax code. Call it inverse domestic content, if say 50% of the product's content is US content, then income from selling said product is US income. And we could ban transfer of intellectual property, say the rights to Disney films like Peter Pan, out of the United States. Between movies and music and computer programs, and books and suchlike, the US earns a lotta money, probably more than we do exporting automobiles and steel.
We probably need a world wide tax agreement, setting corporate tax rates the same all over the world. This would reduce the incentives for US companies, cursed with the highest tax rate in the world, to move abroad. To make this work, we would have to bring our corporate tax rate down to match places like Germany, Japan, and England. And once we have the first world on board, we pressure the tax havens like the Bahamas to shape up. We tell 'em if they want to do business in the first world, they gotta adopt first world corporate tax rates. If they don't listen, we tighten the screws on 'em.
Wanna bet nobody running for president ever talks about this?
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Let's go with Pence for VP
I stayed up to watch the VP debate. With both presidential candidates in, or near their seventies, and a world full of crazies, there is a distinct chance of the VP succeeding to the presidency. So do either of these two guys, Republican Mike Pence, and Democrat Tim Kaine look like they could cut it as president? Both of them are unknown to me. Governors of states so far away from NH that I never heard a word about them before.
Of the two, Republican Mike Pence made a much better impression on me. He seemed steadier, talked more of substance rather than just dishing up insults, which is all Democrat Tim Kaine did. I feel the country would be in good hands with Mike Pence should something happen to Trump. Not so much Tim Kaine, Hillary won't be much good as president and Kaine will be worse.
Kaine spent the night repeating every distasteful thing Trump has ever said or whining about Trump's personal taxes. Not very interesting, I have heard most of 'em, from Trump on live TV, or on instant replay with the morning TV pundits. Pence talked about his successes as governor, they sounded pretty good, lowered taxes, lowered unemployment, created a $2 billion surplus in the state government. Pence also talked about Republican plans to revive the national economy.\
The moderator, a lady from somewhere in the MSM, I don't know her, used each question to pet the democrats and slam the republicans. And the questions were light weight, just invitations for another flood of politician talk, feel good, commit to nothing speech or the kind that Obama is so good at.
Of the two, Republican Mike Pence made a much better impression on me. He seemed steadier, talked more of substance rather than just dishing up insults, which is all Democrat Tim Kaine did. I feel the country would be in good hands with Mike Pence should something happen to Trump. Not so much Tim Kaine, Hillary won't be much good as president and Kaine will be worse.
Kaine spent the night repeating every distasteful thing Trump has ever said or whining about Trump's personal taxes. Not very interesting, I have heard most of 'em, from Trump on live TV, or on instant replay with the morning TV pundits. Pence talked about his successes as governor, they sounded pretty good, lowered taxes, lowered unemployment, created a $2 billion surplus in the state government. Pence also talked about Republican plans to revive the national economy.\
The moderator, a lady from somewhere in the MSM, I don't know her, used each question to pet the democrats and slam the republicans. And the questions were light weight, just invitations for another flood of politician talk, feel good, commit to nothing speech or the kind that Obama is so good at.
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
How should Boeing do its books?
What companies make, and report as income, depends on how they do their books. For Boeing, the problem is accounting for the fantastic expenses of new product development. Take the 787 program. Originally planned to cost $5 billion to develop, it went ten times that, $50 billion in outgo (expenses) before a single 787 could be sold. If Boeing had just reported the expenses in the year they were incurred, Boeing would have shown massive losses for five years in a row. Which would have done awful things to its stock value, its credit, and its image.
Boeing used "program accounting" instead. The horrible expenses of 787 development were held somewhere, off the books, until the 787 started to sell. Now these massive expenses are divvied up on each 787 sale, after sales begin. Which makes Boeing's books look a helova lot better during the development time. The Wall St Journal didn't explain a few crucial details, like how long Boeing can take to write down the 787 expenses. Clearly forecasting a production run of 50 years drops the expense per aircraft a lot compared to a production run of 10 years. Boeing could argue that since the old 747 stayed in production for 50 years, the newer and more fuel efficient 787 might last as long. And just where the expenses are recorded, (on the books, off the books, in the cloud, somewhere) is not mentioned. The Journal does say that "program accounting" is legal.
Spending $50 billion on new product development is clearly a good thing. Without the 787 Airbus would take over the market. We need a way for companies to make super expensive investments in plant, equipment, and new product development.
I'm not an accountant. In my simplistic view of the world, you do the books every year. You list expenses, and income, and report the profit or loss every year. But looking at the Boeing case, maybe we need "program accounting".
Boeing used "program accounting" instead. The horrible expenses of 787 development were held somewhere, off the books, until the 787 started to sell. Now these massive expenses are divvied up on each 787 sale, after sales begin. Which makes Boeing's books look a helova lot better during the development time. The Wall St Journal didn't explain a few crucial details, like how long Boeing can take to write down the 787 expenses. Clearly forecasting a production run of 50 years drops the expense per aircraft a lot compared to a production run of 10 years. Boeing could argue that since the old 747 stayed in production for 50 years, the newer and more fuel efficient 787 might last as long. And just where the expenses are recorded, (on the books, off the books, in the cloud, somewhere) is not mentioned. The Journal does say that "program accounting" is legal.
Spending $50 billion on new product development is clearly a good thing. Without the 787 Airbus would take over the market. We need a way for companies to make super expensive investments in plant, equipment, and new product development.
I'm not an accountant. In my simplistic view of the world, you do the books every year. You list expenses, and income, and report the profit or loss every year. But looking at the Boeing case, maybe we need "program accounting".
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