Drops

A day of more shuttle news: official tally comes in at $1 billion. Yes, $1 billion, for one launch whose stated purpose was to "test new safety equipment" and deliver "supplies" to the space station. Kind of an expensive test-the-brakes-and-pick-up-some-beer run. For a commentary that's amusingly on the money, check out this segment of Ed Gordon's show.

Here's the part where the centrist-conservative wonk pooh-pooh's space program grumps like Joe Citizen by saying something blisteringly insightful like, Hey, in a budget the size of the US government's, one billion dollars is a drop in the bucket. And maybe he's right. But then how come we can never find what to drink when someone's really thirsty?

I'm sure that if you're a big-shot wonky insider with a fat stipend from Rand or Heritage or the Manhattan Foundation, and you hobnob at swank beltway parties with senators and elite media execs and the directors of major multinationals (parties at which, by the way, neither drugs nor sex of any kind ever make an appearance, ever), then maybe a billion dollars is nothing more to you than the next wire transfer to your offshore shelter in the Caymans. But to Joe Citizen, a billion dollars is still, like, a billion dollars. That buys a lot of potato chips and beer. Or a lot of trips to the doc's office. Or a lot of public transit rides. Or a lot of books for elementary and high school classrooms. (Any of you out there have friends who are teachers? If yes, how much do they spend each year — of their own money, I mean: of their own insultingly measly public-servant salaries — on books for the kids they teach?)

For that matter, I bet it buys a lot of armor plating for personnel carriers in the desert — unless, that is, you're shopping at one of those megamarts of corporate bilk who have relatives at the White House and an army of lobbyists. But even with them you could probably cover 10 or 20 humvees and get back a little change. How many American soldiers might that save?

I know, I know. Joe Citizen sucks at math.



Speaking of corporate bilk and relatives in Washington: the House passed a new energy bill today, and those in the bidness can rejoice. Not only are oil prices at a record high, but our free-market-loving legislators have decided they love the free market so much they'd like to give it a hand. They have thus incentivized deep-water drilling. I guess they just wanted to make double, triple sure no one sits on his ass letting deposits of the most valuable commodity on earth lie untended.

No one's rejoicing quite so much as certain residents of the majority leader's home district, though. At the last minute (no, really), a provision was added to throw $1.5 billion at "drilling research." Apparently there just wasn't enough left over from oil revenues themselves; the bidness needed a goverment handout (just a drop and a half in the bucket, as the wonks would remind). And I'm sure it's completely coincidental, but the primary beneficiary of said handout will be an energy consortium in Tom DeLay's district in Texas.

And you thought socialism was dead.

Sadly, the addition of the DeLay boondoggle so increased the size of the legislation that a number of other provisions had to be left out — purely for reasons of space. Among these were fuel-efficiency requirements for cars and trucks. Yes, it's true: such a provision might have done more to cure our country of its disastrous dependence on foreign oil than all the rest of the bill's measures combined. But adding more pages would have been — well, a waste of energy. Besides, wouldn't you rather keep waging war overseas to secure a steady oil supply? Even when it doesn't work, we get years of great future documentary footage, plus a geography lesson and a stack of new vocab. It almost makes up for those missing school textbooks.



Also this week: the Patriot Act was signed on for a return engagement by — again — your good friends and caretakers in the House. Which means, as far as Joe Citizen is concerned, that Joe Citizen took one more itty bitty step toward becoming Joe Subject.