At what cost?
Jan. 15th, 2004 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserThis has been bothering me ever since little Georgie announced our grandiose plans to make a super high-tech nifty Moon Base to venture further into space from: How can he, or anyone who has thought this through, support this idea? Sure having base on the moon would be cool, and oh boy! Another thing we do first! And as a Star Trek fan, how could I not dream about being on some Enterprise-like ship flying way far away? But putting down the crack pipe, how about the money behind this dream?
There are kids, American kids, go to bed hungry every night. People in America starve to death. They die of lack of medical care. Our very same government is cutting funding to nursing homes (so many of which are already lacking in staff and funding). Women and children are beaten, and there aren't enough outreach programs to save them all. Sexual predators can sign up on the offenders list or not as they choose -- there is no one to force them to do it! They'll only get in trouble for not signing up if they're caught doing something else.
I'm not disagreeing that a base on the moon would be an oh-so-cool idea, but how in the world can anyone put it before correcting the on-going suffering and loss of life? The lack of a minimal standard of living for everyone?
Until every single American is living above poverty level, until random wandering homeless mental patients are off the streets and in some sort of organized, supervised place, we should be focusing our attention and money towards fixing our current problems, not allowing Mr. Georgie President to distract us with the idea of a shiny new toy that we might be able to one day get.
Bah.
There are kids, American kids, go to bed hungry every night. People in America starve to death. They die of lack of medical care. Our very same government is cutting funding to nursing homes (so many of which are already lacking in staff and funding). Women and children are beaten, and there aren't enough outreach programs to save them all. Sexual predators can sign up on the offenders list or not as they choose -- there is no one to force them to do it! They'll only get in trouble for not signing up if they're caught doing something else.
I'm not disagreeing that a base on the moon would be an oh-so-cool idea, but how in the world can anyone put it before correcting the on-going suffering and loss of life? The lack of a minimal standard of living for everyone?
Until every single American is living above poverty level, until random wandering homeless mental patients are off the streets and in some sort of organized, supervised place, we should be focusing our attention and money towards fixing our current problems, not allowing Mr. Georgie President to distract us with the idea of a shiny new toy that we might be able to one day get.
Bah.
