Mail 686 Wednesday, August 03, 2011

NPR Top 100 SF&F

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

I did not know if you knew that you and Niven have 2 books on the NPR top 100 SF&F list and they are winnowing down to 10. Time to mobilize the fans?

The link is here: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138894873/vote-for-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-titles

Rick Cartwright

I know it now. Thanks!

A Federal Case

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wind-eagles-20110803,0,2891547.story

Federal authorities are investigating the deaths of at least six golden eagles at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Pine Tree Wind Project in the Tehachapi Mountains, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.

So far, no wind-energy company has been prosecuted by federal wildlife authorities in connection with the death of birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. A prosecution in the Pine Tree case could cause some rethinking and redesigning of this booming alternative energy source. Facilities elsewhere also have been under scrutiny, according to a federal official familiar with the investigations…

*** ***

Developing alternate sources of energy was supposed to help the environment. Now that wind energy is a viable business it’s a threat to the environment?

Do you remember Norman Spinrad’s “Holy War on 34th Street” about a brawl between the competing sects’ street evangelists? Maybe this news article will inspire him to write a story that ends with a standoff between the Department of Energy SWAT Team and the Wildlife Service.

–Mike Glyer

I can even imagine writing that one myself. Thanks.

The Economy is Dead

China and Russia renew their attacks, albiet financial, on the United States:

<.> China, the largest foreign investor in U.S. government securities, joined Russia in criticizing American policy makers for failing to ensure borrowing is reined in after a stopgap deal to raise the nation’s debt limit. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-03/china-s-zhou-to-monitor-u-s-debt-as-xinhua-sees-bomb-yet-to-be-defused.html

Of course, government programs still won’t work; we can see why our creditors might be concerned:

<.> Way back in March I made fun of the Volt for selling 281 units in February. Turns out, February was a good month. But wait, there’s more! GM says they’re going to increase production to 5,000 Volts per month in order to keep up with demand. You see, they claim that the reason the Volt isn’t selling is that they can’t keep enough cars on the lot. A GM spokeswoman recently claimed that they are “virtually sold out.” Which is virtually true. Mark Modica called around his local Chevy dealers and found plenty of Volts waiting for an environmentally conscious driver to bring them home.

All told, GM has sold close to 2,700 Volts. (Funny aside: There’s a Volt in my neighborhood and a Volt that parks in my garage at work. So I see almost 0.1 percent of all the Volts in America on a daily basis.) But hey, the EV future is just around the corner. </> http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/chevy-volt-still-not-selling_581956.html

Stocks are down; gold is up — and layoffs are on the rise…  We might still lose our AAA rating, but we knew that more than five years ago — we "conspiracy theorists" who use speculative devices e.g. critical thinking, complex reasoning to estimate future events.

<.> Come Jan. 1, 2012 American workers will see less in their paychecks as a temporary two-percentage-point cut in the Social Security tax expires. That’s a $2,136 tax hike for someone earning $106,800, the maximum subject to the tax. Obama had pushed for this as a short-term stimulus and would like to see it extended, but this is one tax cut Republicans are ready to let die. http://blogs.forbes.com/janetnovack/2011/08/02/higher-taxes-and-epic-tax-fight-are-on-the-horizon

Of course, we can always leave — until they put up an Iron Curtain to go with TSA.  I mentioned this to my mentor.  He seems to think that Americans will stay in America because that is what Americans do.  I disagree and evidence supports my disagreement.  Here is the latest:

<.> Taxed-out New Yorkers are voting with their feet, with a staggering 1.6 million residents fleeing the state over the last decade. </> http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/new-yorkers-fleeing-state-ncx-20110803

And corporations are fleeing Chicago as they fled Oregon and as they increasingly flee California.  Let’s keep giving away money to "undocumented aliens".  Let’s keep spending money on foreign aid programs; we know an exposed breast exists out there and we must use the Federal Bunny Inspectors to cover it or the American people will never feel secure.

—– Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC Percussa Resurgo

I have mail pointing out that eliminating Bunny Inspectors would have a negligible effect on the Budget, as if that were the objective. I trust it is clear that a nation that can’t even get rid of Bunny Inspectors who harass stage magicians will not be able to control the regulatory army that produces the Permit Raj? And a nation that seems to believe that the solution to borrowing too much is to borrow more probably has a problem.

shovel ready

Jerry

When the current administration (Obama) first mentioned shovel ready projects in the stimulus package, I thought, maybe, just maybe, the government spend all campaign might at least produce something tangible like infrastructure improvements.

Little did I realize what SHOVEL READY really meant was we are just digging ourselves deeper in the hole.

Sigh.

MIke J=

Subj: How to create a double-dip recession

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/273459/how-turn-recovery-another-recession-victor-davis-hanson

J

Hanson is always worth reading. This one points out what we have been saying for a year or more. Well done.

spending reform

Jerry,

My take on the budget crisis, for what it’s worth. (Nobody seems to listen, anyway).

1. Agree to develop a clear plan to return to a federal balanced budget without increasing federal tax revenues above the current levels as a percent of GDP (not through repeal of the so-called "Bush tax cuts," not through further engineering the tax codes so that deductions available to all businesses are suddenly denied to high-income multinational companies, not through ANYTHING). Note that this plan does not necessarily mandate an immediate balanced budget, and in that sense is closer to the Paul plan than "penny" plan and the variants you are recommending.

2. Explicitly avoid default (which has a specific meaning in terms of debt service; I think the President has been scaring people by using the term in a more generic sense of not making promised payments.) Debt service is the first priority, and when we do have a surplus, the first priority become retirement of any treasury obligations to sovereign funds, then to foreign individuals.

3. Maintain the National Defense (including required homeland security functions). That is not to say that defense expenditures shouldn’t be delicately pruned, or even grossly reprioritized, and defense contractor spending reigned in, but John Stossel’s "chainsaw" (http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2011/07/29/take-chainsaw-budget-2) is a non-starter. Our defense needs are NOT and can not be determined by an arbitrary 2/3 cut, or by Democratic party fiat. They are what we need to preserve the safety and security of the American people. Any other tact is, frankly, treason, and in the literal sense of the word. It may be that 1/3 of current expending is enough to do that — but get there by a reasoned process. I would eliminate Homeland Security and the Veteran’s Administration as separate departments from Defense, but might then consider splitting Defense back into Army / Air Force and Navy departments.

4. Maintain essential national law enforcement. That is the U S Marshals, the Secret Service, the Customs and Border Patrol, and the FBI. TSA should be privatized and funded by the airports, airlines, and municipalities. BATF, DEA, the Education SWAT team, bunny inspectors, and other groups should be disbanded and any essential functions turned over to one of the other services (the Marshals as the agents of federal crime, the Secret Service in its protective and anti-counterfeiting role, Customs regarding all border issues including drug trafficking, and the FBI if interstate crime, where it should be subsidiary to local and state authorities and the Marshals instead of vice versa).

5. Maintain Social Security but adjust payments to match revenues — and raise the retirement age (to 70) fairly quickly. Social Security cannot draw on its holdings of federal debt until all foreign parties have been paid.

6. Maintain the "national seed corn." Another objectionable element of Stossel’s "chainsaw" was total cancellation of NASA, NSF, and Department of Energy research. Those should be pruned and forward-focused but not eliminated, as part of our national "strategy of technology." Similarly maintain government services such as the National Weather Service, NOAA, and USGS, but without the political adventuring on global climate control — keep it to pure research until we do know what is going on. Note that these agencies may in many cases require substantial reform, and DoE needs to get out of most research related to improvements in products already on the market, that is to say most research on alternatives to conventional fuels, battery’s, and fuel cells. Let the marketplace decide on the maturity and wisdom of such technologies. I would probably reorganize these elements, together with Commerce, into one department on the model of Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (call it the Department of Science, Technology, and Industry).

7. Contain Medicare, Medicaid, Veteran’s benefits, and federal pensions on a constant-funding basis. A good start on pension reform is reducing or eliminating most "double dipping" of federal retirees. (We have to maintain our commitment to war veterans, but not to the vast retired federal bureaucracy who are bringing bureaucracy to the private sector, to its detriment.) Consolidate Medicate and Medicate, Centers of Disease Control and National Institutes of Health, and the current federal departments, into a Department of the Public Health and Safety.

8. Significantly reduce the regulatory apparatus. Focus strictly on safety and fraud prevention. Turn to the Marshals as the principal enforcement mechanism. We do not need to maintain the US Code and a separate Code of Federal Regulations — combine the documents by making Congress vote on the regulations.

9. NOW apply Stossel’s chainsaw, for values. Wholesale disbanding of remaining departments and consolidation of functions; I think we should end up with State, Treasury, Justice, Defense, Public Health and Safety, and Science Technology and Industry. And the surviving departments must be smaller and more streamlined.

Jim

Eligibility Ages

You stated that you thought the retirement age should be brought up to 68 (or 70). I have a different thought. Rather than tying retirement age to a specific age in the law, and then having to revise the law as medical technology and lifestyle choices extends our lifespans, why not define the retirement age related to life expectancy and then have the transition period defined in law.

For example, if the retirement age is defined as the median life expectancy at birth and the transition rate is one month per year, then Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages will increase one month per year until they are both 80. If, in the meantime, some new medical procedures are placed into service which raise the median life expectancy to 85, the ages would automatically be slowly increased to 85. On the other hand, if some huge environmental disaster lowers everyone’s life expectancy by five years, then the eligibility age would slowly drop.

This makes for a self correcting system. The big question would be what ratio of life expectancy should we set. Once that’s done, we may never have to tinker with eligibility ages again.

—

Fredrik V Coulter

The details are important, but first we must establish principles.

Fiction of privacy

Facial recognition combined with cameras everywhere means you can find anyone on the grid.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14386514

"The researchers have also developed an ‘augmented reality’ mobile app that can display personal data over a person’s image captured on a smartphone screen."

R

It’s a brave new world…

SWATs raid raw milk producer/distributor.

<http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2011/08/cops_raid_rawesome_foods_owner_james_stewart_arrested.php>

Roland Dobbins

I have mixed emotions on such matters. I know the conditions we had on our farm when we collected milk. I miked the cow by hand before school and my sanitary habits were not savory. Most of it we drank ourselves or gave to the field hands, but I expect I am a bit more squeamish today…

Freedom or “public” health…

"I was just amazed by the idea that you can test for all these other universes out there – it’s just mind-blowing."

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14372387>

Roland Dobbins

"Part of what we found was that there are certain places on Earth where tidal energy gets dissipated at a disproportionately high rate, real hot spots of tidal action."

<http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-ancient-tides-today-higher.html>

Roland Dobbins

That’s fascinating. There’s a lot of energy in tides, and it’s constant. What effects it has…

Mail 686 Tuesday August 2, 2011 – 1

I had Hollywood Bowl tickets tonight. Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto, and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. I’ll deal with more mail tomorrow, but this one indicates that I haven’t been entirely clear on a subject that’s not easily understood in the first place.

federal spending

just wondering where you got this:

"The most important thing to understand is that if the Congress were to freeze government spending: pass a Bill that says that we will next year spend precisely the same amount as we did last year, same salaries, same payments to pensions, same purchases, same veteran benefits, same payments to Bunny Inspectors and SWAT teams, same amount to Food Stamps and Free Lunches – if we froze government, the result would be called a $9.5 Trillion cut."

The fed budget is only $4 Trillion. With off budget spending, the highest I’ve seen is around $6 Trillion.

yves

If the budget is only 4 Trillion, how can a freeze be a $9.5 Trillion cut?  But note that the Congressional Budget Office scores the effects not on next year, but on the effects over ten years. And do not forget the magic of compound interest. Exponentials are exponentials.

In CBO’s March 2011 baseline, total outlays over the ten-year period from 2012-2021 are $45.8 trillion.  If annual outlays throughout that period instead stayed at 2011’s level ($3.6 trillion), they would sum to $36.3 trillion over the ten years — a difference of $9.5 trillion.  That’s the apparent basis of Limbaugh’s figure. [Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, email to Media Matters, 7/28/11]  http://mediamatters.org/mobile/research/201107280029No

Note that the freeze discussed here is a total freeze on everything: a continuing resolution, in which the Congress says that no department of government may spend more next year than it did in the preceding year. That means social security, Medicare, military salaries, Bunny Inspector pensions.

The “Pournelle Plan” couples the one year freeze with a 1% reduction in the next year, along with permission and encouragement of Federal managers to eliminate needless activities such as Bunny Inspectors. And adjust Social Security by raising the age of eligibility one month every month until the age of eligibility is 68. Consider 70. Adjust ages of eligibility for other entitlements; the total outlay is already limited by the freeze. The goal is real cuts, to levels of expenditure approaching those of the mid 1990’s after the end of the Cold War. When we get there and pay off the National Debt, we can consider again the question of do we have enough government, or should it be reduced more?

My inclination, incidentally, is not necessarily automatically to less government, but it is to less Federal government. If Government should do more, let it be through the states. Massachusetts experimented with something like ObamaCare. Let others see if they want to copy that. Leave welfare to the states, and get the egalitarian courts out of that picture. I suspect that would lead over time to less government in most places. Investors would flee some states and seek others. Let them all compete for smart people who create jobs. But that’s my proclivity.

If something cannot go on forever it will stop. We cannot continue to go another trillion a year in debt.

But that is how a freeze becomes a massive cut.

Rush Limbaugh proposed that the government institute a "spending freeze," which he claimed would be demagogued as a "draconian cut." In fact, according to federal budget experts, such a proposal would lead to "a massive reduction in the services provided by government to a growing population" and would mean that "no new person could retire on Social Security until a current beneficiary dies."

No. It means that the department can’t pay out more this year than it did last year. That might mean a cut in payments in the first months of the year until it is clear what the total payments for the year will be. If so, then there will be a cut in payments to individuals.