2009-06-26, 00:14 | Link #3081 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
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Aye.... Barney isn't an idiot so I'll just mark that as him talking out of his ass. NASA's entire annual budget is less than one day of either the defense budget or the HHS budget. Poor NASA has always been a shiny easy target for arm-waving bullshit despite it delivering more payback-per-buck than almost any other agency over its lifetime.
How about those F-22s and B-2s... or those unwanted tankers? Star Wars? Problem is, every time you talk about a project or agency --- politicians translate it to "what is it doing for MY district" rather than "is this good for the country?" I'm about at the point where I just assume that space will be explored by other countries of the world.
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2009-06-26, 02:23 | Link #3083 | |
Pretentious moe scholar
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Age: 37
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I've always wondered what exactly the US government runs that causes the US's public health spending to be higher per capita than Canada's according to OECD data when we're actually running a full public system. Where does all that money go? (To the skeptics: look up the OECD data if you don't believe me. In Canada, we spent about $3700 per capita in 2006 on health care, with about 71% being public spending. In the US, the numbers are around $6700 and 46%. Do the math. You can verify the figures here: http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,33..._1_1_1,00.html ) |
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2009-06-26, 02:33 | Link #3084 | |
NYAAAAHAAANNNNN~
Join Date: Nov 2007
Age: 35
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Project Orion is an ingenius idea IMO and I don't think any other country other than Russia or Japan can replicate it or come up with something equally ingenius. Maybe if we reverse engineer the H1N1 and spread it across the globe to become worse, we might be able to advance the world's space agencies......
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2009-06-26, 02:43 | Link #3085 | |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
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Basically, the last eight years have been spent as a general looting of the public treasury and taxpayer by a select group of large corporations in all the major sectors including health. Outsourcing operations to corporations ended up with them running operations just as sloppy as any government but with the additional costs of profit margin and much higher costs for executive pay. This is part of why the "co-op plan" and the other "anything but single payer" plans are such poison pills that won't reduce costs but simply transfer more wealth into fewer hands with no effective benefit to the patient.
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Last edited by Vexx; 2009-06-26 at 02:54. |
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2009-06-26, 05:38 | Link #3086 |
土は幻に
Fansubber
Join Date: Dec 2005
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Sorry guys, but I'm going to have to agree that NASA's budget could be rather usefully cut (or done away with entirely).
The United States' defence budget is absolutely massive, and it already has an overwhelming advantage over any military in the world. What good does it do researching ever more complex weaponry in order to gain an advantage over an imaginary enemy? Mind-bogglingly expensive aircraft carriers don't do a thing to Al-Qaeda, and the US has a huge lead over China's military, and its economy can outpace China's easily. Who else is a threat to the United States? North Korea? Their army is technologically a joke compared to the United States', though it may be big. Other countries manage to get by with far less military expenditure. One wonders whether America really needs such a large military, unless it is trying to maintain an overwhelming power of projection in order to sustain its power by the threat of military force. Justifications aside, is it even sustainable, considering the US' huge budget deficit? Imperial overstretch and all that... Last edited by Circular Logic; 2009-06-26 at 05:59. |
2009-06-26, 06:40 | Link #3087 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Detroit, MI
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Just a heads up, NASA isn't part of the military. NASA's budget and the defense department's budget are separate entities so whatever you do to one has no impact (at least directly) on the other. NASA get's it's funding from various sources, the government just happens to be one of them.
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2009-06-26, 06:42 | Link #3088 | ||
Come and drink my koolaid
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2009-06-26, 06:46 | Link #3089 | |||
土は幻に
Fansubber
Join Date: Dec 2005
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2009-06-26, 06:55 | Link #3090 | ||
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2009-06-26, 07:05 | Link #3091 | |
Le fou, c'est moi
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA
Age: 34
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And who knows what low gravity experimentation will do to advance our medical research? Well, then NASA shouldn't be cut, no? Nifty killing machines to maintain the almighty military-industrial complex maybe overkill, but we can never have enough of space research. NASA doesn't build supercarriers and modern battle tanks (unless NASA technologies are used on them), NASA do space research...and some other related stuff. There's a lot of things out there, and the budget spent on NASA, I'd argue, is actually ridiculously low for the potential space holds for humanity, which is practically infinite barring the intervention of Cthulhu and his merry friends. The scientific researches done for the projects of the organization also tend to produce useful side technologies, meaning even if I'm never going to become a space pirate in my life (oh man, if only I will be born in 2063 instead), it's still going to do me and a lot of people a lot of good. The billions may look big, but they're a practically a beads-for-Manhattan deal if one is willing to see beyond the immediate numbers. |
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2009-06-26, 09:40 | Link #3092 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
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We pay far more per person in healthcare (whether public or private) than any other industrialized nation and yet we place way down the list in terms of what we get for that dollar. That extra cost is largely being siphoned out of the system.
Problem is fixing it basically pits the needs of the *people* against the greed of a very few. And that very few seem to have lots of puppets in Congress -- including a fair number of Democrats as well as many Republicans. What you're seeing in this debate is pretty much a naked display of power and corruption. Yeah.... NASA is not part of the military.
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2009-06-26, 10:04 | Link #3093 |
Senior Member
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This nationalized healthcare policy is nothing more than a scam.
Cut funding for NASA Really? It's about the only good spending the Government even does anymore. My generation, and my children's generation, will be paying for the mistakes of the past 40 years, for the rest of our lives.
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2009-06-26, 10:26 | Link #3094 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
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2009-06-26, 18:03 | Link #3095 | |
Lurker
Join Date: May 2004
Location: New York City
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LA police hunt for Michael Jackson's doctor
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2009-06-27, 01:32 | Link #3096 | |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
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Venice Approves First Female Gondelier
Just to lighten things up a bit.... ARIA fans can rejoice in that things are starting to fall into place - only two or three hundred years to go...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_221702.html Quote:
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2009-06-27, 02:00 | Link #3097 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Detroit, MI
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2009-06-27, 07:39 | Link #3098 | |
Aria Company
Join Date: Nov 2003
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2009-06-27, 10:30 | Link #3099 | |||||
Come and drink my koolaid
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Attempts to derailed manned exploration of space is certainly newsworthy, and a lot more than the latest Michael Bay Failformers movie. But I'll gladly start a new thread on the importance of space exploration.
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2009-06-27, 12:16 | Link #3100 | |
Aria Company
Join Date: Nov 2003
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I suspect he's in the pockets of a pro-Martian lobbiest group that's trying to undermine humanity's attempts to claim Mars for our own. He even tried pushing a ban on funding a mission to Mars before NASA was considering one. Something's fishy there. We can't let this agent of Martians stop humanity for claiming what's rightfully ours, martian space oil.
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current affairs, discussion, international |
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