Posted on 04/17/2012 7:28:58 AM PDT by KeyLargo
Glenn Beck is asking his listeners now on his radio program the question:
"Except for the military.
What has the government done to make you proud?"
My answer: NOTHING.
Any thoughts?
Your answers?
The US Postal Service back in the Days. (lone gone)
However, Obama and corrupt government has screwed that up now also. NASA will never be the same.
Even the military will go to shit soon. Big government drives good people away. It attracts the wrong crowd.
Nothing recently, but what about the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program?
Nothing.
And after homosexuals have been allowed to serve openly in the military,
The answer is still nothing.
The moon landing
Space shuttle
Hubble telescope (after they fixed the optics)
The moon landing
Space shuttle
Hubble telescope (after they fixed the optics)
Not much else since the 70's.
“Nothing recently, but what about the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program?”
Yes. But Beck wants to know “recently.”
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Back then, we paid our scientists/engineers well; they had to compete for their position, there were no quotas nor unions. NASA was admired the world over, for pushing mankind ahead.
And the advances that NASA made were then spun off into the civilian sector, yielding advances in medicine, computing, alloys, food, engineering - the money generated by the spin-off technology returned the cost of NASA a hundred-fold.
Today, NASA's primary goal is apparently "Muslim Outreach", which is even more pathetic than flying 1970's technology Space Shuttles around the country.
The Space Shuttle was good until they fouled up the propellant used to spray on the foam. It never worked the same after the ‘environmentally friendly’ version was used.
Ah, I did not see recently in the post, so I thought they were fair game...
This Obama lead Government has taken a once prosperous country and turned us into the biggest debtor nation on Earth.
If that’s not bad enough a lot of those billions of dollars in wealth were just thrown away on unproven environmental schemes..
We are so screwed its not funny.
Other than that, I can't think of anything.
Similar to the question I have been asking for more than a year now: In the last 50 years, what has the government done that was really good for everyone?
NOTHING. Since the Interstate and Defense Highway system I can’t think of a thing. Sure, Reagan made us proud for a little while, more-or-less ended the cold war, we did the right thing for Kuwait and ourselves... these were military actions that are part of the basic expectations. But as for actions or public policy that has made the day-to-day lives of all Americans better? NOTHING that I can point to. NOTHING that demonstrates global leadership and puts the United States out ahead of the rest of the world.
Sweeping tax policy for the better... no, just more complexity and higher taxes.
Cogent visionary energy policy with programs on par with going to the moon that would cement our competitive edge for decades if not centuries to come... no, just spending money and more crushing regulations that raise the cost of everything.
Unleashing competitive medical care... no, just more tax funded programs that have done nothing but raise costs
NOTHING.
Is the Martian Rover recent enough?
Voyager was quite a while ago.
How about - NOT getting involved in the College BCS
As the poster at despair.com says - Government, if you think the problems are bad, wait until you see our solutions!
Is the Martian Rover recent enough?
Voyager was quite a while ago.
How about - NOT getting involved in the College BCS
As the poster at despair.com says - Government, if you think the problems are bad, wait until you see our solutions!
“What has the government done to make you proud?”
NOT issue Lady Gaga, Madonna, Black-Eyed Peas, Whitney Houston, Studio 54, Kurt Cobain/Courtney Love, Flava Flav, Guns and Roses, Barney the Dinosaur, Trayvon or Eminem (too many to list here) postage stamps.
Also, I’m proud of the fact that I can still apply for an extension to file my 1040 even though it is not an extension to pay! Pay???
Kind of broad question but I would add the destruction of the USSR as one, without a hot war.
Someone else said the highway system, before using the funds for political inner city projects.
However, these are in the almost distant past. In the past 15 years, I cannot conceive of one good thing beyond the Bush tax cuts, which are soon to expire.
Interesting, as the government expands beyond the ennumerated powers, the worse job it does.
Recently?
Illinois governors making license plates?
Take the advice of the late great Andrew Breitbart and ignore Beck.
http://nation.foxnews.com/andrew-breitbart/2011/12/13/breitbart-goes-coward-glenn-beck-he-dead-me
Try turning this around; we are so screwed....
The US budget in 2000 was 1.8 trillion. In 2011, it was 2.8 trillion. What special thing are we getting out of the US government now?
Actually, it seems like we’re getting less and less from the government.
Which government? There are many. But do you mean the feds? Didn’t they invent the Internet?
(I know, I know, it was actually Al Gore. But he was a federal employee — to be specific, a Congursmun — at the time!)
There are a few basic things done well by government that are not mentioned - our interstate highways, the air traffic control system, the National Weather service that may have saved dozens of lives last week in KS. While the Coast Guard is “military” they do stuff that goes above and beyond in providing safety to boaters that is not in the “defense” of our shores. Finally, the national park system makes me happy/proud every time I visit a place like Yosemite or Appalachian trail.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, something NASA plays down because it represents one of the few things inspired by conservatives the White House was unable to shut down. That, and too many scientists can't be bothered with politics (so naturally politics bothers with them.)
The LRO has been in lunar orbit almost three years, longer than anything any human contraption has ever managed to keep in lunar orbit. It has returned to Earth more data than all the previous human deep space probes combined, several times over. Photographed nearly the entire Moon in high resolution, etc. etc. And its done more than just shoot pretty pictures (again, for the first time) of human artifacts. Long after the mission is completed, for at least a decade to come, investigators will be pouring over that pile of data.
And it was all done on-time, under budget.
This reproduction of a roughly 188 meter wide segment (between lines 18602 and 19053) of LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) observation M168000580R may not be the best view of the Apollo 17 lunar module descent stage or the rover tracks and foot prints left behind by Cernan & Schmitt in 1972, still it was collected from an altitude of only 22.41 kilometers on August 14, 2011; LRO orbit 9892, official resolution 0.41 meters per pixel with an incidence angle of 45.17° From the post "LROC NAC August Close-Ups, Part 3," December 31, 2011 [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
All that being said, that's not saying much for a budget and debt wall. It's not even one brick in the Washington Monument, by comparison.
Want something not Space-related?
Tough one... A picture comes to mind. That of U.S. Navy personnel as the backdoor of a helicopter opens up after landing somewhere on Sumatra after the Boxing Day earthquake in 2005. In his arms is a box of rescue supplies, and on his face is genuine apprehension.
That made me proud, I guess. And believe it or not, the federal response to Katrina made me proud, considering the state and local breakdown, I just never bought the shameless feeding frenzy of the press.
All that sounds like a lot, but it's not much.
Our nation has become decadent, a self-perpetuating orthodoxy rather than the civilizing influence it started out being, because of the shared attitudes of out people.
Last night, while channel surfing, I noted that the documentary "Woodstock" was being replayed by VH1. Watching the clueless mudbathers descending into self-absorption, I recalled that weirdness happened just about the same time as the first moon landing, and the aftermath of Ted Kennedy's freestyle swim...
‘MENĒ, MENĒ, TEKĒL, UPHARSIN.’
Obama authorized the Military to shoot and kill the 3 pirates who held that ship captain hostage in 2009; an act I am sure he (Obama) regrets.
That is the ONLY thing I can think of in the last 3-1/2 years.
Thanks for mentioning LRO. I worked on the High Gain Antenna on that bird, along with the HGA on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Hoover Dam is impressive, but not recent.
Inter- state highway system ( Pres Eisenhower’s experience in WWII provided the impetus)
I love those stills from the studio production. They should have made the earth a lot bigger, though. In that photo the earth looks the same size the moon looks like from the earth.
Locally they removed all the traffic cameras in my city.
When my friends garage caught fire it was put out quickly and his house wasn’t damaged.
The severe weather warnings last week gave people in Ok, Tx, Ks area time to be prepared.
I don’t need to boil my water before I drink it.
They are several services that state and local governments do well.
We have a high level of expectations of all our government services and that in it self we should be proud of.
Good one, but I would put that in the "military related" category.
“Which government? There are many. But do you mean the feds? Didn’t they invent the Internet?”
The Feds did create the forerunner of the Internet - called DARPANET; the “D” was for defense. It was a military thing.
I’d like to back it completely our. Pay no taxes and ask for nothing in return, no social security, no fire dept, no police department, no public schools, I’ll take care of things myself.
The American air traffic control system is horribly outdated by international standards. Not only is this unsafe and has led to many crashes, but it also creates large numbers of travel delays.
yea they have been trying to get the planes on direct routes using GPS or some other technology and it is still not perfect, but look how much traffic is in the air. The highways are a little crowded and there is need of work on them too, but we move alot more stuff faster than anyone in the world.
RE: #27, I would agree. I started to mention the National Weather Service, esp. their severe weather watches and warnings.
The government that's big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.
“Obama authorized the Military to shoot and kill the 3 pirates who held that ship captain hostage in 2009; an act I am sure he (Obama) regrets.
That is the ONLY thing I can think of in the last 3-1/2 years.”
That is why “Except for military” was in the question.
By Robert VerBruggen
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com
Privatize Air-Traffic Control
By Robert VerBruggen
September 23, 2011 4:00 A.M.
In the GOP debate on September 7, moderator Brian Williams asked candidate Ron Paul if the government has a role in “air-traffic control, controlling the jets above our heads.”
“I think in theory,” Paul replied, “if you understood the free market in a free society, you don’t need government to do that.”
Williams seemed taken aback; he evidently thought that without the federal government, there would be no air-traffic control at all: “All the pilots in the sky, to add to their responsibilities, their own air-traffic control, in an organic way?” And the comment brought Paul ridicule from the Left, including Talking Points Memo.
But just two weeks later, none other than Peter Orszag — formerly the director of the Office of Management and Budget for the Obama administration, and currently a Citigroup executive — endorsed a kind of privatized air-traffic control in a Bloomberg op-ed. This is not only a good idea; it’s a centrist one.
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/278042
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