Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary

The Democrats’ Scandals

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They’re all rooted in the evil of unlimited government:

Adam Smith’s formula for prosperity — “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice” — is the very modest ambition that conservatives aim for. Limited government is the tool by which government can be made to do good without necessarily being good, or being composed of good men.

The progressive state, on the other hand, is a state infused with moral purpose. If politics is to be a jihad, then the state must be invested with extraordinary power to achieve its moral mission. There is no way to invest the state with extraordinary power without also investing those powers in the men who hold its offices and staff its bureaucracies, which hold ever more nearly absolute power over our property and our lives. (And given that the Obama administration has made a policy of assassinating U.S. citizens without legal process, we might as well call that power “absolute.”) But if those elective offices and regulatory fortresses are to be staffed with men who are corrupt and corruptible, then the progressive vision of the morality-infused state must falter.

And they — we — are all corruptible.

Lord Acton was right, once again, about the power of power to corrupt.

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

This Morning’s Space Hearing

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Here’s a story by Dan Leone, in which Mo Brooks makes an historical ass of himself:

One SLS supporter, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), said he was “astonished” that Bolden would claim the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama had nothing to do with the current gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability. Brooks’ district includes NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, which is leading the SLS effort.

“When the space shuttle was mothballed [in 2011], President Obama was president of the United States,” Brooks said. “He could have made the decision to continue to use the space shuttle, or to continue to keep it available in the event of an emergency. He chose not to.”

He had no practical choice, Congressman. The point of no return on the program was reached before Obama took office. The parts needed to keep it flying were already out of production, and the cost of restarting it would have been astronomical, if it could be done at all. It makes me weep to see such monumental ignorance from the people who are running space policy on the Hill.

But Dan misses what is, to me, the big story from the hearing. Interestingly, Brooks office released a transcript late in the day:

Congressman Brooks:… What would be the consequences to the operational capabilities of the Space Station if within the next year, Russia chooses to deny us access by no longer allowing us to hitch a ride on their rockets?

Administrator Bolden:…The partners would probably have to shut the Space Station down…

Congressman Brooks: If the Space Station is shut down for an extended period of time, say a few years more or less?

Administrator Bolden: I will go to the President and recommend that we terminate SLS and Orion…

Congressman Brooks: Let me make sure I understand the sequence of events from your testimony. You correct me if I err. If the Russians deny us access to the International Space Station, it’s your testimony that because of what services we provide to the International Space Station, you would have to shut it down. And if the International Space Station is shut down, you in turn would then see no reason to have the Space Launch System or Orion, so is it fair for me to infer that you would then recommend that those programs be shut down too?

They should be, regardless of what the Russians do. But this is stupid. We have invested over a hundred billion dollars in the ISS. It is only now starting to do any significant research. What Bolden is saying that he would abandon it, rather than risk flying without an abort system, even though we flew Shuttle without an abort system for thirty years. I’d like to think that he wouldn’t actually do that — that he’d decide to just ask SpaceX how soon they could start flying people to keep the program going. I hope that he was just bluffing to try to get Congress to properly fund Commercial Crew, because if he isn’t, it’s maddening. If he’s serious, it indicates that he’s completely unserious about spaceflight. And of course, someone should write a book about that.

[Friday-morning update]

Jeff Foust has the story now over at Space Politics.

[Mid-morning update]

Here’s another report, from Marcia Smith.