Rocketman thinks that a new NASA administrator has been chosen. For what it’s worth (not much, since we don’t know whether he really knows, and we don’t know who it is).
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Time To Bust The Biggest Trust
Thoughts on the unsavory and oppressive relationship between big government and big business:
…one needs to remember that the New Deal was not the assault on big business that its fans claim. FDR may have talked a good game about going after “economic royalists,” and he did love confiscatory personal income taxes. But he and his Brain Trust also loved cartels, big businesses, and other “big units” of society. The notion that big business and big government are at war with one another is one of the great enduring myths of the 20th century. The truth is that ever since Teddy Roosevelt abandoned his love of trust-busting, progressives have liked big businesses big, really big. The bigger the business, the more reliable the partner for big government.
Contra popular myth/lies, It’s not libertarians who favor big business and corporations.
[Update late morning]
Not Japan — Argentina:
In visits to Asian capitals during the region’s financial crisis in the late 1990s, I often heard Asian reformers such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew or Japan’s Eisuke Sakakibara complain about how the incestuous relationship between governments and large Asian corporate conglomerates stymied real economic change. How fortunate, I thought then, that the United States was not similarly plagued by crony capitalism! However, watching Goldman Sachs’s seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs as well as the way that Republicans and Democrats alike tiptoed around reforming Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — among the largest campaign contributors to Congress — made me wonder if the differences between the United States and the Asian economies were only a matter of degree.
On Wall Street there is an old joke that the longest river in the emerging-market economies is “de Nile.” Yet how often do U.S. leaders respond to growing signs of economic dysfunctionality by spouting nationalistic rhetoric that echoes the speeches of Latin American demagogues like Peru’s Alan Garcia in the 1980s and Argentina’s Carlos Menem in the 1990s? (Even Garcia, currently in his second go-around as Peru’s president, seems to have grown up somewhat.) But instead of facing our problems we extol the resilience of the U.S. economy, praise the most productive workers in the world, and go on and on about America’s inherent ability to extricate itself from any crisis. And we ignore our proclivity as a nation to spend, year in year out, more than we produce, to put off dealing with long-term problems, and to engage in grandiose long-term programs that as a nation we can ill afford.
Read the whole depressing thing.
The JournoList, Revealed
Pardon me the schadenfreude, but I just can’t stop laughing at these links.
Don’t pull on Superman’s cape, and don’t…mess…with the Mickey. And I don’t mean mouse.
Banning Guns By Zip Code
You know, if we were to follow the logic that people use against the high penalties for crack cocaine, this law would be racist. Of course, as Glenn points out, that would be nothing new in gun-control laws. It has a long-established history of being employed to keep the “negras” from being too uppity.
And of course, it’s also, historically, the basis for things like the minimum wage and Davis-Bacon — to keep people of darker hue from competing for white folks’ jobs. Amusingly, it is another demonstration of Jonah Goldberg’s thesis that so-called progressives are unfamiliar with their own intellectual history.
One other point. Ironically, Barack Obama no doubt supports such laws, since he has talked about how laws for places like Iowa aren’t applicable in Chicago. But I doubt that he sees the irony.
One Gaffe Off The Score
The Irish teleprompter “gaffe” by President Obama wasn’t.
Yes, It Is Creepy
Once again, the Repubicans have let us down. I had hoped that the Senate would block this authoritarian expansion of Americorps.
Gee, Ya Think?
The Obama/Geithner plan could rob the taxpayers to pay off the banks.
Of course, “robbing the taxpayers” seems to be the general theme of this administration.
Heresy
Did Natasha Richardson die of Canadacare?
But it’s so much more “efficient.”
Hillary?!
The most beautiful politicians in the world.
As Glenn Reynolds notes, for some reason, neither Barney Frank or Chris Dodd made the list. Not even John Edwards. Of course, the contest may have been restricted to the distaff. And as one commenter notes, the fact that Sarah Palin came in 24th may be a result of nationalized eye care in Spain. But the real shocker is Hillary Clinton coming in ahead of Kirsten Gillebrand. Some might wonder why she’s even on the list. I think that the fact that she is, and that Palin is so low, is a reflection of political prejudices.
Also, amusingly, if one links to the original article, it lists Palin as “vice president elect.” Would that she had been. Especially if Senator McCain’s health was sinking. And I suspect a lot more people wish that now than did a few months ago.
Space Access Agenda
In case you haven’t been checking the web site (graphic link also over to the left), Henry Vanderbilt has updated it with the current list of speakers, and the conference starts a week from today. It’s really the best conference to go to all year if you want to find out what’s going on in the world of private space launch. I’m looking forward to seeing Henry Spencer’s awaited exposition on how we get to orbit from suborbit.
I usually miss the beginning of the conference in the afternoon, still being on the road from LA, partly because Henry has a stock discussion on general orbital mechanics and space access issues, but this will be a new talk, at the request of several people. It is a contentious issue, and it’s one that’s often thrown back at proponents of suborbit (“You need orders of magnitude more energy! It’s a distraction and a waste of time!”). I fully expect Henry to compellingly explain why it’s not, even if some skeptics will remain forever unconvinced (even after we do it).
Oh, and I’m not specifically slated to talk, but Henry has made great efforts to get me to come, so I assume that he’ll want to do something with me (perhaps on the wrap-up panel, if nothing else occurs to me in the interim).