I Voted for Donald Trump

Didn’t want it to be that way. During the primary season Mary and I and some friends wrote and paid to run full page antiTrump local ads on the day of his campaign stop in Vermont. We criticized his protectionism, misogyny, apparent racism, praise for Putin, and his practice of leaving investors More...

An Old Dog, Scratch, and Python

As a programmer I’m a very old dog – been doing it since 1962. Lately I had to learn some new tricks: Scratch for my grandkids and Python to manipulate some astrophysical data with my son. These days communities grow up More...

The Farm Bill: Where Wealthfare Meets Welfare

The US Farm Bill is bipartisan swamp cultivation at its worst. Democrats and Republicans come together and eagerly and equally trade their “principles” for election support and campaign contributions. Most of the money in the bill is for food stamps (urban votes) but there is plenty of money, man More...

Let the Market for Domestic Workers Raise the Minimum Wage in the USA

Ever since at least the time of Queen Elisabeth the First, workers have objected to open immigration on the rational economic grounds that “foreign” workers drive down wages. Employers, on the other hand, have always been for open immigration for exactly the same reason. Employees want the protec More...

Incels: Just Say No

The cult of victimhood has reached its reductio ad absurdum with the grievance of the incels, involuntary celibates in case you’ve missed the news. Last month Alek Minassian drove a rented van onto a sidewalk in Toronto and killed ten people in apparent retribution for women who are too More...

A Good Use of One-Time Funds

Vermont Governor Phil Scott has proposed using one-time funds from various sources to fill a $58 million gap in the state education budget. Normally using one-time funds to paper over a problem in a spending program which has grown beyond affordability is a bad idea. However, Scott’s proposal is More...