Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

You’re Irrational

9 Comments

…if you don’t want to ban private gun sales. So sayeth several lying, idiotic Senators:

“There is no rational reason to oppose closing the loophole. The reason it’s still not closed is simple: the continuing power of the special interest gun lobby in Washington” Sen. Lautenberg said ignoring the Constitution.

There is no “loophole.” As is noted at the link, what they’re trying to do is to ban private gun sales. And the reason people are fighting this unconstitutional power grab is that they believe that they have a right to buy and sell guns, like any other commodity. I hope they won’t be able to find sixty votes for it. I suspect they won’t. There are too many western Democrats who would have to answer to their constituents if they allow this atrocity to occur.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

“Revenue Neutral”

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Sorry, there’s no such thing as a “revenue neutral carbon tax.” Or if there is, you’d stumble on it by pure luck:

The most important point is that revenue neutrality is most likely a mirage. We would have to maintain the carbon tax for decades in order to generate the consumption reductions that advocates argue will occur, but FICA rates aren’t static over decades. In 1950 the FICA rate was 1.5%; by 1970 it was 4.8%; by 1990 it had risen to its current rate of 7.65%. It has been stable for about two decades, but meanwhile the programs that it (in theory) funds are in crisis.

Over the next few decades, we should expect to be in bitter political fights over changing retirement ages, benefit levels, access to publicly-funded medical care, tax rates, and other measures designed to make these programs financially stable. The FICA rate will not be insulated from this process. Who could possibly say that when it has increased in irregular and unpredictable steps to, say, 15.3 percent between now and 2028 in response to various political crises, that, but for the carbon tax, it would otherwise have been 16.5 percent?

I’ve previously discussed this conceit of politicians that they can predict the economic effects of their nostrums:

When a politician says that he’s going to either cut or increase your taxes, he is engaging, wittingly or not, in a conceit and a deceit. He says it as though he has the power to do any such thing, when in fact he does not. He has no power except to reduce or increase the rate at which you pay taxes, whether on property, income, or whatever.

Think of it as the difference between a joystick and a mouse. With a computer mouse, you can point directly to the place that you want to be on a screen. With a joystick, you can only control the rate at which you move toward it, and in so doing, the target may move, and it may move faster or in a different direction than you can keep up with using your rate control. Politicians talk about tax cuts as though they have a computer mouse that allows them to pass a law and a specified amount of revenue will roll in, but the reality is that they have a slow joystick, with a nebulous relationship to the eventual goal.

As Manzi says, TANSTAAFL. I think that dropping both sides of the payroll tax until the economy recovered would have been a hell of an instant stimulus, but eventually, that money’s got to be put back into the system.

Political Commentary, Space

Has The Wall Finally Come Down Completely?

1 Comment

Back in the 1990s, the Clinton administration made the disastrous policy decision to eliminate intra-government competition in launch systems, and assigned expendables to the military and reusables to NASA. As a result, fifteen years later, we had the X-33 fiasco, and since then, have no significant government activities in the latter area.

But the Air Force has put out a Request for Information (RFI) for data on reusable first stages (and interestingly, it includes suborbital as a mission category, in which case it could be a single-stage reusable). There’s no serious money flowing yet, or requests for actual proposals, but I hope that this means that the DoD will finally pick up the ball that NASA dropped, and get on with the business of supporting the vital development of space transports.

[Via Doug Messier]

Political Commentary, Space

Then And Now

17 Comments

Paul Spudis has some guidance for the Augustine Commission to update the 1990 report to the 2009 report, based on what we know about the moon now that we didn’t then:

what do these discoveries mean for lunar return? We now know that sustained human presence on the Moon is possible, largely because we’ve found a source of near-constant power (permanent sunlight) and a source of sustenance and rocket propellant (volatiles, including water). The robotic Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions showed us that the poles, almost completely unknown in 1990, are inviting oases on the lunar desert. There, we can extract hydrogen and oxygen to make air and water for life support and propellant to fuel rockets. The sunlit areas can generate near continuous electrical power, with regenerative fuel cells providing power for the short duration eclipse periods. Locally obtained power and consumables means that continuous human presence is possible, without the enormous expense or unproven technology of large nuclear reactors and the delivery of massive quantities of material from Earth.

The new Augustine committee should be made cognizant of these facts. The more we learn about the true nature of the Moon, the more the goal of learning to live there on a quasi-self sufficient basis appears feasible. This opens up wholly new areas of operations and commerce in space, undreamed of as little as twenty years ago. It has the potential to change the entire paradigm of spaceflight, from a narrow, government-run, science-oriented program, completely dependent upon the caprice Congressional largess to a self-sustaining, free-market program, in which NASA develops and demonstrates new technologies that open up spacefaring by many different passengers and payloads for a wide variety of purposes.

Wouldn’t that be a breath of fresh space policy air?

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

College Is For Suckers

16 Comments

In many cases, it is. I’m glad I made it through without any student loans, though I was paid fairly well upon graduation as an engineer in the early eighties. But it’s really crazy to spend as much money as a degree costs when the degree has no marketable value.

I think that overrated higher education is the next government-financed bubble to pop.

[Update mid afternoon]

Derb has some more reader emails:

I made the same mistake myself: a BS in Geography is worth nothing on the job market. If I had it to do over again, I’d have taken shop classes in high school (assuming that they existed) and gotten a 2-year blue-collar technical degree. Other than engineering and business degrees, most college BSs and BAs are worthless.

and this:

Higher education is the biggest scam going. I don’t think that’s news to you (or Charles Murray). What’s really disheartening is that the business world plays along — demanding four-year degrees for positions that shouldn’t require them. It’s just a lazy way for them to make their “first cut.”

That is the problem. As Derb says, an aptitude test would do a better job, but it might not provide enough “diversity,” so the degree has become a poor surrogate. And it reminds me of NASA’s astronaut selection policy. It likes to select PhDs, or at least grad degrees, not because they are necessary for the job, but because they have so many more applicants than positions, it makes a handy filter.

But if I were a businessman, and I was just looking for a degree as evidence that the holder at least had the stick-to-it-iveness to get a degree, I’d be just as happy, and perhaps happier, with a technical associates degree than a bachelor’s in French Lit. Or even English.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Fit Of Sanity

From Andrew Sullivan, on hate-crimes:

The real reason for hate crime laws is not the defense of human beings from crime. There are already laws against that – and Matthew Shepard’s murderers were successfully prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in a state with no hate crimes law at the time. The real reason for the invention of hate crimes was a hard-left critique of conventional liberal justice and the emergence of special interest groups which need boutique legislation to raise funds for their large staffs and luxurious buildings. Just imagine how many direct mail pieces have gone out explaining that without more money for HRC, more gay human beings will be crucified on fences. It’s very, very powerful as a money-making tool – which may explain why the largely symbolic federal bill still hasn’t passed (if it passes, however, I’ll keep a close eye on whether it is ever used).

Oh, well, stopped clocks, and all that.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The World Gone Mad

…or at least Andrew Sullivan, though I think that he’s just the tip of the insane iceberg that continues to delude itself about the president. There are many words that could usefully and accurately describe him and his policies, but “conservative” is not among them.

[Update before noon]

Victor Davis Hanson discusses Obama’s radicalism, and missed opportunities:

Obama could have had a one-time stimulus, then vowed to balance the budget. He might have praised wind and solar as he asked the carbon industry to ‘get us through.’ He could have politely disagreed with Bush, but framing differences in the tragic notion of no good choices. He might have cooled the overseas apologies, savvy that other nations have more to apologize for than his own. Obama should have established zero-tolerance for tax avoidance at a time of record tax increases. He could have remonstrated with Wall Street, and sought to rein in excess without Europeanizing the financial sector. He could have proactively reformed entitlements with bipartisan support, rather than, as will happen, drastically address them in the 11th hour. But then to do all that would be to assume he never went to Trinity Church, knew no Rev. Wright, Ayers, Khalidi, etc., did not run mysterious campaigns that eliminated opponents before the elections, was not the most partisan Senator in Congress, and avoided rather crude social and racial stereotyping while campaigning. Most who read this will not agree, given the mesmerizing effect of the Obama charisma. But in time, unless there are radical changes, I think the nation will come to learn that such talent was not put in service to our collective welfare.

Some time, let’s hope soon, as Reverend Wright would say, President Obama’s chickens…will come home…to roost.