Shubber Ali noticed an omission, that surprises neither of us.
As I continue to point out, space isn’t important. Unless it somehow gets kids to study their math and science.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
“Slippery Slope To Socialism”
According to Congressmen Hensarling.
Yes, it’s one that we started sliding down over seventy years ago. Unfortunately, though, many of his colleagues (including many in the media) see that as a feature, not a bug. As does at least one of the presidential candidates.
A Tale Of Two Candidates
Mark Hemingway notes the ongoing double standard of the press:
Not that these things are to be excused out of hand, but Palin bends zoning rules — which I’m sure are stringent and a high stakes matter in Wasilla, Alaska — and gets a free facial. Obama gets a freakin’ house with help from someone indicted for money laundering, wire fraud, extortion and corrupt solicitation; has someone raising money for his campaign with well-publicized ties to organized crime; and the Illinois attorney general is currently looking into how Obama earmarked $100,000 for a former campaign volunteer who never spent the money for its intended purpose — and yet, I don’t see too many “investigations” decrying Obama’s transparently false claims he practices a “new” kind of politics.
I guess that my thesis is going to be tested. We’re seeing exactly the same behavior from the Fourth Estate regarding the Democrat candidate as we saw in 1992–completely ignoring the candidate’s unsavory history, and hoping that no one else exposes it, while acting as an adjunct part of his campaign in maintaining the anti-Republican narrative. Will they get away with it again?
We’ll see if the blogosphere can make a difference this time.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Well, now we know what a community organizer does. He strong arms banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.
And he has the audacity of hope that the media won’t call him on his hypocrisy in blaming George Bush and the Republicans, and “deregulation” for the current crisis. Unfortunately, his audacity seems to be justified.
Someone should put together an ad, and ask which regulatory agency should have reined in organizer Obama.
[Update mid morning]
Victor Davis Hanson has more on the media double standards:
As I recall Raines was the one who, following the Enron scandals, gave public lectures about corporate responsibility and CEO honesty. And as one begins to read about Raines, James Johnson, Jamie Gorelick, and Leland Brendsel at Freddie Mac, one begins to understand their modus operandi. Freddie and Fannie were landing pads for former Democratic insiders, who milked the agencies for millions in bonuses as they covered their tracks by donations to Congressional candiates and pseudo-racial-populism of helping minorities buy homes with little down. Their careers are every bit as nauseating as anything at Enron — and yet the press strangely does not go after them in the manner we learned of Ken Lay’s deceit. God help us all.
It goes beyond nauseating. It makes me incandescently angry.
[Early afternoon update[
Geraghty has some related thoughts on the Missouri issue:
Think about it, the local television station summarized the story on their web site, “The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign,” and it seems no one at the station blinked; there was nothing in the report that indicated that this might be controversial.
I hate to be glum heading into October, but to a certain extent, an electorate gets the leaders it deserves. If the journalism institutions in a given area nod and smile as they’re given information like this — if it never crosses their mind to object — then the Fourth Estate, for all extents and purposes, ceases to exist. When Ben Franklin responded to the query about the government that would manage the young nation, “A Republic, if you can keep it,” moments like this make you wonder if we’re in the process of losing it.
These “reporters” are a product of their environment–public schools and (often) schools of journalism. Is the problem that they don’t understand the Bill of Rights, or is it that they don’t care about it, if it gets in the way of their preferred candidate? Do they not understand that it is precisely the right being potentially violated here that allows them the freedom to pursue their supposed profession? Either way, it is very dismaying.
“First, they came for the McCain supporters, and I did nothing, because I was not a McCain supporter.”
Here’s The Kind Of Ad Campaign
…that John McCain should have kicked off on Friday by properly responding to Senator Obama’s lies and demagoguery on the financial crisis. It’s exactly what Fred Thompson would have done, but I fear that out of a misplaced sense of collegiality, McCain won’t do it.
The problem is, that in his heart, McCain doesn’t really believe in free markets, any more than his opponents do. He has an emotional stake in “honor” and “service” over profit, and it makes it tough for him (as Glenn said) to go for the jugular against the corrupt rent seekers and collectivists in Washington, of both parties. Instead, he placidly and pallidly aims for the capillary.
He really needs to read this. As he notes, the problem isn’t capitalism. It’s politicians.
The Latest In Libel Tourism
You don’t have to go overseas any more.
Debate Thoughts
My brief take: Senator Obama won, because he didn’t lose. Senator McCain had many, many missed opportunities to hammer him and show him for the fraud that he is.
I also think that Senator Obama did as well as he possibly could have, given his temperament, past actions and positions. But Senator McCain could (and should) have done much better, and if he had, it could have been a knockout, or at least a major blow. I’m glad that there are two more.
More Cost-Plus Contracting Thoughts
In comments at the previous post on this subject, Karl Hallowell comments:
It’s not government’s job to suck up risk for a contractor. As I see it, if contractors really were giving their best cost estimates, then they’re regularly overestimate prices not consistently underestimate them.
The other commenters who seem to think that designing a brand new UAV, or the first successful hit to kill missile (SRHIT/ERINT/PAC-3, not the dead end HOE), or an autonomous helicopter (all things I’ve been heavily involved with) is something that can and should be done on a fixed-price contract (after all, one bridge is like any other, right?) . . . it can maybe be done, but only if you’re willing to let system development take a lot longer.
I don’t know who posted this, but it’s unrealistic.
Let’s give an example of how the real world works in salvaging ships on the high seas:
Salvage work has long been viewed as a form of legal piracy. The insurers of a disabled ship with valuable cargo will offer from 10 to 70 percent of the value of the ship and its cargo to anyone who can save it. If the salvage effort fails, they don’t pay a dime. It’s a risky business: As ships have gotten bigger and cargo more valuable, the expertise and resources required to mount a salvage effort have steadily increased. When a job went bad in 2004, Titan ended up with little more than the ship’s bell as a souvenir. Around the company’s headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, it’s known as the $11.6 million bell.
Exactly the scenario where it is claimed that fixed price contracts can’t work. Huge risk, lots of uncertainty, time pressure. A similar example is oil well firefighters. As I see it, there’s almost no circumstances when government needs to help the contractor with risk. The money, paid when the job is done right, does that. If it’s not enough, then nobody takes the contract. Simple as that.
Yes. The reason that cost-plus contracts are preferred by government is that government, by its nature, has an aversion to profit. It’s the same sort of economic ignorance that drives things like idiotic “anti-gouging” laws, and it results in the same false economy for the citizens and taxpayers.
The problem isn’t that companies are unwilling to bid fixed price on high-tech ventures. The problem is that, in order to do so, they have to build enough profit into the bid to make it worth the risk. But the government views any profit over the standard one in cost-plus contracts (generally less than ten percent) as “obscene,” and to allow a company to make more profit than that from a taxpayer-funded project is a “ripoff.” So instead, they cap the profit, and reimburse costs, while also having to put into place an onerous oversight process, in terms of cost accounting and periodic customer reviews, that dramatically increases cost to the taxpayer, probably far beyond what they would be if they simply let it out fixed price and ignored the profit. I would argue that instead of the current model of cost-plus, lowest bidder, an acceptance of bid based on the technical merits of the proposal, history and quality of the bidding team, even if the bid cost is higher, will ultimately result in lower costs to the government (and taxpayer).
As I understand it, this is the battle that XCOR (hardly a risk-averse company, at least from a business standpoint) has been waging with NASA for years. XCOR wants to bid fixed price, and accept the risk (and the profits if they can hit their internal cost targets), while NASA wants them to be a cost-plus contractor, with all of the attendant increases in costs, and changes in corporate culture implied by that status.
This is the debate that will have to occur if John McCain wants to make any headway in his stated desire Friday night to get rid of cost-plus contracts. Unfortunately, he’s not in a very good philosophical position to argue his case, because he’s one of those economic simpletons in Washington who think that making money is ignoble, and that profits are evil, particularly when they’re so high as to be “obscene.”
Probably Just Scurvy
So, what is the cargo of this Iranian ship headed for Somalia?
Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died…
…This was also confirmed by Hassan Allore Osman, minister of minerals and oil in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia.
He headed a delegation sent to Eyl when news of the toxic cargo and illnesses surfaced.
He told one news publication, The Long War Journal, that during the six days he had negotiated with the pirates, a number of them had become sick and died.
“That ship is unusual,” he was quoted as saying. “It is not carrying a normal shipment.”
The pirates did reveal that they had tried to inspect the ship’s cargo containers when some of them fell sick — but the containers were locked.
Osman’s delegation spoke to the ship’s captain and its engineer by cellphone, demanding to know more about the cargo.
Initially it was claimed the cargo contained “crude oil”; later it was said to be “minerals”.
And Mwangura has added: “Our sources say it contains chemicals, dangerous chemicals.”
The symptoms described could be possibly caused by chemical weapons, but the pirates claimed that they didn’t open the locked holds (though the holds could have leaked as well). But the symptoms also match radiation poisoning.
But why would the Iranians be shipping WMD of any kind to Somalia? For transhipment elsewhere overland? And if it is radioactive, is it the material for a nuclear weapon, or a dirty bomb?
It will be ironic if it turns out that pirates caught what the CIA didn’t (assuming, of course, that they haven’t been tracking it).
[Late afternoon update]
Marlon McAvoy emails:
‘m a Radiation Protection tech at ORNL. Was formerly a member of the DOE’s RAP (Radiological Assistance Program) team, originally tasked and trained mostly for transport incidences, but which was reprioritized after 9-11. Just wanted to offer an observation, which might be old news to you two science geeks.
Skin burns were also reported in this incident. These are normally more associated with beta than the far more penetrating gamma radiation, but there’s no way these guys could have gotten beta burns without close exposure to actual, unshielded radioactive material. Gamma can certainly burn the skin, but in which case the victim has sustained an enormous dose and will absolutely die from it, unless the exposure was tightly collimated over a small area.
So, my guess, this seems much more likely to be of chemical rather than radiological origin. But if multiple guys did receive 500+ rem (Roentgen equivalent man) of gamma radiation, our spooks will have no difficulty determining it. We have civilian instrument packages that can map minute fluctuations in background radiation levels; a poorly shielded gamma WMD would look like a magnesium flare to whatever is used by the intelligence community.
Whether they can or should let us civvies know is, of course, another question.
It is indeed.
If Only (Part Two)
Andrew Sullivan’s dementia is now apparently affecting his hearing.
I wish that he actually had said “horsesh!t.” There is never a shortage of worthy opportunities when The One speaks.
Well, That’s New
At least the first time I’ve heard it.
McCain just called for an end to cost-plus contracts in the debate.
I don’t know if they can be eliminated, but they should sure be cut way back. But good luck with that.
I have to say that so far, McCain is not doing very well. He’s letting Obama get away with a lot of lies and sophistry, calling him on very little of it.
[Update on Saturday afternoon]
I’m pretty sure that this is the first time that cost-plus contracting has come up in a presidential debate. It was really quite bizarre. I can’t imagine that it’s an issue on which the election will turn, and I suspect that 90%+ of the listeners had no idea what he was talking about. I’m not even sure that I know what he is talking about (in terms of what the basis of his objection is, and what specific examples in his experience prompted this strange utterance). I doubt that it had much to do with NASA, though–I’m sure that he was thinking of Pentagon contracts, where much larger budgets are at stake, and there have been some recent notable expensive procurement failures.
The good thing is that it’s clearly something that he takes seriously, and may try to do something about as president. But I suspect that it would require either an overhaul of A109, or at least a major reinterpretation of it by whoever the new SecDef, NASA administrator, and OMB directors are (not to mention GAO). It would constitute an unimaginably major cultural change in the federal procurement community, in a culture that has developed over several decades.
Which is why I first said, “good luck with that.”
[Sunday afternoon update]
Based on some comments, I have a follow-up post to this one.