While waiting for Invest 91 to become the next tropical storm of the season, we can review our ever-reducing ability to monitor and forecast severe weather.

I wrote earlier about the ‘death’ of QuikSCAT, a satellite, and an important tool in watching Atlantic storms. It out-lived its designed life-span by 7 years, but a Republican Congress and President refused to authorize a replacement.

Now, the word is that a House committee wants to cut the number of research missions of NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter aircraft. Apparently they can’t connect the research with better warning for coastal states, and more accurate landfall forecasts. This is all the more bizarre because the states most heavily affected by hurricanes, are primarily majority Republican.

One is left with the conclusion that Republicans hate knowledge, and anything associated with expanding it, like education and research.

The short answer is ‘tradition’. We got into the habit when it was necessary, and continued to do it, after it ceased to have any real relevance.

That is a $100,000 gold certificate. They were only used by Federal Banks, but they entitled you to go to the national depository at Fort Knox and pick up 2857.142857 Troy ounces of gold. No one ever did it, because then they would have to worry about the gold, and the paper certificates were a lot easier to manage and secure. At any given time the location of every one of the certificates was known, so it didn’t make a lot of sense to steal one. It is rather difficult to disguise yourself as a Federal Reserve bank.

When the US was on the gold standard it had have the gold or silver in its possession to issue the paper money. When it didn’t, it had to borrow it to cover the difference. It was actually buying something, so the debt had meaning.

After we went off the gold standard and repaid the owners of the gold, there is no reason to issue bonds, other than becoming a savings bank. There is no benefit to the United States in the issuance of bonds, and it costs us money to pay the interest, but the practice has continued because ‘we have always done it that way’. It is a very expensive way of controlling the money supply.