Depressing mostly. I'm going to my 55th high school reunion shortly and I thought at my age I ought not to show up in khakis out at the knee. Littleton really only has Walmarts for guys clothes. I both a few there and then for variety, I drove over to North Conway to shop the world famous outlet stores.
Weather was poor. Overcast, cold, snowing thru Crawford Notch. Great Depression 2.0 has been hard on North Conway, it shows. Numerous strip malls and outlet stores closed and empty. North Conway is a pure tourist town, anchored by the ski area on Mt. Cranmore (home of the eccentric ski mobile lift) and a main street (Rt 16) wall to wall outlet stores. Granted it is mud season, inbetween ski season and summer season, but still, the number of dead storefronts was discouraging.
Then it's hard to find stores that carry stuff in my size. The racks are all full of shirts too small to fit my sons, let alone me. The slacks are all 34 waist by 36 inseam, I haven't worn a 34 waist since high school, which was 55 years ago. The shirts are mostly knit tee shirts with collars, the few shirts tailored from real woven cloth cost $50 apiece, a ripoff IMHO. Even more depressing are the LL Bean khakis with only the waist size marked. They expect you to find a tailor to cuff the inseam at the right length. Great, I'm really gonna get wash pants tailored, even $65 a pair wash pants.
Dunno what the chicks see in clothes shopping.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Saturday, April 25, 2015
"Investing" in the Balsams.
For those readers outside of New Hampshire, the Balsams was a big old summer resort way up in northern NH, up in Dixville Notch. Times were hard, and the Balsams went out of business a few years ago. Now there is a push to revive the Balsams. Adding urgency is the collapse of the paper industry in northern NH. All the mills are now closed, and the northern mill towns like Berlin and Clearbrooke and Lancaster are hurting. The hurt is so bad you can see it just driving thru town. So naturally everyone in Coos County is in favor.
Trouble is, the developer[s] are saying they need government support to the tune of at least $28 million in cash, and more in loan guarantees. Money to come maybe from the state, and maybe some from Coos county. Loan guarantees to come from the State. Which means the taxpayers cover the developer's risks. If the project goes belly up in a few years, my tax dollars make good the developer's losses.
The real question is, can the Balsams be made to work? To make enough money to pay its suppliers, its workers, and service its debt. Good question, which nobody is asking. The Balsams is way far north, too far north to attract Boston skiers. The drive is just too long. The Canadians don't ski in NH much, they go north to Mt. Tremblant in Quebec. Tremblant gets more snow and more cold than NH 'cause it's 150 miles further north.
I'd like to see a real business plan, one that shows how many skiers, hikers, snowmobilers, and others it needs to cover projected costs. I haven't seen it yet.
I'm OK with spending my tax money to bring some business and employment to hard stricken Coos country. But I'd like to see that the money has a chance of doing some good rather than just getting flushed down the drain.
Trouble is, the developer[s] are saying they need government support to the tune of at least $28 million in cash, and more in loan guarantees. Money to come maybe from the state, and maybe some from Coos county. Loan guarantees to come from the State. Which means the taxpayers cover the developer's risks. If the project goes belly up in a few years, my tax dollars make good the developer's losses.
The real question is, can the Balsams be made to work? To make enough money to pay its suppliers, its workers, and service its debt. Good question, which nobody is asking. The Balsams is way far north, too far north to attract Boston skiers. The drive is just too long. The Canadians don't ski in NH much, they go north to Mt. Tremblant in Quebec. Tremblant gets more snow and more cold than NH 'cause it's 150 miles further north.
I'd like to see a real business plan, one that shows how many skiers, hikers, snowmobilers, and others it needs to cover projected costs. I haven't seen it yet.
I'm OK with spending my tax money to bring some business and employment to hard stricken Coos country. But I'd like to see that the money has a chance of doing some good rather than just getting flushed down the drain.
Friday, April 24, 2015
Grilling Hillary
The MSM is sure putting up a lotta flak aimed at Hillary. The uranium thing being the latest. Could it be that the MSM doesn't like her? And is any of the flak scoring? The registered democrats (yellow dog democrats) will vote democratic no matter what. The registered republicans will vote against her no matter what. What are the independents thinking?
I notice that the Hillary camp isn't saying much, or at least isn't getting their side of the story out to TV. Silence gives assent. If she doesn't say something, the mud will stick.
If the flak brings down Hillary, who will the democrats run? And will he/she/or it be any better? Or easier to beat?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I notice that the Hillary camp isn't saying much, or at least isn't getting their side of the story out to TV. Silence gives assent. If she doesn't say something, the mud will stick.
If the flak brings down Hillary, who will the democrats run? And will he/she/or it be any better? Or easier to beat?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Hiking Minimum Wage
The Dems are all in favor. They think all the people making minimum wage will enjoy a pay hike and vote democratic in return. But what about all those people thrown out of work 'cause the business loses money when it pays it's unskilled labor $15 an hour? Well, they probably don't vote. In fact they are less likely to vote after loosing their jobs.
What is a just and equitable wage? And how, and by whom,should it be set? A business has a lot of claims upon it's money. It has to pay it's suppliers, the rent, the utilities, plant maintenance, advertising, the investors, wages, taxes, new product development, pensions, and lots of other things. How much should go to wages, as opposed to all those other things?
Free market thinking is that the business bids for workers against all the other businesses around. Workers, finding a business willing to pay more than their current employer, change jobs. This way the business that needs the labor the most gets it, 'cause they are willing to pay more for it. This works better than the now discredited Soviet communist idea of the state allocating workers to industries as it saw fit. And setting their wages too.
This can be hard on the workers, especially the unskilled workers, when there are plenty of workers and not enough jobs. In this case, companies don't have to offer much in the way of wages to get all the labor they can use. There are plenty more workers out there, all needing a job, and willing to work for less.
In America, labor unions solved this problem. Organize the plant, lead the workers out on strike, and management will cave. This takes some doing on the part of the workers, but it has been done, repeatedly, and it works. Management has been so terrorized by unions that it will do anything to keep their workers happy enough that they won't unionize. Non union companies pay pretty much the same as union companies, in order to stay non-union.
So, American wages are set by a combination of free market supply and demand, and union activism. Due to the long long Great Depression 2.0 that set in with the Obama election in 2008, wages have been flat since then. Companies lack customers, and everyone understands that a wage hike means a price hike which means fewer sales and hence layoffs. Nobody is very happy about the situation, but everyone figures it's better than unemployment or going out of business. So wages stay flat, and except for crazies like Boeing's machinist's union, nobody goes on strike. Everybody is waiting for the economy to get better.
So, with things sorta balanced out, but sorta shaky, is it smart, or ethical, to pass a $15 an hour minimum wage that will throw a lot of people out of work? This kinda boat rocking can tip the boat clean over and put us all in the drink.
What is a just and equitable wage? And how, and by whom,should it be set? A business has a lot of claims upon it's money. It has to pay it's suppliers, the rent, the utilities, plant maintenance, advertising, the investors, wages, taxes, new product development, pensions, and lots of other things. How much should go to wages, as opposed to all those other things?
Free market thinking is that the business bids for workers against all the other businesses around. Workers, finding a business willing to pay more than their current employer, change jobs. This way the business that needs the labor the most gets it, 'cause they are willing to pay more for it. This works better than the now discredited Soviet communist idea of the state allocating workers to industries as it saw fit. And setting their wages too.
This can be hard on the workers, especially the unskilled workers, when there are plenty of workers and not enough jobs. In this case, companies don't have to offer much in the way of wages to get all the labor they can use. There are plenty more workers out there, all needing a job, and willing to work for less.
In America, labor unions solved this problem. Organize the plant, lead the workers out on strike, and management will cave. This takes some doing on the part of the workers, but it has been done, repeatedly, and it works. Management has been so terrorized by unions that it will do anything to keep their workers happy enough that they won't unionize. Non union companies pay pretty much the same as union companies, in order to stay non-union.
So, American wages are set by a combination of free market supply and demand, and union activism. Due to the long long Great Depression 2.0 that set in with the Obama election in 2008, wages have been flat since then. Companies lack customers, and everyone understands that a wage hike means a price hike which means fewer sales and hence layoffs. Nobody is very happy about the situation, but everyone figures it's better than unemployment or going out of business. So wages stay flat, and except for crazies like Boeing's machinist's union, nobody goes on strike. Everybody is waiting for the economy to get better.
So, with things sorta balanced out, but sorta shaky, is it smart, or ethical, to pass a $15 an hour minimum wage that will throw a lot of people out of work? This kinda boat rocking can tip the boat clean over and put us all in the drink.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
How do I get photos OFF the tracfone?
Let's see, I got the Tracfone (LG model 305c) to dial, keep a phone list, speak to the new router via WIFI, and snap a picture. It's still flaky on answering an incoming call. But I haven't found out how to get the photo OFF the cell phone. My two computers won't talk to the phone on USB. They don't see the phone in network neighborhood. The phone offered to send the photos but all it offered for destination was telephone numbers. My real telephone number is a plain old wired phone, which will not do anything with pictures except make funny noises in the earpiece.
The secret of connecting to the router is two fold. Learning how to input an alpha password using the telephone keypad, and replacing the router with a new one to which I was sure I knew the password. I might had changed the password on the old router and forgotten what it was. Old router went belly up and refused to connect to the Internet, so I bought a new one and now two computers and one cell phone are talking on it, I think.
Any suggestions are welcome.
The secret of connecting to the router is two fold. Learning how to input an alpha password using the telephone keypad, and replacing the router with a new one to which I was sure I knew the password. I might had changed the password on the old router and forgotten what it was. Old router went belly up and refused to connect to the Internet, so I bought a new one and now two computers and one cell phone are talking on it, I think.
Any suggestions are welcome.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
The two wings of the Republican Party
On one side we have the Regular Republicans, present office holders, older voters, conservatives. These guys are not crusaders, they don't want to change the rules. The know the rules, they know what can be done under the rules, they know that they need votes, a majority of votes, to get anything done. They don't badmouth their political opponents, they know they might need their support someday. They don't believe in feuds and vendettas, they view them as counterproductive. They view the Tea Party as a bunch of rabid boat rockers who may well capsize the boat.
On the other side we have the Tea Party. They want serious changes in the rules, income tax reform, perhaps a flat tax, abolition of dead weight like Dept of Education, and IRS. They want scalps, starting with Lois Lerner's. They want to keep the EPA from shutting down all American industry, the FCC from taking over the Internet, the TSA from groping them in airports, and the cops from shooting them. They distrust all government regulators. They care about getting the economy growing again. Many of them are parents, worried about keeping their jobs, their kids finding jobs, buying houses, paying for college. They call the Regular Republicans RINOs.
Both sides need to bear in mind that the Independents are the key to winning elections. Only about 35% of voters are registered Republicans. 40% are registered Democrats. Registered Democrats (yellow dog democrats) will vote democratic no matter what. It's a matter of political faith with them. They voted to re elect Obama.
But 25% of voters are registered Independents. These people will vote for either party depending upon the goodness of the candidates and the badness of incumbents. Put the registered Republicans together with the Independents and you have 60%, a land slide.
Both wings of the Republican party should remember that their beloved wedge issues (abortion, war on drugs, gay marriage) offend Independents.
On the other side we have the Tea Party. They want serious changes in the rules, income tax reform, perhaps a flat tax, abolition of dead weight like Dept of Education, and IRS. They want scalps, starting with Lois Lerner's. They want to keep the EPA from shutting down all American industry, the FCC from taking over the Internet, the TSA from groping them in airports, and the cops from shooting them. They distrust all government regulators. They care about getting the economy growing again. Many of them are parents, worried about keeping their jobs, their kids finding jobs, buying houses, paying for college. They call the Regular Republicans RINOs.
Both sides need to bear in mind that the Independents are the key to winning elections. Only about 35% of voters are registered Republicans. 40% are registered Democrats. Registered Democrats (yellow dog democrats) will vote democratic no matter what. It's a matter of political faith with them. They voted to re elect Obama.
But 25% of voters are registered Independents. These people will vote for either party depending upon the goodness of the candidates and the badness of incumbents. Put the registered Republicans together with the Independents and you have 60%, a land slide.
Both wings of the Republican party should remember that their beloved wedge issues (abortion, war on drugs, gay marriage) offend Independents.
Monday, April 20, 2015
Internet Crapped out today
Both computers, Blackbox and Flatbeast complained that they could to connect to the internet this morning. I decided to wait a while and see if the Internet would come back of it's own accord. No such luck. So some hours later I called Time Warner Cable's help number. They were actually very helpful and with a bit of troubleshooting we decided that the router had croaked. So, off to Staples to buy another $50 wifi router. The dead Belkin router was only three years old, but I guess they don't make 'em like they used to. So all I have to show for the old dead Belkin is a 12 volt wallwart that I can use on the HO train layout. All I had to do was introduce the computers t o the new Netgear router with a new WEP password. I even got my LG cell phone to recognize the new Netgear router. Now all I have to do is get a test photo off the LG cell phone and onto a computer.
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