{"id":2111,"date":"2008-02-01T12:22:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-01T18:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/?p=2111"},"modified":"2008-02-01T12:22:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-01T18:22:00","slug":"planet-seeking-telescope-funding-denied-thanks-to-you-know-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/2008\/02\/01\/planet-seeking-telescope-funding-denied-thanks-to-you-know-what\/","title":{"rendered":"Planet-seeking telescope funding denied, thanks to you-know-what."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is there a better way to spend the money we are currently\u00a0spending in Iraq?<\/p>\n<p>The January 18, 2008 issue of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nature<\/a><\/em> reports that Congress is telling NASA that NASA needs to dig up $60 Million in funding for a planet-hunting telescope out of its general budget, money that simple doesn’t exist (this article is available on line only to subscribers).\u00a0 NASA is outraged. Congress will not provide any additional funding. The stated purpose of the project is undeniably worthy according to scientists.\u00a0 Because of the attitude displayed by Congress, however, other NASA projects are also endangered, including “missions to study dark energy, gravity waves and X-ray astronomy.”<\/p>\n<p>The thing that struck me on reading this article is the tiny amount in controversy regarding this NASA project, relative to enormous size of\u00a0the Iraq budget.\u00a0 We spend <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalpriorities.org\/costofwar_home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$275 million per day<\/a> to do the things we do in Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>This makes me wonder? How many other worthy science projects are not getting funding because of Iraq expenses? It would be interesting and depressing to see people raise their hands in response to this question:\u00a0 How many of you have had federal funding denied on worthy projects because of the “lack of money in the budget.”\u00a0\u00a0We need to constantly call “lack of money” for what it is. It’s not lack of money.\u00a0 Rather, we’re spending that money on Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not simply that we are pissing away money on the <a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/?p=1215\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cWar on Terror\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 (BTW, it’s not a war and it’s not about terror, though it pretends to be).\u00a0 And this “war” effort is even worse than a simple misallocation of money.\u00a0 We are causing massive political damage by doing the things we are doing in Iraq. People around the world hate what we are doing in Iraq and have no respect for the reasons we utter for pursuing this “war.”\u00a0 The great majority of Americans now agree with the people around the world (those people we used to scoff at when they doubted our intentions and methods).<\/p>\n<p>How many worthy projects will never be funded? And how many unfunded humanitarian projects are not being funded because of the “war”? What could that money have accomplished?\u00a0 What about new cures for malaria, TB, cancer and dozens of other diseases that take the lives of millions every year?\u00a0 What about funding new methods of conserving, generating and storing energy, to lessen our dependence on oil?\u00a0 What about new improved\u00a0methods of birth control, to reduce the demand for abortions, which, in turn, might put somewhat of a damper on the culture war that is tearing the U.S. apart?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/?p=279\" target=\"_blank\">Dollars and hours are fungible,<\/a> which means that the Iraq “war” is utterly immoral, especially so in that it has accomplished none of its stated objectives; further, it’s failed to accomplish those objectives at horrific cost.\u00a0 We can see much of the carnage and destruction, but there is equal amount of damage that we can’t see.\u00a0 This invisible damage consists of things that we <em>could have done <\/em>with the time and money we have squandored on Iraq.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/?p=1154\" target=\"_blank\">Iraq is, and always was, a domestic issue. <\/a><\/p>\n<p>All of these unfunded projects must be viewed in the context of the hundreds of thousands of people killed and wounded and the millions that have been displaced in pursuit of the misbegotten so-called \u201cwar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is there a better way to spend the money we are currently\u00a0spending in Iraq? The January 18, 2008 issue of Nature reports that Congress is telling NASA that NASA needs to dig up $60 Million in funding for a planet-hunting telescope out of its general budget, money that simple doesn’t exist (this article is available […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,18,9,4,50,43],"tags":[6442,69,6439,6433,6480,6473],"class_list":["post-2111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-iraq-and-afghanistan","category-politics","category-science","category-technology","category-war","tag-corruption","tag-iraq","tag-politics","tag-science","tag-technology","tag-war","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}