There will be a lot of screaming and howling in the coming days about the proposed 2013 NASA budget [pdf], released today by the Obama administration. Though I have many bones to pick about this budget proposal, a longer view of the budget suggests it is merely a reflection of the transitions going on both in NASA and the federal government.
First, some bullet points:
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The reaction from religious organizations to Obama’s proposed heathcare rule compromise has not been good.
It is an attempt to deal with a matter of religious conviction with an accounting gimmick,
And this:
“The President’s statement today is an insulting affront illustrating a basic lack of understanding that this issue will not be solved by sleight-of-hand word games.
Similarly, the insurance companies have their own objections.
What must be noted is that the language of Obamacare is so flawed that it basically puts us in a situation where one man, Barack Obama, can simply dictate policy hither and yon, based merely on political expediency. Such a situation makes this a country ruled by the opinions of men rather than by the rule of carefully worded law.
The sooner we repeal this horrible legislation the better.
Clark Lindsey has posted a quick summary of the proposed NASA budget to be released by the Obama Administration on Monday.
I will have more to say about this next week, when the full budget is released.
We’re here to help you: A woman was forced to miss her flight because no female TSA agent was available to pat her down.
We’re here to help you: FAA regulations have forced a volunteer pilot program in Alaska to cancel its support of the Yukon Quest International Dog Race.
The rules prohibit private pilots from accepting cost deferments such as fuel, accommodations and food. According to the agency’s regulations, allowing private pilots to accept compensation for costs is commercial activity, and commercial aviation is heavily regulated.
In other words, because these volunteers are simply getting reimbursed for their expenses the FAA forbids them from volunteering. Isn’t it great how the government is so helpful?
Ed Weiler quit NASA in September because of the cuts to the Mars planetary program that the Obama administration will announce on Monday.
Weiler was NASA’s chief science administrator for most of the past thirty years.
As I have already noted, the programs that NASA shouldn’t cut are its planetary and astronomy programs. Far better to dump the Space Launch System, which eats up a lot more cash and will end up producing nothing. By doing so you would not only reduce NASA’s actual budget — thereby saving the federal government money — you could simultaneously increase the budgets of the planetary and astronomy programs.
According to scientists, Obama’s proposed budget — to be announced on Monday — will severely cut NASA’s planetary program.
We will find out if this is true on Monday. However, I suspect it is, as all the rumors have pointed that way for months.
Meanwhile, Congress is forcing NASA to spend $3 billion on the Space Launch System (SLS), a rocket that will never get finished. As I have written previously, this is a very bad use of the taxpayer’s money. Better to get rid of SLS, put half the savings into the science program (which would almost certainly increase its overall budget) and pocket the rest as budget savings.
The man duped is Fritz Vahrenholt, a former global warming advocate and leftwing environmentalist in Germany. The words were spoken in a long and detailed interview in Der Spiegel. Read it all, as it demonstrates without question that Vahrenholt has done his research about the complexities of climate research as well as the flaws and dishonesty contained within the IPCC reports. However, he gets to the nub of the matter when he is asked why he has taken on the role of a climate skeptic with such passion.
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HHS is Health and Human Services, the federal department tasked with running Obamacare.
The important thing to note about this story is how completely normal it seems for a government agency like HHS to have significant problems keeping track of its money and operations. No one is ever surprised when a government agency is found incompetent in this manner, and in fact, it happens frequently. And yet, the President and the Democrats in Congress thought it perfectly reasonable to hand over control of healthcare to that same government.
Not only is this story further evidence that Obamacare should be repealed, it illustrates again how clueless the Democrats were who voted for it.
All NASA funding for ESA’s unmanned ExoMars mission appears to have been cut by the Obama administration.
A public announcement by Nasa of its withdrawal from the ExoMars programme, as it is known in Europe, will probably come once President Obama’s 2013 Federal Budget Request is submitted. This request, expected in the coming days, will give the US space agency a much clearer view of how much money it has to implement its various projects. “The Americans have indicated that the possibility of them participating is now low – very low. It’s highly unlikely,” said Alvaro Gimenez, Esa’s director of science.
Though this story doesn’t confirm the earlier rumors that the Obama administration was going to eliminate the entire NASA planetary program, it sure lends those rumors further weight. However, the new budget should be released any day now, when we will finally find out.
