Model Airplanes

It began at the fringes.  And almost at warp speed, the campaign for a $15 an hour federal minimum wage has taken center stage.  The Democratic Party has made it part of its platform.  Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton all but supports it.  Her intraparty rival, Bernie Sanders, is sponsoring a bill to achieve it.  Cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington, D.C., plus the states of California and New York, have passed laws to phase it in.  Heavily driven by organized labor, supporters insist a $15 an hour minimum is way overdue.  The current $7.25 an hour, they say, has not kept pace with the cost of living, driving many Americans into poverty.  This claim is off-base.  And their legislation, if fully realized, would leave a trail of unemployment and shuttered businesses.  In some places, this has begun to happen.

National Legal and Policy Center described at length the logic, motives and strategy of the $15 an hour minimum wage campaign in September 2013 and again in September 2014.  Back then, the idea was in its germination stage.  The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) gave vocal support, but other unions, much as they sought an increase, seemed reluctant to go so high all at once.  The subsequent burst of support is a testament to the capacity of an artificially-created “bandwagon” to shape public opinion.  And much of the public does view the idea favorably.  According to a poll last year conducted

Article source: http://nlpc.org/stories/2016/08/29/15-hour-minimum-wage-bad-idea-union-label

Unmanned flying vehicles (UFVs), such as drones, have become increasingly visible in parks and open spaces across America. Stanford faculty and students are among those working on the effective design and deployment of these aircraft.

But UFV flights can pose safety and privacy risks in a campus environment such as Stanford’s. As a result, the university has enacted a new policy governing the use of UFVs at Stanford.

Signs going up at various locations around the campus, including the Oval, publicize Stanford’s rules for unmanned flying vehicles.

The policy prohibits third parties from outside the Stanford community from flying UFVs above or from within Stanford lands, which are private property. The policy also requires Stanford faculty, students and staff to obtain advance approval for a UFV flight at Stanford through a new university committee that has been established to serve as a single, streamlined resource for reviewing proposed flights.

The new protocols come out of a deliberative process that brought together stakeholders from across the university in recent months to formulate UFV guidelines for the campus. They also come as the Federal Aviation Administration has adopted new rules regarding private drone flights.

“We want to support the safe use of UFVs for university research, education and business purposes,” said Larry Gibbs, associate vice president for environmental health and safety. “We also want to provide a reasonable process that actively addresses the safety, regulatory compliance,

Article source: http://news.stanford.edu/2016/08/29/policy-ufv-flying/

PENTAGON: A sleek little model sits on the desk of Lt. Gen. Jon “Dog” Davis, Marine deputy commandant for aviation. What is that, we asked? The next tiltrotor Bell Helicopter Textron hopes the Marine Corps will buy. But it’s not the V-280 Valor, the new manned tiltrotor Bell plans to fly next year. It’s an unmanned tiltrotor designed to give the Marines a drone that can do everything the Air Force’s armed MQ-9 Reaper does – and more. Especially taking off and landing from ships or from land where there’s no runway.

“I think there is a big need for a UAS that can go aboard the sea base,” Davis told me in an interview last week. “General Neller says he doesn’t need a Reaper, but he needs a Reaper-like capability that can go from the sea base.” Gen. Robert Neller is the Marine Corps commandant.

“This is what Bell is proposing,” Davis says, placing the model of Bell’s new concept on the table. “Single engine. It looks a lot like a V-280, doesn’t it?”

V-280 Valor artist rendering

One reason the Marines want such an aircraft is to reduce their reliance on Air Force Reapers — always in short supply — to support operations launched from the sea,

Article source: http://breakingdefense.com/2016/08/meet-bells-x-247-armed-tiltoror-drone-for-marines/

There was nothing but admiration for retired Lieutenant Colonel Harold Brown, 92, at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum’s exhibit Saturday on the famed Tuskegee airmen, the U.S. air force’s first black pilots and crews.

The airmen not only fought in the Second World War, but also fought prejudice to achieve their goals of becoming pilots.

Brown, one of the few remaining Tuskegee pilots, awed and charmed his audience of 150 to 200 people by regaling them with stories and comedic touches on how he and his comrades overcame deep and overt racism.

Article source: http://www.thespec.com/news-story/6828465-tuskegee-pilot-92-enthralls-hamilton-audience/

Don and Jonna Bradway recently cashed out of the stock market and invested in gold and silver. They have stockpiled food and ammunition in the event of a total economic collapse or some other calamity commonly known around here as “The End of the World As We Know It” or “SHTF” – the day something hits the fan.

The Bradways fled California, a state they said is run by “leftists and non-Constitutionalists and anti-freedom people,” and settled on several wooded acres of north Idaho five years ago. They live among like-minded conservative neighbors, host Monday night Bible study around their fire pit, hike in the mountains and fish from their boat. They melt lead to make their own bullets for sport shooting and hunting – or to defend themselves against marauders in a world-ending cataclysm.

“I’m not paranoid, I’m really not,” said Bradway, 68, a cheerful Army veteran with a bushy handlebar mustache who favors Hawaiian shirts. “But we’re prepared. Anybody who knows us knows that Don and Jonna are prepared if and when it hits the fan.”

The Bradways are among the vanguard moving to an area of the Pacific Northwest known as the American Redoubt, a term coined in 2011 by survivalist author and blogger James Wesley, Rawles (the comma is deliberate) to describe a settlement of the God-fearing in a lightly populated territory that includes Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and the eastern parts of Washington and Oregon.

Those migrating to the Redoubt are some of the most

Article source: http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article98487987.html

Pasadera Behavioral Health, 2700 S. Eighth Ave., is closing. Cenpatico Integrated Care policies on subcontracting made it difficult for Pasadera to compete, says Clarke Romans, head of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Southern Arizona.

Article source: http://tucson.com/news/pasadera-southern-arizona-provider-of-mental-health-care-to-close/article_1792fdd0-7b31-5aa5-85df-1c785fabb28a.html