…and the health-spending gap. An analysis by Keith Hennessey:
Combining Kennedy-Dodd with all of the President’s proposed Medicare and Medicaid savings would make America’s long-term entitlement spending problem much worse than under current law.
Gee, ya think?
I’m…glad to see that Ezra Klein is explicit about his acceptance that climate change is expected to have extremely limited effects on the United States for at least the next hundred years. I figure that ought to be pretty important when debating the proper policies for the government of the United States. On the other hand, we continue to disagree about the financial efficiency of the foreign aid program defined by transforming the energy sector of the American economy in order to very slightly ameliorate a predicted problem that might affect people who might live in low-lying equatorial regions of the world decades from now.
As Bjorn Lomborg would say, it’s a lousy deal. But of course, it’s not about economic efficiency. It’s about forcing everyone into the secular religion of our moral betters.
[Early afternoon update]
Keep the lights on! Fight the bill.
“Remember: Under a Republican President, whistleblowers are brave heroes, standing up for accountability and the rule of law. Under a Democratic President, they’re deranged partisans.”
Thoughts from Shannon Love on Obama administration plans to shut down the blogosphere.
Jim Oberg shoots down bad media coverage of the US satellite shoot down.
The “social progressives” are always complaining because we’re not more like Europe. Well, they can stop whining now:
The US unemployment rate exceeded Germany’s rate in April and was very close to the rate in France.
Spreading the wealth around. And the poverty.
[Update a few minutes later]
A depressing chart of how hard it will be to recover.
[Update a few minutes later]
My piece on Munchausen’s Syndrome By Proxie is up at Pajamas Media (I wrote it a couple weeks ago, but Iran had kept it off the front page, and I have a feeling it will be relevant for a long time, unfortunately).
The economic crisis was not caused by the free market. We didn’t have a free market. But the Democrats got themselves into power propelled by this ongoing lie.
Over at Voxiversity, take the quiz and see how much you really know about Mussolini.
The New York Times has a story on yesterday’s Augustine hearing, and this jumped out at me:
In an interview, Steve Cook, manager of the Ares Project at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said that the cost estimate for developing the Ares I and seeing it through its first manned flight was $35 billion. Contrary to the claims of critics, he said, costs have not spiraled out of control.
Let’s ignore the tragic hilarity of that last statement, when we consider what the original cost estimate was when it was “simple, safe, soon.” He is admitting that the development cost, for Ares I alone, through first crewed flight, is thirty-five millibaracks. So how can that be reconciled with the Aerospace study which seems to imply that the total life cycle cost for fourteen flights is nineteen billion? If development alone is thirty-five, then using the assumptions I used in that other post, the LCC for fourteen flights would be over forty billion (almost three billion dollars per flight, for people who know how to divide). That compares to a cost of sixteen billion for the Delta option, or a little over a billion a flight (still ridiculous, of course). Why is it that we accept these kinds of numbers as though they’re perfectly reasonable, perfectly affordable? Particularly in light of the fact that SpaceX has gone a long way toward developing both the Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 for (at a guess) a percent or so of forty billion?
Anyway, I find that the most interesting thing about the Times reporting is that there is no mention of SpaceX or commercial alternatives. I guess they’re not worth covering. As for the “dueling power points,” my vote is “none of the above.”
[Update a while later]
OK, I was digging around to try to find what the original promises were for Ares I development costs, and I stumbled on to this. “Safe, Simple, Soon” is still up! And apparently being maintained and updated by someone (no doubt funded by ATK).
And it’s hilarious. It’s like reading Pravda in 1988.
Comrades! All is well!
The potato and beet crops were a record this year! Steel production is exceeding the Gorbachev five-year plan!
I’m going to save that page for posterity.
Anyway, does anyone have a link to an initial Ares I cost estimate, circa late 2005?
[Friday morning update]
“Rocket Man” has the numbers:
“In September 2005, NASA authorized the Ares I project to proceed with the development of a new human-rated crew launch vehicle with a 24.5-metric ton lift capability and a total budget of $14.4 billion for design, development, test, and evaluation (DDT&E), and production.” (GAO-08-51)
So the development cost estimates (including production? Of how many vehicles?) have more than doubled in less than four years. But the program is “under control.” And now the Aerospace numbers make sense. They were using the original DDT&E estimate for their trade, which (as usual) puts a NASA thumb on the scale in favor of Ares. The Aerospace study is now either worthless, or makes Ares look even worse; it does nothing to aid its cause.
Ignorance is strength. And firing an Inspector General who was exposing the corruption of your good bud is an “act of political courage.”
Ah, the audacity of audacity.