NH Senate session 15 May

Senate session, Wednesday 15 May.  This was a long one.  Started at 10 AM and lasted until 5 PM.  We dealt with a lotta bills, most of them nit noi unimportant stuff.  We kicked things off by passing the Fast Track calendar with 17 bills on it with one quick voice vote, no debate.  Then we faced up to 51 bills on the regular calendar. 

   We killed HB 558 the plastic straw ban bill.  We amended HB 560, the plastic bag ban into something totally different.  After amendment HB560 didn’t say any thing about plastic or bags, but now requires cities and towns to report weight of trash dealt with to DES.  Guess my town will have to buy a scale. We stalled off HB 447 about school calendars by re-referring it to committee.  It would have allowed school boards to start school anytime they please which guts an earlier bill we passed that required schools to start after Labor Day.   I think starting school before Labor Day is child abuse, but teachers and administrators would start school in July if they thought they could get away with it. 

   We passed HB 446 on a voice vote.  This bill allows editing your birth certificate to remove “Male” or “Female” and replace it with “Other”.  We passed HB 669 that would do the same for NH driver’s licenses on a voice vote.

   That’s all the interesting bills.  The bulk of them are just not interesting enough to me to comment on them.  Twelve bills created study committees, which I think is a polite way of killing the issue. 

   And, we passed HB 280 making the red tailed hawk the state raptor.  Important issue that.  Apparently a bunch of 4^th graders proposed this bill four years ago.  Those kids are now in 8^th grade, and they were present for the vote on HB 280.  I think we taught them that it takes forever to get the NH legislature to anything. 

NH Senate Activity. 13 May

Ed Comm hearings, Tuesday, 13 May.  This was executive session day, no hearings.  We only had two bills to deal with.  HB 131 was an attempt to recover the Signum University degree granting authority.  We passed a bill in the Senate to grant degree granting authority to Signum back a month ago.  For some unclear reason the House killed it last week.  We tried to revive it by tacking the Signum bill onto HB 131 as a rider.  Ed committee chairman Senator Jay Kahn discouraged this scheme, saying the house would kill it.  He suggested we offer the Signum amendment as a floor amendment during senate session this week.  Well, that never happened, and Signum, an innovative way to gain a college degree is without NH support, even though the NH Dept of Ed thinks they are doing good.  Too bad. 

   Then we rehashed HB 226 which would grant teachers their “experienced educator” certificate after only three years of class room teaching, instead of the current five years.  We added a lot of verbiage to the bill, making it harder to figure out what it was doing.   Which is OK by me.  Three years of class room teaching is plenty.  In the Air Force we put teachers in front of classrooms after only three weeks of training.  And the Air Force teachers, just sergeants, pulled right off the flight line, with classes of rowdy teen aged airmen, did just fine.  I took some courses and the instructors were as good as, of better than, any teachers I ever had. 

Anyhow, Tuesday cleaned up the last Ed Comm bills.  No Ed Comm hearings next Tuesday. 

What to do about Facebook?

They have been selling user's data.  They don't keep anything confidential.  They have been kicking conservative posters off.  They are almost the only game in town.  So what to do?
1.  Do nothing.  If Facebook kicks you off, start a blog. 
2.  Use anti trust laws to break Facebook into two (or more) viable pieces.  This ought to create competition.  Conservatives black balled off of one piece can re apply to the other piece.  The two pieces ought to compete for advertising by lowering their rates. 
3.  Regulate.  Set up a commission of "impartial" members to lay down the law to Zuckerburg.  Will stir things up for a while.  Then Facebook will capture the regulators by taking them out to lunch, and other juicy things, and offering them cushy jobs with Facebook if they treat Facebook right.  Plus, real control of what Facebook actually does will remain in Zuckerborg's hands.  The regulators won't be able to tell if Facebook is doing what they are told to do or not. 
4.  Encourage a competitor to compete.  Probably not viable.  Facebook has occupied the market space and getting started against them probably is not possible. 
5. Something else? 

I started up a Facebook page to support my Senate campaign.  It got a lot of hits.  Like 150 for each time I posted.  I believe it did me a lot of good in the election.  I won after all.  I am still on Facebook.  They have not booted me, or even bitched to me. Yet.

Islamic terrorists have posted a lot of really disgusting and hateful stuff on Facebook.  I'm glad to hear Facebook is doing something about that.  At least that's what I hear, mostly from Facebook. I can believe as much of that as I please.  They claim that Russian trolls have used Facebook posts to influence the 2016 election.  Not sure if I believe that.  Putin, old KGB man, has good intel on America, and must have known that Hillary was his best bet.  Hillary isn't very smart, isn't very brave, and would never give Putin any trouble over Russian aggression anywhere.  Trump was (still is) a wild card.  Nobody knows what he will do next.  Putin knew all this well before the US election.  It is inconceivable to me that Putin wanted Trump to win. 

Avengers:Endgame 2019

I took it in at the Jax Jr in Littleton this afternoon.  The theater was chilly, even for me wearing a fleece vest over my shirt, and a ski parka.  It's looong.  Three hours.  A lot of scenes when far longer than need be.  I recognized some characters from previous Marvel flicks,  Captain America (Steve Rogers) Tony Stark (Ironman but we don't see him wearing the Ironman suit), Rocket Racoon, Groot, Thor, Hulk.   Bunch of new faces that meant nothing to me.  Some of them vaguely familiar looking, must have turned up somewhere sometime in a Marvel movie.  The bow and arrow guy from I forget which flick turned up.   
    There was a hint of plot.  The Avengers must develop time travel to got back and acquire/steal/rescue five magic gemstones needed to save the world.  Some awful catastrophe has overtaken poor old Earth and with the five magic stones the avengers can fix it.  Needless to say the stones are recovered and then a lot of hand to hand combat with a large armored nasty happens. 
   Despite glowing rating in the print press and Rotten Tomatoes, I was not all that impressed. 

New tariffs on Chinese goods will make life interesting for WalMart.

Nearly all the goods on Walmart's shelves are made in China.  The 25% tariff going into effect is going to put a squeeze on Walmart.  Unless there is more juice in the business (like 25% juice, which is unlikely) which I doubt, something has got to give.  Most likely Walmart will have to raise their prices. 
   As for me, I don't shop Walmarts all that much.  At my stage of life I am pretty well fixed for housewares and clothing and appliances.  I do buy my prescriptions there, but I think those are all made in USA. 

May you live in interesting times.

Words of the Weasel Part 57

From Aviation Week.
    The Dragon capsule had successfully completed a series of 2-sec. firings of its small Draco thrusters, used for in-space maneuvering and was about 0.5 sec. from igniting eight Super-Draco  launch abort motors when the anomaly occurred, destroying the vehicle, Koenigsmann said.

In plain English.  The launch abort rocket engines exploded during ground testing, destroying the Dragon crew capsule. 

Mechanical failure doesn't get much worse than this.

Question for the Space-X folks.  Why are not the launch about engines solid fuel?  The ones that blew were liquid fuel engines burning hypergolic (ignites upon contact, no ignition required) hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide.  Solid fuel is stable, does not leak, and is very reliable.  Launch abort means rocket the capsule off the top of, and away from, an exploding booster rocket.  Never been done to my knowledge.  Requires VERY rapid response.

NH Senate activity 7 May 2019

Things are slowing down.  For the usual Ed Committee meeting this Tuesday 7 May, we had no new bills to hear.  We went into executive session to rehash some bills previously heard.  We took up HB 131, a bill to create yet another study commission on prevention of suicide among school children.  We decided it needed more study, and postponed action until the next meeting.  Next was HB 149 concerning co operative school districts, and how to handle matters should the level of cooperation drop off, and one party want out.  We decided that existing law was just fine, and we voted HB 149 Inexpedient To Legislate.  We discussed HB 226 which wanted to decrease new teacher apprentice time from 5 years to 3 years.   Cannot remember what we decide to do with this one, my notes are silent on the matter.  We probably decided to kick the can down the road and deal with it later.  We did vote HB 258, a bill requiring study of teacher training, Ought To Pass, 4-0. Frankly, this is a no account bill.  The best teacher training is training in subject matter, English, US history, science, foreign language, art, etc.  A teacher that knows his or her subject matter can do a fine job teaching our children.  We voted HB 437 a quibble over paperwork, changing “ethics” into “conduct”. Ought To Pass, 4-0.  And we voted HB 447, which would have allowed school to start before Labor Day rerefer to committee, giving us more time to argue about it.  And we closed out the morning by voting HB 489, a bill concerning transfer of students from one school district to another, Inexpedient To Legislate. 

   We took a brief recess and then heard John Tobin’s presentation on state aid to education.  We need to do something.  Poorer towns like Berlin are running out of school money, despite outrageous property tax rates.  We need to do something to help out the towns with little assessed value in their tax base. 

    Then I met with 80 fourth graders from Berlin, down for State House visit.   Bunch of cute young kids, most wearing red school T-shirts.  I welcomed them, I said a few good words, and I shook hands with all of them.  It’s a worth while educational exercise.  For kids to understand anything about democracy in New Hampshire, they need to visit the State House.   

After a quick lunch, I got to the Senate hearings on the state budget.  Every one speaking, spoke up for more money to their pet cause.   The only gave each speaker three minutes.  After an hour of this I left for the hearing on HB 557, a bill to curb robocallers.  I spoke, urging some cruel and unusual punishment for robocallers, boiling in oil for the first offence and burning at the stake for the second offense.  I mentioned the robocallers who call me, pushing drugs, about once a week.  I suggested that we require the phone company[s] to fix caller ID so it cannot be spoofed.  That would give the PUC something useful to do.