In response to this post:
How come the Left always preaches ‘sustainability’ or ‘it’s for the children’…until it comes to their economic plans?
How come, indeed?
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Ad Astra To A Visionary
I’ve just learned that Tom Rogers, former head of the Space Transportation Association, has died. I hadn’t talked to him in a few years, and deeply regret now that I hadn’t. There is so much more to say about him than that he is the former head of the STA, and I’ll make a probably pathetic attempt to do so on the morrow. All that I can say now is that I am more frustrated than usual with this news by the boneheaded space policies that the nation has had for half a century, and all of the dreams that they have crushed, and all of the hard-working and far-sighted people who couldn’t live long enough to see better.
[Update a few minutes later]
Konrad Dannenberg has died as well.
Do space pioneers go in threes, like Hollywood? If so, who’s next? I don’t even want to speculate.
[Late evening update]
Clark Lindsey has some Rogers-related links.
[Tuesday morning update]
There are some more encomia for Tom over at NASA Watch. Here’s one from Courtney Stadd:
I interacted with Tom for over 25 years – both in my capacity as a government official and in my various private sector incarnations. In speaking truth to power, he marshaled his data and did everything he could to persuade the government that the commercial space sector offered innovative and cost effective solutions. And if logic failed to penetrate the prefrontal cortex of his intended target – e.g., a Member of Congress during testimony or an agency official or the audience at a space conference – Tom was legendary for raising his voice to a decibel level that ensured that no one with functional hearing could possibly ignore his key arguments. His footprint was deep and wide – from early pathfinding work on GPS, among other leading edge research (during his tenure heading the Air Force and MIT R&D labs) to the first director of research at Housing and Urban Development. For many years his was a lonely voice in the wilderness as he organized fora on space tourism and funded a series of studies via his Sophron Foundation. (I was a happy recipient of one of his grants many years ago.) His Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) study regarding the issues and challenges of the International Space Station – issued during the Reagan Administration – is a classic in terms of clarity of thought and prescience regarding the cost and policy challenges that have confronted the Space Station in recent years. In a world increasingly populated with self-regarding incrementalists, Tom’s legacy is an inspiration to all of us who believe in the power of big ideas (based on sound principles) and the passion and courage to counter conventional wisdom in pursuit of one’s convictions. As Arthur C. Clarke once said, “The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.” Few embodied this philosophy as well as the late Tom Rogers. Godspeed, Tom.
I was also a grant recipient, about a decade ago. The results were this study on near-term prospects for space tourism. Also over at NASA Watch, Mark Schlather recounts (though he bowdlerizes) Tom’s stock response to anyone who asked him why he wanted to go into space: “None of your goddamned business!” The point being that no one should have to justify to anyone, government or otherwise, why they wanted to go into space or what they wanted to do there. Only if the government was paying for the trip should it care.
I had heard Tom give one of his fire-and-brimstone speeches on commercial space at the Denver ISDC back in the mid-eighties, but I didn’t actually meet him until I attended a conference sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the early nineties, on standardizing commercial space operations. He saw the dreaded word “Rockwell” on my name badge, decided to make me a surrogate for his big-aerospace nemesis, and proceeded to harangue me on everything that the industry was doing wrong, repeatedly calling my company “Rockwell North American.” It took several discussions over the course of the conference before he finally decided that I wasn’t one of those horned devils trying to hold America back in space for purposes of corporate greed. It was the beginning of a wonderful and productive friendship, with breakfasts at the Cosmos Club whenever I was in Washington. Sadly, though, it’s one that I’ve regrettably been remiss in upholding in the last few years on my end.
Tom was a raconteur (to dramatically understate), and he loved to tweak the establishment, though he was deeply of it. For instance, I never saw him not wearing a suit. On the other hand, one of his favorite (non-space-related) stories was when he was invited to a meeting at Orbital Sciences, and was informed that the company dress code was casual. He showed up out in Reston, as usual, in his suit, and walked up to the receptionist behind the counter inside the entrance. She signed him in, and then gently reprimanded him: “Mr. Rogers, you didn’t need to wear a suit. Didn’t anyone tell you that we dress casually here?” He replied, “You don’t understand, dear. I know you can’t see from where you’re sitting, but I’m not wearing any pants.”
Tom had decades of experience in the Beltway, and had learned through an accumulation of (as he often put it) “cleat marks in his back” the difficulty of the task that was laid out for us, and how long it would take. He always cautioned against impatience, and to not expect sudden shifts in policy, or overnight success. He would counsel, instead, to look for smaller signs of optimism, to consider the immense inertia of federal policymaking, and just look for “curvature in the wake” of the policy. It is pretty hard, on a day-to-day basis, to see it. But when one looks back over the past thirty years or so, the ship has changed course considerably, from an era in which it was almost inconceivable that a private entity could put up a satellite (let alone a human) to one in which the FAA is granting launch licenses to suborbital space tourism firms, with prospects on the horizon for private human spaceflight into orbit. And one of the heaviest shoulders on that stiff rudder was Tom Rogers. And wherever he ends up, whether with God or Beelzebub (the latter seems highly unlikely), either of them will have their hands full with him, and he’ll have a great time.
[Bumped to Tuesday morning]
[Update a little later]
Some more thoughts over at NASA Watch from Alan Ladwig (Obama administration space adviser), which I also remember:
He was a great mentor and always had time to share ideas and dispense advice. At various points in my career he would stop by my office to admonish me for focusing on non-priority issues. ‘Ladwig,” he proclaimed, “stop screwing around on page two and page three issues and concentrate on page one!”
I think about this proclamation constantly and although I still get bogged down on the back pages, he gave me a goal to strive towards that I’ll never forget.
The problem with space policy is that it remains on the back pages in general. Tom always advocated a complete scrape-down-to-the-paint approach to remaking space policy (as have I, and even more since meeting and being influenced by him) that the politics and policy inertia simply will not allow.
Why The New Deal Didn’t Work
This is an important point:
The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression because of not one but a combination of misguided policies that made it harder for employers to create jobs and harder for consumers to buy things. Keynesian commentators talk as if FDR made a single key mistake, like not incurring big enough budget deficits. This ignores the tripling of the tax burden during the New Deal period (1933-1940). Also ignored is the fact that New Deal spending was mainly paid for by the middle class and the poor, because the biggest revenue generator for the federal government was the excise tax on beer, cigarettes, chewing gum, and other cheap pleasures disproportionately enjoyed by the middle class and the poor. Moreover, several New Deal laws made everything — especially food — more expensive when Americans desperately needed bargains.
There’s a lot more.
Notions that the New Deal didn’t work because they didn’t do enough of it (particularly based on the absurd notion that the war was “the New Deal on steroids” which was why it did) are just the kind of rewriting of history that I was talking about.
[Update on Tuesday morning]
There are few things I enjoy more than dealing with history-challenged simpletons who stupidly assume that because one doesn’t accept the gospel that FDR Saved Us From The Breadlines, that one must therefore think that Herbert Hoover was (in the parlance of the times) the cats pajamas, and that if we’d only stuck with his (non-existent) laissez-faire policies, all would have been well with the world. Larry Kudlow had a guest on his show who made this idiotic assumption last week, when he talked about Larry’s “hero,” Herbert Hoover. Kudlow quickly put him in his place (as I did here with my own idiot in comments). It’s the same (or at least related) pigheaded mindlessness and false choice that causes people to foolishly assume that because I’m down on Democrats I must be a Republican.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Michael Barone, on the real lessons of the Great Depression. Of course, those pushing “stimuli” don’t want to learn the real lessons, because it would remove much of the justification for their efforts to grow government and take over more and more of our lives as individuals.
[Bumped to Tuesday morning]
A Trip To The Museum
We went over to the Holocaust Museum today. I’d never been, but never had much desire to — I’d read my fill of that history years ago. It’s not so much that I found it disturbing as simply a waste of time that I could spend looking at museums in which I was more interested. But Patricia wanted to, and one of the reasons that I love her is that she did, and so we did. As I expected, there was little unexpected for me in the permanent exhibit on the upper floors, but in the basement is space for temporary exhibits. One that opened a couple weeks ago (ten days after the White House had a new occupant, though I’m sure that was just a coincidence) was on Nazi propaganda. Now that, I found disturbing.
This is the image that greets you at the beginning of the display.
The placard that accompanied it said that one of the elements of convincing propaganda, to appeal to the masses, is a powerful image combined with a simple message. It helps even more, apparently, if it is done in the style of socialist realism, like this.
Farther on in the display, it discussed how Goebbels and the other Nazi propagandists were enamored of new communications technologies, using the gramophone as an example. If they were operating now, they would no doubt be fascinated by Web 2.0.
A few steps later, I came across the following striking quote, by a woman in Germany who had attended one of Hitler’s rallies:
How many look up to him with touching faith! As their helper, their saviour, their deliverer from unbearable distress…
I was so relieved that I live almost eighty years later, and that our society had grown beyond that kind of primitive thinking — that the president is responsible for the personal well-being of every citizen, and every sparrow that falls in America, like a demigod. I mean, obviously, any responsible leader today, confronted with such idolatry would use it as a teachable moment about the nature of our Republic, rather than basking in the worship, as Hitler did, to gather more raw unchecked political power unto himself.
I also found interesting the description of how the Nazi authorities encouraged and organized public rituals, ceremonies, meetings and other public events. I could see how this kind of activity might solidify public support behind otherwise less politically palatable notions felt important by the state.
Of course, one of the most disturbing tactics, used not only by the National Socialists, but also the fascistic international socialists in the Soviet Union, was the continual rewriting of history to glorify the state, and make it out to be the victim of past failures and treachery, and misguided policies. Some of the examples they gave were almost as though modern leaders were continually talking, fantastically, about how we got into our current economic problems through deregulation and tax cuts, and (non-existent) laissez-faire policies, rather than overspending and overregulation, and continuing government interference in the free market, often at the behest of corporations.
Finally, during the war, one of the hallmarks of the Nazi regime was to control the flow of information to the German citizenry. I hadn’t realized that they actually built specialized radios whose sensitivity was so weak that they could only pick up German government signals, but generally not overseas views (such as the BBC). They viewed clandestine listeners to foreign broadcasts as traitors to the state, undermining the war effort. I’m certainly glad we live in a nation where such attitudes would be odious, to both Congress and the President.
All in all, it was a relief to leave the museum, and walk back across the mall toward the White House, secure in the knowledge that such things could never occur here.
[Update a while later]
We’re all fascists now (part II).
And try to figure out which chapter of the story we’re in.
[President’s Day update]
The administration is no longer issuing denials on the Fairness Doctrine. I guess when the campaign did it last summer, it was, you know, “just words” to get elected.
But I’m sure they mean well. They just have to keep their options open in case some people don’t follow the leader’s sage advice to “not listen to Rush.”
[Update a few minutes later]
What I find fascinating is how the BDS-afflicted had to doctor the photos of President Bush to push their conception of him as a fascist dictator, yet the Obama promoters did it to him with no apparent sense of the irony of what they were doing.
These folks seem to have had their sense of irony excised at birth.
The War Against Islamism Is Lost
At least in Britain, which no longer seems great.
The Bailouts Explained
By Calvin (sans Hobbs).
Will The “Stimulus” Really Stimulate?
Economists say no:
“I think (doing) nothing would have been better,” said Ed Yardeni, an investment analyst who’s usually an optimist, in an interview with McClatchy. He argued that the plan fails to provide the right incentives to spur spending.
“It’s unfocused. That is my problem. It is a lot of money for a lot of nickel-and- dime programs. I would have rather had a lot of money for (promoting purchase of) housing and autos . . . . Most of this plan is really, I think, aimed at stabilizing the situation and helping people get through the recession, rather than getting us out of the recession. They are actually providing less short-term stimulus by cutting back, from what I understand, some of the tax credits.”
It won’t slow them down, of course. Because it’s not really about “stimulus.”
As a commenter over at Instapundit noted a few weeks ago, a government providing stimulus is like an ugly and uncoordinated person performing a lewd dance. Even if the intent is to stimulate, the effect is exactly the opposite.
[Afternoon update]
The shock doctrine:
Last year the US economy was hit with one shock after another: the Bear Stearns bail-out, the Indymac collapse, the implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the AIG nationalisation, the biggest stock market drop ever, the $700bn Wall Street bail-out and more – all accompanied by a steady drumbeat of apocalyptic language from political leaders.
And what happened? Did the Republican administration summon up the spirit of Milton Friedman and cut government spending? Did it deregulate and privatise?
No.
It did what governments actually do in a crisis – it seized new powers over the economy. It dramatically expanded the regulatory powers of the Federal Reserve and injected a trillion dollars of inflationary credit into the banking system. It partially nationalised the biggest banks. It appropriated $700bn with which to intervene in the economy. It made General Motors and Chrysler wards of the federal government. It wrote a bail-out bill giving the secretary of the treasury extraordinary powers that could not be reviewed by courts or other government agencies.
Now the Obama administration is continuing this drive toward centralisation and government domination of the economy. And its key players are explicitly referring to heir own version of the shock doctrine. Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the economic crisis facing the country is “an opportunity for us”. After all, he said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And this crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before” such as taking control of the financial, energy, information and healthcare industries.
That’s just the sort of thing Naomi Klein would have us believe that free-marketers like Milton Friedman think. “Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters,” Klein wrote. “Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas.” But that is exactly what American left-liberals have been doing in anticipation of a Democratic administration coming to power at a time when the public might be frightened into accepting more government than it normally would.
As is often the case when the left accuses the right of something (lying, racism, hate), Naomi Klein’s thesis is simple projection.
Is This Any Way To Run A Government?
Is it reasonable to expect the peoples’ representatives to at least read the bills they vote on and pass, let alone comprehend them? Jimmie at The Sundries Shack has done the math:
Let’s start with two generous assumptions: that the bill remains at 1,434 pages, and it gets in the hands of your member of Congress at 8 PM. Let’s also assume that there are about 350 words on each page
In order for anyone to read the entire bill in 13 hours, they’d have to start the very minute they got it and read over 1.8 pages a minute every minute, without a break. They’ll be clocking in at a reading speed of 640.5 words per minute at that rate. If anyone needs a potty break, they’d better take the bill with them. Forget eating.
By comparison, the average human reads about 200-400 wpm if “reading for comprehension”. You only hit 640 wpm if you’re skimming the text (and the top end average skimming rate is 700 wpm and the comprehension rate drops dramatically).
Now, let’s face it, it’s not exactly unheard of for legislators to vote on legislation they haven’t read, but usually there is at least time for their staffers to get a gander at it.
This is the biggest political travesty of my lifetime, and (unfortunately) I’m no spring chicken. Which of my commenters is going to attempt to defend this?
[Friday Update]
Hope! And Change!
It stands to reason that perhaps the most basic obligation members of Congress have is to know what they are voting for. And this is doubly true on a spending bill of this unprecedented magnitude. It’s also worth noting that President Obama campaigned on pushing for explicit transparency measures in Congress. John Dickerson at Slate helpfully pointed out what Change.gov says about legislative transparency:
End the Practice of Writing Legislation Behind Closed Doors: As president, Barack Obama will restore the American people’s trust in their government by making government more open and transparent. Obama will work to reform congressional rules to require all legislative sessions, including committee mark-ups and conference committees, to be conducted in public.
Just a few weeks in office, and we already have the President enabling and encouraging one of the least transparent processes imaginable to muscle through an $800 billion spending bill. Does the administration think this amounts to change, or should I wait for them to get their new website, worsethanever.gov, up and running?
I guess we’ll just have to wait. I guess it was “just words.” Just like the words about “going through bills, line by line, and eliminating wasteful spending.” Anything to get elected.
Have these people no shame?
[Bumped]
Space Policy “Tensions”?
Rob Coppinger is hearing some rumours (if I had heard them, they’d be rumors) of dissension within the White House over the NASA administrator pick, apparently over whether or not to put a retired general in charge (at least two of the candidates, and perhaps three are). It could be that the space people favor it, but that other administration members are anti-military, but that’s purely speculation (though not an unreasonable one, knowing the types of people who would be in this administration). He also thinks that it could be a year before the administration pays much attention to NASA. Which makes all of the transition activity on the subject somewhat puzzling.
Legal Aspects Of The Satellite Collision
Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts.