Slashdot Mirror
Romney-Ryan Release Space Policy Paper
RocketAcademy writes "The Romney-Ryan campaign has released a white paper on space policy, which observers find to be long on criticisms of the Obama Administration but short on specific recommendations. The policy promises 'a robust role for commercial space,' but it's clearly a supporting role: 'NASA will set the goals and lead the way in human space exploration.' When it comes to space, both parties put government ahead of private enterprise. Some see a parallel with the policies which are driving space companies out of California. Newt Gingrich, one of the few politicians who thinks seriously about space, says the policy is a step in the right direction but not enough."
47% of space is lazy...
What NASA needs is a specific goal (moon in this decade), and the money to achieve it, free of political constraints. None of this "No ATK, no $$$" garbage.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Romney thinks the windows in our space craft need to be able to open.. ya know, in case there is a fire and they need to let the smoke out.
Bottom line is, if you can't afford insurance, you have no business getting free health care financed by the rest of us. Find a free clinic.
And who pays for this "free" clinic?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Whoa so wait a minute... Romney's policy is almost identical to Obama's? What a shocker! Who could have predicted such a thing, when they are so.diametrically opposed on every other issue? Gee, that makes it so much harder to decide which tyrant to vote for.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no - and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous.
Clearly, Romney is an expert on these things, so I hope they take his input seriously in the design phase. We wouldn't want future astronauts dying from not being able to open their windows.
(yes, I know I'll be moderated down for this. but I've got karma to burn - even if I can't get oxygen at 30,000 feet to burn it with)
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Bottom line is, if you can't afford insurance, you have no business getting free health care financed by the rest of us. Find a free clinic.
And who pays for this "free" clinic?
Magic. Magic pays for everything. It's the new fiscal accounting model.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We can blame ether side all we want, but the truth is that without a perceived threat there isn't any political power to throw to NASA. If their was a known killer asteroid that was going to hit in 10 years we'd put every penny of the defense budget towards stopping it. If North Korea were building a lunar station we'd do everything to get one up first. But without the credible threat of something like what USSR presented we have no motivation other than just "to do it". I'm sorry but as much as we like to think we do things just because we can we do things a lot faster when you're in fear for your life.
1:Science and innovation important, some how having nasa means our workforce is some how more scientifically educated and skilled. Which makes no sense because I thought education did that, not Nasa.
2: Space is important some how to a bunch of industries, despite the only real importance being research and satellite launching.
3:Military in space good, need to secure space against space terrorists. More money to defense contractors. Could be hostile aliens?
4:Nasa and our space program is like fancy armor in WoW, it is the international penis we can wave in the face of non-space faring countries. People respect space penis. Also private space penis is good too.
Restate all the above and say that the country needs clear and concise leadership etc.
pretentious quote by me. Who quotes themselves in their own policies? I do. I'm that awesome
Huge diatribe on how Obama is bad and stuff. Also commercial space stuff is good
They are if there's a tax penalty in it levied under the FBAR Amnesty program because his Swiss bank threatened to report his numbered account to the IRS.
That program is for two people: those who are completely ignorant of the tax code because they just immigrated into the US and were told too late what to do with offshore accounts, and those who tried to hide capital gains from the IRS. The first one doesn't apply the Romney, and the second ought to really make you question why Romney is running.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Do you really think that parents that take their kids to the ER for a fever and/or ear infection are going to suddenly stop taking their kids to the ER and go to their regular doctor? Do you really think that the homeless, who account for a large percentage of ER costs, are going to find a doctor who will take them that doesn't work in an ER?
Mitt's plan is to let the States work this out for themselves. In some states that can be Robamacare and in others it can be insurance and tort reform. Tort reform would save the system more money then any of the current proposals.
January 27, 2012 Republican debate:
“I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, ‘You’re fired!’” -Mitt Romney
Calling for anything other than a minimal to nonexistent manned space program is hypocrisy for Mitt Romney.
Simple, Ryan has this one covered...
You just have to rob a bank to steal the money to pay for your health care. If you get away, you can now afford it. And if you get caught, no worries, the government will now pay for all of your health care, food, and lodgings anyway.
Anywhoodlidoodle, don't worry sir(or ma'am), you need not fear paying for check-ups, immunizations, and whatnot. You can simply wait and pay tons more for what could have been easily preventable emergency care. Just like Rand would have wanted.
Actually, ol' Ayn would have preferred they die in the street, assuming it's not a street she frequents.
Who pays to clear the bodies away?
If he's going to be President of a country who's attitude on individual privacy can now be summed up as "if you didn't do anything wrong, what are you hiding?" then yes, I think it's very relevant.
Wow, Magic Johnson must pay a LOT of taxes to cover for medicare alone!
Tomorrow is another day...
Both may be appropriate.
Then again, once Romney announces he's going to repeal the Patriot Act, fix the TSA and abolish the DHS, and prohibit all warrantless wiretapping and illegal imprisonment of US citizens, I'll consider his own right to privacy worth defending...
Do you care to discuss this point using reason and logic, or it this just flamebait?
Honest question, it is worth discussing.
Intellectual honesty, or coward? Just asking,
I'd point out something about anonymous coward and finger pointing, but don't expect you have the grace to say, "Touché"
Sometimes it's just about having a little light hearted fun, after all this is a political thread. I don't expect anything in here to influence a vote, one way or the other.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well yeah, they'll have insurance. These people aren't hopeless morons, and they love their children and what whats best for them. Indigent homeless are trickier, but you see a lot of working homeless families lining up around the block to get their non-emergent medical needs addressed. Under a
You forgot to call the President "hopey changey," or make a reference to the "democrat party." Minus two points.
Tort reform is a bit of a red herring. Orrin Hatch's Tort Reform proposals in '09 would have saved about $54 billion, which isn't chump change, but it would only reduce total national health spending by 0.5%. So we could claim that money on the table, but the limitations in Hatch's proposal specifically were extremely low, to the extent that they reduced pain and suffering awards to a slap on the wrist and would probably cause incidents of malpractice to increase.
State-by-state solutions are doomed in the US because of regulatory arbitrage. Employers and tax units in states with expensive programs can simply move their paper addresses to states with lower tax liability. Insurance companies can shop around for states that offer them the most favorable regulation (the ones with the least customer protections), and employers can play states off each other to obtain favorable tax treatment. States simply can't design their own programs when the employers within it can simply evade the costs of the system by filing paperwork, while enjoying all the benefits of the system by dumping their employees into the state public program. A state-by-state healthcare system in the US would end up looking a lot like the consumer credit card system in the US, which is to say, we'd all have whatever rights the North Dakota and Delaware legislature had agreed to, because they were the highest bidder for the health insurance company's business.
"States' Rights" has been keeping 60's-style state capitalism alive for decades, by giving employers a huge stick with which they can extract free services from a state government, guised under the threat of "killing jobs." An employer simply threatens to move unless they can stay tax-free, dumping the costs of roads, schools, police, and health care on everyone else.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
At least they are still alive, and not lying face down in a gutter. And of course those inadequate facilities are probably still costing taxpayers about 10x what providing basic insurance would...
Always amazing the stupid decisions people (politicians and voters) will make with emotion or spite over reason. Reminds me of the CA death penalty. 13 people have been executed since it was reinstated in 1978, at a cost of about $4B. And the process takes so long that over *80* death row inmates have died of other causes. So $200M a year has been wasted just to wait around for 90% of the inmates to die on their own, same as in life without parole.
That's correct. They skipped the "flip" part and just flopped.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I got mine fuck you. I certainly hope you don't call yourself a good christian/human being
Tort reform would save the system more money then any of the current proposals.
That, unfortunately, is unlikely to be true.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751009
No matter how you 'reform' the system there will remain some liability.
Do you really think that parents that take their kids to the ER for a fever and/or ear infection are going to suddenly stop taking their kids to the ER and go to their regular doctor?
You never stop it completely. But after they've waiting 5 hours in an ER once, versus getting an appointment the next day with their family physician the problem isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. This has the downside of inflating ER wait times considerably in Canada and the UK for example, but most sane parents get the message.
The US spends almost 18% of GDP on healthcare. France and the UK both have better healthcare and come in around 10-12% of GDP. The best way to save money would be to copy either of their systems and tell the insurance companies to GTFO, you'd get better care for about half the price. Effectively this would be the same as extending medicare or medicaid to everyone with some relatively minor adjustments. Right now you've decided to copy the swiss system (which is still better than the US system by far), so it's something, but it could be better.
Keep in mind that part of medical lawsuits is the (entirely justifiable) cost of fixing whatever went wrong. When you have socialized care you still have that cost - but it's not a lawsuit anymore, the cash transaction is much smaller, so lawyers are taking less of a cut on top of it, and it becomes a system problem to try and reduce the cost fro accidents, rather than a liability problem to shield yourself from bankruptcy due to the cost of making a mistake.
They face a declining budget each year and have to try find ways to make it streach and what projects should cover it.
Like any far-flung political governemnt organization, not all parts of NASA are created equal.
If you look at the "top" line budgeting for NASA, you'll see the following...
Decreasing funding...
Operations: FY11: $5.1B, FY12: $4.2B, FY13: $4.0B (e.g., shuttle, ISS)
Pretty steady funding...
Science: FY11: $4.9B, FY12: $5.0B, FY13: $4.9B (stuff like the James Web Telescope, LandSat, MSL experiments)
Exploration: FY11: $3.8B, FY12: $3.7B, FY13: $3.9B (rover development, Orion, space commercialization grants)
Cross Agency: FY11: $2.9B, FY12: $2.9B, FY13: $2.8B (overhead, people, buildings, pork, etc)
Aeronautics: FY11: $530M, FY12: $570M, FY13: $550M (all that nextgen airtraffic control stuff)
Increasing funding...
Space Tech: FY11: $450M, FY12: $570M, FY13: $700M (all the researchy stuff you are talking about)
Of course for longer term aggregate budgetary trends, you could also look at a wiki and you can see how your statement about "declining budgets" isn't really true at all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
It just seems like Nasa is getting less money since its percentage of the total federal budget has been shrinking (from 1% in the 90's to less than 0.5% today). However, in real dollars it's been about the same for a long while. Unfortunatly, the rest of the government has been getting bloated. Maybe that's the space-nerd in you feeling like Nasa is getting gyped relative to other federal spending.
Still, getting "gyped" no excuse for not getting something from the $450-700M/year we are spending on researching new Space Tech for the last 30 years. The strategy to attempt to garner sympathy for failure by pointing out others got more help is excuse of a kindergardener... Sure there are political winds to navigate, but that's the game you have to play when the tab is being picked up by a bunch of finiky taxpayers.
I didn't know Paul Ryan was a Democrat. Sorry when he spoke at the Republican national convention, I thought he was a Republican. I mistook him for the same Senator Paul Ryan that criticized the President for not ramming the budget through Congress, the same budget that Republicans like Paul Ryan actively tried to defeat. There must be like six Paul Ryans in Congress these days.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Bottom line is, if you can't afford insurance, you have no business getting free health care financed by the rest of us. Find a free clinic.
And who pays for this "free" clinic?
WTF does this have to do with TFA about Romney and space? This is why I dont like reading /. anymore
"I don't want a president who looks like a game show host." - David Letterman
Obama released 12 years worth of tax returns. Stay with us AC, the thread is not that complicated...
Thread drift is a hallowed part of /. history. From the time I joined after lurking for a while, thread drift has become a major feature of this atmosphere. To ensure you like it, next time you get mod points, use the Offtopic mod.
Most geeks have at least a touch of ADD. The original topic, which talked about a Space Program by the opposition candidates, was made after one of them wondered, in all seriousness, why you couldn't open windows on airliners. Any semblance of subsequent sanity is purely accidental.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I have had a drink and Retract everything I said above.
I realized, as I stared into my empty Bud Light, that I need to get a life, get out of the house, and talk to real people.
And you don't think taxpayers pay for prisons?
Taxpayers pay for everything that government does...
Bottom line, if you don't get health insurance yourself, we are collectively robbing taxpayers are paying for it (one way or another). Who do you think picks up the insurance when someone robs money from a bank? We do. Witness TARP.
If you give all of NASA's budget to them, they'll still be poor. Still poor, but their kids will have one less reason to stay in school. It's really hard to buy people up from poverty, but you can teach their kids up from it.
I remember wondering why it was illegal to shoot buzzards once when I was a kid.
I was told
"How much would it cost for the county to remove a dead animal from the road, or for you to do it? Buzzard does it for free."
No idea if there's any truth to it, but hey, it seems like it answers the question :)
--- Mercutio was right.
If they left the state that'd be fine with everyone, the problem is corporations staying in the state, using the public services, the roads, the police and fire department, the courts, and sending their employees to the Medi-Cal office, all the while claiming that they don't have to pay for any of it because they happen to rent a mailbox in Reno, Nevada.
It's even worse in some states, where the threat of a multi-national employer moving out-of-state has convinced legislatures that they have to extend open-ended tax holidays, or grant the employer the right to pocket their employee's payroll taxes, among other things.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Mitt's plan is to distract us while he robs the bank. He's a crook.
The article's editorializing isn't really fair. No, Romney doesn't have a plan, but the goal of the article isn't to propose a space policy, but to bash Obama's. And it's true that space exploration has taken a hit during the Obama administration, but all the key events took place before his administration.
Bush, 2004: "Screw that space shuttle, boys, we're going back to the moon!"
NASA, 2004: "Cool! Just so you know, that's kind of expensive."
Bush, 2006: "Is a buck fifty enough?"
NASA, 2006: "No. And BTW, we're cancelling the shuttles like you asked."
Obama, 2009: "Umm, guys? Let's be honest here, going to the moon on a buck fifty isn't going to happen. We need a new plan for what to do with your buck fifty."
Congress, 2009: "What buck fifty?"
Obama, 2011: "Oh for fuck's sake."
I've talked to lots of NASA employees over the year. Lots of them are really pissed off at Washington politics. But the names that inspire curses are George Bush and Congress. Obama is rarely mentioned.
NASA's woes are a classic case of the Republican game plan:
1) When in power, make grand plans without sweating the details or the cost.
2) When out of power, block all solutions to the problems that arise from your grand plans.
3) When seeking power, blame the opposition for failing to solve the problems you caused.
Actually the FDIC takes money from banks to be a member. It is an actual insurance.
Now, as for the police looking for the criminals... yes... yes it is our tax money.
But I guess I would rather pay taxes for cops, firefighters, teachers, medical care than to have people dieing on the streets because someone broke into a house and lit it on fire because they dont know that inflammable means flammable.
I must be a bleeding heart liberal... or someone who can critically think how things affect our society.
100% of 2012 U.S. presidential candidates are certified assholes. Fuck them all. Die with festering boils you SOBs.
FTFY
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
"So that's what's covering Obama's multi-trillion-dollar deficits!"
No, you are. And me, and that guy over there, and a whole shitload of people--every single American, plus millions of other people worldwide. We, collectively through the markets, decide the value of the dollar. We've collectively decided that the value of the dollar is pretty damn good and that it's long-term prognosis is absofuckinglutely marvelous. Sound as a pound is so 1800's. Big Daddy Dollar's large and in charge, the reserve currency of the motherfucking planet. Fucking hell people are lining up for the opportunity to buy our debt, and are willing to pay for the privilege. That's right, a 20 year T-bill doesn't even beat inflation. The US government can spend money, for fucking free, for 20 years! God damn all hail the power of the markets, baby!
You call that fair? How about mentioning the fact that Obama tried to convince us that taking the buck fifty from NASA was a good way to help reduce our national debt? Or that Obama has had nearly four years to do something with NASA? Or do all the facts get in the way of beating the dead horse that is George Bush?
The truth is, neither of the two main political parties in America give a damn about NASA or the space program. If this is truly important to any readers, find a more worthy political party, and give them your vote.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
One would give states jurisdiction over a woman's uterus, and the other favors a profit motive for imprisoning people. That's no choice I want to have to make. The Libertarian party is as much of a sham as the two leading parties.
You could just imprison people IN a woman's uterus. It's a win-win.
I'm from Massachusetts. He fucked us. He's fucks anyone he can. It's what he does. He's a fucker. First he's over there fucking those people. Then he's here fucking us. Soon he could be everywhere fucking everyone. He's not pro-healthcare. He's pro-big-business-fucking-innocent-people.
What's that old saying? "I didn't protest when they left the liberal state. I didn't protest when they left the moderate state. Now they are leaving the country and leaving all the burdens on citizens. "
Maybe not a faithful quote but you might get the gist of it.
Corporations don't care about your values. They only care about the bottom line. That's how it is set up and probably how it should be. OTOH it's our job to hold them accountable. Part of that social contract is to make them contribute back to the community they have benefited from. The infrastructure, the subsidies, etc.
Laws and regulations enforce that contract. Without them corporations are bound to screw us over by their own rules.
The flip side is feast and famine. When the predator over hunts a territory he either moves on and fights his way into a new one or dies of starvation.
Civilization is supposed to moderate that cycle for us smart humans. Part of civilization is rules and regulation. Really that's all it is. Agreed upon self regulation to avoid feast and famine.
You are an ignorant person.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
The banking side of TARP is going to turn a profit.
Universal health care will decrease the cost of health care to the entire population, while increasing overall health. Arguing against it is short sighted and stupid.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
And this little analogy you've written out applies how? Neither party is being straight with voters. Obama talks about how important NASA is, but he's already tried to cut their funding. Romney is now taking cheap shots at Obama for it, but that doesn't change the fact that he's actually correct in his criticisms. Frankly, his rhetoric is largely identical to Obama's rhetoric about the wars - lots of bluster, but no real action.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
But if the law allows people to dump all of their costs in state A, and keep all their profits in state B, it's impossible to tell what policies "work."
The problem is the size of these companies and being beholden to them. If you had a thousand companies employing nearly the same number of people that the one mega multinational company was employing, I would argue that there would be much more economic productivity in that same part of the country, more general tax revenue, and arguably less ability to engage in those kind of accounting shell games because those companies in state A would not have any office in state B to play those kind of games in the first place.
Vermont was able to keep Wal-Mart from coming into their state for a long time simply because they refused to play the political games that Wal-Mart was expecting them to play. Other states could do the same sort of thing and not give in to these companies, but instead encourage local businesses to grow and develop. A tax incentive that helps bring a huge business with a thousand jobs that was instead given to a thousand local businesses or even encouraged ordinary people to become entrepreneurs to start businesses creating a thousand jobs would go a whole lot further and benefit state and local governments far more.
BTW, with small businesses, the "shareholders" are local too, citizens and voters of that state who have a stake in what happens in that government, culture, and society. It is the large businesses that don't care or have likely been managed by executives that have never even heard of that state much less their shareholders.
You clearly don't understand what TARP was. IMO it may go down in history as one of the better ideas the government has had. Why? In the end it was about purchasing preferred stock in those banks. Most banks have already repaid/bought back that loan/investment. And, for example, the Treasury has already made a $12B profit (that's about 30% return) on Citibank. Smaller profit on some others. There are 3-4 who have not fully paid it back, but shit, even AIG has committed to paying it all back, with a tidy profit to the taxpayers.
Not sure if you are conservative, libertarian, or just don't understand shared risk, but the same principles can be applied to universal healthcare (not that Obamacare is universal healthcare, just as close as he could get given the opposition). The key is to look for the longer term benefit, not the short term costs and "inconvenience". Just like TARP.
There is a reason for that vague. From the own mouths they said, in the majority they do not get the votes of the educated elite. So, they with their second rate election team, spend the appropriate amount of time on creating illusionary policies. The amount of effort results in the simplest and vaguest nothings. Now if we were part of the more likely to vote for them crowd, then their corporate public relations teams would spend more time coming up with more accurate nothings to vote for them.
As far as they are concerned you are not going to vote for them, so they are not going to waste time with you, how ever as we are a bunch of smart arses they will also not go out of the way to offend us prior to election time. The from the gut bullshit, the educated elite always trying to tell everyone what to do bullshit, the liberal elite bullshit, the being smart is un-American bullshit and, the smart specialists cost to much let's import cheap third worlders bullshit that's all post election or behind closed doors. Make no mistake they hate us, they did so since high school, the remorselessly picked on the physically weakest of us, the toughest they avoided completely as we were doubly threatening. That hate and jealously they have carried with them into an immature adult hood, surely you must have noticed by now.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
But she didn't really demonize the bikes/benefits, she demonized the theft/taxes that paid for them. And yes, she benefited from the system, but she was also forced to pay into it, much like the guy who benefits from the bike was forced to give up the car.
Again, I have no sympathy for Rand, but you can't force people into a system and then call them hypocrites because they want to recoup their losses.
Dilbert RSS feed