First Amendment, why we have it

Been a lotta talk about the first amendment on the media, TV and internet lately.  Lotta things said, most of 'em valid.  "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press."  But none of them gets right down to the meat of the matter.
   The meat is simple.  Without the first amendment, the government can call any speech it doesn't like treasonous, blasphemous, disloyal, seditious, unAmerican, or other bad name and zap, speaker gets jailed, which shuts him up.  The founders believed in democracy, by which they meant every man could speak in support of his political ideas without fear of government reprisals.  And without free speech, we don't have a democracy.  

Saving money on healthcare

America spends 19% of GNP on healthcare.  That is twice as much as any other country in the world.  After spending this ridiculous amount of money, our health, as measured by infant mortality and life expectancy, is no better than other first world countries.  That also means that American products are 19% more expensive than they might be, just to pay the workers health care.   Here is my list of things we ought to do about the health care cost crisis.
1.  Allow duty free import of drugs from any reasonable first world country, like Canada, the EU, and Japan.  Many US rip off priced drugs can be bought overseas for half their US prices. 

2.  Allow competition in the health insurance business.  NH could pass a law saying that any American health insurance company, licensed in any state of the union, can sell health insurance in New Hampshire, no more paper work required. 

3.  Clamp down on the malpractice racket.   We could pass a law stating that prescription, manufacture, and administration of any FDA approved drug or device is never malpractice, even if the FDA later withdraws their approval. 

4.  Stop prescribing so many opioids.  The Wall St Journal says that 80% of Medicaid patients in West Virginia and Kentucky are getting prescriptions for pricey opioids.  Which gets the patients hooked on heroin when the opioid prescription runs out. This is a mixed issue, part federal, part state, part medical profession.

5. Bring back “hospitalization only” policies.  Back before Obamacare forbade them, you could buy a regular, covers everything family plan for $12,000 a year.  Or you could buy a $3000 a year hospitalization only policy that only covered things bad enough and expensive enough to put you in the hospital.   With the $9000 a year saving, you can pay for a lot of yearly physicals and childhood earaches.  For ordinary people, with a little money in the checking account, hospitalization only is a good deal.   

Kavanaugh hearings off on snarling and backbiting

The hearing has senators interrupting senators,  members of the audience screaming at the top of their lungs.  Democrats moving to close the hearing because the truck loads of documents about Kavanaugh already delivered are not enough, they want to see 100,000 more documents.  You would think the Kavanaugh's published rulings as a judge ought to be enough to figure out where he is coming from.  Now they are off letting all the Senators on the committee have their say. That is expected to take the rest of the day.  I'd be more interested in hearing what Kavanaugh has to say, but that doesn't happen until later this week. 

Difference between Democrats and Republicans

Democrats are the party of more free stuff.  Republicans are the party of the taxpayers. 

US Civil Servants don't deserve a pay raise.

They don't do much, they cannot be trusted, they cannot be fired, no matter what, and they are overpaid.  Trump wants to cancel their pay raise.  Good for him. 

Yahoo admits to snooping all emails going thru its site

Email is forever.  If it embarrassing, revealing, and anything you would mind posting on the bulletin board at the local supermarket, DON'T put it in email.  Yahoo has just admitted to snooping email on their site, and it would not surprise me that others are doing it too.
   If it is a company email, and your company gets sued, they will demand to see all the emails from every one.  So don't bad mouth customers (or anyone else) never discuss pricing, never discuss technical shortcomings, never discuss anything that might make your company liable.  Sensitive topics should be handled face-to-face, away from phones.  
   Next job interview, figure they can see all your email, going way way back, all your facebook postings, everything you every put on the net.  Sexting can be really really embarrassing.  If its a good hot pic, a lotta guys will pass it on to their buddies.  It never goes away. 
   For that matter they can see all your medical records now that Obama forced the doctors to keep patient medical records on computer. 

Federal Money given to secure NH electoral system.

Well, I'll take the money, money is nice, I can always find something to spend it on.  But we can secure our election system with two simple steps, no money required. 
1.  Use paper ballots, everywhere, every time.  They cannot hack a paper ballot over the Internet. 
2.  Secure the voter registration lists.  That list upon which the poll workers check off your name as you vote.  If the list is destroyed, or altered, bad things happen.  Legitimate voters will be denied ballots,  illegitimate voters will be given ballots.

In this PC age, every thing is kept on computer.  There was a time when the voter registration list was kept by town clerks, using pen and paper.  We could go back to that, but all the poll workers would scream and cry and threaten to hold their breath.  Since we seem to be stuck with computers, we can at least take some obvious security measures.  The computer[s] upon which the voter registration list is kept shall NOT be connected to the public internet (or the telephone network).  The computer[s] shall be kept in a locked room, with the keys restricted to a very few people.  All floppy disc drives shall be removed and all USB connectors snipped off.
   A paper listing shall be made periodically and stored off site.  An electronic backup (CD-ROM) shall be made periodically and stored off site.  Each time a new backup is made, it shall be compared with the previous backup to see if any changes are reasonable.