Posted on 09/18/2012 4:58:22 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Space Shuttle Discovery sailed off into the sunset and the United States for the first time in a half century has no proven ability to put men into space. Thank President Obama. Or maybe, thank SpaceX founder Elon Musk. (See Rand Simberg’s very different take on things.) SpaceX is getting federal dollars that NASA would otherwise use.
.......While NASA dollars have moved into the pockets of SpaceX, we now know that Elon Musk is an Obama bundler. Yesterday I had a conversation with a Congressman who revealed to me that Musk is a big Obama friend and bundler. Musk has been skimming federal largess in more than just his space enterprises. He’s also skimming tax dollars for his car company, Tesla [and Solar City].
We’ll be watching SpaceX very closely to see if it becomes Space Solyndra, another big expensive failure for Obama friends.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
September 17, 2012 (Breitbart) Report: Top Obama Bundlers Bag Millions in Taxpayer Money "An investigation by the Government Accountability Institute found that more than half of the most politically active 50 campaign bundlers for President Obama were either appointed to a presidential council, committee, board, or other White House post. Many bundlers’ businesses or relatives' businesses also received millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded federal contracts, grants, loans, or other crony perks."
May 29, 2012 (Ricochet) Elon Musk Shows Us How to Thrive in the Government-Directed Economy ...."Those who know how to navigate an economy driven by the state will succeed. They do so regardless whether the market has determined their product as the best or not—sometimes it has, sometimes it hasn’t. Sometimes the consumer has no real ability, thanks to the aforementioned mix of laws and regulations, to go in another direction. Sometimes the only consumer is the government, meaning the appropriators, bureaucrats, and administrators who dream fondly of working some day for the contractor titans they fuel with other people’s money.".....
April 15, 2012 (National Legal and Policy Center) Taxpayers Subsidize Forbes 'Green' Billionaires' Schemes........Musk, best known as co-founder of the company that became PayPal, is Chairman of SolarCity and CEO of Tesla. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, SolarCity spent $535,000 in 2009 and 2010 to lobby Congress and the Department of Energy on climate legislation, the Recovery Act, “green workforce training and development,” and provisions in various legislation “relevant to solar development.” SolarCity has sought to extend a program, due to expire at the end of 2012, that delivers to manufacturers an upfront cash grant in lieu of a 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (called the Section 1603 grant program). So far, according to DOE reports, SolarCity has received more than $66 million from that program.
The company also won a partial guarantee from DOE of a $344 million loan that will place up to 160,000 rooftop solar installations on military housing across the country.
Similarly, Musk’s Tesla Motors spent $480,000 from 2007 to 2011 to lobby Congress, the White House, EPA and DOE on climate and energy issues, the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program, the Promoting Electric Vehicles Act, and the Recovery Act. Tesla received a $465 million loan guarantee from DOE’s ATVM program.
Musk is also a generous political donor, mostly to Democrats, although his investments and giving are equally diverse. Also the CEO of a space exploration company, Musk donated $290,000 to political candidates and the major parties from 2008 through 2012, which included $66,200 to the Democratic National Committee, $34,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and $63,500 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. His presidential candidate was Barack Obama, giving $2,300 for his 2008 campaign and $5,000 for the 2012 cycle. Besides Musk, a former Tesla director, Steve Westly, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for both of President Obama’s campaigns as a bundler."............
Say it ain’t so..../s =.=
Gee : More corruption by te Obama Administration.
What a surprise.
...."Tesla has even more questionable connections:
Tesla brings political pull, as well. A former Tesla board member, Steve Westly, is an Obama bundler who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the president in 2008 and for his 2012 re-election campaign. His Westly Group was also a financial supporter of Tesla Motors until Tesla went public in 2010, and Westly continues to back the company.
Tesla’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, is a hearty political contributor who has primarily backed Democrats, including Obama. According to published reports, another Tesla investor is Nick Pritzker, a donor to Obama and a cousin of Penny Pritzker, the national finance chair of Obama’s 2008 campaign."......
More on Steve Westly [July 2012 - Washington Post "fact check"]
Even worse than corruption,.....
......"We have "lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do things that built the Golden Gate Bridge." Tellingly, when people aspire to do great things, they use the metaphor of a moon shot. Obama did not -- perhaps because he eviscerated our space program, which was symbolic of our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do great things."..... What Obama thinks of Americans
Obama outsourced manned spaceflight
None dare call it Cronyism.
..............“I have a lot of facilities that we, NASA, no longer need,” Robert Cabana, NASA Kennedy Space Center director and a four-time space shuttle flier, told the Washington Post in February. “I don’t have the money to maintain them, I don’t have the money to tear them down. They’re just going to sit and rot.”
Cabana was frustrated with NASA administration’s inability to adapt, "explained" Joyce Riquelme, director of center planning and development directorate at Kennedy.
“We do have facilities that are unused or underutilized as a result of the shuttle program shutting down,” she told FoxNews.com.".............
.................A prime example is Hangar One, a Silicon Valley landmark built in the 30s and one of the world’s largest free-standing structures. In April, NASA said it was working to dispose of it.
Leasing Hangar One is illegal, according to current policy, since there’s no immediate need for the vast space. Yet selling it would be a dire hit to Silicon Valley and even national security, many warn.
“The very vitality and future of NASA Ames as a center is at risk,” the Silicon Valley Leadership Group said in May.
The facility is currently being cleaned up by the original tenant, the Navy, according to Scott Anderson, environmental coordinator for the former Naval Air Station. In mid-November, NASA will take over again -- but what happens then is anyone’s guess.
“NASA is responsible for residing the hangar, paying for the cost to reside the hangar, and making any additional upgrades and repairs necessary to prepare the hangar for reuse,” Anderson told FoxNews.com.
Google -- one of the largest tenants of NASA properties -- has offered to pay for tens of millions for that work and to rent the structure through H211 LLC, a private plane operator linked to the search giant.
The status of that offer is unclear.
“NASA has made improvements to its leasing program in recent years,” Martin wrote in his report. Riquelme agreed that headway was, at last, being made.
“In the next three to four months, you’ll see several interesting things come out that will show progress,” she told FoxNews.com."........
______________________________________
Those working to save Moffett Field's historic Hangar One have taken note of reports that Pete Worden, the director of Mountain View's NASA Ames Research Center, may be on his way out.
"Multiple sources report that NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden is planning to fire or reassign Worden and two other center directors as well," reported longtime NASA watchdog Keith Cowing of nasawatch.com.
William Berry, former assistant director at Ames, said the report was a backdrop for the fight to save Hangar One, calling it "clear indication that NASA HQ wants to fire Pete Worden in some part for his support of Hangar One."
Worden has spoken publicly in support of reusing the former airship hangar for a modern airship being developed by the U.S. Department of Defense...
.....”Tesla’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, is a hearty political contributor who has primarily backed Democrats, including Obama. According to published reports, another Tesla investor is Nick Pritzker, a donor to Obama and a cousin of Penny Pritzker, the national finance chair of Obama’s 2008 campaign.”......
“....Very quietly, Obama’s chief financier, Penny Pritzker, has entered the Hawaii housing market to buy a retirement home for the president and his family that will be available not in 2016, but in January 2013, according to a confidential source within Pritzker’s Chicago organization
Pritzker, a wealthy Chicago business executive and heiress to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, served as national finance chairman for Obama’s 2008 campaign and is the co-chairman of his 2012 effort.”.......
http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/secret-retirement-plans-does-obama-expect-to-lose/#
They're talking about a commercial venture to mine asteroids for rare-Earth metals. The EPA is keeping our domestic rare-Earth mines closed.
"Commercial" space is not ready for prime time.
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