| As may be seen, my newsletter had also discussed faster travel between planets. Plagiarism, which is the enemy of technological progress, motivated some political figures to ignore or belittle anything I might say. For power brokers, up there on Mount Olympus, there may have been a dilemma. On the one hand, one clearly couldn't risk doing any damage to the reputation of the Fed Chairman. On the other hand, there were well-established precedents for the idea that a cover-up often causes much more harm than would have been caused by disclosing the original matter in question. Mrs. Barbara Bush, who was perhaps swayed by the first consideration, seemed to want to consign my suggestion regarding faster interplanetary flight to the realm of juvenile science fiction--where it did not belong. And, for her, there may have been pressing political considerations. All other sources of illumination had to be dimmed, perhaps, lest they compete with the rather modest glow (mostly irregular blobs of moonlight) emanating from the brow of Mrs. Bush�s eldest son. As 2006 began, NASA's expensive program was in ruin to a considerable degree. There'd been a second Space Shuttle crash. I wished I'd found some way to make myself more acceptable to the Bush familly. It wasn't that my suggestion was, in itself, vital to NASA. I wasn't, in fact, being particular original. I was basically just talking about Newton's laws of motion. But development of space resources remains very important to the future of the human race. Public discussion of broad issues of NASA strategy has been extremely inadequate. As discussed in another article on this site, one NASA project, which in 2008 was suffering from neglect, may prove to be vital in dealing with global warming. Click left for the article. And it was politically revealing--in a way it was a compliment--that Mrs. Bush felt the need to go the trouble to trample on my humble suggestion. I won't go into details here of how she seemed to be doing that. At the end of 1981, shortly before the Greenspan commission was to begin its deliberations, I published a second newsletter. That second effort made reference to events of 1981 which have just been described�the published Social Security analysis, and the letters from Science Digest and Reader�s Digest. Mrs. Elizabeth Wentworth, of People�s Bank of Indianapolis, notarized a copy of that second newsletter in late 1981. That was about a month before the Greenspan commission had its first meeting. That notarized document is positive proof of the truth of my allegations regarding plagiarism and is displayed here (below and left). The raised, notarized seal has been rendered legible for scanning by rubbing a crayon lightly over the surface. Later, the prediction I�d made for 1989 for Social Securiy finances proved precisely accurate. CONTINUE |
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