Now that NH has a Republican governor to sign a right-to-work law, maybe we could pass one. Why do we care? Simple. No Right to Work, no corporate investment. No factories, warehouses, ternimals, help centers, nothing. If the state isn't right to work, companies go elsewhere. NH needs investment to create jobs. Every June, we see all our new high school and college graduates leave the state to find decent paying work. I'll grant that NH has a low unemployment rate, but that's largely because the unemployed, being hard working New Hampsters, leave the state to find work, rather that drawing welfare.
To create jobs, we need someone, corporations mostly, to build factories and other facilities. And we need to attract corporations to expand in NH. If we passed right to work, we would be the ONLY right to work state for 500 miles in every direction. There has got to be companies that need a facility in the Northeast. If NH was right to work, all those facilities would be built in NH.
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Disappointment: Museum of the American Indian
The Smithsonian opened this one a while ago, but it's still pretty new in my book. The building architecture is strange, no style known to me, does not suggest any sort of Indian architecture, an odd colored yellow stone facing, a fine location right on the Mall.
Collections were mediocre to poor. The Inca floor had only a few nondescript earth colored pots. A lot of stuff from the twentieth century. Dating was vague. The older things were all dated 1432-1547. The modern stuff was mostly dated 1960-2000. You would think they could date things more closely than +/- fifty years. And the curators flunk spelling. They spell Inca with a K. Consistently.
And it's pretty political for a museum. As everyone knows, there are a lot of Indian groups with grievances against the white man. A lot of such groups had posters or even whole displays supporting their points of view. Your tax dollars at work.
Collections were mediocre to poor. The Inca floor had only a few nondescript earth colored pots. A lot of stuff from the twentieth century. Dating was vague. The older things were all dated 1432-1547. The modern stuff was mostly dated 1960-2000. You would think they could date things more closely than +/- fifty years. And the curators flunk spelling. They spell Inca with a K. Consistently.
And it's pretty political for a museum. As everyone knows, there are a lot of Indian groups with grievances against the white man. A lot of such groups had posters or even whole displays supporting their points of view. Your tax dollars at work.
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Shoot down the NORK missile launch?
Pudgy NORK dictator Kim Jung whats-his-face is threatening an ICBM test launch of a missile that could reach the US with a nuclear warhead in a few days.
Today's Wall St Journal suggests that we ought to shoot it down. The Journal would have a Navy Aegius cruiser standing off shore put a SAM thru the NORK missile as it boosts up.
Not a bad idea.
If I was doing it, I would have an Air Force AC-130 gunship orbit the launch pad and ventilate the NORK missile with 20mm Vulcan cannon fire. This would need some fighter escort against NORK fighters, and some Wild Weasel support against NORK SAMs, but it's doable. The strike force could assemble out to sea, over international waters, and fly into NORK airspace only after intelligence positively located the missile standing on the pad. North Korea isn't all that big and a strike force flying at 400 knots can be anywhere inside North Korea in no time at all.
Today's Wall St Journal suggests that we ought to shoot it down. The Journal would have a Navy Aegius cruiser standing off shore put a SAM thru the NORK missile as it boosts up.
Not a bad idea.
If I was doing it, I would have an Air Force AC-130 gunship orbit the launch pad and ventilate the NORK missile with 20mm Vulcan cannon fire. This would need some fighter escort against NORK fighters, and some Wild Weasel support against NORK SAMs, but it's doable. The strike force could assemble out to sea, over international waters, and fly into NORK airspace only after intelligence positively located the missile standing on the pad. North Korea isn't all that big and a strike force flying at 400 knots can be anywhere inside North Korea in no time at all.
What to do about Obamacare?
Obamacare is a disaster. The costs it lays on business has stalled hiring, stalled expansion, and generally slowed the economy. Obamacare is one of the reasons for the miserable 1% growth of GNP in the Obama years. GNP growth used to be 3.5% back before Obama. Obamacare along with some other misguided Obama policies knocked it down to 1%. That's not enough growth to offer employment to match our population growth let along reduce unemployment and raise wages.
And, the US spends too darn much on healthcare. We spend 19% of GNP on healthcare, where as all the other countries in the world only spend half that. And US health is no better than many other countries who spend much much less. This means that US exports have to be priced 19% higher than direct manufacturing cost, just to pay for the workers healthcare. Whereas our international competitors, places like Japan, the EU, South Korea, even Canada, only have to mark their products up 9.5% That's a crippling price disadvantage in the marketplace. And it drives US companies to move operations overseas to avoid US healthcare costs.
The Obamacare law is some 10,000 pages long. Nobody can read 10,000 pages of legal gobble-de-gook and understand it, even if it doesn't drive them mad. Trump needs to repeal all 10,000 pages just to eliminate surprise clauses springing to life and doing badness. Modifications or amendments are a slippery slope that open the door to all sorts of crookedness. Trump needs to kill the whole thing, root and branch. If there are parts of Obamacare that people want to keep, pass them as new laws and Trump will sign them.
Most Americans (say 80%)get their healthcare insurance thru their employers, or from Medicare after they retire. Obamacare only helped the self-employed, and the medium poor, the extremely poor get Medicaid. First thing to do is to increase competition by allowing interstate sale of health insurance. Any insurance company, based in any state, should have the right to sell insurance in all 50 states, WITHOUT doing any paperwork anywhere except in their home state. Right now, to sell insurance in any state, the insurance company is required to do a couple of tons of paperwork for the state "regulators". For small rural states (like NH) most insurers just don't bother, the market ain't that worthwhile. Which is why we only have two companies offering insurance up here. Allow interstate sales and we would get more choices and better prices.
Then to curb drug price ripoffs, $800 Epipens and $100 pills, we need to allow duty free import of drugs from any first world country, Canada, the EU, Japan and places like that. Any drug the authorities of a first world country have approved can be imported, even if the US FDA hasn't approved them yet. FDA will scream and cry, and so will big Pharma, but too bad.
And, the US spends too darn much on healthcare. We spend 19% of GNP on healthcare, where as all the other countries in the world only spend half that. And US health is no better than many other countries who spend much much less. This means that US exports have to be priced 19% higher than direct manufacturing cost, just to pay for the workers healthcare. Whereas our international competitors, places like Japan, the EU, South Korea, even Canada, only have to mark their products up 9.5% That's a crippling price disadvantage in the marketplace. And it drives US companies to move operations overseas to avoid US healthcare costs.
The Obamacare law is some 10,000 pages long. Nobody can read 10,000 pages of legal gobble-de-gook and understand it, even if it doesn't drive them mad. Trump needs to repeal all 10,000 pages just to eliminate surprise clauses springing to life and doing badness. Modifications or amendments are a slippery slope that open the door to all sorts of crookedness. Trump needs to kill the whole thing, root and branch. If there are parts of Obamacare that people want to keep, pass them as new laws and Trump will sign them.
Most Americans (say 80%)get their healthcare insurance thru their employers, or from Medicare after they retire. Obamacare only helped the self-employed, and the medium poor, the extremely poor get Medicaid. First thing to do is to increase competition by allowing interstate sale of health insurance. Any insurance company, based in any state, should have the right to sell insurance in all 50 states, WITHOUT doing any paperwork anywhere except in their home state. Right now, to sell insurance in any state, the insurance company is required to do a couple of tons of paperwork for the state "regulators". For small rural states (like NH) most insurers just don't bother, the market ain't that worthwhile. Which is why we only have two companies offering insurance up here. Allow interstate sales and we would get more choices and better prices.
Then to curb drug price ripoffs, $800 Epipens and $100 pills, we need to allow duty free import of drugs from any first world country, Canada, the EU, Japan and places like that. Any drug the authorities of a first world country have approved can be imported, even if the US FDA hasn't approved them yet. FDA will scream and cry, and so will big Pharma, but too bad.
Monday, January 2, 2017
Did Snowden have a "Need to Know"?
You gotta blame NSA for first of all, not checking Snowden's background before issuing him a security clearance. You would think a simple background check would have turned up evidence of flakiness. Back when I got a Top Secret clearance, the FBI followed up and interviewed my references. I do remember going back to my high school reunion and running into old Fred Swan, teacher of physics, swim team coach, and all around decent man. Fred says to me, "Did you know the FBI has been around asking about you?" I wonder if they did the same for Snowden.
Second of all, for granting him access to so much stuff. We used to have a doctrine of "Need-to-Know". You didn't get to see classified material unless you had a clearance, AND, a need to know the information.
Seems like NSA gave Snowden free run over all their classified. And I never did hear just what Snowden was supposed to be doing on the job. Other than passing every thing to the Russians.
Second of all, for granting him access to so much stuff. We used to have a doctrine of "Need-to-Know". You didn't get to see classified material unless you had a clearance, AND, a need to know the information.
Seems like NSA gave Snowden free run over all their classified. And I never did hear just what Snowden was supposed to be doing on the job. Other than passing every thing to the Russians.
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Obama tries to delegitimize Trump with Russians
Obama is making this big Russian hacking fuss to make Trump's election win seem illegitimate. He is saying that Trump would not have won with out help from Russian scumbags. Obama came out on TV and blamed the Russians for the Democratic National Committee hacks and claimed they tipped the election to Trump. Trump went on TV and pooh-poohed the Russians-did-the-hack theory. And surprise, surprise, the voters believed Trump's story rather than Obama's. Even when Obama claimed the CIA and 17 other intelligence agencies support the Russians-did-it story, the public has real doubts about the intelligence and honesty of CIA and 17 other faceless intelligence agencies.
So Obama declared 35 Russian "diplomats" to be persons non grata and must leave the country ASAP. I'm thinking Obama did that to support the Russians-did-it story rather than to make the Russians smart.
And for a side effect, it might make President Trump's dealing with the Russians harder in the future. That makes it a twofer.
I will grant that the DNC hacks and the Podesta email hack didn't help Hillary, but I won't think they were decisive. The Hillary private server, which was outed by the New York Times, hurt Hillary more.
So Obama declared 35 Russian "diplomats" to be persons non grata and must leave the country ASAP. I'm thinking Obama did that to support the Russians-did-it story rather than to make the Russians smart.
And for a side effect, it might make President Trump's dealing with the Russians harder in the future. That makes it a twofer.
I will grant that the DNC hacks and the Podesta email hack didn't help Hillary, but I won't think they were decisive. The Hillary private server, which was outed by the New York Times, hurt Hillary more.
Happy New Year
Things to be thankful for. The endless election is finally OVER. Maybe in a few more weeks the MSM will figure that out too. And the Republicans won. Hallelujah. And old 2016 may be the year the MSM finally blew it and people no longer believe what they say. And I'm gonna miss Carrie Fisher. She put a lot of life into the Star Wars movies.
Things to hope for. Economic recovery in the US. 1% GNP growth is miserable and just this side of Great Depression. Let's do better in 2017.
Things to hope for. Economic recovery in the US. 1% GNP growth is miserable and just this side of Great Depression. Let's do better in 2017.
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