Category Archives: Political Commentary

Economics, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The Laughter Is Over

3 Comments

The Washington Post has an obituary for Tom Rogers. I didn’t know that he was having kidney failure. I wonder how he was holding out otherwise? How bad was his heart condition? Could he have lived several more years with a transplant?

I’m always frustrated when I hear of people dying of kidney failure, regardless of age, because it would be needless for many to do so, if only the free market was allowed to work (as in many other things). People who support the current regulations in the name of “medical ethics” are consigning thousands to needless death each year. And if he could have held out for a few more years, we might get to the point at which we can grow new ones from stem cells.

Anyway, this will be his legacy:

In a 2005 interview with Today’s Engineer, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, he recalled delivering a talk on civilians traveling in space and afterward finding his wife in tears.

He asked her why she was crying. “Because I can’t stand so many people laughing at you,” she said.

Well, because he was willing to accept having people laugh at him, for years, a lot of the laughter has died down, and it’s finally becoming a real business, and likely to be the one that finally opens up space for the rest of us. And I hope that Estelle, in her understandable grief, is proud of him now. She certainly should be.

[Update about 9:30 AM Pacific]

Rich Coleman has info on the memorial service via email:

Memorial services are being held Saturday – Feb. 21 at 1 P.M. at the
Vantage House in Columbia, MD. The address: 5440 Vantage Point Road,
Columbia, MD 21044.

I’m planning to attend the services, all are welcome, please let me
know if you plan to attend as well.

If I was still back there, I would.

[Update mid morning]

Leonard David weighs in over at NASA Watch:

In my near 30 years of jail time in Washington, D.C., Tom was an anchor for me. We had many morning meetings at the Cosmos Club – and I savor to this day his words of wisdom on space, and in particular space tourism.

In fact, I recall one memorable morning gabfest when Tom got so animated, swinging his arms wildly to make a point, that he knocked his own glasses off – sending them off into near space and forcing me into retrieval action.

That gusto was infectious…and spirited me onward.

Secondly, Tom was “there and on call” – a stalwart voice for space tourism when it was – quite literally – a giggle factor folly. His voice of trust, experience, and reason made the idea of space tourism not only compelling, but matter-of-fact. He was ahead of the power curve…and we ALL owe him a debt of gratitude for carrying the torch early on.

Thirdly, I remember Tom as one hell of a story-teller. He would launch into a treatise on some tangent of a factoid, so much so, that the listener might fall into a catatonic state – yet the saga would come full circle with the recipient of Tom’s words of wisdom invoking the “ah ha…I got it” response.

Tom Rogers was a true visionary – and thank god I retrieved his glasses that day at the Cosmos Club.

He was pretty far-sighted without them.

Political Commentary

Change!

23 Comments

I guess that dissent is no longer the highest form of patriotism:

”The Secret Service called and said they were at my house,” Harrison said.

After talking to his attorney, Harrison went home where he met the Secret Service.

”When I was on my way there, the Secret Service called me and said they weren’t going to ransack my house or anything … they just wanted to (walk through the house) and make sure I wasn’t a part of any hate groups.”

I suspect that it won’t be long until people who don’t go along with the party line are part of a “hate group” by definition.

[Update a while later]

The ever-expanding definition of “hate speech.”

Whenever I hear anyone use the phrase, I automatically cease to take them seriously. The word “hate” has become as devalued as “racist.”

Business, Economics, Philosophy, Political Commentary

The Liberaltarian Discussion

8 Comments

…continues, with thoughts from Ilya Somin. And this continues to make me crazy:

In a strange way, the Bush record of massive expansions of government has also shifted the goalposts for liberal Democrats. They seem to assume that anything Bush and the Republicans did must have been “laissez faire” (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) and that the current Democratic agenda represents a needed course relative to failed free market policies rather than a continuation of Bush-era trends of greatly increased government spending and regulation.

I continue to be both appalled and dismayed at this inability of the Democrats to recognize (or to be honest about their recognition) that the last eight years bore no resemblance to free markets, or laissez-faire. We overspend, and overregulate, and when it goes south, it gets blamed on tax cuts and underregulation. Madness.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Randy Barnett follows up.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Here’s What I Mean By “Misleading And Deceitful”

41 Comments

From today’s Journal:

In a passage from his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” he sounds like a Republican complaining about the stimulus. “Genuine bipartisanship,” he wrote, “assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained — by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate — to negotiate in good faith.

“If these conditions do not hold — if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so — the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this ‘compromise’ of being ‘obstructionist.’

“For the minority party in such circumstances, ‘bipartisanship’ comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being ‘moderate’ or ‘centrist.'”

Sound familiar?

The hypocrisy kind of makes me sick. As do the people who remain willfully blind to it. Because he’s going to bring “hope.” And “change.”

[Update early afternoon]

A steady stream of whoppers.

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Ad Astra To A Visionary

3 Comments

I’ve just learned that Tom Rogers, former head of the Space Transportation Association, has died. I hadn’t talked to him in a few years, and deeply regret now that I hadn’t. There is so much more to say about him than that he is the former head of the STA, and I’ll make a probably pathetic attempt to do so on the morrow. All that I can say now is that I am more frustrated than usual with this news by the boneheaded space policies that the nation has had for half a century, and all of the dreams that they have crushed, and all of the hard-working and far-sighted people who couldn’t live long enough to see better.

[Update a few minutes later]

Konrad Dannenberg has died as well.

Do space pioneers go in threes, like Hollywood? If so, who’s next? I don’t even want to speculate.

[Late evening update]

Clark Lindsey has some Rogers-related links.

[Tuesday morning update]

There are some more encomia for Tom over at NASA Watch. Here’s one from Courtney Stadd:

I interacted with Tom for over 25 years – both in my capacity as a government official and in my various private sector incarnations. In speaking truth to power, he marshaled his data and did everything he could to persuade the government that the commercial space sector offered innovative and cost effective solutions. And if logic failed to penetrate the prefrontal cortex of his intended target – e.g., a Member of Congress during testimony or an agency official or the audience at a space conference – Tom was legendary for raising his voice to a decibel level that ensured that no one with functional hearing could possibly ignore his key arguments. His footprint was deep and wide – from early pathfinding work on GPS, among other leading edge research (during his tenure heading the Air Force and MIT R&D labs) to the first director of research at Housing and Urban Development. For many years his was a lonely voice in the wilderness as he organized fora on space tourism and funded a series of studies via his Sophron Foundation. (I was a happy recipient of one of his grants many years ago.) His Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) study regarding the issues and challenges of the International Space Station – issued during the Reagan Administration – is a classic in terms of clarity of thought and prescience regarding the cost and policy challenges that have confronted the Space Station in recent years. In a world increasingly populated with self-regarding incrementalists, Tom’s legacy is an inspiration to all of us who believe in the power of big ideas (based on sound principles) and the passion and courage to counter conventional wisdom in pursuit of one’s convictions. As Arthur C. Clarke once said, “The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.” Few embodied this philosophy as well as the late Tom Rogers. Godspeed, Tom.

I was also a grant recipient, about a decade ago. The results were this study on near-term prospects for space tourism. Also over at NASA Watch, Mark Schlather recounts (though he bowdlerizes) Tom’s stock response to anyone who asked him why he wanted to go into space: “None of your goddamned business!” The point being that no one should have to justify to anyone, government or otherwise, why they wanted to go into space or what they wanted to do there. Only if the government was paying for the trip should it care.

I had heard Tom give one of his fire-and-brimstone speeches on commercial space at the Denver ISDC back in the mid-eighties, but I didn’t actually meet him until I attended a conference sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the early nineties, on standardizing commercial space operations. He saw the dreaded word “Rockwell” on my name badge, decided to make me a surrogate for his big-aerospace nemesis, and proceeded to harangue me on everything that the industry was doing wrong, repeatedly calling my company “Rockwell North American.” It took several discussions over the course of the conference before he finally decided that I wasn’t one of those horned devils trying to hold America back in space for purposes of corporate greed. It was the beginning of a wonderful and productive friendship, with breakfasts at the Cosmos Club whenever I was in Washington. Sadly, though, it’s one that I’ve regrettably been remiss in upholding in the last few years on my end.

Tom was a raconteur (to dramatically understate), and he loved to tweak the establishment, though he was deeply of it. For instance, I never saw him not wearing a suit. On the other hand, one of his favorite (non-space-related) stories was when he was invited to a meeting at Orbital Sciences, and was informed that the company dress code was casual. He showed up out in Reston, as usual, in his suit, and walked up to the receptionist behind the counter inside the entrance. She signed him in, and then gently reprimanded him: “Mr. Rogers, you didn’t need to wear a suit. Didn’t anyone tell you that we dress casually here?” He replied, “You don’t understand, dear. I know you can’t see from where you’re sitting, but I’m not wearing any pants.”

Tom had decades of experience in the Beltway, and had learned through an accumulation of (as he often put it) “cleat marks in his back” the difficulty of the task that was laid out for us, and how long it would take. He always cautioned against impatience, and to not expect sudden shifts in policy, or overnight success. He would counsel, instead, to look for smaller signs of optimism, to consider the immense inertia of federal policymaking, and just look for “curvature in the wake” of the policy. It is pretty hard, on a day-to-day basis, to see it. But when one looks back over the past thirty years or so, the ship has changed course considerably, from an era in which it was almost inconceivable that a private entity could put up a satellite (let alone a human) to one in which the FAA is granting launch licenses to suborbital space tourism firms, with prospects on the horizon for private human spaceflight into orbit. And one of the heaviest shoulders on that stiff rudder was Tom Rogers. And wherever he ends up, whether with God or Beelzebub (the latter seems highly unlikely), either of them will have their hands full with him, and he’ll have a great time.

[Bumped to Tuesday morning]

[Update a little later]

Some more thoughts over at NASA Watch from Alan Ladwig (Obama administration space adviser), which I also remember:

He was a great mentor and always had time to share ideas and dispense advice. At various points in my career he would stop by my office to admonish me for focusing on non-priority issues. ‘Ladwig,” he proclaimed, “stop screwing around on page two and page three issues and concentrate on page one!”

I think about this proclamation constantly and although I still get bogged down on the back pages, he gave me a goal to strive towards that I’ll never forget.

The problem with space policy is that it remains on the back pages in general. Tom always advocated a complete scrape-down-to-the-paint approach to remaking space policy (as have I, and even more since meeting and being influenced by him) that the politics and policy inertia simply will not allow.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Why The New Deal Didn’t Work

22 Comments

This is an important point:

The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression because of not one but a combination of misguided policies that made it harder for employers to create jobs and harder for consumers to buy things. Keynesian commentators talk as if FDR made a single key mistake, like not incurring big enough budget deficits. This ignores the tripling of the tax burden during the New Deal period (1933-1940). Also ignored is the fact that New Deal spending was mainly paid for by the middle class and the poor, because the biggest revenue generator for the federal government was the excise tax on beer, cigarettes, chewing gum, and other cheap pleasures disproportionately enjoyed by the middle class and the poor. Moreover, several New Deal laws made everything — especially food — more expensive when Americans desperately needed bargains.

There’s a lot more.

Notions that the New Deal didn’t work because they didn’t do enough of it (particularly based on the absurd notion that the war was “the New Deal on steroids” which was why it did) are just the kind of rewriting of history that I was talking about.

[Update on Tuesday morning]

There are few things I enjoy more than dealing with history-challenged simpletons who stupidly assume that because one doesn’t accept the gospel that FDR Saved Us From The Breadlines, that one must therefore think that Herbert Hoover was (in the parlance of the times) the cats pajamas, and that if we’d only stuck with his (non-existent) laissez-faire policies, all would have been well with the world. Larry Kudlow had a guest on his show who made this idiotic assumption last week, when he talked about Larry’s “hero,” Herbert Hoover. Kudlow quickly put him in his place (as I did here with my own idiot in comments). It’s the same (or at least related) pigheaded mindlessness and false choice that causes people to foolishly assume that because I’m down on Democrats I must be a Republican.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Michael Barone, on the real lessons of the Great Depression. Of course, those pushing “stimuli” don’t want to learn the real lessons, because it would remove much of the justification for their efforts to grow government and take over more and more of our lives as individuals.

[Bumped to Tuesday morning]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

A Trip To The Museum

52 Comments

We went over to the Holocaust Museum today. I’d never been, but never had much desire to — I’d read my fill of that history years ago. It’s not so much that I found it disturbing as simply a waste of time that I could spend looking at museums in which I was more interested. But Patricia wanted to, and one of the reasons that I love her is that she did, and so we did. As I expected, there was little unexpected for me in the permanent exhibit on the upper floors, but in the basement is space for temporary exhibits. One that opened a couple weeks ago (ten days after the White House had a new occupant, though I’m sure that was just a coincidence) was on Nazi propaganda. Now that, I found disturbing.

This is the image that greets you at the beginning of the display.

The placard that accompanied it said that one of the elements of convincing propaganda, to appeal to the masses, is a powerful image combined with a simple message. It helps even more, apparently, if it is done in the style of socialist realism, like this.

Farther on in the display, it discussed how Goebbels and the other Nazi propagandists were enamored of new communications technologies, using the gramophone as an example. If they were operating now, they would no doubt be fascinated by Web 2.0.

A few steps later, I came across the following striking quote, by a woman in Germany who had attended one of Hitler’s rallies:

How many look up to him with touching faith! As their helper, their saviour, their deliverer from unbearable distress…

I was so relieved that I live almost eighty years later, and that our society had grown beyond that kind of primitive thinking — that the president is responsible for the personal well-being of every citizen, and every sparrow that falls in America, like a demigod. I mean, obviously, any responsible leader today, confronted with such idolatry would use it as a teachable moment about the nature of our Republic, rather than basking in the worship, as Hitler did, to gather more raw unchecked political power unto himself.

I also found interesting the description of how the Nazi authorities encouraged and organized public rituals, ceremonies, meetings and other public events. I could see how this kind of activity might solidify public support behind otherwise less politically palatable notions felt important by the state.

Of course, one of the most disturbing tactics, used not only by the National Socialists, but also the fascistic international socialists in the Soviet Union, was the continual rewriting of history to glorify the state, and make it out to be the victim of past failures and treachery, and misguided policies. Some of the examples they gave were almost as though modern leaders were continually talking, fantastically, about how we got into our current economic problems through deregulation and tax cuts, and (non-existent) laissez-faire policies, rather than overspending and overregulation, and continuing government interference in the free market, often at the behest of corporations.

Finally, during the war, one of the hallmarks of the Nazi regime was to control the flow of information to the German citizenry. I hadn’t realized that they actually built specialized radios whose sensitivity was so weak that they could only pick up German government signals, but generally not overseas views (such as the BBC). They viewed clandestine listeners to foreign broadcasts as traitors to the state, undermining the war effort. I’m certainly glad we live in a nation where such attitudes would be odious, to both Congress and the President.

All in all, it was a relief to leave the museum, and walk back across the mall toward the White House, secure in the knowledge that such things could never occur here.

[Update a while later]

We’re all fascists now (part II).

And try to figure out which chapter of the story we’re in.

[President’s Day update]

The administration is no longer issuing denials on the Fairness Doctrine. I guess when the campaign did it last summer, it was, you know, “just words” to get elected.

But I’m sure they mean well. They just have to keep their options open in case some people don’t follow the leader’s sage advice to “not listen to Rush.”

[Update a few minutes later]

What I find fascinating is how the BDS-afflicted had to doctor the photos of President Bush to push their conception of him as a fascist dictator, yet the Obama promoters did it to him with no apparent sense of the irony of what they were doing.

These folks seem to have had their sense of irony excised at birth.