999

Will Herman Cain's 999 tax plan work? That's a 9% income tax, a 9% Corporate income tax and a 9% national sales tax. How much money would we raise with 999? Would it pay Uncle Sam's bills?
Just for fun, I did a little surfing and got to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. There I find that total US income is $12.8 trillion. So 9% of that is $1.152 trillion
Corporate Profits before taxes is $1.8 trillion So 9% of that is a measly $0.162 trillion.
National sales is not given, so let's guess that one half of people's income gets spent on taxable stuff. That's fair, rent and mortgage payments suck up about half of most folks income and they aren't taxable. So let's estimate the 9% sales tax brings 9% of half of total income. That's %0.576 trillion.

Add it up. $1.152 + $0.162 + $0.576 = $1.89 trillion raised by the 999 tax plan.

Is this enough? No.

Current US govt expenditures are $5.4 trillion. Of that $1.3 trillion is borrowed.
Under 999 we would have to borrow $3.51 trillion to add to the $1.89 trillion of 999 tax revenues to raise the $5.4 trillion we are spending.

Even an 18-18-18 tax plan wouldn't be enough to cover today's federal spending.

Federal law requires USAF to have 316 transports?

According to Kelly Ayotte, my US senator, there is a federal law that requires the Air Force to maintain no less than 316 "transports" on active duty. She has introduced a bill to repeal this law.
Why do we have such a law on the books in the first place? Surely the defense department and the Air Force have a far better idea than Congress of how many transports are needed to defend the country. This sounds like something dreamed up by the senators from Lockheed (C-130) and Boeing (C17).

Uganda

Made the news last night. US will send combat troops to Uganda. According to the TV news, it's only 100 special forces troops. Jeeze. That's hardly more than the embassy guard. Any embassy has three military attaches, each with 3 or 4 NCO's to run the office, and a 20 man Marine guard force. There you have 32 troops just hanging around the embassy.
I'm sure the US has 100 man units active in dozens of countries. Why did Obama announce this 100 man unit going to Uganda? Why not just send the troops and say nothing? A 100 man operation is small enough to keep secret. Especially as anyone knows announcing ground forces going into Africa is going to put the press into orbit with predictions of "another Viet Nam".
Or does Obama fear leaks from the military? And figures he is better off with a public announcement? He shouldn't. The US military is very loyal. Besides they learned never to talk to the press back in Viet Nam.

USPS

Why does USPS give junk mail a cheaper rate? Why should not junk mailers pay the same rate I pay to mail my bills? The junk mail travels the same routes, gets delivered by the same mail carrier and travel just as fast, which means it costs USPS just as much to deliver junk mail as first class mail. So why should junk mail get a nice cheap rate? Why should my first class stamps subsidize junk mail that just goes into the fireplace.

Franconia Notch Parkway

The NHDOT called a meeting about the Franconia Notch Parkway last night. A couple of dozen folks showed up at Peabody Slopes base lodge, most of them fire and rescue team people, along with some police and sheriff’s deputies. All of whom have vivid memories of trying to reach the sites of automobile crashes at night during blizzards and whiteouts. The DOT people all regret that the Parkway is not built to Interstate Highway standards, but were under instruction by the legislature to stick with the agreement hammered out thirty years ago between the DOT and the hikers, campers, conservationists and environmentalists back when the current parkway was built.
The outdoors people look on Franconia Notch as a beautiful and well loved wilderness area for hiking and camping. If they had their way there would be no road at all, and no ski resort at Cannon. The highway people and the rescue first responders want four lanes and a good big shoulder so they can get thru to an accident scene with a fire truck.
Thirty years ago the hikers and campers forced a the current deal, a two lane road. It took years of fighting to resolve the issue and memories linger. Nobody wants to re open that particular can of worms.
Making life difficult is the centerline barrier. Thirty years ago when the road was widened, there was no centerline barrier. Old US Route 3 thru the Notch was just an ordinary two lane blacktop country road. When the new road was blasted thru, it had no centerline barrier. Then they had a number of horrific crashes, and the existing centerline barrier was installed to prevent them. Trouble is, with the barrier there is no way to get a rescue vehicle turned around. Franconia rescue vehicles can only reach accidents in the southbound lane, North Woodstock can only reach accidents in the northbound lane, and there is no way to get past the line of cars that back up behind a bad accident scene.
There was a lot of discussion about snow removal. Someone asked about getting a big snow blower to toss the snow well clear of the road and keep the snowdrifts from encroaching upon the road. The guy from DOT replied that snow blowers were high maintenance. Everytime they suck up a rock or an unlucky road sign they break.
After a lot of discussion the meeting broke up with nothing decided or revealed. The DOT’s plans for the Franconia Notch Parkway are known only to DOT.

Ron Paul and the Gold Standard

Ron is still into the gold standard. He talked about it last night. After quite a bit of discussion it seems that a lot of folk need a quick refresher on monetary thinking. Consider the modern economy. Technological improvements allow it to create more "stuff" every year. Compare the number of automobiles, stereos, computers, foodstuffs, alcoholic beverages, books, etc, etc produced in this year 2011 with the quantities produced back in say 1945. Obviously the the amount of stuff to available buy increases every year.
Consider that money is easily printed, how much money should we have in circulation today. Should we keep the amount of money fixed? Suppose there was no more money around today than there was in 1945. In that case, a fixed amount of money would be spread over more goods and services, so less money would be available to buy any one of them. Put another way, prices fall and money becomes more valuable.
Bankers love this. It means their loans get paid off with more valuable money. Borrowers (most of us) hate this. It means we have to work harder to pay off mortgages and car loans contracted in the past when money was cheaper.
Ron Paul's gold standard, means the amount of money is fixed, because the amount of gold in the world is not large, and ain't getting larger. Gold never wears out, humans have valued it and searched for it since First Dynasty Egyptian times. Most of the gold in the world has been discovered. If we make a rule that the amount of money in circulation is fixed by the amount of gold in Fort Knox, we are saying that the amount of money in circulation will never change. That's good for bankers and bad-to-terrible for the rest of us, industry, jobs, and just about everything.
Have you looked at Mitt Romney or Herman Cain?

Ron Paul comes to town

Littleton to be precise. We only got advance notice on Monday of a Wednesday evening event. Nevertheless I summarized the poster and put it out to the Grafton Country Republican email list, the Tea Party list and the North Grafton Republican list. Word must have got around. By 6:30 the Littleton Opera House was pretty full. Ron Paul started speaking on time. He sounded good, spoke with substance, not fluff, unlike the average politician, and took questions from the floor. The crowd was supportive, no hecklers, and applauded repeatedly. Youngest son, who used to refer to Paul as "Crazypants", came away impressed.
We had reporters from the Union Leader and the Littleton Courier. I got interviewed by both of them. Dunno why me, except maybe my bright red ski parka and white hair. The Union Leader put the story on page A3. Byline of Sara Young-Knox, she quoted me and then misspelled my name. She also lowballed the crowd estimate at 80 people. I counted better than 200.

Glass Steagal lives

After the great stock market crash of 1929, Congress passed the Glass-Steagal Act which forbid banks from playing the stock market. FDIC deposit insurance had just been invented, and nobody wanted to see banks playing the market with tax payer guaranteed money.
Banks hated Glass Steagal, and they spend 50 years lobbying the Feds to repeal it. They finally succeeded under Clinton and starting in the 90's banks jumped back into the stock market. They made barrels of money out of the market, and lots of capital that should have been invested in economic expansion was frittered away playing the market.
Now after Great Depression 2.0, the Feds are pushing "The Volcker Rule." which is Glass-Steagal brought back to life. Banks may not play the stock market.
This time the proposed "rule" is 294 pages long, and they estimate it will take 6 million man hours on the part of banks to fill out the paper work. Each year.
Can you say "Welfare for lawyers"?
They could just re instate the Glass-Steagal act which worked fine for 50 years. But that would be to easy, and be a confession that repealing Glass-Steagal was a mistake.
By the way, our old buddies Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were cheerleaders in the repeal of Glass-Steagal 20 years ago.

Thr Great Debate

It wasn't on cable TV. My broadband isn't broad enough to watch it over the internet. Long irritating pauses while the compute makes excuses. Then I listened to it on internet radio for a while but that croaked too after 10 minutes. Apparently not much blood was shed, at least not enough to make it to the car radio as I drove into Littleton for a doctors appointment this morning. Nothing in this morning's Wall St Journal, probably because they must start printing before 8 PM in order to get it up here in time for the morning mail.
For tonight's political entertainment I am going to see Ron Paul, live at an Town Hall meeting in Littleton.

Terra Nova disappoints

Monday's show was dreadful. The outpost in the past is overwhelmed by a virus that gives everyone deep and serious amnesia. They don't remember being married, being in Terra Nova, nothing. It makes a bunch of characters do and say really dumb things.
Apparently all the Hollywood scriptwriters have died or gone on strike or moved to New Zealand to work for Peter Jackson. In Terra Nova we had a plot generating device nearly as good as the Starship Enterprise. We can hunt dinosaurs, open mines, start farms, fight the rebel Sixers, distill moonshine, race dirt bikes across the plains and have every sort of love affair. And yet, with all these possibilities for interesting plots, the scriptwriters decided to make everyone in the Terra Nova settlement do stupid things. Arrgh.
Plus, they need new camera's. The color is broken on the camera's they use. Everything comes out in black and white. Makes me think my TV set is failing. Which is irritating. And the actors mumble too much and I fail to catch the dialog.
Not sure if I will bother to watch it again.

Republican County Dinner last night

It was the annual County fund raiser. All the active Republicans in Grafton county were there, something close to one hundred. At this point I have been kicking around long enough that I know most of them. So we all did the chit and chat thing, shook hands, greeted newcomers, and generally socialized.
Then we got down to the business of the evening, fund raising and politicking. We managed to attract two real Republican presidential candidates, Huntsman and Fred Karger. Fred is a new name to me. Both men gave their stump speeches and received rounds of applause. Huntsman come across as a perfectly reasonable man, he spoke well and didn't express any crazy ideas like some have. If elected he would make a capable president. Whether he can overcome his rivals and gain the nomination is a good question.
For fundraising we did the traditional auction of celebrity ties. This started years ago with the auction of one of John Sununu's ties. Last night we had ties from Rick Perry, Ovid Lamontaigne, Fred Karger, Herman Cain, and a couple of others. Rick Perry's son Griffin told of asking his father for a tie to bring to the dinner. Some confusion resulted, with the Perry household left wondering what those crazy New Hampsters would think of next.

Thanks Florida

Thanks for moving your primary up to January. That means we in NH have to move up to December of this year. The presidential election season is too damn long right now. Instead of governing the country, presidents (and Congresspersons) spend all their time running in the permanent election. And you have taken a big step toward making it longer.
The newsies love presidential elections cause they are easily understood and easily reported upon, all you have to do is talk about who is in front. That doesn't require much brainpower, or education. So the newsies talk up presidential elections all the time 'cause even the dimmest of them know that much.
The other trouble with starting the primary race so early is we pick candidates on issues that are often moot by November. Last time we picked Hillary Clinton as out Democratic presidential candidate. How did that work out for us?

Frugal Forever

Title of a Wall St Journal piece. The gist of the story is that financially pressed Americans are buying more store brands and less national brands. Catchy and all, but as a regular buyer of store brands, I gotta say, they ain't THAT cheap. True, you save a few percent over a national brand, but somehow I don't think that small difference is going to swing the country into or out of Great Depression 2.0. Must have been a slow day at the Journal.
More to the point, consumer spending used to be 70% of the US GNP. Of that huge amount of spending, much of it is deferrable. Consumers worried about losing their jobs or layoffs, will defer buying new cars, appliances, clothing, lawn care, housewares, even Christmas gifts. About the only things people have to are groceries. And that's all most of us are buying. I can see this when I visit Home Depot or Lowes. The aisles are empty of customers.

Rahm Emmanual is one slick talker

Meet the Press (David Gregory) had Rahm Emmanual on this morning. Rahm said Obama saved Detroit and now every thing is better in the auto industry.
I don't buy that. Obama didn't "save" anything except the UAW. Ford, the only Detroit company with decent management, didn't accept government bailout money. All Obama did was interfere in the bankruptcy proceeding of GM and Chrysler, giving the companies away to the UAW and Fiat for zilch, and stiffing the bond holders, the banks and the stockholders. And preserving plush union contracts. GM and Chrysler would be in better shape today if they had gone thru regular bankruptcy, which would have junked their ultra plush union contracts and gotten their labor costs down to the Toyota-Honda level.
In short, Obama bailed out two losers. And made the UAW happy.
But, Rahm Emmanual sounded so positive on TV.

Words of the Weasel Part 21

"Edgy" as applied to TV shows. We used to call 'em raunchy.

Computer Virus infects USAF drone controllers

I saw this on Slashdot last night. Apparently the computers used to fly Predators over Afghanistan have picked up a virus. The article says it's "just a keylogger" and has done no harm, yet. The most amusing part of the story, Air Force IT has been unable to scrub the virus off. That will teach 'em not to use Windows for anything important. "They" believe the virus came in on an infected flash drive used to update imagery and target information. These ought to be classified computers, and there are regulations against connecting classified computers to the public internet.
I was gonna post a link, but blogger isn't doing links this morning.

Safer table saws? by regulation?

According to the Wall St Journal, the Obama administration is moving toward tougher safety standards for table saws. The table saw makers Stanley, Black & Decker, Bosch, and Ryobi have objected.
As well they might. Table saws are dangerous. A tool that can sever a 2 by 4, will sever any body part that comes in contact with the blade. It's a simple tool that hasn't changed much in the last century. I learned table saw use on my grandfather's 8 inch table saw manufactured back in the 1920's. The brand new saws on sale at Home Depot are the same. There is nothing that new regulations can do to make a safer table saw. New regulations will soak up time and money from the makers, which will be reflected in higher prices at Home Depot.
With one exception. There is a radical new technology that electronically senses flesh contacting the blade and stops blade rotation instantaneously, fast enough to save a finger pushed into the whirling blade. This technology is called Saw Stop, and is commercially available right now. It works, but it is costly, Saw Stop table saws cost hundreds of dollars more than ordinary tools. The price of safety is too high for most customers.
It could be that the Feds are planning to make Saw Stop mandatory on all table saws sold. The Wall St Journal article didn't say. This will push the price of a table saw from $150 up to $400, out of reach for many do-it-yourselfers.

Auto Makers Now Import Jobs

Wall St Journal headline. The new Ford-UAW contract allows Ford to hire new workers on at about $15 an hour. Ford is going to beef up production in Michigan and start assembly the new Fusion in Michigan. Up until now Fusions were only produced in Mexico. Another Ford plant in Kentucky will assemble vans which are currently assembled overseas. Ford also announced plans to manufacture a transmission currently purchased in Japan, and oil pumps currently made in China.
Could it be that the UAW managed to price itself out of business and is just coming back to its senses?

Obama gives a press conference

Just finished up on Fox. Disappointing. Obama called upon reporters by name, and was able to get a series of softball questions from the likes of the New York Times, ABC, NBC, and Reuters. Each question resulted in several minutes of meaningless blather from the President. "millionaires and billionaires", "Good of the American People", "Fair share", "economists agree that my jobs bill will create jobs" (without naming any of these economists). "Solyndria was one one of many green jobs companies financied by the Federal government" (without naming any of the others).
Never a number. Never a substantive statement. Obama, like most US pols, has mastered a language of vague nice sounding phrases, and he can just open his mouth and they spill forth, as meaningless this time as they were the last time. Arrgh.

We are going to miss Steve Jobs

It was with sorrow that I heard of Steve's death last night. Steve was the man who conceived and brought to market, Apple II, Macintosh, Ipod, Iphone, Ipad. Today tens of thousands of people are gainfully employed making, selling and servicing these revolutionary products. Without Steve, all those people might well be out of work today.
We need more new products guys. The way out of Great Depression 2.0 lies thru new product introduction.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry for quasicrystals

NHPR announced the Nobel prize in chemistry was given to Daniel Schechtman of Technion in Israel for the discovery of quasicrystals.
I never heard of quasi crystals before so I did some research. Far as I can tell, quasi crystals are a form of solid matter in between regular crystals and glasses. Glass lacks any kind of order on the molecular level; glasses are more like a supercooled liquid than a crystalline solid.
Quasi crystals are somehow less ordered than ordinary crystals. When they refract X rays they don't show some of the symmetries that regular crystals do. Just what those symmetries are, and what they mean was not clear to me.
Since most of what we know about the crystal structure of matter comes from X ray diffraction experiments, discovery of a new structure is clearly very important in the field of X ray crystallography. Applications outside that field are less obvious right now, although we can expect it to lead to better insight into strength of materials, and possibly lead to stronger building materials or stronger metal alloys.

NH revenues improving

After all the sturm and drang over the NH budget this spring, things are looking up. Tax receipts are up and we might even turn a slight surplus. If you remember back in June the MSM were wailing and gnashing their teeth over "cuts" to all sorts of worthy programs.
Looks like the fiscal blood letting has done some good. Tax revenue is up, estimated tax payments are up, and tax refunds are down. Maybe the New Hampshire Advantage is kicking in again.

Economic recovery means defeat Obama

After three years of Obama the private sector is shell shocked. They plan to dig deep holes and hibernate until Obama is gone. For example.

1. Shutting down oil exploration and voiding oil leases.
2. Repeated Federal financial crisis and lack of Federal budget.
3. Obamacare
4. Dodd Frank
5. Taking over GM and Chrysler
6. Calling for punitive taxes against oil companies and corporate aircraft. And against "the wealthy" who don't sound very wealthy, they sound like pretty much everyone.
7. Threatening Boeing's new North Carolina plant for 787 production
8. FCC taking over the internet via "net neutrality" regulations, despite a court order not to.
9. EPA running amok and trying to shut down everything that burns anything.
10.Gun running into Mexico (Fast and Furious)
11.$14 trillion federal debt.
12. 54 mpg CAFE.
13. Killing off Gibson Guitar. Obama's Feds have put Gibson out of business and thrown all the workers out on the street for no reason (other than Gibson has contributed money to Republicans.

After all this anti business action by the Obama administration, investors of all sizes have decided to bury their money in the backyard and wait for safer times. At this point there is nothing Obama can do to overcome the fear that the last three years reign of terror has created in the business community. With luck he will be gone in 2012. Too bad we have to wait that long to start putting people back to work.

Bashing the Tea Party

The Tea Party has spread fear and panic among professional politicians nationwide. Tea Party has a huge number of supporters, and last year showed some teeth in the elections. Some RINO's were slain in the primaries, and that was really scary.
Tea Party is so scary that the North Grafton DEMOCRATS have rented the Colonial Theater in Bethlehem and will put on an anti-Tea Party program this coming Thursday evening. Message of the show will be "The Tea Party is just AstroTurf, bought and paid for by the millionaire Koch brothers".
I have some association with the Tea Party, and the people are all New Hampshire citizens of long standing. They wish there were outside money (or inside money or any kind of money) to support them, but there isn't.
The Tea Party is more idea than Party. It stands for lower taxes, and lower spending to permit those lower taxes, less borrowing, and the limited Federal government that the US Constitution calls for. Those ideas are shared by all Americans. The Tea Party lacks ballot access, candidates, dues, membership cards, elected officers, regular meetings, and all those things that mark an ordinary political party.
But it does have a compelling idea and lots and lots of believers in that idea.

Is the Euro really doomed?

Probably not. The "United States of Europe" people want a more tightly integrated EU. They can get this by setting up a European Common Bank empowered to borrow money on the credit of the EU and use it to bail out Greece. So they are using the Greek debt crisis to push their pet hobbyhorse. Turning the EU into a United States of Europe would turn a lot of lack luster Brussels bureaucrats into officials of something big and powerful. And so they talk up economic doomsday scenarios to scare people into putting up the money.
The holdup of this plan is the German taxpayers. They correctly observe that an EU bailout of Greece will be done with their tax money, and under the control of Eurocrats rather than reliable German government officials and they see no reason to pony up that kind of money.
So sooner or later the Greeks will run out of other people's money and default. This will be tough on some stupid banks in Europe who loaned the Greeks wads and wads of Euros. Those banks won't get their money back. Some of them will probably go out of business on account of the humungous loss. Those banks are talking to their governments, and to the ECB, and saying "oh please don't make us loose all that money. Save us." And so, the EU keeps doling out money to Greece, and the Greeks give most of it back to the banks.
When the Germans cut off the money, Greece will default, and tell all those banks "Tough luck". Ought to happen inside of 6 months.
Question: Is this the end of the Euro? Probably not. It will be tough on Greece who will have to cut spending down to whatever they can raise by taxation. Or, Greece can drop the Euro, start up their own currency, and cover their deficit by printing fresh money.
But the biggies, France and Germany, want to stick with the Euro and so they will. All the other smaller countries on the Euro like Belgium and Holland will stick to enjoy the benefits of doing business with the biggies without the hassle and risk of currency swaps.
If they let three of four of the stupider banks go out of business, it will improve the competitiveness of the entire continent. Having stupid banks pour valuable capital down Greek drains does bad things for your economic growth.

UNH

NHPR ran a piece this morning wailing about funding for UNH. The president of the joint said they were only a few million short this year and it would (of course) get worse next year.
I have a few questions for UNH.
1. How many non teachers (administrators,janitors,secretaries, assistants and such) do they have on the payroll? That oughta be less than 5% of payroll.
2. Do their tenured professors teach 3 classes each term?
3. Do the students handle routine housekeeping, sweeping the floors, mowing the grass, shoveling snow, shelving books and washing dishes?
4. Do they fully utilize their expensive classrooms by conducting class on Saturdays as well as Monday thru Friday?

USPS

It's been a week since I last heard the Post Office whining about running out of other people's money. Seems like those 44 cent stamps have driven a lot of folk to paying their bills on line. Apparently bills are the only first class mail left, no body writes letters anymore, we telephone or email.
I am gonna miss that mailman (oops lettercarrier). He brings me the daily Wall St Journal, Netflix, the Economist, Commentary, Woodworkers Journal, and the Littleton Record. As many bits get into my house from those Netflix DVD's as come in on my sluggish broadband. On the other hand I wouldn't really miss the Franconia Post Office, I only buy stamps there to pay the bills with. I could buy them in Littleton no problem.

New Formats Available

Blogger has just offered a "change the look and feel" of your blog feature. At least that's what I think they are talking about. I looked at some of the options and decided to leave things as they are. What do you all think?
By the way, Blogger's picture load/edit process sucks. You cannot see your photos as you write the captions, and Blogger moves text around randomly which is why the captions don't come out under the right photos.

Leaf season is starting

The Echo lake parking lot. From the shore of the lake you can hear your voice reflect back from the granite cliffs in the background. We are in Franconia Notch State Park, which is best known for the Cannon Mt. ski resort.



Mittersill Inn Driveway. That one red tree was peak a couple of days ago when I took this photo. It's turning brown now.



The Mittersill Inn, a vast ski place high up in Franconia Notch. Built right after WWII by Baron Hubert Von Pantz, an Austrian nobleman from Mittersill Austria.



The Franconia Notch Bike trail, northern end, looking north. The bike trail runs many miles to come out at the Flume on the south side of the notch. Great ride.

Terra Nova

New TV show on Fox. Watched the two hour premiere last night. Story opens in a bad future, the air is so polluted they wear oxygen masks, the sky is yellow, food is running out, drastic population control measures are in place. Paul Erlich's "Population Bomb" mixed with greenie nightmares. The family (husband, wife, three children) escape by stepping thru a star gate like machine, and with a flash of light they are elsewhere, 85 million years into the past. We, the audience, are given to believe it is a one way trip.
Elsewhere is a frontier village complete with metal palisade, armored personnel carriers(APC), energy weapons, and model suburban housing inside the stockade. It's run by a compelling and hard core old guy with a gray beard named Taylor. Taylor has dinosaurs, rebels, and stupid teenage colonists to keep him busy.
Dialog can be dumbass. "Do you think we did the right thing?" wife asks husband after taking a one-way trip to elsewhere. Doesn't matter if it was or was not the right thing to do, you did it, and there is no way back.
Teenage son demonstrates proper teenage rebelliousness right off by skipping first day orientation class. He is picked up by a native chick who takes him on a "OTG" (outside the gate) expedition. The native teenagers have a still hidden in the woods, they proceed to get smashed and turned into dinobait. Native chick, (no name was given) turns out to be tough and crusty Taylor's daughter. She has inherited her old man's leadership qualities and is the dominant member of the teenage gang and has teenage son well under control. The show ends with a dino attack on the APC the teenagers have taken refuge in, and a rescue with lots of zap-zap of energy weapons.
Could have been better in the plot, dialog, and characterization departments, but I think I will watch the next episode.

Perry as a Pinata

Those Republican debaters have been whacking away at Rick Perry. But the things they whack the hardest on I have trouble with.
Perry as governor signed a Texas law to grant children of illegal immigrants the right to attend Texas state universities at resident's rates. Sure, that deviates from a hard line policy of making life tough for illegals. But I find it hard to get worked up about letting teenagers attend a state university at a price they can afford. I have a lot of sympathy for immigrants of all kinds, and letting a teenager get a college degree is a good deal for everyone. College degrees make productive, loyal, citizens who stay out of trouble, pay their taxes and raise families. That's all OK in my book.
Then Perry was talking about securing the border by patrolling it on the ground from SUV's and in the air from Piper Cubs. He was attacked for this and denounced as "anti fence". Dumb and dumber. Fences don't keep people out, people keep people out.
Then Michelle Bachmann jumped all over Perry about Guardasil, a cervical cancer vaccine that became mandatory on Perry's watch. Far as I know, Guardasil works, it's a little costly, but I didn't see requiring a vaccination as any different from all the other shots they require to attend public school. But they beat Perry about the head and shoulders over that one.
Heh, I'm not the worlds greatest Perry fan, matter of fact I sent someone else a campaigh contribution. But if we are going to trash a guy, let us do it over something real. These issues are pure BS.

Air Force gets suckered again.

From Aviation Week discussing the tanker job Boeing just won from Airbus:
" a master schedule , which outlines KC-46A milestones and the progress in developing the commercial Boeing 767-2C, a new aircraft that will be he baseline platform. The aircraft was a "catalogue" item, meaning it has been offered to customers but not yet developed, thus the Air Force will be its launch customer.
The 767-2C is based on the -200ER airplane and included Boeing 787 digital displays,main deck cargo door, and freighter equipment and auxiliary fuel tanks. "

Tranlation: Boeing got the government to pay the research and development costs of a new version of the decades old 767. None of this was necessary for the tanker mission, a run of the production line 767 would work just fine without all this extra engineering work at taxpayer expense.

"The FAA and the Air Force are also working to "streamline" the certification process so that tasks only need be done once for both authorities,"

And, the standard 767 was type certified by the FAA decades ago. Since we are redoing large parts of the aircraft we have to do type certification all over again.

"Boeing plans to conduct a major review of the 767-2C configuration by the end of November with a preliminary design review for the KC-46A in March. A critical design review of the KC-46A is slated for the summer of 2013 and of the -2C four months prior;"

And we plan to spend a two years messing around before we start to build the planes. If the Air Force had insisted upon the standard 767, production could start today. The Air Force has allowed the program to slip two years just to be nice to Boeing. Boeing gets a new commercial product on taxpayer money. The Air Force gets bupkis.

Piece of Cake

A BBB Masterpiece theater miniseries from long ago. I got the first two episodes on one DVD from Netflix. It's WWII, with an RAF fighter squadron, a Spitfire squadron, none of your sluggish Hurricanes or bombers; Spitfires, the hottest plane the RAF ever flew.
The squadron moves to France in 1939, settles into a French chateau, and fly the Spitfires off the chateau tennis courts. The Spitfires are real, lovingly maintained and restored to better than new condition. The paint is flawless and glossy, waxed and gleams in the sun. Those Spitfires are in better condition than any of the jet fighters in my USAF unit during the Viet Nam war. The squadron officers dress for dinner, mess dress and take lessons in table manners from the squadron adjutant. In my USAF unit, the pilots went to dinner at the Officer's club in olive drab flight suits. Maintenance officers (like me) turned up in shade 1505 Class B uniforms. I don't think we had a mess dress uniform in the entire country.
The RAF squadron has some real turkeys for officers and gentlemen, the most offensive of which would have be court martialed in USAF. One goes thru a dead man's effects looking for money to pay a gambling debt. That would have led to a lynching in USAF.
The sets, costumes, and airplanes are first class. Too bad the rest of the show, plot, dialog, acting, and characterization is low speed. The actors mumble with strong British accents which renders half the dialog incomprehensible to Yankee viewers.

Grass Seed, fine print thereon

I bought a 1 pound bag of grass seed down at Wally Mart, to reseed the big dirt patch the town water guys left in the front lawn after replacing the watershutoff valve.
On the back of the bag, in the fine print I read:

"Warning! Treated seed. Do not use for feed, food, or oil purposes. Store away from feed and foodstuffs. Do not use bag or container for refilling with food stuff. Keep out of reach of children.

"Precautionary information for treated seed.
Wear long sleeved shirt, long pants, socks and waterproof gloves when handling treated seed. Wash thoroughly with soap and water after handling. Remove contaminated clothing and wash before reuse.

Damn. All that for just grass seed. This is the kinda warning they put on Agent Orange.

Warp Drive

A paper has been released reporting faster than light neutrinos. Not much faster, but faster. Speaking as an old Trekkie, bring it on. If this holds up, it may lead to faster than light spaceships, communicators, and a science fiction style future.
Speaking as an engineer with 40 years of practical experience, let's recheck the calibration of their instruments.

Shut down the goverment over corporate welfare?

The Senate just killed a bill to fund the US government for another few weeks. According to the TV news, a bit of corporate welfare, money for green car research, was ommitted and the money moved over to FEMA for disaster relief.
Apparently the democratic Senate is willing to start another "fund the government" showdown over a measely billion or so for green pork. Intelligence seems to have left DC for a long vacation.

USAF's lessons from Procurement Blunders

Cover story on this week's issue of Aviation Week. They are talking about the great tanker disaster which has been running for 10 years. It started with a plan to lease new tankers from Boeing, continued with a high Pentagon procurement official pleading guilty to steering plum jobs to Boeing, an award of the tanker job overturned by appeal, a second bidding for new tankers awarded to Boeing. Talk about incompetent and crooked, it doesn't get much worse than that.
So what did the Air Force learn from this decade long disaster? Well, some high level civilians were fired. The new Air Force secretary Mike Donley tells Aviation Week that the Pentagon has hired nearly 10,000 new procurement civilians, who can now do "should cost" estimates. This is only important on sole source jobs. If there are competing bids, you just take the lowest bid, that's what the job should cost. Sounds like Donley is getting ready to do more sole source procurement.
Then there were some surprising statements by Donley. Such as "We had some conversations with Boeing AFTER then contract award, obviously as the were starting to put together their initial estimates." Wow! Donley apparently isn't aware that he is supposed to settle on price BEFORE awarding a contract.
Or "Working on the requirements process was one of the outcomes there on which we took some action. Limiting out appetite in that requirements process was an important step." No kidding.
The Air Force is notorious for putting fancy gadgets on planes that don't work, cannot be made to work, and are not needed to fly the mission.
Does not sound like Air Force procurement has learned much over the years.
I still remember my first job with defense contractor Raytheon. We had a big two story building. First floor was engineering, labs, shops, storerooms, the stuff to build product with. Second floor was all "contracts", paper pushers to make the government procurement people happy. Raytheon had as many people pushing paper as they did doing the work. That's gotta be expensive.

DADT but what about UCMJ?

The Washington radio was loaded with pieces about "the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell". Interviews with gay ex soldiers, pontificating, story after story. NPR was vastly in favor.
Question: Are we talking about revising the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)? Back when I was in the service, there was a punitive article making sodomy a crime to be punished as a court martial shall direct. Did they drop the sodomy article out of the UCMJ? The happy talkers on the radio never mentioned this issue. Most of them probably don't even know what the UCMJ is, let alone what it says.
Until and unless the sodomy article is dropped, gays in the military have a sword hanging over their heads. I assume they know this. They will be in trouble if they don't.

Radio still really sucks.

We listened to FM radio all the way down and all the way back. All they have is NPR, goldie oldie and soft rock stations, mixed with a few "all-ads-all-the-time" stations. NPR is OK but they have a one hour news spiel that repeats every hour. You hear it once, and that's enough. What do you listen to for the rest of the trip? We did hear the disk jockey on one station say that this was the first time in her career that a station manager had expressed any interest in music what so ever. This might explain why FM programming is so boring.
Then there was the college station with a student disk jockey who turned the treble all the way down and the bass all the way up to give his voice a deep and breathy sound. Too bad that he came out of the Mercury's speakers sounding like mumble-rumble-mumble and I couldn't understand a word of what he said against the humming of the car and the whine of the tires.

Rahman Noodle Place?

Would you believe a snazzy Washington eatery that features Rahman noodles? Daughter insisted that the place was good and the noodles were good too. And she was right. Big bowls with long noodles and other good stuff like pork in a very tasty sauce. They are on the north side of H street, near 13th st in Washington Northeast. Close to the Rock and Roll hotel.
By the way, H street is all newly spiffed up, and has brand new trolley car tracks embedded in the street. The trolleys oughta be cool when they get running. The tracks are down, I'm told the trolley cars them selves have been delivered. They still need to string the overhead trolley wire, and I'm told they have to straighten out some right of way issues with Amtrak, but if the funding holds up they might be running trolley cars on H street some day.

Antietam

Being an old Civil War buff, I drove up to the Antietam battlefield on Monday. It's in Maryland, about an hour's drive from DC, and very close to the Virginia border. Lee was invading the North (Maryland remained in the Union despite being south of the Mason Dixon line). Lee was north and west of both Washington and Baltimore, and threaten to capture either or both cities. Taking Baltimore would have been nearly as good as taking Washington, the only route to Washington ran thru Baltimore.
The land out in western Maryland is low and rolling, a lot of open fields, cut by little streams, sunken roads, and woodlots. From Union headquarters you cannot see the entire battle field. McClellan must have relied upon messengers to learn where his units were and where the enemy was. Messengers are slow, apt to get lost or shot, or forget to pass on vital information. Battlefield command could be difficult back then.
Terrain features played decisive roles. I saw the Bloody lane where the Confederates mowed down the Union infantry. It's just a one lane wagon track, sunk about a man's height below the fields. The banks slope up at about 30 degrees. Standing in the road, the confederates were protected from rifle fire, and could load and fire and do it again. There is a contemporary photograph showing the field in front of the Bloody Lane covered with Union dead.
Then there is Burnside's Bridge over the Antietam creek. Burnside's entire corps of 9000 men took from 9 AM til 1 PM to force their way across this bridge against 2500 Confederate defenders. Burnside was something of a chucklehead. He never realized that Antietam Creek is shallow enough to wade across. Burnside could have waded across on a broad front and overwhelmed the confederates in less than an hour. Concentrating on crossing the bridge held Burnside up and cost terrible losses.
Antietam was a very important battle. It came after a year of defeats at the hands of Lee and Jackson. Lee felt strong enough to invade the Union rather than just standing on the defensive in Virginia. But despite a bloody year of losses, the Union was able the throw a strong army right into Lee's path, and make frontal attacks on Lee's lines. Lee was driven back to Virginia only a few miles from the Virginia border.
Antietam was the victory upon which Lincoln hung the Emancipation Proclamation. He had been ready to issue it earlier that year, but his cabinet pointed out that proclaiming freedom for slaves after a summer of military defeats would look like a desperation move on the part of the Union. It would be seen as an attempt to raise a slave insurrection in the South after conventional warfare had failed. As it was, after a solid (if costly) Union victory, the Emancipation Proclamation announced the adherence of the Union to the principle of the Declaration of Independence ("All men are created equal").

The Open Road

Drove down to DC and back this weekend. From New Hampshire that's six states. We did the traditional thru New York City and down the Jersey Turnpike to the Delaware Memorial Bridge route. Except for New York, the road conditions are excellent. Vermont is resurfacing I91 again, laying fresh black asphalt on top of fresh black asphalt. Vermont still has some porkulus money to spend. Ignore those NPR pieces about how America's infrastructure is falling to pieces. The Interstates in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic are in fine shape.
New York was a mess. Some lanes on the George Washington bridge were closed and that backed up traffic on the Cross Bronx expressway clear back to Coop City. That cost us an hour of walking pace traffic jam. It was so bad we took the Tappan Zee bridge on the way back.
Someone is spending some bucks on mile markers. All the way down Vermont and across Massachusetts we have fresh new mile markers, marking every tenth of a mile. They are growing in size, this years growth of mile markers are 12 inch by 18 inch, nearly the size of a speed limit sign. They are planting them on US 302, a secondary road in the Northern kingdom. These are new, we didn't used to have them. Some nanny state agency is pushing them and I have know idea where the money is coming from.
Once we get down into New Jersey the truck traffic is HEAVY. Like maybe one fifth of the vehicles are trucks. Full of freight, going to customers. There must be some life left in the economy to keep all those trucks loaded. If all that freight went by rail the railroads would be rich beyond measure.
Americans don't drive American cars any more, at least not the 6 passenger V8 rear drive sedans and station wagons of yore. Mostly they drive dinky four door sedans painted gray and made in Japan. Some SUV's, some minivans, lotta pickup trucks, but the little gray econo boxes are the majority vehicle. My Mercury Grand Marquis handled the trip in comfort and style.

Bad ideas never die

Last year we managed to kill the New Hampshire casino gambling bill. It took a lot of doing, but we did it in the house. Major objections to NH casinos are the tackiness will offend tourists, the gambling revenues come from sucker citizens who lack the self discipline to avoid gambling away the rent money, and the mob connections of casino operators and personnel.
Well, it's like a snake, gambling is coming up again in the NH legislature. NHPR was cheering that on this morning. Just 'cause a snake is lying on the floor and not moving much doesn't mean it's dead. You have to cut a snake up into six inch lengths to make sure you killed it.
The pro gambling people think casino's will pay rivers of tax money which they will dedicate to their favorite causes, health and human services, education, the environment, what ever. Every one has a favorite cause they want my tax money to pay for.

Blogging may be light

I'm going on a long road trip starting tomorrow. I'll do some catchup when I get back next week

New building?

Solyndra, a startup, was constructing a new factory building on a new site before they went belly up.
Wow. All the famous startups around here got started renting existing, old and shabby, industrial space, old mill buildings. Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) got started in an old woolen mill in Maynard MA. New buildings are expensive, and probably a lot of that $535 million US taxpayer loan guarantee went into construction.
Maybe Solyndra failed because it's principles were spendthrifts?

Hot Products create demand

As we struggle thru Great Depression 2.0, everyone laments the "lack of demand" i.e. people aren't buying stuff. If only they say, people would spend more, we would be on the road to recovery.
Target Stores cut some deal with a hot Italian designer to do some really nice clothes that Target would sell at typical Target prices (low). The stuff was so good that eager shoppers bought up every thing on the store shelves and crashed the web site trying to order over the web.
That's the answer to the lack of demand, offer desirable product. Even a big bland box store like Target can pack 'em in with the right merchandise. People will spend money for the right stuff.

Antibiotic residues in Pork?

USDA announced tighter limits or more inspections of pork looking for "antibiotic residues" that might be harmful if eaten.
No mention of breeding up an antibiotic resistant version of the andromeda strain by feeding penicillin and other antibiotics to farm animals. A common practice but very dangerous. The damn bugs learn how to survive antibiotics. A lot of antibiotics that worked just fine when I was a child are no longer effective, the bugs have learned to resist them.
Bad enough that we over prescribe antibiotics for humans. Worse is feeding them to farm animals by the pound. Sooner or later an antibiotic resistant bug will jump from animals to humans (swine flu anyone). The farmers claim that the antibiotics make the animals grow faster and bigger and squawk whenever someone suggests limiting antibiotic use.
Anyhow, I don't see a problem with "antibiotic residues" in pork, that could not be solved by banning the use of antibiotics as feed.

Demand, the fix for Great Depression 2.0

70% of the US economy is consumer spending. Right now the consumers have stopped spending, which means that companies cannot sell their products. Which means they lay off workers and stop buying parts.
To get the consumers to spend again, we need some new and attractive products that everybody "just has to have." Let's start with a look at the US auto industry, as a vast consumer producer.
The US car companies haven't introduced a new type of car since Lee Iaccoca invented the minivan back in the 1980's. They used to introduce new types of cars every few years, the station wagon in 1954, the compact cars in 1959, the pony cars in 1964, the SUV and the minivan later. Each new car resulted in a shower of sales. Then Detroit went to sleep and now they don't even bother with yearly restyle anymore. They used to restyle and announce "all new" cars every September. The suits in Detroit lack the stones to do that anymore, for fear that a new design that doesn't sell will be blamed on them.
How about a "mini hauler". A small car that somehow can carry furniture home from the auction or sheetrock back from the lumber year. Perhaps a hatchback with a really really big hatch, perhaps a detachable roof. What we want is a low price car that can get you to work, and haul stuff, smaller and more agile that an F150 pickup.
How about a commuter's hot rod? All the car has to do is get one person to work in some style, and with enough power and handling for rush hour on Rt 128. Maybe even four on the floor. A small car, with a small engine that gets 30 mpg and yet is still fun to drive. Give it one passenger seat just in case the lucky owner has a significant other, and it's somewhere to put a few bags of groceries.
How about a skier's sled? Comes with a stylish factory ski rack guaranteed not to separate at 80 mph full of expensive skis. Plus a good snow car, front wheel drive, traction control, an out side air temp gauge so you can tell if that black patch on the asphalt is a puddle or an ice patch. Good ground clearance for pushing into unplowed parking lots. Big fat tires to float you over snow. You could sell it to boarders and bikers too.
A snow country hot rod. Something as jazzy as a Mustang or Camaro, that would get around in winter. I used to lust after a new Camaro until a friend came up skiing in one. That car got stuck in my driveway, got stuck in the Cannon Mt driveway, couldn't climb the hill into my mother's place. After that weekend it came clear that if I bought something like that everyone would just laugh at it (and me) in snow country. Shouldn't be too hard to do. Good styling, 50/50 weight distribution, front wheel drive, big fat tires, reasonable engine power, say 300 horse.

9/11 according to NPR

It's Sunday, a morning that NPR uses for spiritual pieces. They don't do religion these days, but they feel that Sunday ought to be different from their all-politics-all-the-time fare. So they did a long piece on 9/11, about how it was connected to (they didn't come right out and say caused by) some obscure fault in American souls. And it led to a long dark time of reduced civil liberties at home and evil ass kicking overseas.
Arrgh.
Needless to say I don't agree with that "interpretation" (distortion) of the last ten years. In fact, we suffered an unprovoked attack in time of peace that caused 3000 deaths. That's worse than Pearl Harbor. We got serious about it, and struck back with some heavy blows. Al Quada is a shadow of it's 2001 self, we killed Bin Ladin, we overthrew Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. Not a bad score all things considered.

The horse business

According to the Wall St Journal, 14805 race horses were sold at auction, for $617 million last year. Damn, that's a lot of money for horses. Of course, I'm not into horse racing. If we were talking motor racing, now that's different, I could relate.