politics

With the Obama administration attempting to place a stranglehold on NASA funding and prohibit any manned exploration I thought I'd take a few moments of your time and express my views.

Please note the lack of a Space Shuttle in the attached photo - that program has already been cancelled, and they're trying to pull the budget for the replacement.

The current argument is that NASA expenditures and exploration are a drain on an already hurting economy. In Barney Frank's words “Space exploration is very important and has great scientific and practical results, but sending human beings to Mars and back will cost hundreds of billions of dollars for very little scientific worth.” In a recent interview with Dan Rather, Frank was asked "What if Lewis and Clark had made it to the Louisiana Purchase and turned back?" Frank's answer (to paraphrase): "Well if they got there and said it was a desert we wouldn't have been all that interested in rushing out there!" Forgive me, but I think the fact we DID rush across the deserts to found California kind of negates the argument.

There was a time when people referred to the "American Dream." The dream was that if you worked hard and smart, that you could become something better than you were. Immigrants flooded our borders hoping to jump on the capitalism bandwagon and make something of themselves.

What's interesting is that they have. In fact, a study by Johns Hopkins in 2001 found that even when considering Caucasian European immigrants against native-born Caucasian American's (in order to remove any racial prejudice from the numbers,) immigrants generally had greater than a 35% better net worth.

As an employer, entrepreneur and father, the average work ethic in the US seriously concerns me. I have to say we have an exceptionally good batch of employees right now, but when we were located in Alabama, finding good employees was exceptionally hard. Several people seemed to feel entitled to work 5 hours a day, and then spend 3 of those browsing the Internet or chatting with other employees. Unfortunately I didn't just have a bad batch, it was something I saw over and over. If you had to let someone go due to lack of work ethic, suddenly they threatened you with a lawsuit (one even went to arbitration.)

I try to not broadcast my feelings about one candidate or another online. So many people do that already, what would be the point in repeating something already said by someone else?

But, I have to say something on this topic.

I've fought my way up through the American dream. Not so many years ago I was on food stamps. I've worked for minimum wage for companies like Wal-Mart and worked 80+ hours per week for Radio Shack while making $30k / year as a store manager. I lived for many years under the poverty level.

Now I am partners in three companies. I still make less than "Joe Plumber" in personal income. My house cost me $72,000, not counting the repairs I'm constantly putting into it. I drive a Ford pickup truck and a Town & Country minivan, both of which already had 80k miles on them when I bought them.

Unfortunately for me, Obama's plan would hurt. Bad. As a partner in a small business that employs 40 people, my individual income certainly doesn't hit the threshold, but the business income does. and a lot of my pay is based on a percentage of business net income. That means if taxes go up on the business, my personal income goes down AND my personal income tax liability will go up, because I have to pay taxes on the S corporation. As you can see by my spending I list above, my personal income isn't all that large. I make considerably less than I would doing this same job for a large company, and I take that sacrifice because I know that one day my company will be worth a lot more than it is.