Tag: Congress

Ryan’s speech

9:57 am

If you depend on the conservative commentary about Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech yesterday at the Republican convention to find out how he did, you would have no doubt that this was the greatest and most effective speech since Genesis. To quote just one report:

Paul Ryan’s speech, in two words? Nailed it. Everything that I like (and surmise that others will like as he becomes more and more familiar to them) about Paul Ryan was on perfect display during his half hour-ish on stage. He was intelligent without being intimidating; he was stern and serious but still optimistic and even funny; and he hinted at his wonkiness without getting into jargon and maintained his approachability. But the most beautiful thing about Paul Ryan as the potential vice president of the United States is his uncanny knack for breaking through populist myths and shrill leftist attacks and instead communicating the merits of free-market economics and small government, all without being shrill or polarizing.

Because I’m not spending a lot of time watching these conventions, mostly because they really are nothing more than public relations events staged by both parties, I didn’t see the speech live. After reading reports like the one above, however, I decided late last night to go to youtube and dig up Ryan’s speech and see this amazing performance for myself.
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It’s the ideology, stupid.

10:47 pm

It’s the ideology, stupid.

It’s easy to forget, but Republicans swept the 2010 midterms not through a sweeping indictment of Obama’s economic stewardship, but by hammering Congressional Democrats over their support of the president’s health care law, the stimulus and Democrats’ pursuit of a cap-and-trade energy policy. Running on a firmly ideological agenda, House Republicans picked up 63 House seats – a larger pickup for Republicans than in any election since 1946.

What’s remarkable is that all the fundamental indicators from that historic moment have hardly changed – and in some ways, have worsened for the president. The 2010 midterm NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed 32 percent believing the country was headed in the wrong direction; their latest poll shows that “right track” number exactly the same, with even more believing the country was on the wrong track. Obama’s job approval in the October before the midterm was at 47 percent; it’s only inched upwards to 48 percent in the most recent survey. [emphasis mine]

2010 wasn’t a fluke, it was a trend. And running on the “ideology” of fiscal responsibility, a balanced federal budget, and a smaller federal government does not seem to me to be very ideological. Rather, it is simple common sense, which is why it worked in 2010 and will work again in November.

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Romney, the Republicans, and Space

3:47 pm

The Republican Party, as part of their national convention taking place in Florida this week, yesterday released their party platform for the upcoming election campaign.

Normally, I don’t waste my time with party platforms. No one really reads it, and no president ever follows it. Granted, it can give you a general sense of where a party and candidate is headed philosophically, but this is politics. If you think philosophy is their number one priority then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.

However, this document is helpful to us, at least when it comes to the nation’s space effort, as it actually devotes one entire (though short) section on the subject. Considering how vague Mitt Romney has been on what he will do with NASA and space, and how schizophrenic the Republicans in Congress have been, any hint on how they might approach this particular program should they win the election is helpful.

Here is the entire statement of the Republican party platform on the subject of space exploration:
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More than 2,200 hospitals face penalties under Obamacare for how they decide to treat patients.

12:24 pm

Finding out what’s in it: More than 2,200 hospitals face penalties under Obamacare for how they decide to treat patients.

Starting in October, Medicare will reduce reimbursements to hospitals with high 30-day readmission rates — which refers to patients who return within a month — by as much as 1 percent. The maximum penalty increases to 2 percent the following year and 3 percent in 2014. Doctors are concerned the penalty is unfair, since sometimes they have to accept patients more than once in a brief period of time but could be penalized for doing so — even for accepting seniors who are sick.

The penalties are bureaucratic and statistical in nature, and have no relationship to the actual treatment of patients. Thus, they illustrate in one bold sweep the idiocy of Obamacare and why it must be repealed.

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The Congressional Budget Office yesterday projected this year’s deficit will be $1.1 trillion dollars, making it the fourth year in a row that the deficit has broken the trillion dollar ceiling

10:14 am

The day of reckoning looms: The Congressional Budget Office yesterday projected this year’s deficit to be $1.1 trillion dollars, making it the fourth year in a row that the deficit has broken the trillion dollar ceiling.

In the entire history of the U.S. the deficit never exceeded one trillion dollars, until Barack Obama became president. In fact, it never came close until Obama arrived.

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Contrasting Paul Ryan with Barack Obama.

12:18 pm

Contrasting Paul Ryan with Barack Obama.

The next month, both [budget] plans came to a vote in the Senate. Ryan’s budget lost on a party-line vote; Obama’s lost 0-97. Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, and Obama’s own appointee to the deficit-control panel whose recommendations Obama completely ignored in that budget proposal, told a University of North Carolina audience in September 2011 that Ryan had proposed “a sensible, straightforward, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion.” In contrast, Bowles told the audience, “I don’t think anyone took [Obama’s] budget very seriously.”

In February 2012, Obama proposed yet another unserious budget that ignored all of the realities of our short- and long-term fiscal shortfalls, with yet another trillion-dollar deficit. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried to tell Ryan and the House Budget Committee that Obama’s budget proposal would “stabilize” the deficits. This time, Ryan only needed four minutes to dismantle that argument, showing that Obama’s long-term budget only “stabilized” deficits for a decade, after which they escalated out of control — unlike Ryan’s long-term budget reforms, which solved the problem of escalating costs. “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem,” Geithner finally exclaimed. “What we do know is we don’t like yours.”

Bluntly put, Obama has never been willing to propose anything that might solve the federal budget disaster, while Ryan has at least made an attempt.

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Politicians who don’t want to do their job

9:51 am

The Houston Chronicle today has an editorial entitled “Let’s bring logic to NASA’s budget process” which describes and supports a bill introduced by two Republican Congressmen which would

model NASA’s budget process after that used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Doing so would make the agency less political and more professional. It calls for the president to appoint the NASA director to a 10-year term and would make the budget cycle multiyear rather than annual.

The editorial also quotes sponsor Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) as explaining the goal of the bill is ” to take the politics out of NASA … and create continuity in the space agency.”

Bah. The last thing I want is to take the politics out of NASA’s operations.
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Democratic Congressman Peter Stark (D-California) reportedly threatened the family of another California politician after learning that politician was endorsing Stark’s primary opponent.

9:54 am

Leftwing civility: Democratic Congressman Peter Stark (D-California) reportedly threatened the family and livelihood of another California politician after learning that politician was endorsing Stark’s primary opponent.

But the conversation quickly got ugly, as the Congressman launched into a bitter and angry diatribe. “(Stark) called me a turncoat and said, ‘Are you sick?’” Torrico recalled. “He was yelling and yelling….he kept going and going. He asked me if I was mentally well.” The furious [Stark] then added, “Maybe I should send a social worker to your house. Your kids need to be safe. You’re not well,” a horrified Torrico recalled.

Read the whole article. It is appalling if true, which is likely because it is consistent with Stark’s past behavior.

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The scramble in Congress to head the House committee on Space, Science, and Technology after November’s election has begun.

9:28 am

The scramble in Congress to head the House committee on space after November’s election has begun.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) have begun to quietly campaign to replace Rep. Ralph Hall as chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology next year, according to Stu Witt, General Manager and CEO of the Mojave Air and Space Port.

If Rohrabacher gets the chairmanship it will be very be good news for commercial space, and bad news for the NASA-built and very expensive Space Launch System (SLS). He has been a strong supporter of private space, and will likely want to funnel money to it from SLS.

I’m not sure giving private space more cash is necessarily a good thing, as that will encourage these new companies to be less efficient, more expensive, and more dependent on the government. However, getting SLS shut down will certainly help the federal budget deficit.

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