KTVT-TV, a CBS affiliate in Dallas-Ft. Worth, turned its investigative lens on NASA in a report that aired Monday night. Reporter Tracy Rowlett used a number of GAO studies (such as its recent review of NASA’s aircraft fleet) and interviews with the head of Citizens Against Government Waste (which has previously been critical of NASA) to conclude that NASA is “wasting taxpayer dollars by the millions”.
Whenever I hear that NASA is wasting “millions”, I am reminded of a quote from the very first episode of The X Files that I saw, when Mulder, investigating strange events at NASA, says something to the effect, “Millions of dollars wasted: that’s all Congress needs to shut NASA down.” (When I heard this I started laughing and concluded this was actually a comedy show; it was years before I watched another episode. But I digress.) Millions have been wasted at NASA (and probably every other government agency of any size), yet the space agency lives on.
The CAGW’s Tom Schatz believes that Congress doesn’t want “to rein in an agency that’s very popular with voters”, adding that while Congress likes to hold hearings on such issues, they are less effective in forcing reform. An alternative, though, might be that when the agency’s and Congress’ focus is on a gap of up to $6 billon between NASA’s plans and its budget, concerns like inappropriate use of agency aircraft, while unfortunate and undesirable, are simply a much lower priority.
Why is it that the liberal news media rarely investigates the waste and coruption in it’s pet welfare state programs?
Waste is an important issue, and it is a legitimate topic for the media to address. Saying “probably every other government agency” wastes money is a defense akin to suggesting unethical actions are acceptable as long as a large enough group are conducting these actions. As to the “liberal” media ignoring waste in welfare, a google news search for “NASA waste” recieved 240 hits, while a search for “welfare waste” recieved 543 hits. While not a scienctific survey, I’ve seen many more stories on welfare waste than on NASA waste, so I’m not convinced yours is a defendable position.
Amazing – how trained you are to accept ‘waste’. Obviously you aren’t engineer as waste is one of those things we try to negate.
Just another blog dealing more thermo energy to help create the political reality field to keep reality in check – you have to love the classic social waste vs. progressive research argument. Or if you prefer different tension there are many to choose from – all artificial based on peoples view how reality should be …
And then there intellectual stimulating way I see once again the 2 dimensional view of reality, which allows a large taxonomy of labeling ‘liberal vs. conservative.’
Hey sometimes i like the post … but bs filter is clog again.
Cecil, I agree with Chance Williams. You must only be watching one-third of the news programs. Any liberal slant the popular news media ever had has long since been buried by Fox, which all of the other networks are now emulating to one degree or another.
If you call the one-dimensional pap on modern TV “news,” I find my respect for you seriously strained. What’s really happening, I fear, is anything you disagree with is a “liberal slant” and you can’t stand to hear anything you disagree with.
Back to the topic at hand, yes, there is massive waste at NASA, but much of that is cultural — American culture, not just NASA. The persuit of ultimate safety and perfection wastes far more than people stealing the odd flight on a government jet.
— Donald
Cue Dr. Evil:
“I will force NASA to save a [scary organ chord, lightning flashing, thunder roll, horses neighing…] million dollars…”
Millions? They must surely be using a silent ‘B’.
Jeff,
NASA “wastes” millions on aircraft?
While we spend $7B a year for three
years post-Columbia keeping one
astronaut alive on ISS while NOT
doing any assembly because NASA
couldn’t be bothered to (until Griffin
arrived) actually start a procurement
to buy commercial resupply services.
The media, like some congresspeople,
like to posture as caring about
taxpayer finances instead of taking on
the entrenched interests that are
wasting billions.
To borrow a phrase from Jefferson,
I cry for my country when I reflect
that God is just.
– Jim
Donald: “If you call the one-dimensional pap on modern TV “news,” I find my respect for you seriously strained. What’s really happening, I fear, is anything you disagree with is a “liberal slant” and you can’t stand to hear anything you disagree with.”
And if you call the pre-FoxNews era of the ABC/CBS/CNN/NBC monopoly “news” and anything YOU dissagree with is now “one-dimensional pap”…… you get the picture?
After the recent Pakistani Earthquake, I heard on NPR that Bush had authorized $60 billion in earthquake relief. That is almost as amazing as the fact that it actually cost that and more to clean up New Orleans.
Just wait until there are more trillion dollar projects, trillionaires and trillion heiresses.
Sam
The difference, Cecil, is I willingly listen to, in fact go out and seek, information from many points of view, much of which I disagree with. Even in the days you are talking about, conservative information was readily available should I chose to read or listen to it. I don’t think many conservatives seek outside information, and, in fact, are actively attempting to eliminate the few remaining sources of liberal news (e.g., NPR and public television). They want a chearleading section, not news from many points of view, and failing to listen to many points of view guarantees a narrow, or even near-blind, view of the world. Do you really want to live in a world where nobody questions or provides a counter-point to the conservative movement?
— Donald
I don’t think many conservatives seek outside information, and, in fact, are actively attempting to eliminate the few remaining sources of liberal news (e.g., NPR and public television)
So, just to calibrate you, you don’t think that the nightly network news broadcasts, the LA and NY Times, Newsweek, and Time, are liberal media? It is to laugh.
“Conservatives” (I’m not one, but I’ll attempt to speak for them, because as a libertarian I share their views on this issue) don’t want to “eliminate sources of liberal news” (that would be like trying to command the tide, even if it weren’t a classicly illiberal thing to do). They are just tired of having the taxpayers subsidize ideological tripe that otherwise might have trouble finding an audience.
With the exception of the NYT and LAT, no, I don’t consider any of those Liberal news sources. Obviously, its in the eye of the beholder, but you seem to feel that anything that doesn’t toe Mr. Gingrich’s philosophical line to the letter, or mentions any government program in a positive light, or admits that some people in our society might need help, is a “liberal” media. If so, I’m surprised there’s much left to talk about in the “conservative media.”
BTW, I don’t believe any of the outlets you listed are especially subsidized.
However, I quit since this is too far off topic and none of us our prepared to listen to the others.
— Donald
Obviously, its in the eye of the beholder, but you seem to feel that anything that doesn’t toe Mr. Gingrich’s philosophical line to the letter, or mentions any government program in a positive light, or admits that some people in our society might need help, is a “liberal” media.
Well, that’s an amusing, but unuseful strawman, Donald.
BTW, I don’t believe any of the outlets you listed are especially subsidized.
Of course not. The point (which you seem to have missed) is that the two that you specifically cited are. And they’re the only ones that “conservatives” are trying (not to “shut down,” but) to end the subsidies for.
Doanld: “The difference, Cecil, is I willingly listen to, in fact go out and seek, information from many points of view, much of which I disagree with.”
You posted once here not long ago that you never watch Fox, except once when you were in a situation where it was on and you had no choice (and on that one time you formed you opinion of Fox “one-dimensional pap”). So which is it?
Donald: “With the exception of the NYT and LAT, no, I don’t consider any of those Liberal news sources.”
So you agree that NYT is a liberal news source? Now I have to reach back into my memory for another of your past posts where you declared that the NYT was one of the best (you may have said the best) news sources in the nation/world. There is nothing inherently wrong with your thinking that a liberal news source is so great, but it is an insight into your thinking.
Face it: for your average liberal, “conservative” means evil, uneducated fundie and/or Gordon Gecko. It’s a deeply entrenched and continuously self-reinforced bigotry. Sad but true. It doesn’t help if you know what you’re talking about: if you’re simultaneously smart, articulate and conservative, the liberal puts you in the same mental compartment with horses that can count with their hooves–he sees it happening, but he’s automatically looking around for the guy who’s secretly feeding the cues.
And why shouldn’t he? He’s been fed this mindset for the last forty years.
Sorry to go further OT, but I just hate to see people headbanging that particular wall.
Cecil, no I don’t watch Fox, any more than I read the ultra-left rags published in Berkeley. Neither are news in any meaningful definition of the term. I read The Economist for my conservative slant. And, yes, the NYT is both liberal and the nation’s best paper, and probably the world’s, which is not necessarily a contridiction. (Second best in the United States is probably the — conservative — Wall Street Journal.) Globally, The Economist comes in as a close second, partially because they are one of the world’s only truly global newspapers (e.g., the cover what’s going on in Africa), and because of their bluntness and unwillingness to toe anybody’s party line, including the “neocon” movement in the United States. Sometimes I find their positions hard to take, but they are always interesting and well argued and based on presented facts. (You will consider them “liberal,” though, because they don’t like Mr. Bush or some of the other axioms of the American Right, but Mr. Bush’s policies and conservatism as a philosophy are hardly synonomous.)
— Donald
Patrick, this liberal can think of many very intelligent conservatives, some of whom I have great respect for. Mr. Gingrich, for instance, though I think he largely wasted his time as House leader. Or on this list, Jim Muncy, Dfens, Mr. Day, and, at least on space issues, Cecil. Or, any of the editors at The Economist. However, Mr. Bush and most of his close confidants are not among them.
In fact, if American conservatism would lose the social agenda and practice what it preaches on personal privacy, adapt a more nuanced military philosophy, and stick to economic issues, I would probably be a conservative.
— Donald
Donald: “no I don’t watch Fox, any more than I read the ultra-left rags published in Berkeley.”
That is not even a mildly accurate comparison.
You can say that, Cecil, because, like many conservatives, you accept current conservative dogma as absolute truth without seriously questioning it — exactly the way many people in Berkeley do about liberal dogma. Just like Patrick complained about liberals, you give the other side near-zero credit for intelligence or validity.
Most of what I saw on Fox is propaganda, no more and no less, and exactly comparable to the liberal rags in Berkeley. There are good conservative news sources, but, unless Fox has changed a lot in the last year, Fox is not one of them.
— Donald
“you accept current conservative dogma as absolute truth without seriously questioning it”
As if YOU don’t accept anything and everything that flows forth from the NYT liberal propaganda fountain?
“Most of what I saw on Fox is propaganda”
No more so, and I would even say much less so, than what is passed off as “news” by CNN, CBS and you favorite the NYT.
Has Fox yet had to fire an entire cadre of “journalists” caught broadcasting false stories on a high-ranking American political figure? Not that I know of, yet I don’t recall you castigating CBS as a propaganda network. And the story I refer to was only the latest in Dan Rathers long history of made up liberal agenda propaganda.
But this is way off topic to continue here, but I challenge you to this: You email me privately the very next time to see anything on Fox that you think is lies or propaganda. Of course that would require you to watch Fox, I’ll suggest you start with “Fox News Sunday”.
Would Messrs. Robertson and Trotter please take their off-topic discussion offline? Your anticipated cooperation is appreciated.