eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:26am on 2008-03-12

"Brad DeLong once said that 'Nobody could have foreseen ______ is the Bush administration's version of The dog ate my homework.' [...]

"[...] This excuse is really a serious admission that America's legendary facility with foresight and planning has all but vanished under 30 years of conservative rule. From the very beginning, we've been some of the biggest dreamers and most effective planners the world has ever seen. For better or worse, we settled up a continent, crossed it with railroads and interstates, dammed the West, dominated the skies, got water and power and phone lines into the most remote towns, fought a war in two theaters, and put men on the moon. Say what you will about the consequences of these endeavors; but they are not the achievements of a people who were afraid to look far ahead and imagine big things, who were unable to see all the possibilities, or who were ineffective at bringing those dreams into reality."

-- Sara Robinson, "Stealing Our Future: Conservatives, Foresight, and Why Nothing Works

There are 3 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

Wow

posted by [identity profile] unix-vicky.livejournal.com at 12:47pm on 2008-03-12
Excellent article. Thanks for pointing it out.
 
posted by [identity profile] dptwisted.livejournal.com at 09:39pm on 2008-03-12
Oh, but Bush did forsee the housing crisis; he took credit for that.

(The same housing crisis that he had been vehemently denying just prior.)
 
posted by [identity profile] pedropadrao.livejournal.com at 09:57am on 2008-03-13
NASA's been worried about how to hand along the skills that led us to the Moon for several years now. If you look at the numbers, a lot of the civil servants at the agency are due to retire in under a decade. NASA was asked to reduce its size through the '70s, & it hasn't really had the chance to hire anyone since. A new generation is starting to move in, but NASA's going to have to get the mentoring process that it once had rolling along smoothly in the '60s back on track before the experiences of the last set of spaceship builders is gone. There's things that just don't come out in blueprints & specs.

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