RealCurrents

Congressman John Culberson, from Bill Archer’s (and George H.W. Bush’s) old District 7 in Houston, is getting a bit of a backlash for daring to say something critical of NASA. Here’s the comments page from yesterday’s Houston Chronicle article, Culberson weighing legislation for NASA overhaul.

Now Culberson has gotten a reputation as one of the most tech-savvy Congressmen, which seems well-deserved. In May, he did a live video, using his cell phone and the Qik service, of the Mars Phoenix landing from JPL. Culberson’s enthusiasm for space, science and discovery is obvious there. He’s also very active on the fast-growing Twitter social network (@johnculberson), to the point that last week he became embroiled in a flap with Democrat congressional leaders over proposed rule changes that would severely restrict congressional internet video and blog posts.

Asking a question like “What’s wrong with NASA?” is so complex that a long answer is probably of little practical usefulness. I will say that it was a little disturbing how quickly folks who obviously knew far less about NASA than Culberson, including some politicians, turned on him as if he’d blasphemed or something. It’s also frustrating how many immediately viewed this as some sort of attack on the personal integrity of NASA employees.

As someone who once worked, long ago, both for NASA and a contractor, these sorts of arguments seem pretty much pointless. Let me just repeat what I wrote at the Chronicle page:

This has nothing to do with whether NASA has good employees or not. Of course there are many very motivated and dedicated folks at NASA and among the contractors. The real question is whether they’re being used effectively.

Rep. Culberson is right in certain respects. NASA has made great strides in many areas, but two areas, manned spaceflight and propulsion technology, are greatly lagging. We need a concerted effort in advanced propulsion because this drives everything else, and we desperately need strong leadership for a sustained manned spaceflight program.

As far as NASA taking credit for a “growing commercial space industry”, that’s ridiculous. Maybe the agency is finally seeing the light about commercial space, but it’s visionary entrepreneurs and private investors who have long been the driving force.

As to how we should invest funds to best create a vigorous manned space program, I wrote about the basic technical strategy here on my blog AeroGo. Congressmen, responsible for determining NASA’s budget and priorities, at least need to understand the root problem behind our frustrating lack of progress in manned spaceflight, which I noted in this discussion of SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan’s criticisms of NASA:

Because its R&D isn’t properly divided between technology development and operations, NASA remains prone to starving technology development whenever funds are tight (i.e. nearly always), which is much of the root problem. I suspect this is a lot of what is upsetting to Rutan about the program, “that you are not going to learn anything new here that is useful for you to go on to the other moons.”

The reality of NASA budgeting over the last 30 years or more has been that of operational manned space projects - Shuttle and ISS - crowding out most everything else, which leads to a very risk-averse R&D environment where breakthroughs are unlikely to occur

NASA will never be a perfectly efficient organization, but it still could accomplish a lot more if its budgeting were realigned to reflect the strategy needed to make steady progress. Manned flight operations cannot be allowed to crowd out space technology research, especially propulsion, anymore than they can be allowed to displace space probes, space science, or aeronautics research.

Because manned spaceflight is so expensive, however, the reality is that it will end up crowding out the others unless Congress imposes budgetary guidelines to protect these other areas that provide so much technological return on investment. Rep. Culberson is right in calling for an overhaul of NASA, but the budgeting process is key. Even without multi-year appropriations, a lot can be accomplished just by making sure NASA isn’t eating its own seed corn, particularly in the area of space technology R&D.

I was reading Jessica Mah’s post on how a lot of her high-school and college-age friends are really scared about global warming. Here in the U.S., it’s often reported that folks in other countries are more concerned than the average American, but little attention has been given to how the issue is impacting younger Americans.

It occurred to me that they need a little perspective on this. I grew up in the 1970s, and for those of us Americans who went through this period when the U.S. was in a severe technophobic angst, and there were constant pronouncements about all the terrible things that were going to happen, I suppose we’re just not so quick to be convinced the world is coming to an end every time scientists start preaching doom and gloom.

This was a very long list of crises that 1960s-70s experts insisted were soon to befall us, most of which I’ve probably (thankfully) forgotten, but which included such calamities as pollution, endangered species, population, overcrowded skies, the San Andreas and yes, even a looming ice age. I guess being terrified of nuclear armageddon just wasn’t enough anymore. The funny thing was, very few of these scientists were talking about an energy crisis.

Of course, even the “energy crisis” didn’t last long, once investors started pouring hundreds of billions into oil, which was $35 when I got out of high school but less than $10 when I got out of college. Jessica titled her post “Scared of Global Warming? Bring in the entrepreneurs!” and so yes, I think she’s right that entrepreneurs and the free market are a lot of the answer to global warming.

In general, though, I think we ought to stop and notice something. It sure seems to me that scientists can get into a negative funk about stuff, and end up focussing too much on the problems rather than the solutions. In fact, I can’t help wondering if it’s sort of the same dynamic as with investment newsletters - negativity and fear apparently sell a lot more newsletters, and a crisis may, sadly, be the only thing that will finally garner a research project any funding.

Now, this is certainly not all the scientists’ fault, nor is the business world off the hook. Just look at the American car industry, one of the most pitiful examples of research budgeting in modern history. Perhaps GM, Ford and Chrysler may be excused for being caught unprepared on fuel economy in the early 70s, since they were already struggling with new emissions restrictions. On the other hand, here we are again thirty years later and, sadly, it seems that only the recent combination of high oil prices, a dropping dollar, and concerns over carbon emissions was finally enough to get them serious again about improving fuel economy.

Amidst all the prognostications, it’s still not clear how global warming is going to play out. Besides the many questions of specific effects in specific places, there’s at least three basic questions involved. First is the question of how fast temperatures will go up. Second, how much will they rise long-term (or is it a runaway increase with no end in sight)? Third, if temperatures can be stabilized, will (can?) they then head back down?

We hear virtually nothing of potentially beneficial effects, but clearly there’s going to be some winners among the many losers from effects of global warming. Interestingly, so far the Russians seem to be the only ones thinking ahead about any positive outcomes from it. As Jessica suggests, entrepreneurs ought to be also. Again, though, we must keep a proper perspective - a long-term perspective.

While there’s a lot we don’t know, we can say that at least for practical purposes, whatever we can do will take place over decades. Realistically, it’s far too late to do anything about changes that may take place within the next decade or so. In other words, whatever research and changes - technological or political - that are to be made must be done consistently over a decades-long time frame.

This is, for example, why I strongly disagree with the basic Kyoto (Treaty) framework. Already China is producing as much carbon emissions as the U.S., and will likely continue to increase. Kyoto might be effective in reducing the emissions of Western industrialized nations, but given these reductions and the continued growth of China, India and other large industrializing countries, within a few years this extremely costly plan will prove ineffective in reducing the bulk of emissions.

We’ve heard from the scientists on global warming, but have yet to hear from the engineers, who are going to be the folks who have to make reductions in carbon emissions actually happen. We need to think about cost/benefit ratios. We also need to think about sustaining research investments over decades, which as the history of NASA indicates, is awfully difficult to do when you start out with crash-program type overbudgeting.

I think it’s a good bet that a lot of these new technologies are going to come from both big American businesses (such as Boeing with its new 787) and American entrepreneurs. This realization may not play well overseas, but any approach such as Kyoto that hobbles the American economy is going to be counterproductive.

Like it or not, the U.S. is still a (if not the) major innovation engine in the world. Companies in Silicon Valley (1, 2, 3) and elsewhere in the U.S. are working on hundreds of different technologies, everything from emission controls to cheap solar to electric cars to wind power and so on. Here in Texas, it’s become common to see the giant parts of wind turbines rolling down the highway on their way west, where hundreds are being put up.

We must remember that innovation, not political decrees, is the only way to solve the problems from global warming, and while we’re at it, let’s not forget to also think about taking advantage of the benefits.

With all the criticism of George W. Bush and Republicans in general, I think we need to sort out a few basic aspects of our current mess so we can then, hopefully, make intelligent changes.

In my view, Republicans (in which I include myself, since I generally vote that way) have two basic problems:

1. Bush’s administration has been hijacked by war-hawk NeoCons, the first evidence of which appeared to be his picking Dick Cheney (seemingly out of nowhere, considering Wyoming isn’t a big state) to be his running mate.

As a result, early philosophical drivers of Bush policy, such as Marvin Olasky’s notion of “compassionate conservatism“, a foreign policy that refrained from “nation building”, and in general a more limited federal government, gradually gave in to the NeoCon urge to use power whenever possible, wherever possible.

Of course, the dam broke after 9/11, an event which may well have been given too much import in re-shaping U.S. foreign and domestic policy. In any case, the war-hawk NeoCons were firmly behind the wheel after that, and within a year were openly maneuvering to invade Iraq.

2. The near-complete failure of the rest of Republicans to make a serious effort to reclaim their party from the war-hawk NeoCons.

As I wrote before, despite Bush’s obvious failings, I put more blame on the Congress, for largely abdicating its responsibilities: “the Republican Congress … has failed to fulfill two of its primary duties: providing a check on the Executive Branch and controlling spending.”

So, two basic problems: the NeoCon takeover of the Bush administration, and the failure of the rest of us Republicans to counter it. With these in mind, it’s time for someone to finally state what’s plainly obvious, at least to any non-NeoCon in the Republican camp:

War-hawk NeoConservatives do NOT represent the views of all or anywhere near a majority of Republicans, nor are they legitimate heirs of Ronald Reagan’s legacy.

Through most of my teen years, I would hear Ronald Reagan in the morning, giving his radio address outlining his views, and no one’s going to convince me that his vision of personal responsibility and freedom, with limited government, has anything in common with the imperialist, police-state policies promoted by the war-hawk NeoCons.

The Republicans lost control of Congress for the simple reason that they failed to do their job. They completely failed to control spending, they failed to rein in government, and one by one those opposed to the invasion of Iraq knuckled under, I guess swayed by the argument, “We’re in a ‘war on terror‘, you just have to trust us.” Well, it’s amazing that the Bush administration still seems to be trying to use that argument. It shows how out of touch they really are.

As far as Bush’s failings go, I think Lee Iacocca hits the nail on the head in his new book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?. Iacocca gives 9 “C’s” of leadership, and notes that Bush dismally fails on the very first one: Curiosity.

George W. Bush has a lot of good, even great, qualities, and I’m sure most Republicans, including myself, want to continue supporting him, but he has GOT to develop both a much greater interest in what is going on, and multiple alternative channels of information. As someone once said, a leader must use the chain of command to issue orders, but can NEVER depend on the chain of command for information.

As for other Republican politicians and candidates, I hope they will not abandon Bush, but will finally begin to demand accountability (and fiscal responsibility) from his administration.

Obviously, the folks Republicans DO need to be abandoning, and driving from the party, are the war-hawk NeoCons, who haven’t got a clue what terms like “limited government”, “Constitution”, “separation of powers”, and “conservative” really mean.

Sadly, if this mess continues much longer, us conservatives will have to come up with a new name for ourselves, lest people think we’re in favor of torture, abolishing the Geneva Convention, pre-emptive war, and all the other nonsense (evil) that’s been foisted upon us by these “Neo-Conservatives”, who seem to think the solution to every problem is the exercise of more government power.

First of all, in case anyone’s looking for it, here’s the official details on the IRS’ reasons for making April 17th the national deadline for filing your personal income taxes this year. It’s certainly also a good time to be thinking about how we could improve the system, something we all agree needs to be done, but can’t seem to agree how.

Of course, when you really get down to details, I’m not sure any of us quite knows quite what kind of tax system we’d prefer, but there are some basic qualities we could probably agree on. We need a system that no longer penalizes American business competitiveness, we need a simpler system (need I say more?), and we need a system that encourages - or at least doesn’t penalize - savings and various forms of investment and capital formation.

While a lot of conservatives might not agree on this last point, I think we also need a system that is modestly progressive, i.e. that gives a break to the poorest members of society. Even if you don’t agree with this philosophically, there is certainly a public interest in seeing these folks succeed financially, rather than linger on welfare rolls.

I don’t know all the specifics of the FairTax Plan, but this morning Houston City Councilman Michael Berry had Americans for Fair Taxation’s David C. Polyansky on, discussing this proposal. Here’s a summary taken from their website:

“The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment.

The FairTax Act (HR 25, S 1025) is nonpartisan legislation. It abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities.

The FairTax taxes us only on what we choose to spend on new goods or services, not on what we earn. …”

In other words, the FairTax plan would be based on consumption, not income or savings, so if you made a lot of money but lived frugally, saving and investing what you made - and so creating jobs and wealth - then you wouldn’t get taxed that badly. On the other hand, if you wanted to live like the robber barons, then you’d pay considerable tax - 23% (plus state sales tax, I presume) - but you wouldn’t have to hire an army of accountants and lawyers, nor would you need to worry about estate taxes. That last part alone would probably save wealthy folks enough to where many would gladly pay the 23% on consumption in order to have more financial flexibility.

Of course, I don’t know how they come up with these numbers, but that 23% would apparently include all Social Security and Medicare taxes, and since it’s a straight number, it would be easy to predict the tax impact of any transaction and, like sales taxes, the amount would apparently only be levied on the final purchase, so there wouldn’t be a bunch of “built-in” taxes that add to the cost of goods. While the combined federal and state tax would be about 30%, twice the European VAT, if it had a downward impact on inflation - and interest rates - it might prove a bargain for these reasons as well, without having the regressive characteristics for which value-added taxes have been criticized.

The FairTax Plan, which currently has about 60 mostly Republican co-sponsors in Congress, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, is reportedly most strongly opposed by Washington lobbyists and some Congressmen in powerful committees, who would lose a lot of influence were it to pass. Perhaps this is the best reason of all for supporting it.

The FairTax would basically be a 23% federal sales tax on everything, that would be balanced by a “prebate” that would rebate the tax burden that would be paid by a family living at the poverty level. So as I understand it, you’d only be paying this consumption tax on purchases above the poverty level.

Moving to a consumption tax is key, because this would put our industries on a much more competitive basis with those of other countries. Right now, in Texas at least (I know some states are different), if you buy a $100,000 home, you have to pay property tax, on the order of 2.5%, every year on that home, which is made in America, of course. On the other hand, if you buy a $100,000 car imported from Germany, England, or wherever, you generally don’t have to pay this tax every year. But if you you buy a $100,000 aircraft made in Wichita, Kansas, you do!

Of course, this is property, not income tax, but it’s just one glaring example of how our system in some many subtle ways (double taxation of overseas earnings is another) rewards importers over domestic industries. A consumption tax would lower the effective cost of our goods overseas and make our manufacturing, agricultural, and other industries more competitive, while at the same time likely doing more to improve conservation of resources and protection of the environment than a lot of other measures would.

While folks are busy fretting about all the terrible things that might happen in Washington this year with a new Democrat-led Congress, Americans might need to keep a lot closer eye on their state and local politics as well. Is it just me, or does it seem that politicians are busier than usual proposing all kinds of odd-ball laws? I saw a report today that someone in New York was proposing a law banning listening to iPods while crossing the street! If legislators have this much time on their hands, they ought not meet so often.

Here in Texas, where the biennial legislative session is a notoriously short 140 days, this shouldn’t be a problem, yet I’m more concerned than usual this year. I must admit I don’t keep very close tabs on Texas state politics in Austin; the general news coverage is far from adequate and usually focusses on just a few bills. Back before the internet really caught on, there used to be an organization, the Texas Grassroots Coalition, run by Austin attorney/CPA Adrian van Zelfden, that did a great job of putting out information, especially during legislative sessions and before primaries. Perhaps nowadays with the many blogs there is something equivalent, but I have yet to discover it.

Despite the information gap, the maneuverings of the past few weeks have been enough to get the attention of even casual observers, whereas, I guess, even the astute were caught off guard by Governor Rick Perry’s draconian power grab last Friday, when he issued Executive Order RP65 mandating the HPV vaccination of all 11-12 year-old girls in the state.

There are so many things wrong with both the scientific/medical and political aspects of Perry’s action that I will leave this to others, or at least to another post. David Watts, Jr. has started a helpful blog, Overturn RP65, to track developments regarding this issue.

Besides that mess and its threats to our civil liberties, not to mention our constitutional form of government, there’s the general budget situation in Austin, and the huge surplus, which Perry, among others, hopes to spend, but ought to by and large be handed back to the citizens of Texas through tax cuts. This will be a huge fight, I’m sure, because all these billions of taxpayer dollars floating around are just asking for trouble.

In light of the very favorable budget situation, it seems awfully curious to me that Republicans are so busy trying to raise extra cash. Perry’s idea of selling the lottery, unsettling at best even for those of us who oppose state-sponsored gambling, is indefensible with so much surplus already floating around. As ususal there’s various efforts, that I haven’t managed to keep track of, to legalize additional gambling and “use the money for education”, a phrase which some political hack might as well convert to newspeak since we hear it so constantly.

Besides these, there’s the Republicans’ push to privatize new state highway construction. This is one of those ideas that sounds “conservative”, but really is just a different can of worms. Texas has had one of the best highway systems for a long time, especially considering the size of this state, and more public toll roads may well be worthwhile. Private toll roads, on the other hand, would turn the economics of highway construction and repair - and property taxation - on its head. Foreign-owned private toll roads, which have limited exits and which don’t convert to free roads once paid off, are a very bad idea.

In general, it seems state Republicans are increasingly looking for assets to sell, or otherwise mesmerized by big projects to fund, which is making a mockery of the term “conservative”. Since just about every candidate running in Texas these days boasts about how they are a conservative, a little fiscal discipline would sure be refreshing.

With their unbridled willingness to spend money and start new projects, the rush to start war in Iraq, and potentially elsewhere, even while threatening the rest of the world, I can’t help but wonder if many Republican office-holders who call themselves such even understand the meaning of the term “conservative”.

Considering how upset a lot of folks are over RP65, and the disappointments with the free-spending Republican Congress of recent years, I don’t know how much more of this Texas conservatives can take. If our legislators in Austin don’t think real hard before spending Texans’ money, they may well ensure that the 2008 primary gets very interesting.

Business Week has a disturbing article in the May 29th issue about how Exxon Mobil, flush with earnings larger than the GDPs of many countries, has apparently decided simply not to fund a projected $11.2 billion pension liability. This bothers me for a lot of reasons, but most of all because it’s such an outlandishly large example of a flawed mindset that is found today throughout our society, and even more so in the analytical world of finance.

It seems that setting something aside for a rainy day just isn’t “smart” enough for the highly-trained MBA types. Of course, they want someone to hold reserves, but not them. So instead of taking a small portion of Exxon Mobil’s earnings and getting the pension fund ship-shape, I guess the bean-counters would rather use that money to make money, since that would be the “smart” thing to do. Then, if down the road things don’t go so well, they can let their employees and the government - taxpayers - take the hit.

It used to be that the strong, responsible entities in society were expected to hold reserves, but since there is inevitably an opportunity cost involved, nowadays everyone wants someone else to be the one holding financial reserves, inventory, or whatever. Even many governments (e.g. the U.K.) and the International Monetary Fund seem to be souring on the notion of holding gold reserves. Amazingly, the Clinton administration’s manipulation of U.S. gold holdings in the 1990s still remains largely obscure, whether for lack of curious journalists or lack of public interest, I don’t know.

The point is that in the real world, reserves and margin, i.e. “unused” assets, serve a purpose. They provide stability and buffers that guard against damage. While it’s bad enough that in our instant gratification culture many have lost a grasp of this, it’s particularly disturbing that somewhere in their extensive education, those who ought to know best - highly-analytical financial types - also seem to lose an appreciation for the essential role of reserves.

Besides artificial lights and artificial foods, we also live in a world with a lot of artificial economics. Even folks who work in a factory are generally very removed, economically, from the actual production process. By this I mean that they have become accustomed to getting a paycheck, usually the same amount, every two weeks, which is a total fiction when it comes to how things are produced. Just as we have become used to having light, day or night, we have come to expect income streams to be uniform.

We have also become comfortable with increasingly artificial markets, such as those for complex derivatives transactions. Yet there are real dangers in these artificial markets, as the spectacular failures of Long Term Capital Management and Enron have shown.

While we may take comfort in the broad spreading of risks in the derivatives market or in the Fed’s manipulation of interest rates to bring about a “soft landing”, in the “natural economy”, everything inevitably fluctuates. There are physical cycles of day and night, winter and summer, rain and drought; business (demand) cycles of boom followed by bust; and production cycles of planting & harvest or research & development, cycles that in the latter case can be much longer, e.g. years in automobiles or decades in aerospace. Reserves are essential to manage the uncertainty inherent in these real-world cycles.

Of course, there are still some folks who contend with these natural economy effects on a daily basis. These include farmers, entrepreneurs, and long-suffering managers in the global manufacturing economy. Many of these maintain a deep disdain for the financial types, but what is really needed is for those in charge of managing the money to have one foot firmly planted in each world, i.e. to have an appreciation of the fine points of financial analysis while also maintaining a grasp of natural economy dangers.

As an example, successful entrepreneurs soon learn that Job One is managing cash, not maximizing profits. Without liquidity, a business is bled dry, no matter what the balance sheet or income statement says. Entrepreneurs also soon learn that even when you have a good year, that is no guarantee that the next year will be the same. You learn first to use the receipts from “fat years” to fill holes that were left from the lean years, before presuming to tackle other opportunities.

This is simply prudent management, something understood by millions of small business people, and it really bothers me that a huge business like Exxon Mobil could lose sight of something so basic. Besides this, I can’t help but think of all the companies that have wasted windfalls on imprudent acquisitions. Of course there’s Chrysler, for example, who after emerging from bankruptcy with the help of federal guarantees, plowed many of the profits from the success of its minivans into questionable acquisitions, and ended up back on the brink. Then there was also Mobil’s own purchase of Montgomery Wards, which one employee described to me as a “money disposal project.”

There’s no guarantee that oil prices will be at $70 a year from now, and I hope Exxon Mobil’s employees, directors and shareholders, as well as the PBGC, will put pressure on its executives to do the prudent thing and fully fund its pensions now, while they could just “write a check” to do it. Maybe the company is entitled to its “obscene profits”, as some put it, but it’s not entitled to leave us holding the bag.

I’ve been writing on my AeroGo site about the fundamental problems with NASA and U.S. space R&D policy (calling it a strategy would seem a stretch). Last week at the 2006 International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles, SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan ruffled some feathers with several criticisms of NASA and its Crew Exploration Vehicle, as well as FAA space tourism safety policy.

I’ve now posted a fairly lengthy discussion of Rutan’s comments regarding NASA and the CEV, and how they reflect many of the basic problems with U.S. space policy, as well as basic disagreements within the space community about how to make real progress.

There’s a constant tension in NASA space R&D between operational programs and development of advanced technologies, and until we clear up the confusion and systematically address (and invest) in both these areas, NASA will inevitably continue to just reinvent the past, as Rutan charges.

On the other hand, while the agency apparently continues to be guilty of overspending on big manned programs while giving space technology, science, and aeronautics scant resources, I disagree with Rutan’s view that the CEV capsule concept is inherently flawed. Nevertheless, schedule pressures do seem to once again be working their (not so good) magic at NASA.

John Drzal raised some good points in his comments on my last post. He doesn’t think a guest worker program will do much to reduce inflows, and apparently favors hefty fines to those who employ illegals.

Regarding immigration reform, there are at least a couple of key factors here. First, we have to reset the legal clock, so to speak. It’s pointless to try to take severe action against illegals and their U.S.-born children after decades. A fine would be in order, as some have suggested, though I think it would be unwise to make it too severe. In any case, by starting a full-blown regulated guest worker program as part of an overhauled immigration law, the U.S. effectively resets the clock, and conveys clearly that future violations will not be ignored as in the past.

The second factor is this whole nonsense of severe penalties to employers, etc. First of all, a lot of these employers are individuals, mom and pop restaurants, small contractors, etc. To hit them with huge fines while slapping companies like Wal-Mart on the wrist is just plain wrong.

It’s a general sign that government has failed when it resorts to harsh penalties. A lot of the drug laws fall in this category. Celebrities can smoke joints in the White House, joke on TV about using drugs, etc., usually with impunity. It’s the poor kids without a good lawyer who get locked up.

Certainly, there’s a lot of improvement needed in treatment of farm workers, etc., but government can only really get involved in this once these folks are no longer invisible. I do think regulation and taxation, combined with better future enforcement, can drastically reduce the flows. Nothing will be perfect, but hey, there are a LOT of other folks here illegally besides Hispanics!

Regulation and taxation are among government’s core competencies. The employment laws were already made a lot tighter some years ago, with little to no apparent impact. A hundred laws with severe penalties will do no good if they aren’t enforced. We’ve got a better chance of seeing laws actually enforced if they are more limited, with most of the work being done by regulations instead.

The problem with popular opinion among non-Hispanic Americans is this notion that we need to suddenly act harshly because “All these folks are violating the law!” Rather than being reactionary, we really need to come up with a strategy for dealing with this, or else we’re going to get even more illegal immigration, unless our economy tanks or the dollar declines a lot.

As far as Hispanic communities taking in those who might come in outside of a guest worker program, this will be a problem, no doubt. But when these immigrants have some legal status, they will then have something to lose. I’m certainly not going to argue that it will work perfectly, it won’t. But we need to get these folks on the radar screen, and I think the first step is to create a tiered pathway to citizenship. Then the ones who remain invisible can justly be suspected of being undesirable elements rather than just folks trying to feed their family.

As I noted last time, the program is going to have to be large, but at least these people will be paying taxes. They’re not going to go away in the short run, and trying to get businesses to do the government’s job isn’t going to work, either. The reality is that we all benefit a great deal from immigrant labor, whether in lower food costs (the entire country) or lower costs in many areas such as housing, services, etc. (much of the country). I really don’t think we’re prepared to wreck our economy (which it probably would) just to kick these folks out, and I think in this respect Americans need a bit of a reality check, and immigrants deserve a little credit.

I’ve been putting off writing about immigration because it is such a difficult subject to really nail down. There are so many mixed emotions, conflicting interests, and pertinent historical precedents that it’s hard for even one person to agree with themself. I think Mark Belling’s comment on the Rush Limbaugh show Wednesday, that we can’t get agreement on immigration because we can’t find even two people who totally agree, is right on the money. This is very much an issue in flux, but it may no longer be an issue that can be deferred.

Of course, immigration is only one of many issues that U.S. voters have just wanted to keep sweeping under the rug. This rug is getting awfully lumpy nowadays, and these ugly problems are going to be emerging one-by-one (if we’re fortunate enough not to have to deal with them en masse) in the coming years. Any American can list half a dozen of these, e.g. the trade deficit, national debt, consumer debt, Social Security (i.e. even more national debt), Medicare (ditto), corporate pension plans, a disadvantageous tax and benefits structure for global competition, rapidly rising health care costs, and, oh yeah, a couple of looming possibilities - proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and of various natural diseases such as bird flu.

To George W. Bush’s (and his staff’s) credit, they have been on the immigration issue for some time, but seemingly with little support from anyone, whether fellow Republicans or even Mexican President Vicente Fox. Fox’s anticipated good relationship with Bush seems, instead, to have proved to be largely dysfunctional. Unlike Social Security reform, which Bush was astute to push soon after the election but unfortunately with a scheme largely at odds with the public, on immigration I think he’s probably more in tune than other politicians realize.

Maybe the best way to solve this political, diplomatic and economic dilemma is by a process of elimination, because the reality is that most of the ideas Congress has offered will almost surely fail in practice. Are we really going to lock up church members who help illegal aliens or deport parents while leaving probably millions of “orphans” here in the U.S.? Are we going to deport millions of children who are American citizens? Are we going to destroy our agriculture industry, one area where - I hope - we still enjoy a trade surplus?

These “solutions” are just not going to happen. Are we really going to have another Trail of Tears down to Matamoros or Tijuana? Any politically workable solution is going to have to deal with the historical reality, not just the rhetoric of a bunch of folks who want the cheap housing and living costs of the Sun Belt while pretending the issue just suddenly got out of hand, and deserves some sort of abrupt knee-jerk response.

The hard fact is that when you let a situation go on for decades unchecked, you don’t have some of the options you would have if you dealt with it promptly. Whole generations have grown up in citizenship limbo, and to pretend you can just slice this gordian knot with one sharp legislative blow is nuts. We need to figure out where we want to go, and then figure out how to deal with the situation we’ve already got.

What you can’t stop, you regulate and tax, and this is really the only workable solution. If you raise the costs, you reduce the demand. Maybe someone can come up with a better solution, but it seems to me that in order to regulate the inevitable cross-border flows, a sizable guest-worker program will be needed. Incentives will have to be in place that cause most potential immigrants to be willing to go with the program, and disincentives such as more secure borders and harsher penalties for future violators will be needed to reduce the flows to a workable level. I don’t know what this level is, but it’s going to be more people than a lot of folks will like. Deal with it; in the long run we can probably reduce the pressure on our borders if we can encourage Latin American countries to reform politically (really key) and economically.

The guest worker program will need to be multi-tiered. Workers will have to meet higher requirements to move to the higher levels (allowing longer residency periods and possibly bringing in family members), and of course the highest level will be attaining citizenship, for some portion of the workers. All the workers’ earnings need to be taxed, and tax violations should be grounds for deportation. Health care, education and other issues will have to be worked out, but since they are guest workers, they shouldn’t be on welfare.

While a large guest-worker program may be hard for a lot of Americans to accept, there will also need to be measures taken that will be unpopular with many illegals and with many Hispanic Americans. We must do away with bilingual ballots and require that all citizens learn English as a qualification for citizenship. Bilingual education will remain, I’m sure, at least to teach guest workers’ children in public schools, which will obviously have to be compensated to some degree since guest workers may not own much taxable property. Nevertheless, instruction in Spanish should be only a stopgap, and all students should be required to take English, and have a limit on how many years of bilingual education they can receive before transitioning to regular classes.

Unlike other immigrant ethnic groups, English seems to be a real sticking point for a lot of Hispanics. I really don’t feel any sympathy here. My wife immigrated to this country from Taiwan, and she had to go to kindergarten not knowing any English. Now her vocabulary is probably better than mine. Everyone understands that it’s harder for the older folks to learn the language, but to insist that the next generation can just stay out of the loop of discourse is quite irresponsible. The United States is a republic, a representative democracy, which requires that its citizens be able to communicate with one another. To dispense with this would pose a threat to the whole fabric of our society.

I know that emotions are charged over immigration, with accusations of racism, ingratitude, double standards and the like being wildly thrown about. I hope folks will calm down and actually talk to one another. Hispanics have a lot to be upset about but they certainly should have seen this coming by now. I tend to sympathize with the students getting out and protesting (peacefully), but they need to realize they are sending an incredibly incoherent message, waving Mexican flags while demanding the rights of United States citizens.

Laws have to be enforced, or else they need to be changed. Millions of Hispanics have chosen to violate our laws, and they have no business being upset that we may now choose to change the law and then enforce it. On the other hand, I hope that as we prepare this spring to begin celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Colony, that Americans pushing for immigration reform will remember that nearly all of us had ancestors who were once immigrants, and reflect on the somber fact that a measure of humility is, indeed, in order.

I recently wrote on my site AeroGo (which is for students and others interested in going into the engineering and aerospace fields) about the real reasons behind NASA’s seeming inability to make much progress in manned space flight. Though there are some good things about new NASA Administrator Michael Griffin’s Moon/Mars plans, already we are seeing additional hits to science budgets and a backing away from developing new spacecraft technologies.

I noted how entities such as the European Space Agency and India are getting a better return on their space technology investment by more thoughtful and efficient pacing of research and development, and how other countries have shown more interest in using the International Space Station for microgravity research than NASA has.

In summary, NASA’s key strategy flaw is an inability to build on past successes. NASA needs an incremental space technology development strategy that combines new vehicles and technologies in ways that produce new, affordable options for exploration and science. It is NASA’s inclination to start with a clean sheet of paper every time - an approach the rest of the world simply can’t afford - which has caused us to end up in a situation today where we are again looking at having to spend a decade just to get back to the Moon.

As I discuss in my AeroGo post, a much more aggressive space technology development program needs to be maintained over the long run so that designers of operational programs have the confidence needed to use new space technologies. Only with more stability in spacecraft development and the maturing of new technologies can we really hope to get costs down.

Unfortunately, the difficulty of getting stable funding from Congress may be an insurmountable obstacle to NASA’s implementing such a strategy. On the other hand, Congress seems to grasp the role of NASA as an investment in the country’s technology future, so perhaps something could be worked out if NASA shifted away from a few very large development projects to a broader array of efforts that could make better use of some of its oft-neglected research centers, e.g. Glenn in Ohio, Goddard in Maryland, Langley in Virginia, Stennis in Mississippi, and Ames and Dryden in California.

Even if NASA isn’t able to change, the number of relatively well-funded commercial space companies continues to grow. We may already be past the point where the commercial arena is seeing the most significant research investment, if indeed these firms are able to get a more efficient return on the R&D dollars in their commercial efforts, and tie these to such an incremental, well-paced development strategy.

In addition to the post on NASA’s strategy, I also recently wrote about Aviation Week’s article on the supposed Blackstar space plane and XOV orbiters, and on the resulting controversy about it. I’ve included a number of links on these articles for those seeking additional information.