Democrats have been complaining about the electoral college system since last Tuesday night when Trump pulled ahead of Hillary. It's in the Constitution, right up front, unlike some of the other things judges have invented from the bench. It's the way things have been done since George Washington's time which makes it legitimate in the eyes of most. It works like this, each state gets votes (electors) equal to its Congressional representation, one vote for each rep. and one for each senator. Voters get to choose the electoral college votes (electors) for their state. After the election (sometime in December) the electors get together and vote on who shall be president. The founders originally thought that the electors would be solid citizens who be free to vote for the most worthy candidate. But the parties came up with dependable party men who believe in their party and have always voted a straight party ticket to stand as electors. Which makes the selection of president more democratic than the founders had planned upon.
The other effect of the electoral college is to level the playing field between big states and small states. As a citizen of New Hampshire, I like the electoral college system. It gives my small state more influence in national politics than it would otherwise have. Without the electoral college, the hordes of democrats in California would out vote the rest of the country. I'm not ready to be californicated.
Saturday, November 19, 2016
Friday, November 18, 2016
The Demographic Imperative for immigration
To be a superpower, you have to have a large population. The reason the United States surpassed the British Empire during WWII is fairly simple. The US boasted a population in those days of 100 and some million, compared to Britain's 40 million. That turnover was peaceful due to close historical ties between the two countries and Winston Churchill who clearly saw that an Anglo American alliance, which he succeeded in creating, could win the war and impose a Pax Americana on the world.
Lesson to be digested. To remain a superpower we have to have a large population. Especially today when we have 320 odd million as opposed to China with a billion, and India with nearly as many. To maintain our position in the world, we must maintain and grow our population. And natural increase is failing. To just maintain a population, to say nothing of growing it, each woman needs to bear 2.1 children in her lifetime. As of today, America's women are just breaking even, and it looks like they will fall further behind in the coming years. Continental Europe and Russia are already far behind, in Russia the figure is down to 1.4 children per woman, and the population of Russia will sink by half in a generation. Which might explain Vladimir's rambunctiousness on the world stage today. He wants to get his licks in while Russia still has the population to do it with.
America has an advantage here. We have created the freest, wealthiest, and most pleasant to live in country in the world. Everyone would like to move here. We have a tradition of welcoming and assimilating newcomers, the old melting pot idea. And, immigrants coming from our south are good Catholics and hard workers. Compare with France and Germany, where the immigrants are low grade Islamics who have not assimilated at all, they are trying to make Europe over into the Middle East.
To maintain our population we ought to admit each year, immigrants equal to 1 or 2 percent of the current population. Say 3 to 6 million immigrants a year. And since everyone wants to come, we can be picky and admit people who will do the country good. Young, healthy, loyal, educated, and law abiding we need. We don't need more elderly, more unemployed, more gang members.
We already have a lot (10 million?) of illegal immigrants in the country. They are picking crops, roofing buildings, waiting tables, probably all for cash under the table. But, many of them, most of them perhaps, are fitting in, finding work, raising their children to speak English, staying out of trouble with the law, paying taxes. Which kinda defines a good citizen in my book. I'm ready to grant to legal papers to good citizens cause we need more good citizens, and in these cases we know who has been good and who hasn't. I don't really care if they slipped into the country illegally. Given their circumstances I probably would do the same thing if I had the guts.
Lesson to be digested. To remain a superpower we have to have a large population. Especially today when we have 320 odd million as opposed to China with a billion, and India with nearly as many. To maintain our position in the world, we must maintain and grow our population. And natural increase is failing. To just maintain a population, to say nothing of growing it, each woman needs to bear 2.1 children in her lifetime. As of today, America's women are just breaking even, and it looks like they will fall further behind in the coming years. Continental Europe and Russia are already far behind, in Russia the figure is down to 1.4 children per woman, and the population of Russia will sink by half in a generation. Which might explain Vladimir's rambunctiousness on the world stage today. He wants to get his licks in while Russia still has the population to do it with.
America has an advantage here. We have created the freest, wealthiest, and most pleasant to live in country in the world. Everyone would like to move here. We have a tradition of welcoming and assimilating newcomers, the old melting pot idea. And, immigrants coming from our south are good Catholics and hard workers. Compare with France and Germany, where the immigrants are low grade Islamics who have not assimilated at all, they are trying to make Europe over into the Middle East.
To maintain our population we ought to admit each year, immigrants equal to 1 or 2 percent of the current population. Say 3 to 6 million immigrants a year. And since everyone wants to come, we can be picky and admit people who will do the country good. Young, healthy, loyal, educated, and law abiding we need. We don't need more elderly, more unemployed, more gang members.
We already have a lot (10 million?) of illegal immigrants in the country. They are picking crops, roofing buildings, waiting tables, probably all for cash under the table. But, many of them, most of them perhaps, are fitting in, finding work, raising their children to speak English, staying out of trouble with the law, paying taxes. Which kinda defines a good citizen in my book. I'm ready to grant to legal papers to good citizens cause we need more good citizens, and in these cases we know who has been good and who hasn't. I don't really care if they slipped into the country illegally. Given their circumstances I probably would do the same thing if I had the guts.
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Thank You Paul Ryan
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.
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.
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.
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