Some examples.
Space transportation is not immune to this phenomenon, in either theory or history, which is why Ares I would likely have cost even more than current projections, which have already grown since it was first proposed.
Category Archives: Business
After Climaquiddick
Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts on what we should do in the wake of the collapse of the Warm Mongers:
…what should we do?
Nothing. At least, in my opinion, we should continue to try to minimize the use of fossil fuels regardless. Burning coal and oil is filthy, and they’re more valuable as chemical feedstocks anyway. We should be building nuclear plants and pursuing efficiencies in the shorter term, while working on better solar (including orbital solar), wind, etc. power supplies for the longer term. That doesn’t mean “hairshirt” environmentalism, where the goal is for neo-puritans to denounce people for immorality and trumpet their own superiority. It just means good sense.
I think some elaboration is required. Starting with (to use a politically incorrect phrase from the old Lone Ranger joke), what do you mean “we,” white man?
That is, who should decide?
I have a weird concept. How about letting the market do it?
For example, overhaul Price-Anderson to deindemnify the nuclear industry to make them more responsible for plant safety, in exchange for removing many of the design restrictions imposed by an anti-innovation Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Eliminate the bans on drilling, both on and off shore, to reduce energy costs in the near term (and cut the income of those making war on us and the West in general) and provide wealth to invest in the technologies that will eventually replace fossil fuels. Stop trying to pick technological winners (something government is notoriously bad at) and distorting the market with tax credits. Put some federal money into R&D, but eliminate government mandates (such as ethanol) whose purpose is more for political payoffs than environmentalism, and let the market sort out what makes sense.
This should be one of the planks of any new Contract With America — let the energy market work.
[Update late morning]
Three major corporations have pulled out of Climate Action Partnership:
Oil giants BP PLC and ConocoPhillips along with Caterpillar, Inc., the Peoria, Ill., heavy-equipment maker, have decided against renewing their membership in the organization, according to a statement released by the group Tuesday.
Red Cavaney, ConocoPhillips senior vice president for government affairs, said USCAP was focused on getting a climate-change bill passed, whereas Conoco is increasingly concerned with what the details of such a bill would be.
“USCAP was starting to do more and more on trying to get a bill out without trying to work as much on the substance of it,” Mr. Cavaney said.
Gee, sounds like health care. I expect this to be the beginning of a corporate stampede that will finally put a wooden stake through the heart of this monster. Business is starting to sense the blood of the ecofascists in the water. I’m still wondering if the Audi ad was part of that.
Small Business
…strikes back. I suspect they’re going to strike back a lot harder in November.
In this new war against the kulaks, I think that the kulaks are going to win. At least they won’t be starved out without a fight.
[Update a few minutes later]
And then there’s this:
“Welcome to Obamaville: Our business is no business, like no business you know.”
Intermixed with the song and dance, I suggest tea partiers call on Howdy Doody, a.k.a., Robert Gibbs, to explain why one signal effect of the President’s intervention into the economy has been to drastically increase the government payroll. Why is it that Washington, D.C., is boomtown while Main Street is bust?
This is a question that should be repeated early and often.
The President talks about stimulating the economy. But why does he not employ the one elixir that time and experience has shown really does stimulate the economy: i.e., tax cuts? Why is he planning to raise taxes, and drastically, on nearly every productive citizen and every successful business? Why?
It’s what socialists do.
The first usage of Hooverville in the press was in 1930, less than a year after the Crash. We’re overdue to start talking about Obamavilles.
The Limits Of Blaming Bush
In my article in The American, I suggest the following: Let’s assume that all the spending before this year is Bush’s fault. Then, using data in President Obama’s budget request for fiscal 2010 and data from the fiscal 2011 budget request, I made this chart that projects spending each year from fiscal 2010 until fiscal 2019. The purple bars represent the spending amounts the president requested in February 2009. The orange bars represent the growth in the projected spending request between February 2009 and February 2010.
In his latest budget request, President Obama added roughly $1.6 trillion in spending over the next ten years on top of what he requested last year. Can President Obama blame that extra $1.6 trillion on former President Bush? No.
He can’t stop, though. It’s all he has.
Obama Isn’t A Keynesian
He just thinks he is:
If Keynes were alive today, what would he think of President Obama’s fiscal policies?
He would roll over in his grave if he could see the things being done in his name. Keynes was opposed to large structural deficits. He thought that they chilled rather than stimulated the economy. It’s true that we’re stuck with large deficits now. The goal should be to reduce them, not to take on new spending that makes them worse.
Today, deficits are getting bigger and bigger with no plan to significantly lower them. Keynes understood what the current administration doesn’t understand that the proper policy in a democracy recognizes that today’s increase in debt must be paid in the future.
We paid down wartime deficits. Now we have continuous deficits. We used to have a rule people believed in, balanced budgets. And now that’s gone.
But misinterpreting Keynes allows them to pursue their political agenda of growth in government.
The Great IPCC Meltdown
When the glacier story broke, IPCC apologists returned over and over again to a saving grace. The bogus glacier report appeared in the body of the IPCC document, but not in the much more carefully vetted Synthesis Report, in which the IPCC’s senior leadership made its specific recommendations to world leaders. So it didn’t matter that much, the apologists told us, and we can still trust the rigorously checked and reviewed Synthesis Report.
But that’s where the African rain crisis prediction is found — in the supposedly sacrosanct Synthesis Report.
So: the Synthesis Report contains a major scare prediction — 50% shortfall in North African food production just ten years from now — and there is no serious, peer-reviewed evidence that the prediction is true.
But there’s more. Much, much more.
You wonder at what point, if any, the warm-monger worshippers will realize that they’ve been scammed?
And as Mark Steyn notes (again), it’s not just a science scandal, it’s a scandal of gross journalism malpractice.
[Update a few minutes later]
Time to follow the money.
The Country’s In The Best Of Hands
Why small business isn’t hiring, and why the tax credits won’t work. I love this line:
The good news is that, when it comes to reshaping the U.S. mortgage market [any market for that matter — ed.], the Obama administration’s top guns are bringing to bear all of the brisk, rough-’n’-ready entrepreneurial know-how they picked up in their previous careers as university professors, nonprofit activists, and holders of political sinecures.
Sad, but true.
The Irony On The New Space Policy
For this baby boomer who grew up in the Cold War, the world has gone bizzaro. Here is Jeffrey Manber on Russian TV defending the capability of commercial companies to design and fly manned rockets and disputing Alabama politicians who are attacking such companies and claiming that only a government agency can do such things. The irony is manifest when Jeffrey notes that said agency will be paying a Russian company to launch its astronauts.
Heads are exploding all over the place.
More Space Policy Thoughts
…from Stephen Fleming. Goodby space program, hello space industry.
[Tuesday morning update]
Michael Belfiore, at Popular Mechanics:
I would argue that the new direction is not just the best option for NASA, but the only one. NASA already has no choice but to rely on the Russians for rides to the International Space Station after the shuttle retires this year. It’s an embarrassment. Obama’s budget will open the door to homegrown solutions for crew and cargo delivery to the space station, while providing much needed research funding for the development of next-gen technologies such as heavy-lift rockets and on-orbit refueling depots.
It’s a step that’s long overdue, though not one without peril. The private sector will have some very big shoes to fill, without the track record to prove that it’s up to the job. And can it succeed without succumbing to the kind of bloat that has eaten our defense budget alive? Working with the government tends to increase the amount of paperwork and oversight, along with the bureaucracy required to handle that extra workload, so it’s a legitimate concern. But, after all, the goal is to reduce the cost of reaching space. It has become clear to the right people, including many engineers and managers at NASA, that the traditional way of doing things hasn’t been working. NASA and the White House have every incentive to keep out of the way of the private contracts as much as possible.
We’ll see if that’s enough.
“It’s Up To The Commercial Guys”
Alan Boyle has a report on today’s events, and it looks like Bill Nelson is finding his way into the real world, even if other Senators aren’t.