Lancaster, Pennsylvania — home to James Buchanan, Jr., the 15th president of the United States, and to congressman, abolitionist and “Radical Republican” Thaddeus Stevens — served, during the American Revolution, as the capital of the United States for one day, on September 27, 1777.
This occurred after the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia, which had been captured by the British. The revolutionary government then moved still further away, to York.
One set of fines pertains to using an “unapproved control room” and failure to “conduct the required T-2 hour poll” during a June 2023 launch: 350,000 smackers.
Another set, totaling $283,000, is for using an “unapproved rocket propellant farm,” i.e., tanks for storing fuel until it’s pumped into the ships, back in July 2023.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has sued SpaceX for hiring “only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents” (wait, what?) and failing to take into account currently prevailing political winds. Perhaps the FAA should sue the Justice Department for expecting SpaceX to focus on anything but its missions.
The initial reporting doesn’t make clear whether there’s any merit to the FAA’s complaints — wrong specs for fuel tanks or whatever. The mere deviation from some regulation is meaningless if what SpaceX did instead is as safe or safer than what the bureaucrats stipulated.
Large enterprises must navigate an infinite number of regulations, and federal agencies are certainly selective enforcers. If you’re Boeing, it seems you can get away with shoddy practices for years, at least until the fit hits the shan.
I’ll wait to hear more, but I suspect that the FAA’s attempt to grab hundreds of thousands of dollars from Musk is indeed a symptom of regulatory overreach.
And just possibly motivated by . . . politics.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly
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Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
Computer scientist and science fiction author Vernor Vinge (1944–2024), “The Coming Technological Singularity” (presented at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30–31, 1993.)
On September 26, 1786, protestors shut down the court in Springfield, Massachusetts, beginning a military standoff and ushering in Shays’ Rebellion.
This anti-tax revolt spurred a dramatic reaction on the part of the day’s politicians, including their attempts to reform the Articles of Confederation and to figure out better ways than high state taxes to pay off Revolutionary War debts. These efforts directly led to the adoption of a new Constitution.
Blight that Arnold was already fighting himself.
What happened to Arnold was not an isolated occurrence.
Institute for Justice reports that over the last few years, “Macon-Bibb County has demolished over 800 houses that it has designated as blighted through a fast-tracked, secret code enforcement process that completely avoids court proceedings and deprives property owners of a meaningful chance to protect their property.”
Sometimes, the county doesn’t even notify owners.
Arnold discovered what was about to happen only because a neighbor alerted him that a demolition crew was installing a dumpster on Arnold’s property. He provided officials with evidence of the improvements he was making. But it was like talking to a brick wall. The county’s only answer was to speed up the process.
“To spend all that time and money and sweat and end up with nothing but a bare piece of land, it’s devastating,” he says.
IJ attorney Dylan Moore says that Macon-Bibb “should welcome skilled home renovators like Eric with open arms. Instead, county officials made demolishing Eric’s house ‘high priority’ after Eric asked for help. . . .”
IJ and Arnold are suing the county to try to spare others from the loss that he has been made to suffer without any due process whatever. It’s the county’s unconstitutional system that needs demolishing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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For the sake of my children and grandchildren, I hope that the human talent for self-destruction can be successfully controlled, or at least channelled into productive forms, but I doubt it. I think we are moving into extremely volatile and dangerous times, as modern electronic technologies give mankind almost unlimited powers to play with its own psychopathology as a game.
J. G. Ballard, as interviewed by Jean-Paul Coillard, “JG Ballard: Theatre of Cruelty,” Disturb (1998).
On September 25, 1789, the U.S. Congress passed twelve amendments to the United States Constitution: the Congressional Apportionment Amendment (which was never ratified), the Congressional Compensation Amendment (which was later enacted as the Twenty-seventh Amendment), and the ten that are known as the Bill of Rights.
Centuries earlier on that date, in 1555, the Peace of Augsburg was signed in Augsburg by Charles V and the princes of the Schmalkaldic League.
The orgiast’s name is Dr. Jay K. Varma. He served as New York City Hall’s senior public health adviser under Mayor Bill de Blasio from the height of the pandemic panic to May 2021. The camera was hidden by comedian Steven Crowder — of “Louder with Crowder” fame and infamy — who tweeted the video last Thursday.
On the released recordings Dr. Varma says a lot of incriminating things. Bad enough is what others regard as his boast: “I actually was the one who convinced the mayor to make it mandatory,” he says clearly, with the “it” being “the vaccine.”
He was just as intentional, though, about the orgies he participated in — “to let off steam.” These were not spontaneous events erupting at sedate dinners at his home. The “eight or ten friends” rented a hotel room and bought drugs for the occasion.
If you are at all shocked, the doctor understands. “Yeah,” he says, upon being asked what would have happened had he been found out at the time he was bullying people throughout the city, “it would have been a real embarrassment.”
But more than merely embarrassing. That the public health Covidians were willing to break both letter and spirit of their tyrannical edicts only suggests that the most flagrant orgy was their naked abuse of political power.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Now, these men weren’t idiots. They were geniuses who paid a high price for their genius because the rest of their thinking was other-world. A genius is someone who travels to truth by an unexpected path. Unfortunately, unexpected paths lead to disaster in everyday life.
Alfred Bester, “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed,” The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1958; reprinted in The Dark Side of the Earth (1964) and David Hartwell, ed., The World Treasury of Science Fiction, p. 268.
On September 24, 1789, the United States Congress passed the Judiciary Act, creating the office of the United States Attorney General and the federal judiciary system, and ordered the composition of the Supreme Court of the United States.
On the same day that President George Washington signed the bill into law, he officially nominated John Jay to the new position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Jay (pictured in his official portrait, above) served in that position until 1795, when he resigned to take up his elected position as second governor of the State of New York. The Supreme Court heard only four cases during Jay’s Chief Justiceship; Jay refused to consult, officially, on legislation written by Alexander Hamilton, establishing the precedent that the Supreme Court has followed to this day: the Court would only rule on cases tried before it.