Repli Cars. We NEED a repli MG

Given that the worldwide car industry is clueless, they have been reviving great cars from the past. Call them replicars. We have a replica Beetle from VW, a replica '39 Plymouth from Chrysler, a replica T-bird from Ford, a replica Morris Mini from BMW, a replica Mustang from Ford, a replica Camaro from Chevy and a replica '49 Carryall from Chevy.
What the world really needs is a replica MG. MG was the car that introduced Americans to European sports cars. It was a cool little two seater, wire wheels, convertible top, four speed on the floor, in red or British Racing Green, decent gas mileage on a four banger engine.

The grass roots are rooting for candidates

North Grafton has been a hotbed of political activity this last week. There was a tea party by the Irving station in Littleton, a meet Ovide Lamontagne event in Franconia, a meet all the candidates event at the Littleton Opera House, and an all candidate lunch at the Gold House. Each event was put on by a different group of volunteers. The amount of political spirit is impressive. Attendance by busy candidates was outstanding.

Using Global Warming to raise taxes

Back a few years ago, New Hampshire joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI for short) along with the rest of New England, Quebec, Ontario, New York and Pennsylvania. RGGI put in a carbon cap and started "selling" licenses to emit CO2 to the utilities. The proceeds from the "sale" would be spent on energy efficiency improvements. I put "sale" in quotes because the utilities had no say in the matter, it was "buy 'em or we shut you down".
Back in January this year, NH budgeted $50 million dollars to "Greenhouse Gas Initiative".
Somewhere between the budget and the legislature, the $50 million from the RGGI fund was diverted to more pressing needs, namely closing the state budget gap. The legislature plead poverty.
Bottom line, the environmentalists used the global warming scare to slip in a new state tax. It was carefully camouflaged, the money comes from your electric bill, so the ill will gets directed to the electric company, rather than the politicians who slipped one over on us.
NPR did a program on this , here. If you listen to the discussion, you will note that the outrage about the diversion of RGGI funds from energy efficiency programs. None of the commenters on the program notes the job killing effects of the RGGI tax. Businesses planning a new plant ALWAYS check the local electric rates. RGGI jacks up NH electric rates and makes the state less attractive to new industry.
Perhaps a Republican state government could repeal the RGGI tax next year.

Federal deficit

Just finished watching a union economist on TV spreading dis information about deficit spending. Just to set the record straight, here is what deficit spending really does. To keep the US government checks from bouncing, the treasury sells bonds to Wall St. The buyers give Uncle dollar bills, cash, and Uncle gives the investor a treasury bill, a piece of paper promising to pay back the money in the future. To the buyer, the T-bill he receives is nearly as good as cash. He can keep it, sell it, use it to back loans. Samuelson, (my college economics text) called T-bills "near money". You can use a T-bill for nearly all the things you use money for, and so the buyer of the T-bill feels as wealthy holding the T-bill as he did when holding cash. In short, selling T-bills is just about the same as printing new dollar bills.
We don't like to print too many dollar bills because that causes inflation. For the same reason, we should not be printing so many T-bills, it causes inflation for the same reasons as printing too many dollar bills does.

The joy of driving to Brooklyn

School is starting. Youngest son is ready for his senior year. He had the car packed and ready a day in advance. Trip down was a white knuckle affair. Youngest son speeds, tailgates, and changes lanes so roughly as to set heavily loaded Subaru into scary fishtails. We were ahead of schedule until we hit the bridges of Long Island. The are working on both Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridge at the same time, so no matter which way you go you get stuck in traffic. Then Long Island is the usually traffic snarl, it took an hour to get from the bridges to Brooklyn. The State of New York is competing for the "World's worst traffic signage" award and looks like a sure winner. Sign reads "Eastern Long Island Midtown Tunnel". So which one is it? One is east the other is west, which way does this off ramp go? And they don't bother to post the toll on the bridges, you have to ask the toll taker how much, and then fumble for it. Best part of the trip, we found a parking space right in front of the apartment.
The "micro mile post" madness is taking hold in MA. They have shiny new expensive little signs calling out each 0.1 mile of progress, just like we did on I93. The sign making companies love it, but it doesn't do a thing for us motorists.

Is net neutrality ruining my broadband?

Dunno about the rest of you, but broadband service on Time Warner Cable is going down hill for me. Used to be you clicked on a bookmark and bingo, the site opened in Firefox. Now, as often as not, the website fails to open and you draw an error page indicating the site is unavailable. Pain in the ***.
Deteriorating service is either failing equipment or network overload. The TV signal comes thru just fine. The broadband goes over the same wires and amplifiers as the TV signal, so if the TV is clean, the network is OK too. So the trouble as gotta be network overload.
The traditional way of dealing with overloaded networks is to let the important traffic go thru now and send the less important traffic later. In my view, and the view of the ISP's, important traffic is traffic that a live human user is waiting on, and less important traffic is stuff that computer programs are buffering out to disk. Music and video downloads are the classic less important traffic.
But, the purveyors of music and video downloads screamed like wounded panthers and started up the "Net Neutrality" jihad. As of right now, the ISP's are under siege by the jihad and probably are letting the downloads block more important traffic.

Katrina, 5th anniversery thereof

Every one (NPR, NBC, WSJ, Fox, you name it) is doing a Katrina story. I watched Brad Pitt showing off new green houses with solar panels in the Lower Ninth Ward. We had pundits complaining of the slowest of the disaster response, community development corporations showing off new construction, finger pointing, and endless talk.
But no talk about the root cause. The root cause wasn't racism, classism, illegal immigration or dreadful public schools. The root cause was the floodwalls broke under the weight of 18 feet of water and let the Gulf flow into the city. Most of New Orleans is below sea level, and once the floodwalls failed the town filled up with water.
Before New Orleans can do much rebuilding, the floodwalls and levees must be fixed. No bank is going to grant a mortgage and no insurance company will offer homeowners insurance to a site that is below sea level, unless there is a strong public commitment by Army Corps of Engineers to defend the site against the next flood. Banks are not keen on mortgages when the collateral for the loan is liable to be destroyed in the next spate of bad weather. Insurance companies are equally reluctant to insure places that are going to generate humongous losses. Banks won't grant mortgages unless the place is insured. Few private citizens can afford to rebuild without a mortgage and insurance. Until the Corps of Engineers makes clear which neighborhoods will get levees and floodwalls, and which ones won't, little private redevelopment is going to occur.
In five years following the disaster the Corps has said nothing.