Czars, Einstein, and whither NASA?

View 694 Wednesday, September 28, 2011

We keep hearing about the White House “czars”, and some of those telling us about them can get fairly shrill. It might be well to temper that with the White House Blog (a political site) defense. Clearly it isn’t an impartial presentation – it doesn’t pretend to be one – but it does give some facts. One of those facts is well known but often forgotten (as Burke said, men seldom need educating but they often need reminding): There is no legal definition of czar, and officially the position does not exist; most of those designated “czar” are so named by journalists, political enemies, or both.

Second, of the 32 czars complained of by Glenn Beck, nine have been confirmed by the Senate. Others have no actual executive authority.

The position of “czar” is not new.

But while Obama’s cadre of newly crowned czars has earned condemnation from the right, when it comes to recruiting presidential advisers he’s in good company. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson appointed financier Bernard Baruch to head the War Industries Board — a position dubbed industry czar (this just one year after the final Russian czar, Nicholas II, was overthrown in the Russian Revolution). Franklin Roosevelt had his own bevy of czars during World War II, overseeing such aspects of the war effort as shipping and synthetic-rubber production. The term was then essentially retired until the presidency of Richard Nixon, who appointed the first drug czar and a well-regarded energy czar, William E. Simon, who helped the country navigate the 1970s oil crisis. The modern drug czarship — perhaps the best-known of the bunch — was created by George H.W. Bush and first filled by William Bennett, now a conservative radio host. By some counts, George W. Bush had the same number czars as Obama — or even more — though not so early in his presidency.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1925564,00.html#ixzz1ZHoUkTwh

The main complaint is that it is a position unknown to the Constitution.

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The result of this is that commissioned officers of the United States from ensigns and second lieutenants to five star generals are all confirmed by the Senate. Congress by law has vested the appointment of Warrant Officers in the Service Secretaries. The complaint often heard is that of the 32 “czars”, many of them have executive authority but have never been confirmed by the Senate.

Mostly this is a political matter. The remedy, if one is needed, would be for the House of Representatives to seek an injunction barring the Treasurer of the United States from paying those “czars” whose names were not submitted to the Senate or the beneficiaries of interim appointments.

That isn’t going to happen.

However, as long as we are discussing ways for the House to assert its constitutional authority, it certainly could put into every appropriation bill a clause specifically denying that this bill authorizes payment to – and name those enforcing Obama Care, Bunny Inspectors, various czars, etc. That would produce some interesting political debates. I’d love to hear the President’s defense of bunny inspectors.

For those interested in Petr Beckmann’s book Einstein Plus Two, it is supposedly available free in pdf format here:

http://www.stephankinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/texts/beckmann_einstein-dissident-physics-material.pdf This link is published in the Wikipedia Beckmann entry. The parent web site www.stephenkinsella.com contains among other things referenences to essays and a book “Against Intellectual Property” so it is possible that this is not authorized by Beckmann’s estate. My copy of the original Einstein Plus Two is copyright 1987 and published by Beckmann’s house imprint Golem Press. The Golem Press website under “buy this book” lists Amazon and other secondary sites with used copies at over $100, and no other sources.

Actually, the pdf contains essays about Beckmann’s book, some of them very interesting, but not the book itself. Several of the essays may be worth your while; and about halfway through the pdf you will find the last issue of ACCESS TO ENERGY written by Beckmann. In it he triumphantly announces that Einstein’s Relativity is refuted by the observational data on the aberration of certain binary stars. Clearly the world did not agree, but the “proof” is relatively clear.

Moreover, the reference does contain Beckmann’s Preface to Einstein Plus Two, and I do urge those interested in what Beckmann was trying to do to read it. The preface is quite short and very clear.

In his introduction (which is not in that pdf), Beckmann says:

“Note that I am not complaining about the amount of supportive evidence for the Einstein theory; only a crank (and there seem to be plenty) would go to war against Einstein on that account. What I am complaining about is the narrow field from which this plentiful evidence is gleaned.

“No length contraction has ever been shown on a well-defined, charged or uncharged body with well-defined dimensions and a velocity measured by several independent methods, if not directly; no time dilation experiment has ever provided proof that the changed rate of the clock is only perceived by the moving observer and has not taken place in the clock itself.

“The Einstein theory has never proved its two tacit postulates: that the Maxwell-Lorentz electrodynamics, remain valid at high observer-referred velocities; and that the motion of matter though a force field does not inherently – independently of any observer – change its own force field.”

I thought Beckmann’s theory interesting when it was published, and as a science fiction writer who needs faster than light travel for his space operas I was more than willing to add it to my armory. At the time I wondered just how many serious physicists took it seriously, and was surprised to find that the answer was “not many” rather than zero. Other than that I hadn’t thought much about Beckmann’s theory until the CERN announcement of a possibly faster than light neutrino – enough faster than light that it might be able to convey at least a bit or two of ftl information. That would indeed turn physics on its head and require all serious physicists to look for, if not alternatives to Einstein, then at least adjustments. Beckmann, to the best I can tell, had an alternate theory that covers all the experimental evidence available at its time of publication, and does allow information to travel faster than light. It also generates a prediction of the Titius series (better known as Bode’s Law).

This could be fun.

NASA has a design for an expendable heavy lift vehicle, but no mission for it. Since it employs segmented solid rocket boosters you may be sure that politics has a great deal to do with its design. I can think of one major space mission worth public financing, that it’s military, and we don’t need NASA to build or operate it. Let the Air Force or the Navy do that.

It is probably time to phase NASA out in its present form. There is still talent at NASA, and it is still important to have space science and space research: the question is whether NASA ought to do that or contract for it. One possible use for NASA is to let it become a part of NSF, or indeed remain a separate agency but which performs the NSF mission for space science.

This is worth further discussion.