Bernie also self-identifies as a socialist, so... respect, mon. Respect. 
Anyway, soliloquy time! This here is the meat of the argument.
Gen. Fnord: There are a number of reasons that factored into the decision, and I'm sure we'll end up discussing those in greater detail as the day goes on, but the decision was primarily made in accordance with Soviet long-term foreign and domestic policy.
The United States, like it or not, has a role to play in the greater development of the Solar System. A disproportionate number of fen are American in origin. Many if not most of the major power players in Fenspace today are like myself, former Americans who've renounced their citizenship or had it renounced for them de facto by the Technological Security Act. The United States is the third-largest trade partner with Fenspace, coming in just behind Australia and Japan. Greenwood Unlimited, the 800 pound gorilla in the asteroid belt, is an American-owned and American-held company. And on, and on.
Of the connections between Fenspace and the United States, the strongest is the civil space program run by NASA. Every single person in Fenspace grew up with NASA, we all have some positive feelings towards it. Moon shots, the space shuttle, ISS, all these things were part of the inspiration that founded Fenspace. We are all, down deep, fans of NASA.
When the Congress passed the Technological Security Act and handed all future space operations over to the Transrationality Science Assessment Bureau, many fen were concerned. In a moment of what we considered blind panic your government had crippled the civil space program we admired and transferred all operations over to a military organization. Handwavium ending up in the hands of a superpower was inevitable; that the United States immediately turned their research towards the military without any provision for civilian research or application suggested all sorts of things that made us worried. I'd like to think that the Committee is perceptive enough to understand why.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight our concerns were less immediate than we thought in 2009. The U.S. Air Force's grasping and ham-handed control of TSAB kept the organization neutralized through the recent conflict. However the central concern - the Technological Security Act and continued military-only control of Handwavium - remained and remains present.
The easy choice would have been to allow the status quo to continue. TSAB would eventually slide into irrelevance in the greater Solar System, though the damage done would ensure that the United States would be out of any new space race more or less permanently. To let a major part of the terrestrial political and economic engine shoot themselves in the head that way would be bad for Fenspace and Earth.
So the Central Committee, after much deliberation, set out to break the spine of the Technological Security Act, remove TSAB's stranglehold on Handwavium access and restore the American civil space program to its rightful place in the fen hierarchy. We did it with full knowledge and (pause) I wouldn't say 'malice' but with a certain amount of amused detachment aforethought. We knew that eventually somebody from our faction would be discussing the matter with your government, and we knew full well that there would be a potential international incident in the making.
We knew all this and we did it anyway because it was the right thing to do, for us and for you. You'll thank us for it later. (pause) Much later, probably. Does that answer your question, Senator?
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Anyway, soliloquy time! This here is the meat of the argument.
Gen. Fnord: There are a number of reasons that factored into the decision, and I'm sure we'll end up discussing those in greater detail as the day goes on, but the decision was primarily made in accordance with Soviet long-term foreign and domestic policy.
The United States, like it or not, has a role to play in the greater development of the Solar System. A disproportionate number of fen are American in origin. Many if not most of the major power players in Fenspace today are like myself, former Americans who've renounced their citizenship or had it renounced for them de facto by the Technological Security Act. The United States is the third-largest trade partner with Fenspace, coming in just behind Australia and Japan. Greenwood Unlimited, the 800 pound gorilla in the asteroid belt, is an American-owned and American-held company. And on, and on.
Of the connections between Fenspace and the United States, the strongest is the civil space program run by NASA. Every single person in Fenspace grew up with NASA, we all have some positive feelings towards it. Moon shots, the space shuttle, ISS, all these things were part of the inspiration that founded Fenspace. We are all, down deep, fans of NASA.
When the Congress passed the Technological Security Act and handed all future space operations over to the Transrationality Science Assessment Bureau, many fen were concerned. In a moment of what we considered blind panic your government had crippled the civil space program we admired and transferred all operations over to a military organization. Handwavium ending up in the hands of a superpower was inevitable; that the United States immediately turned their research towards the military without any provision for civilian research or application suggested all sorts of things that made us worried. I'd like to think that the Committee is perceptive enough to understand why.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight our concerns were less immediate than we thought in 2009. The U.S. Air Force's grasping and ham-handed control of TSAB kept the organization neutralized through the recent conflict. However the central concern - the Technological Security Act and continued military-only control of Handwavium - remained and remains present.
The easy choice would have been to allow the status quo to continue. TSAB would eventually slide into irrelevance in the greater Solar System, though the damage done would ensure that the United States would be out of any new space race more or less permanently. To let a major part of the terrestrial political and economic engine shoot themselves in the head that way would be bad for Fenspace and Earth.
So the Central Committee, after much deliberation, set out to break the spine of the Technological Security Act, remove TSAB's stranglehold on Handwavium access and restore the American civil space program to its rightful place in the fen hierarchy. We did it with full knowledge and (pause) I wouldn't say 'malice' but with a certain amount of amused detachment aforethought. We knew that eventually somebody from our faction would be discussing the matter with your government, and we knew full well that there would be a potential international incident in the making.
We knew all this and we did it anyway because it was the right thing to do, for us and for you. You'll thank us for it later. (pause) Much later, probably. Does that answer your question, Senator?
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"