I have the story on the potential end of the company, in a broader industry context, over at Popular Mechanics.
Category Archives: Business
“A Stunningly Stupid Thing To Do”
Newt isn’t pulling any punches on the Keystone decision.
Internet Regulation And The Economics Of Piracy
A very good post by Julian Sanchez on why SOPA/PIPA are so bad.
The Ship Disaster
Should not have been at all surprising.
Regulation Versus Inequality
It’s a false frame. But one convenient to the statist narrative.
Newtering Obama’s Election Strategy
Did Gingrich’s and Perry’s failure to hurt Romney with their class-warfare rhetoric bode ill for Obama in the fall?
President Obama should be very worried by the backlash against these attacks, real or perceived, on free-market capitalism. The White House’s divisive class-warfare strategy of running against free enterprise, against the “1 percent,” was given a test run by Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Perry, and it failed miserably. Not only was Mr. Romney given the opportunity to preview that line of attack and prepare accordingly but, more importantly, the voters soundly rejected it.
Democrats will claim that these Republican primary results do not necessarily reflect the sentiments of general election voters, but not so fast. New Hampshire has an open primary, and 45 percent of its primary voters were “undeclared” as to political party. Independent voters are unquestionably rejecting the ahttp://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/morning-jay-what-make-obamas-approval-bounce_617121.htmlssault on free enterprise. What’s more, Mr. Romney received a higher percentage of voters, despite the large GOP field, than either Mr. Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton did in 2008.
I don’t think it will slow them down. It’s all they have, really. They’ll go ahead, and rationalize that Newt and Rick just didn’t do it right. They knew the words, but Obama sings the music.
[Afternoon update]
How to explain Obama’s approval bounce?
As we can see, Ronald Reagan blew Jimmy Carter out of the water in 1980 (then Walter Mondale in 1984) because he won substantial support among Democrats. However, the party more or less consolidated its base vote starting with Michael Dukakis in 1988, and this is pretty much all Obama has managed to do in the last two months. His relentless, partisan campaign of this winter has only moved him into Dukakis territory.
Good luck with that.
The Space Code Of Conduct
Over at Open Market, I have the latest on the administration’s decision to start negotiating new protocols for space, and the potential concerns with them.
Go Buy The Latest Reason
So says the editor. It’s about space. Yours Truly is given a plug.
The Great Wikipedia Blackout
How to survive it.
What The “Republican Establishment” Really Means
It’s about the spending, stupid:
The current trajectory of American government spending is one in which spending by government in general, and by the federal government in particular, just keeps on growing as a share of the economy, further and further crowding out the space occupied by free private citizens and businesses in the private sector. Worse, much of this happens automatically, without the consent of the governed in any but the most perfunctory way: discretionary spending is designed to grow because budgets are set by using the prior year’s spending as a baseline, and entitlement and public employee benefit spending – which consume a far larger share of spending – grows by itself in the absence of any affirmative legislation to stop it. The federal government has not passed a budget in nearly 1,000 days (President Obama’s State of the Union speech will mark the 1000th), yet spending has continued to grow, and will continue to grow as far as the eye can see – a dramatic change in our country taking place on auto-pilot – unless dramatic action is taken in response to stop it. Jack’s magic beans have nothing on public spending.
And the growth of spending bleeds over into every other issue. Federal spending comes with strings attached, and those strings reduce the independence of the states and burrow the arms of the federal octopus ever further into the area of social policy. Institutions like churches, schools, and hospitals become hooked on federal money, and have to dance the federal tune. Spending gets earmarked and targeted to favored people, businesses and groups, making society less equal and government less ethical. Spending distorts energy markets, housing markets, and markets for higher education, creating bubbles and inefficiency. And that’s before we even get to the metastatic growth of federal regulation. And eventually, runaway domestic spending saps our ability to adequately fund our national defense.
There is general philosophical agreement among both Republicans and conservatives about all of this. Where the fault line lies is in exactly how far we are willing to go to do something about it.
If we don’t do something, America as we knew it is over.