Capitalism makes us all rich.

  America runs (mostly) on free market capitalist principles.  And it works.  We have plenty of food, fuel, clothing, new cars, electronics, housing, electricity, clean running water, movies, schools, roads, every material thing imaginable.  We have it.  The socialist countries go hungry. 

   Part of our plenty comes from the free market regulating how much of each thing should be produced.  If we don’t have enough of something, the price goes up, and people produce more of it.  If we have too much of something, the price goes down, and people produce less of it.  This works, and we have just the right amount of everything.  The Russians used to have a bureau in Moscow that set production quotas for the entire country.  They never got it right, and the Russians were constantly plagued with shortages or surpluses.  There are so many different things needed by a modern industrial economy, nuts and bolts, gasoline, corn, spark plugs, broccoli, automobiles, etc, etc,) that no bureau can keep track of all of them, let alone figure out how much of each to produce.  The free market system, working on supply and demand gets it right automatically, no central bureau required (or wanted).

    The second thing about capitalism is that it puts its money into the right things.  Society only has a limited amount of capital.  Just operating a business, let along starting one up from scratch, requires capital.  Here we raise that capital by borrowing from banks or selling stocks and bonds.  Investors and banks put their capital (money) into things that look like they will turn a profit, and refuse to loan to things that look like losers.  Being that we have a lot of banks, and a lot of investors, they mostly get it right.  Capital is available for successful enterprises like Apple and Amazon.  Losers like Sears cannot get any.  We direct our limited capital into the right things and don’t waste it on boondoggles. 

   And finally we offer incentives for hard work.  Starting up a new business is a lot of hard work.  The entrepreneur has to put in 60 and 70 hour work weeks for years and years before it pays off.  He has to work so hard that he endangers his marriage, looses touch with his children and his friends, develops ulcers.  People, guys mostly, only put themselves thru this sort of ordeal because they can see a handsome reward, maybe not as handsome as Bill Gates, but at least enough to put all their kids thru college.  And without all these entrepreneurs working their hearts out we would be much poorer. 

    I am hearing that the youngest generation wants to convert to socialism, which is just a nicer name for communism.  Those kids are either misinformed, or just plain stupid.

Good old daylight savings time. Set all the clocks, watches, VCR's, car clocks, clock radios, back one hour. I don't dare turn the hands backward on my 100 year old Tiffany mantle clock that was a wedding present to my grandmother. I stop the pendulum and wait one hour and then start it up again. Cable box set himself back all automatically. So did the clock radio. Laptop running Win 10 set himself back all automatically. Desktop, also running Win 10 did not. I had to set him back by hand. I wonder what made that happen.
   We ought to stay on daylight savings all year round.  Up here, in winter, there is not enough daylight to drive to work, work an 8 hour shift, and drive home all by daylight.  You either drive to work in the dark, or drive home in the dark.  Of the two, I would might rather drive to work in the dark, I am more awake in the morning, it gives me a good virtuous feeling being up before the sun. Driving home in the dark is a drag.  

New York has gotta be crazy

Donald Trump announced that he was changing his residency to Mar a Largo in Florida so he doesn't have to pay New York taxes.  And the New York governor AND the mayor of New York city got on TV to say "good riddance Donald Trump".  Dumb move.  Donald Trump was a maga tax payer. I haven't seen his tax returns, but he must have been putting serious money into New York, both state and city. 
   Say goodby to some serious tax money New York.  You ought to be sad to lose a prominent citizen who has a lot of money.  Even if you don't like his politics.

Congressional Democrats are bungling impeachment

Impeaching a president is very unusual and requires really strong evidence, shared with all the voters to succeed.  In all the long history of the American Republic we only tried impeachment three times, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.  Only the Nixon impeachment succeeded.  Nixon resigned the presidency before the Senate acted, but I will count that as a successful impeachment.  I surely do remember the build up to Nixon's resignation, hours and hours of Congressional testimony on TV, the Saturday night massacre, John Dean, the tapes, Judge Maximum John, and many more.  All this had me, and the rest of the country convinced that Nixon had to go.
   Let is look at today's impeachment against Trump.  Congressional hearing conducted in secret.  Unnamed witnesses, a highly unreliable committee chairman, no House vote to impeach or even to investigate.  Nothing that is gonna convince the average voter that Trump has to go.
   The voters need the strongest and clearest evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors" before they will go along with impeachment.  If the voters are not onboard, they will remember in November, and vote stupid Congresscritters out of office.  The more intelligent Congresscritters know this.
    The democrats ought to be doing Trump's impeachment like Watergate, lots of TV, lots of public testimony, lots of publicity everywhere.  All I can figure is that they really  don't have anything on Trump.  

Al-Bagdadi snuffed last night. Good show.

Actually, it is too bad that we didn't take him alive.  He doubtless knew a lot of things that we would like to know.  According to the TV news this morning Bagdadi wore a suicide vest which he detonated before he could be captured.  But the plan was good, helicopter in some troops to take him alive is better than using a Predator drone to snuff him with a Hellfire anti tank missile.   
   I like taking out the enemy higher ups.  Strikes me as more civilized than killing a lot of plain foot soldiers just because we can. 

Wood chip electric power plants in New Hampshire

The State of New Hampshire published “Study Pursuant to New Hampshire Chaptered Law 156:228 (2017), subtitled “Study on the economic viability of renewable portfolio standard Class III biomass electric generation resources in New Hampshire”.  Good lawyerly title to obfusticate understanding.  Dated 21/1/2018. 

  The executive summary contains a couple of just plain weird statements.  “these resources are less flexible than intermittent renewables.”  This is foolishness.  The biomass plants can come on line when needed, say after dark, or on calm windless days.  That’s flexible in my book.  Solar goes away at sundown, which is when most of us need our electricity, to run the lights, cook dinner, run the TV.  Wind goes away when the wind stops blowing, something that happens pretty regularly up here.

   “While biomass is a major market for low grade wood, it is not the only end use.”  Oh really?  And what might be another volume use for wood chips now that the paper mills are gone?  

  Interesting figures provided.  Each of the 6 bio mass plants used nearly a quarter million tons of wood chips a year, 1.36 million tons altogether.  That’s a lot of wood.   At 50 tons per truck load, that’s like 5000 truckloads per plant over the year.  Pretty heavy truck traffic for most places.

    Discussion of hit to the NH economy from killing off the biomass plants.  They only count the plant workers, say 500 men, as losing their jobs.  No mention of all the loggers who cut the wood chips.  I would expect at least as many loggers as electric plant workers to loose their jobs too.  Jumps the 500 job losses to at least 1000. 

   The report shows the New Hampshire wholesale price of electricity at $35 a Megawatt Hour.  Or $35 per 1000 kilowatt hours, or 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour.  I have to pay 20 cents a kilowatt hour at my home.  Somebody is making a killing.  I’m getting robbed.  It also drives industry out of New Hampshire.  Companies always check electric rates before moving to anywhere. 

Crapware comes back to life

I have been trying to speed up my Win 10 laptop.  I believe most software is evil and the machine will run better if unnecessary software is removed.  Unfortunately, good old Windows Update keeps reloading stuff I kill.  I keep a log of things I have done to Flatbeast, the laptop, just incase I need to do them again.  Couple of years ago I  killed of IaStorDataSvc, a RAID drive support some-thing-or-other.  Flatbeast is a laptop, doesn't have RAID drives and never will.  And I zapped Bonjour, an Apple network thingie the Itunes wants.  I don't have an Ipod, don't plan to get one, don't run Itunes and so it was adieu to Bonjour.
   Well, this morning I noticed that both of these turkeys were back and running.  Must have been Windows Update.  Thanks Micro$ofties. You make my day.  Fortunately both turkeys are easy to kill, Add/Remove Programs does them nicely.