Category Archives: Business

The “Stimulus”

How it failed.

[Monday morning update]

How Big Government screwed up the Big Spend:

Biden said the stimulus would “literally drop kick us out of the recession.” But Grabell concludes that “the stimulus ultimately failed to do what America expected it to do — bring about a strong, sustainable recovery. The drop kick was shanked.”

And that’s about what you might expect from a White House run by brilliant theoreticians with no one around to do a reality check. Let’s contrast Team Obama with Team Reagan. The Gipper’s cabinet had Donald Regan, former CEO of Merrill Lynch; George Schultz, former president of engineering firm Bechtel; Caspar Weinberger, also of Bechtel; Malcolm Baldridge, CEO of manufacturer Scovill. And, of course, there was Reagan himself, the former two-term governor of America’s most populous state.

It’s depressing.

[Bumped]

The Groundhog State Of The Union Address

Five things we don’t want to hear any more:

What is it about debt that Mr. Obama does not get? Please spare us any new programs or initiatives. We owe now $16 trillion. America is borrowing at the rate of $3 billion-plus a day. So please, Mr. President, no more Solyndras. We did not want or need Cash for Clunkers. There is no money for more expansions of food stamps. Nothing is left for student loan reprieves, high-speed rail, or anything else. To propose any new expenditure would first require some honest disclosure, like the following: “I wish to borrow $10 billion at 3% interest to lower student loan debt and I propose to pay for it by selling off 1000 new oil leases.”

The problem with these Obama initiatives is not just that we do not have the money and must borrow to pay for them, but that we feel most of them only make things worse, whether by subsidizing another mortgage for someone who is by market standards not likely to meet the loan payments and would be better off renting, or by paying some insider crony to make and sell solar panels at a loss. Again, chill on the new programs, and just start paying off what you already borrowed. Outside government, psychiatrists often treat with mind-altering medicines the unstable who compulsively charge things that they cannot pay for and do not need.

That’s just one of them.

More Lunar Base Thoughts

Over at Open Market, where I also discuss the Romney advisers.

[Update late afternoon]

More from Doug Messier.

Newt needs to make an issue of this before Tuesday: “Governor Romney, you said that you’d fire someone who came up with a costly plan for lunar activities, and yet you just hired someone as a space adviser who was already fired for doing just that…”

Also, here’s Marcia Smith’s report on the Romney non-event today.

[Saturday morning update]

On the 26th anniversary of the Challenger loss, Byron York has a report on the two candidates’ space policies.

[Update a few minutes later]

“Mitt Romney would have fired Mike Griffin.” I’m guessing that Jim Muncy had some input into this, and that it may become a Gingrich talking point in the next couple days. I just fed Jake Tapper some questions to ask him tomorrow morning on This Week.

Gingrich’s Space Plan

Is it science fiction?

Ummmmm…no.

By the way, did anyone else wonder why he asked about Atlas at the Cape, when Falcon 9 is already designed to human-rating specifications? Surely he’s aware of SpaceX.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is the most depressing thing I’ve seen all day, at least in terms of space policy:

ROMNEY WILL RESTORE AMERICA’S SPACE PROGRAM

Scott Pace, Chair of the Romney Space Policy Advisory Group
Director, Space Policy Institute, The Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University
Former Assistant Director for Space and Aeronautics, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Mark Albrecht
Chairman of the Board, USSpace
Former Executive Secretary, National Space Council

Eric Anderson
Chairman and CEO, Space Adventures
Chairman, Commercial Spaceflight Federation

Gene Cernan
Commander, Apollo XVII

Bob Crippen
Pilot, First Space Shuttle Mission
Former Director, NASA Space Shuttle Program

Michael Griffin
Former NASA Administrator
Former Head of the Space Department, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Peter Marquez
Former Director of Space Policy, National Security Council
Former Director of Special Programs, Department of Defense

William Martel
Associate Professor of International Security Studies, The Fletcher School at Tufts University
Former Alan B. Shepard Chair of Space Technology and Policy Studies, Naval War College

This is the first thing that I’ve seen that makes me want to see Obama reelected. It almost certainly implies that a Romney presidency means a resurrection of Constellation.

[Update a few minutes later]

I’m both surprised and disappointed that Eric Anderson has signed on to this.

This is potentially a perfect storm of space policy disaster.

[Afternoon update]

It is very frightening to see the name of the once (and future?) NASA administrator there. Top. Men.

[Update a few minutes later]

Heh: “So Mitt Romney is looking to Mike Griffin for space advice? I thought Mitt didn’t like impractical $200 billion lunar projects.”