Tag: policy

“Long-term budget pressures on NASA mount.”

12:07 pm

Why SLS will surely die: “Long-term budget pressures on NASA mount.”

Whether the cheaper, more efficient, and competitive commercial space program will survive remains unknown. It could be that our brilliant Congress, which wants SLS, will keep that very expensive program alive just long enough to choke the life out of the commercial space program. Then, with the government part of private space dead from lack of support, they will suddenly be faced with the gigantic bill from the NASA-built SLS and will, as they have done repeatedly during the past four decades, blanch at paying the actually construction and launch costs, and will kill that too.

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California now has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

9:12 am

Success! California now has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

California’s state legislature and governorship have both been held by the Democrats for years. Both have repeatedly raised taxes. Both have repeatedly failed to balance the state’s budget. And both have been and continue to be eager to increase government regulation on the state’s citizenry. What could go wrong?

Update: In related news, Los Angeles’ film and television industry has lost 16,100 jobs in past seven years, mostly due to businesses leaving the state.

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Obamacare is still vulnerable.

11:19 pm

Amen! Obamacare is still vulnerable.

One way or the other, this monstrosity is going to crash. Better that we keep fighting to kill it now rather then wait for it to do endless harm and then fail. And since a majority of state governors are Republican, they shouldn’t back down but keep up the fight. Moreover, despite Romney’s loss the election was still close and Obamacare remains deeply unpopular. There is plenty of support for killing it. The Republicans should not back down.

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Bankruptcy

10:20 pm

It appears that Barack Obama has won another four years in office. Despite what many consider to be one of the weakest and most incompetent presidencies in history, the American people have decided to stick with this man. Even worse, the Democrats look like they will gain seats in the Senate, even though it was the Democratic majority in that Senate that has refused to pass a budget — as required by law — for the last three years. For that dereliction of duty, the American people have decided to reward them with more power.

Overall, it appears that the polls that favored Democrats in their sampling were actually capturing the tone of the country. The public wants big government and a restriction in freedom. 2010 was a fluke, not a trend. I was wrong.

We are stuck with Obamacare. We are stuck with trillion dollar deficits. We are stuck with bankruptcy. I have little hope now for the near future. It will probably take fifty years or more to fix the problems that the past four years and the next four years will create.

This is not even a conservative perspective. No policy can survive, even good leftwing policy, when the government is bankrupt. And with trillion dollar deficits the new normal, we are guaranteed that the government will go bankrupt. And it will take everything else down with it.

Even worse, this willingness of the American public and its intellectual class to ignore this reality, to make believe that trillion dollar deficits don’t matter, suggests an intellectual bankruptcy that is even more appalling. For you can’t fix a problem if you refuse to face it.

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We ain’t going away

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I posted this video song the evening of election, 2010. I think its point remains the same today, the eve of election day 2012. The people do not go away, no matter how much the elite leadership of society wishes they might. Even in a dictatorship they hover over everything.

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The proposed IRS tax form every American will have to fill out when Obamacare goes into effect.

4:11 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A proposed IRS tax form every American will have to fill out when Obamacare goes into effect.

This form is not from the IRS, but it is based on the actual law, and is I think a reasonably good facsimile of the kind of information the IRS will require when the individual mandate goes into effect and the IRS will have to determine whether you have health insurance or need to pay higher taxes because you don’t.

I especially like the section of the form that asks these questions:

  • Are you claiming a religious exemption from the individual responsibility mandate?
  • Are you an incarcerated criminal and therefore exempt from the personal mandate?
  • Are you an illegal immigrant and therefore exempt from the personal mandate?

All three exemptions exist, though the Obama administration has already made it clear that the first will only be available to actual religious organizations, and even there the exemption will be limited. However, if you are a criminal or illegal immigrant (also a lawbreaker) you are exempt from this law, though you receive all its benefits.

As I’ve said, Repeal this turkey! And vote out every idiot that supported it.

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This is the first time since 1988 that climate hasn’t been mentioned in the presidential debate cycle

12:46 pm

Good news: “This is the first time since 1988 that climate hasn’t been mentioned in the presidential debate cycle.”

When you try to sell government policy based on crisis, and that crisis doesn’t take place as predicted, and in fact is shown to be based on fraud and dishonesty, the sales job will eventually fail. Thus, better to forget the whole thing and make believe it never happened.

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The filmmaker who made the anti-Islamic movie falsely blamed by the Obama administration for the Libya attack has now been in jail for a month.

9:51 am

Freedom of speech is so 20th century: The filmmaker who made the anti-Islamic movie falsely blamed by the Obama administration for the Libya attack has now been in jail for a month.

The movie had nothing to do with the Libya attack. And even if it caused the riots in Egypt, who cares? I thought there was something called the First Amendment, a law to protect the speech rights of U.S. citizens. Yet, Barack Obama and his entire administration have done everything they can to blame the movie, not their own foreign policies, while going out of their way to squelch this man’s freedom.

But remember those binders!

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“This is the election where black folk sit down and say ‘NO MORE!’ and we stay home.”

4:13 pm

“This is the election where black folk sit down and say ‘NO MORE!’ and we stay home.”

Read the whole article. It is detailed, and I think gives an accurate portrayal of the present political attitude of the black community. And this is in Chicago. Blacks might not be ready to vote Republican, but they apparently are finally beginning to realize that the Democrats aren’t their saviors.

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The Cuban government announced today that it will allow its citizens to freely visit other countries for the first time in over a half century.

8:24 am

The Cuban government announced today that, beginning January 13, 2013, it will allow its citizens to freely visit other countries for the first time in over a half century.

This quiet announcement reminds me of what happened in East Germany in 1991. The government then made a quiet announcement saying it would allow travel outside its country, and within days the Berlin Wall was literally being torn down by its citizens. Shortly thereafter East Germany ceased to exist, absorbed into Germany itself, and the communist bloc fell apart.

Hopefully, we shall see the same thing happen to the Cuban dictatorship.

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The new blacklist

6:08 pm

The new blacklist.

As columnist Maggie Gallagher pointed out during the furor over Proposition 8, “Targeting an entire business because one person associated with it made (in their personal capacity) a donation to a cause is brand new.” Some gay activists are one step away from claiming that if someone disagrees with them, they shouldn’t be allowed to work anywhere. The original Hollywood blacklist never went that far, but you won’t see any movies made about the current intolerance of supporters of traditional marriage. [emphasis mine]

Read the whole article. It very clearly illustrates the reality today that if you disagree with the gay movement in any way, they are increasingly demanding that you should not be allowed a job anywhere, and your career, life, and family should be destroyed.

That doesn’t sound like the actions of an oppressed minority, does it?

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Telescopes of the future

11:27 pm

Two stories were published on Thursday about two very different future space telescopes. Both are worthwhile, but the differences between them illustrate how the industry of space astronomy — like manned space — is evolving from Big Science and government to small, efficient, and privately built.

First there is this story describing how the nonprofit B612 Foundation’s project to launch an infrared telescope by 2017 had passed its first technical review.
» Read more

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“A profound disdain for the Constitution.”

9:17 am

“A profound disdain for the Constitution.”

The article quotes numerous Constitutional scholars, cites numerous examples of abuse by Obama, and repeatedly makes this same point:

Multiple experts interviewed for this article cited the Obama administration’s willingness to disregard laws for the sake of his policy goals as evidence that the president is disregarding the Constitution.

The last thing a free nation needs is a leader who has contempt for the law.

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A new survey of 13,575 physicians had found that doctors are fleeing the field.

6:45 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A new survey of 13,575 physicians had found that doctors are fleeing the field.

The survey also found that over the next one to three years, more than 50 percent of physicians will cut back on patients seen, work part-time, switch to concierge medicine, retire, or take other steps likely to reduce patient access.

But don’t worry, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.” Not!

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To avoid the cost of Obamacare, companies are reducing their full time stuff and switching as many employees to part-time as possible.

9:18 am

Finding out what’s in it: To avoid the cost of Obamacare, companies are reducing their full time staff and switching as many employees to part-time as possible.

It is very simple. The regulatory cost of Obamacare is so high companies are doing anything they can to avoid it. It is for this reason that they stopped hiring almost the instant the law was passed, and are now scrambling to find other ways to survive outside its influence.

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