FAA authorization?

Lost in the sound and fury over the debt limit is an interesting sidelight. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorization ran out last Friday. There was a dispute over $16 million in funding for "rural airports" and unionization of federal workers. The TV newsies did not say just who was in favor of what, but we can guess. Any how no compromise was reached and the authorization ran out.
So the FAA furloughed 4000 bureaucrats. The air traffic controllers were classified as "essential personnel" so they are on the job and the planes are flying. The Newshour had Ray Lahood, transportation secretary on last night. When asked what the 4000 laid off bureaucrats used to do, he mumbled "nextgen" and "improve the FAA". In short, they drew their pay but were not doing anything essential. Four thousand bureaucrats cost $400 billion a year, or $4 trillion over 10 years. Jeeze, just leaving them laid of would give a enough spending reduction to satisfy demands for spending cuts to cover a debt limit increase.

And the authorization to collect a 10% tax on tickets expired, which is a windfall to the airlines. They pocketed the money and didn't reduce air fares at all.

All and all, let's leave the FAA un authorized.

Is Washington broken ?

Subject of the talk session on Meet the Press this morning. Translating pundit speak into plain English, we don't have the votes to pass our pet programs. And that's terrible.
We lack bipartisanship in Congress. Translation, those nasty Republicans won't vote for our programs.
Everyone is so ideological now. Translation, they are voting their districts and the districts are up in arms. Few Congressmen dare to vote for more taxes or a debt limit increase lest their districts vote them out of office.
Nobody will compromise and compromise has become a bad word. Translation, those nasty Republicans won't vote for our programs.

Debt limit?

Saturday TV claims a total break down of negotiations between Obama and Speaker of the House John Bohner. Maneuvering to place the blame for a government shut down continues.
A failure to raise the debt limit will be confusing. Some people will not get paid, and it's Obama who chooses who to pay and who to stiff. Unless Obama is totally out of his mind he will make payments on the national debt, pay the troops, and pay social security. Remember even under Obama, 60% of federal spending still comes from taxes, so the feds can pay 60% of their bills.
The Wall St credit raters like Standard and Poor are going apeshit and threatening to reduce the credit rating of the US government. However this is a sideshow, after rating all those worthless mortgage backed securities AAA nobody takes them seriously any more.
Republicans need to find a way to shift the blame to Obama, the real issue is winning in 2012 as opposed to gaining some mostly worthless promises to reduce spending in the future. All spending bills have to pass the Republican house and they can cut and trim the pork as desired, and they have until 2013 to keep doing so. In fact they ought to retain control of the House past the 2012 elections, giving plenty of time to reduce spending the old fashioned way.

A Marvel Comics Superhero movie

Captain America. It was pretty good if you like that kind of movie. Better than Ironman, better than the last Spiderman. Once the movie gets past the origin story, it settles down to steady ass kicking and that's fun to watch. There is a girl friend, who has an impressive upper cut and a government model 45. She spends most of the movie making Capt America pay for an incautious office smooch with a passing blonde clerk-typist.
The whole thing is set in the 1940's and WWII. The vintage scenes are well done, I was unable to spot any anachronisms. It's in 3 D, 'cause every one is doing three D. I wish the 3 D thing would go away. The effects aren't that eye catching, the glasses are annoying and the theatre charges extra for 3D movies.
For opening night, the crowd wasn't that big, there were a lot more people last week for the third night of Harry Potter.

Security, computer style, small business

Wall St Journal reports that hackers are having a field day hacking small business computer systems. Smaller operations lack a big well trained IT department dedicated to keeping hackers out.
For small business men, I offer the following advice to keep your business information confidential. Worry about the security of plans and drawings, the CAD files that control the making of your product. And the software, both source code and executable that make the product run. Email, customer lists, human resources material such as employee reviews, and especially payroll. You don't want your competitor hiring away your best people, and going after your customers.
Remember that Windows computers have no security, any high school kid can break in and do anything he likes, tracelessly. Windows computers connected to the internet are even more vulnerable. An unpatched Windows computer will be infected by a virus within 10 minutes of connecting it to the net.
In light of this, step one means don't keep anything on a Windows computer that you don't absolutely have to have there. Let ADP do your payroll on their machines. Back the plans, drawings and software up to CD's and store them in file cabinets. Review all those reports each department makes and keeps, with an eye to weeding out the deadwood and backing up the historical stuff. If you ever get sued or investigated it's stuff from your files they will use to hang you. Less is better.
Don't allow dialup connections to your company machines. A dialup user is most likely a hacker.
Disconnect from the network all machines that don't absolutely have to have live internet access. Those dedicated machines down in production that burn proms, and test product don't need to be on the internet.
Brief your people that anything they put in email is public, just as if they posted it on the cafeteria bulletin board. Discussion of issues of interest to your competitors should be down face to face, not by email.
There are no silver bullets, your company computer network is vulnerable. Your only chance is to remove stuff you don't want your competitors to see.

Geography

Today's WSJ had an article bewailing the poor showing of American school children on a geography test.
They taught geography when I was in third grade. By the time I reached sixth grade, they stopped teaching geography, in stead we had "social studies" None of my children had a geography book or class.
If you don't teach it, don't expect children to know it.

Corporate Income Tax reform

Corporate income tax (at least for publicly traded corporations) should be a straight 20% (down from 35%) of the yearly profit from the corporation's annual report, the SEC approved, and audited report they show to Wall St investors. No allowances for domestic production, use of ethanol, purchase of electrical vehicles, green goodness or anything else. No loss carryover, loosing money last year is no reason to get a tax break this year.
Rationale. Accounting is so slippery that clever and crooked accountants can and do turn losses into profits, loans into income, phone bills into capital investments, and similar trickery that we might as well take advantage of all the rules and paperwork that attempts to limit accounting swindles for tax assessment. Plus companies are less likely to declare purely imaginary profits when they have to pay taxes on them.