Comments on: Lobbying tips from Tom DeLay

By: Greg Kuperberg

Greg Kuperberg — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 00:36:51 +0000

There is a lot of truth to the old name “National Keep It Sold”, crass though it is. NKIS/CSE is yet another lobby that shamelessly begs for in-district patronage. They couldn’t care less if NASA achieves anything or nothing in space as long as the money keeps flowing from Washington. On the other side any way that NASA can save money is against their interests, no matter how worthy the reform.

And that is what Tom DeLay is really about, and from the looks of it, Nick Lampson too. There is no particular reason for either a pest exterminator or a tax assessor to care about space. Their interest in space surely begins and ends at “my district”.

Unfortunately, DeLay is also a terrible interloper in many other national and even international issues. He has his fingers in many other pies that he does not really care about, except as a means to extend his influence. So it is sad that it has come down to who can best bring the bacon to Bay Area Houston, DeLay or Lampson. It is very tempting to back Lampson all the way, but I can’t honestly do it, because NASA’s human spaceflight program is a fiasco.

By: Jim Banke

Jim Banke — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 19:19:43 +0000

The National Keep it Sold group was originally created to keep the space station program sold each year in Congress.

Jim Banke

By: Falco

Falco — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 08:20:06 +0000

Dang it. Marchant is my rep and he is definetly getting a letter about this.

By: William Berger

William Berger — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 22:13:34 +0000

Does anybody know where they came up with the awful name “National Keep It Sold”? That is just so bad that I scratch my head until my hair falls out.

Reminds me of another one I just heard about a union group called “The Change to Win Coalition.”

So many tin ears…

By: Bill White

Bill White — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 16:58:34 +0000

While surfing through the website for the “Citizens for Space Exploration” I found a link for Nick Lampson that leads to a dead-end page at the House of Representatives.

Maybe they need a webmaster to clean up before Tom Delay came to visit.