Slashdot Mirror

I'm not at all surprised you ignored the link I gave you. It even comes with a search box for buzzwords:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/search/site/wiretapping
http://www.whitehouse.gov/search/site/guantanamo
http://www.whitehouse.gov/search/site/usa%20patriot

If your only standard for "change we can believe in" is your own random defintion of which of "my civil liberties" you don't "have back", then you're not arguing from a democratic perspective, you're just denigrating what has been accomplished because you don't want anyone to believe anything has been accomplished.

I'm not at all surprised you ignored the link I gave you. It even comes with a search box for buzzwords:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/search/site/wiretapping
http://www.whitehouse.gov/search/site/guantanamo
http://www.whitehouse.gov/search/site/usa%20patriot

If your only standard for "change we can believe in" is your own random defintion of which of "my civil liberties" you don't "have back", then you're not arguing from a democratic perspective, you're just denigrating what has been accomplished because you don't want anyone to believe anything has been accomplished.

The lie that this administration is not different from the previous one, or that it has not brought about significant change, is the result of persistent propaganda, or maybe flat-out ignorance.

Here. Inform yourself instead of merely entertaining yourself between the Goldline commercials:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room

Since when does NASA have any money? I thought all their budgets had been hacked and slashed by the gov't and other bureaucracies.

The White House actually proposed a budget increase for NASA this year, making it one of the only non-defense discretionary spending agencies to have such an increase proposed for it. The White House wants to use the increase for space technology (including Centennial Challenges), precursor robotic missions, and commercial crew transportation, although a number of folks in Congress want to just use to money to build a multi-billion dollar mega-rocket favoring particular congressional districts instead. Be sure to call up your congresspeople and let them know which you prefer.

The point of the 1st Amendment is to protect UNPOPULAR speech!.

What has happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?"

And what has happened to the promise of the most open and transparent in history?

I'm no supporter of the Obama Administration, but in this case, so what?

The government isn't banning what YOU can read. It's controlling what's on TSA workstations. Considering how much people screw off on company time (and in this case, it's taxpayer time), I'd just as soon see government agencies go back to dumb terminals for things like email and creating/editing documents, and take Internet access out of the equation completely. I work in aviation, and the vast majority of TSA employees are essentially beat cops... except their beat is your luggage. Most of them have no need for access to a computer at all.

The point of the 1st Amendment is to protect UNPOPULAR speech!.

What has happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?"

And what has happened to the promise of the most open and transparent in history?

Man don't be so cynical.
See Article http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Broadband_Award_Roster.pdf

The first grant is just for 5.2 million for 60 people and 20 businesses.
At 50$ per person per month and 150$ per business a month that is just a around $72,000 Per year of revenue for the 5.2 million dollars expense.

Who says Democrats don't know how to properly allocate funds. How I missed the boat on this free money has me needing some serious therapy. Do we have free health care for that yet? :)

Copper Valley Telephone
Cooperative Incorporated
AK This $5.2 million grant/loan middle mile project will allow Cooper Valley Telephone Coop. to extend terrestrial wireless broadband connectivity to
McCarthy, AK. When complete, the project will offer upgraded service to more than 60 Alaskans and nearly 20 local businesses and other
community institutions that currently can only subscribe to satellite service. The project will include significant non-federal investment. Beyond
the jobs it creates upfront, the project will open McCarthy to future economic and business development.

You can explain a good chunk of this as the result of Akamai's world-wide content caching/load balancing solution. The default Akamai plan doesn't get you SSL support, but the thousands and thousands of web servers they have (which host a good 10% of the Internet's web traffic, last I heard) will all reply on the SSL port, and will present a certificate for an Akamai domain name, whether you connect to ocw.mit.edu or www.whitehouse.gov or www.mtv.com or whatever it may be.

In general, this can also be explained by servers that happen to listen on port 443 but aren't intended to do SSL.

First off, a full link to the document (instead of the short fact sheet linked in the original post) is here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/national_space_policy_6-28-10.pdf

It's useful to compare this to the 2006 National Space Policy document issued by the Bush administration:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/national-space-policy-2006.pdf

Space Politics has a pretty good comparison of the two:

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/06/28/the-new-national-space-policy-is-out/

I think the revised section on commercial space is quite promising:

Commercial Space Guidelines
The term "commercial," for the purposes of this policy, refers to space goods, services, or activities provided by private sector enterprises that bear a reasonable portion of the investment risk and responsibility for the activity, operate in accordance with typical market-based incentives for controlling cost
and optimizing return on investment, and have the legal capacity to offer these goods or services to
existing or potential nongovernmental customers . To promote a robust domestic commercial space
industry, departments and agencies shall:
Purchase and use commercial space capabilities and services to the maximum practical extent
when such capabilities and services are available in the marketplace and meet United States
Government requirements;
Modify commercial space capabilities and services to meet government requirements when
existing commercial capabilities and services do not fully meet these requirements and the
potential modification represents a more cost-effective and timely acquisition approach for
the government;
Actively explore the use of inventive, nontraditional arrangements for acquiring commercial
space goods and services to meet United States Government requirements, including measures
such as public-private partnerships, hosting government capabilities on commercial spacecraft,
and purchasing scientific or operational data products from commercial satellite operators in
support of government missions;
Develop governmental space systems only when it is in the national interest and there is no
suitable, cost-effective U .S . commercial or, as appropriate, foreign commercial service or system
that is or will be available;
Refrain from conducting United States Government space activities that preclude, discourage,
or compete with U .S . commercial space activities, unless required by national security or public
safety;
Pursue potential opportunities for transferring routine, operational space functions to the
commercial space sector where beneficial and cost-effective, except where the government
has legal, security, or safety needs that would preclude commercialization;
Cultivate increased technological innovation and entrepreneurship in the commercial space
sector through the use of incentives such as prizes and competitions;
Ensure that United States Government space technology and infrastructure are made available
for commercial use on a reimbursable, noninterference, and equitable basis to the maximum
practical extent;
Minimize, as much as possible, the regulatory burden for commercial space activities and ensure
that the regulatory environment for licensing space activities is timely and responsive;
Foster fair and open global trade and commerce through the promotion of suitable standards
and regulations that have been developed with input from U .S . industry;
Encourage the purchase and us

First off, a full link to the document (instead of the short fact sheet linked in the original post) is here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/national_space_policy_6-28-10.pdf

It's useful to compare this to the 2006 National Space Policy document issued by the Bush administration:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/national-space-policy-2006.pdf

Space Politics has a pretty good comparison of the two:

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/06/28/the-new-national-space-policy-is-out/

I think the revised section on commercial space is quite promising:

Commercial Space Guidelines
The term "commercial," for the purposes of this policy, refers to space goods, services, or activities provided by private sector enterprises that bear a reasonable portion of the investment risk and responsibility for the activity, operate in accordance with typical market-based incentives for controlling cost
and optimizing return on investment, and have the legal capacity to offer these goods or services to
existing or potential nongovernmental customers . To promote a robust domestic commercial space
industry, departments and agencies shall:
Purchase and use commercial space capabilities and services to the maximum practical extent
when such capabilities and services are available in the marketplace and meet United States
Government requirements;
Modify commercial space capabilities and services to meet government requirements when
existing commercial capabilities and services do not fully meet these requirements and the
potential modification represents a more cost-effective and timely acquisition approach for
the government;
Actively explore the use of inventive, nontraditional arrangements for acquiring commercial
space goods and services to meet United States Government requirements, including measures
such as public-private partnerships, hosting government capabilities on commercial spacecraft,
and purchasing scientific or operational data products from commercial satellite operators in
support of government missions;
Develop governmental space systems only when it is in the national interest and there is no
suitable, cost-effective U .S . commercial or, as appropriate, foreign commercial service or system
that is or will be available;
Refrain from conducting United States Government space activities that preclude, discourage,
or compete with U .S . commercial space activities, unless required by national security or public
safety;
Pursue potential opportunities for transferring routine, operational space functions to the
commercial space sector where beneficial and cost-effective, except where the government
has legal, security, or safety needs that would preclude commercialization;
Cultivate increased technological innovation and entrepreneurship in the commercial space
sector through the use of incentives such as prizes and competitions;
Ensure that United States Government space technology and infrastructure are made available
for commercial use on a reimbursable, noninterference, and equitable basis to the maximum
practical extent;
Minimize, as much as possible, the regulatory burden for commercial space activities and ensure
that the regulatory environment for licensing space activities is timely and responsive;
Foster fair and open global trade and commerce through the promotion of suitable standards
and regulations that have been developed with input from U .S . industry;
Encourage the purchase and us

There are three new papers on this subject on the Whitehouse.gov site today -- one is a fact sheet, one is the Presidential memorandum on the subject, and one is Larry Summers' prepared remarks to the New America Foundation.

If one reads them one discovers that, as Larry Summers' remarks put it,

The President’s plan has four parts:

First, identify and plan for the release of 500 MHz of spectrum.

In order to achieve this, we need a two-pronged strategy that focuses on the opportunities to use both Federal and commercial spectrum more efficiently and to free up spectrum for new uses such as wireless broadband.
First, the government will examine how we are currently using spectrum and identify areas for improvement, consolidation, or sharing. To that end, we are pursuing a separate fast-track process to identify a down payment of specific bands of spectrum that could be freed up.
Second, we will encourage commercial spectrum holders to avail themselves of opportunities to transition their uses if there are more efficient possible uses of their spectrum.
While we go forward with this planning process, the Department of Commerce and the FCC are also conducting an inventory of spectrum use that will help inform potential end-users of the spectrum and improve transactions in secondary markets.

The second part of the President’s plan is to provide new tools and new incentives to free up spectrum.

[...]

Third, redeploy the spectrum to high-value uses.

[...]

Fourth and finally, use the auction proceeds to promote public safety and job-creating infrastructure investment.

It's clear from this that the frequencies have not yet been found -- this initiative is essentially a command to the FCC to go out and find 500 MHz. Somehow. Somewhere.

There are three new papers on this subject on the Whitehouse.gov site today -- one is a fact sheet, one is the Presidential memorandum on the subject, and one is Larry Summers' prepared remarks to the New America Foundation.

If one reads them one discovers that, as Larry Summers' remarks put it,

The President’s plan has four parts:

First, identify and plan for the release of 500 MHz of spectrum.

In order to achieve this, we need a two-pronged strategy that focuses on the opportunities to use both Federal and commercial spectrum more efficiently and to free up spectrum for new uses such as wireless broadband.
First, the government will examine how we are currently using spectrum and identify areas for improvement, consolidation, or sharing. To that end, we are pursuing a separate fast-track process to identify a down payment of specific bands of spectrum that could be freed up.
Second, we will encourage commercial spectrum holders to avail themselves of opportunities to transition their uses if there are more efficient possible uses of their spectrum.
While we go forward with this planning process, the Department of Commerce and the FCC are also conducting an inventory of spectrum use that will help inform potential end-users of the spectrum and improve transactions in secondary markets.

The second part of the President’s plan is to provide new tools and new incentives to free up spectrum.

[...]

Third, redeploy the spectrum to high-value uses.

[...]

Fourth and finally, use the auction proceeds to promote public safety and job-creating infrastructure investment.

It's clear from this that the frequencies have not yet been found -- this initiative is essentially a command to the FCC to go out and find 500 MHz. Somehow. Somewhere.

There are three new papers on this subject on the Whitehouse.gov site today -- one is a fact sheet, one is the Presidential memorandum on the subject, and one is Larry Summers' prepared remarks to the New America Foundation.

If one reads them one discovers that, as Larry Summers' remarks put it,

The President’s plan has four parts:

First, identify and plan for the release of 500 MHz of spectrum.

In order to achieve this, we need a two-pronged strategy that focuses on the opportunities to use both Federal and commercial spectrum more efficiently and to free up spectrum for new uses such as wireless broadband.
First, the government will examine how we are currently using spectrum and identify areas for improvement, consolidation, or sharing. To that end, we are pursuing a separate fast-track process to identify a down payment of specific bands of spectrum that could be freed up.
Second, we will encourage commercial spectrum holders to avail themselves of opportunities to transition their uses if there are more efficient possible uses of their spectrum.
While we go forward with this planning process, the Department of Commerce and the FCC are also conducting an inventory of spectrum use that will help inform potential end-users of the spectrum and improve transactions in secondary markets.

The second part of the President’s plan is to provide new tools and new incentives to free up spectrum.

[...]

Third, redeploy the spectrum to high-value uses.

[...]

Fourth and finally, use the auction proceeds to promote public safety and job-creating infrastructure investment.

It's clear from this that the frequencies have not yet been found -- this initiative is essentially a command to the FCC to go out and find 500 MHz. Somehow. Somewhere.

There are three new papers on this subject on the Whitehouse.gov site today -- one is a fact sheet, one is the Presidential memorandum on the subject, and one is Larry Summers' prepared remarks to the New America Foundation.

If one reads them one discovers that, as Larry Summers' remarks put it,

The President’s plan has four parts:

First, identify and plan for the release of 500 MHz of spectrum.

In order to achieve this, we need a two-pronged strategy that focuses on the opportunities to use both Federal and commercial spectrum more efficiently and to free up spectrum for new uses such as wireless broadband.
First, the government will examine how we are currently using spectrum and identify areas for improvement, consolidation, or sharing. To that end, we are pursuing a separate fast-track process to identify a down payment of specific bands of spectrum that could be freed up.
Second, we will encourage commercial spectrum holders to avail themselves of opportunities to transition their uses if there are more efficient possible uses of their spectrum.
While we go forward with this planning process, the Department of Commerce and the FCC are also conducting an inventory of spectrum use that will help inform potential end-users of the spectrum and improve transactions in secondary markets.

The second part of the President’s plan is to provide new tools and new incentives to free up spectrum.

[...]

Third, redeploy the spectrum to high-value uses.

[...]

Fourth and finally, use the auction proceeds to promote public safety and job-creating infrastructure investment.

It's clear from this that the frequencies have not yet been found -- this initiative is essentially a command to the FCC to go out and find 500 MHz. Somehow. Somewhere.

This is a post I wrote for another forum on the subject of the Obama Administration's just released vision of intellectual property rights enforcement (as reported by DailyTech, which I assume to be a prelude or complement to ACTA:

The fact is, as others have often pointed out, digital information wants to be free. You can turn the whole world into criminals trying to fight that simple truth, but it's only going to create a virtual international police state. I don't want that, and I don't think you want that, either. If copyright infringement is that damaging to your bottom line, I think you have to figure out other ways to monetize your product.

There's only one analogous example to the grip of the media cartels that I can think of. Government and other organized labor employees are destroying the industrialized world with their lavish pensions and other benefits. They work 30 or 40 years and then demand and get guaranteed pensions for the rest of their lives, even while the countries they're sucking dry are going into national bankruptcy. Politicians naturally assume they'll just raise taxes ever higher in order to pay off these corrupt deals. May people know about the serious financial problems posed to the US by the public entitlements of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But nearly no one discusses the fact that Government Employee Entitlement costs are almost as large as the public Entitlements.

Similarly, with copyright protected media, the creator produces something once and then expects to receive guaranteed income from it forever. But in this case it's not even the original creator who gets most of the recurring revenue - it's the media cartel that distributes his or her product. Despite the fact that the march of technology has changed the way we interact with distributed media, some still expect to get rewarded financially in the same fashion that they were rewarded prior to the consumer Internet age.

Now here's the thing, I have a limited amount of respect for copyrights. I think granting a limited-time narrow monopoly to the creator of a given product is a desirable trade-off to support the creation of works of art and science. But the key word is limited. The Constitution calls for limited-time copyrights, but as time has gone on copyrights have gone from limited to unlimited, and now the media cartels want to turn the Internet into a virtual police state to enforce their permanent monopolies. If enforcement provisions like the ones envisioned go into effect, we're on a very slippery slope to the death of the Internet as we know it. If a person can be prosecuted for a random search term that may draw the wrath of the media cartels, then that means it's no longer safe to surf various sites and click links to different pages indiscriminately. Remember, we're talking about merely searching for terms that the media cartels think may lead to an infringing download, not the infringing download itself. What this is referred to as in the law is an "inchoate offense" - a violation of the law the precedes the actual illegal act, and it's a very controversial subject because of the far-reaching implications involved. When the media cartels get that kind of power over our online lives, it means they've taken things way, way, too far. And make no mistake - this will be a slippery slope. If government can snoop on search engine keywords to help the media cartels, what's next? Logically keyword searches about anything that could arouse even minor suspicion could put a user in danger. What this announcement looks like to me is a "War on Digital Piracy," and just like the "War on Drugs" it will certainly ensnare many innocent people, erode liberties and be of dubious value - if not harmful in all respects.

Is this a Socialist move? Yes, I believe

I'm little confused after reading Espinel's brief introduction at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/intellectualproperty/ipec/. How is a poisonous "counterfeit" toothpaste related to intellectual properties when supposed "counterfeit" toothpaste isn't actually violating IP since it's using poison and not the same product as the authentic one. And how is this example pertinent to IP issue? Shouldn't this fall under customs and product safety, or FDA??? It's somewhat irksome to think a head IP person in the US is actually using this type of analogy as a rationale for IP protection. It feels like US is gradually turning into a protectionist country, locking down on old innovation to protect its IP rights against the global thugs. This is going to look ugly, with US looking like an old wrinkly lady trying to protect her own turf at any cost instead of encouraging collaboration and partnerships... I think the assumed enemy of IPs is China here...

You said,

If the government was acting in OUR interest, it would force places like Walmart to accept returns of CDs and DVDs.

The government is acting in your best interests. More specifically it is acting to protect the children against dangerous counterfeit goods. According too our Copyright Czar,

U.S. Customs officials have seized several shipments of counterfeit toothpaste containing a dangerous amount of diethylene glycol, a chemical used in brake fluid, and that in sufficient doses is believed to cause kidney failure.

Children unfortunately use toothpaste. The United States of America is a law abiding country, so we need to protect people from criminals who commit illegal acts. It is your patriotic duty to uphold the laws of the United States of America. If you don't like the laws, or think they are too strict, then you can always vote in a Republican President during the next election.

For every one of those CD's that you sample without paying for, there are millions of dollars of money and spin off jobs that the RIAA, its lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, bookkeepers, musicians, officer cleaners, etc and so on lose, just because you wouldn't pay for a CD that you didn't like but decided to listen to anyways. All of this money could be used to pay taxes to pay for more robust Internet filters at schools and in libraries. Think about it. Your behavior is directly hurting children!

It seems that acting can lead to the highest offices in places other than California."

Like... the United States (which isn't entirely composed of California, in spite of rumors)?

I don't see how the "per employee budget" figure has anything to do with, well, anything. Essentially, these employees are tasked with spreading this money through several different educational systems. The total K-12 budget *alone* is about half a trillion, according to The National Center for Education Statistics. The federal contribution here is so paltry that I'm happy to argue that there is not enough federal support for education.

You are entirely wrong about the ED only being involved in K-12. They're involved in pre-school. They're involved in higher education. They're involved in technical/vocational training. The Pell Grant program is sponsored and administered by the Department of Education, as is the federal work-study program.

Also, according to their own budget, the figure is $46B, not $68B.

Angle doesn't want to "get rid of" SS and Medicare, she wants to "phase them out." You must see the contradiction there.

Explain to me exactly where I described myself as "pro-slavery." In fact, show me where anyone, anywhere on this thread described themselves as "pro-slavery?" Yes, violent revolution is necessary sometimes. But only you, Glenn Beck, and those idiot militia people who were planning to ambush cops think that now is one of those times.

Do you consider yourself to be in a state of "intractable oppression?" Why? Because the government takes some of the money that society supported you in earning, and uses it to support others, under laws passed by your fellow citizens in a democratic system? Dude, you aren't oppressed. In fact, you're being grossly insulting to people who are.

The old Tea Party slogan was "no taxation without representation." It looks to me like the new Tea Party took a sharpie and scribbled out those last two words.

Back on topic: I looked up what Sharon Angle actually said about violent revolution, and it's pretty clear that she believes that, when Thomas Jefferson talked about violent revolution against oppressive governments, the current Democratic government is exactly what he had in mind. That's short of the characterization in the original post, but not very. I don't imagine that these public statements of hers are going to endear her to the people of Nevada.

There are a lot of big messes going on right now, people. Any one of them would be the most notable thing to happen in a presidency - and we're getting all of them at once. He inherits two wars, a historic recession, and now possibly the worst ecological disaster in US history.

He didn't inherit anything. He applied for the job. Now he's got it. He promised no offshore drilling. He didn't deliver. Now look at the mess. He promised:

He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.

Wow, what a huge failure he turned out to be. Now people like you are defending this incompetence to rationalize the fact that YOU voted for him. And don't try to turn this into some sort of red state/blue state bullshit. Get your ass waist deep in that oil and then tell me about what a great fucking job he's doing.

The government should hire all they can to contain and control the situation

They already have (and have had) a page set up specifically for this.

and make BP pay for it, since BP won't act on their own to minimize profits damages instead of environmental damages.

They are trying to, but many Republicans are blocking legislation to raise or remove the liability cap.

That's what they are already doing, though...what else do you want from them?

Well since I can't really link to the civics and government texts I learned from in 5th grade through undergrad, Wiki will have to do.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/executive-branch
http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/legislative-branch
http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/judicial-branch

There, that better?

Well since I can't really link to the civics and government texts I learned from in 5th grade through undergrad, Wiki will have to do.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/executive-branch
http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/legislative-branch
http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/judicial-branch

There, that better?

Well since I can't really link to the civics and government texts I learned from in 5th grade through undergrad, Wiki will have to do.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/executive-branch
http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/legislative-branch
http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/judicial-branch

There, that better?

Yeah, i totally agree with you that the devices can be modified. I think the difference between us is trust in the government.

Take browser cookies for example.. government websites can't use them and so far they've done a good job enforcing that. Even though it would be super simple to enable such a feature and few would notice, it hasn't happened. I should say that Obama is trying to change this before someone jumps in (Executive's take on cookies: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Federal-Websites-Cookie-Policy/). Just like you said about a new politico wanting to change the limits. But they can't just do it, they have to get permission.

There are plenty of great people working for the US Gov that have trust / paranoid issues that i'm sure a whistleblower would come forward about unlawful use of the devices.

I don't know, typing this out i can see how something good could become bad within a short ammount of time. But like i said, i think i trust the Government enough not to. If there was a way they could enforce speed limits without the privacy concerns, that would be great.

You've got your facts wrong. Scott McNealy was never slated to become the Obama administration's Open Source Technology adviser. According to the articles you referenced, all he was going to do was write a paper:

Scott McNealy "revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject (open source technologies and products) for the new administration."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7841486.stm

"According to BBC News, the Obama administration has asked Sun chairman McNealy for a position statement justifying the administration's use of open source software. The BBC wasn't clear on who specifically asked him, but McNealy's spokesperson, on a query by the Linux community, acknowledged that McNealy had been meeting over the last year with members of the administration's new technology initiative, which apparently led to this request."
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Sun-s-McNealy-Advises-Obama-Administration-on-Open-Source

I don't know if Scott ever got around to writing that paper. Searching the White House website for papers on Open Source, the only one I found was here:

Open Source Software and Cyber Defense
A White Paper provided to the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council as input to the White House Review of Communications and Information Infrastructure.
Bob Gourley, Chief Technology Officer, Crucial Point LLC
http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/cyber/Gourley_Bob_Open_Source_Software_and_Cyber_Defense_01_April_2009.pdf

Senior staff positions at places like the SEC are exactly the types of position that change when a new Administration comes to power. In comparison to a country like Britain, where the civil service is largely tenured and only the Cabinet changes, American presidents appoint literally thousands of people throughout the Executive Branch.

I thought the comments from the Republicans in the article were rather surprising. All of these events took place during the Bush administration, and many of the staff involved were probably Bush appointees.

The real scandal here is the staffing of regulatory agencies by opponents of regulation, a common practice during the Bush Administration. One of the most effective "deregulatory" actions of that Administration was having their appointees to regulatory bodies sit on their hands for four or eight years. For another example, see this article contrasting antitrust policies at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.

The majority of the Senate voted to block funds necessary to transfer detainees. The Republicans then made a huge deal about it and turned into a political nightmare. Obama has pressed forward with preparing facilities in the US and on trials, regardless.

Also, do I need to post sources or are we just ignoring those now? Here's the senate block, here's Obama pressing forward with a memorandum.

Given how quickly almost all of the Senate blocked the transfer of prisoners, I think he's doing quite well. Unfortunately, the President can scoff at Congress' decisions only to a certain degree, and it takes a lot of legal wrangling to get around Congress denying funding for transferring inmates.

.
The departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Homeland security, HUD, State, Treasury, VA, SBA, SSA, NSA, Judicial, Legislative, and the White House all get pretty big steps up. Even NASA got a 2.9% increase in funding. In fact, a pretty strong majority received increases as compared to those who received budgetary decreases.

So now I don't just doubt your claim, I completely discount it as false and hyperbole.

Sure, go ahead and mod me down, but you can't escape the fact that Obama is facing a reality where the budget needs to be cut to bring the deficit under control, whereas the past administration and congress continually lived in fantasyland believing that they could spend whatever they wanted.

Actually the NASA budget is not slated to be cut; it will still increase at about the pace of inflation, meaning it will essentially hold steady. Canceling the moon program merely frees up more resources to be spent elsewhere, on programs you described which were sacrificed in the name of the Constellation program.

That said, I believe it's a mistake to cancel the program instead of funding it. Since it is widely regarded as an essential stepping stone, and will thus be necessary at some point, delaying the manned moon program will only set us back further in relation to other countries (Japan, China, Russia, India(?)) and collectives (ESA).

NASA's $19B budget is a tiny fraction of Federal spending: between 0.5% and 1%, historically, for the past 30 years. Compare that to the DHS budget, which has doubled from 23.3B in 2003 to $56B today, just shy of 3x NASA's budget. If you consider DHS to be the manifestation of loss aversion, and NASA to be the manifestation of aspiration and progress, which I think are fair characterizations, then loss aversion is limiting progress (as it often does). Of course it's not a strict dichotomy between DHS and NASA, but I find it ridiculous that we have no shortage of funds for Security Theater while science and technology suffer.

I'm extremely disappointed that the Obama administration -- one ostensibly dedicated to advancing science and technology -- has decided to scrap this program.

How are all those Obama promises of change working out for you folks that supported him and voted for him?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/

"My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use."

"Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government."

"Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperateamong themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/03/05/weekly-address-what-health-reform-will-deliver-year would be a good start - why not ask the guy who wrote it?

I've seen a lot of posts wanting capitalist reform (some would say republican ideas). FYI, alot of these things are in the bill. http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-meeting/republican-ideas

Well, kind of - but you have to stop reading the slanted news from Fox, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC and start going to the horse's mouth. Go to the actual proposal on whitehouse.gov and read it for yourself.

In it you will see that there is an expansion of Medicaid and Medicare (both government run insurance last I checked), a tax on those who are uninsured to cover then when they need public health care, and funding for "community health centers".

I am not commenting on whether this is good or bad (I think it has some of both) but you should know what is being proposed and to say there is nothing "government run" means you don't know what is in the proposal.

Right here.

Established by George W Bush, and kept by Barack H Obama. Some of the controversy around that office includes the fact that the organizations that are funded by it are almost universally Christian-run, and have in some cases had the government funding put into evangelizing a particular variety of Christian faith.

I know that Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior and is trying to do everything he can to boost the current US economy, but those of us who are knowledgeable and have a strong opinion on this should contact the White House as well as your Senators and Congresspeople to let them know why we should not be supporting ACTA.

White House:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Senators:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Congresspeople:
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

A lot of good that will do to buttered hands and well-paid lobbyists with personal access to those in power.

But I would agree we should all still do this. As soon as our calls and letters stop, America loses. I'm only being realistic when I say it probably won't work, but you never know, our leaders have listened to us before *sarcasm*.

Yeah, People could just listen to the president directly. White House
One-click, 5 minutes of their time

Imaginary property hurts us all.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

I know that Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior and is trying to do everything he can to boost the current US economy, but those of us who are knowledgeable and have a strong opinion on this should contact the White House as well as your Senators and Congresspeople to let them know why we should not be supporting ACTA.

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Congresspeople: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

For some reason this only got posted to the politics.slashdot page (where it's gotten all of 2 comments), but since I figured others would be interested in learning more I'll re-post the details here, with relevant links included:

The White House has announced that on April 15 the President will be visiting Florida to host a conference on the Administration's 'new vision for America's future in space,' which is focused on developing new technologies and capabilities needed for sustainable exploration of 'the Moon, asteroids, and eventually Mars.' The White House's plans for reinvigorating NASA are facing vocal opposition from several congressmen in Florida, Texas, and Alabama, due to its outright cancellation of the Constellation/Ares program, which was found to be 'fundamentally un-executable' but is/was an important source of jobs in many areas.

phantomfive wrote: "we have Republicans who say, 'government is too big, we need to either cut it or cut its budget'"

You didn't put enough emphasis on the word SAY. Republicans **say** government is too big, but what they mean is: give some of that money to our interest groups (defense, fossil fuel, financial, health insurance, etc. companies). I'm not defending Democratic spending--I'm just saying at least they don't lie about it.

Look it up: spending under Republican presidents Reagan, Bush1, and Bush2 all went way up.
Reagan - 80% increase
Bush1 - 30% increase
Bush2 - 67% increase

source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/hist.pdf

If you use open source, then you're a pirate? Ok, slap him in prison. go on, I'd love to see them try :)

I would certainly hope that if a law was passed outlawing OSS, that the President would not be above that law.

If you use open source, then you're a pirate? Ok, slap him in prison. go on, I'd love to see them try :)

All regulatory agencies do this, because it is required by Executive Order 12866.

These comments should be directed at the White House. Venting it here doesn't help anything. http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact I just finished writing them to complain and you should too.

Note that plenty of OTHER PEOPLE have made a big deal about it, but surely you don't claim that Obama should have denied their free speech, do you?

Of course not. There are very limited reasons where the government can curtail the speech of citizens and that certainly wouldn't qualify

There seems to be a lot of assumption that Obama wants to clamp down on people / companies using these images to prevent using them to make it appear that Obama has endorsed something. Firstly, that does not really fall under copyright laws, that would fall under fraud. Secondly, some time spent searching the net yields no clear cases of this having happened, except for the one mentioned in the summary. For those of you that suggest this is the reason, please provide sources. I do not believe that this is a rampant problem.

Also, as someone else has stated the Whitehouse has three conflicting messages on the use of photos

1. Creative Commons: http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright
2. Statement on Flickr photo stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/4331402906/
3. USA.gov copyright policy: http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml

Numbers 1 and 2 would seem to be in conflict with number 3, which I believe is the proper way.

...using Creative Commons like they already are? Creative commons already states that on most of their licenses that you can't use whatever is licensed in a way that makes it seem like the copyright holder (in this case, the US government) endorse you or your derivative work (without permission, of course, like if Obama officially said that he approved of something). I mean, really, there's WAY more than only two choices, and Creative Commons just makes sense to use.

I suspect you probably already know about this, but it looks like CAM is one of the things the newly-announced initiative for NASA is looking to bring back:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/factsheet_department_nasa/

$183 million to extend operations of the ISS past its previously planned retirement date of 2016. NASA will deploy new research facilities to conduct scientific research and test technologies in space. New capabilities could include a centrifuge to support research into human physiology, inflatable space habitats, and a program to continuously upgrade Space Station capabilities.

Always a horrifying thought, being reported by your neighbors.

    I work with an elderly West German lady. She was telling me that her East German friends had grown a lifetime of distrust for just about everyone. Some East Germans that grew up steeped in this mindset still keep new friends at arm's length, even today.

Also, the story reminded me of this gem:
There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/