To read this post please scroll down.

 

Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Sixty-six programs slated for elimination in Trump budget

The Trump budget followed through in one area very clearly: It proposes to completely eliminate sixty-six government programs.

The programs eliminated would only save $26.7 billion, which in terms of the deficit is chicken-feed. Still it would be a step in the right direction.

The pigs are squealing however, including one recent failed presidential candidate:
Clinton: Trump Budget Shows ‘Unimaginable Level of Cruelty’

Based on past experience, expect the Republican leadership in Congress to gut most of these cuts. The budget will grow. The deficit will grow. The federal debt will grow. The power of the people in Washington will grow. And we will be one step closer to bankruptcy and collapse.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

6 comments

  • Cotour

    “The budget will grow. The deficit will grow. The federal debt will grow. The power of the people in Washington will grow. And we will be one step closer to bankruptcy and collapse.”

    And We The People will the obligated and yoked to pay. The redistribution of wealth is well under way and there will be no turning away those now eternal dependents, I mean hopefully Democrat voters. The people not having a reasonable escape a reasonable escape must be invented. Reasonable.

  • Edward

    From the Clinton article: “Hillary Clinton castigated President Trump’s federal budget proposal during a keynote address on Tuesday, calling it an attack on the needy that showed an ‘unimaginable level of cruelty.’

    Wouldn’t it be less cruel to get the needy to be less needy and more productive? Wouldn’t it be less cruel if most of them were able to become independent of the state, taking care of themselves and their families?

    Or is it a kindness to keep the needy as they are: wards of the state?

    Are women really as incompetent at taking care of themselves and their families as Clinton says that they are? Does Clinton think that women need men in their lives to care for them, or lacking men in their lives they need a government in their lives to care for them?

    Aren’t able bodied people who are on the government dole, rather than working at a productive job, just being greedy?

    It is people who think like Clinton does that keeps the budget growing faster than our national productivity is able to fund it.

    Meanwhile, we have 66 programs taken down. At this rate we still need to get rid of a good 6,000 more in order to get down to an almost reasonable $1,500 billion budget.

    As Reagan once said, government is not the solution; it is the problem. Every time government helps one person or one group, it hurts many others — now that is cruel. One problem solved, but at the expense of many more problems generated for others. Did that person or group really need help, or were they merely petitioning government for a leg up over the others? And isn’t that what wealth redistribution is all about, favoring the unproductive at the expense of the those who produce?

    Governments and their bureaucrats tend to reward their friends and punish their enemies, and the larger and more bureaucratic the government the easier it is to accomplish this and the easier it is for corruption among the bureaucracy to go undetected, uncorrected, and unpunished.

    Then again, Clinton has an interest in corruption going unpunished.

  • F-16 Bill

    How fitting if the number had been 666 !!

    Sadly, most of these cuts will never see the light of day.

  • PeterF

    It would seem that the only control over the budget that the president has from this point is the veto. I doubt that will happen.
    I’m wondering if executive orders could be used to either end these programs outright or to roll them into another agency where a Trump appointee could strangle them?

  • Edward

    PeterF,
    There is a law that requires the president to spend the money as directed by the budget, as passed and signed. The concept of the line-item veto has also been permanently shot down, so the president must accept or reject each budget bill in its entirety. This means that a president who gets what he wants in the budget must spend a lot of time negotiating the bill that comes to his desk for signature.

    What we tend to consider as a president’s budget is actually the president communicating with Congress that he would sign a budget that looked close to what he has presented to them. Congress may or may not take this “president’s budget” into consideration as they work out the real budget.

  • ken anthony

    The Trump budget focuses on the needs of the taxpayer. Any person that doesn’t support this perspective is a liar if they call themselves a conservative. With control of all three branches, there is absolutely no excuse for not getting this done.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *