Category Archives: Political Commentary

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

America The Illiterate

9 Comments

I don’t generally think much of Chris Hedges, and the comments are nutty, but I largely agree with this piece:

The illiterate and semi-literate, once the campaigns are over, remain powerless. They still cannot protect their children from dysfunctional public schools. They still cannot understand predatory loan deals, the intricacies of mortgage papers, credit card agreements and equity lines of credit that drive them into foreclosures and bankruptcies. They still struggle with the most basic chores of daily life from reading instructions on medicine bottles to filling out bank forms, car loan documents and unemployment benefit and insurance papers. They watch helplessly and without comprehension as hundreds of thousands of jobs are shed. They are hostages to brands. Brands come with images and slogans. Images and slogans are all they understand. Many eat at fast food restaurants not only because it is cheap but because they can order from pictures rather than menus. And those who serve them, also semi-literate or illiterate, punch in orders on cash registers whose keys are marked with symbols and pictures. This is our brave new world.

Can democracy survive for long, with such an electorate? Of course, he doesn’t finger the primary culprit–our fascist public school system which manufactures exactly the sort of people who will keep it in power.

[Late afternoon update]

Are individualists losing the IQ war with the left?

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

A Frightening Thought

5 Comments

George Abbey as NASA administrator? If that were to happen, it would be one of the worst effects of the Obama win, at least for those who care about our future in space.

[Update early afternoon]

Here was my take on the Abbey/Lane paper at the time it was first published, over three years ago:

I’m reading the space policy paper by (former JSC Director George) Abbey and (former Clinton Science Advisor Neal) Lane.

It gets off on the wrong foot, in my opinion, right in the preface:

Space exploration on the scale envisioned in the president’s plan is by necessity a cooperative international venture.

I know that this is an article of faith with many, but simply stating it doesn’t make it an incontrovertible fact. In reality, this is a political decision. If it became important to the nation to become spacefaring, and seriously move out into space, there’s no reason that we couldn’t afford to do it ourselves. The amount of money that we spend on space is a trivially small part of the discretionary budget, and even smaller part of the total federal budget, and a drop in the bucket when looking at the GDP. Even ignoring the fact that we could be getting much more for our money if relieved of political constraints, we could easily double the current budget.

The statement also ignores the fact that international cooperation in fact tends to increase costs, and there’s little good evidence that it even saves money. It’s something that we tend to do simply for the sake of international cooperation, and we actually pay a price for it.

Neither the president’s plan nor the prevailing thrust of existing U.S. space policies encourages the type of international partnerships that are needed. Indeed there is much about U.S. space policy and plans–particularly those pertaining to the possible deployment of weapons in space–that even our closest allies find objectionable.

While I don’t favor doing things just because other countries find them objectionable (with the exception of France), this issue should not be driving our space policy, as I pointed out almost exactly three years ago. What the authors think is a bug, I consider a feature.

In the introduction itself, I found this an interesting misdiagnosis:

In January 2004, President George W. Bush announced a plan
to return humans to the Moon by 2020, suggesting that this time U.S. astronauts
would make the journey as a part of an international partnership.
However, the recent history of the U.S. space program–the tragic Columbia
accident, a squeezing of the NASA budget over many years, the cancellation
of the Hubble Space Telescope upgrade mission, a go-it-alone approach to
space activities, the near demise of the U.S. satellite industry due to U.S. policy
on export controls, and international concern about U.S. intentions
regarding the military use of space–points to serious obstacles that stand in
the way of moving forward.

Again, they state this as though it was obviously true (and perhaps it is, to them). But they don’t actually explain how any of these things present obstacles to returning to the moon. The loss of Columbia was actually, despite the tragedy to the friends and families of the lost astronauts, a blessing, to the degree that it forced the nation to take a realistic reassessment of the Shuttle program. We aren’t going to use Shuttle to go back to the moon, so how can they argue that its loss is an obstacle to that goal?

Similarly, how does squeezing of past NASA budgets prevent future intelligent spending in furtherance of the president’s goal? While lamentable if it doesn’t occur, repairing Hubble was not going to make any contribution to the Vision for Space Exploration. And while the state of the satellite industry is troubling, again, there’s no direct connection between this and human exploration. I’ve already dealt with the spuriousness of the complaints about international cooperation. In short, this statement is simply a lot of unsubstantiated air, but it probably sounds good to policy makers who haven’t given it much thought.

They sum it up here:

U.S. policy makers must confront four looming barriers that threaten continued U.S. leadership in space: export regulations that stifle the growth of the commercial space industry, the projected shortfall in the U.S. science and engineering workforce, inadequate planning for robust scientific advancement in NASA, and an erosion of international cooperation in space.

There are some barriers to carrying out the president’s vision, but so far, with the exception of the export-control issue, these aren’t them, and they don’t seem to have identified any of the other actual ones.

From there, they go on to give a brief history of the space program, with its supposed benefits to the nation. They then go on to laud the international nature of it. When I got to this sentence, I was struck by the irony:

The International Space Station best portrays the international character of space today.

If that’s true, it should be taken as a loud and clear warning that we should be running as far, and and as fast, from “international cooperation” as we possibly can.

The largest cooperative scientific and technological program in history, the space station draws on the resources and technical capabilities of nations around the world. It has brought the two Cold War adversaries together to work for a common cause, and arguably has done more to further understanding and cooperation between the two nations than many comparable programs.

What they don’t note is that it is years behind schedule, billions over budget, and still accomplishes little of value to actually advancing us in space, other than continuing to keep many people employed at Mr. Abbey’s former center, and other places. But, hey…it promotes international cooperation, so that’s all right. Right?

The piece goes on to describe the four “barriers,” of which only one (export control) really is. While it’s troubling that not as many native-born are getting advanced science and engineering degrees as there used to be, there will be no shortage of engineers, since the foreign born will more than pick up the slack. It’s perhaps a relevant public policy issue, but it’s not a “barrier” to our sending people back to the moon.

The most tendentious “barrier” is what the authors claim is inadequate planning and budgets for the vision:

President George W. Bush’s NASA Plan, which echoed that of President George H. W. Bush over a decade before, is bold by any measure. It is also incomplete and unrealistic. It is incomplete, in part, because it raises serious questions about the future commitment of the United States to astronomy and to planetary, earth, and space science. It is unrealistic from the perspectives of cost, timetable, and technological capability. It raises expectations that are not matched by the Administration’s commitments. Indeed, pursuit of the NASA Plan, as formulated, is likely to result in substantial harm to the U.S. space program.

Even if one buys their premise–that expectations don’t match commitments, that all depends on what means by the “U.S. space program,” doesn’t it? They seem (like many space policy analysts) to be hung up on science, as though that’s the raison d’être of the program. Leaving that aside, they (disingenuously, in my opinion) attempt to back up this statement:

The first part of the NASA Plan, as proposed, was to be funded by adding $1 billion to the NASA budget over five years, and reallocating $11 billion from within the NASA budget during the same time frame. These amounts were within the annual 5 percent increase the current Administration planned to add to the NASA base budget (approximately $15 billion) starting in fiscal year 2005. This budget, however, was very small in comparison to the cost of going to the Moon with the Apollo program. The cost of the Apollo program was approximately $25 billion in 1960 dollars or $125 billion in 2004 dollars, and the objectives of the NASA Plan are, in many ways, no less challenging.

This is a very misleading comparison, for two reasons.

First, as the president himself said, this is not a race, but a vision. Apollo was a race. Money was essentially no object, as long as we beat the Soviets to the moon. The vision will be budget constrained. NASA’s (and Mike Griffin’s) challenge is to accomplish those few milestones that were laid out in the president’s plan within those constraints. It will cost that much, and no more, by definition.

Second, simply stating that the goals of the plan are no less challenging than Apollo doesn’t make it so. While the goal of establishing a permanent lunar presence is more of a challenge, it’s not that much more of one, and we know much more about the moon now than we did in 1961, and we have much more technology in hand, and experience in development than we did then. In short, any comparison between what Apollo cost and what the vision will cost is utterly spurious. The only way to get an estimate for the latter is to define how it will be done, and then do parametric costing, using 21st-century cost-estimating relationships, on the systems so defined (a process which is occurring, and is one not informed in any way by Apollo budgets).

The U.S. Congress has made clear with its NASA appropriation for fiscal year 2005 that it has serious questions about the NASA Plan.

No surprise there. But that’s merely a reflection of specific items (i.e., pork for their districts) that were cut, and says nothing in particular about the overall ability of NASA to achieve the plan with the budget. In fact, an annual appropriation is just that–it provides no insight whatsoever into what Congress might think is required in the out years, when the real budgetary issues would emerge, if they do at all.

Overall, this section strikes me as less a serious policy discussion than a political slap at the administration, by one of the first high-level NASA officials to be canned by it, and by a disgruntled physicist (and science advisor from the previous administration) unhappy that science is not the be-all of the program.

I’ve glanced through the rest of the thing, but I think I’ve covered the major flaws in it already. What’s actually most notable to me is that they completely ignore the potential for private passenger flight, and commercial space in general (other than bemoaning the impact to the satellite industry of export restrictions). Given how badly they’ve misdiagnosed the problems, their prescriptions have little value. In terms of providing a basis for administration policy, my own recommendation is that it be simply filed away–in a circular receptacle.

I see little reason to revise that review today. George Abbey shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near space policy (though perhaps, at seventy six years of age, it’s not something that he wants, or could handle at this point). It certainly wouldn’t be change we can believe in. Or change at all.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Shameful

17 Comments

That’s how Beldar describes John McCain’s post-election behavior:

John McCain has failed this test of his own character.

The would-be commander-in-chief surely still had the clout to summon the top twenty-five or so campaign aides into a room for a “Come to Jesus” meeting, a “we aren’t any of us leaving this room until I know who leaked those comments” meeting, a “you aren’t any of you ever going to work in politics again until we find out who’s to blame for this” meeting.

Instead, he goes on Lenno and shrugs his shoulders, minimizing the whole episode. That didn’t make anyone famous. That affirmatively encouraged this crap to continue, not just in this campaign but in future ones.

I practice a profession in which secrets are important. I understand the concept of fiduciary duty. I’ve employed people, professionals and staff alike, who — simply by virtue of working for me — have been made subject to the same bright-line, absolute standards that I’m subject to. Very, very rarely, someone in my employment has breached that trust — and my reaction has been ruthless and thorough and instantaneous. Yes, there have been a few times when I’ve enjoyed firing someone, and have gone out of my way to make sure that anyone who cared to make future inquiries about hiring that person would find out exactly why they were fired.

McCain’s background as a military officer ought to have acquainted him with high ethical standards and the need for their consistent and vigorous enforcement. He almost flunked out of the Naval Academy at the end of every year he spent there, based on conduct demerits, but he never once had an Honor Code violation.

Senator, this was an Honor Code violation by someone on your staff. And you just blew it off. There was no shame in losing the election. But there is definitely shame in this.

Also, thoughts on the willful gullibility of people who believe the idiotic lies about Sarah Palin:

People joked about “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” and about “Palin Derangement Syndrome” as its successor. But at some point this kind of thing stops being a joke and becomes a genuine cognative disability — an inability to process and deal in a rational fashion with objective data because of a bias that is so intense that it blocks out reality.

I can’t explain it. I just hope it’s a temporary, acute problem rather than something long-term or possibly organic, like the sort of brain tumors or lesions of which Dr. Oliver Sachs writes in his book, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” I’m not being at all snarky here. Rather, I’m entirely serious, because I have considered Dr. Joyner a friend, and I am genuinely concerned for his mental health. He, Andrew Sullivan, and others in their camp are completely persuaded that they can see a degree of ignorance in Gov. Palin which is utterly inconsistent with anyone’s ability to function as the governor of any state, but to which hundreds of thousands of Alaskans were absolutely blind for many years despite a much better opportunity to assess Gov. Palin first-hand. That kind of thinking represents a break with reality, one that’s not funny at all, but genuinely sad.

[Via David Blue, who has a number of other reasons to be glad that John McCain didn’t win the election. But they don’t, unfortunately, constitute reasons to be happy that Barack Obama did. We were screwed either way, primarily because the media selected both candidates.]

[Update a few minutes later]

I wonder how many people actually voted for John McCain (that is, voted for him because they liked him, and thought he would be a good president)? I suspect that the vast majority of McCain voters were either voting against Obama, or for Palin, or both, but they weren’t voting for McCain. It seems to me that those people who actually like McCain, either personally, or on his eclectic policies, probably like Obama even more (e.g., many in the media). So hardly anyone voted for him. And this is also the reason that the Republican turnout was relatively low. The candidate had no attraction to them.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Capitalism, Corporatism, Free Markets

26 Comments

Some useful thoughts from Rod Long, over at Cato Unbound.

As he points out, there is a broad-based mythology that defending capitalism is equivalent to defending “big business” when, by its nature, big business abhors capitalism (at least as understood by true free marketeers). Of course, I agree with Jonah Goldberg that we latter should abjure the term “capitalism,” both because it is such a misunderstood word with a wide variance of definitions, and because it is fundamentally a Marxist concept.

A “free-market economy” (something that hasn’t existed to a large degree in this country for many decades) is what should be defended and supported, and we should continue to push to get the country to move back in that direction to find our way out of our current travails (which really started back in the Depression Era). Just as one example, there’s an interesting discussion over at Megan McArdle’s place, here and here, on GM’s straits (about which I’ve also had thoughts over the years, as someone who grew up with it). I think that, as one of the commenters over there notes, the roots of the destruction of the American auto industry lie in the Wagner Act:

GM and the UAW are a perfect illustration of bad government in action.

At some point, a collective decision was made that the unions should be given such expanded powers that they could destroy the company if they wanted (see the above post describing how a strike at a key plant could idle the whole company). What happens here? Well, naturally the union tries to extract as much as they can from the company with the tools available. The union doesn’t profit from increasing profits and building a healthy company, it profits from building an overstaffed company that exists to benefit its employees. The union would have been better served if it divvied up the right to collect a union payout from GM among the workers of the time and let them sell the claims. Then the union could simply negotiate the maximum dividend possible for the holders of these claims. This way you have a rationally run company with the benefits going to the larger voting block (the workers) than the shareholders who are all presumably evil capitalists.

What would have been much more honest and worked better would have been outright nationalization of GM when the rules were set up that the UAW could destroy the company. Instead you’ve got unclear property rights and consequent ill management.

It took a long time to kill the industry, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the cause. Arsenic or mercury can kill over a long period of time as well, though death might actually occur from some other ailment that the toxin-ridden body is ill equipped to fight.

The toxin in this case may be a lot of things (perhaps even including “capitalism” by some warped fascistic definition) but it is an abomination to a free market, and it has destroyed the American auto industry.

[Update a few minutes later]

IBD says let GM go bankrupt:

Far from vanishing, many of GM’s assets would be quickly purchased by competent foreign automakers eager to expand their capacity in what is the world’s largest auto market. Happily, the list of well-run car companies, from Toyota to Nissan to Porsche, is long.

How this helps Michigan, the auto sector and smaller firms reliant on the latter’s health is pretty clear. With capable auto executives finally overseeing GM’s poorly deployed assets, the value and utility of each would rise, thus perpetuating the existence of jobs in the sector, all the while ensuring that other businesses that exist due to GM will enjoy more stable commercial relationships with competent management.

So while the cries of certain Armageddon would be ear splitting in the event of a GM failure, the U.S. auto sector would actually emerge much healthier thanks to a change in ownership that would be the certain result of GM going under.

The problem of course, is that this will be another Enron, in that many people will be thrown out of work, and lose pensions (I should note, for the record, that as a Michigan native, I have close family members who may be in this situation). The political pressure to maintain the status quo will be intense, and unfortunately, given the fact that despite all of the talk about “change,” the status-quo-ante types (at least when it comes to static economic circumstances) have just entrenched their power in Washington, that’s probably the way it will go. If GM is going to get federal money, it should go toward buyouts of long-term employees, and then let the market work to redeploy its assets toward more useful purposes than maintaining an expensive company-town welfare state, that makes cars on the side.

[Update mid morning]

Matt Welch says to the barricades to defend free markets. Except that he uses the confusing word “capitalism.”

I should add, that I consider George Bush’s biggest failure not the events leading up to this crisis, but his response to it, in which (as Matt points out) he capitulated to those advocating government solutions to government-caused problems. Of course, it’s on a par with “compassionate conservatism” and “comprehensive immigration reform” and “no child left behind” and “prescription drugs” and myriad other issues, large and small, on which he showed himself to be anything but a conservative (let alone a libertarian). Had he been a Democrat, the Dems would have been cheering all of his actions as the greatest thing since LBJ and the Great Society.

Speaking of compassionate conservatism (and the tone deafness of George Bush and Mike Gerson and others to how rightly offensive the phrase was to actual conservatives), imagine how well the Democrats would take to a nominee who ran on a platform of “logical liberalism.”

[Early afternoon update]

Iain Murray has more thoughts on free markets and their relationship to liberty:

…as Jonah says, markets are more than this information delivery system. Where the Chicago School has gone wrong is in focusing purely on economic efficiency. As my boss Fred Smith said way back in 1983, “The Chicago School’s case for antitrust policy . . . rests solely on economic efficiency, as if rights had nothing to do with the matter — as if business had no right in principle to dispose of its property as it sees fit, but only a conditional freedom so long as it helps maximize some social utility function. That is to say, no business is entitled to its property if that property can be redeployed so as to expand output. With ‘conservative,’ ‘pro-business’ economists taking this view, who needs social democrats.” In other words, if we value property rights, the free market is an essential consequence. And that is why market socialism never works, because it devalues property rights. Liberty demands property rights which demand free markets. We only interfere with that chain in defiance of history.

It is not a coincidence that communist nations are the most unfree on earth.

[Early evening update, particularly for Instapundit readers, who might want to look around the site]

I’ve talked in the past about the fact that my father was a GM exec, but I’ve never noted what he did there.

Here’s a little background, which may be apocryphal, because I only knew it from my mother, but they met after the war in New York (he was from Brooklyn). She was a former WAC who had served in Egypt, and had decided to see a little more of the world before heading back to her home in Flint, Michigan.

He was standing on a soapbox in the Village, haranguing the crowd on the benefits of Marxism. As an economics major, raised on Keynes, she fell in love.

They married, and finished their graduate degrees, at various places (NYU, UCLA, other, his in Psych–Industrial Psych, hers in Econ). In the fifties he tried door-to-door in Lansing after moving to Michigan with his upper Midwest bride, but when he got an offer at A.C. Spark Plug in her home town (as a result of her brother, my uncle, being an engineer there) he took it, and settled into a middle-class lifestyle, during the best years of the company, in which he raised his family.

He moved up though the white-collar world at AC, in “personnel” (these days, it would be HR, which is one of the reasons that he could get me summer jobs there during college), until he got an offer to go to work for corporate in Detroit, a job for which he commuted sixty miles a day each way from Flint, and we never had to move. I know that this is no big deal of a commute in southern Cal, but for me, it was amazing. He died at an age slightly older than me (right now, for those reading in the future) that I can count on one hand, and not half of it, from a heart attack (his second–he had had his first about a decade earlier, in his forties). That was almost three decades ago.

His job?

Head of labor relations, and negotiator (perhaps chief negotiator, though (as Doctor Evil said) I can’t vouch for that), with the UAW.

[Bumped to the top, because there’s a lot of new stuff]

Political Commentary

All For Show

4 Comments

I’ve no idea whether or not this is true:

Hello everyone, As you know, I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to “The War Zone.” I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plane and got into bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off and didn’t say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General.

As he finished, the vehicles took him to the Clamshell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to soldiers to thank them for their service. So really he was just here to make a showing for the Americans back home that he is their candidate for president.

It seems as well sourced as the dirt being dished about Sarah Palin. And more credible.

I’ll be amused to see what happens the first time someone salutes him as Commander-in-Chief. (Draft dodger) Bill Clinton was an instant joke to military insiders when he ineptly returned his first one. If the Obama campaign is smart, they’ll know about that history, and have him practice beforehand. Not that there’s any requirement to return it, of course. But Reagan seems to have started a presidential tradition. Obama can end (or at least deviate from) it if he wants. But would it be politically wise?

[Update early evening]

Mea culpa maxima. I should have checked Snopes before posting.

Nonetheless, everything else I wrote stands. It was more credible than the Sarah Palin dirt, and I still await the first salute.

And I also await Snopes’ investigation of the Sarah Palin smears.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Buyer’s Remorse?

25 Comments

Some thoughts on Obama, Weatherpeople, and Sarah Palin, from Camille Paglia:

…my concern about Ayers has been very slow in developing. The mainstream media should have fully explored the subject early this year and not allowed it to simmer and boil until it flared up ferociously in the last month of the campaign. Obama may not in recent years have been “pallin’ around” with Ayers, in Sarah Palin’s memorable line, but his past connections with Ayers do seem to have been more frequent and substantive than he has claimed…

…Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don’t know their asses from their elbows.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

I think she gives the press too much credit for their ability to wake up.

[Update late morning]

It may have been politically incorrect for Michael Barone to say it, but I think he’s right when he points to Palin’s greatest sin in the eyes of much of the media and the left:

“The liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby,” Barone said, according to accounts by attendees. “They wanted her to kill that child. … I’m talking about my media colleagues with whom I’ve worked for 35 years.”

Barone, a popular speaker on the paid lecture circuit, is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and principal coauthor of “The Almanac of American Politics.”

About 500 people were in the room, and some walked out.

Guess the truth hurts. That was obvious to me at the time as well, with all of the criticism of her for having the baby. She was a huge threat to the pro-abortion (and yes, that’s what much of it is) movement.

Business, Economics, History, Political Commentary

Hoover, Or Reagan?

18 Comments

Which president will Barack Obama want to emulate? He has said that he admires Reagan, but only for his transformational qualities, not for his political beliefs. But if he persists in his apparent desire to implement some combination of Hoover and FDR policies (raising taxes on the productive, protectionism, enforcing high wages), he’ll end up making a bad situation much worse, and end up being a one-termer for sure.

History, Political Commentary, War Commentary

An Extinct Species?

1 Comment

Would that it had been so. In honor of Veterans’ Day, here’s an interesting story of a recording captured to preserve the memory of the war that was to end all wars. Unfortunately, that part didn’t work out.

[Update mid morning]

On the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice, three British veterans are still alive. The oldest is 112, the oldest man in the country. Did he ever imagine, in the midst of the war, that he would survive another nine tenths of a century beyond its end?