For those who don’t know, the Democrat-controlled Colorado legislature two weeks ago passed what have come to be called the “Dirty Dozen” tax increases – blatantly ignoring the Taxpayer Bill of Rights amendment to the state constitution by raising taxes without a vote of the citizens. Among the items subjected to new or increased taxes, including soda and (some, weirdly-defined) candy, doggie bags, software downloads, and bull semen (!), are all online sales.

In the case of the latter, the tax increase mandated onerous and privacy-invading reporting requirements onto online retailers. Amazon announced early on that they would suspend all affiliate accounts for Colorado residents if the measure passed, and over the weekend made good on that promise, sending cancellation letters to all of its Amazon Affiliates in the state.

In other words, a company had the guts to stand up in a small, symbolic way to the anti-constitutional taxation policy and invasive reporting requirements of the state of Colorado – and Senator Morse won’t stand for it. How dare Amazon not meekly accept the dictates of Senator Morse and his pals in the Colorado legislature? Who does Amazon think it is?

Me? I say “Hooray for Amazon!”

What amuses me is that he is now going to ditch his Kindle, boycott Amazon, and take his custom to more statism-friendly Apple. While I applaud Amazon’s actions, I firmly believe that they will lose far more business from people like me, who will no longer purchase anything online, from any retailer, so long as this taxation and reporting law is in effect. Indeed, even though I am a shareholder and the move would cost the company money, I would have preferred to see Amazon go all the way, and refuse to accept any orders for delivery to or with a billing address in Colorado (or at the very least the addresses of the governor and every legislator who voted for the bill).

What’s not funny about Senator Morse’s dramatic soliloquy, though, is the unquestioned assumptions that lie behind it. The notion that Amazon being a $900 million “corporate customer [sic]” is something shameful, a sin that requires the redistribution of their profits to assuage. Or the assumption that the targets of an objectionable piece of legislation ought to know their place, and accept the imposition humbly without uttering a word of protest. Or the apallingly ignorant assumption that he and his equally-economically-ignorant colleagues can blithely pass tax increases without altering economic behavior in the private sector whatsoever.

What’s even worse is Morse’s astonishing and hypocritical attack on Amazon as being a “bully” and engaging in “egregiousness” and ”tyranny”. Senator John Morse, Democrat of Colorado Springs, may want to look in the mirror – after all, it isn’t Amazon who is pitching an over-the-top emotional fit, it isn’t Amazon who is throwing its weight around to take something it shouldn’t have or forcing people to do business with it, and it isn’t Amazon who is acting in blatant violation of the state constitution and against the loudly expressed wishes of the citizens of Colorado.

[via WhoSaidYouSaid]

ADDED: Senator Morse is getting called out on his BS in the comments at YouTube, and is (not at all surprisingly) responding with snippy and condescending remarks. How dare we proles question him! He’s a senator!

Heh. I think I just schadenfreuded.

Mike Coffman, my Congressman and the one in whose district most of Colorado’s LM facilities happen to be located, paid us a visit yesterday to discuss the efforts to stay the cancellation. He is a signatory to the letter calling for a halt to the cancellation based on language in the FY2010 budget forbidding NASA from cancelling Constellation or initiating new programs – Congressmen from the space states are threatening to use the 1974 Impoundment Control Act to reverse the new policy, at least through the end of the current fiscal year.

The meeting consisted of management giving Rep. Coffman a short briefing on the history of Constellation (and in particular Orion), what it is and is intended to do. Lots of the standard rah-rah stuff: space is cool and cutting-edge, it’s a national security issue (engineering skill and innovation), and has spinoffs to the broader economy (thankfully, Tang and velcro were not mentioned). The usual.

Then the Congressman took questions. Here again, I was a disappointed by my coworkers and their attitude of entitlement when it comes to the program. Most of the questions were about what we might do to help save our jobs by persuading Congressmen to preserve the Constellation program as-is, unchanged. This focus on job security is understandable among people who might in a few months be looking for new employment in a crappy job market, but it seems awfully short-sighted in that it ignores the potential for the new policy (if actually implemented and not just happy-talk from the Obama administration) to create a much bigger industry (and thus more job opportunities) than we currently have in manned space.

There were only a few really novel questions. In one case, some guy asked earnestly whether the violation of the law implicit in the cancellation (see above) meant that Congress could now impeach Obama. Coffman seemed to get a kick out of the absurdity of this question, and kept making joking references to it afterwards (fortunately, no mention was made of the birth certificate – this was eye-roll inducing enough).

My own question focused on the commercial alternatives, and was the ONLY one which seemed to favor them. I pointed out that the new policy provides “subsidies” (bad choice of words, but not entirely inaccurate) to help new companies enter the market for cargo and crew delivery to station, which was a good thing and something exceptionally surprising to see coming from the Obama administration, and then asked whether he and the other Congressmen fighting against the cancellation would consider keeping and supporting this element of the new policy. (Which is a watered-down expression of my views on the matter, but the best I could do extemporaneously and in that specific environment.) In his answer, Rep. Coffman asserted that his first concern was preserving constituent jobs in the district, and that meant keeping Orion and Constellation going — other considerations, like new business possibilities, would have to take a back seat. Which I found disappointing from someone who claims to be a capitalist, but not surprising from someone who is a politician. Implied in his response was the belief that any of the new jobs created by the shift to commercial services would not be in CD-6, or Colorado generally, which is surprising given the new engineering work and increased launches that Tech Center-headquartered ULA would see under the new policy.

The last memorable question was a response to mine. Someone asked, his voice quavering with either nervousness or anger, if the entire policy shouldn’t be thrown out, asserting without making any supporting argument that privatization was wrong, that it was wrong wrong wrong to privatize the space program. Oh, and we shouldn’t privatize the space program…because that would be wrong…somehow. (Never mind that privatization is not even on the table.) I don’t know if his objection was merely an emotional response to the threat to his own job, or whether he was some sort of die-hard statist/Von Braunian who considers space a sphere of activity in which only the government should be permitted to operate. Or possibly both.

Increasing taxes and a hostile attitude towards business from our Democrat overlords would seem to have consequences…

Looks like Colorado will have to make do with the Mars Science Lab and the Mars Society as its connections to the Red Planet.

As for the MarsBlog quote, it would be more worrisome if everybody in Constellation were in lock-step unanimity the same way that we see with some of the smaller organizational units that are attacking Ares I. I am sure that T.L James is entitled to his opinion, but I would like to know more about his credentials, experience, and specifically where he is coming from with his comments. I am neutral about James, but Rob Coppinger has broached the topic of T. L. James” credibility over at Flightglobal. The name is probably a pseudonym, so it will not be easy to confirm that James is telling the truth. As for his claim of “working on Orion”, we need to know what his specific job role is. Is he a structural engineer, a software guy like Metschan, or does he wash the windows? I’m not too worried about James, in any event.

Funny to discover this after spending nine hours in the office, on my day off, not washing windows.

As I’ve mentioned from time to time, I don’t discuss Orion in any detail because I don’t care to test the limits of what might get me in hot water in regards to insider information, competition sensitivity, and export control concerns. Simple as that.

Image: Seymourpowell/PA

Set aside the obvious problems with floating bags of hydrogen large enough to lift nearly 400 tons of payload over major cities, and their obvious appeal as terrorist targets, and the fact that obtaining that much hydrogen would not be as green as the creators imagine.

I want to know how they’re packaging this monster.

The windows at the lower apex suggest most if not all of the accommodations are there…which makes sense, since you want the mass on the bottom (think Weebles). But what about the hydrogen cells? Is an octahedron with concave sides really the best way to package large volumes of gas that want to assume a spherical shape? Oh sure, the thing could be fitted with conformal cells, but how structurally efficient would all of this be compared with other, less eye-appealing shapes?

On the other hand, I do like the rendering of tethered airships against the backdrop of Hong Kong – it makes me think of the floating cities from the Ringworld books.

[hat tip: JB]

While it was amusing to see one of my friends from New Orleans and what I think was the back of my boss’ head in a couple of the clips, I have to agree with Keith that the video is propaganda. And not merely propaganda aimed at saving Constellation, but saving Ares I in particular – made clear by the emotional manipulation towards the end of the vehicle, where images of children set to funereal music segue into an image of Ares I, equating it with The Space Program and describing it as “America’s Rocket”.

But nearly as apalling in this regard is the map which appears at about 6:25. Notice anything missing from this map purporting to show the players in Constellation? It isn’t ATK, Boeing, or Pratt & Whitney. While Turzillo may have merely scavenged this animation from other public video, the way that it is used here suggests that these contractors, with NASA, are the only ones taking part in Constellation. It is spliced in under the “Who Are You Guys?” segment, after all, the question in-context implying Constellation as a whole – were this video explicitly showcasing Ares I, I’d see no problem with it, but as it very clearly attempts to encapsulate the whole program it comes across as a slap in the face to the rest of us.

About three or so years ago, when Ares I’s many, many problems really started coming to light andthe fixes started to eat away at other areas of the agency’s budget, I cynically speculated that at some point all other money at NASA’s disposal would be used up, and Orion itself would have to be cancelled in order to fund the development of the vehicle meant to launch it. In Gift of the Magi fashion, we might eventually end up with a rocket that worked, but it would come at the cost of sacrificing the purpose for which it was supposedly built.

I may be reading too much into this single video by a Ares I engineer (made on his own time, and not sanctioned by his employer), but I have to wonder if this is what it will come to when the new space policy is taken up by Congress.  I’m certainly no less cynical about such things than I was three years ago, so I can readily imagine the absurd prospect of the rest of Constellation getting the axe, while Ares I is saved by grace of its stronger Congressional backing – despite being shorn of its stated reason for being.

I think Michael Mealing comes closest to my own attitude towards this development:

President Obama’s new policy for NASA is the most fiscally conservative and downright capitalist policy to come along since the agency was founded. 

And yes, it really boggles my mind that that should be the case. Obama? Capitalist? Who’da thunk? As one co-worker quipped today, Obama seems confused: he wants to nationalize a private industry in healthcare, but privatize the national program in manned space. One thing that has really surprised me today is how many of my friends have called or emailed me, expressing shock and disappointment that we are now “abandoning” space – unwittingly accepting the premise that a government program is our only possible means of getting people there. The perception that government is the sole entity capable of conducting manned spaceflight is so ingrained and unquestioned that it doesn’t seem to occur to even those who claim to be capitalists to question it.

But of course, I have to temper my surprise and excitement at this prospect, much as I did regarding the newfound enthusiasm for nuclear power Mr. Obama expressed in his SOTU last week. There’s going to be a lot of haggling to get the Congressional NASA caucus on board with this (although one Senator who could have been expected to be among the biggest roadblocks seems to be climbing on board – however reluctantly). It’s going to take some time, and who knows, just as ESAS made a dog’s breakfast of the VSE, so too could Congressional compromises and NASA resistance turn the promise of this new policy direction into yet another dead end.

Even the most Heinlein-quoting, Ayn Rand-lovin’, taxation-is-theft Wookie suiters get all weepy when NASA takes a shot in the payroll, when the simple fact of the matter is that the only spaceships the federal government has any constitutional business building should be run by the USAF and have frickin’ laser beams on them.

It’s a good thing NASA didn’t exist from the nation’s founding, or Lewis & Clark’s canoe would have taken thirty years to build and contained strips of birch bark from 72 different Congressional districts. If we want to see progress in space, we need to tell NASA to go research airfoil shapes and just declare everything that happens above X miles to be extraterritorial and tax-free.

[hat tip: Wesley]

Update: Fixed broken link.

As with the big healthcare speech back in September (the occasion of the NPR incident), my commentary was delivered in the more transitory medium of live heckling of the teevee screen. This time around there wasn’t a neighboring table of kool-aid-guzzling Obama worshippers hissing and whining back at me, unfortunately, which took a bit of the fun out of it.

Apart from Fox’s amusing Drudge-like juxtapositions of lines from the speech with camera shots of topically-relevant politicians, there was only one thing that I liked about this SOTU: Mr. Obama’s promise to push for next-generation nuclear power in the U.S.. Of course, just like his promises to freeze (parts of) federal spending, expand government transparency, and usher in a new bipartisan civility, I realize that we are as likely to see any action on that promise as we are to see the National Mall host unicorn chariot races.

The rest of the speech was a nauseating stew of all-things-to-all-people statism and incongruous attempts to steal the fiscal responsibility and small government themes the Republicans are gearing up to campaign on in the fall, seasoned with the usual Democrat pathos and anger and garnished liberally with Mr. Obama’s trademark nose-high smugness. Noticeably absent yet again was any mention of NASA or space policy in general. “So what’s new?”, one might ask. Amid all the yammering about green energy trendy greenwashing scams and investment in taxpayer subsidization of (politcally sexy) science and technology, it’s still a little surprising that federal space policy didn’t merit a mention this time around, especially if the rumors are true that a change in that policy towards more climate monitoring (green!) and commercial services (jobs!) is imminent.