Comment by justinator
1 day ago
Stop trying to use logic to make sense of these budget cuts. The budget cuts aren't about saving money. They're about destroying whole parts of the Government.
1 day ago
Stop trying to use logic to make sense of these budget cuts. The budget cuts aren't about saving money. They're about destroying whole parts of the Government.
Not just the government. Destroying whole parts of the future and the potential of humanity, just to stoke the egos of two men.
You packed quite a punch in that short comment! Those fed employees who voted for this govt. and got laid off must be feeling a voters remorse.
Facebook is packed with posts of people saying they support this administration but could they please make an exception for their own role or for their loved one whose nursing care got cut (at the VA) etc.
They still don't understand that they voted for this specific thing, nobody was shy during the campaign about what was to come.
They're anthropomorphizing the lawnmower and it's not going to work out.
They don't want to destroy it, just make it so useless they have pretext to privatize it.
I don’t think anyone wants to privatize any of the space telescopes or NASA as a whole. Do you have any evidence that there is someone who does?
Generally speaking the current administration is looking to cut some functions and programs from federal agencies and then pay private entities to perform those same functions because they believe that private industry can perform those same functions better more cheaply [1]. There is certainly some merit to that, however I think being dogmatic one way or the other is for simpletons.
Specifically for privatizing space telescopes or privatizing NASA as a whole I don't think that has been on the table, but you can imagine a scenario in which eventually something like 20%, 40%, 90% or some other significant portion of NASA's "funding" is just a pass-through vehicle for private contracts.
Honestly if you want to learn and understand more about some of these activities you can just read the news because a lot of analysis is being done, well-informed opinions are being written, and indisputable factual evidence including quotes, interviews, and detailed data are publicly available. Admittedly some reporting is behind paywalls, but that's easy to get around. I understand it's not very fair to tell someone to "go read the news", but if you can't keep up with current events or you aren't willing to that's kind of just your problem. There are plenty of websites across the political spectrum ranging from the Financial Times to the Economist, to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, international journals, and more including locally focused websites that keep tabs with events going on at the federal, state, and local level. It's certainly a lot but it's your responsibility as a citizen (assuming you are American, apologies if not) to keep yourself informed and well read.
[1] I'm being charitable here because I personally believe that the goal is to just funnel money from government agencies to specific private enterprises that have the favor of the current administration. Crony Capitalism is what that is called. The current administration has not yet earned my trust to believe otherwise.
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Nothing could make less sense than a plot to privatize space telescopes. Space telescopes have no commercial value whatsoever. All satellites which have commercial or military value are pointed at earth. The only plausible counterexample is a few of those pointed at the sun, and they only have value insofar as they can make forecasts about solar weather that may disrupt affairs on Earth.
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Musk just yesterday asserted that it was time to deorbit the ISS.[1] Decommissioning telescopes would not be out of the question.
1. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1892621691060093254
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Nah, a lot of this is about removing regulation to let private businesses do whatever they want. It isn't about privatizing the government, it's about removing regulations and "woke" policies
You see, those are necessary steps since billionaires are tired of rules and regulations that don't let them grow and thus hold America back, so it can't be great again.
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