Tag: government

ELT construction moves forward

9:06 am

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) today signed contracts for the construction of the mirrors and sensor for its Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

At a ceremony today at ESO’s Headquarters four contracts were signed for major components of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) that ESO is building. These were for: the casting of the telescope’s giant secondary and tertiary mirrors, awarded to SCHOTT; the supply of mirror cells to support these two mirrors, awarded to the SENER Group; and the supply of the edge sensors that form a vital part of the ELT’s huge segmented primary mirror control system, awarded to the FAMES consortium. The secondary mirror will be largest ever employed on a telescope and the largest convex mirror ever produced.

The construction of the 39-metre ELT, the largest optical/near-infrared telescope in the world, is moving forward. The giant telescope employs a complex five-mirror optical system that has never been used before and requires optical and mechanical elements that stretch modern technology to its limits.

Meanwhile it remains unclear when and where the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will be built.

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Boeing obtains available seats on Soyuz as result of Sea Launch settlement

10:57 pm

As part of Boeing’s settlement with Russia over the break-up of their Sea Launch partnership, the company has obtained rights to several manned Soyuz seats that are available because the Russians have cut back on the number of astronauts they are flying to ISS.

In turn, Boeing is offering these seats to NASA.

[John Elbon, vice president and general manager of space exploration at Boeing] said he expects NASA to make enter into negotiations with Boeing about the 2017 and 2018 seats shortly after a Jan. 27 deadline for companies to respond to the sources sought statement, a requirement when a government agency proposes a sole-source procurement. “Assuming that goes well, I think we would sit down and, in relatively short order, negotiate the details of this kind of arrangement,” he said.

He didn’t specify how much Boeing was proposing to charge NASA for the seats. The agency announced an agreement with Roscosmos in August 2015 for six Soyuz seats in 2018 at a total cost of $490 million, or $81.7 million per seat. “It’s a good value for NASA and the taxpayer,” Elbon said of Boeing’s proposed deal with NASA. “We wouldn’t ask them to pay more than they would have been paying before.”

What is happening here is that Boeing is trying to use these Soyuz seats as a way to recoup its losses from Sea Launch. The problem is that NASA doesn’t really need the manned flights in 2017 and 2018. They might need them in 2019, should the manned capsules that SpaceX and Boeing are building get delayed, but I am not sure that this deal will allow them to be used at that time.

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Big money offered to protest Trump

10:05 am

Advertisements in two dozen cities offered protesters a $2,500 monthly retainer plus $50 per hour to be professional protesters against Donald Trump.

Demand Protest, a San Francisco company that bills itself as the “largest private grassroots support organization in the United States,” posted identical ads Jan. 12 in multiple cities on Backpage.com seeking “operatives.”

“Get paid fighting against Trump!” says the ad. “We pay people already politically motivated to fight for the things they believe. You were going to take action anyways, why not do so with us!” the ad continues. “We are currently seeking operatives to help send a strong message at upcoming inauguration protests.” The job offers a monthly retainer of $2,500 plus “our standard per-event pay of $50/hr, as long as you participate in at least 6 events a year,” as well as health, vision and dental insurance for full-time operatives.

Though the article does not say where the money is coming from, it really doesn’t matter. It proves that the protests we will see are generally fake, and not expressing a real undercurrent of protest. Congressional Republicans and Trump should thus ignore them.

The

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Head of ethics office Obama supporter

11:19 pm

Surprise, surprise! The head of the Government Ethics Office that the Republicans tried to defang two weeks ago donated money to Obama.

It appears by his actions since the Republicans were forced to back off that their concerns were completely justified. He has since tried to help the Democrats by pushing to have hearings for Trump’s nominees slowed. In addition, he has been harshly attacking Trump’s plans to separate himself from his businesses, in great contrast to his strong support of Clinton when ethics questions were raised about her paid speeches to foreign governments.

There is more at the link. It is quite clear that the Republicans in the House knew this guy was a Democratic plant, and wanted to get him out. They just handled it badly, and are still stuck with him. Fortunately, it appears that they are not only mostly ignoring him, his documented biases are now working against him. Expect them to act to shut this ethics office down not too far into the future.

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Video of leftists planning terrorist acts during Inauguration events

4:07 pm

Fascists: A new video from James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, the first of a series, shows the leaders of a variety of leftwing organizations planning terrorist acts during the inauguration and related events.

I have embedded the video below the fold. It is very damning, and definitely involves the planning of illegal acts of violence. Worse, this is only part 1.

I wonder if the DC authorities will do anything about this.
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Private Chinese rocket company gets launch contract

8:47 am

The competition heats up: A private Chinese rocket company, Landspace, has signed a launch contract with a Danish firm to launch an unstated number of satellites.

The article does not provide much information, but from it I suspect this is a smallsat operation, similar to Rocket Lab and Vector Space Systems. I also think that its private nature in China and the timing of its announcement, only a few weeks after China released its five year space plan which seemed to lend support to the development of a private space industry, provides confirmation of that support.

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“We have waited for you for a very long time.”

10:43 pm

Link here.

Who said this, and why they said it, puts the lie to every left wing anti-American cliche expressed for the past half century. The people who know what oppression is, and where it comes from, also know who has consistently defended their freedom the most, in the past.

My only fear is whether the United States that these Eastern European nations remember and love still exists. I am sadly no longer sure.

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Japan’s SS-520 launch a failure

10:27 pm

Japan’s attempt to launch a payload into orbit with the smallest rocket ever ended in failure today.

[A]ccording to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), communication systems malfunctioned after the rocket launched, causing the ignition of the second booster to be terminated. The rocket fell into the sea southeast of Uchinoura.

My impression of Japan’s space effort in recent years is somewhat comparable to that of Russia’s: Significant quality control issues that cause too many failures. This is just one more example.

I must also note that the rocket was not a private effort, but a demo project of Japan’s government space agency, JAXA, designed to show off new technology but funded through coercive government funds, not monies provided voluntarily by customers. Thus, the pressure to succeed was much less, as no one’s job or business was at risk should it fail.

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Pakistan test fires a submarine-launched cruise missile

8:19 am

Does this make you feel safer? Pakistan last week successfully tested a submarine-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 miles and capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The article provides a lot of detail not only on Pakistan’s capabilities but of India’s as well.

Although still a far cry from India’s 6,000 ton displacement Arihant class nuclear ballistic missile submarines (one is service and three others planned) and the short-range K-15 or medium-range K-4 ballistic missiles they carry, Pakistan’s nuclear armed Agosta class boats at least get the country in the second strike game, but in a very minimal way.

The Indian Navy’s anti-submarine capability is credible, and their submarine fleet includes multiple diesel-electric submarines of different origin, as wells a Russian Akula II class nuclear fast attack boat. So keeping an eye on Pakistan’s tiny Agosta 90B fleet will be possible, although it is not clear what level of confidence the Indian Navy has that they can always keep the boats in their own submarines’ crosshairs. Not just that, but even attempting to do so will tie up valuable assets that could better be assigned to deterring other regional nuclear powers, like China.

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Yannapoulos speech canceled because of violent protesters

12:00 am

Update: I’ve posted some video below the fold. Watch it and tell me is you want to be allied with these protesters.

Fascists: Because a mob of violent protesters tore down barricades and attacked people, a speech by Milo Yannapoulos was canceled tonight at the University of California-Davis.

Not surprisingly, the local California authorities and the university did not seem very interested in providing proper protection, and actually laid the responsibility for the violence not on the protesters but on the conservative student club that had organized the event.

A statement from the UC Davis College Republicans: “We were told by the chief of Davis police that they could not guarantee the safety of the students, the speaker, or the police officers if the event should go ahead,” said Gabrielle McDowell, vice chair of the UC Davis College Republicans. “As the organization hosting the event, we would have been held personally responsible for any harm caused as a result of its taking place. We were therefore forced to cancel the event” she continued.

The violence and thuggery from the left has been getting worse. Five years ago they wrote letters of protest. Three years ago they merely heckled the speakers. Now they are aggressively attacking them and forcing them to flee. I suspect that, given time, these thugs are next going to advocate having every conservative arrested and shipped to concentrations camps.
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House approves Senate budget resolution repealing Obamacare

3:13 pm

The House today approved the Senate budget resolution repealing Obamacare’s tax and spending provisions.

The House voted 227-198 Friday to approve the resolution a day after the Senate voted 51-48 to clear it. Nine conservative House Republicans voted against the measure: Justin Amash of Michigan, Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Walter Jones of North Carolina, John Katko of New York, Raul Labrador of Idaho, Tom MacArthur of New Jersey, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Tom McClintock of California.

The resolution, which is nonbinding, sets budgetary and spending levels for Obamacare. It will act as a vehicle for Republicans to craft legislation that would gut Obamacare via the reconciliation process.

What the article does not note is that the Democrats voted 100% against the bill, once again demonstrating their steadfast marriage to this disastrous law. The Republicans who voted against the bill did so because they are sincerely worried about its budgetary impact. The Democrats who voted against it did so because they have become close-minded on the issue, and will defend this law no matter how many voters they offend.

When the next election comes we should remember this and remove more of these fools from office, if only to finally get the Democratic Party to wake up and abandon this bad policy.

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“We do see ourselves as preventing a peaceful transition of power.”

9:24 am

Fascists: The leaders of a leftwing protest group planning protests for Inauguration Day admitted during a press conference yesterday that they opposed the idea of a peaceful transition of power in the United States.

Watch the video at the link. Essentially what these leftists are arguing is that, though they agree with Trump that Washington is corrupt, they don’t like Trump himself because he isn’t them. Their solution to that corruption isn’t a peaceful election where the voters choose someone new but the violent overthrow of the government so that they can take over and rule.

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NASA names acting administrator

8:36 am

NASA yesterday named Robert Lightfoot as the Acting NASA administrator, taking over from Charles Bolden when he leaves on January 20, 2017 at the start of the Trump administration.

Lightfoot is a former Director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, having begun his NASA career there in 1989. He transferred to NASA Headquarters in 2012 to serve as Associate Administrator, the highest ranking civil service position in the agency. It is traditional for the highest ranking NASA civil servant to take over as acting administrator during changes in presidential administrations. The Trump transition has not always followed traditional paths so today’s announcement provided some degree of reassurance. Bolden said the Trump transition team officially told NASA yesterday that Lightfoot will serve in that job. A mechanical engineer, he has served in many capacities at Marshall, Stennis Space Center and Headquarters, including assistant associate administrator for the space shuttle program (2003-2005) at headquarters and manager of the space shuttle propulsion office at MSFC (2005-2007). He was named MSFC Deputy Director in 2007 and Director in 2009.

Essentially Lightfoot will act as a placeholder until the new administration names its pick for the position.

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Senate passes Obamacare partial repeal

9:47 am

In a party line vote last night, the Senate passed an Obamacare repeal bill that ends the law’s tax and financial components.

It must be emphasized that the failure to repeal the law’s regulations is entirely due to the unwillingness of any Democrats to cross party lines, end the filibuster, and allow a vote. The result: we are still stuck with some of the most egregious components of the law. In 2018 many of those same Democrats will be faced with difficult re-elections. It will be time to remove them.

I should add that, just like Obamacare itself, the manner in which this repeal is being written and approved actually appears to be unconstitutional. It is tax policy and it is originating in the Senate. The Constitution however clearly states “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” (Article 1, Section 7) The same section also states that the Senate can propose, so I suppose this is how they get around this issue.

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Russians complete investigation into Progress launch failure

5:50 pm

The news is not really good.

According to Roskosmos, the accident led to the unplanned separation between the third stage of the launch vehicle and the spacecraft. Members of the commission established that the most probable cause of the accident had been the disintegration of the oxidizer tank of the third stage as a result of the failure of the 11D55 engine, following the fire and disintegration of its oxidizer pump, Roskosmos said. The fire in the pump and its disintegration could be triggered by a possible injection of the foreign particles into the pump’s cavity or by violations during the assembly of the 11D55 engine, such as a wrong clearance between the pump’s shaft and its attachment sleeve, floating rings and impellers, leading to a possible loss of balance and vibration of the rotor.

The fault, which has a production nature, manifested itself during the flight, Roskosmos said. The State Corporation promised to prepare a plan of immediate action at enterprises of the the rocket industry to ensure the safe launch of the Progress MS-05 spacecraft, Roskosmos announced. [emphasis mine]

It appears that though they have not definitely established what went wrong (due to a lack of telemetry), they have determined that all of the possible causes are related to quality control issues.

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The X-37B flies on

8:55 pm

The Air Force’s X-37B reusable space vessel is now approaching 600 days in orbit on its second space mission, and is only two and a half months away from setting a new record.

There is as yet no word on when it will return to Earth, though there are rumors that when it does return it will do so at the Kennedy Space Flight Center and not at Vandenberg in California.

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Japanese SS-520 rocket launch scrubbed due to weather

8:51 pm

The launch of Japan’s new small rocket, SS-520, was scrubbed today due to bad weather.

Japanese officials announced a few minutes before the launch that the flight would be postponed due to bad weather at the space base. Authorities did not immediately set a new launch date.

The SS-520-4 will try to become the smallest rocket to ever put an object in orbit. Its sole payload is the six-pound (three-kilogram) TRICOM 1 spacecraft, a CubeSat from the University of Tokyo designed for communications and Earth observation experiments. Standing 31 feet (9.5 meters) tall and spanning around 20 inches (52 centimeters) in diameter, the SS-520-4 will blast off from a rail launch system and head east over the Pacific Ocean, dropping its lower two stages and payload enclosure into the sea in the first few minutes of the flight.

Primarily funded by a $3.5 million budget provided by the the Japanese government’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the SS-520-4 program is a one-off demonstration by Japan’s space agency, which aims to validate low-cost technology and launch operations procedures for a future “nano-launcher” to deploy tiny satellites in orbit on dedicated rides.

The last paragraph is disappointing, but not surprising considering that this rocket is entirely owned and built by the government, which like NASA, routinely builds things and then abandons them, no matter how useful they are. I hope that some private company grabs the design here and runs with it.

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Coordinated bomb threats against Jewish schools and community centers

10:17 am

While the left worries about Islamaphobia: Coordinated bomb threats occurred yesterday against numerous Jewish schools and community centers in the U.S. and Great Britain, forcing the evacuation of thousands.

Jewish schools across the United Kingdom were placed on alert after bomb threats were called into metro London Jewish schools in Roehampton, Ilford and Brent on Monday morning. The schools were “warned” that explosive devices had been planted on the premises. Thorough searches were conducted at all three sites and other schools were placed on precautionary lock-downs until the “all clear” was received. Bomb threats were also called in to a few non-Jewish schools as well, according to the British Jewish Chronicle news site. “Police were alerted at around 10:30am hrs on Monday, 9 January, to phone calls made to schools in Roehampton, Ilford and Brent in which bomb threats were made. Police officers attended the schools. All three incidents were stood down a short time later. An investigation into the threat will be conducted,” Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

Meanwhile, in the United States, bomb threats were called into Jewish Community Centers (JCC)s in Delaware, Tenafly, New Jersey; Miami Beach and Jacksonville, Florida; in Rockville, Maryland; in West Nashville, Tennessee, and Columbia, South Carolina. In Delaware, police were called to search the Siegel Jewish Community Center north of Wilmington on Monday, after a bomb threat was called into the facility at around 11:45 am.

This story has gotten practically no coverage, even though it indicates a very serious and widespread threat that could very easily morph into real bombs very soon. Instead, the focus is on the Democrat protesters who appeared at congressional hearings for Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general nominee, dressed most appropriately as KKK members. They were trying to imply they supported Sessions and he supported the KKK, but I think they merely proved that Democrats are very comfortable dressing as KKK members and expressing racist opinions. They certainly do not seem to have a problem with Islamic terrorism, oppression, and bigotry.

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Utah climate scientists whine about possible NASA cuts

9:31 am

The squealing of pigs: In the kind of journalistic pro-government spending propaganda that I despise, the Salt Lake Tribune today published this article giving climate scientists in their local area a platform to lobby the public in favor of their NASA funding.

The article provides a quick quote from a Trump campaign official noting their strong hostility to the politicization of climate research, and then spends the rest of the article allowing scientist after scientist to condemn that position and to defend that spending, repeatedly implying that should the NASA cuts go through, the research will end and even possibly that access to the data from NASA climate satellites will be denied to the public and to the scientists. At no time does the article provide any thoughtful information to explain that Trump administration perspective, which is based on some reasonable and very justifiable concerns.

I note this article as a warning. Expect more of this very bad journalism. Most of the press are blindly liberal and Democratic Party partisans. They are going to work blindly with the climate community to help them defend their funding, without the slightest effort at objective reporting. The public should be aware of this, and see this political lobbying for what it is.

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Pentagon test flies a swarm of 100 micro-drones

8:45 am

Sci-fi comes to life! The Pentagon in October test flew a swarm of 103 micro-drones, showing that they could work as a unit in a coordinated manner in targeting specific points.

“ Due to the complex nature of combat, Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals. They are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” said SCO Director William Roper. “Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to drones entering or exiting the team.”

Video of the test flight is embedded below the fold. I can imagine these drone swarms used in a number of very unpleasant ways, all of which have been portrayed in sci-fi movies and books.
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Republicans moving to restore earmarks

10:20 am

Idiots: Senate Republicans are pushing for a secret vote tomorrow that will propose restoring earmarks.

Senate Republicans are poised to restore earmarks unless opponents muster the votes to stop them in a secret ballot Tuesday. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, is under severe pressure from his members and has agreed to study the issue. “Very tone-deaf,” Mr. Coburn told The Washington Times. “I’d love to know who the smart guys are in the Republican conference who want to do this.”

Earmarks increase spending. Right now we have a spending problem in the federal government, which is also the hammer that government uses to wield its out-of-control power over the citizenry. Doing anything that increases that spending thus increases that power and is entirely counter to the overall sense of the electorate that voted in November.

Coburn is right. This is very tone-deaf, and incredibly stupid.

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Handicapping Trump’s Supreme Court pick

6:32 pm

Link here. The analysis is not only thoughtful, it is very entertaining. He also provides a lot of information about the people on Trump’s shortlist, while also admitting quite heartily that his prediction is worth nothing, based on the events of the last year.

Nonetheless, the data here once again suggests that, despite Trump’s past history as a moderate liberal Democrat, he is going to rule from a conservative perspective. At least, that is what it looks like, based on his list of possible Supreme Court nominees. We have of course no guarantee at this time whether he will stick with that shortlist.

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FAA okays SpaceX launch on Monday

6:13 pm

As I expected, after several days of hemming and hawing, the FAA has granted SpaceX a launch license for its planned Monday launch.

The FAA license approved Friday covers all seven Falcon 9 launches planned for the Iridium Next constellation, along with landings of the Falcon 9 first stage on a barge positioned downrange in the Pacific Ocean. The $3 billion Iridium Next program aims to replace all of the company’s existing satellites, which were launched in the late 1990s and early 2000s and are now operating well beyond their design lives.

What SpaceX clearly did here was to move ahead, daring the FAA to challenge their desire to launch quickly. Government bureaucrats don’t like that, but to call SpaceX’s bluff and block the launch would have caused these bureaucrats even more problems. SpaceX knew this, and gambled that the FAA would back down. It did, and thus the launch license was issued.

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GOP schedules six confirmation hearings for one day

5:50 pm

The Senate Republican leadership has scheduled six cabinet appointee hearings all for one day, next Wednesday, despite Democratic demands that they not do this.

Interestingly, the Democrats did exactly the same thing in 2009, when they controlled Congress. And they did it for probably the same reason the Republicans are doing it now, to hamper the opposition’s ability to obstruct the appointment process. The Democrats are of course going to squeal about this. If the Republicans do not back down, it will be a sign that they might be growing a spine and will stand up to them.

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A feudal and isolated California

11:01 am

Link here. It is very clear that politically California is increasingly isolating itself from the rest of the country. From the article:

Today California is returning to its outlier roots, defying many of the political trends that define most of the country. Rather than adjust to changing conditions, the state seems determined to go it alone as a bastion of progressivism. Some Californians, going farther out on a limb, have proposed separating from the rest of the country entirely; a ballot measure on that proposition has been proposed for 2018.

This shift to outpost of modern-day progressivism has been developing for years but was markedly evident in November. As the rest of America trended to the right, electing Republicans at the congressional and local levels in impressive numbers, California has moved farther left, accounting for virtually all of the net popular vote margin for Hillary Clinton. Today the GOP is all but non-existent in the most populated parts of the state, and the legislature has a supermajority of Democrats in both houses. In many cases, including last year’s Senate race, no Republicans even got on the November ballot.

The article goes on to note the number of ways California also differs from the rest of the country in matters of policy. Sadly for California, those policy differences are not to its long term advantage. As I read I was reminded of New York and how, during the 1960s and 1970s when the politics there were completely controlled by leftwing Democrats, the state’s dominate position in the nation’s economy collapsed and New York became looked at as a poor neighbor, unable to pay its bills even as industry and private sector fled the state. I expect the same to happen in California in the coming years.

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Obamacare: The Republican strategy of partial repeal vs full repeal

10:23 am

This National Review editorial today describes very succinctly the strategy being used by the Republican leadership in its effort to repeal Obamacare.

Senate Republicans want to pass a bill that repeals the taxes and spending in Obamacare, but not its regulations. That’s because they think that they can use a legislative process to avoid Democratic filibusters only if they leave the regulations alone. They think that this partial repeal of Obamacare will set the stage for later legislation that repeals the rest of the law and creates a replacement.

The heart of the problem for a full Obamacare repeal is that in the Senate you can pass budgetary items with only 51 votes while regulatory changes require 60. The Democrats plan to filibuster any regulatory changes, thus preventing their repeal.

The editorial opposes this strategy and instead calls for removing the federal government completely from health insurance regulation, the situation that existed prior to the passage of Obamacare. While I totally agree with this stance, I also recognize that the intransigence of the Democrats in the Senate makes it difficult. The only way it could work is if the Republicans could convince 8 Democratic senators to break away from their party and support full repeal. While a large number of Democratic senators are faced with difficult elections in 2018, I don’t think the Republicans could get 8 to agree.

We are thus faced with the unfortunate and bad situation that the Republicans will repeal only part of the law, which will further damage the health care industry. While they hope this damage will strengthen their effort to get the law entirely repealed, I fear that it will instead be used by the Democrats to attack the Republicans and the idea of the repeal itself.

It seems to me that it would be better to offer a full repeal, forcing a Democratic filibuster, and then use that filibuster as a campaign weapon to defeat more Democrats in 2018.

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House passes bill requiring Congressional approval for major regulations

10:51 pm

The House today passed a bill requiring Congressional approval for regulations having an economic impact of more than $100 million.

The legislation, dubbed the REINS Act, requires a regulation with an economic impact of more than $100 million annually to be approved by both chambers of Congress before it can take effect. Republicans also attached an amendment that requires agencies, when promulgating new rules, to repeal or amend existing rules to fully offset the economic costs. The House also passed comparable legislation in the last congressional session, but it faltered in the Senate. GOP leaders are taking a renewed crack after President-elect Donald Trump offered his support during the campaign.

Not surprisingly, the Democrats opposed the bill. It is unclear whether the Senate will follow suit, but with Trump in the White House and very much in favor of reducing regulation and the power of the bureaucracy, it is going to be increasingly difficult for the Democrats to block all these legislative bills.

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Trump does a clean sweep of all politically appointed ambassadors

10:42 pm

A very good sign: The Trump transition team has issued a blanket order requiring all politically appointed ambassadors “without exception” to resign their posts by inauguration day.

This order, which breaks with past precedent which allowed ambassadors to stick around until a new person was named, is actually a very good sign. It indicates that Trump really does intend to clean house. His track record in the private sector is to fire people if they are not producing. It appears he is going to bring that experience to the executive branch, an approach that the federal government has lacked for decades.

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Corzine fined $5 million for stealing $1 billion

12:54 pm

Slap on the wrist: Jon Corzine, former Democratic governor and Senator for New Jersey, has been fined $5 million for his part in misusing and losing $1 billion of privately owned customer funds and eventually causing the bankruptcy of MF Global.

What Corzine did was the equivalent of a banker illegally taking your savings from the bank to invest in risky stocks, without telling you, and then losing that money when the investments went sour. The banker would go to jail for doing that. Corzine however was a major player in the Democratic Party. Not only was he a governor and senator, he raised funds for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Thus, he must be blameless and pure, and must not be punished for things that were clearly forced upon him by the evil Reagan-Bush administrations. This fine is only occurring because of civil action, not because he was prosecuted for his crimes, something that the Obama administration refused to do.

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