Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The EPA Climate Regulations

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How Scott Pruitt could gut them:

s Pruitt and President Trump look to unwind Obama’s major climate policies, the endangerment finding might be imperiled.

“You know what’s interesting about the situation with CO2, Joe, is we’ve had a Supreme Court decision in 2007 and then the endangerment finding that you’re making reference to in 2009,” Pruitt told CNBC host Joe Kernan, referring to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision — the court ruled that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and the EPA has to determine whether they should be regulated.

“Nowhere in the continuum, nowhere in the equation, has Congress spoken. The legislative branch has not addressed this issue at all,” Pruitt said.

“The decision in 2007 was not that the EPA had to regulate. The decision in 2007 was they needed to make a decision.”

And what was decided can be undecided. Live by the pen and the phone, die by the pen and the phone. Though I’d like to see Massachusetts v. EPA reversed as well, given that we now know, since the release of the emails from CRU, that it was based on junk science. The notion that plant food as a trace gas is a “pollutant” is nonsensical.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of Massachusetts, it could get up to two feet of snow tomorrow, a week before the vernal equinox. Because, you know, the earth is overheating.

[Update early afternoon]

Yes, Scott Pruitt is right on CO2. But he’s a religious heretic, so he must be condemned.

[Tuesday-morning update]

Let’s talk about Scott Pruitt’s “denial” of global warming.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

“Liberals”

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It’s the end of the world for them:

The fear and panic on the left are palpable. Network programs that once, long ago, were respected news outlets are now little more than vicious rants declaimed in raised voices. News anchors have become mindless megaphones of victimhood and defeatism, totally absorbed by the idea of stopping Trump because Trump threatens the end of their world.

Why is it that Trump poses such an existential threat to progressivism? How does that threat operate? Why is Trump so much more dangerous than Christie, Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich would have been? It is because unlike those who merely oppose the left, Trump dissolves the opposition by holding it up to ridicule. With his laser-like tweets and incisive wit, with his very presence, Trump brings the preposterousness of the left’s positions into the light.

I hope so. But Stop. Calling. Them. Liberals. They are exactly the opposite, and always have been.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Camille Paglia

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She predicted the rise of Trump:

Paglia was not surprised by the election results. “I felt the Trump victory coming for a long time,” she told me. Writing last spring, she’d called Trump “raw, crude and uninformed” but also “smart, intuitive and a quick study”; she praised his “bumptious exuberance and slashing humor” (and took some pleasure in watching him fluster the GOP). Speaking two weeks into his administration, she sounded altogether less troubled by the president than any other self-declared feminist I’d encountered since Inauguration Day: “He is supported by half the country, hello! And also, this ethically indefensible excuse that all Trump voters are racist, sexist, misogynistic, and all that — American democracy cannot proceed like this, with this reviling half the country.”

In fact, she has had to restrain herself from agreeing with the president, at least on certain matters. “I have been on an anti–Meryl Streep campaign for about 30 years,” she said. When Trump called the actress “overrated” in a January tweet, “I wanted to leap into print and take that line but I couldn’t, because Trump said it.”

I found this (by the interviewer) revealing, though:

The past few years have felt like a return to the identity-politics wars of the 1990s, another period in which liberals (especially those inside the academy) began to draw bright lines dictating the boundaries of acceptable discourse. [Emphasis mine]

She keeps using that word “liberal.” I don’t think it means what she thinks it means.

Business, Economics, General Science, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Scott Pruitt On Climate

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I agree with Professor Curry that the media has distorted his statement beyond recognition (and I basically agree with his position, as does she). I also agree that this statement is nonsense:

The right’s refusal to accept the authority of climate science is of a piece with its rejection of mainstream media, academia, and government, the shared institutions and norms that bind us together and contain our political disputes.

The “authority of climate science.” Sorry, but “climate science” has no “authority” (no science does). It and its ignorant defenders have beclowned themselves.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: A new paper says that only five out of thirty climate models can capture the Asia Pacific Oscillation. But sure, let’s use them as a basis to pauperize much of the world.

[Update a while later]

Oh, look, here’s some insanity from NBC News:

Pruitt’s view is at odds with 99.99 percent of climate scientists, according to peer-reviewed studies.

At least it’s precise, if not accurate.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Alabama Porkers

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It’s not enough that they have to screw up human spaceflight; now they want to cripple ULA and military launch as well:

“The United States Government (USG) must have a hands-on, decision-making role… in any decision made by United Launch Alliance to down-select engines on its proposed Vulcan space launch system, especially where one of the technologies is unproven at the required size and power,” the letter states. “If ULA plans on requesting hundreds of millions of dollars from the USG for development of its launch vehicle and associated infrastructure, then it is not only appropriate but required that the USG have a significant role in the decision-making concerning the vehicle.” The letter then goes on to say the Air Force should not give any additional funding to ULA, other than for current launch vehicles, until the company provides “full access, oversight of, and approval rights over decision-making” in its choice of contractors for the engines on Vulcan

Vulcan, by definition, cannot use the AR1. It’s a methane vehicle. AR1 means continuing to use the Atlas V, which can’t compete with SpaceX (or Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn). This doesn’t hurt Blue Origin that much, because its main use for the BE-4 is for its own vehicle, but it would be devastating for ULA if they’re forced by politics to stick with an uncompetitive launch system to please the Alabama delegation.

Although both Rogers and Thornberry are members of the House Armed Services Committee, it is difficult to avoid ascribing at least some political motives to the letter. In January, Aerojet Rocketdyne said it would produce the AR1 rocket engine in Huntsville, Alabama, creating 100 new jobs near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Already, another Huntsville company, Dynetics, has become a subcontractor for the engine’s main propulsion system. (A spokesman for Rogers didn’t not reply to a request for comment).

Politics in space hardware procurement? Say it ain’t so!

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The IRS Non-Scandal

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They’re still withholding 7000 documents that show how (as Koskinen himself admitted) they were targeting conservatives.

As I wrote on an email list this morning (in the context of Big Data, Facebook and government spying): “I’m much more worried (or at least was in the last administration) about being targeted as a “right-wing” (i.e., someone who is a classical liberal, and gives a s**t about the Constitution) rather than Islamic terrorist, if they’re looking through my contacts and statements. And I think that the previous administration was the worst since Woodrow Wilson in terms of targeting what it perceived to be its political enemies (including through the campaign…). I’d call it Nixonian, except Nixon didn’t get away with it.”

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Biggest Jobs Gains In Years”

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Yes, there is such a thing as an economic environment, and psychology. These are not “Obama’s jobs.”

When Obama came in, the Democrats had already had a jackboot on the neck of the economy since 2006 (including talking it down and things like Schumer helping start the bank runs), and when business (mainly small business) saw that Obama was going to be elected, they pulled in their horns to weather the storm that they hoped would last only four years. It turned out to be eight (though it was mitigated somewhat by the mid-term losses of the party of War On The Free-Market Economy). Despite Paul Krugman’s hilarious prediction, for which he should rightly be mocked until the end of time, the post-election market rally was because she lost, and this boom is part of that relief, despite Trump’s own anti-market instincts.

[Noon update]

Related: It’s an older piece, but Democrats can’t win until they recognize how terrible Obama’s economic policies were.

In other words, they can’t win.