Space Policy, Education Spending, and the EPA

Today in the News

Space Policy

After NASA’s bungling of the space program, the U.S. has become dependent on Russian space technology, which has had a string of recent blips.

Adjunct Analyst Rand Simberg explains.

“The venerable Russian rocket that had successfully delivered 43 consecutive Progress missions failed today, with the cargo destined for the ISS instead scattered across the forests of Siberia. Concern is compounded by the fact that Roscosmos, the Russian company responsible for the launch, had also put a communications satellite in the wrong orbit just last Friday, meaning that they had two failures in less than a week.”

 

Education Spending

Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel says that it’s difficult to prove that going to college increases one’s creativity or potential productivity.

Senior Counsel Hans Bader comments.

“College tuition is often a rip-off, since most people who went to college because of rising college-attendance rates in recent years wound up in unskilled jobs (including 5,057 janitors who have Ph.Ds or other advanced degrees), and tuition is skyrocketing faster than housing costs did during the real estate bubble, resulting in a 511 percent increase in student-loan debt. (100 colleges charge at least $50,000 a year, compared to five in 2008-09. Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation, while Obama seeks to double it. Spending has exploded at the K-12 level: per-pupil spending in the U.S. is among the highest in the world.”

 

EPA

The New York Times asks what Republicans will do to limit the power of the EPA.

Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis responds.

“The E.P.A. today is legislating climate policy under the guise of implementing a statute, the Clean Air Act, enacted in 1970, years before global warming was even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. This is an egregious breach of the separation of powers. The claim that Congress gave E.P.A. such expansive powers in 1970 but just forgot to tell anybody is absurd. G.O.P. presidential hopefuls should support the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which would overturn most of the E.P.A.’s greenhouse gas regulations.”