Category Archives: Business

Trump’s NASA Proposal

Loren Grush has the details.

This is just a proposal; as she notes, Culberson is likely to restore the Europa lander. And in general, the White House proposes, and Congress disposes. What really matters is what gets appropriated.

Shared Risk

No, that’s not how insurance works. The word “insurance” has lost all meaning in the context of the health-care debate.

But this raises another issue. I’ve been seeing stories that insurance companies are factoring “climate change” into their premiums. These people have real skin in the climate game, and I’m wondering if they’re taking the “climate scientists” too seriously, and creating a market opportunity for an insurer who doesn’t buy the nonsense?

If You Lose Your Health Insurance

Are you really worse off?

The word “insurance” has lost all meaning when it comes to health care, and the continual confusion and conflation of the two lies at the root of much of the problem. Crazy idea: I want a health savings account to deal with normal medical expenses, and insurance for catastrophes. You know, the way insurance used to be until it got screwed up by wage controls during the war and union negotiators.

The Planetary Society

Entirely not unexpectedly, they have some terrible suggestions for Trump and NASA:

  1. Maintain the exploration of Mars as the organizing principle for NASA’s human spaceflight program
  2. Direct NASA to plan an executable, affordable path for sending humans to Mars orbit by 2033
  3. Expand NASA’s highly successful science portfolio
  4. Continue to grow and support the commercial space industry
  5. Initiate annual five percent increases to NASA’s budget for five years

The only good one is the fourth. Here are mine:

  1. Make the continuous reduction of the cost of space activities the organizing principle for NASA’s human spaceflight program
  2. Direct NASA to end development of its own launch systems and to start to procure propellant in LEO to enable trips beyond
  3. Expand NASA’s science portfolio with data purchases
  4. Continue to grow and support the commercial space industry
  5. Direct funding from SLS/Orion to support 1-4

Wasteful Spending

Trump is going to order a government-wide review of it.

[Update a while later]

Congratulations to Altius Space Machines for their NASA SBIR Phase II win for cryo propellant transfer technology development. If we canceled SLS/Orion, we could found several thousand efforts like this.

Fixing ObamaCare

Ted Cruz may have found a way.

I think we have to face the fact that, thanks to “progressives,” first with the 17th amendment, then ending the need for actual filibusters, and more recently the eviscerating of the filibuster for lower courts, the Senate has lost its original role of being (supposedly in George Washington’s words) the saucer into which the hot tea of the House was poured to cool. It’s a shame, because the Republicans are likely to pick up a number of Senate seats in 2018, due to the disparity between the two parties in how many are up for re-election.

The EPA Climate Regulations

How Scott Pruitt could gut them:

s Pruitt and President Trump look to unwind Obama’s major climate policies, the endangerment finding might be imperiled.

“You know what’s interesting about the situation with CO2, Joe, is we’ve had a Supreme Court decision in 2007 and then the endangerment finding that you’re making reference to in 2009,” Pruitt told CNBC host Joe Kernan, referring to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision — the court ruled that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and the EPA has to determine whether they should be regulated.

“Nowhere in the continuum, nowhere in the equation, has Congress spoken. The legislative branch has not addressed this issue at all,” Pruitt said.

“The decision in 2007 was not that the EPA had to regulate. The decision in 2007 was they needed to make a decision.”

And what was decided can be undecided. Live by the pen and the phone, die by the pen and the phone. Though I’d like to see Massachusetts v. EPA reversed as well, given that we now know, since the release of the emails from CRU, that it was based on junk science. The notion that plant food as a trace gas is a “pollutant” is nonsensical.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of Massachusetts, it could get up to two feet of snow tomorrow, a week before the vernal equinox. Because, you know, the earth is overheating.

[Update early afternoon]

Yes, Scott Pruitt is right on CO2. But he’s a religious heretic, so he must be condemned.

[Tuesday-morning update]

Let’s talk about Scott Pruitt’s “denial” of global warming.