More political interference and cronyism at NASA

NASA Watch reports that Patrick Rhode, the deputy to Michael Brown, of Hurricane Katrina FEMA infamy, has been appointed to a NASA position. His total lack of experience at anything except getting Bush and Cheney elected makes this a very bad bit of corruption.

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Oh boy, it just never stops with this administration and its contempt for science. Via Keith Cowing's NASA Watch comes news of a, well, interesting new Bush Administration appointee at NASA: NASA Headquarters has a new political appointee in its employ: Patrick Rhode. He'll be working on the 9th…
I first posted this picture on September 8th 2005 in the wake of the ineptitude shown by the administration with their handling of Hurricane Katrina. As we approach the anniversary of the hurricane's second landfall on August 29th 2005 at Louisiana, we've little to convince us that the boy king…
Paul Campos has an article in the New Republic (registration required, but available on bugmenot) about FEMA director Mike Brown. I've written before, as have many others, about Brown's complete lack of qualifications for that position, which he got only because his former college roommate hired…
Via Andrew Sullivan's blog I came across this account of a recent talk given by former FEMA director Michael Brown: Political storm clouds gathered again over the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina as former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown said party…

From the NY Daily News:

Never fear, though: Rhode has covered disasters--as a TV anchor for local network affiliates in Alabama and Arkansas, in which capacity he developed "an acute interest in what responders do in times of crises." Perhaps not acute enough. He recently said that FEMA's response to Katrina was "probably one of the most efficient and effective responses in the country's history.

I'm sure he'll do just fine...

Is it any wonder that it's so easy to believe the new review process for USGS will add focus to Administration policies instead of sticking to the science, or that the Administration provides anti-science support to the National Parks system?

Since NASA policy increasingly emphasizes meaningless engineering exercises like the proposed moonbase over cost-effective science, it doesn't matter so much who administers the program. He'll be like the guy the pharoah put in charge of building his pyramid. Whether the pyramid ever gets built or not, the same amount of money and energy will be wasted in the process of building a monument to vanity.