Privatizing Government As A Way To Trim Deficit

Could mining moon be a way to cut deficit? (Exclusive to Yahoo! News)
Some ideas for trimming the skyrocketing federal Deficit are not just out of the box. They are out of this world. Yahoo! News asked members of the Yahoo! Contributor Network to submit their own ideas for what to do about the deficit, and contributor Mark Whittington decided to shoot for The Moon — literally. He recommended leasing The Moon for mining, along with privatizing more down-to-earth government services. We've chosen other interesting responses to highlight over the course of this w...

Virgin Galactic joins fray to fly NASA astronauts
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Virgin Galactic, a U.S. offshoot of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, joined two separate teams vying for a $200 million NASA program to spur the development of private-sector space taxis, the company said Thursday. The teams, led by Orbital Sciences Corp. and Sierra Nevada Corp., both propose flying passengers on reusable winged spaceships that launch on expendable rockets and land on runways like NASA’s Space Shuttles. These designs “could revolutionize o...

Bachmann lands slot on Intel panel
Rep. Michele Bachmann, one of the most outspoken Conservatives in the House, has won an appointment to the secretive House Intelligence Committee. The move by incoming Speaker John Boehner to put Bachmann on the panel surprised Republican insiders, who see her as a fiery grass roots leader of the Tea Party movement but not necessarily a leader on National Security among House Republicans. Continue Reading Text Size - + reset Politico 44 Bachmann once suggested that Congress should investiga...

History & Archaeology
As a distant war was intensifying and the city of New Orleans was slowly recovering from a Hurricane's devastation, ten days before Christmas 1965, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration got an early holiday present: Astronauts Walter M. "Wally" Schirra Jr. and Thomas P. Stafford, aboard Gemini 6, rendezvoused in space with Gemini 7, piloted by Frank Borman and Jim Lovell. Gemini 6 had been launched into orbit several days after Gemini 7. Schirra and Stafford maneuvered thei...

BLIND ITEMS: What Senator Earmarked a Bridge To the Moon?
This is still referred to as “The D.C. Gossip,” right? Let’s give you some. This senator from a Great Plains state has a district office made entirely of pickup trucks and is on record against Earmarks. But that didn’t stop him from sticking one into the recent omnibus bill that provides Trillions of dollars for construction of a bridge to The Moon to be named after his grandson, after he lost a bet in a game of Go Fish. What does the earmark say shall be done with any l...

Solstice-eclipse overlap marks rare sight
Rebecca Lindell, Postmedia News · Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2010 Ottawa — This year’s winter solstice — an event that will occur next Tuesday — will coincide with a full lunar eclipse in a union that hasn’t been seen in 456 years. The celestial eccentricity holds special significance for spiritualities that tap into the energy of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and a time that is associated with the rebirth of the sun. “It’s a ritual of ...

Lunar eclipse and winter solstice to coincide, first time since the year 1378
How often do you get to witness an event that has not been seen since the year 1378,  over half a millennium, 632 years ago? Of course, weather will make or break the viewing, and it appears the much of the West Coast of the USA will be socked in with a significant winter storm at that time. Here’s the USA forecast for cloud cover. Blue is clearest, gray is cloud cover. For those that can see it, The Moon will likely appear as a deep coppery red, like this 2003 eclipse photo at left. ...

Final lunar eclipse of 2010 set for early morning of December 21
Skygazers hoping to catch the last lunar eclipse of 2010 on Tuesday morning best be ready to stay up late (or wake up very early) to watch the full moon as it goes through a range of dramatic color changes. The December 21 lunar eclipse is expected to last about three-and-a-half hours from its start as a partial eclipse at 1:33 a.m. ET to its finish at 5:01 a.m. ET, according to NASA. The previous lunar eclipse occurred June 26. During a lunar eclipse, The Moon, the Earth, and the sun align...

Good grief: ObamaCare lawyers argue that health insurance premiums is itself a tax
This is absurd. As a Professor in a University, I choose a healthcare plan from a pool that my U negotiate with providers. I make a choice based on coverage and cost. The Obama regime is arguing in court that no matter what I choose, I am paying a tax to a private company to cover myself and my family. Uh - what?!? By that reasoning, when I buy apples at the Grocery Store for $0.68 per pound, I am paying a $0.68 per pound tax. In fact, every product or service I purchase is a tax. It's absurd b...

Taking the reins
With the nod of the Miami City Commission, Tony Crapp Jr. now has a gleaming trophy for his hard work as a Bureaucrat on the one hand -- and a sticky wicket on the other. Mr. Crapp is Miami's new city manager, his name put forth by Mayor Tomás Regalado. Thursday, commissioners unanimously approved the choice -- without rancor and with warm support, which Mr. Crapp already has earned. He is an experienced administrator who currently is an assistant city manager under Carlos Migoya, who's a...

Annals of Hackery
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. The economic picture in Florida is not pretty: there were 1.1 million Floridians unemployed last month, and 55 of Florida’s 67 counties reported double-digit Unemployment. It has the fifth-highest Foreclosure rate in the country, and the state is facing a $3 billion Budget shortfall, including a $1.5 billion shortfall for pressing needs like schools and courts. Former Health Care executive and multi-millionaire Rick Scott (R) ...

Sudan's Nubian desert meteorite just one piece of an unknown celestial body
© Unknown Scientists from all over the world are taking a second, more expansive, look at the car-sized asteroid that exploded over Sudan's Nubian Desert in 2008. Initial research was focused on classifying the meteorite fragments that were collected two to five months after they were strewn across the desert and tracked by NASA's Near Earth Object astronomical network. Now in a series of 20 papers for a special double issue of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, published on D...

What Shuts Down, Exactly?
Lawmakers in the House and Senate are scrambling to pass Legislation to preserve the funding stream for the Federal Government, which, if nothing is done, will expire at midnight on Saturday, prompting a shutdown of the federal government. In the event lawmakers fail to reach a deal, old hands in and around the Capitol have begun looking to the past as prologue, to determine how the federal Bureaucracy -- and Americans across the country -- would be affected by a government shutdown. "The entire...

The Obama Administrations New Focus: Environmental Justice
Recently the Obama Administration had a mutli-agency forum - including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the EPA, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Labor - about “environmental justice.” So what the heck is “environmental justice?” As Carter Wood explains, it’s whatever the Environmentalists decide it is at any given moment: The trouble with “environmental justice” is that it means whatever th...

Irony: After Requesting $164 Million In Pork In A Single Bill Kent Conrad To Receive Fiscal Restraint Award
In a single bill, the now-defunct (thankfully) Omnibus Spending Bill, Senator Kent Conrad requested a whopping $164 million in pork spending. Now, ironically, Senator Conrad is set to receive an award on “fiscal restraint.” A nonpartisan trio including David Walker of the Comeback America Initiative, Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition selected three elected officials to receive the first “Fiscy awards.R...

Space Cheese and Other Breakthroughs
If you had been onboard the Dragon capsule last week as it was launched into orbit and then quickly retrieved after a Pacific Ocean splashdown, you would have enjoyed “a very nice ride” according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk. But the occupants of this test flight—the first successful launch and recovery of a pressurized capsule by a commercial space company—were limited to some ballast weights, souvenirs for the crew, and this wheel of Le Brouère cheese. The cheese was sent along

Omnibus Defeat Is a Victory for Reality
I’m glad the Senate came to its senses and killed the omnibus spending monstrosity. That outrageous Trillion-dollar pork buffet was an outright slap in the face to the American public’s expressed wishes in the last election. It was as if Congress was earning its historically low 13 percent Approval Rating before our very eyes. I applaud senators like Jim DeMint, John McCain, and others who fought this and stopped it. However, the very fact that some lawmakers on Capitol Hill tho...

Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It (Hardback)
Terrorizing Ourselves explores disciplined approaches to Terrorism and dismantles the flawed thinking that dominates today’s National Security policy. It exposes how politicians manipulate fear for political purposes and shows how anxiety about Terrorism is driving Military adventurism, exploding the National Debt, militarizing domestic affairs, and shifting expenditures away from other urgent priorities. Terrorizing Ourselves dismantles much of the flawed thinking that dominates U.S. coun...

Obama Tax Cut Deal Is a Bad Bargain
There’s a common view in politics and in business that if nearly everyone is unhappy with a negotiated package, it must be good. That is not the case, unfortunately, with the massive Tax Cut extension the House approved late Thursday night. The $858 billion package will do lots to increase the Deficit, but Americans won’t feel the move as an actual tax cut. The measure merely extends the Bush-era tax cuts (inexplicably instituted during wartime, when historically, Americans have be...

Bachmann to Intelligence Committee
By Patrick O'Connor Rep. Michele Bachmann , the Minnesota Republican who helped create a Tea Party Caucus of House members is getting a seat on the House Intelligence Committee. Speaker-designate John Boehner (R, Ohio) named Ms. Bachmann, a favorite with Tea Party Activists, to the panel a few weeks after she bowed out of a potentially combative race for the job of Republican Conference chairman, the no. 4 slot in the party’s leadership hierarchy. Ms. Bachmann has become a prolific Fundraiser a...

B.C. not prepared for snap election
Last updated Friday, Dec. 17, 2010 3:53PM EST Elections BC would need six months’ notice to prepare for an early election, the province’s chief electoral officer says. With BC Liberal leadership Candidates debating an early election call, Craig James has ruled out a snap election on practical terms. Because of B.C.’s fixed election law, Elections BC does not keep its Voting Machine in a state of constant readiness. In all likelihood, the earliest a new premier could call for a ...

Our Race-Obsessed MSM: A Self-Serving Fraud
At the Washington Examiner, Noemie Emery writes, “Liberal disillusionment somehow less Racist than conservative opposition.” Funny how that works, isn’t it? Boy, some people fly off the handle at nothing these days. “F— the president,” an unidentified Democrat said at a House Caucus, concerning the tax deal President Obama cut with Republicans. At once, the keen ears of Maureen Dowd picked up a message: “Fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word i...

Congress throws a tea party
Overall, a pretty good day for those who believe in low taxes and less spending. Here is the money graph from my upcoming Reuters Breakingviews column: Democrats and Republicans in Congress are gridlocked over the $1.1 Trillion 2011 Budget. So they will likely pass a temporary spending measure to keep the government running for another month or two. This creates a situation next year where incoming Tea Party Republicans can a) combine a threat of government shutdown with b) a refusal to raise t...

US tax deal, budget feud set stage for 2011 cuts
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. To nations suffering Austerity, it must seem as if Washington has gone mad. First, the U.S. Congress fails to agree on a 2011 Budget. Then lawmakers overwhelmingly pass another giant stimulus. But both events actually hint at some chance of more disciplined fiscal action next year. President Barack Obama will quickly sign the $858 billion stimulus/Tax Cut bill that funds Unemployment Benefits for 13 months and...

The New Mitt: Same as the Old Mitt
A WHILE back, an article about the Romney camp’s post-mortem on Mitt’s 2008 presidential run caught my eye. Upon reflection, some members of Team Romney had apparently come to the conclusion that the Mittster had tried too hard to appeal (read: pander) to the conservative purists. Next time, some suggested, Romney would play to his strengths, establishing himself as a smart, pragmatic, solutions-oriented Mr. Fix-It. Granted, it seemed to have taken Mitt’s inner circle an awful...