In the President's State of the Union address, he made a great effort to compare the country's reaction to the Soviet launch of Sputnik to the situation the nation faces today.
What he convieniently forgot to mention, is that he has consistently led the drive to cut funding to NASA. At the moment, for all practical intents, the Space Program is dead.
Yet, Mr. Obama made a great many references to the way the Space Program stimulated the economy by creating new industry, promoting new technologies and even leading to new medical treatments (i.e. the creation of new pharmaceuticals that could only be made in 0-gee conditions).
Instead of directing funding into a PROVEN program with a long history of innovation and that, quite frankly, we NEED, he has decided in his infinite wisdom, that what we need is a HIGH SPEED RAIL system, when we can't even make Amtrak solvent.
Listen, folks. The days of rail for moving people are over for all practical purposes. Nobody (well, maybe a few) is going to travel by rail, unless the government subsidizes it to the point where the average person is traveling nearly for free. And just what does that gain us?
It get's us even higher taxes in order to pay for it. Does anybody honestly want to tell me that they will give up their cars for this boondoggle??
It may be great for the Japanese and the Chinese (though at the rate of speed the Chinese are buying cars, I doubt their rail system will be moving many people much longer.), but the days of rail are over in this country, except for moving freight.
I do agree with him on one thing (God help me). We DO need to put folks to work on our infrastructure. Roads, bridges, laying new gas and power lines, building more power plants (preferably nuclear),installing windmills and putting solar energy systems on every building that can hold them---That's a real way to put people to work!!
Sat Jan 29, 2011 1:46 pm