There’s still some painting and repairs to complete before The Manse goes on the market and we really didn’t need yet another delay. We are already three weeks behind schedule and the ‘hot market’ window will be closing when school starts late next month.
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With the ongoing debate about energy, specifically the means of generating electricity, the push seems to be for expanding renewables in favor of other more traditional technologies like oil, coal, natural gas, and particularly nuclear.
While renewables sound appealing, the reality is that they aren’t all that great (with the exception of hydro), particularly when you look at the costs. The cost of maintaining the renewables like wind and solar is much higher than originally forecast and their service lifetime is shorter. Because of the intermittent nature such renewables, meaning they cannot be counted on to generate power at any specific time, something that makes them non-dispatchable. The rest of the system has to adjust to the variable nature of renewable sources, making the system less stable.
Another downside to renewables – subsidies.
While many utilities receive subsidies of one form or another, renewables cannot exist without them. The others can, even nuclear. (Yes, the federal government heavily underwrites the storage/disposal of spent nuclear fuel, but that’s under federal non-proliferation laws.)
With all of that in mind, nuclear is one of the best non-carbon energy sources available. And if Elysium Industries has its way, nuclear power may be on the brink of a resurgence.
While a number of companies have been working on next generation reactors, many which have yet to build their first prototypes, Elysium is building upon already proven molten salt technology using materials that are already nuclear qualified. While it is taking a slightly different path in regards to the molten salt, preferring to use chloride salts rather than the fluoride salts of other reactor. As molten salt thorium reactors have a number of advantages over uranium/plutonium reactors, I think it is time that we make the move in this direction.
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Why doesn’t this surprise me?
If you have the misfortune to be a young Republican in Washington, DC, or worse, a Trump staffer, the dating scene is all but non-existent. Considering the atmosphere in the District, particularly after eight years of the Obama Administration and the entrenched Deep State it left behind, that Republicans are in effect social outcasts is to be expected. After all, they are not of the proper political ideology and do not live within the constantly shifting confines of the Left’s paradigm. They are the untermenschen of Washington, to be devoutly ignored, minimalized, and disparaged.
Yet another gleaming example of the intolerant Tolerant Left.
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After the Supreme Court decision that allows states to collect sales taxes from other states where their residents make Internet purchases, one has to think that the 45 states that do have sales taxes expected the revenues to start rolling in once they enacted legislation to collect them. However they may find that a few states, particularly those 5 states that have no sales tax of their own may balk at collecting them for the states that do. That’s certainly the case with my home state of New Hampshire.
While New Hampshire doesn’t like the idea of collecting revenue for other states (and there has been a NH Supreme Court decision – Town Faire Tire vs. Massachusetts Department of Revenue Administration - that have stated that New Hampshire doesn’t have to), it may be forced to do so. However that won’t come without a cost for those states demanding our state do so.
Since New Hampshire does not have a system in place for collecting sales taxes, retailers will have to invest time and money to install the software in their systems to do so as well as pay for the constant updates that will be required to keep the tax requirements up to date. So what plan does the state legislature and the governor have in mind to deal with this?
Make the states demanding we collect sales taxes for them reimburse all of the businesses for the expenses they incur to implement the collection of those taxes. They will also be required to present themselves to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office and prove they have the legal circumstances to ask for the collection and aren’t unfairly targeting small businesses.
How many states will want to go through all of that to collect what will in the end be less than what they think they will get? (I expect that California, Illinois, and Connecticut will do so because they desperately need the revenue. And maybe New Jersey. Of course there will be many different sales tax rates in some states, between the state, county, and municipal sales taxes that exist that have imposed.)
As one commenter to the linked post suggested, “Ironically, my fee, for administration and management of your taxes, is the EXACT amount of your taxes...PLUS postage.”
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I haven’t quite figured out the math, but so far no one has been able to explain to me how it is that having more than one job lowers the unemployment rate. Does the Department of Labor automatically assume that one job filled equates to one person? Or do they look at how many people are looking for work versus how many people have jobs?
Senator Elizabeth Warren seems to think that all of the real reason the unemployment rate is so low is because everyone is working more than one job. This is a similar point that Congressional hopeful Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has brought up as well. What makes it worse is that she has a degree in economics and should know better. But she’s pushing the Progressive narrative and purposely ignoring real world economics as a means of gaining elective office.
To this point I haven’t seen where having more than one job affects the unemployment rate. Using Warren’s and Ocasio-Cortez’s reasoning, we could have a theoretical unemployment rate in the negative numbers if everyone capable of working had more than one job. The labor participation rate could exceed 100% under that same reasoning.
Does anyone else see a problem with this?
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Oh, noes! Colorado snowflakes has a sad because Starbucks has released a coffee mug showing that state’s oil and gas industry.
The blue Colorado mug, part of the coffee giant’s “Been There” series touting the distinctive features of U.S. states and cities, included drawings of bighorn sheep, pine trees, mountains, skiers — and a drilling rig.Losing their minds over a friggin’ coffee mug? These folks need to get a life.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rains have arrived for the next couple of days, all outside work has come to a halt, and where once again I look forward to Monday because it means I can get some rest at work.