Getting ready for high school

Regardless of whether your high school starts in 9th grade or 10th grade, you want to start thinking about what you want to do to make a living after you graduate high school or graduate college.  Probably you don't have a clue.  I didn't at that age.  But you want to think about it.  Talk to people about their jobs.  Read up.  But unless you are born into a lot of wealth, you will have to make a living doing something after you make it thru school. 
   Since you probably don't know what you want to do yet, you want to keep your options open. One large option is a career in  Science Technology, Engineering, or Math  (STEM).  It can be fun, I did electrical engineering myself, it was a lot of problem solving, customer contact, lab work, software coding.  Beats selling real estate or used cars.  STEM jobs pay well and you will stay employed, layoffs are very rare.
   To do a STEM major in college, you have to take integral calculus freshman year.  The STEM courses are all taught with calculus, if you don't have your calculus you simply cannot understand the coursework.  To take integral calculus, you have to have already taken trigonometry, two years of algebra, and preferably plane geometry.  You have to take these in high school.  You gotta start taking the algebra in 9th grade.  Plane geometry (Euclidean geometry) is not absolutely essential, but it is very useful.  You learn how you can start with a few simple ideas, use some logic and prove some remarkable theorems, using nothing but pencil and paper.  And the proofs are intellectually satisfying, after doing a proof, you know it's true.  This entire concept is so valuable that the plane geometry course is well worth it. 
   Right now, as you start high school, you probably don't know what you want to do to make a living after school.  It is a shame to lock your self out of all the STEM fields because you didn't take the required math courses in high school. 

NH Senate session 21 March

Thursday 21 March.  Regular Senate session.  Not as bad as last week, we only had 40 bills to deal with.  We managed to get done by 3 PM.  Which was good, I was able to get up to Lancaster in time for the Coos County Republican committee meeting.  That ran until 9:30 PM and I didn’t get home until 10:30PM.  Long day. 

   Senate session got off to a good start by passing the Fast Track (consent) calendar of 13 bills in one quick voice vote, no debate.  One surprising exception.  A fairly harmless bill SB 42 to declare applejack as the official New Hampshire state spirit was pulled of the Fast Track calendar and thrown onto the regular calendar.  Usually this kind of bill declaring state flowers, state birds, state just about anything are quickly passed because it makes their sponsors happy and nobody else cares.  Applejack was not so lucky.  The Democrats debated this bill for a half an hour at the end of the day, speaking about the hazards of alcohol, the case for New England rum, and a bunch of other trivia.  Total waste of time. 

    Now for the main event, the regular calendar.  We opened with SB10, the minimum wage bill.  Introduced by Senate President Donna Soucy.  Jeb Bradley spoke eloquently against it. This is a job killer.  Up here in Littleton, far up in the North Woods, the retailers are already automating in anticipation of a $15 minimum wage.  McDonalds, Applebee’s; Wal-Mart, and Lowes are pushing us customers to learn how to run the bar codes thru the scanner.  Kiss that entry level jobs goodbye.  SB 10 backs the minimum wage down to $12 an hour, but it is still a job killer.  Democrats rammed it thru on a roll call 14-10.  That’s all the Democrats voting yes and all the Republicans voting no. We spent a half an hour on this turkey.  Maybe we can get the Governor to veto it.

    Then my bill SB 150 to allow all out of state health insurance companies to sell in New Hampshire was voted Inexpedient  To Legislate on another roll call vote 14-10.  Democrats claimed that the insurance department would not be able to control them, that the out of staters could offer lower cost policies that lacked some of the mandatory coverages of Obamacare and some other stuff.  The way to lower the costs of healthcare is competition.  Right now we have only TWO insurance companies licensed to sell in New Hampshire.  Not much competition there. 

   And we revived casino gambling SB310.  Three fellow senators urged me to vote to revive it and so I did, reluctantly.   It got Ought to Pass 13-11.  Probably the house will vote it down.  This bill has been kicking around for 10 years that I know of.  It always promises fantastic tax revenues.  And it gets voted down every time (so far). 

   We have been kicking a lot of cans down the road.  We have tabled 16 bills before this session started.  We tabled 10 more on Thursday.  Let’s hope that table is strong enough to hold up under load.  It is not clear to me what will happen to these tabled bills.  They might be allowed to die quietly and out of sight.  They might be waiting for the finance committee to decide if we can afford them.  Stay tuned. 

   And we voted SB 309 which restores the stabilization grants to state schools Ought To Pass 24-0.  Stabilization grants are an obscure school funding deal, going far back in history.  However, the schools in district 1 (my district) need the money badly.  So do plenty of other districts.  I said exactly that during the floor debate.  Unfortunately, after voting OTP, the democrats moved to table the bill.  If it ever gets off the table it will do good. 

What happened to Sears Roebuck?

Well, they are dead or dying, I think we all know that.  But what killed Sears?   The Wall St Journal had a longish piece on Sears on Saturday.  It was a collection of comments by eight ex Sears people, some of them pretty high up, remarking on Sears collapse.  Too bad none of them wrote about what went wrong.  They all expressed sorrow but none of them gave a coherent story explaining what happened.  Too bad.  I miss Sears.  I noticed just this morning that the little mini Sears we used to have in Littleton is gone.

NH Senate Session 14 March

Senate session, Thursday 14 March.  88 bills on the calendar.  Session ran until 10 PM.  I didn’t get home til nearly midnight.  They promise worse is coming.  We knocked off 18 bills on the Fast Track calendar with one voice vote.  We bumped SB 143, dealing with state aid to special ed students off the Fast Track calendar into the hurley burley of the regular calendar ‘cause it involved a LOT of tax payers money. 

   We had a few good bills and a lot of bad bills. For good bills we passed SB 266 which makes state aid to education cover kindergarten students on the same basis as grades 1-12 and redirects the Keno revenue from kindergarten to school building aid.  That passed 24-0 on a roll call vote. 

   We passed suicide prevention training for students and teachers 24-0 on a roll call vote.  We are loosing all too many students to suicide.  We need to let all students know what suicide is, and what they should do or who they should contact should they find that a friend is contemplating suicide.  Certainly back when I was in grade school I would confide a lot of stuff to my closest friends than I would to teachers or parents.  And back then I had no idea what suicide was or what to do should I learn of a friend thinking about it.  

   We passed SB 306 establishing a housing board of appeals to which builders and developers could go after a build-absolutely-nothing-anywhere (BANANA) planning board refused to grant a building permit, especially a building permit for workforce housing or affordable housing.  Way things are going, without the housing board of appeals nothing will get built anywhere is the state inside of five years.  SB 306 passed on a voice vote, no nays were heard. 

     And now for the bad bills.  The democrats voted SB 135 and SB 301 thru.  Both bills raised the business profits tax a lot.  Like $37 mil a year.  Most of us know that last year was a very good year indeed and this year is shaping up nicely.  GNP growth is up, unemployment is down, stock market is up (mostly) and taxes are down.  Out in the real world, where I come from, it is generally accepted that the good economy of last year was caused by tax cuts, both federal and state.  In the not so real world of the Senate, democrats believe they can raise taxes without stalling the economy.  Nobody out in the real world believes that.  Anyhow the democrats have voted in heavy duty tax hikes.  Hopefully the governor will veto them. 

   The democrats passed SB7, the motor voter bill on a roll call 14-10.  This bill would register anyone to vote who registered a car or obtained a driver’s license.  If you are a driver you are a voter, zap.  Me, I think the voters ought to go to town hall and register BEFORE the election.  Far as I am concerned, any voter who lacks the motivation to get out and register himself is so unmotivated that we don’t need his vote. 

   And the democrats passed SB 249 to allow state house employees to unionize.  We really really needed that.

   They also passed SB 71 allowing the state to interfere in the party’s delegate selection.  I believe the two parties ought to select their delegates anyway they please, without any state interference.  No matter, the democrats pushed this turkey thru 14-10 on a roll call. 

   And we had some Mickey Mouse bills. SB 133 about definition of emergency vehicles.  We need this?  We all know that flashing lights and a siren mark an emergency vehicle.  And SB 275 requiring the state to replace the entire fleet of state vehicles with battery operated vehicles by 2039. 

Life in the NH Senate

I have been posting the goings on in Concord on my campaign Facebook page.  Lately Facebook has gotten flaky and refusing to accept my posts.  So I'm going to start posting them here as well.

Tuesday, 12 March.  Ed Committee hearings.  Started off at 9 AM with SB 267 bearing the suspicious title of “Relative to the release of student assessment information and data”   New Hampshire Dept of Ed requires yearly testing (assessment) of all NH students.  The tests are sent off to the test provider to be graded.  State law currently requires that student’s names, birth dates, addresses, and other identifying information be kept confidential.  So the schools erase the student ID info from the tests before sending them off and replace it with an ID number.  Thru some bungle or other, the tests come back, scored; the Dept of Ed admitted that only 80% of numbers matched up with children’s names.  The Ed folks wanted to just leave the children’s names on the tests to solve the bungle.  Just great.

   It gets worse.  I asked why the tests were not graded by the home room teacher and be done with it.  The Dept of Ed representative explained that the tests were administered by computer.  If the child was doing well, the computer would switch to more difficult questions.  If the child was doing poorly, the computer would switch to easier questions. In short no two children got the same questions on the test.  This is not right.  It is unfair to give some kids easier tests and some kids harder tests.  After hearing this, I am convinced that the entire NH yearly testing deal is corrupt, and should be scrapped. 

   Didn’t bother anyone else on the committee.  In executive session they voted the bill Ought To Pass 3-1.  I was the one, everyone else was perfectly happy with the bill and the testing protocol. 

   Next was SB 137 which wants to set up special certification of school nurses by the Dept of Ed.  In addition a nurse being licensed to practice in New Hampshire, she had to get “certified” by the Dept of Ed.  Job security for some Dept of Ed bureaucrats.  Plus, what does Dept of Ed know about the practice of medicine?  Never mind, in executive session we voted it Ought To Pass 3-1.  Again I was the one. 

   Finally we got to a bill that I submitted to authorize Signum University to grant degrees.  Signum is a startup.  It is an internet deal, I have talked with the Signum people and they sound real to me, not just a diploma mill.  They specialize in English literature (Tolkien) and Germanic philology.  The Tolkien part makes them OK in my book, I first read Tolkien in middle school, I read it to all my children, and I still occasionally read it to myself.  Anyhow we voted Ought To Pass 4-0. 

  

Ethiopian Airlines crash

It was a brand new Boeing 737 MAX, the same plane that Lion Airlines crashed a couple of months ago.  In the Lion crash, it is believed that the autopilot got into a snivit and thought the plane was stalling.  It took control of the stick, pushed the nose down to get out of the stall, and flew the aircraft into the ground, over the strenuous objections of the crew, who pulled back on the stick as hard as they could.  Aircraft hit the water, killing all on board.   This Ethiopian crash looks like it might be the same problem.  It's too early to be sure, we have not had time to read out the cockpit recorders, but it sure looks suspicious.  The Lion air crash investigation is not complete, and they have not issued any fixes to the 737 MAX based on that disaster, yet.
   The 737 MAX is the well known 737 which has been flying for decades.  The MAX part is a re engine mod, putting on bigger, more powerful and more fuel efficient engines on a well proven airliner. The anti stall feature in the autopilot is a reaction to the Airbus crash in the south Atlantic a couple of years ago.  In that disaster the entire flight crew, three qualified pilots in the cockpit, failed to recognize they had stalled the aircraft and failed to pull out of it.  The plane hit the water, all on board were killed, and it took a couple of years of searching the ocean bed to find the flight recorders and figure out what had happened.

Wall St Journal is OK with stock buybacks

We been hearing a lot of talk from both left and right about the evils of corporations buying back their stock. Like talk of banning the practice. It's not that corporations need the stock, they can print new stock certificates for nearly any amount of money for pennies, cost of paper and ink.  It's not like buying raw materials or building new factories.  It is believed that buying up the company's stock will raise its price, supply and demand, make the stock scarcer and its price will rise.
   Saturday's WSJ editorial came out strongly in favor of  allowing stock buybacks.  They didn't give any numbers.  The traditional way for a company to raise the price of its stock is to declare a big fat dividend, Which is paid to all stock holders and can be expensive for a company like GE with a zillion shares outstanding.  The idea behind stock buybacks is you only have to pay off the investors that actually sell their stock, rather than all shareholders.  Might be cheaper that way.  The WSJ didn't give any numbers supporting that idea.
   On the other hand, the main reason companies want to boost their stock price is to reward executives with stock options.  I had a stock option once, with Bernie Gordon's Analogic, and it paid off like crazy.  On the other hand, if the company wants to pay off a hardworking successful CEO, they can jolly well vote him a cash bonus. They don't have to manipulate the stock market to reward successful executives. 
   And, you would think that companies could find constructive things to do with extra cash in the till rather than doing stock buybacks.  Like new product development, new factories and distribution centers, improved manufacturing techniques to lower product cost, more publicity and advertising, buying up competitors,  stuff that would increase their income.