New Hampshire's deficit is as bad as California's

New Hampshire is looking at a $900 million deficit this year. State spending will exceed tax revenue by that much. California is looking at a $28 billion deficit. Who is deeper in the hole?
New Hampshire's population is 1.3 million people, California's is 37 million.
Divide New Hampshire's deficit by the population to yield deficit per citizen.
$900 million/1.3 million = $692 deficit per citizen.
Divide California's deficit by the population to yield deficit per citizen
$28 billion/37 million = $756 deficit per citizen

In short, we in frugal New Hampshire are nearly as broke as free spending California.

NH Republican Annual Meeting

It was cold yesterday morning, about 4 above zero. Trusty car started right up and by 7:30 we were heading downstate to Derry at a sedate 75 mph. Google maps brought me right to the front gate of Pinkerton Academy, whereat the meeting was supposed to be held. Not a sign of a meeting. 30 or 40 other cars showed up at the same place, and everyone looked around and shrugged their shoulders. Some casting about found the event, it was in a theater up the road, only the theater building was signed as the school gym.
Meeting opened at 10 AM. Lots of pep rally type speeches, reports from various committees, and back patting talk soaked up the morning. Business really got started after lunch with the election of party officers for the next two years.
Fun started there. Outgoing party chairman, John Sununu, retired NH governor hauled out of retirement in 2008, had done a smashingly successful job, leading the state GOP to major victory. Supermajorities in the house, the senate, and all five executive councilors. Victory doesn't get much better than this.
The party establishment nominated Juliana Bergeron to replace Sununu for the next two years. The Tea Party backed Jack Kimball, would had run for governor in 2010. Juliana stood for a quiet bureaucratic party leadership that wouldn't rock any boats. Jack stood for an activist leadership pushing for real change. Both sides campaigned hard before the meeting. I got emails and snail mails by the bushel, plus phone calls from both sides. Juliana called herself, in person, not a robo-call. Two old friends, whose judgment I respect, called me on behalf of Jack Kimball.
On the way in, partisans for both sides were handing out buttons. I got a two inch round button that read simply "Jack". The razzle dazzle ran down and just about 3 PM we had the vote for new chairman. After a lengthy delay to count the paper ballots, outgoing chairman Sununu announced the results. 223 for Jack, 199 for Juliana. The house erupted into cheers. Shortly the Kimball folks started a chant going "Jack! Jack! Jack..."
At that, I figured my civic duty was done. I found the car and started the two hour drive back to Franconia.

Going up against the Federal budget

There has been a lot of talk about hiking the federal debt limit, something that will become pressing this spring when federal borrowing bumps up against the limit. If the Republican house wants to use this crisis constructively, they could say "After we pass this year's appropriation bills, so we know how much deeper in the hole we are going to go, THEN we can talk about OKing more borrowing."
The Democrats adjourned last year's Congress without passing ANY appropriation bills. The whole federal government is running of a "continuing resolution", which runs out about the same time as the debt limit will be reached.
In short, use the debt limit as a lever to lower overall federal spending.

How farsighted are suits? Part 2

On the radio this morning, Travelocity and Orbitz no longer display American Airlines flights. That will increase American's market share. At least that's what the suits running American think. Good luck to them.
If I worked at American I would be getting my resume in order.

Dr. Strangelove rides again, on NHPR no less

NHPR this morning had an anti fluoridation speaker on. He explained how fluoride in your drinking water led to all sorts of horrible health problems. He did admit that fluoride was good for your teeth, and he allowed that fluoride toothpaste was OK, but putting fluoride in the drinking water is dangerous and unAmerican.
Last time I heard such a strong anti fluoridation rant was from General Jack D. Ripper in Doctor Strangelove. Anti fluoridation had mostly died out by the 1980's. I wonder why NHPR decided to revive this mostly dead issue in 2011?

So what if they don't hike the federal debt limit?

The TV pundits get very dramatic and call it "shutting down the government" and "defaulting on our debts". Would it really be that bad?
Hard to tell. According to the usual sources Uncle Sam is borrowing 40 % of federal outlays. If we hit the debt limit, that borrowing will have to stop. That cuts Uncle's cash flow down by 40%, and he would have to reduce the check writing by 40% to avoid bouncing checks.
That's pretty drastic. But 60% of government activity could proceed as usual.
So what government activities would be in the unlucky 40%? Government suppliers and contractors should fear for their lives, they won't get paid on time, and perhaps never. Payments for projects like fighter planes would be put on hold and the contractors told to just freeze the program where ever it is. "Non essential" government workers would be furloughed. Say the departments of education, energy, agriculture, health and human services and transportation. Maybe even the obnoxious TSA.
Farm subsidies, highway subsidies, unspent porkulus money would all be frozen.
That all probably ain't enough. The next cut would be medical. Medicare and Medicaid payments would be "delayed". This would cause a firestorm among the patients and the medical business but it probably isn't as bad as the firestorm that would occur if social security checks stopped flowing.
All this turmoil will create irresistible political pressure to do something, anything. The path of least resistance would be to cave in and raise the debt limit and let the spending go on as before.
I notice the new Republican leadership in the House has wisely kept their heads down on this explosive issue.

WSJ writer is no engineer

The story headline was OK, "Toyota tries to break reliance on China." with a sub headline "Company seeks to develop electric motor without costly, tightly controlled rare earth metals." So far so good.
Then we get to some statements indicating this writer is fundamentally ignorant of things electrical. "All electric motors rely on magnets to make them work". Not true. Most electric motors, including the ones found around the house, don't use magnets at all.
Then we have "induction motors found in such devices as kitchen mixers". Not true, kitchen mixers use universal (AC-DC) motors. Induction motors are used to power fans and vacuum cleaners, not kitchen mixers.
In actually fact, very satisfactory electric motors, which used no magnets, were developed to power trolley cars better than 100 years ago. Such motors could power electric or hybrid cars.
Another type of motor, the AC induction motor, is nearly as old and, with clever solid state controllers would work fine. The clever solid state controllers would take DC from the batteries and turn it into AC for the motors. The clever controller would vary the frequency of the AC power to control the speed of the AC motor. Large railroad locomotives use this scheme today. The new AC locomotives are somewhat more powerful than the traditional DC locomotives that make up most of the world wide locomotive fleet. They are also more costly which accounts for the survival of the older DC locomotive design.
In short the writer thinks Toyota is working on a break thru technology. I think Toyota is doing a routine research and development project, drawing upon well known technology, to design a motor which will be optimum for their electric and hybrid cars.