Global Warming caused Mississippi floods

At least that's what NPR was pushing this afternoon. This isn't true, the Mississippi has been flooding in springtime since the end of the last ice age. This one river drains the entire center of North America, of course it's going to flood from the spring snowmelt. This year's floods are much worse than usual, about as bad as 1937. The floods work terrible hardships upon the people living along the river.
I find it distasteful to hear NPR pundits using this disaster to push their narrow political agenda. After blaming global warming they moved on to blame federal funding cuts, something about a single weather satellite not getting replaced on schedule. Talk about single issue politics.

Are we back on the air?

And, my last, terrible witty post seems to have vanished, at least for now.

The OBL raid according to Aviation Week

The helicopter that crashed was a previously undisclosed stealth chopper, a heavily modified Sikorsky H-60 Blackhawk. The one chopper to crash was brought down by a miscalculation of air temperature in and outside the compound. The Blackhawk ran into lift trouble due to a 15F difference inside the courtyard said Rep. Buck McKeon(R-Calif). "They couldn't hold the hover."
Two Blackhawks and two Chinooks carried the raiding party in. Four choppers is plenty of lift for only 40 raiders. Even after the loss of a chopper they had plenty of seats to get everyone out.

Cats of War

This one is funny.

That $4 billion oil industry tax break

Obama has been running around and running his mouth about a $4 billion tax break for the oil industry. Unfortunately Obama never actually says just what this tax break might be. Some net surfing suggests that he might be talking about Section 119, the Domestic Manufacturing deduction. This is a deal that allows all companies (and individuals too) to deduct 9% of their earning from domestic (US based) manufacturing, construction, movie production, and a few other opaque things, one of which apparently is drilling for oil.
This is a fairly general US income tax loop hole drilled back in 2004. Reading the opaque language of the statute hints that the intent of the statute was to give a tax break to domestic manufacturing to encourage investment at home, rather than in China. Just about every kinda company is eligible, it's by no means an oil industry tax break. It must have been buried pretty deep in the 2004 tax cut law, I never heard of it before.
Obama gives no indication of what he wants to do, close the loophole (raise taxes) for every one, or just oil companies.
At a time when cutting spending is the serious problem, why is Obama touting a chicken feed tax hike on the oil industry? Does he think the voters can be distracted from their quest for spending cuts by promising tax hikes on unpopular industries?

Egypt to go Islamist

Apparently Egypt is going the way everyone, yours truly included, predicted. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist extremist group older than, more extreme than, and just as violent as, Al Quada, is going to control the Egyptian parliament. This comes from an Egyptian who is likely to become president, which means he has a fairly good idea of what's going down. The Muslim Brotherhood has been around since the 1920's when it worked to drive the British out of Egypt. It has survived severe prosecution by Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarik. They are the group responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat. They are survivors, and they are the only organized political party in Egypt. There is nobody to resist them.
Once in power, the Muslim Brotherhood will make trouble for Israel, impose Sharia law on the population, prosecute the Christians (10% of the population) and team up with Iran to cause trouble for the United States.
Egypt is important. It is the center of the Arab world. Cairo has the same prestige in the Arab world as New York City has in the real world. Egypt sets the tone, writes the books, makes the movies, prints the newspapers that go all over the Arab world.
Aren't you so glad that Obama called for Mubarik's ouster?

Soldering Iron

I needed a real soldering iron (150 Watts) to do some brass bar stock. These are pretty much obsolete, no store up here carries them anymore. You can get soldering guns in that wattage, but the biggest irons are little 30 watters intended for semiconductor work.
So, what do you do when it is not sold in stores? Simple, E-bay. Some one on the Bay had a carton of cheap ass 150 Watt irons from China. Couple a bucks for the iron, $9 shipping and handling. So I ordered one. It came in after a week.
It's Chinese, and it's cheap ass. The packaging has some amusing Chinglish on it.
"It's normal for heating elements to have a slight fever with smoke after the first electricity, they'll disappear after 10 minutes." "Thermo elements and iron head are strictly prohibited to be demolished or replaced when iron is in electricity." "Mada in China."

Unregulated Tattoo Ink

Monday must be NPR's day of woe. After the autism piece, they ran a second piece about the dangers of unregulated ink used to tattoo humans. They dropped the amazing statistic that 30% of Americans have tattoos (really?) and then bemoaned the lack of government regulation of tattoo ink, and by implication regulation of the entire tattoo business, probably with an eye to shutting it down.
Now I don't hold with tattoos myself, I think they are dumb looking, and likely to cause infection, but if others want to tattoo them selves, it's none of my business, and none of the government's business.

The rise of Autism

Long piece on NPR this morning claiming that autism is much more widespread than thought. They did a study in a Korean city and declared that better than 2% of the children in the city were autistic. They went on to explain that a large number of cases were discovered even though the unlucky children had been doing well in school and not in difficulty.
The piece did not explain how these "hidden" cases of autism were detected, nor how bad the situation was.
I reflect upon a couple of young boys I know, who seem like perfectly ordinary boys to me, but whose mothers both informed me that the they were autistic.
Is autism becoming the new Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a diagnosis beloved of teachers, because it releases them from responsibility for the child's academic difficulties?

Leaf Day

In the high mountain passes of New Hampshire, the trees are putting out leaves, finally. Hurray.
Let's hope it doesn't snow on them.

Upstate NRA dinner

National is right on the ball, and forwarded my name and contact info to the local NRA organization, and they invited me to attend their dinner Friday night. So I went. It was held in the Littleton Elks hall. About 100 people turned up, all ages from two, thru teen age, thru old geezers like me, and a fair number of girls considering the nature of the event. Dress was informal, I was overdressed in coat & tie.
The event consisted of talking, eating, and auctioning. They auctioned off a raft of cool stuff to raise money, including a fair number of firearms. Two guys from NRA national turned up, which is not bad considering the remoteness of Littleton, NH from most of the US of A. On the other hand, 100 votes is enough to tip a lot of elections up here, and most of the 100 people present were NRA members. Who will probably pay close attention to NRA recommendations about who is and who is not, a supporter of the right to bear arms. I know for a fact that Charlie Bass, our current US rep, owes a lot of votes to a letter the NRA mailed to all New Hampshire members just before the 2010 election.
Gives one some appreciation of the effectiveness of the NRA as a lobbying organization.

Firefox 4

My Firefox has been nagging me to upgrade to V4 for some time now. I googled Firefox 4 and failed to turn up any bad reviews of it. So I upgraded today.
Be golly, Firefox 4 is faster than 3.6. I'm getting less "site not found", and when I click on a site it comes up faster. This is good. It promises a world of head spinning inprovements, about which I don't care much, but it is faster, about which I do care.

Al Quada gives the US a freebie

According to Fox News, Al Quada has admitted, on a website somewhere, that Bin Ladin is dead. With that, we no longer have to release photographs of the body to convince the Mid East that we really got him and it ain't a propaganda play. Al Quada has done that for us. Probably a quid pro quo for all those times our CIA announced that some scratchy audio tape was really from Bin Ladin.
It may also be, that between gunshot wounds to the face and a coating of blood, the photos don't look much like Bin Ladin. Which limits the value of releasing them.

Debate, Debate, whose on the Debate?

This was a Fox news show. They had Bret Bahr, Shannon Bream and Ron Williams, Fox regulars all, asking the questions. It was a little rough on the candidates, the newsies had done some homework, and the questions all started off "On such-and-such a date you said thus and so. Do you want to retract that tonight, right here on national TV?" They had hot potatoes to go around. Rough it may have been, but it did get the candidates to speak in concrete terms, rather than the usual meaningless motherhood and apple pie verbiage.
The five candidates were stood up behind podiums on stage. Annoyingly, the podiums lacked signs giving the candidates names, which makes it tough on viewers who don't know all five candidates by sight. One of the purposes of these debates is to let the voters get to see the candidates. If you don't know who they are, it's sorta meaningless.
Herman Cain is my favorite, and he did well, looked good, handled questions well. Tim Pawlenty looked pretty good too. Ron Paul had some feisty answers that brought a lot of applause.
The Donald, Romney, Newt Gengrich and Sarah Palin were not there, probably on the theory that when a better known and a lesser known politician appear on the same stage, the benefit goes to lesser known politician.

What do you do with terrorists other than shoot them?

Victor Davis Hanson makes this point here. The US justice system has had a Gitmo full of terrorists for ten years and they have not done squat, other than grilling them. Osama bin Ladin was shot resisting arrest partly because every one feared some US judge would set him free after capture.
We ought to be able to bring captured terrorists before a reliable tribunal that will conduct a public televised trial with the purpose of convincing the entire world that defendant so-and-so deserves what we are going to give him. The tribunal needs to be able to sentence enemy soldiers, those who merely carried packs and rifles under orders, to indefinite confinement, even if they are otherwise innocent of crimes.
It's worth letting the enemy know that capture isn't an automatic death sentence. The enemy is more likely to surrender if he thinks he has a chance of surviving captivity. If the enemy thinks the Americans will just waterboard him and bury him at sea, they are apt to fight to the bitter end.
The tribunal has to allow captured terrorists to be grilled for intelligence, grilled harder than usual police practice, and still put them on trial, and use the intel they furnished under duress against them.
It has been ten years since 9/11 and we don't have a method of dealing with captured terrorists. So we shoot them.

Pakistan, Country of Confusion

One thing we have to remember about Pakistan. The only road into Afghanistan runs thru Pakistan. Without Pakistani permission, the only way into Afghanistan is by air. We do NOT want to support our 40,000 man army in Afghanistan by air. So we have to make nice to the Pakis.
The Pakistani establishment, the landowners, the businessmen, the Army, the upper class, are inclined to side with the US. They fear India, which is five-ten times their size and which still bears grudges going back to 1947. They want an American connection to keep the Indians at bay.
The regular Pakistani's are sharecroppers, illiterate, poor, and scratching out a living farming with hand tools. They are Muslim fundamentalists, anti American, anti Indian , pro Al Quada, pro Bin Ladin, what education they have comes from madrassas, and they are all kinds of touchy about Islam, Paki sovereignty, and four or five other obscure issues that I don't understand.
The Paki establishment has to pander to the regular Pakis, lest revolution happen. Up until 9/11, the Paki establishment was attempting to take over Afghanistan using the Taliban as a cats paw. After 9/11 Bush told the Pakis they had a choice, dump the Taliban and support the US, or suffer the consequences. General Pervez Musharref, the Paki leader at the time, threw his lot with the Americans, and told his security apparatus, the ISI, to cool it with the Taliban.
So we have today's Pakistan, an ally with mixed feeling about everything. They have to cope with elements of the establishment who used to deal with the Taliban and wish they still could. They have to pander to the ordinary Pakis in the street, and they are putting up with American affronts to their sovereignty (Predator strikes and helicopter raids). That Bin Ladin was able to operate from a compound in Abbotabad for years is not surprising.
But we have to put up with it. We cannot break off relations and tell the Pakis to stuff it, so long as we need road access to Afghanistan.

Canada, Oh Canada

The Canadians ran off a national election yesterday and the results are wonderful. The Conservatives got enough votes to give them a real majority in parliament, so Stephen Harper remains prime minister, and he doesn't have to mess around with a coalition. Even better, "Bloc Quebecois", the old Quebec separatist movement disappeared. Poof. The Quebec separatist party dropped down from 60 odd seats in Parliament to a mere four. That's too small to qualify as a "serious" political party under Canadian election law, so they loose government funding.
This marks the end of the Quebec separatist movement, which has been a thorn in the side of the Canadian body politic for 40 years now. There was a time, ten or fifteen years ago, when Quebec came within a gnat's eyebrow of seceding from Canada. Thank the good Lord that didn't happen, and now it looks like it never will.

Coffee, making thereof

I have improved my coffee technique to the point where I can enjoy it black, no milk and artificial sugar needed to conceal bitterness. Start with real ground coffee, instant just doesn't cut it. Need not be a fancy brand, I get excellent results with Maxwell House and Shur-Fine, the local store house brand. Keep the opened coffee can in the fridge, the low temperature slows the evaporation of volatile essences. Use one heaping tablespoon of coffee to each cup (each 8 oz measuring cup, not coffee cup)of water.
Coffee maker must be spotlessly clean inside and out. The flavorful oils of brewed coffee coat the entire inside of the coffee maker and then go rancid if not washed off.
The coffee maker must be cleanable. This lets out percolators, the inside of the perk tube is uncleanable. French presses, Mr Coffee style electric makers, drip makers, and the all glass vacuum coffee makers will make good coffee. The maker ought to be the right size. You don't want to fill up an 8 cup coffee maker to make coffee for just you. Find a two cup coffee maker to make coffee for yourself.
Don't let the stale coffee and leftover grounds sit in the pot, the rancid odor can sink into the inside of the maker and disflavor the next pot. To make coffee again before doing the dishes, rinse the maker with hot water, add a drop of liquid dishwash and fill it with hot water. Let it stand until it's coffee time again. The soapy water will dissolve any stale coffee that might be left in the pot.

Hallelujah , Finally Got the Bastard

Woke up this morning hearing the news on NHPR. Even better, he's dead, shot resisting arrest. This way the US justice system does not get a chance to bungle his trial.
Killing Bin Laden won't end the war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. But it's a solid victory that heartens us and discourages our enemies.

Metrics that don't measure

The Economist ran a long piece explaining what America ought to do to shape up. Included in the mix was a long rant about "infrastructure", and the lack of "investment" (read spending) upon it. To prove the need for more infrastructure they show a graph of commute times for various countries around the world. The US is nearly the worst with an average commute time of 43 minutes.
Trouble is, commute time is a measure of how long we are willing to commute, not of the quality of the roads. When job seeking, the jobs are located in a circle centered up on your house. The longer you are willing to commute, the bigger that circle, and the more jobs contained therein. Improve the roads, and we can commute farther in the time we are willing to spend commuting. So we tend to find jobs farther from home and the commute time stays the same.
We don't need or want more roads. Boston, which suffers as much from rush hour traffic as anywhere, defeated an attempt to add two superhighways into the center of town. The state highway people tried to run I95 right into, and thru, the downtown. This occurred back in the 1980's. The folk whose homes would have been taken to build I95 rallied politically and defeated the construction plan. Boston, left with two ring highways, and four divided highways into the center of town, has all the road the land and the people will bear.
The famous Boston "Big Dig" merely buried the unsightly elevated central expressway in a tunnel. The fabulously expensive project did nothing to improve automobile access, it merely freed up some very nice downtown real estate that used to have the expressway standing upon it.
We don't need any more "investment" in new highways, we have all the road we can stand.

Leadership of the Anglosphere does a marriage

Weather in London was fine, William and Kate got married with all the pomp and ceremony that the British could arrange, and that's a lot of pomp and ceremony. A helova good show, enjoyed by multitudes. Why do we care?
The British monarchy is the ceremonial leadership of the entire Anglosphere, England, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, even India. This is the alliance that won WWII, and has called the shots world wide ever since. The British royals are widely respected, loved, and serve as a focus for loyalty and patriotism thruout the Anglosphere. They have been particularly effective in North America, cementing the loyalty and support of the obstreperous Americans to the larger missions of the Anglosphere.
The Brits may gripe about the cost of running the monarchy, but that's short sighted of them. For less than the cost of operating a single aircraft carrier or army division, they receive unparalleled support. Ask the Argentinians about that.

Right to Work in NH

House Speaker Bill O'Brien on the Neil Cavuto show, here. O'Brien is saying the right to work law passed House and Senate with veto proof margins. The guv'nor has promised to veto it, but O'Brien thinks the legislature can over ride his veto.
Funny, the Speaker never mentions the real reason to pass right to work. We need right to work because most corporations won't open new plants in states that don't have right to work. New Hampshire needs new plants to provide jobs for our out-of-work citizens. Too much of the New Hampshire economy is tourism, which doesn't pay much even if it is scenic and green. Just one good factory would do a lot of good things in a place like up country New Hampshire.

Dodd-Frank Financial Regulation Law

It doesn't regulate Wall St, it regulates anything that Dodd or Frank wanted to regulate. Buried in the 2000 pages is a requirement for US companies to report to the SEC yearly if they use tantalum, tin, tungsten, or gold from the Congo or nine neighboring countries.
Tantalum is needed to make high performance capacitors. Used to be only military electronics could afford tantalum oxide capacitors, while civilian electronics had to make do with aluminum oxide capacitors, but now tantalum is cheap enough for civilian use. Tungsten makes lamp filaments and tungsten carbide teeth to tip saw blades. Tin and gold have been valuable since Phoenician times.
Apparently Dodd or Frank slipped this goody into the financial regulation bill in order to cut off sales by Congo rebels. In actual fact it's cutting off sales from all of Africa. It also requires every company in the supply chain to do mountains of extra paper work, raising costs for all of us.
First I ever heard of it was yesterday's Wall St Journal. Apparently Dodd and Frank knew that a straight "apply-economic-sanctions-to-the-Congo" bill would never pass Congress, so they hid it deep inside their pet financial regulation bill.
Another good reason to never pass any bill too long to read.

Spring at last.

I opened the windows, sat on the deck, and put up the deck umbrella. First time this year.

Tax break for the oil industry?

Obama was on TV complaining about tax breaks for the oil industry. He wants to stop them, and spend the money (some $4 billion Obama says) on alternate energy. I have a question for Mr. Obama. Just what are these oil industry tax breaks? According to the web, the famous oil depletion allowance was eliminated for large corporations in 1975. So just what is this tax break, and why is it only $4 billion dollars. Seems like chump change for a trillion dollar industry.
And lastly, if such a tax break exists, and we end it, we don't want to spend the savings on boondoggles, in fact we don't want to spend it at all, we want to use it to reduce federal borrowing.

Do you like austerity as an idea?

The TV newsies (even the Fox ones) have been bloviating that Americans don't want austerity measures to balance the federal budget. This article suggests that the pollsters are asking the wrong questions and the newsies are repeating the wrong answers.
Balancing the budget is selecting the best of several unpleasant alternatives. Nobody likes tax hikes or spending cuts. When the pollster asks "Do you approve of this unpleasant alternative" the answer is always NO. Of course, nobody approves of unpleasant choices. I don't, and you don't.
The correct question to ask is "Do you prefer this unpleasant choice over that unpleasant choice." When presented with these kinds of questions, a goodly sample of Americans choose to reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending, raise the eligibility age for social security and bump up the limits of the FICA tax. Taken together the measures produce (on paper at least) a balanced budget. In one year.
This article suggests the Federal budget problem in Washington is the product of small bore politicians who aren't trying to get the budget balanced. Instead they are all trying to win the 2012 election, by bashing their opponents over the budget.

Sharpe , Richard.

Sharpe, played by Sean Bean, is a British officer leading riflemen in the Napoleonic Wars. Sharpe is dashing, handsome, an effective combat leader, the man Wellington selects for especially difficult missions. He has a beautiful mistress, later his wife, who is also a leader of Spanish guerrillas. She is shot in action, and dies in Sharpe's arms in the fourth episode. The villains are villainous, and get their just deserts. The costumes are great, the redcoats are bright red, the riflemen wear dark green with lots of buttons, the ladies dresses are wide and floor sweeping. Sean Bean has a much better role here than he did as Boromir in Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring.
Some British company did 14 episodes of Sharpe as a TV miniseries and Netflix has them all. The series is based upon a series of historical novels by Bernard Cornwall, and in my humble opinion the TV series does the books full justice. If you liked the Captain Hornblower mini series you will like this one. Good fun and good theatre.

NH State pension "reform". SB3

This bill isn't going to help us taxpayers much. First off it allows spiking. Pension is determined NOT by base pay, but by base pay PLUS overtime, sick pay, vacation and holiday pay, cost of living bonus, non-cash payments such as room and board, and some other stuff. That's right at the beginning, RSA 100-A:1, XVII. Employees work a lot of over time, and cash in all their accrued pay right before retirement to boost their pensions. Pensions ought to be on base pay ONLY.

It permits pension benefits of 100% of base pay. (RSA 100-A:6 a). That is twice what it ought to be. Pensions ought to half pay. If the pension pays as much as base pay, why not retire now?

It permits pensions be paid to employees with as little as three years of service!! (RAS 100-A:XVIII 1).

The pension department says this bill isn't going to save any money. This is a "note" toward the end.

The whole bill is too long, and has too much opaque verbiage in it. There has gotta be some expensive benefits hidden in the lawyerese. We shouldn't pass bills that cannot be understood.

Resaw, or why you need a bandsaw

Should you need wood thinner than the standard 3/4 inch (softwood) or 1 inch (hardwood) you are pretty much up the creek without a paddle. Thinner stock either isn't available at all, or it's special order.
Plenty of projects call for thinner stock. In my case I needed 1/4 inch pine for the model railroad and 3/8 inch walnut for a set of DVD holding boxes.

Click on the image to see the whole thing. I can't seem to make blogger size the picture to the page.

A bandsaw will resaw thick stock into thinner stock. You can cut a 3/4 inch thick board into three 1/4 inch thick slices, or two 3/8 inch slices. A low end 12 inch Craftsman bandsaw is big enough to do a lot of resawing. You don't need a big fancy DoAll saw (like a friend of mine has), a plain jane low end bandsaw off Craigslist will do the job.
I resaw with a home made fence to keep the board vertical. The fence is nothing more than a couple of pieces of plywood, fastened together in a right angle, and secured to the band saw table with C-clamps.

I use a square to make sure the fence is at right angles to the table and the table is at right angles to the blade. I use the widest blade the saw will accept (1/2 Inch in my case, with coarse teeth and big gullets between teeth with room to hold the sawdust created on a deep cut.

Obama can too bring gasoline prices down

All Obama need do is issue 50 or 100 permits for deep water drilling in the Gulf. Do it on TV, show stacks of paperwork, big "Approved" stamps all over them. Hand the paperwork over to some oil drillers, who then stagger out the door under the load of hundreds of pounds of paperwork.
Then expedite permits to drill in the Arctic ocean.
Then declare "Alaska National Wildlife Refuge" (ANWR, darling of the greenies) open for drilling. Explain that oil wells on frozen tundra don't harm caribou. Then open up the Atlantic and Pacific coasts for offshore oil exploration. Auction off leases to exploit shale oil in Colorado.
Do all of these things before the 2012 election. Watch the price of crude drop back to $50 a barrel. Price of crude will start going down within a week. Doesn't matter that it will be years before any of this comes on line. The crude market is a futures market, the price today is set by what the market thinks the price tomorrow will be.
When the MSM or the Administration says nothing can be done about gasoline prices, they are not telling the truth.

The Economist knows all about California

The Economist is a weekly news magazine from England. Unlike Time and Newsweek, the Economist still does real news mixed with a bit of liberal editorializing. This week they focus on the woes of California. Initiative, referendum, and recall, 19th century reforms, are 21st century disasters according to the Economist. "Too much democracy is bad." They go on to explain that initiative laws cannot be changed by the legislature and once passed, they live forever. Initiative proposition 13, the Howard Jarvis tax cap from the '70's is dissected in detail. Prop 13 put a 2% per year limit on real estate tax increases. This so impoverished municipal governments that Jerry Brown (governor back then) stepped in and offered state funds to the municipal governments to keep their payrolls intact. This had the effect of centralizing all budget decisions in Sacramento.
And that, in a British nutshell, is how California became a basket case. It's all because of initiative petitions.
That's a turn around from the American history they taught back when I went to school. In those days, initiative, referendum and recall were presented as true reforms of corrupt state governments and saviors of democracy.
There has to be more too it than that. Clearly the forces in favor of spending overwhelmed the forces of low taxes in California. The Economist says little about who the forces were (are), how numerous each side is, and what the crucial battles were, and how the forces of tax restraint lost them, or perhaps never even came out to fight. Despite being journalists themselves, the Economist says nothing about the role of the California media in informing the voters. They don't talk about the Gray Davis recall and the Governator. And why Arnold was unable to get the legislature to cut spending, or even pass a budget. Nor do they talk about the great California electric price controls and electric deregulation, which so reduced capacity as to cause rolling blackouts. Nor the greenies who obtained a law that makes virtually everything "known to cause cancer by the government of California." They never mention the name of Victor Davis Hanson, noted CA resident, author and blogger.
Bottom line. The Economist bloviates just as much as the rest of the MSM.

Predators over Libya

My question is, why drones? Why not manned aircraft? Unmanned drones are expensive and are intended for missions too dangerous to risk pilots on. Is Libyan airspace that dangerous? It's a no-fly zone, which means anything the radar sees taking off gets a fighter vectored onto it, and it's dead. That leaves SAM. Is the SAM problem that bad in Libya?
The drone pilot's vision is restricted to a TV set. I maintain a pilot in the cockpit, with binoculars, has a better chance of spotting targets, and aiming weapons accurately than a drone operator half a world away, sitting in an air conditioned trailer in Nevada.

Tax Reform, Federal Income Tax that is. Pt II

I used to think a flat tax, no deductions, no exemptions, no credits, no nothing, with a rate cut, would bring in enough revenue to run the country. Now I'm not so sure.
Federal expenditures were 17% of GNP from the end of WWII to Obama. So, it would seem reasonable to make a tax rate of 17% and that would pay the bills. No tax hike.
I looked at the federal rates from 2010. They start at 10% and work up to 33% at $370,000 per year. They don't hit 17% until you hit $50,000 (single) and $100,000 (married). That's after deductions, exemptions, credits and what have you ("stuff"). We need 17% to maintain the government at the pre Obama level. It looks to me like we need more than the current rates to furnish 17% of GNP to keep the government in money. If we drop all the "stuff" we probably cannot cut the rates much and still furnish government revenue of 17% of GNP.
Even with really solid spending cuts, the Feds are gonna be short of revenue.

BP is going to sue over the Gulf oil spill

That's right, BP is going to sue the maker of the blowout preventer that failed to prevent, and the owner of the drill rig.
Actually, the BP man on the drill rig bears great responsibility for the blowout. He ordered skipping three leak tests of the cement job, any one of which would have showed the cement job had failed and was leaking high pressure natural gas up the well. Then they pumped out the heavy drilling mud and the well blew. This individual has never testified and in fact, left the US to avoid being put on the witness stand.
The blow out preventer, a 500 ton valve on the well top, was supposed to close and shut off the oil. It failed. It was salvaged last summer and inspected on a Lousiana dock last month. Apparently the drill pipe was a little off center and the "shear rams" won't work unless the pipe is right on center.
This is described as "a design failure". They got that right. In action the blow out preventer sits on the bottom, with 5000 feet, (one mile) of pipe reaching up to the drill rig floating on the surface. It doesn't take much to allow the drill rig to drift off position by a few hundred feet, pulling the pipe off center. Any blowout preventer that can't close no matter where the pipe is located is useless.
Apparently this blowout preventer met industry standards and they haven't done anything to stiffen those standards since the blowout. And, industry rumor has it that blowout preventers often are not strong enough to seal the very heavy and strong pipe used in deep water drilling. So in real life, the maker of the blowout preventer was doing what they had always been doing, making blowout preventers to industry standards. That shouldn't make them liable, although BP has plenty of expensive lawyers and you never know what a US court will do.
Was it me, I would require all blowout preventers pass a real test, right on the deck of the drill rig before lowering them into the sea. The preventer should seal a piece of the strongest pipe used in the well. In fact it ought to pass that test with a single failure, one dead battery, one broken wire, one leaking pipe, one empty air tank, etc. And pass that test with the pipe off center.
The drill rig owner is the same case, they were operating in accordance with industry and Coast Guard standards. In actual fact, when the rig caught fire it knocked out electric power, putting out the lights (the accident happened after dark), and killing the fire pumps. The rig is floating in the ocean, there is no lack of water to fight the fire, but when the fire hoses and the sprinklers go dead, the fire wins. They should have had about four engine driven fire pumps in four separate locations. The should have had sprinkler protection on the drilling deck, in the power room, and at the life boats. They should have had emergency lighting. But, none of these things are required and so that were not done. They are still not required. And so, should justice be done, the drill rig owner isn't liable, but again, expensive BP lawyers and US courts might give BP a courtroom victory.

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.

Front Runner who ain't far out in front.

Mitt Romney. All the Sunday pundits agree that he is the front runner, but he sure ain't far out in front. Not with the Donald, speaking birther non sense, right on his tail.
Mitt's a nice guy, and he would made a decent president, but he's got a long way to go to get elected.

NH HHS

The head of the NH dept of Health and Human Services was on WMUR-TV (essentially the NH state TV channel) talking about state budget cuts and his department. The media (democrats to a man) have been wailing about cuts in the HHS budget. Now the department head is on state wide TV and he ought to be making his department's case for more money.
Well, he wasn't very good at it. He didn't say what his last year's budget was, what his this year's budget looks like. He didn't say how many New Hampshire citizens were accepting HHS services. He didn't say what those services were, how much they cost, how many they helped. He didn't say what would happen, would people be cut off completely, have their benefits reduced, shipped out of state, or what?
In short, he (never did catch his name) failed to connect with me. I was prepared to feel sorry for, and perhaps even support a little more money for, deserving citizens being thrown out in the cold. He didn't tell me how bad things are, how deserving the recipients of HHS services are, and how necessary those services are.
So, Bill O'Brian, go for it. Balance that budget.

Buying a gun at auction

That was this morning's exercise. Ammonoosuc Valley Auction Center (Mike and Jan Carver)auctioned off a big lot of guns this morning. There were handguns and rifles and shotguns, and a room full of men looking at the arms and then bidding on them. The top dollar ($600-$700) went for three US military 30 caliber rifles, two M1 Garands and a 1903 Springfield. Handguns fetched as much as rifles. There were a fair number of black powder arms, mostly shootable replicas rather than real antiques. I managed to snag a Marlin 30-30 deer rifle in beautiful condition. Living where I do, with black bears walking up and down my driveway, it seems reasonable to have a real rifle in the house.
Then we had to do Federal Firearms paperwork. Fill out a four page yellow form, check off 10 times "no" you are not a felon, not a fugitive from justice, not a drug user, not an illegal alien, and not a few other things. Then a very patient guy from Corey's Sport Shop telephoned somewhere and after a delay OK'ed us to pick up our purchases. No gun show loopholes in Littleton NH, except you didn't have to do the federal paperwork for black powder guns. Last time I bought a gun (45 years ago) it was simpler, you just gave them money and they gave you the gun.
So, brought my new rifle home and wiped it down with a little WD-40 on a rag to maintain the lustrous dark blueing against the corrosive effects of fingerprints. Need to join the local shooting club to use their range and buy some ammunition and a cleaning kit. That ought to keep me busy for a while.

The American Incline

Op ed in the Wall St Journal for Wednesday. I was gonna post a link to it but I couldn't find it on the Journal's website.
If you look at numbers, say population, GNP, and military spending, over the last decade (2000-2010) we have solid growth. Population is up 10%, to 310 million. GNP is up 21% over the decade, despite the dot com bust of 2001 and Great Depression 2.0, still on going. Military spending is up 55%
Compared to other countries, we are doing better than the EU, Russia, and Japan. India and China have been doing humongous growth over the last decade, so they pulled up closer to us, although we are still ahead by maybe 3X in the GNP department. Ten years ago we were ahead by 10X. Both India and China have 3X our population, so we can expect them to remain competitive for the forseeable future.
But, all and all, the numbers say the US is doing OK. There are a horde of lefty greenie pundits who have been crying gloom and doom, but they are just saying it, the numbers disagree.

Have the 18 wheelers burn natural gas

That's T. Boone Pickens plan, as reported in Forbes.
It makes a certain amount of sense. Natural gas tanks are huge compared to gas tanks. The big 18 wheeler tractors have plenty of space for the bulky tankage. Much easier than fitting a natural gas tank into a Corolla.
The writer estimates that converting the truck's diesel engine to natural gas would cost $60,000 a truck. That's damn high. I bought an entire new V8 engine for $3000 a few years ago. Then he thinks the government should pay for the conversion.
Apparently the conversion to natural gas amounts to converting the diesel to a spark ignition engine, and reducing the compression ratio from 18:1 down to 10:1. That's gonna cost you fuel economy, big time. I'd want to see some test results showing fuel consumption on the natural gas converted engine. Would the converted mill be more economical than stock diesel? At what prices for natural gas and for diesel fuel?
And, the chicken and the egg problem. Truck stops don't supply natural gas right now. They won't until there are some customers for the stuff. Truckers won't convert until there is a refueling infrastructure to keep 'em running.

Expenditures Rise to meet Income (Parkensen)

Medical care is like that. If the funds are there, they will be spent. Make more funds available, and they get spent too. You can always do another CAT scan (just to be sure), do more blood work (something might develop), make another office appointment (see how the patient is doing), prescribe another medicine (just in case). Then you can add more costly safety requirements. Such as requiring the air conditioning in hospitals hold the temperature to plus or minus one degree, no matter what the temperature is outside. Or requiring that even doctor's offices have backup electrical generators.
Medicare has no limit on payouts. Medics submit bills and Medicare pays them. With a deep pocket paying, a lot of medical stuff gets done, and billed, and paid for.
Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed a way to cut medicare costs. Seniors would be given money or vouchers to purchase health insurance. Where do the savings come from? Healthy seniors would tend to purchase "hospitalization only" plans and pay routine costs out of pocket. "Hospitalization only" plans are only $3000 a year, where as the "cover everything" plans are $14,000 a year (last year's prices, tomorrow's will be higher). Patients tend to refuse costly treatments when they have to pay for them. That's where the savings come from.
Medics hate this. They have to put on their best bedside manner and convince needy patients to dig into their own pockets to pay for pills or scans or blood work. Medics like to prescribe and not have the patient worrying about the expense. Improves the doctor-patient relationship no end.
So, is the Ryan plan a good deal for seniors and the country as a whole?
Depends. Ryan's plan puts a hard cap on the government's liabilities. Uncle chips in so much and no more. Patient pays the rest. This is good for the country as a whole. This country spends twice as much on health care as any other country in the world and we don't get anything for it. We would be better off directing that money into economic development, research and development, infrastructure, education, or other worthy causes.
Would it be a good deal for seniors? Depends upon how costly insurance gets, and how much Uncle chips in. This is unclear. Ryan's plan suggests/hints/handwaves that Uncle will chip in $10000 which is about what today's Medicare costs the government. Future contributions would rise at the rate of inflation. Would that be enough? Who knows?
Also, can the senior keep the savings that come from electing a "hospitalization only" insurance plan?
At a guess, it will work out OK for seniors whose health is fair-to-good, and visit hardship on those with poor health and no money.

Minor IRS improvement

This is the year the IRS gave up on mailing tax packages (instructions and forms) to us poor taxpayers. Up here you gotta download 'em. I don't know what people without internet access, a computer and a printer do.
However, all is not dark. The down loadable forms are trick PDF files that allow you to enter numbers in the blanks and them print out the completed form.
Neat. Up til now I had been doing my taxes on a Excel spreadsheet and then entering the spreadsheet results on a paper form 1040 using pen and ink. In my atrocious handwriting. This year I can type the stuff in and print it out, all neat.
I never got into TurboTax. I tried it once, and it was all web based and stored all my stuff somewhere out there on the web, not on my private and secure hard drive. I went back to Excel.

Ten year deficit projections

Would you believe totally wishful thinking? How can anyone project ten days into the future, let alone the years? The current budget discussion would be more honest if the debaters stuck to one year projections.

Words of the Weasel, Part XVI

"Tax expenditures" which really means tax deductions and exemptions. "Reduction in tax expenditures" which means a tax hike. Obama used both of these gems in his speech this after noon. After a lot of typical Obamaspeak, it seems that his plan to balance the federal budget will rely upon "tax expenditure reductions".