SAM News Corp. Comment and Debate thread

[Gabu]

The Senate proposes a 90% cut in education spending.  How will we prepare kids for high tech jobs if we do this?  The Senate proposes slashing scientific research.  How will we maintain our technological superiority if we do this?  They propose cutting many defense programs, weakening the military and making us less safe at the exact moment that global terrorist groups are surging in strength, with attacks in Jordan, Paris, and Iraq.  Then the Senate provides the capstone, a policy so ludicrous I wondered at first if the bill was not introduced in jest: A bill to sell off NASA to the highest bidder.  Excuse me?  The sale of sensitive technologies to the highest bidder, in such a way that we'll be unable to control the spread of the world's most advanced satellite, missile, and other space technology to rogue states like Iran and North Korea and near peer competitors like China?

To be perfectly fair, "the Senate" has proposed absolutely nothing.  DanielX proposed the above.  I just crunched the numbers and showed him what would be the immediate effect to the budget.  Quite frankly, I think that what DanielX is proposing is completely out of the question, but I am not one to take that as an excuse to be obstructionist and unhelpful.  My drafting of the effects of his plan should not be taken as tacit support of his proposal.

[Gabu]

The Senate proposes a 90% cut in education spending.  How will we prepare kids for high tech jobs if we do this?  The Senate proposes slashing scientific research.  How will we maintain our technological superiority if we do this?  They propose cutting many defense programs, weakening the military and making us less safe at the exact moment that global terrorist groups are surging in strength, with attacks in Jordan, Paris, and Iraq.  Then the Senate provides the capstone, a policy so ludicrous I wondered at first if the bill was not introduced in jest: A bill to sell off NASA to the highest bidder.  Excuse me?  The sale of sensitive technologies to the highest bidder, in such a way that we'll be unable to control the spread of the world's most advanced satellite, missile, and other space technology to rogue states like Iran and North Korea and near peer competitors like China?

To be perfectly fair, "the Senate" has proposed absolutely nothing.  DanielX proposed the above.  I just crunched the numbers and showed him what would be the immediate effect to the budget.  Quite frankly, I think that what DanielX is proposing is completely out of the question, but I am not one to take that as an excuse to be obstructionist and unhelpful.  My drafting of the effects of his plan should not be taken as tacit support of his proposal.

Understood that you don't support that particular proposal, but the majority of Senators, whether you yourself are included or not, have shown great zeal in the past for cutting programs that I don't always think should be cut.  I applaud any Senator who stands up for what's right, and that means I applaud you if you intend to vote to block DanielX's proposal.

Quite frankly, I've been thinking of introducing a Constitutional amendment throwing out the requirement for a balanced budget.  It seemed like a good idea at the time that made fiscal sense, but at this point I really have to kind of wonder whether a balanced budget is preferable to either a large tax hike (which may very well require tax hikes ad infinitum in later budgets, given that they'd probably at least make some sort of dent in the GDP) or practically abolishing public education among other things (even if libertarians would swear by the notion that this would somehow help education in the country).

[Gabu]

Glad to hear that some folks are coming around.  If I remember, only me and Lewis Trondheim voted no on the budget amendment, so its been a long hike back.

Yes, well, like I said, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  I will fully admit that I never really thought about what it meant we'd have to do.  I'm kind of glad that DanielX proposed what he did, because crunching the numbers and finding that his proposal didn't even do enough was kind of scary, to say the least.

[Gabu]

It recently occured to me that this senate hasn't passed any forum affairs legislation whatsoever, according to the AFW, and the only forum affairs legislation under consideration right now is for a secret ballot.  Though said secret ballot is good, has everyone suddenly forgotten the debacle that was the October election?

Most of it is all waiting for the secret ballot amendment.  Once that passes (and it had better pass... insert an evil grin here), we can get to my Electoral Reform Bill, which is basically a complete overhaul of the electoral system.  It's there, we just haven't gotten around to it yet, which is, admittedly, not good time that we're making.