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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.


Obamacare to increase costs 60%

Finding out what’s in it: A new report from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, because of Obamacare, the cost for employment-based health insurance will rise by 60% by 2025.

These increases are on top of the increases we’ve seen in the past five years, since the law was passed. Moreover, the increases are going to cost the federal government trillions in the coming years, as the law requires the government to pay large subsidies for those in the lower income brackets who can’t afford these insane premiums. In fact, last year the tab was about $300 billion. And that’s only the start. Worse, these estimates by the CBO are routinely low.

Obviously, we should vote for one of the Democrats, who are promising to fix the problem by waving they arms and making it vanish, while also promising to provide everyone with free healthcare. Or maybe we should vote for the Republican named Trump who has made similar promises though not quite as ludicrous. Why not? What does reality have to do with anything anymore?

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

4 comments

  • wodun

    At $300b, it becomes one of the largest expenditures in the budget.

  • pzatchok

    As long as the US has a single solder the left will cry we need to spend less on defense and more on helping the poor.
    Even though spending more on the poor has never actually worked in the long run.
    For the most part being poor is a lifestyle the poor person has chosen.
    They chose not to get educated, gain a skill, do drugs, not save, spend foolishly. have children or not do the overtime and extra work to get ahead.
    Its the lifestyle they choose for themselves and throwing money at them has never worked to get them out of poverty.

    It only makes them dependent on the government handouts and the government offering ‘free’ anything is just adding new chains of slavery around their neck.

  • Steve Earle

    pzatchok
    February 13, 2016 at 1:35 am

    “For the most part being poor is a lifestyle the poor person has chosen.”

    “Its the lifestyle they choose for themselves and throwing money at them has never worked to get them out of poverty.”

    “It only makes them dependent on the government handouts and the government offering ‘free’ anything is just adding new chains of slavery around their neck.”

    **************************

    Exactly right. Our responsibility is only to provide a safety net of last resort, not was has become a lifestyle.

    Another part of this is the loss of Shame as a cultural control. With the sinking of religion and the nuclear family, Shame has become a bad word. If there is no shame, no religion, no family, then people are ripe to be lured into the Left’s idea of Paradise……

    An interesting thing is that the Left has managed to do this cultural enslavement to every minority class except Asians. In fact I don’t recall any efforts in that direction by the left. I wonder why, especially given that Asians were the largest segment of legal immigration for the last several years IIRC.

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “the law requires the government to pay large subsidies for those in the lower income brackets who can’t afford these insane premiums.”

    Obama has declared Congress and its aides be allowed to receive the Obamacare subsidies, because these people are also too poor to afford the premiums. When these well-paid people are unable to afford the high cost of the premiums, what chance do the rest of us have? It seems to me, with such a declaration, that anyone paid less than Congress or its aides must also be considered among America’s lower income brackets.

    Half a century ago, America set up a safety net, the “War on Poverty,” but I have heard this net called a hammock, in recent years, because too many people spend their lives resting in it instead of using it to keep from hitting bottom.

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