Is it a loop hole to be closed or a tax hike?

Strange bedfellows. Last week the Senate voted to end US tax breaks for the ethanol industry. Then Grover Norquist, long time anti tax activist popped up and complained that closing this tax loophole was actually a tax hike and he opposed it. Norquist does his homework, and has persuaded most congressional republicans to sign his no-tax pledge. So he is hard to ignore.
Then Obama came out four square for tax changes to cut the budget deficit. He wants to close a loophole for corporate jets, another he claims is for the oil industry but is actually available to all US manufacturers, and a tax break he says applies to hedge fund managers.
So are these tax hikes or loophole closings? And is this real money or chickenfeed? The corporate jet loophole actually applies to all new aircraft, and Obama hasn't said what he is proposing, killing it for all aircraft, changing it to exclude small jets, or to exclude all light aircraft.
The oil industry is taking advantage of the 8% US manufacturing tax credit which was passed in 2004. Oil drilling counts as manufacturing.
The hedge fund tax break is "carried interest", IRS jargon meaning the right to treat manager's bonuses as capital gains. Managers get a bonus based upon how much the funds assets appreciate, and the IRS allows this to be taxed at the 15% capital gains rate rather than the 35% ordinary interest rate. The democrats tried to make this law last year but failed. This one is probably real money, the other two are chicken feed.
So what we have here is probably loophole closing, but the Republicans are properly rejecting it as tax hikes, because you don't want to give Obama anything on the revenue side until you have pinned him down on spending cuts.

Waterboarding

"The Interrogator: An Education" by Glenn L. Carle. Reviewed in the Wall St Journal by Ali Soufan. The author retired from CIA, the reviewer retired from the FBI, and both of them did some of the interrogation of 9/11 detainees. They both conclude that "enhanced interrogation techniques" (aka waterboarding) did no good. Under duress, all but the dumbest detainee would tell the interrogator anything he wanted to hear, just to make it stop hurting.

What price Alternate Energy?

Harbor Freight, a low end retailer of low end tools and hardware, is offering a 45 Watt solar panel for $169.99, or $3.77 per watt. Same catalog offers a 800 watt gasoline generator for $99.99, or $0.12 per watt. Or, a utility can buy a 1 Gigawatt nuclear plant for $6 billion, or $0.006 per watt.
Solar cells are not going anywhere because they cost way too much. And they don't give any electricity after the sun goes down, which is when I really want my electric lights to work.

What are kids reading today?

Does not look good. Take a look here The only book in the whole list that is any good is The Golden Compass by Pullman. The rest have just horrible stories featuring suicide, rape, cutting, drug use, and a distopia (The Giver)that makes 1984 look like summer camp. Bummers all of 'em.
What happened to the books I enjoyed in middle and high school? J.R.R. Tolkien, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert A. Heinlein, Rudyard Kipling, Andre Norton, Isaac Asimov, Montgomery Atwater, Sperry Armstrong, Poul Anderson, L. Frank Baum, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jules Verne, Frans Gunnar Bengtson, Fletcher Pratt, Willy Ley?

An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson

A good read. Atkinson tells the story of the WWII North African invasion, Operation Torch. It starts off with controversy, the American general staff was dead set against it. Roosevelt intervened, over rode the US military's objections, and the operation was on. The invasion fleet loaded up in Norfolk Virginia, steamed across the Atlantic and hit the North African beaches some 3000 miles away. One troopship was torpedoed and the troops lowered their landing craft in mid Atlantic, planning to motor the rest of the way. They didn't make it, and had to be rescued by a destroyer, but it was a noble effort.
Then there was a need for a shallow draft vessel to bring bombs and aviation gas up a shallow river to an airfield. A tired banana boat, the Contessa, was commandeered, dry docked for a scrape and paint of the hull, plus leak repairs. When the crew heard where the Contessa was bound, they all jumped ship. The captain and first mate go down to the Norfolk jail and pretty soon they have a new crew of men who think crossing the sub infested Atlantic, loaded with gasoline and explosives, is a better deal than a Virginia chain gang. The Contessa makes it, picks up a local pilot, gets up the river and unloads at the airfield.
Any history buff will enjoy this one.

NH Budget

We should praise our New Hampshire legislators for passing a real balanced budget. Give them extra credit for getting the governor to go along with it. The new budget reduces state spending by 11.7% from last year. These are real cuts. Real cuts occur when the agencies get less money than they got last time. Fake cuts (popular in government circles) occur when the agencies get less than they asked for. This budget has real cuts.
Much angst has been raised among democrats about cuts to worthy programs. In the real world, there is never enough money to pay for all the worthy programs. The programs cut are all worthy programs, but we just do not have the money to pay for them. We will never have to money to pay for all the things that would be nice to have.
The state only has so much money. It can’t get any more without raising taxes. We taxpayers are paying too much right now. We are facing layoffs; cuts in hours worked; a dreadful job market; increased gasoline and furnace oil prices; and increased food prices. We don’t have any more money to give to the state.

Swiss bomb shelters

According to the Journal, Swiss building codes require all new residential construction to have a bomb shelter. And, said shelter is supposed to be hard enough to ride out a 12 megaton nuke at 700 meters. Damn, that's hard. I don't think missile silo's are that hard.
Now that the cold war is over the Swiss are debating relaxing the bomb shelter requirements...