IFPTE Letter to Members on Election 2008 Issues
“It is has been a hard 8 years for NASA. President Bush’s initial mistake was to downsize, outsource, and undermine the technical independence of NASA’s civil-servant workforce. The Republican plan was to eliminate about a fifth of its independent in-house experts and most civil-service protections. This nave ideology, that federal laboratories such as NASA should be run like a private business with the cold, untechnical perspective of a bean-counter, tragically contributed to the Columbia disaster and led to the subsequent hurried and flawed planning for President Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration.”
