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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Betsy Johnson, Brad Witt, Former President Trump, Henry Heimuller, Joe Biden, Pat Robertson, Joe Biden’s dogs, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Bill’s Standard Disclaimer
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Don’t be fooled! These billionaires are using PR stunts to Increase their wealth, at the cost to the planet and the taxpayers.
Billionaires in Space
The world famous billionaires Sir Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are spending billions to race into outer space. Branson and Bezos have completed this objective. Musk is behind his other two pals. How is their 10 minute space travel a benefit to mankind? I guess it’s a step to the future for people to be flying around the earth. That’s is if you have the hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it. How is this benefiting any one? We are having a planet crisis, we are killing the planet, causing mass extinctions. Near the end of June, Jacobabad, a city of 200,000 people in Pakistan, experienced “wet bulb” conditions where high humidity and scorching temperatures combine to reach a level where the human body can no longer cool itself down. Meanwhile, half a world away, on the West Coast of North America, a heat dome that was made much worse by climate change sent temperatures soaring so high that the town of Lytton, British Columbia, hit 121.8 degree F., beating Canada’s previous temperature record by 40.3 degree F then burned to the ground when a wildfire tore through the town. In other parts of the world the sea level has risen, ice sheets melting, forest fires hurricanes, jet streams changing, sea currents changing. We are in big trouble! These ego driven men are to see who can exit the atmosphere first, while on the other, the billions of us who will never make any such journey and could care-less about space. And our concerned about our survival on earth are increasing dealing with the consequences of capitalism’s effects on the climate, and the decades its most powerful members have spent stifling action to curb the known destruction that is happening. These men could combine or not combine efforts to stop climate change by developing new technologies in energy, yet they waste billions of dollars. Yes I know some people will say it’s their money to spend as they wish. I agree it’s their money and no one’s business how they spent it. But come on they got that money by the generous average tax payers who no doubt have supplemented their taxes. Worked for them, in some cases for less wages’ Bezos is known for being an asshole. But besides all that, you would think they would want to save this beautiful Blue Marble and its wondrous inhabitants. Last May-2020 we witnessed the government doing little to stop COVID-19 from sweeping the country, Elon Musk and President Donald Trump met in Florida to celebrate SpaceX’s first time launching astronauts to the International Space Station. As regular people were fighting for their lives, it felt like the elite were living in a completely separate world and had no reservations about showing it. SpaceX’s Elon Musk wants us to colonize Mars and claims the mission of his space company is to lay the infrastructure to do just that. He wants humanity to be a “multiplanetary” species, and he claims a Martian colony would be a backup plan in case Earth becomes uninhabitable. Well instead of ignoring the problems facing earth try and help solve them. His companies along with the other billionaire companies have contributed to our problems with climate change. In other words wreck the planet and then move on to another one. Bezos doesn’t have much time for Mars colonization. Instead, he believes we should build large structures in Earth’s orbit where the human population can grow to a trillion people without further harming the planet’s environment. As we live out our lives in O’Neill cylinders, as they’re called, we’ll take occasional vacations down to the surface to experience the wonder of the world we once called home. Why just visit, here why not just take care of ones home. Neither of these futures are appealing if you look past the billionaires’ rosy pitch decks. Life on Mars would be horrendous for hundreds of years, at least, and would likely kill many of the people who made the journey, while the technology for massive space colonies doesn’t exist and similarly won’t be feasible for a long time to come. So, what’s the point of promoting these futures in the face of an unprecedented threat to our species here on Earth? It’s to get the public on board for a new phase of capitalist accumulation whose benefits will be reaped by those billionaires. as Musk and even Trump continued to push the spectacle of Mars for the public, SpaceX was becoming not just a key player in a privatized space industry but also in enabling a military buildup through billions of dollars in government contracts. The grand visions, rocket launches, and spectacles of billionaires leaving the atmosphere are all cover for the real space economy. In 2004, Bezos and Musk met to discuss their respective visions for space, which led Musk to call Bezos’s ideas “dumb.” As a result of that discussion, they occasionally snipe at each other — exchanges the media eats up — but they’re still working to forward a private space industry from which they both stand to benefit. Its all about controlling a new business venture where they will become more powerful and more rich. The years of competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin over landing platforms, patents, and NASA contracts show what the billionaire space race is really about. The most recent example of this is a $2.9 billion NASA contract awarded to SpaceX to build a moon lander, which Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics challenged. In the aftermath, Congress considered increasing NASA’s budget by $10 billion, in part so it could hand a second contract to Blue Origin. But that’s hardly the only example of public funding for the ostensibly private space industry. The taxpayer is on the hook and don’t even know it. $7.2 billion had been handed out to the commercial space industry since 2000, and it specifically called out SpaceX as a company whose early success depended on NASA contracts. Yet private space companies aren’t just building relationships with the public space agency. It’s all about privatization at the cost of the common man who will never benefit. These billionaires depend on public money, SpaceX won a $149 million contract from the Pentagon to build missile-tracking satellites, and two more worth $160 million to use its Falcon 9 rockets. It also won an initial contract of $316 million to provide a launch for the Space Force — a contract whose value will likely be worth far more in the future — and it’s building the military a rocket that will deliver weapons around the world. On top of all that, SpaceX won $900 million in subsidies from the Federal Communications Commission to provide rural broadband through its overhyped Starlink satellites. Mars colonies or massive space stations are not happening anytime soon; they won’t be a backup plan, nor an escape hatch. As billionaires chase profit in space and boost their egos in the process, they’re also planning for climate apocalypse down here on Earth — but they’re only planning for themselves. It takes thousands of people to keep the International Space station operating. These rich people are making sure they survive not the rest of us, Billionaires are not leaving the planet, they’re insulating themselves from the general public with bulletproof vehicles, battery-powered gated communities, and possibly even exclusive transport tunnels. They have the resources to maintain multiple homes and to have private jets on standby if they need to flee a natural disaster or public outrage. These rich people are doing these stunts to continue and assure they keep making more wealth, it’s not about our future it’s about theirs. They market their adventures, use PR stunts as a cover it’s the old bait and switch to the public, and while many are falling for their crap many of us are not. The government needs to stop funding these billionaires, and start funding NASA instead, stop funding private enterprises. We need to jump in and solve our planets problems full bore. We have no other place to go to live this is it. We are not the Elon Musks, Bezeos or Branson’s of the world, we are the common Joe who needs this planet to live, we depend on other living things to survive, and our planet depends on all of us to make it thrive. We have no other choice. Lets make sure we have a planet and not fall for the PR stunts of these rich elites who have thrived and been a glutton off the public trough.
Tammy
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