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House Outlaws Obama's NASA Intervention
TopSpin writes "NASA's Constellation Program and Ares rockets appear to have strong support in Congress. An appropriations bill passed by the House includes language that bars 'any efforts by NASA to cancel or change the current Constellation program without first seeking approval of Congress.' The Administration's appointed NASA leadership is being publicly hostile towards its traditional aerospace affiliations. As Charles Bolden put it to industry execs, 'We are going to be fighting and fussing over the coming year,' and 'Some of you are not going to like me because we are not going to do the same kind of things we've always done.'"
It's so very important not to change the carefully crafted pork that these projects tend to be once Congress gets their crusty little fingers on them.
"Our minds are made up, don't confuse us with the facts".
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Well, it can be a little more subtle than that. Eisenhower described the process thusly:
Politicians are concerned about the welfare of their constituents. During wartime/other massive government spending in industry, more and more of those constituents become financially dependent on military/government contractor industry for jobs. To act in the best interest of their constituents, politicians are compelled to continue war, or to make other kinds of major fiscal decisions benefiting those industries.
By promoting massive, wasteful spending on NASA, many politicians could be actively seeking the immediate best interest of their constituents.
Representative democracy should fear the military industrial complex.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
NASA has always been used as a pork barrel, and the engineers who just want to fly birds have both used that shamelessly to get funded, and been victimized by it, in equal turns. It's hard to guess whether they would have created cheaper, simpler designs if feeding billions into the industrial complex (in all 50 states as often as possible) were not the more important goal than flying.
Bottom line, I find it hard to cheer for either side when these spats come up. You always want to take the side of the homies (fund NASA, fly something cool somewhere), but NASA is spending so many millions per kilogram flown that the whole thing will ALWAYS be for a lucky tiny few as long as their big-iron design philosophy is enabled by those who LIVE to spend tax dollars (in their state).
Silver lining though: Americans may have forgotten that their Congress has the power to tell the Executive branch "NO!". That the founders considered the legislature, NOT the executive, the first among three equals, because it directly represents the people on the most frequent election cycle.
Who knows, this "make the executive branch moves illegal" power, now revived for the first time in years, may one day be used to make torture, fake intelligence, and war itself less likely instead of perfectly acceptable.
Clings to the idea? How about trying to reconcile the disaster that was the last eight years of foreign policy? Remember those days where we told just about every other country to do it our way or fuck off?
Yeah, we have a lot of enemies out there. But why not work with those who used to be our friends and try to reconcile our differences for a better world? Contrary to popular belief the United States does not have infinite resources. Money, scientists, natural resources... yeah, you know those things we need to actually make shit?
I'm so sick and tired of people bashing the one president this decade who is actually trying to get my country back in the good light it once had. So if you have no recommendations on how to improve this country - move out or shut the fuck up.
Yea, because Clinton's policy of ignoring problems worked out so well for the US
When Clinton had missiles fired at Ossama Bin Laden, it was all "Wag the dog! He's trying to distract from the important issue of his blowjobs!"
There was a little war in Kosovo...
Yeah, he was ignoring problems just like Bush was eloquent.
You can't take the sky from me...