Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

That “You Belong To The Government” Video

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…was no gaffe:

Later this summer, Obama notoriously argued that government created the environment for success through infrastructure spending. “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that,” Obama told a crowd in Oakland. Obama later claimed he meant that businesses didn’t build the infrastructure that allowed them to be successful, and that government deserves the credit. But where did government get the capital to build the infrastructure in the first place? From the successful businesses that produced that capital, not from the Progressive Sunshine Forest.

The reference to churches in the video is another interesting point, although not one that Democrats want voters to notice. This administration imposed a mandate on employers to provide free birth control and sterilization to employees, even those employers whose religious values prohibit them from facilitating such access. Explicitly religious organizations such as schools, health care providers, and charities did not get an exemption, either. The message was very similar to what the video argued: you can join a church, but you belong to the government.

Yup.

Media Criticism, Social Commentary, Space

A Not-So-Green Space Program

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When I first heard that Los Angeles had won the competition to house an orbiter at the science museum on Exposition Boulevard, I scratched my head, trying to imagine how they were going to get it there. At the Space Technology Expo, the museum had a booth, and I asked the young lady working there. “Oh, we’re still working it out.”

[shocked voice] “You didn’t have to submit a plan with the proposal?”

“No, not a detailed one.”

At the SpaceUp LA a couple weeks ago, we saw a description of the plan, using a very precision crawler, in which it was noted that a “few” trees might have to be removed.

Well, “a few” has turned into four hundred mature trees, and the locals, justifiably, aren’t happy about it. I wonder how much support the project would have gotten if they’d known this up front?

Anyway, one of the amusing things about the LA Times piece is the technical ignorance on display:

Several alternatives for the Oct. 12 move were considered but ultimately discarded.

Taking the massive shuttle apart would have damaged the delicate tiles that acted as heat sensors.

Ummmm…no.

The tiles are not “heat sensors.” They are heat protectors, insulating the vehicle from the hot plasma of entry. The heat must be shielded against, not just “sensed.”

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

American Character

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…is at stake:

A half-century of unfettered expansion of entitlement outlays has completely inverted the priorities, structure and functions of federal administration as these were understood by all previous generations. Until 1960 the accepted task of the federal government, in keeping with its constitutional charge, was governing. The overwhelming share of federal expenditures was allocated to some limited public services and infrastructure investments and to defending the republic against enemies foreign and domestic.

In 1960, entitlement payments accounted for well under a third of the federal government’s total outlays—about the same fraction as in 1940, when the Great Depression was still shaping American life. But over subsequent decades, entitlements as a percentage of total federal spending soared. By 2010 they accounted for just about two-thirds of all federal spending, with all other responsibilities of the federal government making up barely one-third. In a very real sense, entitlements have turned American governance upside-down.

It’s not just a fiscal problem, or a governance problem. It’s a moral problem, when so many think that they are literally entitled to live off the productivity of others. It can’t go on, so, one way or the other, it won’t.