I disagree about pre-existing conditions, though. That requirement completely screws up the insurance markets. We need a different solution for that issue.
Category Archives: Law
Constitutional Hardball
Yes. Asymmetric? Not so much.
And related: Why campaign finance violations won’t bring down Trump.
[Update later in the morning]
Looks like Mueller and Weismann may be up to some hanky panky: The case of the missing/altered 302s.
[Update a couple minutes later]
And Mueller destroyed the Strzok-Page texts before the IG could review them. How convenient.
Michael Cohen
…pled guilty to something that is not a crime.
Despite all of the jean creaming among the Democrats and other Never Trumpers over this, it’s pretty weak tea, and has nothing to do with Russian collusion. I find Trump despicable, but if he were on trial for this, I’d vote to acquit.
The Mueller Investigation
It’s just missing one thing: A crime.
The Climate Wars
The first shots are being fired in western Europe:
Who pays for environmental virtue?
The gilets jaune revolt begs the issue: who pays to save the planet? The Paris accords absolved the very countries driving emission increases — China and India — from mandating emissions cuts until 2030, leaving the burden largely on the backs of the West’s own middle and working classes.
Yet many of these people need fossil fuels to get to work or operate their businesses. Tourists may gape at the high-speed trains and the Paris Metro, but the vast majority get to work in cars. More than 80 percent of the Paris metropolitan area population lives in the suburbs and exurbs, in an area nearly the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.
Like the revolutionaries of 1789, people are enraged by the hypocrisy of their betters. In pre-revolutionary times, French aristocrats and top clerics preached Christian charity while indulging in gluttony, sexual adventurism and lavish spending. Today they see the well-off and well-connected buying their modern version of indulgences through carbon credits and other virtue-signaling devices. Meanwhile, as many as 30 percent of Germans and as many as half of Greeks are spending 10 percent or more of their income on energy, the definition of “energy poverty.” This is occurring while these policies prove sadly ineffective in reducing emissions while the much disdained US leads the large countries in cuts.
It’s not about saving the planet; it’s about the “elites” (who are elite in name only, not in talent or competence or intelligence) signaling their virtue to their peers, while defecating on the commoners and telling them it’s cotton candy.
[Update a while later]
It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost exactly nine years since I wrote this piece about the Precautionary Principle. And nothing has changed.
The Facebook App
Yet another reason I’ve never installed it on my phone.
Europa
Elections have consequences; Eric Berger looks into what Culberson’s loss means for the mission. This is politically huge:
During their November briefings with Culberson, the Europa scientists were careful to say they still planned to launch the Clipper on the SLS rocket, but that has not stopped them from looking at alternatives. Until recently, there hadn’t been any good ones. However, as Goldstein said during the briefing, “We’ve had a major development, and it’s really relieving for the team.”
The development had come about as the Europa planners had worked with NASA’s Launch Services Program and SpaceX. All of the rockets available for launch today, including SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, require multiple gravity assists to reach Jupiter, because they just could not provide Clipper the change in velocity needed to go directly to Jupiter.
Until the breakthrough, all of these rockets, including the Delta IV Heavy, needed about 7.5 years to reach Jupiter, and they also had to go into the inner Solar System to obtain a gravity assist from Venus as they ramped up energy for the outbound trip. In fact, this tortuous trajectory necessitated gravity slingshots around Earth, Venus, Earth, and finally Earth again before moving toward the outer Solar System. The mandatory Venus flyby troubled planners, because passing so close to the Sun would raise all manner of thermal challenges and require significant changes to protect Clipper from high temperatures.
The breakthrough referenced by Goldstein involved the addition of a Star 48 “kick stage” to the Falcon Heavy rocket, which would provide an extra boost of energy after the rocket’s upper stage had fired. With this solid rocket motor kick stage, Goldstein said Clipper would need just a single Earth gravity assist and would not have to go into the inner Solar System for a Venus flyby.
“Nobody is saying we’re not going on the SLS,” Goldstein said. “But if by chance we don’t, we don’t have the challenge of the inner Solar System. This was a major development. This was a big deal for us.”
Gee, I’m old enough to remember when I was cricized for saying that FH could do the job. And you know what? Star 48s have been around a long time. The only “major development” here is the ability to talk about a non-SLS Europa mission in polite company.
[Update a few minutes later]
I would note, though the article doesn’t, that while Enceladus is a tougher mission from a velocity standpoint, it’s a lot easier from a radiation standpoint.
The House In Florida
For those curious, it went on the market today. Our long national nightmare is almost over. I’m flying down there tomorrow for a couple days for some final things, then up to DC for the Galloway Symposium on Space Law.
The Great Recession Bailouts
General Motors is a demonstration that they didn’t work.
Of course they didn’t. The point was to bail out the unions, not create viable companies.
News That Should Not Be News
Monica Lewinski says that Bill Clinton pressured her to lie.
This is only news to people who didn’t actually follow what was going on at the time, or people who have been fed a false history for two decades (he was impeached for a BJ, or “lying about sex”). Which is most people. Subornation of perjury (and not just Lewinski’s, but from Linda Tripp, via Lewinski, with physical threats to her family) was one of the reasons he was impeached.