Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Nikole Flax

70 Comments

…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.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Bill Nelson

22 Comments

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.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

A New Rocket Engine

6 Comments

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.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SpaceX

3 Comments

A good article at CNBC about how it’s disrupting the entire space industry:

“It’s not just the launch vehicles themselves that are disruptive,” Jurvetson said. “It’s the known, low price of launch and the fact that it could go lower still. It’s motivating entrepreneurs on the satellite side. You have everything from start-ups to nonprofit organizations that are thinking and executing on plans for space. That was unthinkable just a few years ago.”

Yup. Gonna start a revolution.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Unbelievable Missing IRS Emails

58 Comments

This really is much worse than Watergate now:

One doesn’t need reams of reports or public-opinion polls to understand the gut plausibility of an IRS scandal in full flower. Yet the Obama administration seems not to have imagined that this burgeoning problem might require more attention than anything else Republicans are screaming about. Rather than a president in over his head, Obama is behaving like a president who doesn’t believe the onus should be on him to head off an appearance of impropriety at the pass.

No matter how old-school the IRS scandal feels, that naïve arrogance feels rather new on the scene—the sort of attitude given off by people who believe deep down that if you have the correct stance on policy, you ought to be immune to political attack.

One of the (many) ways in which it’s worse is that Watergate was purely a White House scandal, whereas many Democrats in Congress are complicit in this one. And sadly, there is no Democrat equivalent of a Howard Baker to go to the White House and tell the president that it’s over.