Political Commentary

Good News, If You’re A Republican

Here’s an article in Rolling Stone (not exactly a triumphalist Republican magazine) about Moveon.org, explaining why the Democrats will remain electorally impotent for the foreseeable future:

For a political organization that likes to rail against “the consulting class of professional election losers,” MoveOn seems remarkably unconcerned about its own win-loss record. Talk to the group’s leadership and you won’t hear much about the agony of defeat. Wes Boyd — the software entrepreneur who used his fortune from creating the Flying Toaster screen saver to co-found MoveOn — blithely acknowledges the need to produce some electoral wins “in the classical sense.” But he sees the rise of MoveOn’s progressive populism as a moral victory in and of itself…

…Boyd is a whip-smart man with a deep passion for populist democracy. But speaking to him about MoveOn’s constituency is like speaking to someone who spends all day in an Internet chat room and assumes the rest of the world is as psyched as he and his online compatriots are about, say, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He seems to conflate MoveOn with the rest of America. “We see ourselves as a broad American public,” he says. “We assume that things that resonate with our base resonate with America.”

In fact, there appears to be an almost willful ignorance about who actually composes MoveOn. “We’re pretty light on the demographics,” Boyd says without apology. “It’s funny, when we talk to people in Washington, that’s the first question we’re asked.” He adds with note of self-satisfaction: “We’ve been largely nonresponsive.”

Not to mention non-successful. There’s a term for people who gain “moral victories.” What is it again…? Oh, yeah–“losers.”

Satire

Finally, Uniformity

Iowahawk has the scoop on the latest judicial implications of the Supreme Court’s new legal theories:

“The decision underscores the principle of Federalism by creating uniformity in our notoriously inconsistent state dowry laws,” noted Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe. “For example, Iowa grooms are entitled to $300 and a two-night honeymoon trip to the Wisconsin Dells, while just across the border in Missouri, grooms only get $200 and a set of air shocks for their TransAm. Thankfully, the Court has brought some sanity to the situation.”

General

Trouble Over The Pacific

Steve Fossett’s plane seems to be low on fuel:

Moore said fuel sensors in the 13 tanks onboard the single-engine jet differ from readings of how quickly fuel is burning during the flight. Moore said the crew has been forced to assume that 2,600 pounds of the original 18,100 pounds of fuel aboard “disappeared” early in the flight.

Where does 2600 pounds of fuel “disappear” to? Overconsumption early due to a cold engine, or stuck valve?

Humor

Senate Introduces New Parliamentary Rule

March 2, 2005

WASHINGTON DC (APUPI) Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) announced today that, as part of the ongoing modernization of Senate procedures, it will be instituting a new rule of debate, to be known as the Byrd Rule.

“Standards of debate have evolved rapidly in the Internet age, with the plethora of on-line discussion over the past couple decades,” he explained. “On Usenet, there is a seemingly immutable law that any discussion that goes on sufficiently long will eventually introduce some reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or his political party. Many newsgroups have an unwritten tradition that, at this point, the discussion can be considered to be over, with the person who made the introduction having lost the debate.”

“Accordingly,” he went on, “we are going to make such a rule explicit in the Senate, apply it retroactively to the recent peculiar remarks of the most distinguished and eloquent senior Senator from West Virginia, of whom my esteem is so high as to not be able to find the words to express it, and honor him in perpetuity by naming it after him.”

It’s believed to be the first time that this rule has been applied to a legislative body, though it has long been usefully applied in on-line discussion groups on topics as diverse as geology, meteorology, antique car collecting, and ferret breeding.

Not all were pleased with the new rule. Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) expressed great disappointment at the proposed change, and promised to filibuster against it.

“This is a destruction of the long Senatorial tradition of free expression, and give and take,” he declared, angrily.

“The next thing you know, they’ll be declaring the battle won when an aging and senile Senator rambles on about his little dog Billy. Put simply, it is a blatant attempt by these new Nazis, these little Goebbels, who have taken over our august body, to stifle debate,” he proclaimed.

Space

Mixed Message

Here’s some more on Esther Dyson’s overpriced space entrepreneur conference:

“Nobody’s holding a space conference, so I decided to do one,” she said in an interview. “It’s not that there aren’t space conferences, but nothing as tacky and commercial as we want to be.”

So it wasn’t just hype on the web site. She really is clueless about what’s been going on in this field. This is both disappointing, coming from Freeman’s (for whom my respect is boundless) daughter, and annoying. A lot of us have been in the trenches trying to make this stuff happen for years, even decades. We’ve overpaid our dues, and now we get to deal with an Esther-come-lately.

And she can’t even be bothered to focus on the subject at hand:

The conference, which costs $1,492 to attend, is also aimed at taking on a topic of more immediate potential – a concept called “air taxi.” A growing number of entrepreneurs are looking at using relatively small, inexpensive airplanes to revive and expand the short-hop commuter industry, ferrying people to and from small airports.

That’s an interesting subject, but it has little to do with space technology, and all it will due is further dilute the utility of this one-day conference. I said I’d like to go if I could afford the time and the money, but now I’m thinking that even if I did, I’d get little out of it.

Space

Wow

1 Comment

I’m not sure what to say at this point. Walt Anderson, bankroller of several emerging space companies (some of which I’ve worked for and with), has been arrested for tax evasion:

IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said the allegations mark the largest criminal tax case against an individual.

Anderson, 51, earned millions by dealing in telecommunications companies after the AT&T breakup and became a global figure about five years ago when he embarked on a mission to try to rescue the ailing Russian Mir space station.

I hadn’t talked to him since last June, at the first SS1 flight into space, in Mojave.

Without speaking to the merits of the case, it’s safe to say that this will put a severe crimp into the capability of the first dotcom millionaire who was putting his money where his mouth was to continue to support space entrepreneurs.

[Via NASA Watch]

[Update on Tuesday morning]

Here’s more from the New York Times:

The Justice Department said that Mr. Anderson was involved in starting long-distance telecommunications businesses as the industry was being deregulated, and that he realized in the early 1990’s that the merger of his first successful company, Mid-Atlantic Telecom, with another company would result in substantial taxable earnings.

To avoid paying those taxes, the department said, he formed an offshore corporation called Gold & Appel Transfer in the British Virgin Islands and hired a trust company to serve as Gold & Appel’s registered agent and sold director. Gold & Appel was owned by another British Virgin Islands company previously formed by Mr. Anderson, the department said.

Mr. Anderson structured his dealings so that he had complete, albeit hidden, control of the corporations, prosecutors said. They said he further obscured his holdings by forming another offshore corporation in Panama, transferring Gold & Appel shares to that entity and having the shares sent to a mail drop in Amsterdam that he had rented under an alias.

The indictment said Mr. Anderson concealed his illegal dealings from his accountants, repeatedly tried to thwart I.R.S. inquiries, sometimes used the alias “Mark Roth” and falsely proclaimed himself a citizen of the Dominican Republic when he opened accounts with a New Jersey bank.

Gold & Appel (prounounced “Golden Apple”) was the investment source for many of his investments, including Rotary Rocket, Mircorp, and others. I don’t know, but suspect that it also provided the seed funding and endowment for the FINDS fund.

Well, can’t have that money funding projects that could get us off the planet. Much better to sink it in that vast black hole known as the federal budget, of course.

[Update at 9:45 PM EST]

Here’s more (though for some unaccountable reason the NYT reporter consistently misspells Gold & Appel as “Gold and Appeal”):

Mr. Anderson has long attracted a certain level of public attention, especially when he tried to arrange a rescue of the Mir space station five years ago. He frequently flew in a private jet and made deals involving millions of dollars. At conferences on space travel he often spoke of his hatred of government…

…Gary Hudson of Redwood City, Calif., said that Mr. Anderson invested $30 million in his Rotary Rocket, the primary backing for a private rocket launching and recovery firm that ultimately failed.

“One condition of his investment was that we could not take any government money,” Mr. Hudson said in a telephone interview on Monday.

I guess that occasionally it’s possible to be a little too libertarian.

[Update at 11:20 AM EST]

Here’s one more, the longest piece on the story yet, from the WaPo.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!