Words of the Weasel Pt 18

"A clean bill to raise the debt ceiling". That's what Obama wants. "Clean" sounds so virtuous, all bills ought to be "clean". What "clean" really means is a bill to raise the debt ceiling without any troublesome requirements to cut federal spending attached to it.

Hand or power tools?

I was just prepping some wood for a home project. Ran it thru the jointer, and it looked pretty good, all clean and smooth, but.. It wasn't square. One edge was definitely thicker than the other. In fact I could see by eye that the board was tapered from side to side, like a clapboard.
Jointer can't fix this. Jointer will make board faces flat, but it does nothing about making 'em parallel. Proper power tool for that job is a thickness planer, which I don't own.
So, break out a hand plane. Clearly a job for the big 24 inch long try plane. It's a beautiful Record I inherited from my mother. It probably costs more than my jointer did. The iron was sharp, and with a little adjustment of depth-of-cut and blade angle, it was making paper thin curly shavings running the length of the board. I'm not a real hand plane pro, what little I know was taught to me in middle school shop class and that was a long time ago. But, it only took a couple of minutes to square up a four foot plank.

The DMV in the 21st Century

NH is right up to date. I was able to renew my driver's license on line. Beats standing in line at the DMV. Pretty soon all citizens are going to have internet access, a computer and a printer, AND a credit card just to get thru the day's business. God help those lacking all this hi tech stuff.

Standard & Poor's cuts Uncle Sam's credit rating

This is certainly a wakeup call, gets everyone's attention.
It is ironical that this bad news is coming from a firm that used to give AAA ratings to mortgage backed securities. Standard & Poor's bears great responsibility for causing Great Depression 2.0.

How much blood can be squeezed from a stone?

Answer: About 7.8% This from a Wall St Journal Op Ed. The Journal notes that revenue from the personal income tax has been 7.8% of GNP since WWII. Back in the 50's the top incomes paid 90% and the everyone's rates were 20%. Today the rates are considerably lower, but the revenue from personal income tax is still 7.8% of GNP.
Apparently higher tax rates cause people to find more tax dodges, or work less, or take compensation in the form of perks (travel, fancy company dining room, stock options, you name it)
Conclusion, Obama won't be able to tax his way out of his $1.6 trillion deficit. But he's gonna try.

Confusion in the North Country

Confusion started this morning with a light fall of snow. Stupid Beast insisted on going out, so she did. She left little cat paw prints in the fresh snow while the snow cold bit into her paws. Only took her 38 seconds to decide to come back inside.
Then we have a load of trees getting ready for leaf day. Lots of buds. Fortunately no tree had actually committed to leafing yet, so the buds remain unopened as the snow swirled thru the treebranches.
Then we have a lotta pine needles on I93 on the way to Littleton turning brown. I gotta get some pix. Does not look good for those poor trees.

Good reason to go off shore.

US corporate income tax is the highest in the world according to TaxProf.

Will the last industry leaving the US please turn out the lights.