For killing the attempted revival of earmarks. Congressional "earmarks" were a shadowy system that allowed Congresscritters to direct spending into their own districts. For worthy purposes like getting themselves reelected.
Republicans killed the earmark scam when they took control of the House back in 2010. Caused a lot of squealing from the democrats and RINO's.
Somehow the Congresscritters thought they could slip earmarks back in during the lame duck session. By all accounts they had the votes to open up the earmark black hole again. But Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, somehow managed to stop the stampede to the feeding trough. The whole matter will be put off until the next Congress in 2017.
Thank you Paul Ryan for saving us taxpayers from yet another money sink. There is a least one honest man serving in Congress.
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Words of the Weasel Part 48
Racist: That's what progressives (democrats) call anyone who disagrees with them. Its gotten to the point that the word is loosing its insult value.
Sexist: Same as above.
Sexist: Same as above.
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Fake News on Google, Twitter and Facebook
The Wall St Journal has run stories about fake news on page 4 and page 1 of the business section for two days in a row. They deplore it.
My Facebook has been running fake celebrity obits for a week now. I have been informed of the death of Clint Eastwood, Angelina Joli and three or four others. All fake. Which has pretty much destroyed my confidence in anything else I might see on Facebook. I use Facebook to post snapshots for my widely scattered children and friends. Nothing more serious than a seven year old's birthday party, or autumn leaves in NH. But after all the fake obits, I don't trust anything more serious from Facebook. Dunno about twitter, I don't do twitter, although maybe I ought to start to catch some of the Donald's rants. Haven't seen anything fake on Google, yet.
Was I running any of these web sites, I'd clamp down on fake news, just to retain the ordinary user's confidence in the site.
My Facebook has been running fake celebrity obits for a week now. I have been informed of the death of Clint Eastwood, Angelina Joli and three or four others. All fake. Which has pretty much destroyed my confidence in anything else I might see on Facebook. I use Facebook to post snapshots for my widely scattered children and friends. Nothing more serious than a seven year old's birthday party, or autumn leaves in NH. But after all the fake obits, I don't trust anything more serious from Facebook. Dunno about twitter, I don't do twitter, although maybe I ought to start to catch some of the Donald's rants. Haven't seen anything fake on Google, yet.
Was I running any of these web sites, I'd clamp down on fake news, just to retain the ordinary user's confidence in the site.
The Economist really doesn't like The Donald
For the November 12 edition, they ran 10 pages about Trump. They repeat all the nasty things the democrats said during the election. A ten page hit piece. Let's hope this rant lets off their rancours and they can go back to reporting, as opposed to flaming.
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Infrastructure, useless frills or needed engineering?
We need more infrastructure is the cry resonating from media to legislatures and back. The pols like infrastructure because it means money spend in their districts. Motorists (most of the population are motorists) want potholes, bottlenecks, narrow and bumpy streets to be fixed, to make their drive to work faster and easier. The clueless media cheers for infrastructure.
Except when the money is spent on frills. The drive up to my place is I93, running from Boston to St Johnsbury. I have been driving this stretch of road for 60 years to go skiing, I know it well. New Hampshire has maintained the roadway in pretty good condition over the years, much better than anywhere in New York state for example. But over the years, we have wasted money on mileposts. They put in shiny new mile post signs every 0.2 miles. They are so close together you can see from one to another. We drove I93 safely for 50 years without all those expensive little signs. Then they funded a bunch of very fancy electric signs that just stand there flashing cute slogans like "Arrive Alive" and "One for the road gets trooper for chaser". Really necessary those are. And then there was the great rock blasting of the 1980s. As you can imagine a New Hampshire highway needs a lot of rock cuts to get the road thru the granite hills. When I93 was first built, back in the 1960s, all the rock cuts were made, of a generous width (interstate standards). And traffic flowed nicely for twenty years. Then in the 1980's they decided to spend a lot of money and widen every single rock cut, from the original generous width, to really ridiculously wide. Years of drilling and blasting and well paid contractors ensued. When the work was finally done, and the last "Construction" sign taken down, the road worked just as well as it had before. Mega money was spent to accomplish nothing, except giving a lot of well paid work to contractors.
Each one of these boondoggles was a 90% Federal 10% State money deal. If the Feds are paying for 90% of it, who cares how much money is spent/invested/wasted? Betcha that bunch of thrifty Yankee state legislators in Concord would never have approved these boondoggles if they had to scrape up the money for them.
Principle. He who spends the money should have to raise the money. This business of the feds pay for it and the staties spend it is just asking for waste fraud and abuse. To straighten things out, we ought to shut down the entire federal highway fund. The states will raise the money for truly needed infrastructure, and they won't find the money for boondoggles.
Except when the money is spent on frills. The drive up to my place is I93, running from Boston to St Johnsbury. I have been driving this stretch of road for 60 years to go skiing, I know it well. New Hampshire has maintained the roadway in pretty good condition over the years, much better than anywhere in New York state for example. But over the years, we have wasted money on mileposts. They put in shiny new mile post signs every 0.2 miles. They are so close together you can see from one to another. We drove I93 safely for 50 years without all those expensive little signs. Then they funded a bunch of very fancy electric signs that just stand there flashing cute slogans like "Arrive Alive" and "One for the road gets trooper for chaser". Really necessary those are. And then there was the great rock blasting of the 1980s. As you can imagine a New Hampshire highway needs a lot of rock cuts to get the road thru the granite hills. When I93 was first built, back in the 1960s, all the rock cuts were made, of a generous width (interstate standards). And traffic flowed nicely for twenty years. Then in the 1980's they decided to spend a lot of money and widen every single rock cut, from the original generous width, to really ridiculously wide. Years of drilling and blasting and well paid contractors ensued. When the work was finally done, and the last "Construction" sign taken down, the road worked just as well as it had before. Mega money was spent to accomplish nothing, except giving a lot of well paid work to contractors.
Each one of these boondoggles was a 90% Federal 10% State money deal. If the Feds are paying for 90% of it, who cares how much money is spent/invested/wasted? Betcha that bunch of thrifty Yankee state legislators in Concord would never have approved these boondoggles if they had to scrape up the money for them.
Principle. He who spends the money should have to raise the money. This business of the feds pay for it and the staties spend it is just asking for waste fraud and abuse. To straighten things out, we ought to shut down the entire federal highway fund. The states will raise the money for truly needed infrastructure, and they won't find the money for boondoggles.
Monday, November 14, 2016
Went to the dump today.
Got rid of an entire Buick trunk full of campaign yard signs. All in good shape. Used only once. Seems a shame to chuck 'em, but who has the space to keep 'em?
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Pre existing conditions and 26 year olds on their parents health insurance.
Trump was talking about "modifying" Obamacare repeal to preserve these two Obamacare benefits. I'm not agin the idea, but Trump ought to do it this way.
1. Have Congress pass, and he sign, a simple one page bill repealing Obamacare root and branch. Just to make a point.
2. Promise to sign a preexisting conditions law and a separate 26 year old children law, should Congress get its act together and pass them some time in the future.
If Trump allows "modification" of Obamacare, the special interests come out of the woodwork, all bets are off, all sorts of "stuff" will get packed into the "modification". Better to kill the whole thing, and require Congress to pass new legislation from scratch to pass out any goodies to the voters. Make sure to record the names of Congresscritters proposing and voting for such laws.
1. Have Congress pass, and he sign, a simple one page bill repealing Obamacare root and branch. Just to make a point.
2. Promise to sign a preexisting conditions law and a separate 26 year old children law, should Congress get its act together and pass them some time in the future.
If Trump allows "modification" of Obamacare, the special interests come out of the woodwork, all bets are off, all sorts of "stuff" will get packed into the "modification". Better to kill the whole thing, and require Congress to pass new legislation from scratch to pass out any goodies to the voters. Make sure to record the names of Congresscritters proposing and voting for such laws.
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