We have often marveled at the extraordinary discoveries and pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. However, a panel of the House Appropriations Committee Science has moved to cut the successor to Hubble — the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It is part of a $1.6 billion cut into NASA — an agency already slashed deeply in prior budgets.
The Webb telescope is designed look deeper into space than the Hubble. Its launch is now delayed. It is 75 percent complete, but could now be scrapped.
House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said “given this time of fiscal crisis, it is also important that Congress make tough decisions to cut programs where necessary to give priority to programs with broad national reach that have the most benefit to the American people.”
I understand that sentiment but why not make the tough decision to cut funding for our three wars? The Obama Administration has just burned over $1 billion on our latest war. We are literally burning away our scientific and educational foundations to pay for these wars.
Source: The Hill
GeneH:
I see you can chastise me “Sorry, but you’ll have to sell your “more interested in liberty than thou” candy to someone else.”
But when I call you out you say I am being partisan. And I told you on another thread I am a partisan for human freedom.
So answer me about the commerce clause instead of saying I am a propagandist.
@GeneH, he didn’t bring up a particular political party, so he didn’t bring up partisanship. He called you on your ideology. Different concept.
Well you bringing up partisanship sure didn’t take long, Roco.
Do you always do that when people point out you don’t know what you’re talking about or do you have another schtick?
Your perpetually accusing others of partisanship, but especially someone who has already told you that they are non-partisan? If you’d like to talk about what makes people look like propagandists, why don’t we start with that little tactic of yours?
apparently you neglect to explain that the commerce clause was only expanded in the progressive era and prior to that time many things now considered under that clause were not held as commerce by the courts.
Actually the commerce clause has been used by progressives to expand the scope of government beyond its original constitutional limitations.
So yes I am more interested in liberty than you are.
Funny how Gibbons v. Ogden was waged due to a government monopoly on transportation of people on a ferry.
You either don’t know too much or you are a propagandist for progressive ideology.
Roco,
Apparently you’ve never heard of the Commerce Clause in the Constitution. Understanding the Constitution as a whole and not just cherry picking out the parts you like is a fundamental difference between people who think businesses should either make the rules (the current situation) or have no rules (what you advocate) and people who value not only liberty but the Constitution, the Constitutional form of governance as set forth by our Founding Fathers, but the civil liberties and human rights enshrined therein. Civil rights the Founding Fathers included to prevent the tyrannies of both both government and individuals including economic tyranny. Part of what makes tyrants tyrants is that they make and/or abuse the rules of a society while not being subject to them themselves. Sorry, but you’ll have to sell your “more interested in liberty than thou” candy to someone else.
“That’s the kind of silly thing that happens when Congress listens to lobbyists instead of disinterested (as in they have no financial motive) scientists on questions of science when setting policy.”
Scientists should not be setting economic policy, government should not be setting economic policy, lobbyists should not be setting economic policy.
No one should be setting economic policy. Our economy should be free, 300 million free people should be setting economic policy by virtue of their ability to make unfettered choices concerning what they determine is best for their life.
It is a fundamental philosophical difference between progressives and those who believe in liberty.
gbk:
I am a limited government type. I do not think we should have gone to war in Iraq. Afghanistan was legitimate to root out Al Qeada and the Taliban.
Libya is not a legitimate war.
Looking at a timeline of military actions, we have been involved to one degree or another in world affairs for a very long time.
I think it is time to relinquish our job of being the worlds policeman and focus on what we do best, which is business and trade and innovation.
Enough war, in my lifetime we have had more than enough killing and crippling of the young.
“Wars are the second greatest evil that human societies can perpetrate. (The first is dictatorship, the enslavement of their own citizens, which is the cause of wars.)”
“Men who are free to produce, have no incentive to loot; they have nothing to gain from war and a great deal to lose. Ideologically, the principle of individual rights does not permit a man to seek his own livelihood at the point of a gun, inside or outside his country. Economically, wars cost money; in a free economy, where wealth is privately owned, the costs of war come out of the income of private citizens—there is no overblown public treasury to hide that fact—and a citizen cannot hope to recoup his own financial losses (such as taxes or business dislocations or property destruction) by winning the war. Thus his own economic interests are on the side of peace.
In a statist economy, where wealth is “publicly owned,” a citizen has no economic interests to protect by preserving peace—he is only a drop in the common bucket—while war gives him the (fallacious) hope of larger handouts from his master. Ideologically, he is trained to regard men as sacrificial animals; he is one himself; he can have no concept of why foreigners should not be sacrificed on the same public altar for the benefit of the same state.
The trader and the warrior have been fundamental antagonists throughout history. Trade does not flourish on battlefields, factories do not produce under bombardments, profits do not grow on rubble. Capitalism is a society of traders—for which it has been denounced by every would-be gunman who regards trade as “selfish” and conquest as “noble.”
Let those who are actually concerned with peace observe that capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history—a period during which there were no wars involving the entire civilized world—from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.”
@GeneH, good doggie, want a treat?
gbk, are we know determining how limited our government is by polling nation states we’ve had conflict with?
The constitution is clear that Congress gets to declare war and fund wars. The executive branch gets to make war such as for cases of sudden attack and, at least according to the executive branch, for “police actions” as the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” So, if Congress has a problem with the Executive’s actions, their remedy is to defund that activity or, perhaps, run to the Supreme Court.
But, I’m sure you know all this. So , in which case “If a government can [make] war on foreign peoples without congressional representation and approval of its own is the government limited,” the answer appears to be yes acoording to our Constitution.
kderosa,
I’m sure it will work out better than being a troll has worked out for you, but thank you for your concern. It is most touching. In a creepy uncle kind of way.
Where can I find this definition kderosa? I thought it existed in our constitution. Do you have another reference?
Gbk, I think you may want to check the definition of limited government before too deep a hole.
GeneH, you’re turning out to be quite the little lap dog. I hope that works out for you.
OS,
You’ve been here longer than I have. Do all of the trolls who visit this blog have basic language and logic problems or is this a special case? Hey . . . now there’s a study. 🙂
OS, for a joke to work, there has to be grain of truth in it.
@kderosa
It’s probably best to not speak for Roco.
And of course Central America, the Caribbean Basin, and northern states of South America would question your implication that our government was limited before the progressive era.
ad hominem. ad hominem. I win. (by your logic–or lack of it)
OS, I’ve seen your ability to think logically, I wouldn’t trust you with a bunsen burner or trust that your end product would qualify as science.
Do you mean like the Pentagon and all the contractors under their tutelage?
GBK, Roco is in all probabilty referring to limited government as the US federal government as it existed before the progressive era, so that fact that we regularly went to war before that period does affect your final question in my opinion.
K, if you want to give Gene, FFLEO and me some money, we will happily take it and do a study. I recall FFLEO is a trained biologist, so he will be a good pick for the study you fund. If we took your money, we could be completely independent of that bad old government money. I figure we can we can get a good start for about a million and a half for the first year. We will need to buy some test tubes, bunsen burners and a few other things, so start up will be a bit more than later years. We can probably get by with just a little more than a million the second year. Just send the check to Professor Turley and he will forward it to us.