Who is in the "House Freedom Caucus"?

Karl Rove, writing in a Wall St Journal op-ed,  calls them the biggest obstacle to tax reform.  I'm inclined to believe Karl Rove, he has been around a long time, he was a key player in the last Bush administration.  I wonder who the 30 members of the "House Freedom Caucus" are.  They were responsible for the Republican failure to pass Obamacare repeal and replace, which may cost Republicans their control of Congress in 2018.  Karl thinks they will scuttle tax reform too. 
   We ought to publish their names, publish their voting records, and try to primary them in 2018.  If we don't know who they are, it's hard to lower the boom on them. 

Sorting Fake News from Real News

NHPR was going on and on about this just today.  It's a good point, especially for younger folk, teenagers, who lack experience, and find the Internet is full of all sorts of BS.  Used to be, to get your ideas before the public, you had to do a deal with a man who owned a printing press, either a newspaper/magazine editor, or a publishing house.  To get your ideas printed, you had to convince one of these guys that your ideas were worthy.  This screened out a lot of weirdos. 
   Now in the internet age, everyone has the small change it takes for an internet connection, there are no barriers to entry, on the Internet no one knows you are a dog. So how do you sort out the fake from the real news?
   First, you look to the source.  For instance on the net, Instapundit is pretty fair, Republican, and reliable.  HuffPost is leftie greenie and not so reliable.  For the professional media, the Wall St Journal is very reliable and Republican.  The New York Times has been flaky for 80 years and is Democratic shading into Communist.  The Washington Post is Democratic and fairly reliable, less reliable than the Journal, more reliable than the NY Times.  On TV, Fox News is pretty good, abet Republican.  MSNBC is mostly worthless.   One thing to watch out for, the people who write for the professional media are poorly educated, not very smart, all lefties and greenies, and they think they know it all. And they all watched "All The Presidents Men" and they all want to do a Woodward and Bernstein number.  They love to trash American presidents, especially Republican ones.  You need to keep track of sources and build up your own list of reliable and flaky sources.
   Next you make an opinion survey.  Do several sources tell the same story?  A quick Google will find you a slather of pieces on any imaginable topic.  Do all the pieces agree? or do most of them trash the idea? 
   Then we ask ourselves some questions.  Is the piece you have fallen in love with describe something too good to be true?  If so, it probably isn't true.  Have I ever heard of this author before? Have I ever heard of his platform (website, newspaper, TV channel) before?   For instance, if the subject is physics and the author is Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman it's most probably true.  On the other hand if the subject is global warming and the author is Michael Mann, it's most likely false. 
   Does the piece use numbers?  Number of years before catastrophe, number of dollars to do whatever, etc.  Newsies are innumerate, any piece that never mentions a number is suspect.  Does the piece give evidence or examples to back up it's claims?   How is the author on spelling , dates, and names?  An author who fails to get simple stuff right is suspect. 
   Good luck wading thru the swamps.

New Record for Household Incomes. Wall St Journal

They show a graph of the median income, the income where half the country earns less and half the country earns more.  For 2016 we get up to $59,039, but it was nearly as good ($58665) way back in 1999.  In short, median income has only risen a measly $374 over the span of 17 years.  Pretty chinsy (0.6%)  in my book.
  Things looked so bad that Obama changed the methodology in 2013 giving everyone a $400 wage boost.   Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. 
   We have a long way to go before we can say everyone is getting better wages. 

Why buy drones??

Current drones cost $1 million apiece and up.  Whereas a two place light plane, say a Cessna 172, can be had for closer to $100 K.  Drones and light planes are about the same in range, payload, speed, anything that counts.  Drone pilots only get to see a TV image (blurry, low res, low contrast, small screen).  Light plane pilots get to see  up close, in real time, and with a pair of 7X50's, they can see really close up. 
   The only justification of the pricey drones is for operation in dangerous air space.  When a drone gets shot down we don't loose a pilot.  But for missions like patrolling the US border,  reconning hurricane damage in Florida,  looking for marijuana grows in California,  we don't expect hostile ground fire or shoulder fired SAMs.  A plain old Cessna works better and costs a tenth of what a drone costs. 

Can any student expect real justice from a college administrator?

Especially your son or daughter?  Betsy DeVos, Trump's education secretary, is talking about rolling back the infamous "Dear Colleague" letter that caused colleges countrywide to set up campus kangaroo courts, run by social justice warrior administrators, to punish young men whenever  young women complained about "sexual assault". 
   I don't know about "sexual assault", that's a new one whipped up by the Obama administration, that can mean just about anything.  But rape, that's been a serious crime for a thousand years, so serious it carried the death penalty.  College administrators are unfit to handle cases of rape.  When a young woman complains of rape, the college should offer her a ride to and from the police station to swear out a complaint, and the case should be handled by the regular courts.  American  courts are far far better than college administrators in providing due process.  And they can hand out serious punishment, far more serious than a college administrator who is limited to just expulsion from college.  In my book, expulsion is too mild for a rapist. 
   And if the case isn't rape, but just "sexual assault", should the college get involved at all?  You would think just peer pressure, which I remember as being damn strong, would be enough. 
   I think Betsey DeVos and the education dept should tell colleges to refer cases of rape to law enforcement and the courts, and to drop this "sexual assault" stuff. 

We are richer than we realize Martin Feldstein

Op ed piece in the Wall St Journal.  Feldstein, economist, Reagan's chairman of Council of Economic Advisers, argues that although wages have been stagnant for decades, improvement in the quality of products amounts to an improvement in the standard of living.  He cites television sets and audio speakers as examples.  Strange choice of examples though.  TV sets have been good to us, a 1950's RCA color TV, table model in a cheap sheet metal cabinet, 21 inch round picture tube sold for $500 in the 1950's.  I bought a new Sony flat screen 31 inch recently for $400 at Walmarts.  But audio speakers are not the glamour product they were back when Acoustic Research AR-2's ruled the land.  I don't think they even sell decent stereo speakers up here anymore.  Clearly a product whose time has passed.
   Feldstein should have mentioned automobiles.  Back in the day you could buy a brand new low end six passenger Chevy sedan for around $2800.  It got 18-20 mpg, and only lasted 60,000 miles or 6 years, what ever came first. Today you can buy a 4 passenger Chevy Cruz, which will get better than 20 mpg, and last for 100,000 miles or 15 years, but it costs $17,000.  Better quality, off set by six times the price.
   Dunno if I buy Feldstein's argument.  Modern products are better, but they mostly cost like crazy.  If you haven't had a decent pay raise since the 1950's, you are hurting.   

Trump talks to Democrats. Beltway in flames

Congressional Republicans proved they cannot do much, if anything, in the Obamacare repeal.  Obamacare is killing jobs, forcing people to accept part time work, raising health insurance premiums to awful levels, introducing $6000 deductibles which makes the insurance worthless. And Republicans had been promising Obamacare repeal for years.  But they still could not come up the the votes to actually do it.  Too many RINOs, to many extreme right wingers who do not understand "compromise", and too many just plain right wing kooks.
   So, the country needs  emergency funds to deal with Harvey and Irma, and we need to raise the national debt limit so we can borrow to roll the existing debt over.  Schumer and Pelosi  only asked to tie the two bills into one, and limit the debt ceiling relief to a mere 90 days.  This gives them an opportunity to use the debt ceiling as a hammer to get something they want all over again in just 90 days.  PITA from Trump's viewpoint, but doable.  So Trump, figuring he cannot rely on congressional GOPers, said "Deal", and he signed the bill into law yesterday.  Not too shabby. 
   The republican media has been bad mouthing Trump over this deal for the last couple of days.  I haven't heard Ryan or McConnell bellyaching about it, at least not in public, I'm pretty sure neither of 'em are happy, but done is done, and they don't want to get into a public feud with Trump.  They fear they might loose.