Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Drinking Their Own Ink

11 Comments

Thoughts on the economic unreality of the political class:

There is for instance the wonderful idea that we can’t get out of this hole by cutting expenditures. REALLY? REALLY? So, let me see, if my family is spending 2000 a month, while making 1500, cutting expenditures is not the way to go. We shouldn’t examine our food budget, cut back on entertainment or perhaps move to a smaller place. No way no how, because cutting is not how you get out of a financial hole. No, golly-me. We’re supposed to get a student loan and take a course in something the government assures us will pay off. AND we’re supposed to go out to eat more. And move to a bigger place. And buy a newer car. And then we’ll be…

What? I don’t know. And neither do these people, because they’ve never balanced a checkbook.

The Aristos don’t have to balance anything. There’s always someone willing to finance them while using them as stalking horses. After all they talk so purty, and they say all the right things – the things that will allow those using them to get a greater grasp on power over the lives of everyone else.

Or take the minimum wage nonsense. What kind of insane idiot, with the crisis of unemployment we have would want to RAISE minimum wage? I mean, both the man reading these words off the teleprompter and the idiots who wrote them for him to read have presumably enough intelligence to stand upright and speak at the same time. So it shouldn’t be possible for them to NOT understand that a wage is something paid in exchange for a service. It is therefore tied to the value of that service. The idea of legislating it at ALL is insane, and leads to people who can’t afford to pay it hiring illegals or simply not growing their business past the one man stage – because, children, economics is a science. You can’t simply legislate wages, any more than you can legislate rain. BUT on top of that the idea of in a recession wanting to tie the minimum wage to the cost of living is so astonishingly stupid that– That I run out of words.

Fortunately, it’s just a figure of speech. She has a lot more words.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The State Of Our Union

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…as seen though a fractured bizarro lens:

Obama called for the federal government to “redesign high schools.” Does he not know that schools are creatures of local and state, not the federal, governments? Does he care? Does he see no limits at all on the things that should occupy a president’s time?

And again, on what basis does the president who cannot even submit a budget make the claim that he is qualified to redesign high schools?

It’s all absurd. Barack Obama is the absurd president. He makes no attempt to make any sense, yet the media will pretend that he is a visionary.

The reality is, Barack Obama is just a very powerful crank.

Far too powerful. Far more powerful than the Founders ever intended.

[Update a while later]

Turning MLK on his head:

Ordinarily a politician whose rhetoric diverges so far from the reality of his record would be run out of town, but with this president it is different. After four years of mediocre leadership, the majority of Americans continue to judge Barack Obama not on what he has done but on who he is. In an ironic reversal of the criteria of judgment set forth by Martin Luther King, they judge him not on the content of his character (or more precisely his actions and achievements) but on the color of his skin. The president is therefore exempt from the penalties other democratically elected leaders pay when they offend too egregiously against the truth; unlike them, he can stray into the realm of fantasy with impunity.

Not just with impunity, but he’s actually applauded for it.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Anywhere But California

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Business is rushing for the exits:

The motivating factor in these cases isn’t so much that cities like Fort Worth and Phoenix have suddenly found the perfect formula for luring away coastal business elites. Rather, it’s that California’s business climate is so toxic that regions hitherto considered commercial backwaters now seem perfectly acceptable, if not preferable. (As far as we know there’s no rush for Vermont CEOs to relocate to Arizona, after all.)

As he notes, Prop 30 may have been the last straw.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Solar Geoengineering

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A quick and easy way to stop global warming?

It would certainly be cheaper than carbon reduction, but it’s not clear if it would work, or what the other side effects might be. And of course, if it’s even necessary.

But if it really is a problem, schemes like this, or space-based ones, make a lot more sense than screwing up the global economy.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

The Space Review

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Happy tenth anniversary to Jeff, who is asking the big space policy questions for the next ten years.

[Update a few minutes later]

I have to comment on this:

“NASA needs to have more than one half of one percent of the federal budget,” Bingham said at the FAA conference last week, emphasizing he was speaking only for himself. That call has been echoed by others in recent years who have sought to at least double NASA’s share of the federal budget to one percent.

There is no magic “correct” percentage of the federal budget that NASA should get. Traditionally, it used to be about one percent, but the budget hasn’t actually declined that much. It’s now half a percent because of the monstrous budget growth in other areas over the past several years, and NASA didn’t keep up. NASA should get as much budget as it needs to accomplish its assigned tasks, regardless of the budget percentage. Of course, since some of its assigned tasks are wasteful and useless, like Jeff Bingham’s Senate Launch System, it could actually be doing a lot more with the money that it’s being given, if Congress wouldn’t force the agency to waste so much.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Commercial Space Transportation Regulation

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In my book, here’s one of my recommendations in the conclusion:

The Office of Commercial Space Transportation (OCST), currently located within FAA and often referred to by its internal code designation as FAA-AST, should be taken from under the FAA administrator and reconstituted as a separate agency of the DOT, reporting directly to the Secretary of Transportation as do normal DOT agencies. The OCST was originally constituted as a special office within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation as an interim measure under President Reagan’s executive order of 1983, codified by subsequent legislation in 1984. It was moved under the FAA early in the Clinton administration as a result of Vice President Gore’s “streamlining government” initiative. Giving it independent status would both elevate the national importance of space transportation, and remove it from the routine-transportation, common-carrier-oriented safety environment of the FAA, which (as previously mentioned) lost its role in the promotion of the aviation industry in the wake of the ValuJet crash in the late nineties. Additionally, consideration should be given to relocating to such an agency various routine space-transportation-related infrastructure and operational responsibilities located in other agencies where they are peripheral to those agencies’ main purpose and function and often suffer from inattention and low priorities.

Dana Rohrabacher has read a draft, and I suspect that’s partially what’s behind this:

Rohrabacher said that it remained vital that FAA recognize that commercial spaceflight is still an emerging industry and not over-regulate it. He noted that the Office of Commercial Space Transportation was originally placed directly under the Secretary of Transportation, and only later moved to the FAA. “The culture of the FAA is based on a mandate to protect passenger safety,” he said, but argued that commercial spaceflight, being far less mature than aviation, requires a different regulatory philosophy. “That’s a very different mandate and a very different approach, but it’s necessary for us to recognize that if we are to be successful in moving the industry forward.”

Rohrabacher said that FAA was, for the time being, doing a good job treating aviation and spaceflight differently, but warned he would seek action to move the office out of the FAA should the situation change. “Ultimately, if that proves too difficult for the FAA to reconcile, we may end up having to move this whole job back to the office of the Secretary of Transportation.”

Sounds good to me.

As a side note, the congressman has provided me with a book blurb:

Mr. Simberg makes the compelling case that great deeds and great rewards require great risks, but NASA and my colleagues in Congress have become so risk averse in the arena of human spaceflight that we are incapable of accomplishing great deeds. America must have the stomach to let explorers and settlers willfully take on the kinds of risk necessary for opening the frontier of space to settlement under the rule of law. If we continue to overvalue that risk, or prohibit those who would willfully undertake it, then other nations, with no respect for human life, will be more than happy to fill that void. Left unchecked, the well-meaning, but misguided, group that promotes “safety at all cost” will continue to establish hard ceilings that we can’t break through, require the expense of immense amounts of time and money, and will ultimately cost us our preeminence in space. We must not cede the high ground of space to those who do not believe in freedom. And we must respect the freedom of those individuals who are willing to put it all on the line to head over that next hill – even when that hill is in space. Mr. Simberg’s book Safe Is Not An Option handles this sensitive issue with skill, grace, and tremendous insight.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
Vice Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology; and former Chairman of the Space Subcommittee

I have several others as well, which I’ll put up at the book’s web site, perhaps this week.