Bah, politics

The reason why I may be voting Republican this year, if the primary doesn't turn out well for Clinton: Obama wants me to lose my job. He's obviously timed this announcement well, most of the states with large space programs have already had their primaries, and many of the remaining states aren't doing so hot in the education department.

Some numbers provided by Ben:
States remaining to be decided in democratic primaries: Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina
Discredited States: Florida, Michigan

States with NASA Centers: California, Virginia, Ohio, New York, Maryland, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico

Rank of expenditures per student for states left in democratic
primaries:
Oregon: #28
Montana: #26
South Dakota: #35
Indiana: #22
Pennsylvania: #21
West Virginia: #15
Kentucky: #30
North Carolina: #41

School Teacher Salary Rank:
Oregon: #14
Montana: #46
South Dakota: #51
Indiana: #17
Pennsylvania: #10
West Virginia: #42
Kentucky: #34
North Carolina: #24

Only one of the states remaining has a NASA Center. The majority of the remaining states are in the bottom half of salary and expenditures per student.

It is very rare for NASA to compete with education for money, because they're separate issues, both of which deserve a lot more money than they ever get. But his plan would put us without human spaceflight capability for almost 10 years! Not to mention how many thousands of NASA employees and contractors will be laid off in the states that had their primaries before he came out with this plan, and it's not like there's that much commercial spaceflight going on yet to pick up the slack.

People, we will never have colonies on the moon if all of our engineers die of old age before we get around to going back, and everyone knows it won't be the future until we have moon colonies. Apparently Obama just doesn't want it to be the future. I guess we shouldn't even bother asking him for funding for flying cars or hoverboards.