Environmentalists fail because they think that people are stupid, and treat them that way. As noted, their problem isn’t just their communications style, but the substance.
[Update a few minutes later]
Yes, this really is a form of neo-colonialism.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Superstorm Sandy
The botched recovery.
As noted, though, unlike Katrina, we don’t hear anything about it, because the president is a Democrat.
Nikole Flax
…who also has missing emails, sure visited the White House a lot.
[Update a while later]
The missing emails point to abuse of power and a cover up:
Two different House committees wanted to know more about what instructions Lerner issued in conducting the targeting, and more to the point, who may have instructed Lerner to target conservative groups in the first place. Lerner refused to testify when subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, but the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee both demanded all of her communications from the IRS. Those records could help establish whether this was a “phony scandal,” as the White House has insisted last year, or whether the abuse of power was a coordinated political strategy.
The House Ways and Means Committee pressed the matter for months, while the IRS dragged its feet. In March, new IRS Commissioner John Koskinen reassured chair Dave Camp that the IRS kept solid records of their communications and that collation of the material would only be a matter of time. However, time apparently ran out last Friday afternoon, when Koskinen told Camp that the IRS had lost two years of Lerner’s email data due to a hard-drive failure – and that the IRS only keeps six months’ server data on backup while requiring businesses to store far more.
A few days later, the IRS announced that they had similar two-year gaps for six more IRS officials connected to the targeting effort. While the IRS has been able to piece together the internal-only emails from Lerner and the other six officials, they claim that any emails between these seven IRS officials and outside agencies has been forever lost. Coincidentally, that’s exactly what the House panel wants to see.
Isn’t that rather … convenient? It certainly moves this from “phony scandal” to potential minefield for Barack Obama – or at least it should, if anyone pays attention. The hypocrisy alone is breathtaking: the government’s biggest stickler for accurate records and lengthy archival requirements claiming to have little regard itself for such measures.
Record keeping, like laws, is for the little people.
High-Speed Rail
Unlike Jerry Brown’s crazy train, this private Texas project might actually make sense.
Jay Carney
Treacher’s going to miss him.
What a pathetic little lying puke he was.
Hillary And The IRS
She tries to have it both ways.
Of course. She’s a Clinton.
The Kindle Edition Of The Book
The prophecies were true! It is out
Bill Nelson
He’s pushing back against Shelby’s attempt to sabotage commercial crew.
I don’t think this is right, though:
NASA insists that waiving certain parts of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, which the agency may legally do in certain situations, is vital to getting a commercially designed system safely up and running.
NASA isn’t “waiving certain parts of the FAR.” It is following the FAR, which doesn’t require cost-plus-like accounting for fixed-price contracts. In fact it is Shelby who is trying to change the FAR by demanding that it be used anyway.
A New Rocket Engine
An expensive solution to a problem we don’t have. It’s a good history of how we got into this mess over the decades:
SpaceX is advancing in all directions —a human-rated spacecraft, reusability and a million-pound-thrust LOX-methane motor—and despite normal setbacks, it has failed to fall on its face as many people believed it would.
Hence GenCorp’s concern. But its solution runs counter to the total-launch-service model used by most of the industry, where the prime contractor selects or builds its motors. As SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said last week: “It would be very unusual for us to buy a critical piece of our strategy and our technology from somebody else.” I think that she meant to say “are you out of your tiny mind?” but was trying to put it diplomatically.
Since Seymour expects a government-funded development program after a paper-and-components competition, too, the next question is: “What new technology is the government funding here?” High-chamber-pressure LOX-kerosene rockets may be new to U.S. industry, but not to the world.
If big U.S. government money is going to be spent on space launch, and if SpaceX can provide an “assured access” backup, why not spend it on reusability—the only strategy that promises dramatically lower costs. The X-33 did not fail, and the shuttle did not miss its economic goals by a parsec or two, because reusability is a bad idea: Lousy requirements did it for them both. A modern, intelligently sized two-stage reusable system is like G.K. Chesterton’s view of Christianity: It “has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” It’s time to change that.
Yes. But expect policy makers to continue down the same failed well-worn groove.
Obama’s Presidency
This polling is “the public telling you it’s over.” But we’re still stuck with him for another two and a half years, short of the politically unlikely impeachment/removal.