Wall St Journal ranks US colleges.

The Journal ran a long piece today listing the top 500 US colleges.  I looked thru the list of names, looking for colleges that I and my family attended to see where they ranked today.  Looks like we all attended pretty highly ranked colleges.  

1 and 2.  Harvard and MIT.  I lived 9  years in Cambridge MA , used to rent to Harvard and MIT students,  walked both campuses, very scenic.
7     Brown University in Providence RI.  I applied there, many years ago.  Did not get in.
9     Cornell in Ithaca NY .  My cousin Andrew graduated there.
12   Johns Hopkins, Baltimore MD.  My daughter graduated there.  Majored in international relations, minored in Russian, both stood her in good stead when she did a 2 year tour with the Peace Corps in Kirghistan.  
15   Columbia NYC  My brother and his daughter (my niece) both graduated  there.
24   Wellesley, Wellesley MA.  My mother graduated there.
30   Tufts, Medford MA.  My sister in law graduated there.  Her older daughter, my other niece also graduated Tufts.
35    Middlebury, VT  my other brother graduated there.
91    Franklin and Marshall, Lancaster PA.  I graduated there.  BA in history
148  University of Delaware, Newark DE.  I graduated there with a BS in electrical engineering after my 6 year tour in USAF. 
176  St Olaf College, Northfield Minn.  My brother in law graduated there.
217  Drew University Madison, NJ.  My oldest son graduated there. Majored in theater.
237  Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY.  My youngest son graduated there, BS in Mechanical Engineering.

North Grafton Republican host Bill O'Brien as speaker.

North Grafton Republicans had Bill O’Brien for their featured speaker last night.  Bill is running for US Senate, going up against Jeanne Shaheen, the democrat incumbent.  Bill has been around in NH politics for a long time.  Back about ten years ago, when the Democrats had driven the state budget $1 billion into the hole, Bill was speaker of the NH house.  He managed to cut the state budget 18%, bring it into balance, without hiking taxes. 

   He opened his remarks by saying that he was Trump before there was Trump.  He doesn’t support Planned Parenthood, saying that they are still selling body parts of aborted infants.  Bill sees “identity politics”, beloved by Democrats, as basically divisive, setting one group of Americans against another group.

  He is against Occasional-Castro’s Green Nude Eel; he sees it as imposing fantastic costs upon us citizens, as well as imposing harsh government controls on simple necessities like heating oil. 

   Bill is in favor of ending illegal immigration and sanctuary cities. He wants to fix the porous asylum system, and stiffen border defenses.  He wants a strong economy, because a strong economy creates jobs, the best thing we can do for people, and creates the wealth to deal with all the rest of our problems.  To which end he opposes red tape and regulations, and opposes government takeover of industries, and tax hikes.  He thinks US healthcare costs too much.  He opposes Medicare for All which would destroy Medicare and destroy private health insurance. 

   Far as I am concerned, Jeanne Shaheen has been a totally worthless Senator. She even wants to abolish the Electoral College, which was put into the Constitution to even things up between big states and small states.  New Hampshire is a small state and we would be crazy to give up the needed extra political power that the Electoral College gives us at the federal level.  In opposing the Electoral College Shaheen is opposing her constituents in New Hampshire in favor of the DNC. 

How did the 737 MAX get gounded, perhaps for ever?

It goes back to 2010 when Airbus announced a re engined A320, their workhorse single aisle air liner, that would save 15% on fuel.  Next year 2011, American Airlines told Boeing they better have a reengined 737 or else American would buy the Airbus 320 neo.  Boeing started the 737 MAX project a year later.  This project was a straight forward engine swap, replace the existing engines with newly designed engines that would give better fuel economy, leave the rest of the 737 alone.  It took Boeing four years, until 2016, to get the engine swap designed and built and get the first flight accomplished.  This is a rediculous length of time.  Back in the day, the British were able to swap out an anemic US engine for the 2000 hp Merlin engine on a North American fighter plane over a weekend.  The result of the British engine swap was the famous Mustang fighter.  You would think if the Brits could do it in a weekend, Boeing ought to be able to do the same thing in less than four years. 
   One of the constraints, was the 737 MAX had to fly like the preceding 737s.  And, the bigger engines of the MAX had a tendency to push the nose up when power was added.  So Boeing added code into the autopilot software to push the nose back down and make the new MAX fly just like the old 737.  Unfortunately for Boeing, the new code, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS for short,  could fail disastrously.  When things went wrong, MCAS could dive the plane into the ground.  This happened twice within a few months.  All on board were killed in both accidents.  Which caused the 737 MAX to be grounded.  It's been grounded for 5 months now. 
   Boeing hopes to present corrected autopilot MCAS code to the FAA for approval this month, September.  FAA, being a government bureau, can take as much time as they like to decide to OK the new code, or call for yet changes and/or testing.  When (and if) FAA ungrounds the 737 MAX then all the other regulators around the world will begin to unground the plane for their airlines and airspace.  At this point Boeing is hoping to get the 737 back in the air before the end of 2019.  This may be a vain hope.  

Solar Comes to Groveton NH

I attended a briefing up in Coos County about plans to build a 5 Megawatt solar power plant just outside of Groveton.  Present were Bennie Lamontagne from the department of business and economic affairs, Senator David Starr, Tara Giles from Salmonpress, and Barry Normandeau of Normandeau Trucking.   Tom Wemyss of Pure Point Energy gave the briefing.  He showed maps.  They already own a 600 acre site on the east bank of the river (Groveton is on the west bank) of which they plan to clear some 60 acres to make room for the solar panels.  The solar arrays will be mounted on solar tracking bases to improve power output.  The topography is such that the solar array will not be visible from the roads which will preserve the up country ambiance of the area.  There is a big Eversource substation close by to accept power to the ISO New England grid.  At one point Tom Wemyss mentioned selling power in Groveton for 8 cents a kilowatt hour.  That sounded good to me, since I am paying 20 cents a kilowatt hour in Franconia. 

    The project is waiting for the NH Legislature to authorize net metering for operations as large as 5 Megawatts.  Right now net metering is limited to plants no larger than 1 Megawatt.  Costs to install are roughly the same for large or small solar plants.  A five Megawatt plant can make enough revenue to justify construction, a smaller plant cannot.  There is a bill, HB365, to raise the net metering threshold to 5 Megawatts.  We passed it thru both House and Senate this spring.  Unfortunately the governor vetoed it.  A veto override will be voted upon in September. 

   Assuming a successful veto override, they have to do some more paperwork with DES and others.  Funding is in hand and construction could start next summer. 

That Federal Deficit, why it grows and what it means

The Wall St Journal and Fox News have been complaining about the federal deficit and debt this week.  They condemn both and let it go at that.  They never talk about fixes.  There are two fixes, both of them painful.  We could reduce federal spending or we could raise federal taxes, or both.  Do enough of this and the deficit goes away.  However any attempt to reduce spending will provoke howls of pain from those whose federal gravy train has been cut off.  Hiking taxes produces screams from taxpayers.  No congresscritter has the stones to brave either one, so nothing happens. 
   So, the feds continue to spend more than they take in from taxes.  How do they do this? Simple, they print more money and use it to pay the bills and meet payroll.  They do this every year, to the tune of trillions of new paper dollars.  And this works in a way.  Printing trillions of dollars makes the dollar worth less. 
  In my life time I have seen gasoline go from 28 cents a gallon to $2.80 a gallon.  New cars used to be $2000, now they are $20,000.  Comic books used to 10 cents.  Now they are $2.50.  In short, prices of everything are ten times what they were in my childhood.  Or put it another way, the US dollar is worth only a tenth of what it used to be worth.  This is a concealed tax on everyone  Over a lifetime, 90% of all the money everyone holds is sucked out by the feds. 
  How long can this go on?   Who knows?  We put up with a ten times devaluation of the dollar, we can probably put up with a lot more. 

Asylum ?? For entry to the US ??

Been a lotta talk on TV about asylum, some kind of US policy that might let people from hell hole countries into the US just because the place they come from is so bad. 
   Not sure I understand what' going on here.  Ought to be, used to be, that would be immigrants filed paperwork, perhaps too darn much paperwork, with someone, State Dept? ICE? and in all good time someone might get back to them with rejection notices or invitations to immigrate.  You would think that ordinary fairness requires that all would be immigrants get treated the same, no matter where they are coming from.  And you would think that in this age where everything and everyplace is on the internet, with broadband no less, that the someone who accepts the would be immigrant's paperwork get back within a reasonable length of time, say 5 weeks, not 5 years. 
   And just what is the US asylum policy? and how does it fit in?  And is it fair to give would be immigrants from hell holes a leg up on everyone else?  Just because there home country is dreadful?
   Inquiring minds want to know. 

Recesson Talk

Been a lot of talk on TV, even on Fox.  The newsies talk about rates of return on US T-bills.  Uncle sells a variety of T-bills, short term, long term, forever term.  The rate of return on the longer T-bills fell below the rate of return on shorter T-bills.  The newsies are claiming this is a sure fire recession indicator. 
   Dunno about that.  We have bond markets, open 5 days a week, every week.  You don't have to hold a bond until maturity, you can sell a long bond anytime.  Your broker can have the cash in your account within one business day.  That's faster than a check can clear.  People (people with money) buy T-bills when they don't have anything better to do with some excess money.  T-Bills pay a little interest, not much but better than nothing, and they are as safe as cash.  The US has always paid it's debts, ever since the revolution, the US economy is the largest in the world, it is protected by the strongest military in the world, and the US has anything thing you might want for sale, just as long as you have the money to pay for it.  
   If the investor doesn't have anything better to invest in, like new plant and equipment, new product development, dividends, hot stocks, whatever, he will park the unused cash in T-bills, until he needs it for something more lucrative.  I don't think investors really care if it is a 5 year T-bill or a 30 year T-bill.  They will sell their T-bill when they need the money for something else. 
  I don't see any connection between long and short T-bill returns and recessions.  The TV newsies do, and they are talking it up, but what do they know? Really?