Category Archives: Economics

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

The Last Shuttle Flight

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…and the state of the space agency. A pretty good story by Joel Achenbach. I wish that he hadn’t let this stand unchallenged, though:

“It’s sad. There’s a lot more left in them. The airframes are certified for 100 flights. This one had 39 flights,” said senior mechanical technician Bill Powers, 58, who works for United Space Alliance, the primary contractor for the shuttle. USA already has laid off thousands of shuttle workers across the country. On July 22, the contractor will lay off about 1,900 more people here in Florida.

“It’s not wore-out. It’s just broke-in,” said Tim Keyser, lead mechanic for the orbiters. “It could fly another 20 years. We get into the guts of this thing, it’s pristine.”

That’s not what the CAIB said. The notion that the orbiters were “certified” for a hundred flights is one of the canards of the program. That was a design specification, but it’s a matter of the highest conceit to think that NASA could really know how many flights they were good for. If it were really true, they wouldn’t have needed so much inspection and TLC every flight, which was a dominating factor in the operating costs.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Community Organizer

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…who would be king:

Obama entered office on a groundswell of a disconcerting mania, a mania in which voters imagined on this blank slate of a candidate all sorts of truly fantastic abilities and policies, none of which were warranted in his paltry, truly shabby history.

The man with no available school records, for example, was painted as a genius and his brief time as a University of Chicago adjunct (basically teaching assistant) puffed up to a professorship in constitutional law. The guy who cannot speak a logical, coherent, grammatical sentence on his own was pawned off as a literary genius to unsuspecting, foolish voters. It was inevitable that the reality of his time in office could never match the dream. It was unfortunately equally inevitable that he would prove inadequate to the difficult job of the presidency.

Still, which of those who voted for him could have envisioned the hash he’s made of things in every respect? Unemployment far exceeds what he warned it would reach if we didn’t pass his stimulus package; the housing market shows no sign of lift off; the dollar sinks more each day; manufacturing is at a virtual standstill, and Americans grow more pessimistic about the economy each day. The landmark legislation of his first (and I hope final) term, ObamaCare, is so badly conceived and drafted that Americans are likely to see the best medical service in the world destroyed unless it is soon repealed or ruled unconstitutional. In the meantime, as uncertainty about its future grows, more and more businesses are paralyzed and unable to plan for their futures.

Internationally, we keep alienating our allies and boosting our enemies. Like the Duke of York* in the nursery school rhyme, he had “10,000 men marched them up the hill and then marched them down again.” He ordered a surge in Afghanistan, the place he argued in 2008 we really should be instead of Iraq, and then order pulling them out before the job is done, and in a manner sure to increase the danger to them. Without Congressional authorization, he’s committed our troops and weaponry to a rather pointless fight in Libya; pushed Mubarak out of office in favor of heaven knows what successors; failed to do a thing to prevent Iran from going nuclear; done nothing to stop Syria’s Assad from daily slaughtering his own people; and each and every day puts the life and welfare of our staunch ally Israel at risk.

This week’s press conference revealed him as a man desperately clinging to the same rhetorical devices that have long worn thin: demagogic false choices, class warfare and a preposterous description of himself as the reasonable adult in the legislative process.

As she notes, once it becomes politically acceptable to attack him, he may be like a wounded antelope beset by the jackals of the press, who he has “unexpectedly” disappointed so many times.

He has never disappointed me, and never will.

[Update later Sunday morning]

Et tu, Evan Thomas?

Obama has got to be President of the United States,” Thomas said. “He has to be two things. He has to make a public case of how bad is this, because he is not doing that. He’s not being honest about just how bad this is going to be — no, he was partisan. He was God [bleep] Democrat! He was just, you know – being a party guy. I applaud the energy but it wasn’t getting me anywhere. He has got to rise above that and then in private, in private – he’s got to make a deal.”

I am sensing a disturbance in the Force. Thomas may not be able to, or willing to get him that automatic fifteen percent next year.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

An Open Letter To Certain Senators

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…who are writing open letters to the NASA administrator.

Dear Senators Shelby, Boxer, Feinstein, Warner, Chambliss, and Murray:

Why are you only calling for competition on one particular component of the SenateSpace Launch System? It is a huge project, estimated to cost many billions of dollars. If the taxpayer would be best served by competing the side boosters, why not increase the joy by competing the entire system, including main engines, tanks, upper-stage engines, and design? Why is that only the boosters would benefit from this novel procurement approach? For that matter, why not simply have a competition for the most cost-effective proposal to get humans beyond low earth orbit, or to resupply space station, since these are the reasons that we have been given when asked about the requirements for the SLS. Of course, such a competition might result in no SLS at all, if someone can come up with a cost-effective way of meeting those goals without it, but this is about the taxpayers, right?

Most sincerely and cordially,

Rand Simberg

[Cross posted at Competitive Space]

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Uh, Guys?

52 Comments

The supply chain is gone:

To avoid any gap in providing independent repair spacewalks as a safety contingency for the space station, Congress, NASA and the ISS partners should evaluate the option of postponing the launch of STS – 135 until more external fuel tanks and other parts can be built to support additional shuttle flights in 2012.

2012? What are they smoking?

It would be at least two years, probably three, before they could resurrect the tooling and manufacturing needed to do this, and it would cost billions of dollars that NASA does not have, and isn’t going to get. Meanwhile, we’d have thousands of workers sitting around, forgetting how to launch safely. This is just crazy, and disappointing, considering the sources. Do they really so completely lack imagination that they can’t conceive of ways to do EVA and ISS repair and maintenance with what is currently coming on line, and not relying on an unsafe hyperexpensive vehicle? This is the product of emotion, not thought.

[Update early afternoon]

I have a sort-of-related bleg. I’m working on an article about the false lessons learned from the Shuttle, and how they’re continuing to screw up space policy. Suggestions in comments are appreciated. The first and most obvious one is that it proved reusables don’t reduce cost.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Public Support For Space

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With the approach of the final Shuttle launch next week, Pew has done a survey of public opinion, that shows continuing support for maintaining our “leadership” in space, whatever that means.

As is often the case with such polls, put together by people who don’t understand space policy themselves, those questioned are presented with a false choice:

Q.17 Thinking about the space program more generally, how much does the U.S. space program contribute to:

a. Scientific advances that all Americans can use

b. This country’s national pride and patriotism

c. Encouraging people’s interest in science and technology

You’d think that if they lacked imagination to come up with anything else on their own, they’d at least provide a d) Other, so they would know to think harder next time. I can think of at least two:

d. Increasing the nation’s wealth and standard of living

e. Increasing the potential for human freedom and opportunity.

I’d like to raise the money to do my own poll, that would actually be useful in guiding policy.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

It All Makes Sense Now

Larry J. has figured out what happened to the country:

I think I’ve finally figured out what happened in 2008. We’re all living the ultimate reality TV show. Obama is the hapless boob – think The Truman Show or An Idiot Abroad – with no job experience and nothing to show for his life except for two autobiographies written by age 45 (and it isn’t even certain he wrote them). The pitch for the show must’ve gone something like this:

Pitchman: Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s push to elect someone totally unqualified to be the next president of the United States! We’ll be guaranteed at least a four-year run as we watch him blunder from one stupid thing to another.

Media Exec: Won’t that be hard?

Pitchman: No, I’ve got it figured out. First, we’ll push a black guy as our dupe and call anyone who doesn’t support him a racist. Second, we’ll get the news department to push every negative story we can find or invent to get the country in a bad mood like we did in 1992. Third, we’ll tell everyone how brilliant the guy is and expect everyone to believe it without a shred of evidence. Finally, we’ll point out how “cool” he is to get the young and stupid vote.

Media Exec: Sounds like a plan. What’s in it for us?

Pitchman: We’ll be more influential than ever before!

Media Exec: Who will be the boob?

Pitchman: We’ve found the idea candidate. His name is Obama and he’s the junior senator from Illinois. He reads well from a teleprompter and has a nice looking family but the guy is a total idiot when it comes to economics, history, or actually accomplishing anything. He spent years hanging around radicals and Marxists. He’ll run the country into the ground in no time.

Media Exec: Go for it!

I wish the show would end sooner.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Wisconsin Disaster

…is only disastrous for unions:

…for one beleaguered Wisconsin school district, it’s a godsend, not a disaster.

The Kaukauna School District, in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin near Appleton, has about 4,200 students and about 400 employees. It has struggled in recent times and this year faced a deficit of $400,000. But after the law went into effect, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, school officials put in place new policies they estimate will turn that $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. And it’s all because of the very provisions that union leaders predicted would be disastrous.

In the past, teachers and other staff at Kaukauna were required to pay 10 percent of the cost of their health insurance coverage and none of their pension costs. Now, they’ll pay 12.6 percent of the cost of their coverage (still well below rates in much of the private sector) and also contribute 5.8 percent of salary to their pensions. The changes will save the school board an estimated $1.2 million this year, according to board President Todd Arnoldussen.

Of course, Wisconsin unions had offered to make benefit concessions during the budget fight. Wouldn’t Kaukauna’s money problems have been solved if Walker had just accepted those concessions and not demanded cutbacks in collective bargaining powers?

“The monetary part of it is not the entire issue,” says Arnoldussen, a political independent who won a spot on the board in a nonpartisan election. Indeed, some of the most important improvements in Kaukauna’s outlook are because of the new limits on collective bargaining.

It will be interesting to see if stories like this appear in Wisconsin media, particularly in Madison.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

History Making

14 Comments

When it comes to racking up debt, no one can top Tim Geithner:

When Geithner took office the total national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. As of June 30, 2011, it had risen to $14.3 trillion.

In fact, the debt accrued under Geithner is greater than all federal debt accrued in the first 204 years of the nation’s history. The national debt did not reach $3.7 trillion until October 1991, according to historical Treasury data that reaches back to 1791.

Geithner, who reportedly may step down from his position soon, has overseen the accrual of more federal debt (in only 2.5 years) than every Treasury secretary combined from Alexander Hamilton to Nicholas Brady, who was Treasury secretary in October 1991 when the national debt reached $3.7 trillion.

That’s quite a legacy.

Well, at least he thinks that tax rates should go up on small businesses so that we don’t have to reduce the size of the federal government.

He will be missed. But I’m not sure by whom.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obamanomics

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…leavin’ on a jet plane:

…the clumsy attempt at class warfare probably wasn’t even Obama’s most disheartening moment during the presser. Several others were at least equally as bad…

But about what one would expect from someone so completely lacking experience or competence for the job: our Class Warrior in Chief.

[Update a few minutes later]

The president’s peculiar press conference:

It all had the feel of a childish tantrum by a person who desperately wishes he were living in a different reality—one in which he is the heroic man of action and his opponents are irresponsible and weak. But the fact is, the president and congressional Democrats have so far utterly failed to offer any path out of our fiscal problems—problems that they have greatly exacerbated. The president proposed a budget in February that would have increased the deficit, and then he retracted it in April and proposed nothing in particular in its place. Senate Democrats have not proposed a budget in two years; they now suggest they finally have one, though apparently it won’t really be brought to a vote. Republicans, meanwhile, have proposed a specific path out of our fiscal mess—averting a debt crisis and setting the budget on a course toward balance through discretionary cuts, budget-process reforms, and gradual but significant entitlement reforms. Rather than negotiate over that budget, the president has chosen to play the demagogue, simultaneously insisting that the budget offers nothing and that it goes too far in cutting government services (medical research, food inspectors, and the weather service are apparently in particular danger, he said yesterday, providing a kind of Salvador Dali map of post-modern lifestyle liberalism).

Now, having added about $5 trillion to the national debt since taking office (nearly doubling the debt), the president wants permission to add another $2 trillion, and he’s upset that rather than being given that permission together with a set of class-warfare tax hikes he is being asked to agree to some spending, budget, and entitlement reforms in return for that permission. Entitlements—the chief drivers of the even greater explosion of debt now coming at us—appear to be off the table altogether as far as he’s concerned. And while the president insists that failing to meet the August 2 debt-limit deadline would unleash a train of calamities not seen since the book of Job, he seems to be willing to risk them all in order to enact a set of tax increases that would yield largely trivial sums of revenue and whose only plausible justification could be the political appeal of envy.

It’s what class warriors do.