Will Obama tell them how much he’s doing so?
No. Next question?
Plus, more thoughts on the selfishness of the Boomer generation.
Category Archives: Economics
Solar Geoengineering
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.
The Space Review
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.
Obama’s Latest Scheme
He wants Congress to fix the sequester he suggested with the new taxes he’s wanted all along.
Ed Markey
…and his idiotic war on roller coasters.
The Union Of Confused Scientists
…is apparently unacquainted with the difference between revenues and profits.
[Update a few minutes later]
And then there’s this:
The economic illiteracy continues, both at UCS and at Wired. “Fuel efficiency is really what’s going to put more money back in your pocket and put more money back in our communities,” Goldman tells Wired, and Newcomb worries that “very little of the remaining cash goes into the local economy.” Can we please lay aside the primitive superstition that in the developed world in the 21st century there is such a thing as the “local economy”? Let’s say we took the Brooklyn farm coop approach to gas, and a quaint little store on my corner had a oil well in the back, a DIY-refinery in the garage, and a hand-lettered chalkboard outside advertising its artisanal gas. The bearded hipster inside runs the whole thing. Local economy, right? But I assume he lives in a house or an apartment, which is bound to be made of concrete and steel not locally sourced. He probably has a cell phone and a computer and may even shop at Trader Joe’s or Whole Food or — angels and ministers of grace defend us! — Walmart, thus sending the money I spend at his shop far and wide. You know who has a “local economy”? North Koreans and hunter-gatherers. Autarky is no way to live. Somebody should explain comparative advantage and gains from trade to these gentlemen.
Idiots.
The Virtual Presidency
The inaugural address.
[Update a few minutes later]
It strikes me that Bill is the anti-Obama. That is, his complete antithesis.
Rand Paul
That is an epic rant on how the Leftists are pro-choice only on one issue, and anti-choice on every other one.
I have to say, I’ve rarely heard him say anything with which I disagree.
“Safety Is The Number One Priority”
Ray LaHood, who I won’t miss, is right on cue. As I note in comments, someone ought to write a book about that.
More On Toxic Greenery
Really, someone should use this data to get rid of the idiotic bans on plastic bags.
Warning of disease may seem like an over-the-top scare tactic, but research suggests there’s more than anecdote behind this industry talking point. In a 2011 study, four researchers examined reusable bags in California and Arizona and found that 51 percent of them contained coliform bacteria. The problem appears to be the habits of the reusers. Seventy-five percent said they keep meat and vegetables in the same bag. When bags were stored in hot car trunks for two hours, the bacteria grew tenfold.
That study also found, happily, that washing the bags eliminated 99.9 percent of the bacteria. It undercut even that good news, though, by finding that 97 percent of people reported that they never wash their bags.
They’ll take my plastic bags away from my cold, dead fingers.
[Update late morning]
The San Francisco bag ban kills five people a year.
If we could save just one child’s life…