Chartsmanship goes interplanetary

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Behold! An asshole who happens to be appointed at a position directly affecting science-related policy, attempts to deal with an actual scientist, and finds out his little chartsmanship is cute, but severely lacking in basic knowledge of NASA.

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Seems like the Chairman of the Senate Space and Science and 2013 Person of the Year Ted Cruz doesn't quite like how NASA runs things, particularly how it handles its budget. This hearing was at the subcommittee in relation to Obama's $18.5 billion request, and it's where Cruz used the spotlight to express his dislike of NASA's "fixation" on studying the Earth to the point of questioning the space agency's core mission. After having used a funny bogus chart or two in his vain attempt to show that the space agency is somehow being "misdirected", he went on to point out that NASA's budget for Earth sciences has increased by 41%, and the space missions have decreased by 7%. "In my judgment, this does not represent a fair or appropriate allocation of resources, that it is shifting resources away from the core functions of NASA to other functions".

( Enter NASA chief Charles Bolden )