Category Archives: Media Criticism

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Who’s Been Overreaching, Again?

22 Comments

Jen Rubin takes E. J. Dionne to school:

Overreach would be choosing extra-legislative means (flight) to prevent the voters’ elected representatives from working their will. Overreach would be threatening Republican officials in their homes. Overreach would be a flurry of Hitlerian imagery (good for the National Jewish Democratic Council in denouncing the widespread signage, but where is the George Soros-backed Jewish Funds for Justice and the anti-Glenn Beck crowd when you need them?) Overreach would be a massive sick-out, in essence a dishonest strike. (The schools should dock pay for anyone not actually ill who didn’t show up.)

So, yes, Walker is seeking a revamping of the state’s relationship with its public employee unions. It’s about time.

And Professor Bainbridge explains why public-employee unions are so inimical to public finance, and should be universally abolished. Even Franklin Roosevelt was opposed to them, with good reason:

In effect, public sector unionism thus means that representatives of the union will often be on both sides of the collective bargaining table. On the one side, the de jure union leaders. On the other side, the bought and paid for politicians. No wonder public sector union wages and benefits are breaking the back of state budgets. They are bargaining with themselves rather than with an arms’-length opponent.

Basically, they’ve wrecked the California economy, and in Madison, they’ve created Greece with snow, and are on the verge of granting Frances Fox Piven her violent and anti-democratic wish.

[Update a few minutes later]

Who is polarizing America?

I argue in Radical-in-Chief that Obama’s long-term hope is to divide America along class lines (roughly speaking, tax payers versus tax beneficiaries). Obama’s attack on the Supreme Court at his 2010 State of the Union address, his offensive against the Chamber of Commerce, his exhortation to Hispanics to punish their enemies, and several similar moves were all efforts to jump-start a populist movement of the left. Like his socialist organizing mentors, Obama believes that a country polarized along class lines will eventually realign American politics sharply to the left. Yet the entire strategy is based on the need for an activated, populist movement of the left. So far, Obama has failed to create such a movement. His expensive economic agenda has provoked a populist counter-movement of the right instead: Obama’s nightmare.

Now, however, Obama may belatedly be getting his wish. The very success of the Tea Party is calling forth an opposing movement of the left. Obama’s exhortations may have failed to polarize the country along class lines, but his policies have finally provoked the long-sought battle. The once-dormant legions of Obama’s group, Organizing for America, have now been activated. This is the moment they were created for.

In Radical-in-Chief, I describe the “inside/outside” or “good cop/bad cop” strategy favored by Obama and his organizing mentors. The idea is that a seemingly moderate “good cop” politician works on the inside of government, while coordinating his moves with nasty Alinskyite “bad cops” on the outside. Reports that Obama’s own organizers helped put together the Madison protests fit the model. That coordination is necessary to achieve Obama’s real goal: kicking off a national grassroots movement of the left that he can quietly manage, while keeping his distance when necessary.

And Steven Hayward says it may be time to really start brewing some tea, while these thugs are still in the minority.

[Update a few minutes later]

The AP as union mouthpiece:

“Protesters clogged the hallway outside the Senate chamber, beating on drums, holding signs deriding Walker and pleading for lawmakers to kill the bill.”

“Beating on drums”? Beating on drums? These were public-school teachers, right? In any case, they were public employees. Beating on things is what little kids do when they’re not getting their way, or demanding something. Of course, the beating of drums is meant to menace and intimidate too.

America’s liberals must be very proud. Mobbing the legislature and beating on drums! Bear in mind that the Left is the thinking, sophisticated, and humane party in America.

The AP story — and remember that this is supposed to be a news report from a wire service — contains the line, “Elsewhere in the Statehouse, Democrats showed up in the state Assembly chamber wearing orange T-shirts that proclaimed their support for working families.”

“Working families,” huh? What do you call the families with taxpayers who support what Governor Walker and the Republicans are trying to do, and oppose the unions and their thuggish tactics? Non-working families?

It’s who they are. It’s what they do.

[Update late morning]

Here’s more:

Someone wrote me that the “public employees” in Wisconsin reminded her of Chávez and his goons in Venezuela. Actually, they remind me of Cuba. There, the dictatorship sends its loyalists to the homes of those suspected of not being loyalists. They scream, beat on things, denounce, and threaten. The idea is, the “disloyal” Cubans are supposed to quake in their homes, and they do. These tactics are called actos de repudio — “acts of repudiation.” They are a mainstay of the regime.

Sadly, they’re not the only regime of which they are a mainstay. Remember this the next time someone tells you how “moderate” and “centrist” the president is.

[Update a while later]

Is this how a president should act?

Just think–there once was a time (for more than a century, actually), when the president of the United States thought it too imperious to deliver the State of the Union via a speech to a joint session of Congress, since that would smack of telling a co-equal branch of government what to do. Now we have a president not just taking rhetorical sides in a state issue, but actively mobilizing his political organization to affect the outcome(s), even though (to my knowledge) nothing that Gov. Walker or any other belated statehouse cost-cutter is doing has a damned thing to do with federal law.

I have written in the past about how libertarians are pretty lonely in the political scheme of things in terms of constantly being challenged to defend themselves against the “logical conclusion” of their philosophy. But I think it’s time to amend that. We are witnessing the logical conclusion of the Democratic Party’s philosophy, and it is this: Your tax dollars exist to make public sector unions happy.

When this president acts presidential, it’s the exception, not the rule.

[Afternoon update]

The AWOL Democrat state senators have a new hideout. Hey, it’s the Chicago way.

[Update a few minutes later]

A first-hand blogging report from a law professor in Madison. I’m thinking (and hoping) that this generates a huge anti-union backlash, especially for public-employee unions. I think that people have had enough.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Change

13 Comments

The House has voted to defund the Czars.

It always amazed me that more people didn’t realize how fundamentally un-American and undemocratic the concept of a “Czar” is. And I’ve been even more amazed how they’ve been embraced by socialists in the last couple years. The Bolsheviks, after all, had them shot.

[Update a few minutes later]

More change! A federal judge has ordered Ken Salazar to deal with drilling permits within a month. It’s always hard to know if these people are doing these things despite their effect on the economy, or because of it.

Fortunately, elections still have consequences, no matter how much the fascists (like the ones in Wisconsin aided and abetted by the White House) want to fight them.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Climate Of Civility

27 Comments

What is wrong with these people? Remember, just like “racist,” when they call others misogynist, it’s pure projection.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of projection, now the left is attacking Herman Cain. Guess he got too uppity for them. Remember this the next time a moron like Janeane Garafolo calls the Tea Partiers racist.

[Update mid-morning]

A little good news on the Lara Logan front — the Journal is reporting that it was “not a rape.” Which raises the question — what is a “sexual assault” against a woman that is “not a rape”?

[Update late morning]

Funny, she doesn’t look Jewish to me. The mob was shouting “Jew, Jew” as they attacked her. Sure gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling about the prospects for peace between the new government and Israel.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

NASA Budget Issues

19 Comments

Andy Pasztor (I know, I know) has a piece in today’s Journal about the NASA budget proposal that was released a few minutes ago. As Jeff Foust notes, when he writes:

Commercial-space projects are years behind schedule, and critics still worry about placing undue reliance on them.

…compared to what? At least they weren’t slopping more than a year per year, as Constellation was, and they were spending orders of magnitude less money. Jeff also says:

…the article doesn’t say what that cutback in commercial crew funding is in respect to. If it’s compared to the 2012 projection in the administration’s FY11 budget request, which called for $1.4 billion, that is almost certainly correct, especially since the NASA authorization act passed last year included only $500 million for commercial crew development in 2012. It would be more newsworthy if the administration’s commercial crew request was less than that $500-million figure, especially since the article also indicates that the budget proposal “would be broadly consistent” with the act.

Actually, my reading of it is that it’s a cut from the $500M figure:

The White House last year initially proposed NASA spending of more than $1.2 billion annually on commercial spacecraft. Congress later reduced that figure to less than $500 million a year, and the latest budget envision further trims.

That sounds like a cut from the half billion to me. But then again, it is Andy Pasztor. Anyway, we’ll know today.

[Update a few minutes later]

Clark Lindsey has more thoughts, and there’s a lot of discussion in comments.

[Update a few mintues later]

Jeff Foust has more over at The Space Review today.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

“We Cannot Survive Without You”

25 Comments

I’ve been pointing for a year now that NASA needs private providers a lot more than they need NASA. Jeff Foust has a report from the plenary session of the conference yesterday, in which Charlie Bolden confirmed it. This will, of course, cause exploding of heads in the moronosphere.

[Update a few minutes later]

And as predicted, here is the latest insanity from Mark Whittington:

Charles Bolden was reported to have told Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan that he would provide a bailout for commercial space firms “equal to that given the auto industry” if the private sector faltered in providing space transportation services. Bolden later issued a non denial denial of Cernan’s account.

This raises the question of in what sense is the Obama program “commercial.” Under the Bush era COTS program, the consequences for failure were that a commercial company would be out of the program. Originally a company called Rocket Plane/Kistler was part of COTS. But because RP/Kistler could not meet milestones, it was replaced by another company called Orbital Systems.

But under the Obama plan, the only consequences for failure would be more money pumped into the commercial companies that are developing private space craft. With the demise of Constellation, companies competing for ISS servicing contracts have become too important to fail.

So far this virtual guarantee of money has not had much of an effect on the performance of companies in the commercial space program. Recently, SpaceX successfully orbited, reentered, and landed on the ocean a prototype of its Dragon space craft.

I don’t have time to dissect it right now, so I toss it as chum to the comment sharks. I will note though, that there is no logical connection between the first and second sentences in that last paragraph. Which is not atypical of a Whittington piece.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Press Conference Coverage

11 Comments

Here’s a pretty good story from Clara Moskowitz, based on the actual event, as opposed to just the press release.

I should provide some context for Jeff Foust’s quote of me:

While this group may suppot the administration’s commercial space policies, just don’t expect them to start sporting “Obama 2012″ buttons any time soon. “I just don’t think that the president cares that much one way or the other about commercial space,” Simberg said in response to a question. “But I’m glad for that. I think if he did we’d have worse problems.”

The question this was a response to was one from Keith Cowing. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but a rough but I think accurate paraphrase would be, “You have called the president a liar on your blog. So how can you support his space policy?”

I don’t know if the people on the phones could hear my eyes rolling, but those present will attest that they were, which is why I didn’t bother to actually answer it.

By the way, I think that he does his readers a disservice by so steadfastly refusing to link to anything that I write, anywhere, but as he always tells anyone who complains, it’s his web site.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

On Asteroid Defense And The Constitution

47 Comments

Thoughts from Pejman in response to a snippy post from Mark Kleiman.

Most of the discussion sidesteps the real issue, which is who is being defended, not by whom (if anyone) are we being attacked? The latter issue would only determine which government agency would be responsible for the response, not whether or not a federal response was constitutional. For instance, if the Klingons were using a gravity tractor to divert the asteroid to hit the country, then it would be up to the Air Force (or preferably the US Space Guard, if it exists at the time) to deal with it. If on the other hand, it’s a natural occurrence, then at least in terrestrial terms, it would be up the space equivalent of the Army Corps of Engineers, because it would be more in the nature of something like anticipatory flood control. Though (again preferably) both of these functions — defense and management of nature — might be under the aegis of the Space Guard. The key difference between them is that in the one case, the best defense might be a robust offense (i.e., send warships off to punish and prevent the Klingons), whereas this wouldn’t apply to a natural event.

As to whether or not asteroid defense in general, whether natural, or launched by Klingons, is constitutional, would depend to a degree on the nature of the warning we have. If, for instance, we know that it will hit the planet, but don’t know exactly where or when (and the when determines the where to a large degree, because it depends on what part of the planet has turned to be the front of it from the asteroid’s perspective at the time it hits), then it’s not just a national defense issue, but a planetary one, and we’d have to coordinate with other nations. The only acceptable solution, of course, would be to divert it from hitting the planet entirely, but in doing so, it could be that we end up making things worse (e.g., having it hit Lucifer’s Hammer style in the Pacific with accompanying ocean boiling and tsunamis, as opposed to just hitting land and creating a little ice age from all the stuff tossed up into the atmosphere, not to mention killing all the people in the vicinity).

Once we undertake to try to prevent such a tragedy, we implicitly accept legal responsibility for the outcome of our actions. I can easily imagine things getting bogged down in an international debate over the issue, which is why Rusty Schweikart wants to get the UN involved, which I can also easily imagine would only make things worse.

It’s actually similar to the arguments about hurricane diversion. Suppose we could not prevent or dampen hurricanes, but we could steer them? We might then divert them from hitting the expensive real estate in Florida but instead steer them into the Gulf where they could hit the much cheaper beaches in Mexico, for which we’d presumably compensate them. But getting these kinds of agreements would be problematic, unless (and probably even if) the level of technology was highly certain. Suppose we did have the capability to precisely steer an asteroid (this would be useful for mining them). What kind of international agreements would have to be put in place to allow us to do this? Certainly the 1972 Liability Convention would be viewed as insufficient to set hearts at ease in much of the rest of the world — no one is going to be happy about being compensated after their country has been accidentally turned into a smoking crater. I can’t see, though, how there would be anything unconstitutional per se about our doing such things.

As commenters over there note, this whole discussion mainly an opportunity for Kleiman to trot out a straw man (“Tea Partiers think that anything they dislike is unconstitutional”).