The capsule seems to have taken on water after splashdown.
Category Archives: Business
Google Glass
Why I’m sending it back.
Right now, it looks like a solution seeking a problem. The first issue will likely be addressed (and only be addressed) by a HUD built into contacts. Which I won’t use, because I hate the very idea of contacts.
The Next ObamaCare Lie
The Dems don’t really want to “fix it.” Every attempt to make a legislative change has been blocked in the Senate. Don’t let them get away with it.
[Update a few minutes later]
Hey, remember when Dems thought that the VA was a great model for government health care?
But they continue to pine for single payer, and surreptitiously or otherwise hope that the ObamaCare debacle will push us in that direction.
[Update a couple minutes later]
More problems and arguments lie ahead:
…the vast middle ground of “modify the law without repealing it” is terra incognita. It is as accurate as Burns’s formulation, and no less precise, to say that those who want to leave the law as it is are outnumbered more than 5 to 1 by those who want to repeal or change it.
There’s an additional ambiguity: What does it mean to leave the law “unchanged” when the Supreme Court has already struck down parts of it and the administration has declined to follow or enforce others? That’s not a salient question for immediate electoral purposes; in terms of voting intention, “left unchanged” can be taken as a statement of support for the Democrats. But even if the statutory language proves resistant to any effort at modification, there will be a new administration after 2016. That could mean more discretionary (or extralegal) changes and perhaps the end of ObamaCare as we know it.
“ObamaCare as we know it” is also an ambiguous turn of phrase, to say the least, for what do we know of ObamaCare? A few provisions are relatively straightforward, such as the expansion of Medicaid eligibility (in those states that have gone along with it) and the mandate that family insurance plans cover 23-, 24- and 25-year-old children of policyholders.
But the whole of ObamaCare is an insanely complicated scheme that even experts are still struggling to understand. “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it–away from the fog of the controversy,” then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said in March 2010. We’ll be finding out for many years to come, and there’s no reason to think that “fog” will ever lift.
The only way to lift the fog is to blow it all away.
[Update a few minutes later]
And then there’s this:
“The IRS isn’t likely to bring such proceedings to earn a pittance,” Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan, tells McIntyre. Then again, it wasn’t money the Obama IRS was after when it embarked on a campaign of harassment against conservative nonprofit organizations. These ObamaCare penalties may be too draconian to be applied generally, but applied selectively, they could be a powerful weapon of an abusive administration.
This administration is nothing if not abusive of the weapons at its disposal.
Fedex’s New Business Line
They seem well positioned.
P. J. O’Rourke
“What I would tell the graduating Rutgers class of 2014.”
Here you are graduating from Rutgers, which is, as I mentioned, the 69th-best university in America. Maybe Rutgers should add more vegan selections to its cafeteria fare. U.S. News & World Report scorekeepers go for that kind of thing. Actually, you’re tied for 69th with Texas A&M, an NFL first-round draft with a small college attached.
Your most famous alumni are Garret A. Hobart, 24th vice president of the United States, Ozzie Nelson of Ozzie and Harriet, Mr. Magoo, and seven former governors of New Jersey. Given the recent history of that office, I promise not to tell anybody. (Gov. Kean went to Princeton.)
And you just wasted $100,308 on tuition, fees, and room and board, assuming you were able to zip through Rutgers in a mere four years. Although you only wasted $53,996 if you were living in your parents’ basement. But you wasted $156,404 if you’re one of those bridge and tunnel people from out of state. Let’s call it a hundred long. Approximately 14,000 of you are graduating this year. That’s $1.4 billion wasted.
Why do I say “wasted”? Those of you who are, know why. Those of you who, for reasons unfathomable, are sober on this occasion may need it explained.
I have done research. I used the same tools for deep and comprehensive understanding that you used for your essays and term papers—Wikipedia and random Internet searches.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (at least as reliable a source as the National Association of Cats and Dogs), the average starting salary for a newly graduated B.A. is $45,633.
Not bad, you say. There’s almost rent and a car payment in that, after taxes. But “average starting salary” assumes you’re salaried. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 75 percent of college graduates are in the labor force. Maybe the rest are on a grad-school full ride getting a Ph.D. in string theory.
There’s reason to doubt it. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows 44 percent of recent college graduates are underemployed. A report in The Atlantic claims half of those recent graduates are working “in jobs that don’t require a degree.” And, in a National Center for Education Statistics survey, 48 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds with student-loan debt say they are unemployed or underemployed. Can you spell KFC?
I wouldn’t bet on it.
Forget Safety, We Need Our Own Spaceships
I have a follow-up to my Friday USA Today column, over at The Corner.
[Update a few minutes later]
At the suggestion of a colleague, lest I appear to be advocating kamikaze missions, the suggested language for the legislation might be: “The exploration and development of space is a national priority. Therefore, NASA’s first priority must be mission success in the critical steps toward reaching this goal. Consistent with this priority NASA shall strive at all times to achieve a level of safety comparable to that enjoyed by other critical national programs in extreme environments, such as deep-ocean and polar activities.”
The challenge and onus would then be on NASA and Congress to say why that is not a reasonable standard (which is currently met without all of NASA’s ridiculous safety/cost-plus/certification rigmarole).
The Space Movement
Is it moribund, and losing ground?
I’m not sure it matters, except to the degree that it influences government policy. Ultimately, it’s going to happen privately, if the government doesn’t prevent it. The flaw of past thinking of the movement was the notion that NASA was going to lead the way, and that it would need more money to do so. It’s pretty clear that that was never a realistic possibility.
The Russians Hold The Trump Card
Eric Berger has started a series on the space-policy mess, over at the Houston Chronicle. I hope he’ll get into the safety issue.
Why People Are Getting Fatter
One reason we consume so many refined carbohydrates today is because they have been added to processed foods in place of fats — which have been the main target of calorie reduction efforts since the 1970s. Fat has about twice the calories of carbohydrates, but low-fat diets are the least effective of comparable interventions, according to several analyses, including one presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association this year. A recent study by one of us, Dr. Ludwig, and his colleagues published in JAMA examined 21 overweight and obese young adults after they had lost 10 to 15 percent of their body weight, on diets ranging from low fat to low carbohydrate. Despite consuming the same number of calories on each diet, subjects burned about 325 more calories per day on the low carbohydrate than on the low fat diet — amounting to the energy expended in an hour of moderately intense physical activity. . . . If this hypothesis turns out to be correct, it will have immediate implications for public health.
Actually, it’s only “new” thinking for people who’ve been paying no attention.
Space Hotels
When can we check in to one? An interview with Bigelow Aerospace.