cuts

By Kim Krisberg Friday wasn't a great day for public health. That day, Congress voted to raid the Affordable Care Act's Prevention and Public Health Fund to the tune of $5 billion. The move comes as part of a deal to delay scheduled cuts to Medicare physician payment rates and was part of a legislative package to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. Both the Senate and House voted by wide margins to pass the bill, and President Obama is expected to sign it. Of course, this was hardly the intent of the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which was created via the Affordable…
Official word on the IXO x-ray mission now, with rumours from Europe on what the European Space Agency has in mind. LISA must be rebranded, quick! IXO News "This is an update on the discussions with the European Space Agency (ESA) at the recent ESA-NASA bilateral meeting. ... ESA has ended consideration of IXO and the other concepts as partnerships at the scale proposed in the New Worlds New Horizons decadal survey (NWNH) and EJSM/Laplace in Visions and Voyages for Planetary Science. Instead, ESA has begun a rapid definition effort that includes the formation of a new science team (to be…
NASA has some official word on what is going on in astrophysics in general and with LISA in particular. LISA and IXO ended. Teams supported through Oct '11, if budget is not cut more. New concept studies. LISA and Changes in the Cosmic Vision Programme (pdf) LISA and Changes in the Cosmic Vision Programme "Based on discussions with the European Space Agency (ESA) at the recent ESA- NASA bilateral meeting, we provide the following information concerning LISA. Readers are advised to refer to any ESA postings - when available - for details and clarifications regarding the Cosmic Vision…
So, got confirmation of initial round of cuts. NASA HQ is preparing for budget problems by starting to pull back funds already allocated, in anticipation of fiscal year 2010-11 cuts. Between possible government shutdown, and the uncertainty over the Senate response to the House cuts, and a possible veto, it is hard to know what the funding will be in the end, or indeed if there will be any guidance on what to cut. So... Major cuts to current ongoing mission operations and data analysis. Specifcally, Swift and Chandra are cut. I hear three other missions are also cut, but don't know which…
A lot of people have asked me to link to and comment on the SUNY Albany cuts and some of the reactions to it by some online academics... To cut a long story short, the SUNY system took another round of cuts, and the President of SUNY Albany decided to cut whole programs rather than keep trimming around the edges. Classics, French, Italian, Russian, and Theatre cut by directive, at short notice and with little open consultation. Gregory Petsko wrote a high profile defence of the humanities, from a science perspective, and the Dangeral Professor hisself pitches his penny's worth in, while…
Krugman is is on fire today, as he has been for a while, this time talking about the tax cuts. But, even he makes an essential error that all the democrats seem to be making. It is not about Bush's tax cuts, or keeping Bush's tax cuts or Obama raising taxes. Bush, for whatever reasons, proposed and got passed tax cuts that expire this year. That is it. They will be no more. Any changes in the tax code beyond that are not Bush's. So, at the end of this year, there will BUSH'S TAX INCREASES. That is the status quo, as set in law and signed by President Bush. If your tax increases next year, it…