“I would rather be beaten and be a man than to be elected and be a little puppy dog. I have always supported measures and principles and not men. I have acted fearless and independent and I never will regret my course. I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized.”
Author: Redactor
The idea of a man-made satellite was conceived first by a science fiction writer. Space travel was often depicted as a private activity in that genre, with sci-fi master Robert Heinlein, especially, imagining private launches of rockets as well as private travel from Earth to Moon, and beyond.
But for fifty years, governments have directed — and still direct — money, technology and manpower to develop outposts in space. The current International Space Station is a multi-government project. The rockets that lift payloads of Earth’s surface and into orbit, allowing the station to continue to operate, have all been state-run efforts.
Until now.
Last week, a private company launched a rocket into orbit, and this weekend its unmanned cargo ship, named Dragon, was caught by a robotic arm and dragged in to dock with the space station.
“Looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail,” came the words from out there.
Since mothballing the Shuttle program, NASA has been hiring Russian rockets to launch American payloads, thus meeting American “obligations” to the international effort. Now, with this first successful private launch to a space station, NASA will be able to rely on more local technology and expertise.
By contracting with private firms like SpaceX — the enterprise that launched Dragon — NASA hopes to save money. Its current contract with SpaceX amounts about $1.6 billion.
We can argue about the necessity of developing “outer space,” I know. But if contracting out with private enterprise can save money over government-run efforts, and at the same time encourage the old science fiction dream of private business in space, that seems like progress.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
“He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.”
California politicians are at it again, as you can see on Townhall this weekend. And come back for the links:
Categories
Video: Beyond Hypocrisy
Penn Jillette says that the President’s oh-so-cool chortling over his past drug use has an element of class warfare:
I think he is right. But it is worth noting three things:
1. President Obama does more than “condone” the federal drug war, he has actively upped it, carrying on George W. Bush’s breach of promise not to trump state’s medical marijuana laws.
2. This is not a new phenomenon. Both Clinton and Bush Jr. were guilty of the same offense, if not quite so egregiously.
3. It is possible to agree with Penn without echoing his rather vulgar speech.
In the closing days of this year’s legislative session, Colorado Rep. Lois Court sponsored a bill that would have amended the state constitution to require a 60 percent supermajority to pass any future constitutional amendments. This issue had previously been floated to — and defeated by — voters in 2008, as Referendum O.
In 2009, 2010, 2011 and again this year, this attack on the citizen initiative had been introduced in the Legislature, but beaten back by a coalition of citizens and policy groups, including Common Cause and the Colorado Union of Taxpayers.
This year, Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels informed us that Court’s bill had been “hijacked.” Republican Rep. Jon Becker amended it in committee, requiring the bill’s 60 percent supermajority to apply to any amendment to the state constitution — an idea so repulsive that even Court voted against her own bill.
But there, oddly, is where Bartels’s explanation ends.
You see, Court’s legislation mandated a supermajority to pass a new constitutional amendment, but not for repealing past constitutional amendments — at least, not past amendments proposed by citizens.
Why? Look no further than TABOR.
Passed by citizen initiative in 1992, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights amendment requires any increase in overall government spending, or any tax increase, to be approved by the politicians’ boss: the people of Colorado.
Therefore, Court and her fellow legislative Democrats seek a supermajority to block any future amendment like TABOR, while at the same time allowing TABOR to be more easily nixed with only a simple majority. They want two sets of books, two sets of standards, one for the people and another custom-made for them.
This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.”
Categories
Bob Dylan, born on this day in 1941
“A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
Government tends to grow in spurts, with budgets not decreasing after each spurt. This “ratchet effect” of fast growth then tapering off amounts to a long-term trend: growth.
You’ve probably seen Rex Nutting’s MarketWatch squib, the subject of many a Tweet and Facebook post. Entitled “Obama spending binge never happened,” it begins, “Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.” Nutting reframes the issue as one of the rate of spending growth . . . just as Republican apologists did in the ’80s, even though spending under Ronald Reagan’s first term grew at a whopping 8.7 percent — a bigger rate increase than Obama’s. Nutting entitles his graph comparing administrations’ spending growth rates “Slowest spending in decades,” indicating not how much Obama has been spending over revenue, but year-to-year rates of increase.
The prez gets a bad rap.
Well, yes and no. The graph should make party-loyal Republicans and Bush admirers cringe with shame. Sure. But Obama and the current Congress are still spending. Hugely. And rapidly — those dollars fly out the door!
Further, by maintaining high annual deficits, Obama has increased the federal debt so that this year it has shot above 100 percent of current Gross Domestic Product, a first for my lifetime.
Obama can be blamed for not doing the decent thing after the horrible six years of united government under the Republicans, he didn’t reduce spending.
In other words, he’s no Warren G. Harding, who presided over a huge contraction of government spending, thereby helping usher in a quick recovery from the post-Great War bust.
We could use a man like Warren Harding again.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Victor Hugo
“All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”