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True enough. Generally speaking, if it ain't an entitlement, cutting its budget won't make a dent in the larger scheme of things.FWIW, most people significantly overestimate NASA's budget. NASA's budget this year is 0.45% of the total budget, and the National Air and Space Administration does a lot of things other than launch rockets. It included 1/3 of our total spending on academic scientific research. Basic science research tends to pay for itself over time.
Getting our fiscal house in order is important, and everything should be on the table, but the scrutiny that NASA gets with its 0.45% of the budget seems out of scale compared to other areas of the budget that are far larger and have grown over time.
Pensions = 26%
Health Care = 26%
Defense Spending = 23%
These 3 items point and laugh at trivialities like education, infrastructure, and NASA. Both sides of the aisle are correct in their assertions of wasteful spending, but while they bicker the same talking points, we all lose. Hopefully they don't find life on Pluto - we'll end up like the Aztecs.
When people sit down at the kitchen table and look for ways to start cutting their monthly expenses you look at everything, including the cable and phone bill, even though they only make up 1% of your monthly finances. I don't like when people say "Such and such only accounts for (insert dollar figure here)" I've seen politicians do it a lot. Point is, no one item is going to save you all the money you're looking for, it's a collective thing. I don't know what that Pluto mission cost's, but it is my firm belief we'd be better off spending that money on our own planet. Now if we didn't carry a credit card balance of a zillion dollars, then I'd have zero issue with it, but again, from where I sit, it looks like a huge freaking waste of money to me.
When people sit down at the kitchen table and look for ways to start cutting their monthly expenses you look at everything, including the cable and phone bill, even though they only make up 1% of your monthly finances. I don't like when people say "Such and such only accounts for (insert dollar figure here)" I've seen politicians do it a lot. Point is, no one item is going to save you all the money you're looking for, it's a collective thing. I don't know what that Pluto mission cost's, but it is my firm belief we'd be better off spending that money on our own planet. Now if we didn't carry a credit card balance of a zillion dollars, then I'd have zero issue with it, but again, from where I sit, it looks like a huge freaking waste of money to me.
You sure do look at everything, and I've done this too. And a lot of folks come to the conclusion that, if you need $1000 a month, and your phone bill is $45, there are probably better places to look.
A govt is not a household budget, nor does a senator occupy the same position as a mother and father. I'm intimately familiar with my budget, most govt people are not, because they deal at a very high level with macro numbers, much lower level administrators and dept heads figure out to which programs money is actually spent. The Defense Dept is instructive, the SECDEF came out a few years ago and said he didn't even really know how big his department is, let alone have the capability to line by line audit it.
This is not an impassioned plea by me to excuse the govt from doing more sane things with our money, they have a responsibility to be stewards of it. But its quite noticeable at this point that absent reform in the Big 3, the rest is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
Its been my experience lately whenever I get a chance to talk to a Congressman or so forth, people call in with all sorts of concerns, entitlement reform is not one of them. So I wouldn't expect movement on the issue.
I like the pictures, and that the US is a space pioneer. A waste of money? I don't know, there are a lot of people who received paychecks, in whole or in part, from that money.
Had the Russians or Chinese done this, I would wish it was us for leadership reasons.
Agree with you on budgeting - we should look at everything. If you're doing a cost/benefit analysis on space exploration, I'd humbly suggest that it's still very important.
Innovation - heart monitors, solar panels, global communications, medical research, robotics, etc. There are countless examples of innovation effects from the space program
Problem Solving for current challenges - research on the international space station, development of the Hubble telescope, etc.
Cultural Benefits - attracting new generations to scientific research, International cooperation, mutual understanding of global concerns
Where many see waste, I see incalculable benefits. Unless we find intelligent life. In that case, we're all screwed.
...depends on how many commits NU signs there. Did Coach Riley conduct a mini camp in that region?
This sounds like every department head or manager at a company who says, "Yeah I know we need to cut expenses, but you can't touch my department because blah blah blah". Everyone agrees we spend to much, but they don't want their department or pet project touched when it comes time to do something about it. Color me doubtful we'll see the ROI to justify this pet project. Hope I'm wrong.
The government's number one job is defense not all the other crap. They can spend as much as they need on that.
The government's number one job is defense not all the other crap. They can spend as much as they need on that.
This seems really odd to me. Did the people found to be sending checks to terrorism organizations get arrested for supporting terrorist? It seems like if they are arrested for this, it would fix the problem.We have a problem with entitlements and the people who run them. My uncle is a Lt Col in the Army and worked with anti-terrorism for awhile. They found out that some people were taking their checks and sending them directly to terrorism organizations. When the Army brought this up to the welfare office the response was, 'we know it happens, but if we stop it we would be overstaffed and have to lay people off.'
This is not a joke, I'm being serious. I know this is a small percentage of people doing this. But the management of our government is pathetic. They would rather give taxpayer money to terrorist organizations than fire one of their own.
This seems really odd to me. Did the people found to be sending checks to terrorism organizations get arrested for supporting terrorist? It seems like if they are arrested for this, it would fix the problem.
I like the pictures, and that the US is a space pioneer. A waste of money? I don't know, there are a lot of people who received paychecks, in whole or in part, from that money.
Had the Russians or Chinese done this, I would wish it was us for leadership reasons.
I would be interested in more information. I haven't read about this before and can't find links to it searching. I don't know if everyone is interested. If you don't think so, please contact me directly.I'm not sure. I think it was more that the people didn't deserve the checks in the first place and were scamming the govt to get them. The checks were direct deposited into accounts and the people were hard to find.
They wanted to freeze the accounts and stop the checks, but the welfare office was like 'we know it happens, but what are you gunna do?'
I could ask him for more clarification of you are interested.
This seems really odd to me. Did the people found to be sending checks to terrorism organizations get arrested for supporting terrorist? It seems like if they are arrested for this, it would fix the problem.
That's because its bogus, in all likelihood.
There was some reporting in the UK awhile ago that ISIL was doing this to the UK welfare system.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-false-claims-online-fraud-student-loans.html
The mechanics described in the original scenario are completely off the wall. An Army O-5 doesn't walk into a civilian office and want some lower ranking official than he to shut down funds. That decision would go up his chain, over to a civilian decisionmaker and down into other departments of the govt. An O-5 and a civilian GS-12 aren't deciding anything on their own over coffee.
I'll ask him about it next time I see him. I doubt it is classified. He is very thoughtful and measured. And I used to ask him (jokingly) to tell me all of his classified knowledge. And he would only tell me things that just got declassified (like WMDs were in Iraq and he got to support the mission to extract them - neat stuff).
It is also not like it was just him walking into a welfare office and saying to the receptionist, 'I found this out...' I am sure it went up the ladders and that is the response they got. I just know that he was involved or he worked with people that were inloved in it. He is my uncle/Godfather and we are close. I can't imagine why he would lie about it.