Tucson Arizona shooting

My sincere condolences to the families of the slain, and my prayers for speedy recovery of the wounded.

When is a public company not a public company?

Under SEC rules any company with more than 500 shareholders is a public company and is required to furnish quarterly reports of gains and losses, liabilities, debts, sales, and so forth. That's for openers, in fact the SEC requires public companies to jump thru a large number of expensive hoops.
Facebook is a private company with less than 500 shareholders. They want to remain a private company. They also want to raise capital by selling stock. According to the Wall St Journal, one of the 500 Facebook shareholders is brokerage house Goldman Sachs. Goldman, having a lot of cash, bought a lot of Facebook shares. Goldman has now created a "special investment vehicle" backed by the Facebook shares, and is selling "special investment vehicle" shares to eager investors. Goldman salespersons say that owning shares in the "special investment vehicle" is as good as owning real Facebook shares.
In short, Facebook and Goldman Sachs have discovered a way for a private company to sell stock and avoid SEC reporting requirements (and doubtless much burdensome SEC regulation as well).
I'm of mixed minds about this scheme. The SEC, created after the 1929 crash, is supposed to prevent 1929 from happening again. I think most people will agree that the SEC has failed to do so. So, perhaps much burdensome SEC regulation should be abolished.
On the other hand, investors really need to know if a company is making or losing money, which is the purpose of the quarterly reports. Companies would not disclose such information unless required to do so by law. It isn't fair to let one company avoid reporting when it's competitors are required to report.

Whoppers heard on NHPR

I'm in the car, and the radio is on, NHPR with the Diane Rahms show. She has a couple of public sector union people on, who are trying to explain that public service unions are all that bad. One union guy says "the two major economic problems facing the country are the federal debt and the very low wages paid to workers.
Wow. a union guy and he doesn't mention 10% unemployment? He thinks a pay hike for his members is more important that keeping them employed? Scratch him.
Then the other union guy says "unions promote economic growth and right to work states have less economic growth than good old closed shop union states."
Wow squared. The 2010 census shows that the right to work states have gained population at the expense of closed shop states. All the states that lost US representative this census were closed shop states and the states that gained representative were all right to work states.

Bills in the NH legislative hopper.

There is a good one in there. HB1485 will allow construction of new houses withOUT fire suppression sprinkler systems.
Some back ground. Firemen and fire departments nation wide have been pushing for years to make home sprinkler systems mandatory in new construction. They have managed to get the national fire and building code to require home sprinklers. They are now pushing to make the newly stiffened national code binding upon New Hampshire.
Home sprinklers are expensive, $5000 to $7000 when installed during construction. If the firemen get their way, all new homes in New Hampshire will cost $5000 to $7000 more. For all that money, the home buyer gets those tasteful chrome sprinkler heads sticking out of his new living room ceiling. Good homey atmosphere, just like at the office.
The fire insurance companies are neutral on the issue. They figure extra claims from accidental sprinkler activations will cost them as much as the sprinklers save them by putting out fires.
Me, I've lived all my life in wood houses without sprinklers. I've never experienced a house fire. I have experienced an accidental sprinkler activation at work. Damn things came on in the middle of the day and filled the company computer room with water. That was costly.
We ought to pass HB1485. We shouldn't raise the cost of all new homes to mitigate a not very likely danger. Compared to the number of fatalities in auto accidents, few people perish in house fires.
It used to be a free country. Which means freedom to install, or not install a home sprinkler system.

Things I learn from NHPR

Salvia, a readily availible and legal herb, gives a rocketship high and out of this world hallucinations. The on-the-air piece raved on and on about the quality of the high, the clarity of the hallucinations. Miley Cyrus uses it the radio went on to say.
Damn, this is the first I ever heard of the stuff. Must be getting old.
The NHPR piece was allegedly about new wonder drugs that might be developed from salvia, but it really was a three minute advertisement for the joys of smoking the stuff.
Should NHPR be hyping a new "substance"? There might have been some teenagers out there who haven't heard of salvia.

Sunday TV Pundit Whoppers

Discussion of last weekend's snow storm, and its political repercussions. Lots of pix of snowy car clogged streets. NO discussion of the NY sanitation worker's job action, a slowdown on snow removal. That story has been all over the blogs and Fox, but NBC didn't mention it once. Could it be the sanitation workers threatened retailiation if the story was aired?
Then I heard NH state rep Terrie Norelli (sp?) claim that last year's state budget was only $60 million in the red. In actual fact, the deficit was far worse, and the Feds gave NH $400 million of Porkulus money to fill the gap.

So how to end Great Depression 2.0? Pt 5

Stop wasting money on windmills, solar cells, ethanol, and battery powered cars. Jobs are occupations that produce something of economic value, that can be sold, to pay the wages. The green's pet "alternate energy" projects just consume money, they don't make any. Heavy taxpayer subsidies are used to entice people into buying "alternate energy", gasohol, and battery cars. These projects do not create wealth, they consume it. The money would be better spent on real economic development.