Tag: oppression

More news from racist Evergreen State College

5:04 pm

Bigoted academia: The Board of Trustees of Evergreen State College decided yesterday to hold a “listening session.” Not surprisingly, they heard a lot of stories about how whites are considered second class citizens on the campus, and the attempt by some to challenge that status recently resulted in violence, harassment, and mob rule.

At the link are videos of testimony from two people that will make your blood run cold. This campus has become no different than an on-going hate session from Orwell’s 1984.

It is as important to listen to the testimony of the campus’s defenders. The statement of one professor in particular reveals their willingness to excuse bigotry, violence, and hate, all in the name of their personal “narratives,” whatever that means.

Professor Carolyn Prouty was especially blunt about wanting to see the Board “strategically” change the narrative.

“Finally moving forward it is critical that we all, including the Board I submit, thoughtfully and strategically choose the narratives that we tell about what happened,” Prouty said. She continued, “We are now in the time of sense-making, that is what I hear that you are here to do today. I want to advocate that each of us, all of us strategically and thoughtfully choose to listen, find and tell the stories of what happened, stories that understand social change to be messy and righeteous, difficult and necessary.”

In other words, make believe the bad stuff didn’t happen, and let the protesters off with no punishment.

I once again ask: Would you want to send your kids to this school? Would you want to attend it? I wouldn’t.

6 comments

Commercial space has won

1:12 pm

Today the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, chaired by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), held the third of a series of hearings on the future regulatory framework required for American commercial space to prosper.

My previous reviews of the past two hearings can be found at these links:

In today’s hearing the witnesses in general once again called for a variety of reforms that would simplify the regulatory process for private enterprise. Dr. Moriba K. Jah, associate professor from University of Texas at Austin, suggested removing NOAA’s veto power on remote sensing, something that the proposed House bill I analyzed in my Federalist op-ed actually does). Jeffrey Manber of Nanoracks suggested giving the private sector a certain date when ISS will be decommissioned so that they can more easily obtain investment capital for building the privately-built space facilities that will replace it. Tim Ellis of Relativity, a company trying to build rocket engines manufactured entirely by 3D printing, called for more American spaceports, accessible by private companies, as well as a simplification of the FAA permitting process. Robert Cabana, Director at the Kennedy Space Center, talked about the need for government facilities to provide the infrastructure for private companies, as the center has done for the private launch sites and manufacturing facilities they have helped get established at Kennedy since the retirement of the shuttle.

Tim Hughes from SpaceX topped them all.
» Read more

8 comments

House Republicans push for big spending in Defense and NIH budgets

9:44 am

Failure theater: Two different House committees have chosen to ignore the budget cutting recommendations of the Trump administration and add billions to the budget of the National Institute of Health while approving — against the objections of the administration — the creation of a military “space corps.”

The first story is especially galling. Instead of cutting NIH’s budget to $25.9 billion, which is about what the agency got in the early 2000s, the increase to NIH would raise its budget from $31.8 billion to $35.2 billion. Worse, the House proposal would continue the policy where NIH pays the overhead for any research grants, which has been an amazing cash cow for American universities, most of which are leftwing partisan operations whose focus these days is often nothing more than defeating Republicans and pushing agenda-driven science.

Trump was right to push for those cuts. The Republicans are fools to eliminate them.

As for the second story, as I noted yesterday, the limitations of the Outer Space Treaty are almost certainly what is pushing Congress now to create a separate military space division. That and a greedy desire to establish another bureaucracy where they can take credit for any additional pork barrel funding. While such a force will certainly be necessary should the Outer Space Treaty not be revised to allow sovereignty and the establishment of internationally recognized borders, it is simply too early to do so now. The result will be a bureaucratic mess that will only act to waste money and possibly hinder private development in space.

But then, that’s what too many Republicans, like Democrats, want. They aren’t really interested in the needs of the country. They are interested in pork and power, for themselves.

10 comments

Australia to consider forming its own government space agency

9:27 am

The new colonial movement: The Australian government is studying the idea of forming its own space agency.

With ever-increasing dependence on satellites for communication and navigation, an Australian space agency could oversee the launch of satellites.

But, initially, an Australian space agency’s main role would be to help keep jobs and $3 billion of spending in Australia rather than flowing overseas. The agency would also help Australians take advantage of satellite technology, especially for farmers.

This proposal is actually all about the requirements under Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty. If Australian companies wish to do anything in space, the treaty requires Australian to have some legal framework in place to regulate that activity. The regulations can merely rubber-stamp an approval for any private operation, but they must exist. Without them Australian companies will be forced, for legal reasons, to go to elsewhere to make their space endeavors happen.

One comment

White House rejects House proposal to create a military “Space Corps”

11:01 pm

The White House today objected to a House defense policy bill that included a number of provisions, including the creation of a separate “Space Corps.”

Proposals to build the “Space Corps,” to prohibit a military base closure round, levy notification requirements for military cyber operations, develop a ground-launched cruise missile — and to “misuse” wartime funds for enduring needs — were some of the Trump administration targets.

The White House stopped short of threatening a veto, however, and said it looks forward to working with Congress to address the concerns. Still, the list will provide ammunition to Democrats and Republicans who hope to pick off provisions of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act when it comes to the House floor on Wednesday.

The idea at this time of establishing a separate military division devoted to space military operations is absurd, a waste of money, and would only create an additional bureaucracy that no one needs right now. However, in reading this op-ed by retired Air Force colonel M.V. “Coyote” Smith, one of the early proponents of this idea, I am not surprised to learn that one of the key good reasons for creating such a force is the Outer Space Treaty. As Smith notes,

Created at the height of the moon race between the two principle [sic] Cold War antagonists and others, the Outer Space Treaty was designed to prevent either power from claiming sovereignty over the entire moon upon arriving first. It succeeded. Unfortunately, it forbids any national appropriation of real estate and resources in space.

This prevents the issuance of property deeds and the awarding of resource rights to any part of the planets, moons and asteroids, without a potential legal contest. This also frustrates commercial and private entities whose business plans require legal clarity.

Thus, the limitations of the Outer Space Treaty forces the need for a military force to protect the rights of any American individual or businesses in space. As I said today in my op-ed for The Federalist:

The Outer Space Treaty poses limits on property rights. It also does not provide any mechanism for peacefully establishing sovereignty for any nation on any territory in space. Yet national sovereignty and territorial control is a given in all human societies. If we do nothing to establish a peaceful method for creating sovereignty and national territories in space, nations are going to find their own way to do it, often by force and violence.

Thus, no one should be surprised by this first proposal. It might be too soon, but it probably is not as soon as many critics claim. Unless we get the Outer Space Treaty revised to allow the establishment of internationally recognized borders, the need by everyone for a military in space to defend their holdings will become essential. And what a messy process that will be.

8 comments

Evergreen College already admits to drop in enrollment

10:29 am

While trying to poo-poo the significance, the president of Evergreen College, who allowed mobs to take over his university campus and even hold him hostage because someone might disagree with them, has admitted that he has already seen a “slight decline” in enrollment.

Meanwhile, he has refused to punish any of the students or facility who were part of the mob, even though there are amply videos of them, including some where they actually identify themselves.

I expect this “slight decline” to turn into a flood come next year.

5 comments

Hamas has made Gaza unliveable, according to the UN

11:17 am

A UN study has found that in the ten years since Hamas took control of Gaza the place has become unliveable for its residents.

A decade after the Islamist group Hamas seized Gaza, the Palestinian enclave is effectively unliveable for its 2 million people, with declining incomes, healthcare, education, electricity and fresh water, the United Nations said.

In a report examining humanitarian conditions in the territory, which Hamas took over in June 2007 after a brief conflict with forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations concludes the situation in Gaza is deteriorating “further and faster” than was forecast only a few years ago. “Across the board we’re watching de-development in slow motion,” Robert Piper, the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. “Every indicator, from energy to water to healthcare to employment to poverty to food insecurity, every indicator is declining. Gazans have been going through this slow motion de-development now for a decade.”

The article tries to lay the blame on everyone, including Israel, while somehow ignoring the corruption and terrorist roots of Hamas itself. Still, the real blame might belong to the people in Gaza themselves. After Israel unilaterally pulled out in an effort to exchange “land for peace,” the people of Gaza voted for their own leadership, and choose Hamas, a terrorist organization whose reason for existing is to kill Jews and destroy Israel. After making a poor decision like that, no one should be surprised it their circumstances immediately began to decline. We all get the government we deserve.

69 comments

The confusing Iranian space program

10:06 am

Link here. While written as an op-ed outlining the chaotic state of the Iranian space effort, the article highlights two pieces of interesting information.

First, Iran wants to create its own GPS satellite system, which the article refers to as a “pointing, navigation, and timing” (PNT) system.

Mojtaba Saradeghi, a deputy director of the Iran Space Agency (ISA), recently told Iranian media that the ISA plans to develop an indigenous PNT capability. Saradeghi said that the PNT programme is a long-term one and that the ISA is still figuring out how it will be funded.

This announcement is almost certainly pure bluster, instigated by the agreements signed last week between Israel and India, one of which involved working together to develop their own atomic clocks used in GPS satellites.

Second, Iran has decided that instead of launching an already built smallsat they will put it on display in a museum. The smallsat, Mesbah, was built in partnership with Italy back in the early 2000s but never launched because it was seized by Russia and Italy in 2006 due to international sanctions. Though negotiations are on-going now to get it released with the easing of sanctions, the head of the Iran Space Agency, Mohsen Bahrami, on July 2 still said it was going to be mothballed if they get it back.

This incoherence fits with other recent announcements by Iran. They have repeatedly been promising that a number of satellites will be launched in the coming months, but those launches seem to never happen. In addition, they announced in early June that they were shutting down any further work on a human space mission, citing cost.

I would not be surprised it missile tests continue, however. Iran is a corrupt theocracy and semi-dictatorship, and it is typical of these kinds of top-down governments to focus their effort on military technology.

One comment

Australian academic group to review Outer Space Treaty

9:44 am

Another op-ed today once again notes that the Outer Space Treaty needs updating, and notes that an Australian working group linked to an academic international space conference in Australia in September will be reviewing the treaty and suggesting future revisions.

In late September 2017, Adelaide will host the largest space-related meeting on the annual calendar – the 68th International Astronautical Congress (IAC). In more recent years, there has been a companion conference just prior to the IAC – the Space Generation Congress (SGC). This was initiated on the request of states through the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to represent the interests of the next generation in outer space.

At the SGC, a group of young Australians will lead a working group of delegates from across the globe, to develop and propose a set of supplementary protocols to the OST, in order to adapt global space governance to the needs of the next 50 years.

The article emphasizes that any changes to the treaty should be made with future generations in mind, and this is one reason the members of the working group are being drawn from the Space Generation Congress, since this is an event comprised mostly of students. That they are modern academic students is nonetheless worrisome, considering the increasingly oppressive culture of modern academic student communities. I fear that their naive effort to establish rules will be based too much on the good intentions of young people, and we all know what path that puts us on.

A personal note: I will have another op-ed published this week by The Federalist on the recent efforts in both houses of Congress to deal with the Outer Space Treaty, and it includes my detailed analysis of the proposed space law that was approved by a House committee in early June.

9 comments

Professor who interfered with reporters loses job

11:05 pm

Because of a severe drop in attendance, the University of Missouri has cut staff and reorganized departments, and in the process it appears that it might have finally cut the job of one of the professors who attacked reporters during the mob protests in 2015.

Where in Mizzou is censor Janna Basler? Director of the Office of Greek Life when she bullied and intimidated student journalist Tim Tai for doing his job – covering the race protests that swept the University of Missouri nearly two years ago – Basler was the subject of a formal complaint by a journalism professor who said she “tried to incite a riot.”

That didn’t stop her from getting promoted to associate dean of student life last fall. Now, it appears Mizzou’s financial woes have given the school an excuse to can the remaining employee who attacked journalists in November 2015.

Basler’s profile disappeared from a staff page in the wake of a departmental reorganization that merged part of the Division of Student Affairs into the Division of Operations, a move intended to save $1.5 million.

The more famous Melissa “I need some muscle over here!” Click left the university soon after the riots, but soon got a job in the communications department at Gonzaga University in Washington state, where I am sure she continues to teach students how to shut down debate and stifle freedom of speech.

The fate of Missouri, which has had its attendance crash since the 2015 riots, should be the fate of Evergreen, and Berkeley, and Gonzaga, and every college whose administrations condone violence and thuggery in order to stifle debate.

7 comments

“We will get better aim.”

3:03 pm

Leftwing fascists: A protester at the Tucson office of Senator Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) was arrested after telling staffers there that the real solution to the “Republican problem” is “better aim.”

“You know how liberals are going to solve the Republican problem? They are going to get better aim,” he said. “That last guy tried, but he needed better aim. We will get better aim.” The protester was likely referencing last month’s shooting in Alexandria, Virginia.

Nothing to see here. So what that actual Republican congressmen were shot, one nearly killed, by a Democratic party supporter who had campaigned for Bernie Sanders? So what that actual threats and simulations of violence against Trump and Republicans can be seen almost daily in leftwing culture?

No. What we need to get outraged about is a silly tweet sent out by Trump

21 comments

Pablum from Pence on space

12:31 pm

If you want to waste about about 25 minutes of your life, you can listen to the speech that Vice President Mike Pence gave today at the Kennedy Space Center here, beginning at the 49:30 minute mark.

My advice is that you don’t do it. Pence said nothing. He handed out a lot of empty promises and cliches, without any specifics or details of any kind. He confirmed for me what I have suspected of Pence for several years, that despite the fact that he lives and breathes a conservative and honorable personal life, as a politician he is a hack.

He made a big deal about the recreation of the National Space Council, which he now leads. However, as this article by Eric Berger properly noted the people who seem to be exerting the most influence on that council, on Trump, and on Pence are from the big space companies that have spent more than a decade and a half spending about $40 billion trying to build a big rocket (SLS) to fly a single unmanned test flight of the Orion capsule.

My pessimism here might be misplaced. We still do not know who will be on this space council. Furthermore, the Trump administration has been very good at doing a lot of public relations and soft stroking of its opponents in order to put them off guard prior to hitting them hard, where it hurts. This might be what Pence was doing here.

Nonetheless, the lack of any substance in Pence’s remarks makes me fear that he will be easily influenced by the big players who simply want the federal cash cow to continue sending them money, whether or not they ever build anything.

9 comments

Universities increasingly encouraging segregated events

10:14 am

Bigoted academia: Colleges across the United States are increasingly encouraging segregated graduation ceremonies, creating events that limit attendance to one race, ethnicity, or sexual perversion.

The article describes in detail such college-approved events at Harvard, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Colorado in Boulder, and the University of Georgia. It also notes similar events at the University of California-Berkeley, South Dakota State University, Portland State University, Arizona State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Otterbein University in Ohio.

Would you want your kids to attend places that encourage segregation and the exclusion of people solely because of their race, ethnicity, or sex? I wouldn’t. I would also strongly suggest that any donations to these schools would be far better spent elsewhere.

5 comments

German government sets ethical rules for self-driving cars

9:08 am

What could possibly go wrong? The German government’s Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure has established twenty ethical rules for the design and software of self-driving cars.

The German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure has recently defined 20 ethical principles for self-driving cars, but they’re based in the assumption that human morality can’t be modeled. They also make some bold assertions on how cars should act, arguing a child running onto the road would be less “qualified” to be saved than an adult standing on the footpath watching, because the child created the risk. Although logical, that isn’t necessarily how a human would respond to the same situation.

So, what’s the right approach? The University of Osnabrück study doesn’t offer a definitive answer, but the researchers point out that the “sheer expected number of incidents where moral judgment comes into play creates a necessity for ethical decision-making systems in self-driving cars.” And it’s not just cars we need to think about. AI systems and robots will likely be given more and more responsibilities in other potential life-and-death environments, such as hospitals, so it seems like a good idea to give them a moral and ethical framework to work with.

It appears these geniuses came up with these rules based on a “virtual study.”

In virtual reality, study participants were asked to drive a car through suburban streets on a foggy night. On their virtual journeys they were presented with the choice of slamming into inanimate objects, animals or humans in an inevitable accident. The subsequent decisions were modeled and turned into a set of rules, creating a “value-of-life” model for every human, animal and inanimate object likely to be involved in an accident.

“Now that we know how to implement human ethical decisions into machines we, as a society, are still left with a double dilemma,” says Professor Peter König, an author on the paper. “Firstly, we have to decide whether moral values should be included in guidelines for machine behaviour and secondly, if they are, should machines act just like humans?”

I know that my readers will immediately reference Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics, but that really doesn’t work. Asimov’s laws were incorporated into a science fiction “positronic brain” that was supposedly built almost organically, so complex in formation no one really understood it. Once the laws were incorporated into each brain they could not be tampered with without destroying the brain itself. Our coming robots will have no such protection.

20 comments

Qatar blockade threatens worldwide helium supply

8:54 am

The recent blockade imposed against Qatar by other Middle East countries, supposedly because of its support of terrorism, threatens the world’s supply of helium.

Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of helium and its second-largest producer, accounting for 25% of global demand (see ‘Helium supplies’). So the blockade will inevitably cause shortfalls over the next few months, says Phil Kornbluth, a consultant based in Bridgewater, New Jersey, who specializes in the helium industry.

Countries likely to be most affected are those closest to Qatar. But Asian countries such as India, China, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore are also at risk. “But none of us are immune,” adds William Halperin, a researcher in low-temperature physics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

The U.S. is the world’s largest producer of helium, producing about twice as much as Qatar. That production is for our local markets, while Qatar exports it worldwide.

One comment

Iraq recaptures Mosul mosque from ISIS

10:47 pm

Iraqi troops have recaptured the Mosul mosque where ISIS declared its caliphate three years ago.

After eight months of grinding urban warfare, Iraqi government troops on Thursday captured the ruined mosque at the heart of Islamic State’s de facto capital Mosul, and the prime minister declared the group’s self-styled caliphate at an end. Iraqi authorities expect the long battle for Mosul to end in coming days as remaining Islamic State fighters are bottled up in just a handful of neighborhoods of the Old City.

The seizure of the nearly 850-year-old Grand al-Nuri Mosque — from where Islamic State proclaimed the caliphate nearly three years ago to the day — is a huge symbolic victory. “The return of al-Nuri Mosque and al-Hadba minaret to the fold of the nation marks the end of the Daesh state of falsehood,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement, referring to the hardline Sunni Mulsim group by an Arabic acronym.

The fall of Mosul would in effect mark the end of the Iraqi half of the IS caliphate, although the group still controls territory west and south of the city, ruling over hundreds of thousands of people.

Its stronghold in Syria, Raqqa, is also close to falling.

This defeat of ISIS by Iraqi government forces has been building for months as they have been pushing steadily but slowly forward in heavy street fighting in Mosul. The victory is even more significant in that it has been achieved by Iraq, not American forces, though they have been happily allied with us, and have gladly taken our aid.

Will this victory lessen Islamic radicalism worldwide? No, not likely. The last eight years of bad foreign policy has allowed this evil to fester. It will take a lot more than just the fall of ISIS to cleanse the wound. We still have the Iran government and numerous terrorists organizations running governments throughout the Middle East that are their allies. They are not going away, and their goal of destroying the infidel remains.

22 comments

As predicted climate scientists begin adjusting satellite data to fit models

12:37 pm

If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts! The scientists in charge of the climate satellite data produced by Remote Sensing Services (RSS) in California have decided to adjust their satellite data to increase the warming trend since 2000 and make that data more closely match the surface temperature data that NASA and NOAA have already altered to show that same warming trend.

Researchers from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), based in California, have released a substantially revised version of their lower tropospheric temperature record. After correcting for problems caused by the decaying orbit of satellites, as well as other factors, they have produced a new record showing 36% faster warming since 1979 and nearly 140% faster (i.e. 2.4 times larger) warming since 1998. This is in comparison to the previous version 3 of the lower tropospheric temperature (TLT) data published in 2009.

How have they done this? They made several changes, the first two of which appear quite questionable. First, they addressed the “time of observation issue.” There is a belief among some climate scientists that the time temperature readings were taken can introduce an error in the long term trends.

To account for changes in observation times, the RSS group used a number of different approaches and models to try and estimate what the temperature would have been if the measurement time remained constant. This involves a combination of satellite observations (when different satellites captured temperatures in both morning and evening), the use of climate models to estimate how temperatures change in the atmosphere over the course of the day, and using reanalysis data that incorporates readings from surface observations, weather balloons and other instruments.

Depending on the time of the observation correction approach chosen, the resulting temperature trends between 1979 and 2016 ranged from as low as 0.13C per decade to as high as 0.22C per decade. The RSS group ultimately decided that the most reasonable set of parameters give a temperature trend of 0.17C. [emphasis mine]

I am puzzled by this, since satellites in orbit do not take readings at one particular time, but at a wide range of times. In fact, I would say that the number of readings, at all different times, would easily introduce enough randomness into the results that any error would be insignificant. Instead, these scientists have decided to adjust the raw data to add a warming trend of almost a tenth of a degree centigrade.

Next, they simply decided that the data coming from some satellites should be excluded.
» Read more

10 comments

Republican Senate restores spending in NASA budget

10:23 am

The Senate subcommittee marking up the proposed NASA budget has followed the House lead and restored most of the cuts proposed by the Trump administration.

The bill provides nearly $780 million more for NASA than the administration’s request, including an increase of more than $615 million for exploration programs, such as the Space Launch System and Orion. “We made sure the Space Launch System is fully funded, and that astronauts will have the ability to go beyond low Earth orbit in the Orion crew vehicle,” Culberson said.

The bill restores funding for NASA’s Office of Education, which was slated to be closed in the budget proposal. The bill provides $90 million for the office, including funds for two programs in that office, Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, that would have been shut down.

More here.

It appears that Republicans, like Democrats, have no interest in gaining any control over its out-of-control spending. The Trump budget was a very reasonable document, and would have done no harm to NASA’s overall mission, and in many ways would have helped focus it. Congress however can’t stop spending, no matter who the voters put in power.

The only area where Republicans seem willing to fight for cuts is in NASA’s climate budget. With both the House and the Senate bills, the Republicans supported most of these cuts, though not all.

Overall, this whole process, and the contempt Congress and Washington has for the American people, was best demonstrated by this quote from Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia):

“I’m not sure the private sector is going to step in with so much left undone.”

In other words, private enterprise can’t do it! We need big government, routinely over budget and behind schedule, to make it happen!

2 comments

UCLA fires popular free speech professor

11:09 am

Fascist California: UCLA today terminated its contract with a popular free speech professor whose classes on free speech were always overbooked.

Dean of Social Sciences Laura Gomez told Keith Fink, an attorney and a free speech defender who’s been critical of UCLA for denying students’ free speech rights, in a letter he wouldn’t be appointed as a continuing lecturer. She wrote that Fink’s review found his “teaching does not meet the standard of excellence.” UCLA’s ousting of Fink was first reported by The Daily Wire.

The university’s decision ends a months-long saga between the UCLA administration and Fink, who said his superiors blocked students from taking his free speech courses and put him through a “star chamber” review process because they don’t like his right-of-center politics.

In a statement to The College Fix, Fink’s teaching assistant Andrew Litt said “this outcome is entirely politically-motivated” by Fink’s superiors and others at the university “who do not like his message on issues [such] as free speech and due process which UCLA routinely flout. His termination is an injustice to the students and the taxpayers of the state, a threat to all teachers and academic freedom and a slap in the face to the notion of due process and fundamental fairness. He will not give up the fight here based on principle,” Litt continued.

According to Fink, the problems began when the heads of his department changed. The new heads, including Gomez above, apparently wanted to force him out, merely because of his politics. Can’t have any diversity of opinion, y’know, in a modern California university.

7 comments

China cuts off oil to North Korea

12:03 pm

It’s about time. China’s national oil company has suspended all oil sales to North Korea because of lack of payment.

The reason North Korea doesn’t have the money to buy oil is largely because it hasn’t been able to sell any coal to China. And the reasons for both is likely China’s increasing desire to rein in North Korea’s missile and nuclear arms programs.

Without oil or coal, North Korea’s leadership will find itself hard-pressed to survive.

15 comments

Public school teachers now required to do student mental health assessments

11:19 am

What could possibly go wrong? A federal law passed in 2015 and signed by President Obama now requires public school teachers to do mental health assessments of their elementary school students, without obtaining parental permission.

You read that right: if you live in an ESSA state, your child’s mental health will be assessed by a non-medical professional in a non-medical context. The paperwork will not be protected by HIPAA laws, which means that the school district can share a teacher’s assessment of your child’s mental health with literally anyone. Parents are not asked for permission before the DESSA is administered, nor do they have any say over where the records go once they are obtained.

Worse, the assessments require teachers to fill out a form with 72 questions on each student, a time-consuming task that will likely interfere with unimportant things like teaching.

3 comments

The academic community weighs in on Outer Space Treaty

9:49 am

Link here. They recognize the problem the Outer Space Treaty creates for property rights, but not surprisingly have trouble touching on the heart of the problem, that the treaty forbids the establishment of any nation’s laws on any territory in space.

Hertzfeld points out that the industry needs policies that address for-profit operations in space, particularly activities that will be managed or operated by the private sector. Until now, he says, most private sector activities have been narrow, but that could change as companies become more involved with satellites and in spaceflight. “How do you deal with property rights in space?” he said. “Ownership of these natural resources, mineral resources, up there? How do you deal with approaching satellites that are perhaps owned by someone else, particularly if it’s another nation’s satellite? How do you deal with debris that could cause accidents?”

“There are lots and lots of questions in how you do this internationally, because other nations are involved. These are the issues that are not clearly defined right now.”

Von der Dunk adds that there are still many countries that have no, or only a limited, national space law program. As a result, he says, in the implementation of the Outer Space Treaty, a divergence has grown that has led to gaps, inconsistencies and overlaps in domestic oversight. “Ideally, at the international level it would be good to have some form of harmonization at least of the approaches, noting that of course every sovereign state may have some individual idiosyncratic elements to deal with, but that idea has never moved beyond the stage of academic discussion,” von der Dunk said. “Sovereign states are not willing to comply with any serious effort to make this happen.”

I would love to know what “some form of harmonization” means.

Nonetheless, that this article was published in a major media outlet, which asked these academics about this issue, is once again evidence that people are finally recognizing the problems posed by the Outer Space Treaty, and are beginning to discuss ways for dealing with it.

15 comments

California government healthcare plan shelved

9:38 am

The head of California’s assembly on Friday shelved the senate’s proposed government takeover of that state’s entire healthcare industry, saying that the plan was “woefully incomplete.”

The plan, which was estimated to cost $400 billion, several times California’s annual total budget, had not included any way to pay for it.

At first glance it appears that common sense has arrived in California. A closer look shows no such thing has happened.

“We are disappointed that the robust debate about health care for all that started in the California Senate will not continue in the Assembly this year,” Democratic Sens. Ricardo Lara of Bell Gardens and Toni Atkins of San Diego, the bill’s authors, said in a statement. “This issue is not going away.”

The legislation was championed by the state’s nurses’ union and the Democratic Party’s more liberal wing. “The California Nurses Association condemns the decision by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon to destroy the aspirations of millions of Californians for guaranteed health care,” the union’s co-president, Deborah Burger, said in a statement that also critiqued the timing of Rendon’s announcement, which was sent out shortly before 5 p.m. “Announcing this decision at 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon is a cowardly act, developed in secret without engaging the thousands of Californians who have rallied to enact real health care reform.”

Rendon suggested the Senate draft a new version of the bill that addresses how to finance the plan and more clearly details how it would work. He also suggested the plan could be taken to voters in the form of a ballot measure. In the meantime, he said he would not advance the bill through the Assembly committee process. “This action does not mean SB 562 is dead,” Rendon said. “In fact, it leaves open the exact deep discussion and debate the senators who voted for SB 562 repeatedly said is needed.”

Even if they rewrite it to include a plan to pay for this government-run healthcare system, it won’t work. It never does. The program will still cost far more than they can afford, and it will still bankrupt California, as has socialism in Russia, Venezuela, Europe, and anywhere it has been tried. Every. Single. Time.

Not that these plain facts matter to the political leaders in California. They and their voters want free stuff, and darn it, they are going to give it to them!

11 comments

A detailed look at the UAE’s national space policy

9:09 am

Link here. The overall goals appear smart and worthwhile. They suffer from only one problem: This is a top-down policy, with the government attempting to drag the society forward in a specific direction. The direction might be a good one, but generally such efforts have limited success.

This paragraph meanwhile reveals the influence U.S. policy is having:

Effective and Attractive Space Regulatory Environment – The third enabler recognizes the need to incorporate and develop domestic space laws and regulations. These laws and regulations will be required to increase transparency, effectiveness, and resilience, and also provide protection of intellectual property rights as well as provide insurance policies and facilities for various private space activities. The legal and regulatory environment created through the third enabler will simplify the sharing of appropriate data and information to support value-added industries. The environment envisioned by the third enabler will strive to require the minimum regulatory burden on commercial space activities to enable the UAE to comply with its domestic and international legal obligations. That another country like the UAE might offer a more effective and attractive foreign legal and regulatory environment has been used to great effect in lobbying efforts in the United States and has prompted the both the House and Senate to reevaluate the U.S. commercial space licensing scheme. [emphasis mine]

I have highlighted the key phrases. The first illustrates the recognition that less government regulation is best, a variation of the basic American idea of freedom. The second notes the importance of competition. Just as Congress is rewriting its space laws to make it easier for U.S. citizens and companies to compete in space, the UAE recognizes that it must do the same.

One comment

Four reasons why college degrees are becoming useless

10:35 pm

Link here. The first two reasons are illustrated forcefully by the madness we have recently seen in many college campuses, where mobs of screaming thugs take over and drown out anyone who wants to discuss the issues at hand rationally.

The last two reasons are less noticeable but more economically important. Combined with the first two reasons, expect there to be a collapse in attendance at colleges in the coming years.

11 comments

Senate introduces its version of Trumpcare

9:36 am

Failure theater: The Senate today introduced its version of an Obamacare replacement, and proved once again that the Republican leadership in Congress has no interest in repealing Obamacare and the parts of that law that make it economically unsustainable.

The most popular provisions of Obamacare are kept in place in the bill, including language allowing children to stay on a parent’s health insurance plan until age 26 and preserving coverage for people with pre-existing illnesses.

The bill does repeal some of Obamacare, but without freeing the insurance company from the requirement to accept anyone, whether they are sick or not, makes it impossible for the entire health insurance business to make any profit. It also does not appear that this bill frees insurance companies to offer any kind of insurance they wish, including the popular and less expensive catastrophic insurance plans that Obamacare banned.

The problem here is that the Republican leadership is timid. They fear the squealing of pigs, and thus attempt to come up with plans that will please those pigs. The result? A mish-mosh that no one likes and that solves nothing.

Update: The Senate’s own freedom caucus speaks: Senators Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul reject Senate bill, as written.

26 comments

A congressman acts to limit competition in solid rocket motor production

9:08 am

We’re here to help you! Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-California) in March introduced a new bill that requires U.S. companies building solid rocket motors to purchase the oxidizer from within the U.S.

That oxidizer, ammonium perchlorate, is only available from one Utah company, a company that also happens to belong to a member of the Washington establishment.

Some in industry are arguing the legislation is an earmark to help a now struggling business — American Pacific, owned by the Huntsmans of Utah — with political ties to the Trump administration. Jon Huntsman, former two-time Republican presidential candidate, is tapped to be the next ambassador to Russia.

And if the legislation passes as part of the fiscal year National Defense Authorization Act, the business would be propped up, but potentially at the expense of a larger solid rocket motor industry and the U.S. government, sources interviewed by Defense News argued.

Essentially, this bill would give Jon Huntsman’s company a monopoly and would likely increase the cost of making solid rocket motors.

The article is very detailed. While on the surface it sure looks like a case of crony capitalism, it is a bit more complicated. Demand for ammonium perchlorate has dropped since the shuttle was retired, causing Huntsman’s company to struggle. While it could be argued that this bill is an effort to save this company as well as encourage new American companies to form, there are many factors described in the article that suggest this isn’t going to happen, including this tidbit:

The other factor is the price for [ammonium perchlorate] will improve naturally when the government has more demand in roughly six years when NASA’s Space Launch System kicks off in full and the nuclear missile fleet is refreshed, so a solution that is more temporary could be in order, several sources suggest.

Since it is doubtful SLS will ever “kick off in full,” it is unlikely that demand for solid rocket motor oxidizer will ever rise as predicted. A better solution would be for Congress to mind its own business and let the market function normally. There are other companies in Europe providing this oxidizer, and the competition would force Huntsman’s company (as well as other new American companies) to innovate to stay competitive.

5 comments

Trump administration continues to clean house at EPA

9:14 am

The Trump administration this week announced that it will not renew the appointment of 38 scientists to a key EPA science panel.

All board members whose three-year appointments expire in August will not get renewals, Robert Kavlock, acting head of EPA’s Office of Research and Development, said in the email, which was obtained by E&E News.

Because of the need to reconstitute the board, EPA is also canceling all subcommittee meetings planned for late summer and fall, Kavlock said. “We are hopeful that an updated BOSC Executive Committee and the five subcommittees can resume their work in 2018 and continue providing ORD with thoughtful recommendations and comments,” he wrote in urging departing members to reapply.

As the article notes, some Democratic pigs are squealing over this, but the Trump administration is only following the law. And considering how political and anti-business the EPA has become in recent years, a full review of all committee members seems entirely appropriate and reasonable.

8 comments
1 … 112 113 114 115 116 … 253