Shed a tear for Puerto Rico

They will declare bankruptcy to day, unless some last minute deal is made.  Over the years Puerto Rice managed to borrow $73 billion dollars from bone headed Wall Street bankers, who should have known that the island didn't have and never would have the revenues to pay off the debts.  Wall St bankers must have been taking stupidity lessons from the Euro bankers who lent to Greece. 
   The money ran out last year, and to complicate matters, Puerto Rice as a territory had been left out of the bankruptcy law.   You have to be a real US state to declare bankruptcy.  Territories don't count.   So last  summer Congress passed a law to allow the island to go bankrupt.  Being Congress, they put a few bells and whistles and a committee to negotiate into the law, but today the red tape unwound and bankruptcy is going to happen. 
   Anastasia O'Grady, writing on the Wall St Journal's op-ed page is all kinds of indignant about this.  She never really says just what gets her all riled up, but riled up she is.  Puerto Rico got access to a lot of credit, her politicians took advantage of that to borrow when they had no way of paying off the loans.  Politicians are like that.  And the banks deserve to loose their money.  Those were stupid loans, and loosing the money might smarten up the next generation of bankers.
   Capitalism depends upon intelligent distribution of capital.  Capital used to build businesses, employ people, grow the economy, is intelligent.  Capital used to pay government workers, politicians, and pensions is wasted.  It's clear that Wall St wasted $73 billion that it loaned to Puerto Rico.  Let's have the banker's smart for it. 
   It will take a few years (five maybe ten) for bankers to forget a bankruptcy and begin to loan again.  That will be a little tough on Puerto Rico, but that's the way the world works. 

Let's do the American Health Care Cost Reduction Act.

American health care costs too much.  We spend 19% of GNP on  health care.  Twice as much an any other country in the world.  And plenty of other countries, Canada, Britain, Japan, Germany, and many more, have public health every bit as good and in America, and they only pay half as much money as we do.  When we export American products, the price of those products has to be marked up 19% to pay for the worker's health care.  When every other country in the world exports product, they only have to mark up their price by 9.5% because their health care costs and half what ours are.  One big reason that manufacturing jobs are leaving the US, is the outrageous cost of health care in the US.   Want to make America great again?  Lower the cost of health care.
   Obamacare raised the cost of US health care.  Obamacare is a scheme to subsidize the cost of health care for everyone who doesn't get health insurance from their employer.  Obamacare did nothing to make health care cheaper.
   Here is what we could do to reduce the price of health care.
1.  Rein in malpractice suits, pure welfare for lawyers.  Don't allow lawyers to advertise for plaintiffs.  They didn't use to be allowed to do that.   Go over to the British system, loser pays the court costs.   Pass a law saying that manufacture, distribution, and prescription of any FDA approved drug or device is never malpractice, even if the FDA later pulls the drug or device off the market.  FDA takes so long to approve anything that any reasonable person assumes that anything FDA approved is safe.  Lawyers (all Congress critters are lawyers)  hate this, but there are more hardworking voters than lawyers.
2.  Allow duty free importation of drugs from all reasonable first world countries, places like Canada, England, France and some on.  Any drug approved for sale to the public by the authorities of a first world country can be imported even if the FDA hasn't gotten around to approving it yet.  Reason:  the health care authorities of other countries sandpaper the drug companies into lowering their prices, often by half or more.  Those Epipens that made the news last year when the maker raised the price to $600 each.  You can buy Epipens in Europe for $20.  Drug companies hate this, but  companies don't vote.
3.  Pass a federal law authorizing every American health insurance agency to sell policies in all 50 states of the Union, WITHOUT having to do any state paperwork.  If you are an insurance company selling health policies in your home state, you can sell them in every state.   The insurance companies hate this, but companies don't vote.
  We could run the Health Care Cost Reduction Act thru Congress while they are still fumblng around with Obamacare repeal and replace.  We could even get some Democrats to vote for it.

President Trump's 100 days

   Must be a slow news day since all the newsies seem to be talking about Trump's 100 days in office.  Most of 'em claim that he hasn't done much, or done enough.   As for me, a medium speed Trump supporter (I voted for him but I think he has foot-in-mouth problems),  I will give him a B for achievement and an A for effort.  He has gotten Gorsuch onto the Supremes, OK'ed the Keystone XL pipeline project that will lower my heating oil bills, killed off a lot of Obama regulations with executive orders, and done good on foreign affairs.
   He hasn't gotten his REPUBLICAN Congress to pass Obamacare repeal, let alone Obamacare replacement, or to get onto federal income tax reform.  To be fair, both bills are complicated, have a zillion lobbyists pushing from every direction, and the Republicans have failed to explain to the country just what they are trying to pass,  and both issues are too tricky to deal with in a few months.  It took Obama a couple of years to get Obamacare thru the Congress, it gonna to take Trump more than a few months to kill it.  And the Congress critters are getting all soggy and hard to light. 
  So I think Trump's heart is in the right place, he is working hard on it, but he has a long long way to go.  I don't think we will have a good feel for how he is doing until mid summer. 

Driving home

It's a great grandson.  Cute, three weeks old as of Friday.  Eats and sleeps well.  Doesn't fuss much, and well he does, picking him up and walking around the house quiets him right down.  Likes to nap in parent's (grandparent's too) laps.  Laps are better than cradles, ask any new born.  Has nice fine hair, looks to be blond or perhaps red.  Not unusual considering the both mother and father are still blond. 
  Drove back from DC on Saturday.  I took the scenic route.  Picked up old US 1 off the Baltimore beltway.  It dwindles to a two lane route thru Maryland farm country and gets over the Chesapeake Bay on top of the old Conowingo dam.  Must have been low tide, the down stream side of the dam was going dry, lots of mud flats all across the bay.  Upstream seemed to have plenty of water.  Crossed the Mason-Dixon line in the Pennsylvania, and US-1 widens into a nice 4 lane divided highway, light traffic, clearly a 1950's road project.  Zipped thru/by Chadd's Ford, the Wyeth art museum, Brandwine battle field, Longwood Gardens and picked up old US 202 for West Chester.  PA has finally gotten some infrastructure finished.  The construction on US 202 around King of Prussia is finally (after 10 years!!) finished.  And they have fixed a bunch of bottle necks/bad spots along the way to NJ.  They repaved using that old purple asphalt which looks nice and you don't see much of it around. 
   Got to Tappan Zee bridge at noon.  The new Tappan Zee bridge is still under construction, although progress has been made.  They have the steel girder work up clear across the Hudson, and the towers to support the cable stayed high center section are up.  The old bridge is still there, traffic was moving quickly, all 10 lanes.  The toll booth on the eastern shore is gone.  I zipped right thru, no EZ Pass, either I got thru for free, or they got my license plate on a well hidden camera and will mail me a bill. 
   All and all, the scenic route is nearly as fast as the straight-thru I95 all the way route.  Straight thru took ten hours in the rain.  Senic route was only 10 1/2 hours in good weather.  Saves about $20 in tolls. 
   Good trip.  Got to love the grandson.  Mom (Karen) and Dad (Justin) are looking fine and enjoying their first child. 

Politics and Prose, Washington DC bookstore

I  love to read, and the thought of visiting a bookstore bigger than the Village Bookstore in Littleton is always cool with me.  So we loaded Wyatt into a carseat into the back of my Buick, and set off.  It's a fair piece over there.  Wyatt is OK with car trips, he slept all the way, and was perfectly happy in his baby pack walking around the bookstore. 
   It's big, and has an enormous stock.  Their shelving policy can slow you down.  Usually you shelve history books by date (of subject) so that revolutionary war books get shelved next to each other, likewise civil war books and so on.  Not at Politics and Prose.  It's all mixed together and you have tribute works to Obama shelved next to books on Plymouth and Jamestown.  I splurged on "The Anglo Saxon World", soft cover, slick paper, lots of illustrations. 
   Their science fiction shelf was weak,  many really OLD authors, books I either have, or have no desire to read.  The "graphics novel" shelf was no better.  The science shelf was mostly biology and arguments for and against Darwin. 

Random road impressions

Drove down to Washington DC to visit new born grandson.  Weather was poor.  Ran into rain around White River Junction and drove thru on and off rain showers the rest of the way.  Spring is working on it.  Trees around my place are still bare.  By the time I got south to Brattleboro they were all leafing.  In DC they are in full leaf. 

    NJ turnpike seems to have misplace their toll booths.  Got off GW bridge, and onto the Jersey pike.  No toll booth, could not get a ticket.   Drove to the end of pike at Delaware Mem bridge and paid full toll.  Which is OK since I had driven the pike from end to end, but  beware if you are getting off early, say Philadelphia. 

    Coming thru Connecticut I took the old road, Merritt Parkway.  Conn had done some work on it, fresh black asphalt, brightly painted lines, no potholes.   New York, not so much.  Inside New York, the Cross Bronx expressway was it's usual shabby self.  I notice that most of the calls for "infrastructure" spending come from New Yorkers like Trump. Hoping the feds will bail their roads out of decades of neglect.  The other states keep their roads in fine shape, what's wrong with New York?

   Got on the infamous DC beltway by 3 PM.  Traffic was heavy heavy.  By 5 PM it was a lot lighter.  I guess the civil servants all quit work by 3 PM.  My tax money at work.

The NORKs are getting us hot and bothered.

Trump has invited all 100 senators to the White House for a classified briefing on the NORK situation.  That's some kind of a first.  I never heard of that happening before.
   The NORKs have threatened to sink the USS Carl Vincent. And to nuke the US mainland.  As for the carrier, they could get lucky with a diesel-electric sub, of which they have some.  They would have to be pretty lucky to avoid detection and destruction by the carrier's escort destroyers, and they would have to get several torpedo hits, but it might happen.  If they actually sank the carrier, as opposed to just launching on it, they could expect retaliation, probably air strikes.   If the NORKs have a working nuclear warhead for a missile, that they have never tested, they might be able to nuke the western US.  That ought to buy them wall to wall airstrikes, with nukes.
   Going up against the NORKs with ground forces amounts to starting up the Korean War all over again.  The NORKs have strengthened their army since the 1950s.  The South Koreans have a large army, probably more motivated, better trained, and better equipped, but probably not enough to bring a quick and easy victory.
   Our best bet is to convince the Chinese to cut off the NORKs imports of food and fuel.  The Chinese may or may not go along with this.  They want to keep the NORKs around for all the grief they can give the Americans and the South Koreans.  And to keep a unified Korean, which would be run by the South Koreans, off their border.
   If the Chinese option doesn't work (pretty likely) then the only other option I can see amounts to assassinating Kim Jong whats-his-face.  That would bring the regime down in a welter of back biting and attempts to seize power.  This might be our best option if we want to put the NORKs out of the nuclear business.  The current NORK regime is dead set on getting nukes and the missiles to launch them.  We will need to do regime change on North Korea to change that.