I’ve got a quick rant. I was listening to NPR, and they were doing one of their pro-interviewee interviews of this lady who was running a book store at the Wall Street Occupation.

At the end, the interviewer lets the Occupation librarian explain her philosophical thoughts. She explained that she doesn’t like the way our country treats our weakest members, minorities, etc. Not unreasonable, right? Then she goes on to explain that her biggest issue, the thing she think is the priority, is to transition to a carbon neutral  society, and that the reason we aren’t is because the ‘oil companies’ are preventing it. lol

It’s this kind of utterly ignorant thinking that makes my teeth itch. Earlier in the interview she was saying that the library represents the Occupation movement’s purpose of educating people and educating themselves. lol I guess there aren’t any math books in that library, or books on business or technology.

So, I have some questions about this:

1.       Which “oil companies” is she talking about?

2.       If these oil companies are humans, residents of earth, and they know of a technology that could replace oil – Why do they stick with earning peanuts selling oil??? 

3.       The idea that there’s a secret technology the oil companies are hiding, for several decades has been a favorite random claim of idiots who think making erroneous statements sounds smart. Assuming they’re wrong, we’re left with non-secret non-carbon-releasing energy technology. In that case, remembering that you’re already concerned about how our weak members and minorities are treated, how are poor people going to eat and not freeze to death????

Right, that’s one thing that improves our competitiveness. Some modern factories can run all night with no people there. It’s like a big copy machine, you just set it up and let it go. Annoyingly, last time I had a conversation with someone who repairs robots, which was a couple years ago, the robots came from Europe. That seems like something we should make.

Essentially, it’s a solution to our high labor costs. We can’t pay low-skilled laborers a globally competitive wage because our standard of living is too high, or because unions have corporations by the balls. So you replace 320 workers with a set of robots, a setup guy, a programmer and a repair guy. The programmer and repair guys service numerous factories. It’s like one human doing the work of 10′s or 100′s of humans. Or, it’s like a single $100/hr human doing the work of 10′s or 100′s of $50/hr humans. China can’t beat that, nor can Africa. Although, robot technology does have a ways to go yet. And items usually have to be designed, at least somewhat, with robots in mind.

The trouble is, we can set these factories up anywhere. US regulations not only make factories expensive, they make them take longer to build. Every day that a factory isn’t running can be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. And with idiot bills like cap/n trade, and Presidents who have proclaimed that electricity bills will, “Necessarily sky-rocket,” it makes for a poor case to locate in the US. There’s also the high corporate tax along with the capital gains tax on all this stuff.

So basically, we don’t need to build robots, we need to adjust regulation. If it’s profitable to build things here, then people will build things here, and it will most likely include robots.

Maybe Obama should unwisely invest some of our tax dollars in an obsolete robot company instead of obsolete solar panel companies? LOL, just kidding. That’s poison. Robots don’t join unions. If the Democrats don’t have unions, they’re kind of screwed. Can you imagine the shit Obama would get thrown at him if he advocated automation out-loud? LOL He’d have to dress it up, “Robots only do the jobs that are too dangerous for people, or jobs no one wants to do.”  Maybe Pelosi will pass a law that requires some dumb-shit union asshole to babysit each robot. There’s a Washington solution for you.

Dana Vashon said something interesting on Red Eye a few weeks ago, It’s not a lack of demand, it’s a drought of good ideas, and it’s got me thinking.

Let’s understand where we are. We’re not in a recession. Recessions are a psychological condition where a people hangs onto its money due to uncertainty. In our case though, the recession has lasted too long, and we know that many of our economic loses are permanent. This is a retraction, a permanent change in size.

We’re undergoing an information and technological revolution, and many of the jobs we’ve lost have been replaced by that technology. Much of the consumer demand our economy became accustomed to was fueled by home equity and wildly available credit. But through the housing collapse we lost over $2 Trillion in home equity, which shut off the easy-credit, and that won’t change because the home equity came from a pumped-up housing market. We’re also seeing our overseas competition advancing in all areas, including technology, America’s former monopoly.

During a recession, stimulus can be effective in “shocking” the economy back by filling in the missing demand and alleviating uncertainty. But in our situation, the lost demand is permanent, that’s why stimulus has been so miserably ineffective (and the fact that it wasn’t honest stimulus). The thing we’re trying to shock awake is gone. Washington sprinkling borrowed money into our economy isn’t going to recreate those lost jobs or consumer spending. Many of the unemployed people lack the skills required by the new jobs, and many of the consumer spenders now have under-water mortgages, are paying high rent, have ruined credit, or are trying to pay down expensive debt. Stimulus won’t make those people spend.

Technically, we’ve recovered from the recession, according to growth figures. The trouble is, we’re still missing the jobs we lost. Businesses and investors both have a lot of money safely penned-up. One of the reasons they’re keeping this money safe, besides the high level of uncertainty, is the utter lack of good ideas to put that money in.

To use Dana’s example, Facebook is valued at nearly $50 billion, and what does it do? It reduces productivity… Why are people investing in Facebook? There are no better ideas worth investing in.

This is great, I found the funniest article I think I’ve ever read! The other day I heard Bill O’Reilly say that tax revenues grew after the ‘Bush’ tax cuts. So I decided to look up some validation for this claim or data against it. Well, I ran into this fun article — Bill O’Reilly and the Imaginary Bush Tax Cut Windfall, by Peter Hart. It’s a MUST READ. It’s too funny. It’s meant to be serious, I’m pretty sure, and lists some ‘arguments’ against the success of the ‘Bush’ tax cuts.

It essentially says this: Sure, tax revenues have grown since the Bush Tax Cuts, but that’s because the economy grew. And asserts that: “A more useful measure would be how tax revenue looks relative to the size of the economy.” (How’s that useful???) and “The decade of the Bush tax cuts had, on average, lower revenue levels as a share of the economy than any previous
decade since the 1950s.”

LOL — The intention of the Bush tax cuts were to take a smaller portion of America’s output in order to allow the economy to grow, with the idea that the reduced tax rates would be made up for with higher tax revenue, due to economic growth. And the Liberal argument against the success of that effort is that a smaller portion of America’s output was collected, and the economy grew, producing higher tax revenues than were lost to the lower rates. Quality.

There’s one other argument Pete has stuffed in this article that, if you’re not careful, almost makes sense. He claims the tax cuts added 2.6 trillion to the debt. How does this make sense if tax revenue GREW over this period? First, you understand that spending grew. Second, you take the GDP, and apply the old tax rates to it, then subtract the multiple of the new tax rate and GDP. In other words, you figure out how much tax revenue you would collect if you could magically apply the old higher tax rate to the new bigger GDP, and camper that with the taxes actually collected with the lower tax rates.

This is yet another example of the fundamental misunderstanding of economics that Liberals and Socialists suffer from. It’s the idea that ‘wealth’ is a given, a constant. They ignore the fact that PEOPLE CREATE wealth out of risk, initiative, investment, and labor. If you cut taxes, and the economy grows because of it, you can’t apply your old slow-growth tax rates to the new growth, and pretend that if you hadn’t cut taxes, you would have had more money.

It’s like this. Say you own a restaurant and you sell hamburgers for $2 each and average about 100 hamburgers and $5,000 in sales per day. Now let’s say you’re partner comes up with a new campaign to promote your business. He reduces the price of your hamburgers to $1, predicting that the loss from reduced burger rates will be made up for by increased revenue. A year later, you’re average sales are 200 hamburgers and $6000 in sales. “Ben & Pete’s, Home of the $1 Burger”

You can’t pull out your calculator, and multiply 200 x (old price=$2) = $400, compare that to 200 x (new price=$1) = $200, and claim that your partner caused you a loss of $200, which ADDED to your debt, which is growing due to other wild spending and growing costs. You’re partner CREATED $1000 in sales.

Of course, you can argue that your partner’s $1 burger idea had nothing to do with the extra $1000 in sales, and likewise argue that the tax cuts had nothing to do with economic growth – but not with these inane tactics. Please. You need to point to another cause of the increased revenue or otherwise construct a logical or honest phrase.

Ending the unemployment benefits extensions would effectively lower wages for shitty jobs – logically – by increasing the demand for shitty jobs. It might also have the effect of decreasing the number of full time jobs, replacing them with more part time jobs, because it’s cheaper to have three employees working 30 hours each than two working 45 each, because of benefits.

I doubt employment will be pulled out of the crapper any time soon. They were talking about unemployment numbers on NPR. It sounded terrible. If you count the people who have temporarily given up, and the people working part time jobs while they look for full time, the unemployment rate is estimated to be at least 16%. Basically, we have the same number of available jobs as we did in 2000. So the only thing that will really fix the job market is a decade of growth, unemployment benefits or not.

I just hope we elect a rational adult this time for the presidency. Seriously. Someone with the ability to negotiate a deal between a fat kid and a vending machine, who can lead a group of flies to a pile of dog shit, someone who can show a little bit of character once in a while, someone who can/will do some honest math. Is that too much to ask? Am I being audaciously hopeful that we might elect a leader, not a character, not an icon, but an actual implementer of ideas?

The thing about a FREE market is – it’s irrational. Free markets are very poor at preparing for changes. But interestingly, are good at adjusting to change, after a good hard long deadly panic of course. This is why the best economies are wisely regulated free markets.

There are two big problems with using oil as a critical energy source. First, it’s getting more ‘expensive.’ 100 years ago you could recover oil with an A-frame, a pick-axe, shovel, and a few buckets. Later we implemented mechanical systems to help. We spent a small amount of energy for each barrel of oil recovered. Currently, especially in off-shore locations and in Alaska, or when we ship it half way around the globe or from places we have to defend with aircraft carriers, we spend a large % of that barrel of oil just recovering it. We’re on the path to spending 1 barrel of oil’s worth of energy to recover 1 barrel. It won’t be long before we’re paying for 2 or 3 units of energy for every unit of gas we pump. Second, it’s unstable. Oil requires a LONG messy network to reach the gas station.

Also, there are better uses for oil and natural gas than burning it. Burning it is stupid. We make plastic out of natural gas, yet we burn it inefficiently to heat our homes. Coal is one of our nation’s greatest assets. But like the Liberals say, it is damaging to recover and poisons our environment.

Forcing energy prices up will cause serious damage to the economy. Destroy it – probably not. What we need to cause is energy costs to come down. For this to happen we need alternatives to expensive oil, gas, and coal. For this we need innovation. And for innovation we need investment – which requires a strong economy. People don’t risk money in bad economies with high energy costs, not until they absolutely must. It’s that FREE market irrationality. What we’ve learned from Europe’s ill-fated green energy revolution is to invest in green innovation – and not to pour tax dollars into expensive Chinese-made solar panels and wind turbines.

Increasing costs are inevitable. Taping Alaska isn’t going to do jack-diddly to bring down energy costs. Some have suggested building toll booths and tracking devices on vehicles to charge drivers based on their use of roads.  This is an intriguing idea – but I also find the idea off-putting of building more bureaucracy and unnecessary infrastructure that can track people. It’s far-sighted in that – one day – we won’t be pumping gas but we’ll still need to pay for road maintenance. We’ll be charging up some super fuel cell and driving on it for the whole week. But why make it so complicated? Just tax the damn energy directly. That’s what annoys me about income tax, cap n trade, and all the other business… Just tax it directly. Let us see it on the receipt – ffs. We currently have a cents per gallon tax on gas to pay for roads. Why not just make it a % per dollar? Or tax the miles directly. Or tax the electricity directly.

The market, on its own, will make the transition to green and renewable energies in its own timing and in a way that will not tear the country and world to shreds in the process. The problem is, although we might not be left in shreds, such a free-market transition will probably kill us all or have us riding horses around. The free market will use the cheapest source until a crisis arises, then panic, then crash.

We need more than market forces to get us away from these fuels. I’d rather have all this coal in the ground 100 years from now anyway. What if there’s a world-wide disaster 50 years from now? One so big it knocks us back into the iron age, like a solar flare that fries all our electronics – transformers, cars, and computers. We’ll need that coal to get going again. If we use the energy plan proposed by many of using current fuels until the market naturally transitions to green energires, ALL the energy accessibly without space-age technology will be gone from the earth in our lifetime.

So what’s the solution? Glad you asked. I’ve been pondering this for a while.

First step: Increase efficiency.
We currently use energy in a truly reckless way.
1. Engineer traffic! Replace stop-lights with roundabouts, or at least time the lights in some rational way where roundabouts aren’t suitable.

2. Do you ever wonder why, when you’re sitting there, nudging along in a traffic backup, why the fuck half the miserable freeway is cut off by orange barrels – without anyone doing any ******** work? It’s simple. If you’ve ever chatted with anyone from a civil engineering firm, they’ll explain that basically, they set out the barrels a few days early in an effort to ‘train’ the traffic. They don’t move the fucking barrels before they leave for the same reason. Well – that’s just stupid. Someone be creative for Pete’s sake. Traffic backups guzzle fuel.

3. Let’s figure a way to start converting regular furnaces into internal combustion engines. If you’re burning the gas, you’ll get the heat either way. Burning it through an engine will give you extra heat in the form of friction, and allow you to generate free electricity.

4. We need a smart power grid. Imagine a grid set up like servers on the internet, with internal combustion engines on every node (homes, businesses) – counting the vehicles, maybe more. If a plant goes down, a neighborhood’s power could come from its own furnaces. Regardless, a smart grid would save something greater than 15% on energy waste, I’ve heard. This would also allow individuals to sell energy back with panels and turbines.

5. Move from long-distance truck transit to rail, specifically, develop short-line rail, which is the rail infrastructure that links the trans-continental rail to factories and truck-docks. National passenger rail is as realistic of an idea as ideas relying on unicorns and their magical powers.

Second step: Increase innovation.
Innovation requires investment. And even the Liberals seem to be coming around to the idea that investment in creating new energy technology is a better way to waste other people’s money than dumping it into expensive current green energy. So should we tax people and have congress write a bill and create bureaucracies for the purposes of distributing grants to promising efforts? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! We’ve learned that lesson, haven’t we????? Congress will simply use such power to throw money into their own precious districts and reward contributions.

What about an independent non-partisan board that evaluates and grades promising submissions from green energy entrepreneurs in an effort – blah blah blah…. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously people! Who do you think you /we are?

Here it is. I’m about to tell you how to solve America’s energy problem. Are you ready? I’m not sure you are. Are you sitting down? Go ahead and take a seat. Take a deep breath. Hey, why not go grab a glass of ice-water and give it a quick sip. OK? Ready?

First, we need to define “Green Energy.” Now, this is important. This definition has to be wide enough to encompass the unimaginable ideas of the near future, fuel cells, fusion reactors, algae farms, space elevators, and at the same time not leave accounting holes (usually the result of specific exception for specific congressional votes) that allow any fool business with a sign on a storage room door reading, “Solar Panel Division” to call their body shop a green energy business. Having a pet chicken doesn’t classify you as a farmer – kind of thing…

This definition needs to be simple too. You shouldn’t have to hire an accountant and an attorney to read and follow it.

Once we have this definition, we can deal the death blow to high energy prices and pollution in one mighty scratch of the pen. All we have to do, is create one simple exception in the tax code that makes any investment in “Green Energy” to be totally and utterly free from taxes. Specifically, no capital gains tax, no corporate tax, no income tax on green energy research or production.

We might as well not make the tax code any more needlessly complex. We’d still have retail sales tax on actual green items, panels and turbines and stuff, just not on research investment and manufacturing in the US.

This would be profound. If anything, problems might include other areas being starved for investment. But the speed of green innovation would suddenly turn rapid with billions of highly targeted and well planned dollars being invested. With the new cheap energy, we could stop wasting money on expensive dirty energy and have more to pay off China and the rest.

The S & P recently  lowered the US credit rating outlook.  The reason for the downgrade, in a nutshell, was:

The United States has a large debt and deficit compared with other highly rated nations, and unlike with those other nations “the path to addressing [the debt and deficit] is not clear to us.”

That’s kind of a leadership – dare I say image – problem, isn’t it??? lol Glenn Beck has been warning of this for two years. lol

I think liberals and democrats have some wrong thinking on the idea of paying higher taxes. Like I said a couple posts ago, rich people will be investors, if not outright businesses. Taxing them takes carefully targeted investment out of the market, and then tries to ‘invests’ it otherwise according to bureaucracy. If the electorate think society needs something that only government should provide, why can’t regular people pay and even share for it – minus financially immovable people of course?

Also, there’s no reason we can’t get the economy back to 90s strength. It’s going to take risk and new ideas of course, and taxes just slow all that down. Once we’re back to 90s strength, then you can start raising taxes on The Rich. It’s actually a good idea then, in order to slow the economy down, to prevent all kinds of goofy crap, and build up a surplus to use in the next downturn.

That’s the idea anyway. The problem is wanker politicians who spend and pump regardless. Bill Clinton explained on an interview I heard a while ago that the reason the housing market was pumped up so huge was because it was the only thing growing our economy after the tech bubble blew. We kept low interest rates even though the housing market was hot as hell – getting people buying and selling homes, stuffing all the cash up in the air to be counted. Ooooooh, Mr. Politician, you’re making the economy so good – yeah!

I found an extremely interesting report the other day: Large changes in fiscal policy: taxes versus spending. It’s about a Harvard study on large changes in fiscal policy, and how those policies – tax cuts versus spending – have grown the economy.

I’ve been arguing for some time now the merits of tax cuts, mainly that they spur economic growth and result in increased tax revenue. I’ve presented a variety of historical evidence. I’ve offered logical paths as to why. I’ve been met with unfair, illogical, emotional, and most often, ideologically motivated opposition while at the same time being accused of being ideologically motivated myself.

This study, by Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, is not political in nature. Here is an excerpt from the report’s introduction:

The first question, namely whether tax cuts or spending increases are more expansionary is a critical one, and economists strongly disagree about the answer. It is fair to say that we know relatively little about the effect of fiscal policy on growth and in particular about the so called fiscal multipliers, namely how much one dollar of tax cuts or spending increases translates in terms of GDP. The issue is very politically charged as well, since right of center economists and policymakers believe in tax cuts and the left of center ones believe in spending increases. While the differences are often rooted in different views about the role of government and inequality, not so much about the size of fiscal multipliers, both sides also wish to “sell” their prescription as growth enhancing and more so than the other policy. Unfortunately both sides can’t be right at the same time!

It’s worth reading the entire article, very interesting and educational. It’s only 15 pages long, the other 21 pages being references, data appendix, and charts. But you can skip to page 14 and just read the conclusion – or – if you’re really lazy you can just hit the summary conclusion:

We examine the evidence on episodes of large stances in fiscal policy, both in cases of fiscal stimuli and in that of fiscal adjustments in OECD countries from 1970 to 2007. Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases. As for fiscal adjustments those based upon spending cuts and no tax increases are more likely to reduce deficits and debt over GDP ratios than those based upon tax increases. In addition, adjustments on the spending side rather than on the tax side are less likely to create recessions. We confirm these results with simple regression analysis.

This is yet more proof that tax cuts are more effective than spending in boosting the economy. If the language is to fancy, here’s a simplification: Tax cuts are more likely than spending to improve the economy. Spending cuts without tax increases are more likely to decrease the debt than tax increases. And reducing spending is less likely than increasing taxes to create recessions.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that fiscal policy should focus only on what will improve the economy. There are other things to consider. But during a recession, all those other things have to wait.

What does this report mean? Well – for one, it means the stimulus bill was ill conceived. And two, it means advocates for big government lose credibility when they claim government can create jobs or economic growth by spending our dollars for us. We’re better at growing the economy by spending and investing those dollars ourselves.

Read the entire article here: Large changes in fiscal policy: taxes versus spending.

A Value Added Tax (VAT) is a tax on the estimated value of products at each stage of production and distribution. And like all taxes on business, it’s passed on to the consumer – making everything more expensive.

A VAT is similar to a sales tax in who actually pays it, but the difference is that the VAT hides the amount the consumer pays. When you look at your receipt from the grocery store you can see the sales tax. It’s right under the subtotal. When you buy a car there’s a special line just for the sales tax.

But the VAT is charged at each state of production and shipping. It’s not marked anywhere for you or me to see. With a VAT, the auto manufacturer would be charged based on the value of the car when it’s sold to the dealer. The shipper for the car would be charged a VAT for the value of the shipping. The subcontractors, the companies that make all the parts for the car, would be charged a VAT for the parts they manufacture. And the producers who make the material the parts are made of, they would pay a VAT too, as would the shippers, as would the producers of the packaging material.

And this huge and complex system would apply to most everything. All the materials and equipment everywhere in between the above process would carry the VAT hidden in its price – everything from tools to toilet paper.

This is why sneaky politicians like the VAT. They can make promises of monetary gifts to get into office, once in office establish expensive entitlements and pass huge goody bills for their friends, and pay for it by raising the VAT without anyone noticing. Historically that’s what has happened in Europe anyway.

If a sales tax is raised everyone sees it. But you can raise the VAT quietly, incrementally, with few people raising a fuss.

So why am I bringing this up? The US doesn’t have a VAT. We have income and sales tax. Well, I bring it up because the US is spending huge amounts of money, adding to the immense pile of debt, and otherwise over the past couple years has been moving in the direction of of a European style of heavy tax/entitlement. Also, Obama says the VAT is, “on the table” with regard to fixing the county’s serious budget problems.

And seriously, what else is there? Is anyone going to cut precious programs in this Liberal climate? Hell, we’re passing new ones. The answer Obama and his Dems have offered to EVERY problem so far is a huge pile of cash or a huge new bureaucracy – but usually both. He promised (pfft) not to raise taxes on anyone making less than blah blah. But he can’t raise income taxes on the rich anymore. They’re already on the down slopping side of the bell curve. (raising their taxes will result in lower tax revenue) What else is there?

So watch out for the VAT. It’s a sneaky tax. Every tax is bad for the economy – but this one dodges accountability with the consumer. It hits everyone including the poorest, which is actually good for the Democrat’s style of campaign/governance. They can suck money out of our society then distribute it back as the clumsy, slow, expensive bureaucracies see fit – VISIBLY – so the politicians can take credit for ‘giving’ assistance to people in need.

After receiving criticism from the aerospace world, including Neil Armstrong, on the cancellation of the Constellation program, President Obama has worked out what he thinks is the best path for American space flight. I watched and listened, alongside my colleagues, as our commander in chief stirred up emotions with memories of the 1960′s space race.  He reminded us with his typical eloquence of how, with burning hearts of national pride, paper, pencil, and slide rules, we placed 12 men on the surface of the moon and brought them all back safely.  From there, for me, the inspiration dropped off quickly as the President outlined his plans to land us on an asteroid in 15 years and then orbit (yes, only orbit) Mars in 25 years.  He explained to all of us that we have already been to the moon – been there, done that – and wrote it off as a waste of time and money.

After shaking thoughts of Armageddon and Aerosmith songs from my head, I imagine what value the US will gain from landing on an asteroid.  Keep in mind that the moon is about 237,000 miles from the earth and it took astronauts 8 days to get there, walk around, and get home.  Mars on the other hand, at its closest approach, is 35 million miles away.  I expect fuel-efficient missions to and from Mars would last 1.5 years.  That is quite a difference.  An asteroid, however, at least one we could actually reach, is 5 million miles away, and experts estimate a mission to and from would last 200 days.  The asteroid has no gravity to escape.  This simplifies many things, but creates new obstacles.  Landing softly on the moon and lifting off again requires a lot more fuel than escaping an asteroid.  ”Landing” on an asteroid is not possible, and every step taken would be a push off into space without something to hold the astronaut down.  A spacecraft would have to just float alongside the asteroid.

So what are possible benefits of going to an asteroid?  We would gain valuable experience in longer space missions, learn more about the history of the solar system, possibly gain valuable platinum or other materials, push forward propulsion technology, better radiation shields, and it would be cheaper than landing on the moon.  All of these things would help us get to Mars more safely.

What are the benefits of landing on the moon?  We could gain valuable experience in longer space missions (assuming we stay longer than the Apollo missions), learn more about or natural satellite, possibly gain valuable resources, push forward propulsion technology (because Mars is still the goal), better radiation shields (because we will be in space longer), and we could begin building a permanent base there.

The benefits of both seem similar, except that in the end, you can say you landed on an asteroid (yipee) andgetting to Mars isn’t any cheaper, or you could have machines on the moon harvesting hydrogen for future moon launches to Mars – which long-term, will save money.  I remain skeptical of the intrinsic value of landing on an asteroid rather than the moon.  If I had it my way, we would do both, but an exploding debt and an increase in social program spending makes it nearly impossible.  I hope, in the end, we get to Mars before the Chinese.  And if the President wants to land on an asteroid and I am privileged enough to get on the team that makes it possible, I will do so with pride and the toughness and competence Gene Kranz told us never to forget.