DACA, I forget just how the acronym works, but it was/is an Obama policy of leniency toward young adults brought into the US as small children, by parents who are/were illegal immigrants. Obama asked Congress to do something but Congress doesn't pass laws anymore and the DACA bill never happened.
Me, I feel for kids brought into and raised in the US from early childhood. They are now old enough for high school and college, old enough to enlist, and they are on Mr. Migra's hit list because they are not citizens, don't even hold a green card. For the vast majority of them, who have stayed out of trouble with the law, are gainfully employed, paying taxes, married, raising children, hold honorable discharges from the armed forces, they sound like solid desirable citizens to me. Let's naturalize them. We need more good solid citizens to keep the country running. It takes many tax paying citizens to pay for just one druggie drawing welfare.
Anyhow, the Trump administration isn't behind DACA, and revoked much, maybe all of the Obama executive orders that created DACA. And the matter is now going to the Supremes.
This should not be happening. We should have insisted on the CongressCritters passing a DACA bill. This kind of policy ought to be set in law by Congress, it should not set by presidential say-so (executive orders) or by the Supremes. We need to get on the CongressCritter's cases and insist that they stop messing around, and pass a reasonable DACA bill.
This blog posts about aviation, automobiles, electronics, programming, politics and such other subjects as catch my interest. The blog is based in northern New Hampshire, USA
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Let's hear it for paper ballots. Down with voting machines.
I have been saying this for years. Here we have a computer scientist saying the same. Voting machines are merely ordinary desktop computers running a "Look-at-me-I'm-a-ballot" program. They are vulnerable to all the hacks and malware that Windows computers are vulnerable to. Plus, since voting machines are all stored together at city hall in between elections, a determined agent can get his hands on them and always crack them. A patched ballot program that discards say 10% of the votes for one party can tip any election. They don't leave a paper record, all the votes are recorded in their internal memory and can be erased. There is no way to do a recount.
Whereas the good old paper ballot is secure against hackers coming over the internet, or carried on thumb drives. They can be saved and recounted. If the poll workers whine about the effort to hand count them all, they can buy ballot reading machines that work like the test grading machines used in schools. I remember the teachers using test grading machines back when I did elementary school, and that was a long time ago.
Whereas the good old paper ballot is secure against hackers coming over the internet, or carried on thumb drives. They can be saved and recounted. If the poll workers whine about the effort to hand count them all, they can buy ballot reading machines that work like the test grading machines used in schools. I remember the teachers using test grading machines back when I did elementary school, and that was a long time ago.
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
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.
Sunday, November 3, 2019
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.
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.
Friday, November 1, 2019
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
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.
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.
Sunday, October 27, 2019
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.
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.
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