Years ago in my work life I was in charge of the marketing budget for my company. It included the Research and Development budget which was $30 million a year. The CEO and President of the company both started in the R&D group. I asked R&D to go back and show me what they had produced in the past 10 years for $300 million dollars. The head of R&D immediately went to the CEO and President to say I was messing around in his business. Thank God neither took the bait. It took a long time to get the reports. since they weren’t anxious to show that they had not produced one commercially viable project. I said I would cut the budget 25% a year until something got produced or it went to zero.
NASA reminds me of that R&D group. A bunch of PHD’s who create interesting projects that cost a lot of money and produce nothing. Today, the paper announced the Mars project showed there were salt deposits on Mars. Wow, there’s a useful piece of data worth the billions of dollars it cost to confirm. Just think of the things we could do with that money.
Build highways and improve our infrastructure. No. The same paper had an article that said the I-10 bypass proposal in AZ drew environmental protests. This 250 mile road will never get built because the protesters will lock it up.
We couldn’t substitute that NASA budget for much. We can’t drill, dig, mine, refine, build plants, build new roads, or doanything that reeks of progress in this country. When the protesters, who never seem to have a real job, put the rest of you out of work you can start to protest for projects we need. One article I read said we could use the NASA money to confirm claims about climate problems. Actually, I’d rather piss it away in space.
The Dingleberry Award for the week goes to John Dingell. Michigan is in recession. Has been for a few years. Their astute congressman is leading the charge for the CO-2 cap in the US which will add 50 cents a gallon to your gasoline price. What will this do to the auto industry? Michigan is my home state and I feel really bad about what is happening to my friends who still live there. It will be harder to feel bad if they don’t take charge of Mr. Dingell’s problem.
