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Space Travel For the 1%: Virgin Galactic's $250,000 Tickets Haunt New Mexico Town
The Real Dr John writes: The Guardian has an article about Virgin Galactic's proposed launch site, Spaceport America, which broke ground in southern New Mexico's high desert in 2009 with almost a quarter of a billion dollars from taxpayers, $76m of which came from the two local counties. Truth or Consequences, population 6,000 and home to the Spaceport America Visitor Center, is one of the poorest places in the state. The increased taxes, adopted across impoverished Sierra County, contributed to about $5m as of 2014. Since 2009, state school budgets have been cut and an estimated $26m in necessary repairs to the town's water system has been put on hold. There's no more money to pay for it. The average annual income of residents is just $15,000 per year, one third of residents live below the poverty line, and just 20% over the age of 25 have obtained a bachelor's degree.
But then again that should have been obvious to everyone long ago. Shame too many people think the government is some sort of magic purse.
Everyone in charge of what? And what money?
It's okay to be a nutjob, but as anyone can see by reading his manifesto the Unabomber has raised the bar for this kind of talk. Gone are the days of vague threats of violence and social justice. You need content, not just posturing. Where's your content?
lucm, indeed.
If you kill the people in charge there is no money. No, really. There will be no money. There will be assets but the money will just be paper at that point. It's an important concept.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Good weather for rockets most of the year, and huge swaths of land where very few people live, making down-range fatalities unlikely even in the event of catastrophic failure.
But the real question is: who thought a space port would be any less of a waste of public money than a sports stadium?
We should maybe aspire to something greater than a 3000 year old model?
I don't know, maybe? This is the website that caters to the "latest and greatest" crowd? The crowd that throws away computers older than 2 years and phones older than 6 months may as well be trash?
Odd how you cling to millennia-old ways of organizing society though, all the while being raped by the few people that benefit from it. And you hold their cocks and apologize for your rectum being too cold.
Spending money is one thing. Giving money to corporations in return for vague promises of jobs is entirely another.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
the flight takes you up to about 110 km, which is barely enough to see curvature of the earth.
what virgin are doing is going to make for a spectacular flight but space flight it is not.
A spaceport that doesn't have any commercial flights is probably a worse waste of money than a sports stadium. People will drive for a hundred miles to go to a sporting event if they care about one of the teams playing. They'll buy gas, they'll buy food, they'll pay admissions, they'll go to the bars and the restaurants after the game, they might even look for a hotel to stay in before going home.
A spaceport in rural anywhere only makes sense when there are flights, and for it to be paid for by the taxes collected in an area the area needs to derive an actual benefit.
As for a town of 6000 with only 21% bachelors degrees, that is absolutely no surprise at all. A town of 6000 people probably doesn't have very many jobs that need bachelors degrees. There will be a doctor or maybe a few, there will be some nurses. There may be a dentist. There will be at least one pharmacist. If there are schools the teachers will have degrees. There will probably be a few business owners that originated in the area, left and got their education, and came back, possibly employing some in the town. If anything, 1/5 of a small town having bachelors degrees is probably rather high.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Yep. Nothing mean-spirited about letting people starve, go without medical care, or having knowledge of sexuality, not to mention the actuality of birth control, withheld from them. Not a thing. Nothing mean-spirited about trying to force your religion on the entire body politic, either. Nope. Nothing mean spirited about wasting all your time in congress on a futile task while there is actual work to be done. Nothing mean spirited about trying to shut down the government, either. Nothing mean spirited about lying, then bombing the living shit out of a country that doesn't pose a threat to us (well, they had oil, so I guess it was a work of charity for your fellow conservatives, deeply invested in oil, yes?) Nothing mean spirited about denying people social security, medicare, food stamps, and so on -- that is purely a saintly act from beginning to end. Nothing mean spirited about handing "free speech" to corporations, while herding the dissenters into "free speech zones", amirite?
Psychopath? Psychopath??? Oh hell no. Conservatives are the living incarnation of angels, each and every one.
Thank the Lord of Hosts that we have conservatives to save us from ourselves.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is exactly the kind of bullshit that newspapers like The Guardian usually promote: massive government spending on so-called infrastructure. Heck, the local town residents were even willing to vote tax increases for this.
For a "spaceport", The Guardian recognizes the absurdity of it only out of their general hostility to science and engineering. But California high speed rail, sports stadiums, schools, urban renewal, and a lot of other "infrastructure projects" are just the same kind of boondoggle.
We should maybe aspire to something greater than a 3000 year old model?
Sadly, most people think the big government they keep voting for is there to help them, not to help those who buy the politicians they vote for. With enemies like the left, the 1% don't need friends.
The average person cannot be fat, stupid, oblivious, trusting of advertising (and paid studies and other obviously biased sources), saturated in meaningless tabloid bullshit, and view non-job-related thought as tedium to be avoided or offloaded ... and then expect to have a truly representative government. It's never happened before and it's not happening today.
You may be surprised at how effective 3000 year old tactics still are. Bread-and-circus has many forms and it's at least that old. Oh yeah, speaking of the Roman empire? One of the major souces of corruption involved their equivalent of defense contracts. They had their own version of the military-industrial complex.
While I'm opposed to violence, as a general rule, I suspect you might be right. The government should be afraid of the populace. If it is the other way around then you're doing it wrong. Currently, it is the other way around. While I am not, by any means, advocating a revolution (I think we should exhaust all other options and there should be a rising organically - even if people are too stupid) as a means to an end at this point in time, I do feel it is important to send those in power a reminder that we are ruled by consent.
Things like this (there's an interesting documentary about Space City being built that shows the impending doom for the area albeit betwixt the lines) and an earlier story about TPP being completed are just today's examples of reasons why we might want to consider being truly outraged. I'm all for private space access. I'm not a fan of you paying for my ride, however. Believe it or not, I'm pretty sure I can already pay for a ride to space if I want. It's expensive but I can pay for it and have the means to pay for it. There's no reason for you to be burdened for my amusement. With today's story about the TPP, I'm forced to think and realize that I've not yet seen a single, nary a one, bit of evidence that there's a single good thing about it for the average citizen. Not one single thing...
I am tired so I'm sure the above reads like it was written by a drunken monkey (I also have an attractive female, nearly forty years my junior, who's tiring me out but no - probably not like you may be thinking) but I hope it's still able to be parsed. It's high time they learn that we, the citizens, have the power. What's funny (sad, actually) is that there are so many people in favor of disarming the populace. I'm too tired to get into it so let it suffice to say that I simply can not comprehend the thinking process that leads otherwise rational people to reach conclusions such as those.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
All people receive benefits from the government; one of the problems is that some people are too stupid to know that they do to. Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society... it's not money "confiscated," although there's a bunch of fucking idiots who like to term it that way. These are the same fucking idiots that don't understand that the air they breath, the water they drink, the food they eat, the products they use daily, the protections they gain from police and firefighters, and a myriad of other government functions, keep them safer and better off than if the government didn't exist. When government is compromised by fucking assholes who's sole goal is to destroy that government, then yes, government ceases to work as well as it should.
The beneficiaries of government is everyone... the problem is when it benefits some far more than it benefits others.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The issue is that people can't see past step one. They want to end all suffering even when that suffering is a direct response to a persons choices. Let's take hungry children. In the old days when someone got pregnant without being married they were considered irresponsible. Society gave them two choices. Either they would get married or give the child up for adoption to a married couple. We know a child will be much more successful in life if they are raised by a mother and father. This worked out because some couples can't have kids.
Today what we do is tax the responsible people and give that money to the irresponsible people to raise their kids. Despite all evidence that a single mom (or dad) is a strong indicator of poor future outcomes. The liberal feels bad for the girl that gets pregnant without being married. What they don't feel bad for are the responsible couples that are so heavily taxed they put off childbirth until they are so old they need medical intervention to get pregnant. Meanwhile the single moms raise children that are a drain on society.
This is what happens in all types of situations due to the liberal mind. They can't stand any suffering and they are willing to destroy everything to alleviate responsibility for their actions.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
What's funny (sad, actually) is that there are so many people in favor of disarming the populace. I'm too tired to get into it so let it suffice to say that I simply can not comprehend the thinking process that leads otherwise rational people to reach conclusions such as those.
It's not a thinking process. It's fear. It doesn't help that when a citizen with a legal gun stops a crime, the media says something like "the suspect was subdued until police arrived" (and only that), but when a nutjob goes apeshit and shoots random people they put every gory detail on the front page for days or weeks. If the average person is a moron it's because they don't consider the tremendous incentive the media has to manipulate what they will and won't show, the great power (unelected, unchecked) represented by the ability to do this.
The exact opposite of a thinking process reinforced by numbers of the like-minded parroting each other is where this idea comes from. They seem not to notice that mass shootings overwhelmingly tend to happen in "gun free zones".