Tag: regulation

The first nation in space?

8:29 am

A science research center has announced it is forming an independent nation in space which anyone can join.

If you are 18 or over and have an email address, you can apply to become a ‘citizen’ of Asgardia today. At the time of this writing, more than 4,900 people have signed up, including at least one Popular Science editor. “When the number of those applications goes above 100,000 we can officially apply to the UN for the status of state,” said Ashurbeyli, adding that Asgardians would not have to give up citizenship in their countries of origin.

The group hopes to launch its first satellite in 2017 or 2018. How it will avoid being under the jurisdiction of any other country remains to me a mystery.

Eventually, when there are thriving reasonably self-sufficient colonies in space, circumstances will demand that they declare their independence from what is becoming an increasingly oppressive Earth culture. Until then, declarations like Asgardia are nothing more than publicity stunts that are not going to go anywhere.

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The powerless GOP

6:00 pm

Obama is imposing an unprecedented number of new regulations in his final months in office, and the Republican leadership says it is helpless to do anything about it.

Data compiled by the Heritage Foundation found that the Obama administration issued 184 major rules during its first six years. The conservative organization, citing regulators’ estimates, says those could come with a price tag of almost $80 billion a year. The American Action Forum, which dubs itself as a “center-right” think tank, concludes that since Jan. 1 of this year, the administration has picked up the pace, finalizing 60 new rules and proposing 60 more at a potential cost of $16.5 billion next year alone.

Republican lawmakers and independent experts expect more to come. But Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas told Roll Call that his party cannot do much because “the framers of the Constitution didn’t give us a lot of tools that didn’t involve a presidential signature to overturn them.” [emphasis mine]

Excuse me, Senator Cornyn, but the framers of the Constitution gave Congress all the power. All you have to do is read the Constitution, a document only 16 pages long (excluding amendments), to find out. One would think a sitting Senator might do that once in awhile.

The problem is that Congress for decades has abdicated its responsibilities to the bureaucratic wing of the executive branch, and in the recent years the Republican leadership has further chickened out when voters demanded that they take some of those responsibilities back. The Republicans could very easily shut the whole shebang down, which might finally force some compromise from the Democrats. Until they do, however, expect no compromise from the left, which keeps getting exactly what it wants.

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Feds mistakenly grant citizenship to more than 800 potentially dangerous immigrants

11:32 am

Does this make you feel safer? The federal government has mistakenly granted citizenship to more than 800 immigrants who for many reasons are considered security risks.

The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found that the immigrants used different names or birthdates to apply for citizenship with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and such discrepancies weren’t caught because their fingerprints were missing from government databases. DHS said in an emailed statement that an initial review of these cases suggest that some of the individuals may have ultimately qualified for citizenship, and that the lack of digital fingerprint records does not necessarily mean they committed fraud.

The report does not identify any of the immigrants by name, but Inspector General John Roth’s auditors said they were all from “special interest countries” — those that present a national security concern for the United States — or neighboring countries with high rates of immigration fraud. The report did not identify those countries.

As I’ve noted many times, the federal government is not only bankrupt, it is today totally incapable of doing any job right. We should stop depending on it for anything. And we should certainly shut the faucet of tax dollars we are presently pouring into it. The discussion should not be what is the right tax scheme is for providing funds to the federal government, but how quickly can we shut as many of its corrupt and incompetent agencies down and fire as many of its corrupt workers as possible.

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Federal agencies question establishment of SpaceX spaceport and three liquefied natural gas plants in Brownsville

10:25 am

Two federal agencies are questioning the safety of establishing three liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants near SpaceX’s new spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is reviewing the applications for the LNG export terminals, which plan to take natural gas from the Eagle Ford south of San Antonio, liquefy it and export the LNG to overseas customers.

The Federal Aviation Administration hosted an Aug. 18 meeting to discuss space launch activities near the proposed LNG facilities, according to a FERC filing released on Thursday. During the meeting, FAA officials discussed their role and regulations regarding commercial space launches, as well as the agency’s licensing and public safety requirements prior to the launch of any future mission.

While it makes perfect sense to keep a rocket launchpad safely away from large amounts of liquefied natural gas, I found the article’s concluding paragraphs to be most revealing:

Meanwhile, environmentalists, who were critical of the SpaceX project and oppose the LNG plants, said the launch site is too close to the proposed export terminals. “This announcement should be a wake-up call and warning that putting LNG terminals within six miles of the SpaceX launch site is a bad idea,” Lower Rio Grande Valley Sierra Club Chair Jim Chapman told the Business Journal. “Furthermore, Annova LNG wants to put its facility within the SpaceX launch closure area. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that idea won’t fly.” [emphasis mine]

Note how the environmentalists are essentially against everything. They really aren’t opposed to having these two facilities being placed too close to each other, what they really want is that nothing gets built at all. Most instructive.

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Obama meets with health insurance execs in effort to save Obamacare

11:32 am

Finding out what’s in it: Realizing that the next open enrollment period under Obamacare will begin only a week before the election and will present voters with skyrocketing insurance premiums, higher deductables, and fewer choices, Obama met with health insurance execs on Monday to plead for their support.

The two largest insurance carriers, Aetna and UnitedHealth, did not attend, Both have already abandoned most of the Obamacare marketplaces.

The article has a lot of blather about the public relations steps the Obama administration is taking to shore up Obamacare, along with encouraging quotes from some insurance executives. This quote from the article, however, touches on reality, a reality that it appears Obama might finally be discovering. Or to paraphrase Nancy Pelosi’s words, he is finally finding out what’s in it.

But six years after passage of Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the litany of woes afflicting the Obamacare marketplaces is formidable. Enrollment has plateaued at half of what was projected. Three major insurers have largely quit, citing big losses. Double-digit rate hikes are the norm for plans across the country. And roughly one in five Americans may find just one insurer selling plans in their area when they shop for 2017 coverage.

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UN Secretary-General declares climate change debate ‘over’

10:57 am

The certainty of politics: In a newspaper interview on Thursday UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared, without doubt, that the scientific debate on human-caused global warming “is over”.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that his greatest achievement at the helm of the world’s biggest international organization was last year’s climate change accord in Paris, and he expressed open frustration that Republicans in the U.S. continue to obstruct President Obama and to politicize the subject. “The debate on science and the debate on politics as far as climate change is concerned is over,” Mr. Ban told The Washington Times in an exclusive interview. “Still, the Republican Party, they are not convinced.

“There should be no political consideration on this,” he said. “There should be no room for politics to get involved.” [emphasis mine]

I am so glad that this politician, not a scientist, knows so much about the climate field that he can dictate the future research of scientists. I am so glad that this politician, not a scientist, thinks he has the ability to tell skeptics to shut up. And I am so glad that this politician, not a scientist, can demand that skeptics shut up because he wants to keep politics out of science. (Note the irony and hypocrisy here.)

I find it most interesting that whenever anyone raises questions about the theory of human-caused global warming, the response by its advocates is almost never to discuss the actual data, but to tell the questioners to shut up, and to insist the debate is settled, even though the very existence of those questioners proves it is not.

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Congressman proposes new legislation to better regulate commercial space

9:48 am

We’re here to help you! In an effort to guarantee that the United States remains compliant with the UN Outer Space Treaty when its private citizens begin flying commercial operations in space, Congressman Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma) is proposing new legislation that would better supervise and regulate the emerging commercial space industry.

Bridenstine explained that his top concern is that a U.S. company will proceed with a plan to put a spacecraft on the Moon or conduct on-orbit servicing or some other new type of activity only to have a “near-peer” country like Russia or China complain at the last minute that the United States is violating the OST. That would put the United States “in a difficult position,” he argues. Therefore he sees the need for “airtight” legislation that sets up a process by which the government authorizes and supervises these private companies. Once a company has gone through the process, the United States can unequivocally demonstrate to the international community that it has, in fact, complied with the treaty.

The Obama Administration has been open to working with these new companies, but he wonders if that will remain true over the long term future. He insisted that Congress “needs to exert its authority and power so that whatever administration comes next or is in place 50 years from now, the process exists” and is not subject to a new administration’s “whims.” He also worried that without a legislative solution, it could become a matter of “executive branch regulation by default.” That opens the possibility of some agency saying no, with no recourse for the private sector.

Read the whole report at the link. If you believe in freedom, competition, and private enterprise, it will chill your bones. At no time does anyone suggest that maybe the United States should simply get out of the Outer Space Treaty, as we are legally allowed to do according to the treaty’s own language. The treaty itself is a very bad law, as it makes it impossible for any private citizen or company in space to be protected under U.S. law, leaving everything instead in the control of United Nations bureaucrats and the polyglot of nations, many quite tyrannical, that dictate UN policy. Bridenstine’s proposals will only make this situation worse, as it will not only keep all control in the hands of the UN, but it will saddle American citizens with further regulations imposed by our own government.

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More fraud found in Obamacare

10:54 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A new GAO investigation has found that, like its previous reports in 2014 and 2015, it is remarkably easy for fictitious applicants to get approved for both Obamacare and the large subsidizes that go with it.

Our undercover testing for the 2016 coverage year found that the eligibility determination and enrollment processes of the federal and state marketplaces we reviewed remain vulnerable to fraud, as we previously reported for the 2014 and 2015 coverage years. For each of our 15 fictitious applications, the marketplaces approved coverage, including for 6 fictitious applicants who had previously obtained subsidized coverage but did not file the required federal income-tax returns. Although IRS provides information to marketplaces on whether health-care applicants have filed required returns, the federal Marketplace and our selected state marketplace allowed applicants to instead attest that they had filed returns, saying the IRS information was not sufficiently current. The marketplaces we reviewed also relaxed documentation standards or extended deadlines for filing required documentation. After initial approval, all but one of our fictitious enrollees maintained subsidized coverage, even though we sent fictitious documents, or no documents, to resolve application inconsistencies. [emphasis in original]

This report is actually less a condemnation of Obamacare and more a condemnation of the completely incompetent and failed state of the entire federal bureaucracy. They can’t get this job right, but in truth, they pretty much can’t get any job right.

Obviously, we should therefore do what the Democrats propose and give the federal government and its bureaucracy more power and responsibility. That will surely fix things!

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Another Obamacare co-op folds

1:29 pm

Finding out what’s in it: New Jersey’s Obamacare co-op has been taken over by the state and will fold in 2017.

As noted at the link, “that leaves just six of the original 23 Obamacare co-ops in operation next year.”

In other words, Obamacare is steadily going bankrupt, and in the process it is bankrupting the health insurance business. Before the law, it was possible for individuals to buy at a somewhat reasonable price a catastrophic insurance plan that would cover you in case of disaster but required you to pay for most of your routine health care costs. Obamacare outlawed those plans (obviously, someone was lying when he said you could keep your plan if you liked it). The result however is that everyone is forced to buy at very unreasonable prices the equivalent of those same plans, since both premiums and deductibles have risen so much that everyone now has to pay for routine health care costs.

Obviously, this means we should all vote for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, because they more than anyone else know how to solve the problem they created. Obviously, voting for the Republicans, who predicted this disaster in great detail and with remarkable accuracy, would be a mistake, a clear demonstration of racism or something. And we wouldn’t want to be called racist by Democrats, would we?

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The people directly hurt by Obamacare rises

10:17 am

Finding out what’s in it: A new poll shows that the number of people directly hurt by Obamacare has continued to rise.

Currently, 29% of Americans say Obamacare has hurt them and their family, up from 26% in May, and the highest Gallup has measured to date. Meanwhile, the percentage who say the ACA has helped their family dropped from 22% to 18%. The bulk of Americans, 51%, continue to say the law has “had no effect.” As more provisions of the law have taken effect over the years, the “no effect” percentage has dropped from the first reading of 70%, in early 2012.

Not surprisingly, support for Obamacare, always low, has shrunk as well. As the article at the link notes,

Wait until the next round of open enrollment starts in eight weeks. The number of people who feel the ObamaCare pain is likely to rise even further, especially in places like Tennessee, Minnesota, and other states where premiums will go up 40% or more over 2016.

The fact that in many regions there will be only one or fewer insurance options will help to underline why people increasingly hate Obamacare. Sadly, every one of these failures was predicted by conservatives back in 2010. The Democrats however were too wise and caring to listen. For them, caring is all that matters, even if it means instituting policies that destroy people’s lives.

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Update on the Falcon 9 launchpad explosion investigation

9:42 pm

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today describing the investigation into last week’s Falcon 9 launchpad explosion, noting especially how — despite participation by the FAA, NASA, and the Air Force — SpaceX will be entirely in charge of the investigation, in accordance with present law.

The article is clearly lobbying for a change, whereby the government would have more power in these investigations. I personally think a change would be a mistake, that the law as it is now is how it should be. It was their rocket that exploded. Their business model depends on their rockets not exploding. Thus, they have the greatest self-interest in fixing the problem. The other outside players might be helpful, but their presence can only in the long run make things more difficult and slow things down, without making anything better.

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