Dump The Department Of Education

I have felt from the beginning that we should never have had a federal department of education.  It is bad enough that we have state level departments of education.  This blog will point out some interesting facts.

All we have gotten from the federal department of education is higher cost.  This not just the cost of the federal department, it is all the red tape that they load onto state departments of education. Real education has enough problems just dealing with the state, much less adding on the federal.  It is a lot more money than you may think and the bottom line is that it has not improved education here in the USA.  Most of the rest of the world can read and have access to the Internet so they know the score when it comes to the quality of education here in the USA.  I can tell you that most of them look down their noses at us and know that we are living beyond our means.  They know that it is impossible today for a country as poorly educated as are our citizens to live as high as we do.  They know that time is running out on us.  You know it too, but there is more.

I checked the Internet to see what the ranking is for the USA compared to the rest of the world on education.  What I found was that we spend the most per kid and get results that rank us from about 15th to 25th depending on who did the study.  That is not the most important point, that we spend the most and get the least for our money. Over half of the countries who do better on education have total populations that are smaller than many of our states.  Even if they had a centralized or federal department of education, it would be smaller than most of our states.  The question is, "what is the advantage of a federal department of education when countries smaller than most of our states do a better job with less?"  Example, Canada which is much better than the USA has a total population about the size of California.  Australia who also does much better only has a population of 22 million.  After that it drops off fast.  Finland kicks our butts and they only have a population of 5 million, it is the same for New Zealand.  How about little Estonia with a population of only 1 million.  How do they do it?  Don't they need some big department to tell them what to do?  Iceland kicks our butt too and they have a population smaller than many USA cities at 300 thousand. 

My bottom line is "big" is not better, and centralization is even worse.  There is no doubt in my mind that we would do a lot better going back to the one room schools where the kids swept the floor and cleaned the toilets.  Why is there such a silence on getting rid of the federal department of education?  That is a no brainier in  my mind.  Cut cost and do a better job.  Not only would we cut cost, but think about all the smart people in those departments who could go out and get a "real" job and pay "real" taxes, not just give back to the government some of the money the government paid them.

Is this radical thinking?  I don't think so.

PS--------Most of you don't know this, but there are two basic types of control systems.  Central and Distributed.  Humans are the only animals who have tried to control things using Central control.  It dates back to the time of Kings and Queens.  Even the bible refers to God as the King.  Honey Bees and Ants that have survived millions of years use the Distributed control system where each Bee or Ant takes care of himself.  The bigger a system gets the worse the Central control system works.  That is why letting the federal government try to manage our education system has not worked.  The one room school was an example of a Distributed control system and see how well it worked. Most people think that because the USA is big it needs more central control, but, it needs "less".  I know that is hard to get your mind around, but it is true. Because central control worked well when the USA was small, most people feel that we only need to try harder now that the USA has gotten so large.  Nothing could be farther from the truth and now you know why.

PS------Here is another PS.  I am also a bee keeper and have been for over 60 years.  Bees are organized on a distributed system where each bee knows what his (her) job is and they do it.  The queen bee just lays eggs, she does not run the hive.  If she is not doing a good job, the worker bees get rid of her and the hatch another queen. This is just back ground.  The worst thing that can happen to a group of bee hives is for them to start "robbing".  That means, rather than collecting nectar to make honey, they steal it from other hives.  It is like gaming the system.  When this happens, it is almost impossible to stop the robbing.  The bees will go on robbing from each other until all the hives die of starvation.  I think it is much the same in our human centralized control system.  We all know that it is a lot easier to game the government than an individual.  That is just one more reason that large centralized control systems fail.  Look at history.  It was the big countries that failed, not the Eskimos or the Native Americans.  People are always trying to find out why big civilizations failed when the answer may be right there in a typical bee hive.

Economics And Priming The Pump

I don't know about you, but I have a couple of water pumps that need to be "primed" some times before they will pump water.  I am thinking about changing the name of what I am doing to "stimulating" the pump.  We all know what "stimulation" does for sex, so why not for pumps or the economy?  This whole business has gotten me to thinking about a new blog, so here goes.

I don't know how it happened, but back in the early 1900"s a Canadian economist came up with the concept of economic "stimulation".  It is my guess that he lived on a farm some where in Ontario Canada where they  had this old piston type water pump.  The way the pump worked, when you "pumped" the handle up and down, it moved a piston up and down.  This piston was sealed to the sides of the pipe with a disc of leather so that when the piston was raised, it sucked water up from below.  When the piston went down, a check valve below prevent the water from going back down the well.  When the piston came back up, this action forced the leather seals against the sides of the pipe, and lifted the water that was above the piston so that it flushed out of the mouth of the pump.

Now what does this have to do with "priming" or "stimulation"?  The job of the pump was to pump water so to get the leathers inside the pump to seal, you needed to fill the chamber above the piston with water so that the pump would work.  This is called "priming the pump".  Now for economics.  If the purpose of economics is to produce wealth that we measure in dollars, then it is just like the pump whose purpose is to pump water.  It is not too big of a step to think that if you can pour water down a pump to get it to pump what, then why not pour money into the economy to get it to producing wealth?  That is how simple minded all this is.

In the case of the water pump, the problem was that the leather seal to the sides of the pipe is that the leather dried out and the seal was lost.  In modern times the seals are made of rubber that does not dry out----problem solved.  Rather than priming the pump with water, they could have used grease to lubricate the leathers and thus restore the seal.  Why don't people think this logical when it comes to economics?

Let's try another example.  On this island we have just one human.  With little effort, he can find all the food he needs and it is warm and he needs little shelter.  There are not animals on the island that can harm him either.  After a period of time, he starts getting very hungry.  What has happened is that he is sleeping later and later and thus has less time to search for food.  His economy is going into the toilet.  An economist on another island sees what is happening and decides to "prime" the pump or to "stimulate" the economy of the island.  He does this by sending a large shipment of food to the island.  The person on the island now has more food than he can eat and is no longer hungry.  The economist feels that he has solved the problem and is awarded the  Nobel prize.  After the man eats all the food, he now sleeps even more and is now more hungry than before.

How about another one?  This guy lives by this river that normally has a nice even flow, but one day he notices that the flow in the river is down.  He calls on his friend who is an economist to find out what to do.  The economist tells him that he needs to "stimulate" the river, but how do you do that?  It is easy.  Take a big tank truck up stream and fill it with water and drive the truck back down stream and put the water from the truck into the river just above the guy's property.  Now the flow will be back to "normal".  It works and the guy is so happy that he recommends his friend for the Nobel prize.  A few days later the guy notices the river is even lower than before.  What the guy discovers is "pay back time".

Look at the economy like the tide in the ocean or the level of water behind a dam.  It goes up and down, but there is a reason that it goes up and down.  Hauling water back and forth may affect the level for a while, but it does not address any of the factors that are causing the water to go up and down.  Stimulating the economy is one of the most simple minded concepts that I have ever heard of. Back in graduate school about 50 years ago, I had a professor by the name of Ted Kreps who had been teaching economics at Stanford for at least 30 years.  He was part of the Roosevelt administration during the great depression.  He was always talking about "economic stimulation" and how it could affect the economy, but I asked him exactly how did it "help" the economy in the long run or how it make a person sleep less and search for food more?  He could not answer that.  It was like it worked by magic and you know that I don't go for magic.

The way that you turn around an economic down turn like we are in now is to determine what it was that "caused" us to be in this situation and "fix" those items.  I would say government spending and high taxation might be one area.  Another might be the fact that we are no better than 25th in the world in education or the fact that 40% of our kids drop out of high school.  How about the out of wed lock birth rate.  It has gone from about 10% 50 years ago to over 50% today.  How about the percentage of our kids who graduate from our colleges with technical degrees?  It is the lowest since numbers have been kept and it is getting worse.  How about fixing some of those things rather than "stimulating" the economy or "priming the pump"?  It is like giving a person as asprin when they are choking. It will take pain to solve our problems, so let's get on with the pain.

Odds Of Drawing To An Inside Straight

I have used this test many times in my blogs and now I want to answer the question that I have asked.  I just proposed to a school administrator of a high school of about 500 that no more than 5 of their students could answer the above question.  The administrator refused to take the challenge because he knew the answer.  Isn't that our problem?  Very few things that we deal with on a daily basis are certain.  Most things that we take as fact are only correct a certain percent of the time.  If we can not deal with probability, I don't see how we can deal with real  life.  What are the chances of flipping a coin 3 times and having it never come up heads?  This is an easy one.  How about drawing one card to make a "flush"?  Are the odds more of less than drawing to an inside straight?  If you can't figure out simple things like this, how can you figure out which person to vote for?  That's our problem.

I took a challenge from this high school administrator for this question.  Let's use Canada. The kids in Canada do a lot better on tests than our kids.  I think they are ranked in #3 while we are ranked #25.  Let's go one step farther and say that Canada has a score of 100 and we have a score of 95.  We are then 5% worse than Canada.  You and I both know that we too have a lot of smart kids and not all of our kids are stupid.  The problem here is "how many of the kids at the bottom would have to be eliminated to bring our average score upto the same as Canada?"  An other way to state this would be to ask how many of our kids at the bottom would have to come upto the average of Canada for the USA to have the same average score as Canada?  Got the idea?  This is kind of a back door method of seeing how far we need to go to catch up with Canada.  The math is a little complicated, but I think you can understand how taking off the bad students at the bottom could help the average of who is left.  If we were able to bring these bottom students up to the average of Canada, that would not hurt the USA average nor would they help the Canada average.  Are you following me on this?  Next, let's look at the answer.

To restate the problem, we are 5% points below Canada.  To get our average equal to Canada, we would have to eliminate just under 10% of the bottom students from the population.  In round numbers, you can figure that it takes twice the number at the bottom to equal the % difference that we are from Canada.  When I calculated this number, I could not believe that we were that bad.  We are talking about having to either eliminate 10% of our kids from the population or having to figure out some way that we can get them upto the "average" of Canada.  What this points out to me is how difficult of a problem we have in terms of education in the USA.  I don't think anyone is looking at the problem in this way.  All the talk that I hear is "how can we improve education".  It takes a  lot more than just improving education to catch up with Canada.  Think about it?  How are we going to improve the education of the bottom 10% so that they are as smart as the average Canadian?  I don't know how we are ever going to do that the way we are now going about it.

We could improve the quality of education of the other 90% to bring the average up, but these kids are already working hard.  It has been my observation over the past 50 or more years that the problem is not with the top students, it is with the quality of the bottom students.  If you look around the world at the countries who do the best on education, most have very few kids at the bottom.  Finland has a high school drop out rate of "zero" , as does South Korea.  Our national drop out rate is 40%.  We are all talking about going over the cliff, but that is small in caparison to the economic impact of a high school drop out rate of 40%.  When Obama talks about protecting the middle and lower class of wage earners, he is really talking about  protecting adult high school drop outs.  In the new technical economy, if you do not graduate from high school and learn the math and science that is taught there, you will end up at the bottom, period.  Obama uses code words like "middle class" rather than calling them stupid or lazy or irresponsible, but it is the same thing.  Our problem is that we have a lot more of these types of people than does Canada.  That is the reason that Canada is doing so much better than we are economically.  They are better educated and they have a higher net worth.  Isn't that the name of the game?

My challenge to you is for you to run your own numbers for the card games and for what we have to do to clean up our problem with those kids who don't want to climb off the bottom.  I don't think we should be rewarding people who do not graduate from high school or who are socially irresponsible.  How about you?

PS-----You have 5 cards in your hand and there are 47 cards in the deck or in other player's hands that you do not know.  In those 47 cards are 4 cards that will fill out your inside straight, so the odds of you getting one of those cards is 4/47, or about 1 in 12.

Out House Economic Lesson

I have an inside toilet now, but that was not always the case.  As a kid, we had an out house for #2 and a tree for #1.  I still do have an out house out by the barn that I can use in an emergency.  The reason that I bring up the "out house" is that it has been around for a very long time and it is a reminder that some things can be very simple.  How about this one?

Who can spend your hard earned money the best?  You or the government in Washington DC?  There is no such thing as government money.  It is all our hard earned money.  I'll bet that even the people in Washington DC would admit that they can spend their own money wiser than the government that they work for.  There is really no such thing as "different" kinds of money, but people seem to look at it that way.  If Washington DC sends them some money, they too spend it like drunken sailors.  If it is money that they earned by working, that money is a little more dear.  They think twice before they spend the money they earned.  They want to be sure that they get at least the same value in their purchase as the effort that it took to earn the money.  Why is it not the same when the check comes in the mail from Washington DC?

What we have going on right now with the Judas is that he wants to tax us and take our money and then he wants to spend it.  He is also smart enough to know that he can't spend it as well as we can, but that is not his objective.  The Judas wants to waste the money so that it weakens the country that we built.  Most people think that the Judas is over his head and does not know anything about real economics.  That's wrong.  He knows and he knows that "from the inside" he can waste the fruits of our labor until in the end, he has trashed this country.  The plan of the Judas is working out so well that he has created a class of voters who feel that they are "entitled" to the fruits of our labor.  They have found that they do not need to work like the rest of us, they can vote themselves a check from Washington DC.

I blogged before that it does not matter if we go over the cliff at the end of the year or not.  Our real problem is the spending by Washington DC more than we earn and the Judas is not worried about that.  It is further compounded by the fact that we get so little value for the spending.  My grandfather used to tell me when I was about 8 or 9 years old that a person should never "buy food on credit".  I thought that a little strange at the time, but looking back, I figured out what he was talking about.  He was about 60 years ahead of his time.  He knew then that sending out free "food stamps" that were purchased on credit with money that was borrowed from China would end up as a #2 at the bottom of the hole in the "OUT HOUSE".

That is as simple as it gets!!

Low Tech, Low Cost Energy Saving vs High Tech, High Cost

Why is it that no one seems to be interested in "low cost, low tech energy saving"?  No sex appeal, that is the reason.  Since about 95% of our population are illiterate when it comes to any thing technical, maybe that is the reason why.  Take this test to see if you are one of those low "tech IQ" people.  What are the odds of drawing to an inside straight?  You know who you are.  This blog is about auto gas mileage.  Everyone is talking about it and we are seeing some improvement, but not much.  Remember my blog about the price of cars?  You can not save energy if you increase the cost of cars.  That is why battery powered cars don't net out as an energy savers.  If that is the case what does?  Is it low tech or some kind of technical break thru?  PS--It has been a very long time since I have seen a significant technical break thru.  The laser was the last one.

This blog is going to be a lot of numbers because that is the only way that this subject can be discussed.  Facts talk and bull shit walks!!!  Remember that one?  A gallon of gas has 144,000 btu's.  That is our starting point and it has a cost of $3.50 per gallon.  With me so far?  If you did not know this, the very best gas engines only convert about 33% of the btu's into mechanical energy.  The rest is waste.  Next, how many btu's does it take to go one mile if your car gets 25 mpg?  It works out to 1,900.8 btu's.  The other 3,859.2 btu's goes to waste.  Now how does the new car that gets 30 mpg look?  The hot shot engineers got this extra mileage by increasing the thermal efficiency of the engine from 33%  to 36.3% or an improvement of 10%.  They got the other 10% improvement by reducing friction of different types.  This car only uses 1,742.4 btu's per mile, but it still has a waste of 3,057.6 btu's per mile. It is going to difficult, impossible or very expensive to get the thermal efficiency of the gas engine higher than 36.3% so we can't go there.

Next, we will look at the cost on the basis that this family drives 20,000 per year.  With the old car that got 25 mpg, the annual gas cost was $2,800.  With the new car, the gas cost is down to $2,333 for a savings of $467 per year.  I am assuming that this new car did not cost any more than the old car.  If it did, we will have to take off some of these savings and apply them to the higher cost of the new car.  Are you still with me?

Next, let's look at what happened to the gas that was wasted.  Even with the new car much of the gas goes to waste.  It works out that the new car has an annual waste of $1,486.  That is three times the savings of the new car over the old car.  The problem is that no one is looking at this number because it is low tech and not sexy.  Most of the waste is in the form of heat and that heat goes into the cooling water and then out the radiator and lost.  If we could save 50% of that heat, it would be worth $743 per year.  This is a lot more than going from 25 mpg to 30 mpg, but how could we do it?

Rather than sending all the extra heat to the radiator where it is lost, why don't we send it to a small water tank inside the car where it can be stored?  When the person gets home and the car is in the garage, he could connect the hot water tank in the car to a heat exchanger inside his house and transfer the heat inside his house for heating.  The same system could then send cold water back out to the car and the small water tank so that the car would be ready to collect another load of heat.  We are talking about a very simple and safe system here that could be made by any person who could pass  my test above from parts from their local hardware store.  It is not complicated.  It is low tech.

What if we had systems like this on our school buses?  They are like big trucks that would have no problem having a hot water storage tank on board.  They also only go on short trips of no more than two hours.  They also always end up at the same bus garage or school where there is a need for heat.  I think this whole concept is too simple for people who have "no" technical ability to understand.  Isn't it strange how they claim they understand high tech, but don't understand low tech?  I guess it is human nature or the sheep complex.

Wake up!  This is your country and this is the government that you elected.  If you want them to change, you will have to put different people in those offices.

PS----How much more is a car worth that gets 5 more mpg?  Payback is one of the simplest ways to  evaluate an investment.  An investment that pays off in 5 years or less would be worth doing.  That means if the new car has a cost of  only $2,335 more, it is worth it.  If it takes 10 years to payback, or has an extra cost of  $4,670, it is clearly "not" worth it.  How smart are you?

Harold Geneen And The Economic Cliff

Many years ago, I worked for ITT and sat across the table from Harold Geneen on several occasions.  I was a young executive at the time and soaked up every word and policy promulgated by Harold Geneen.  All the people around Harold Geneen seemed like very normal executives.  It was not until years later that I realized that both Harold Geneen and his team were far from normal and very exceptional.

One of the concepts that came from Harold Geneen was his "Profit Assurance Plan".  ITT, like most companies, required all plants and divisions to submit detailed budgets and business plans.  This part was normal, but Harold Geneen required a third item.  The "Profit Assurance Plan".  All of you who have had to prepare detailed budgets and business plans knows that the best plans of us humans can go bad.  What the "Profit Assurance Plan" did was to lay out what actions you would take if you fell short of your business plan or if some thing happened beyond your control that affected your plan.  Rather than figure out what you should do "after" things went South, Harold Geneen wanted all of us to identify the most likely things that "could" go bad and then write down in your "Profit Assurance Plan" what "action" you would take.  The whole concept is very simple.  What the manager was supposed to do was to put the "Profit Assurance Plan" in his desk drawer and leave it there until it was needed.

When some key indicator noted in the "Profit Assurance Plan" fell below an "action" level called out in the "Profit Assurance Plan", the manager was supposed to pull out the "Profit Assurance Plan" and implement the action called out in the plan.  It was like a football play book with all the plays showing under what conditions they should be "called".  The concept was even more important and here is why.

Most managers can make good decisions if the pressure is not on or they are not emotionally involved.  This is why the "Profit Assurance Plan" was so unique.  Look at the economic cliff that we face?  Don't we have a "Profit Assurance Plan"?  Yes!!!  If the government can not come up with a plan on how to deal with the deficit, then a list of actions will go into affect. We have the original plan that says that on 1/1/2013 the special tax relief laws passed during the Bush administration will lapse and a series of cuts in major groups like the Defense Department will go into affect.  Notice that now, all the players are in an emotional state that prevents them from acting with logic.  When there was no pressure or emotions, they agreed on a plan.  Let's put that  plan into affect.  If anyone every thought that our economic problems could be solved with out "pain", they are incompetent.  Bring on the pain and let's start fixing our problems before they get even worse.  That is my position and one that I learned from Harold Geneen over 50 years ago.

Are we all cowards?  Can't you handle some pain to save this country?  To solve this one, 100% of us are going to have to deal with the pain, not just the hardest working and most responsible 1%.  This is not a case where you can get some guy in a costume to sprinkle holy water on you so that you are not punished for your sins.  This is the real world where we have to pay our bills.

Bull Fights, Obama And The Cliff

What do you think all these three items have in common?  Think about it.  That's long enough.  I'll help you connect the dots so that you can recognize the picture.  Remember when we were kids and all the puzzle pictures where you connected the numbers and they formed a picture. The concept still works today, only the dots don't have numbers.

Have you ever gone to a real bull fight where they kill the bull at the end?  It is ugly and I don't think that most people would enjoy something like that.  It is popular in some countries and if you look deep into the whole thing, there is a serious lesson to be learned.  I have been to a lot real bull fights and they all ended with the bull being killed.  Some times it was clean and other times is was awful.,  The point of this blog is that we have a bull fight going on right here in this old USA.  That's right, we have one too.  In this case it is happening in Washington DC.  Rather than the bull, it is the leaders of the Republican Party.  The matador is Obama and rather than a red cape, he is using the "cliff".  We all know that the biggest problem facing the USA is over spending.  It is no different than in a normal family that buys more than they can afford and then charges it to a credit card.  The solution is always the same.  "Stop spending more than you can afford."  Families have to give up the two cars or some of the fancy cloths. It is always the same.  This is what we have going on in Washington DC.  Rather than the bull going after spending, the bull is going after the red cape, but the red cape is the "cliff", not over spending.  As I have watched bull fights, I have never been able to figure out why the bull always goes for the cape rather than putting a horn between the matadors legs.  Why are the Republicans and 90% of the media going after the cape?  That is the question.  In the bull fight, when the bull punches thru the cape, it turns out that Obama is not there.  Surprise!!!

As the dance progresses, the bull gets tired (out of money) and the matador takes advantage of the tired bull and plunges his sword into the bulls heart and kills him.  If the bull would just not fall for the old cape trick or the "cliff", he would have a chance of catching the matador on one of his sharp horns, but he never does.  Isn't this exactly what is going on in Washington DC now?  It is a simple bull fight and the Republicans (the bull) are falling right into the red cape (cliff) trap.

The media is a big part of the act too.  Did you notice that they never ask people what they personally think the gang in Washington DC should do?  They only ask what the people think the people in Washington DC think.  If this is not some kind of perverted process, I don't know what is.  Asking the stupid general public what they think is like asking them how much the moon weighs.  You could ask all the monkeys in the world and you would not get the right answer.  That's the problem.  Smart people who know what is going on know that we need to stop spending more than we have.  We need to ask just a few smart people who know the score rather than asking people who have not even graduated from high school.  You know that 40% of our kids don't graduate high school.  Given that fact, why are we asking them what they think the people in Washington DC  think?  That is the biggest mystery.  I think that most of them are watching the red cape too and will end up just like the bull.  This Judas is not your average Judas.  He plans on killing the bull and our whole country in the process.

See, I have connected the dots and the picture is not good.  You go try to connect the dots and tell  me if you can come up with a different picture.  I don't think you can.  Have you been drinking the cool-aid too long?

I Am Not Thru With Libya Or Clinton Yet

The more that I see and hear about Clinton and the State Department handling of the Libya murders, the more sure I am that our government is all screwed up.  This will be a rambling blog, but if you can add it all up, I am sure that you will come away with the same view that I have.

First, the gal who was interviewed by the House Committee and who resigned after the report came out.  She must have know what was going to be in the report, so why didn't she resign sooner?  I know, she did not think she would get caught.  This is a hint into her honesty and commitment to us tax payers.  When asked about her decision not to provide adequate security, she responded that it was the decision of the "group" that it was not needed.  Oh, it was the "group" who made the decision.  What we have here is a typical "manager" type who asked subordinates what they think we should do and then asks for a "show of hands" to determine her decision.  What ever happened to people who know what they are doing?  If the people who work under them are all smarter than the boss, why is this person the boss?

I asked one of my friends who is a management recruiter if he targets the civil servants who work for our government for key high paying private industry management jobs.  You know what he said?  No!  Why not? Most of the people in the civil service jobs have "self selected" themselves to work for the government rather than the real tax paying jobs in the private sector.  Those people are not like us, I can tell you that. A key point about the public sector is that if you ever get one of those jobs, it is almost impossible to ever get fired.  In private industry, the original selection process is about 100 time more rigorous than for the public sector, and yet we make mistakes all the time in the private sector that can only be corrected by terminating a large number of the people who we hired.  In most businesses, there are ups and downs and every time there is a "down" some of the "dead wood" is let go.  This is just one way that private industry corrects its mistakes.  Now when it comes to civil service or public employees, there is "no" affective corrective process, and you know what the results are.

Now back to Clinton.  What is her record on real management?  Zero.  She was married to a man who was President and that put her ahead of the pack, not a record of management and good decision making.  What was her track record on selection of new hires?  What was her record on development of talent?  What was her record on motivation?  What was her record on correcting her employee selections by having to fire some people?  I think she and most of our government  workers have a zero record on these points and that is the problem.  How about us voters who hired her with our vote?  What is our record?  How many of us never hired anyone, much less had to correct some of our errors by firing poor performers.  We are not talking about hiring someone to mow the lawn.  These are the people who determine the future of our country and the country that our children will have to live in and pay off the debit that we have run up.  This is serious business and we need competent people helping us run this country.  It is not a popularity contest, or isn't it?  In a business, most of the employees are clearly better and more aligned with the objectives of the company than are people in our government.  Those in government seem to be thinking about their own personal objectives rather than those of the country.  Private workers may do the same thing, but they have a boss who will keep their tricks in check.  Not so for public workers.  They are gaming the system 100% of the time, where as, in the private sector they only do it about 25% of the time.  That makes a big difference in the final results.

When I started college as a freshman in Engineering, all the kids in my freshman class who were in Engineering had met the entrance requirements.  We were all, in affect, hired.  We got the job of freshman Engineering students.  Kind of like "getting on" with the government, but there was a big difference.  What do you think that was?  By the sophomore year, 50% of the kids were gone.  Fired!  Why were they fired when they met all the entrance requirements?  Because the entrance requirements was not a 100% test of whether or not these kids could do the "work" required.  The next year we lost another 15% until when it came to graduation, only about 25% of those who were originally hired got a promotion to "graduation".  This example is just a simple way of looking at the big difference between business, technical  colleges and public sector jobs.  I can tell you another thing.  In the college of education, it was just the other way around.  There were more graduates than there were students in their freshman class.  How could that happen?  Easy.  Rejects from more difficult majors switched to teaching.  This same thing happens when people are rejected from private business, they go and get public sector jobs.  It never happens the other way around.

I have many more examples, but I am going to wrap it up.  I think that we need to go over the cliff so that we can start to fire some of the dead wood that is in everyone of our public sector areas.  I think that we need to error on the side of cutting too many public sector jobs because we can always hire some (not the same ones back) and thus upgrade All the government is like the post office and if we keep doing what we are doing, the end of this country as we have known it is in sight.  If you can defend what we have been doing in the public sector, I would like to hear it. We are going to have more Libya's.  Is anyone listening?

How To Understand Rare Events

I am not sure that I am qualified to blog on this point, but so far, I have not heard from anyone else who seems qualified either. On that basis, I am going to see if I can develop my position so that most of you can understand it.

To keep the emotions out of it, I am going to use the example of a home.  This is your home and it has a value of $100,000.  This does not count the value of the land.  This would be the value for a fire insurance policy.  Looking at the statistics, we find that on average you can expect that your home will be destroyed by a fire every 95 years.  The first problem is to determine how much money you would have to put into the bank each years earning 3% to have saved up the $100,000 home replacement cost when your home burns down in 95 years.  That is how insurance companies look at it and determine your premium.  They add in profit, but we will not do that here.  Based on the interest tables, you would have to pay $192.58 per year.  This is our base line.  Next, we need to determine how much it would be worth to change the odds of your home burning down every 95 years to every 100 years.  If you don't understand the logic of all this, just wait.  It will all come together.  Next, we calculate the premium for a 100 year policy.  It will be less because the insurance company will not have to pay off so soon or so often.  That new number works out to be $164.67.  You save $27.91 per year.

Now the good stuff.   I don't know how you did it, but some how you figured out how to keep your home from burning down every 95 years to now every 100 years.  That is progress, but how much can you afford to spend each year to get that improvement?  It turns out to be the same $27.91.  If what you did had a cost per year of more than $27.91, then it was not worth doing.  You would have been better off by doing "nothing".  The main reason that there is so little value in doing something to solve your problem with your home burning down is the fact that it is a "rare" event.  What if the modifications to your home had a cost of $100.00 per year?  Well, it would not be worth doing.

Here is another point.  Notice that your improvements did not make your home 100% fire proof?  Most actions you take may make things better, but only by some percentage.  In the case of the shooting at the the school in Newtown, no mater what action you take, it can only reduce the frequency of similar events.  It can not totally eliminate them.  That is one the first mind sets that you have to get used too.  I know that most of you can understand the problem with the home, but your emotions get in the way when it is a school shooting.  What ever we end up with in gun control or what ever, it is only going to make a "rare" event a little less "rare".  We have to have level heads to determine if any of the actions are "worth it" or not.  That is the problem with all personal and government expenditures.  Are they worth it?  I can tell you from my perspective that most are "not".

PS----The other thing that we need to look at is if our actions made something else worse.  This is often the case when governmental "do-gooders" get into the picture.  In the case of the school shooting and possible gun control, there will be people killed in the future because they were law abiding and had no gun to protect themselves from criminals who will still have guns.  If our government can get guns away from criminals "first", they can come and talk to me about giving up my guns.  We can't even keep drugs out of prisons and those people are locked up 24 hours a day how can our our government really control guns?   Keep a cool head!

Building My Own Guitar

I have been a wood worker since I was about 5 years old.  When I was about 5, I found my fathers tool box and took out the hammer and a bunch of nails.  I must have hammered 25 nails into our wooden porch right in front of the door.  I got a spanking, but it did not stop my interest in wood working.  Now I am off making a classical guitar, but not a regular one.  That is the point of this blog.

As a pilot, I have access to some old airplane parts.  All the early airplanes had Sitka Spruce spars for the wings.  Wood was chosen because it was strong and light, plus the fact that it was not subject to "fatigue".  Fatigue is where after stressing something many times, it suddenly cracks into.  This is what happens with wire when you bend it back and forth to break it.  All metals are subject to this affect and for that reason, in airplanes, you can only plan on about 1/3 of the metals basic strength.  This means that members have to be much heavier and this is bad for airplanes.  Pound per pound, wood is stronger than steel.  Now, back to the Guitar.

I am using an old Sitka Spruce spar from a 1946 Taylorcraft airplane for the sound board of my guitar.  The spar is 3/4" thick, 6" wide and about 16'-0" long.  There are a few nicks and screw holes in it but it is in good shape.  I cut off a piece about 30" long and resawed it with my band saw into 3 panels about 3/16" thick.  I ran these thru my drum sander and took them down to about 0.125" thick.  I trued up the edges and glued them together.  I held the panels in place with masking tape and now you can't see or feel the joints.  Next step is to cut out the shape and put it onto by building platform.

I have the neck finished.  It is make from Black Walnut with a strong back of Locust running down the middle.  I also plan to use Locust for the finger board.  Locust is one of the strongest and hardest woods native to North America.  East coast Native Americans used to make their bows from Locust.

I also make up a bunch of wooden wood clamps like the ones used by luthiers.  The design is simple and luthiers have been using these hand made clamp for hundreds of years.  Why fix something that is not broke?

I'll keep you posted on progress.

Newtown Tragedy Prediction

The Newtown Tragedy has created a news over load.  Most people feel that the media should just back off and let the people of Newtown do their private grieving.  I don't want another media person to push a microphone in the face of one of the parents and asking them how they feel or telling them that they understand their pain.  I have have had enough, but there are some things that we could discuss, like "what is a life worth".  Don't hang up.  This is something that we all need to talk about.

People every where are calling for the government to "do something".  I don't have a problem with that, but I do want to apply some logic to any action that is taken.  Rather than answering the question of, "what is a life worth", we can work backwards to the answer.  What do I mean, you can calculate what a life is worth?  Yes!  Let's take the case of the Newtown shooting and apply a few numbers to the situation.  School shootings in the USA amount to about 25 deaths per year on average.  You can pick another number if you want.  That is the base line.  First, let's consider some kind of serious limit on gun ownership.  Let's say that we could reduce gun ownership by about 25%.  Remember that we don't even do that well on cocaine.  What do you estimate that would cost?  My guess is about $500,000,000 per year.  This is not a one time cost.  My most optimistic estimate is that it would reduce school shooting deaths by no more than 20% or 5 deaths.  See, now we can calculate what a life is worth.  Divide the $500,000,000 by 5 and you get the value of a life is $100,000,000.

Many of you say that a life has no value or an infinite value, but I showed above that a life would have to worth $100,000,000 to justify aggressive gun control.  But wait!  If we take 25% of the guns away, I can assure you that 99% will come from law abiding citizens not criminal types.  That means at least more than 10 people will be killed by criminals because they did not have a gun to protect themselves.  The bottom line is that we spend $500,000,000 each year and piss off many of our good law abiding citizens.  In the process we end up with 5 more deaths rather than a net savings of 5 as the "one movers" expected.

A side note. Who is Truman Capote?  The guy who became famous by writing the book "In Cold Blood".  The book about the couple who killed the farm family for no reason and for no gain.  The only one who did gain was Truman Capote.  Isn't it also interesting that most of you know of Truman Capote and his book, but not the name of the family who were killed.  My prediction is that this tragedy will end up the same.  Some writer will become famous by writing a book about this whole thing and again, most of you will not know the names of the kids who were killed.  Isn't America great, or what?

Newtown Tragedy And The Judas

Who was it who said, "don't waste a good tragedy"?  I think that it was Obama before you elected him as your President.  Did you notice that he was at the Sandy hurricane site shooting his mouth off and claiming that he was "going to" cut red tape? Why didn't anyone ask why the red tape had not already been cut before he showed up for the TV cameras?  Only a true Judas could make hay out of a tragedy like Newtown and who is that?  You know.

If this tragedy works out, the Judas will have divided this country even more.  He has always had the NRA singled out, but has not been able to really get them "hot".  Now, why would he want to get them "hot"?  Because he wants to divide this country into as many small groups as he can and get them all as "hot" as possible.  He already has heated up the Blacks, Mexicans, Unions and School Teachers.  He has tried to heat up the business community, but so far they have been too busy trying to care for their businesses to get too hot.  The doctors have been set up with the Obama Care program.  It will take some more time, but you can bet that they will get "hot" too.  Now, back to Newtown.  He has expanded his scope to Hollywood and violent  movies and TV shows.  I thought that Hollywood was the friend of the Judas, but now we are starting to find out that the Judas does not want friends.  He wants to divide and destroy this country.  Are you listening?

If he is not a Judas, tell me one thing that he has done to unit this country or cool it off?  I'll wait.  He has not done one thing.  Individual groups feel that he has united them, but what he has actually done is to divide them even farther from other groups and heated them up.  How about religion?  How about farmers?  How about the coal industry?  Taken individually, while he has been polarizing groups, the people in those groups feel that he is helping them.  That is how perverted this whole thing is.  I don't know if I am the only one who can see the pattern, but none of my friends seem to have seen it until I pointed it out to them.

I blogged about the "cliff" that we face.  That is just another "tragedy" that the Judas does not want to waste either.  It does not matter to him how it turns out.  Either way, it will make this country more heated, divided and weaker economically and that is just what the Judas wants.  Open your eyes!  It is like Germany back the 1930's.  No one saw what was happening, but now it all seems clear to every one, but at what a cost.  It could have all been prevented if people had just connected the dots and saw the picture that it painted.  That is all that I ask here.  I'll be dead before this country is totally trashed, but your kids and mine will still be here and have to live with the mess.  The Judas has at least 4 more years and it will get much worse.   99% of you never heard of Allende and what he did in Chile in less time either.  Think of your kids and how much we have to lose.  My father used to tell me, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink".  Keep drinking the cool-aid if you want.

PS----I am not sure that you got the message on "hot".  It is one thing to have groups who don't agree, but who are not disagreeable.  That is what we have had in the country for the past 300 years.  We may disagree, but we are civil about it.  What the Judas wants is to get the groups "hot" so that they are "not" civil.  He wants blood in the streets.  The unions in Detroit have already said that we can expect blood in the streets over the right to work law that passed in Michigan.  As each group heats up and gets "hot" we can expect less compromise and more blood.  When a Judas wants to trash a country from the inside, that is how it is done.  In Chile, to get things back under control after Allende, the army had to make a lot of people "disappear" and it took several years.  That is what we can expect here in about 5 more years or sooner.  You just watch and see if all these groups don't get "hot" and also notice who made them "hot".  By the time most of you figure this all  out, it will be too late.  That is the way it has always been when a really good Judas comes into your life and we have one.

Gun Control And Newtown

We are now seeing the "knee jerk" response against guns. This is a reminder that we have a lot more "one movers" than you may have thought.  I have been talking to some people about the situation and what I have been finding is that those who have never fired a gun or know nothing about guns are the ones who want to ban gun ownership.  I would also be for gun control if there was a chance that it would solve the problem.  I site the law against bank robbery and the fact that we catch and punish 99% of the people who rob banks as an example.  Notice that we still have several bank robberies every day. It would be even worse if we banned guns.

Here is a simple proposal.  Before we give any more authority to the government, we should first "test" the government to see if they are "qualified".  That is to see if they could actually do what they claim.  Every salesman knows that the first step in a sell is to "qualify" the potential customer.  It is no different for our government.  Obama kept saying, "yes we can", when we all  know that the government is not very good at doing anything.  Here is my simple qualification test.  First, let's see if the government can keep 100% of drugs out of prisons.  Here we are talking about a group of people who are locked up in cages where the government has total control over the inmates.  Now, there drugs in 100% of our prisons.  When the government proves that they can get 100% of the drugs out of our prisons, then they can come back and we can discuss what we should do about guns. 

Now, we have both legal and illegal guns.  I know people who legally own machine guns, yet I do not know of a single event where a legal machine gun was used to murder some one. We are only in the first phases on the discussion of gun control, so hold on.

Newtown Tragedy

First off, I am not any kind of expert, but 99% of the talking heads on TV are not either.  What I have to say is just my opinion based on many years of observation.  The kid who did this had a condition called Aspergers.  I have a grandson who also has Aspergers and he is a beautiful child.  He learned to read at age 3, but has no fear for his personal safety. The condition seems very irrational to anyone who observes it and I do not know of any, so called, expert who really knows how to deal with it, but that is not the point of this blog.

Events like this one in Newtown are not really much different from a terrorist attack.  Innocent people are killed for no reason or to accomplish nothing.  The common thread is that in both, the person who did the act kills themselves.  This does not happen 100% of the time, but it is often the case.  The other point is that these events are "rare".  As is the case in dealing with anything that is "rare", we have to be cautious about the application of every day logic.  This is also the case in medicine when dealing with some thing that is "rare".  Would we pass a law that all boys have to get some kind of shot that is only 90% affective to prevent a decease that only happens in 1 in 1,000 boys?  I don't think so.  The shot also has some side affects and 1 kid in 10,000 dies from the shot.  Starting to see how complex all this is?  What ever we try to do to help prevent situations like Newtown, there are side affects.  Cost would be one.  If you spend money on the Newtown problem, that means you are taking money away from some thing else.  We do not have unlimited amounts or wealth.

In a prior blog, I pointed out that we have a legal system that we all like and agree is one of the best in the world.  It is based on the presumption of innocents and the fear of punishment.  For normal people, this has worked very well, but not for all people.  If there is no fear of punishment, our system does not work.  This is the case with terrorists and it is the same with people who have mental problems.  Another small point is that we do not have any laws against what a person is "thinking".  We only deal with "after the fact" actions.  If you are thinking about robbing a bank, that is not a crime.  It is only after you have robbed the bank that you have committed a crime.  See how all this works?

Next, guns.  The kids in the school were shot, but they could have been killed with a home made bomb just as easily.  A 10 year old could make a gasoline bomb in 5 minutes.  Think about doing some thing with guns just like the medicine above for boys.  It is a fact that more deaths have been prevented by the personal ownership of guns than have been killed by people with mental problems.  Go back to the medical example and notice that it is exactly the same as the gun thing. When we are dealing with an event that is "rare", we have to think all the alternatives completely thru.  The bottom line is that the correct action is "no" action.  In my state more people are killed by hitting deer than almost any other cause.  Should we eliminate deers or require all cars to have big deer guards on the front?  Since most accidents involving deer are at night, should we eliminate night driving?

We all need to stand back and look at the Newtown event for what it was, a "rare" event.  People get killed by lightning too.  The chances of being killed by lightning is higher than winning the lottery.  Keep a cool head and let's all be glad that these are "rare" events and get on with life.

PS-----On TV, I see the Newtown police are having a field day with their "investigation".  It looks like some kind of game.  They have measured where each empty shell case dropped.  They know who did this and they can't try him or send him to jail for a "time out".  I think that they want a complete autopsy on each kid to find out how they died.  If one of these kids were mine, I would not allow any thing to be done to my dead child.  I would take their poor body and have a private family funeral..

Harbor Freight And Reality

I don't know about you, but I get the flyer from Harbor Freight about once a month.  If you don't get it or if you have not been to one of their stores, you should take the time to visit one.  Here is why I think that a visit to a Harbor Freight store is a reality wake up call.

All the stuff is made in China.  China is part of the economy of this world, like it or not.  We do not have exclusive rights to the economy of this planet.  We have to complete on a level playing field for a change.  Today, you are only worth what you can produce.  Unions or governments can't change this basic fact.  If some one can make it for less, then you have to compete on that basis and produce it for even less.  If you can't, who is going to give you food for your family?  No one!  Get used to it.  The world has changed and it is not "round" any more.  It is "flat" and we are all equal for a change.  How is that?  Now back to Harbor Freight.

Here is some data from the November 2012 issue.  You can buy a 9 piece wrench set for $6.99.  You do the math.  That works out to $0.76 per wrench.  Now let's look at you.  Let's say that you make $25 per hour and that you would have to produce a total of $75 of value per hour to justify that wage.  I think these numbers are about right.  For you to justify your $25 per hour, how many of these wrenches do you think you would have to be able to make per hour?  That is what we are talking about here.  To keep this simple, it works out to 100 wrenches per hour.  That means you would have to be able to, alone and all by yourself, make 100 of these wrenches per hour.  That is almost 2 per minute. Do you think that you could do that?  If not, it will only be a mater of time before you are caught up with and you will not have a  job.  Those are the facts.  How about another item from the flyer?

Here is another one.  They have a "High Volume Low Pressure  Gravity Feed" spray gun for $9,99.  This is the kind of spray gun that auto shops use to paint your car.  It is a complex device with at least 25 precision parts.  How many of those do you think you could produce in an hour?  Figure it out and that is exactly what you are really worth, not the hourly rate that some union has extorted out of some weak kneed company.  Meet reality.

How about a 60 piece SAE/Metric Tap and Die set for $24.99?  This is what is used to put threads onto metal rods and to tap threads into holes in metal.  These are "tools" and "tools" are what separate us humans from animals.  If you can't make or use tools, you are not very much higher than an animal on the food chain.  In a way, making tools is the most important thing that us humans have done.  It is what got us to this point and now look what is happening?  We can't or don't make tools anymore, but who does?  China.

Go get a copy of the Harbor Freight flyer and read it from one end to the other.  If this does not make you wake up, I don't know what will.  You could call the flyer the "Reality Bible".  That is how significant it is.  Wake up!

Pier Pressure

What ever happened to positive pier pressure?  We hear about bad pier pressure all the time, but not good pier pressure.  Why do you think that is?  This blog may get a little out of hand because I am not going to divide the pier groups between young and old. Each group has changed and each has changed in a negative way as I will point out.

First, just what is pier pressure and how does it compare with the rule of law?  The rule of law is a set of laws that, in our democracy, we have agreed too.  To be sure they are administered fairly, we have a system of judges and punishments.  I think that we can all agree that we need the rule of law and to have those laws equally enforced.  That is why lady justice has a blind fold on.  The laws are also limited in the USA by a constitution that prevents a simple majority of the voters from taking advantage of a minority.  Sorry, but we don't have constitutional protection for the redistribution of wealth.

Next, pier pressure.  Before there were laws, democracies or constitutions, there was pier pressure.  Pier pressure even preceded religion and its Ten Commandments.  Humans found out early that if they wanted to survive and live among one another, they needed some simple rules of conduct and a way to assure that those rules were followed.  That is when pier pressure arrived.  For humans to belong to the social group, they needed to follow the rules of the social group.  If they did not, the group reminded them that if they did not follow the rules, they would be tossed out of the group.  If that were to have happened, there was a very good chance that the human would not survive.  That was pier pressure.  It was clearly better for the human to be in the social group than to be outside of it.  The basic system worked and the humans prospered, now things seem to have changed.

Our current social order is much more complex.  Rule of law is only a very crude tool when it comes to maintaining social order, it needs to be complemented with pier pressure.  Two societies that have the same basic rules of law can look very different due to differences in pier pressure.  Compare Germany with Spain or the USA with South Korea.  I don't think the law are much different, but the social order is very much different and that is due to differences in pier pressure.  Where am I going with this?

What I feel has happened here in the USA is that we have had a major change in pier pressure over the past 50 years.  Start with graduating from high school.  In the distant past, the high school graduation rate may have been low, but it was not because the kids and their parents wanted then to drop out.  conditions beyond the control of the kid or the parent were the main cause of the drop outs.  When it became easier for kids to complete high school after 1945, the completion rate went up. That was, in my opinion, pier pressure.  A kid or a parent would be embarrassed if it became know that their kid dropped out of high school.  The pier pressure would have banded the kid and his parents "low class" with in their social community.  Now, when a kid drops out of high school, their seems to be no pier pressure from the greater social community.  That is the problem.  It could be the same for getting knocked up in high school or out of marriage.  Where is the pier pressure.  It used to come from both the younger social community and the older.  Not now.  Why?

Here is what I think.  It has been a combination of organized religion and the liberalization of our educational system.  Both are to blame.  Western religion teaches us to "look the other way", "if you can not say anything good about a person, don't say anything".  Liberal thinking tells people to, "do you own thing".  You all know that I do not go with trends.  I look for "events" that cause things to change and in this case, I think that we were hanging by a thread and it only took a small change to break our bonds with traditions.   Two events that also contributed to this change were, urbanization and both parents working "outside of the home".  Both parents have always worked to support a family, but on the farm, both parents worked "in the home".  This change meant that their kids were around other kids more than they were around their mature parents.  If the situation were urban, it was even worse.  The pier group for the kids during their emotional development had changed for the worse.  It is crystal clear to me.  Look at marketing today.  It is directed directly to kids around the influence of the parents.  The kids tell the parents what they want rather than the other way around.

Once the flood gates have been opened, it is next to impossible to ever get them closed again.  Once the kid goes to the fair, they are never again the same.  Isn't that true?  I think that pier pressure can be both good and bad.  In the process of protecting the greater social order, it can come down very hard on an individual or it can favor the individual over the greater social order and be just as bad.  What we have is a total rejection of the pier pressure for the greater social good and that is what I feel needs to change.  How we do that is, at this time, beyond me.  For my part, I am just one person who tries to convince others to do what is right for the greater social good, because we are the social order.  It is us, like it or not.  If we don't do it, it will not get done.

PS-----This may not be directly related, but it shows how we have changed.  As a kid, we grew or produced at least 80% of the food we ate.  I milked the cows, fed the pigs and looked after the chickens.  I was also the best gardener and we had a big garden.  My specialty was sweet corn and still is today.  One year I grew pop corn and we had more pop corn that year than we could ever eat.  I measured the height of the pop corn and it was 14'-2".  I had to use a ladder to measure it.  That was the tallest corn that I have ever grown.  Today, I have only one friend who is a serious gardener and only one other who has chickens.  I don't know anyone who keeps pigs.  I saw a program on TV about the Czech Republic and many people there keep pigs in their back yards.  The average Czech male is 6'-0" tall while we are only 5'-10.5" tall.  They also have a longer life expectancy than we do.  What has happened to us?  It seems to be getting worse.  If we can't find the cause, we are never going to be able to turn things around.  That is what I do, search for the "cause".

The News Media And The Economic Cliff

I am sure that most you did not notice the poor job that the news media are doing in regard to the economic cliff that the country faces.  Here are my observations.

I have been watching all the news media and they are all doing exactly the same thing, and what is that?  The are covering the economic crisis like it is a football game.  They are reporting on what all the players are doing and giving us a play by play account.  I, for one, am not interested in a play by play account of a stupid game.  The country has a problem and that is the year end crisis. What the media should be doing every time they get on of the elected players on one of their shows is to ask them, "what should be done".  They keep asking them for their guess on what play will be run next by which team rather than telling us what they think we should do.  These guys were elected to help govern the country, not act like spectators at a football game. 

The two alternatives that Obama has placed on the field are both bad for this country and everyone knows it.  If that is the case, then why don't all the players on the side lines speak up with their opinion on what we should do.  I am not talking about choosing between the two alternatives that have been put on the field by Obama.  Are we all that stupid to go along playing Obama's game?  I am not sure.

Remember that I used to teach decision theory at a major university and know a little about how to structure decisions.  That's right "structure".  I pointed out in the past that the most common error made in decision making is not having all the alternatives on your list.  Obama has gamed our news media and convinced them to just focus on two alternatives.  The people of this country have to speak out and make sure that more alternatives are on the table.  Further, we have to define the "objective".  Right now, we do have any kind of agreement on the objective.  In Obama's mind, it is his objective to punish his enemy, the Republicans, rather than working for what is best for this country.  That is why Obama is a Judas, not like one of us.  Get that thru your heads.

We know that increasing the tax on high earners will not solve our economic problem.  We all know that it will make things worse.  When I say all, I mean people who have normal brains and we seem to have a lower percentage of those people today that ever.  How about the sugar quota that limits the importation of sugar into the USA?  Our sugar cost twice as much per pound than the rest of the world.  We can import ethanol from Brazil cheaper than we can make it because they can produce sugar to half of what it costs us.  I am on social security and I still feel that we need to raise the age by at least 5 years over a gradual period.  This goes for all benefits based on the age of 65.  We need to eliminate special treatment of green energy including ethanol.  We need to put an age limit on expensive medical procedures like artificial knees and open heart surgery.  My aunt had open heart surgery at age 83 and lived an additional 2 years.  Had she not had the surgery, she would have still lived a few more years.  Further, she got in benefits from social security in about 5 years what she paid in during her whole life.  You know that we can not run a business like that.  I would cut student aid by 50% and research grants of all kinds by the same.  If you went thru the numbers, you could actually cut a lot more, but 50% would be a good start.  I blogged before that all 98% Phd's in non technical or medical areas are worthless, so cutting that money by 75% would not hurt anything.  It would mean that a lot of liberal professors would  not have jobs.  I would get rid of unions in all public sectors just like Reagen did when the air controllers went on strike.  I own a plane and I agree 100% with what Reagan did.

What do you think?  Are you just a couch potato who want to just sit and watch the game of the future of this country?  Or do you want to try to save the country for your grand kids?

Thoughts On Immigration

I have not blogged directly on immigration before, but I do have some opinions about the subject.  First, my family came here as immigrants too.  Some walked across during the ice age and the others came by sail boat to Jamestown.  They came here because they thought that an unknown place must be better than the place that they were in.  This part has not changed.  Our problem now is that those of us who are here want our future to be as good as possible.  I do not see anything wrong with that.  Here are the facts.

When the Native Americans came, there was no one here who had any kind of prior claim, but when the European started coming here the Native Americans did have a claim.  The Europeans ignored the claim of the Native Americans and came anyway.  They brought Small Pox with them and in the process killed 90% of the Native Americans.  That reduced their claim by 90% and the Europeans moved in and took over.  That is the way that it happened.

Now we have an organized society based on "rule of law" where all that are here legally are protected and treated equally under the law.  As a result of all the work that went into this effort, those who are here have a "claim" on this place and thus have the right to restrict who else comes in.  The Native Americans got screwed, but that does not mean that those of us who built this place also have to get screwed.  That is just phase I.

Time has not stood still while all this has been going on.  200 years ago, the currency of the day was good eye sight, a strong back and a willingness to do hard work.  People who came here from Europe or any place else, if they had these basic qualities, they could help build the country and they were welcomed.  The problem is that times have changed and those qualities are not the currency of today.  We do not need people who just have good eye sight and small fingers to thread weaving looms any more.  We need people with intellectual skills and technical knowledge.  That is the new currency.  We have always welcomed people who had the qualities needed to help build our country and that is exactly what we should continue to do.  The only difference is that the qualities that are needed has changed and we need to change our policies accordingly.  That is just a fact.

What we did was to build a country where the rule of law protects all of us and makes us equal.  If a person want to join this exclusive club, they have to first agree to the rules or laws that we live by.  Is that too  much to ask?  I don't think so.  The very fact that someone gets into this country by breaking our laws is proof that they do not respect the rule of law and thus should not be allowed membership.  I know that a lot of the people who want in come from countries who do not have respect for the rule of law, but that is not a defense for violating our laws by entering illegally.  If these people are so concerned about the rule of law, I ask why don't they stay home and work like many of us did to create a situation in their own country where they have the rule of law?  Coming here to cash in on the work that we have done is clearly not fair by any standard.

Further, in many of the situations where people who lack the qualities that we need, they also have conducted themselves in an irresponsible manor.  Hatti and Mexico have clearly been irresponsible in their breeding habits.  They have screwed far too many children into this world than they or the economy of their countries can support.  I do not think we should reward that type of conduct by allowing them entry into the USA.  Darwin tries to correct bad behavior like this and we need to stay out of his way.  You may be a Gogooder who feels sorry for these irresponsible people and I have no problem with you using your own money and time to help them, but when you allow them to come into the country that me and my family helped to built, you are asking me to finance your Dogooder ego trip.  To that I say no!!

We can use the help provided by new immigrants just like 200 years ago, but now we need a different type of immigrant.  We need to adjust our policies with the changing times.  We don't need immigrants who know how to make buggy whips.  We need people who know how to program computers.  That is the only thing that has changed.

PS------Rather than  letting people into the USA who do not meet our standards, the USA tax payers send money, food and help to them.  Show me any other country who has done so  much, but don't ask us to allow them to cash in by looking the other way when they break our laws by crossing our borders illegally.  Our laws all need to be enforced equally.  What Obama and Allende did to destroy their countries was to selectively enforce the laws.  Don't allow it to happen here.

The Judas And The Economic Cliff

Most of you know that I have been pointing out that Obama is a Judas and does not have the best interests of the USA at heart.  If you try to connect the dots with the assumption that Obama wants what is good for the future of the USA, you will come away confused.  If, on the other hand, you connect the dots based on Obama being a Judas, all the dots connect.  Isn't that interesting.  Now, how about a different look at the Economic Cliff.

With the attitude of Obama, there seems to only be two alternatives.  The congress gives into Obama and lets him have all the things that he wants or the congress does not give in and we have an economic crisis.  If you try to see the logic in these two on the basis that Obama wants to do what is good for the future of the USA, both alternatives will crash the economy of the USA.  Neither is in the best interests of the future of the USA.  If you can get your head around the possibility that Obama is a Judas, then he would be satisfied with either alternative.  The fact that the dots connect so well, seems to be some proof that Obama is a Judas.

In prior blogs, I pointed out many of the Obama programs that were clearly not in the best interests of the future of the USA, but as a Judas, Obama endorsed the expenditures of the hard earned wealth of the USA.  If the end game of the Judas is the destruction of the USA, the ends justify the means.  That means that he can sleep nights after doing the worst possible things to the USA because it supports the ends or the destruction of the USA.  It is happening from the inside as it almost always has in the past.

I put this challenge to you.  Go back over all the major actions and programs of the Obama administration and tell me which ones, make us more united or less united and which ones make us economically weaker or stronger.  What you are going to find is that 99% make us either less united or economically weaker.  Take any of the programs. Economic stimulation, Student loans, Green energy, Key Stone pipe line, Dealing with illegals from Mexico, Obama Care.  I could go on and on, but the answer would be the same.  We have a Judas in the White House and most of you are still drinking the cool-aid.  It is going to get worse, but I am not so sure that it will get better anytime soon.

PS-------Check out how long it took Chile to recover from Allende.  He was Chile's Judas.  Obama does not just want to win, he wants to "punish" his enemies.  That is the Muslim way.  Remember that!!!  He is not one of us!!

Reason For High medical Cost

I think that we can all agree that medical costs are growing faster than almost anything else.  The solution is not throwing more money at the problem.  If not, then what is?  We have to totally rethink exactly how we provide medical service in the USA.  In almost every other area of economics, we have seen a gradual, but significant increase in efficiency that has lower cost or kept them even.  This has not happened with medical cost.  Did you ever wonder why?  First, we need to look at exactly why and how we have made significant improvements in efficiency in other areas.  That is the point of this blog.

In almost all other areas, knowledge and skill have a "multiplication" factor.  What do I mean by a "multiplication" factor?  Take an engineer who owns a small company that builds some very complex product.  The engineer does not build all these complex products, but he does know how to design them and exactly how to build them.  He knows all the processes in detail and has designed many of the tools and jigs that are required to build the product.  The people who actually assemble the parts are "not" skilled like the engineer.  What the engineer has done is to "multiply" his skill, education and knowledge and thus produce much more than he could have produced had he done all the work by him or her self.  This is what is missing from how we provide medical services.

In the case of medicine, we handle it as if all the doctors are master artists or musicians.  In the case of an artist, they have to do all the actual work all by themselves.  They can not multiply their work by showing others how to make the drawing so that they can sign it at the bottom.  Think of all the things that doctors do?  For some reason we do not allow doctors to delegate individual jobs to lower skilled people.  Remember when the big thing in the news was that people from companies who designed and built artificial joints were in the operating rooms installing the joints while the doctors just watched.  What was wrong with letting the specialist do the job if they could do it better than the doctor?  I am a good welder and know all about the technology related to welding, but I prefer to hire people who have less education, but who are more skilled in actual welding.  That is the way it is done every place else, but not in medicine.  In a few places, we see nurse practitioners, but this is about 100 years too late. 

If you look at what doctors do now, you would have to agree that at least 75% of what they do could be done by someone with a lot less education and thus at a lower cost.  Who do you think does all the blood tests?  Those people are not doctors.  How about reading x-ray?  These are some of the highest paid doctors, but it could be done by a person any place in the world with little more than a high school education with some special knowledge just in the area of x-rays and biology.  Who is preventing multiplication in our medical system?  Is it lawyers or is it the old doctors who have made the big investment and now do not want others to take some kind of short cut?  It is both.  If I had a cut, I would feel just fine asking my neighbor, who is a veterinarian, to stitch it up rather than going to an expensive regular doctor.  How about you?  Look at the poor druggist.  He goes to school to learn about all kinds of medicine, but ends up just counting pills.  Is that a waste or what?  He could multiply his knowledge if we would just get off his back with regulations.

We have this problem at all levels.  How about your dentist?  Why can't a hygienist come to my house like a massage therapist and clean my teeth?  Do you think it would be cheaper if they could?  Under the supervision of a dentist, do you think that a smart high school graduate could fill your teeth or make false teeth?  You don't even know who makes your false teeth.  Many are made in Mexico and mailed back to the dentist here.  It is happening, but it is not enough.  We need to wise up and figure out ways that we can multiply skill and knowledge related to medical like we do in every other area of our economy.  Bankers do it.  Do you think the clerks actually run the bank?

What we need to do is the multiply skill and knowledge at all levels of medical service.  I feel that this is the only way that we are going to get the cost down while not risking too much decline in quality.  If you can't afford some kind of medical service, quality doesn't mean anything and that is the direction that we are going with the way we are handling medical services.  I know that we all want to drive brand new Cadillacs, but you know that we all can't afford them.  It is the same way with medical services.  Wise up and think for yourself.

Education Challenge For The USA

I spend a lot of time blogging on education in the USA at all levels.  I try very hard to do my homework before I start blogging so that I have the facts.  I have been finding it very difficult to get to the real facts on what our colleges and universities are doing.  You don't think so?  Go try to get data on your own state colleges and universities.  Try to find out how may degrees of each type and for what majors they issued this past year.  You can find all kinds of things about race and diversity, but not on what they are really supposed to be doing.  I have been working for an hour to see if I can find the number of bachelor degrees issued at UC Berkeley for each major.  No luck.  I did find that they have 43% Asians and 33% white students.  I also found that the Blacks that get in almost never graduate.  No one seems to know why.  They think it has to do with some kind of victimization.

My challenge to you is to go find out what your tax money is being spent on and see if you think you are getting your monies worth.  Second, look at the kids, the parents and the tax payers who are spending all this money on degrees that you know are little more than hobbies and will never help to grow our economy or pay back the investment.

Take all the degrees that your colleges and universities offer and rank them in terms of their value to this country.  Do this from top to bottom and then draw a line at the 50% point and eliminate all those below your line.  Next take 50% of those that are left and cut the number of degrees awarded by 50%.  Now you are starting to manage your tax money and show the universities how you want your money spent.  Next take the top 25% and see if there is some way that the number of graduates in this area can be doubled..  These are the ones who really pay the bills and we need more of them.

Most of our colleges and universities are run by the inmates who have never been outside the walls.  What do you think our prisons would look like if we ran them like we run our colleges and universities?  They would look just like our universities except the prison terms would get longer.  Did you know that after 6 years, only about 40% of the kids ever graduate?  We should consider it stealing when someone contracts to spend our tax money in college and then never graduates.  What if you hired a carpenter to build your house and it took 6 years rather than 4 and then 60% he left the job unfinished?  That is about what we have.

The reason for this challenge is that I feel the only way to get higher education under control is for each of us to get the facts ourselves and form our own opinion about what needs to be done.  If we all know what we want and not just take the word of other, we may have a chance to fix it.

PS----Why do you think Berkeley has 43% Asians?  Why do you think engineering accounts for 10% of the graduates at Berkeley when is going down every where else?  Some one is kicking our butts and we have to stop it.  Do your research and get hot.

PS----Did you see the news where they said that a large percentage of our young people are so uneducated that they will never be able to hold a job?  They pointed out that the main cause was the large percentage of these kids who were born out of wedlock.  Da!  When did you wake up to the facts when 50% of Black kids were born out of wedlock?  Scientific American had charts on the trend back in 1974 when it was "just" 50%.  Now it is about 90%.  Da!  Whose problem is it that so many Blacks are born out of wedlock?  It is 100% the problem of the Black community, that's who.