#1 -- Last Tuesday (February 24th), NASA launched their Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The satellite was supposed to orbit 438 miles above the Earth and take detailed measurements of the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, only 3 minutes after the satellite launched, NASA scientists noticed that the Taurus XL rocket that was supposed to carry the satellite into space has failed to shed a protective component that should have separated after the rocket reached space. The failure of this piece to disengage itself from the rocket made it unable to make orbit, as the extra weight did not allow for the satellite to reach the speed it needed. As a result, the satellite crashed into the ocean near Antarctica about 5 minutes after its launch. Ok, so what, right? The cost of this crashed satellite was $273.4 million dollars!!! Yep, several years of work and research, along with $270 million dollars spent (courtesy of U.S. taxpayers), all for nothing. It's the same as if they just took that money, put it in a big pile and lit it on fire. I can think of a million better ways that money could have been spent. And now, NASA has formed a board for investigating what went wrong with the satellite which will doubtless waste more money and probably eventually lead to recommendations for building another satellite.
#2 -- This Tuesday (March 3rd), Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), gave the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Overview to the House Budget Committee. There was nothing terribly shocking in Orszag's presentation on the budget--spend, spend, spend being the main theme. What I thought was worth mentioning though was hearing uber-nerd Orszag sound rather ridiculous by using a country music quote toward the end of his opening statement. From what I've read, apparently he is a country music fan but still, he sounded really silly. Here he quoted country singer Toby Keith in saying "there ain't no right way to do the wrong thing." The link to the full presentation from C-SPAN is below, this particular quote is at 18:16.
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=284394-1&showVid=true
I first heard this quote on the radio and the next day, again on the radio, heard Orszag discussing the same budget before the House Ways & Means Committee where he quoted another country duo, Montgomery Gentry, saying "This ain't about easy -- it's about tough." Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a video of this particular hearing.
#3 -- Quite a few weeks ago (as I'm looking it up now, I see that it was on February 10th) I was watching C-SPAN fairly late at night (embarrassingly, this is not uncommon for me) and happened to catch 60 minutes of "Special Order" floor speech time controlled by the Progressive Caucus in the House. Being that this was supposedly live at 11pm, it was basically just Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) talking back and forth to each other in an empty room. They were talking about H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009, and how they were "concerned" about the cuts the Senate had made from the House version of the bill. Below is an excerpt from Rep. Ellison that came toward the middle of the 60 minutes; it caught my attention at the time and I will quote it here without comment, as I'd really like to get some thoughts from all of you out there reading this first.
"Reclaiming my time, you know, the Federal Government has been there for so many of us, even those of us who are under the mad delusion that we did it all ourselves. You know, you may be a big successful businessperson, but you get out of the bed in the morning knowing that if somehow you had a medical problem, 911, you could call them, and the EMS truck -- that's the government -- would come take care of you and take you to the hospital.
If you do manage to get all banged up and clean, the water coming out of the shower, somebody's inspected it to make sure that it wasn't going to poison you.
You get in your car and you get out on the road, that's the government, too, buddy, making sure that you have a decent road to go on.
And then because people aren't driving a gazillion miles an hour driving crazy, there's a cop out there making sure that people obey traffic rules. That's the government as well.
And there is a light that's properly regulating the traffic flow, the government. And then you drive to work and you see your employees, and you know what, they were educated in public school, the government again.
And after all of that help you turn around and said I did it all myself, and I don't want to pay these taxes because they're reaching in my back pocket, wait a minute; we've been helping you every single step of the way. Maybe the invention that you sell was on a government research grant.
So many opportunities are afforded us because we come together, because we are a society that operates for the common good, and yet, we have some people who only want to say that it's all me, I did everything, it's just me, I don't want to pay any taxes, I don't want to help anybody out, I don't care about any poor people. I don't care if a husband had a mental health issue, couldn't maintain his livelihood; she ends up having to turn to a welfare system which really is a caring society. I don't care about them. I don't care about those three kids. I don't care about those homeless people.
That kind of psychology is why we exist to try to tell people that we're better off together than we are apart. We're not trying to stop you from being able to do your own thing, but don't forget about the rest of us as you do your own thing."
#4 - Finally (this is obviously much belated), on Inauguration Day I was prompted by strange comment made by Sam Donaldson involving the fence around the White House grounds and something about "Calvin Coolidge's goat" grazing on the White House lawn to read a bit more about President Coolidge. Suffice to say, I read enough that I became interested enough to want to do deeper research on Coolidge and his administration and would like to devote a post to this topic sometime in the future. I wanted to mention though, since I find it quite fascinating and entertaining, that I also learned that President Coolidge and his wife, Grace, were great lovers of animals and kept quite an array of "pets" both in the White House and before. This included several cats, 10+ dogs, several birds (including a mockingbird and a troupial--a tropical bird from South America), rabbits, a bear, a pair of lions (which they named Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau), a small hippo, a wallaby, a duiker, 13 Pekin ducks, a pair of rock bass (sent to them as a gift intended to be eaten; instead, the Coolidges kept them for a while in their bathtub in the White House), and a raccoon named Rebecca who apparently enjoyed playing in the water in the bathtub with a cake of soap. Apparently, the Coolidges ended up giving some of the animals to the Rock Creek Zoo (now the National Zoo) in hopes they would have a better environment. Anyway, here's a link to a story written by historian David Pietrusza about the Coolidges and their pets that's quite interesting...something you don't hear about in history books.
1 comment:
This quote just singles out gov't funded stuff, but it could apply to the private sector as well. People take google and wikipedia for granted and the gov't doesn't pay for that. I still agree with the quote to some extent.
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