Tag Archives: public sector

Space Exploration Needs Obama Relaunch

BY ROBERT WALKER AND CHARLES MILLER
Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal

During his first term, President Obama set out to transform NASA’s relationship with the private sector, announcing a plan in February 2010 to make technology, innovation and commercial space travel and exploration the centerpiece of his administration’s space strategy. Despite great resistance from special interests, the president proposed to cancel NASA’s programs to build government-designed rockets, leaving that to the private sector.

Unfortunately, Congress wouldn’t go along. Now that Mr. Obama has started a second term, however, he is well positioned to recommit himself to a vision that in the long run will benefit every American and may be remembered as a 30-year arc of Reagan-Bush-Obama space policy. Continue reading →

Obama “You Didn’t Do That’ Speech Defines Him

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

There has been much written about President Obama’s speech in Roanoke, VA, on July 13. What drew so much attention was this: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet…”

There is some discussion as to what “that” refers, whether it is the small business or the “unbelievable American system”. But semantics is a distraction.

The debate should be over the speech itself, not its sentence construction. Continue reading →