A dark day for science ...

[fgnord]

As much as I hate to admit it, the Democratic Congress really blew it this week. The fiscal year 2008 budget is a tragedy for science. At the same time as we're wasting immense quantities of cash on corn based ethanol projects, the new budget breaks our promised contributions to the ITER project - which has a realistic shot at paving the way to

Comments

[fallen42]

Yeah the Democrats screwed us pretty hard. BTW, LLNL is laying of 500 people in response to the budget shortfalls, and there are looking at letting some more go after that.

[fgnord]

Well for you guys the problem must be compounded by the privatization the Republican Congress forced on you guys that automatically put you in the red. It's a little hard for me to see how finding a billion dollars to fund all the unmet science mandates could be so hard. Hell, you could recover almost all the budgetary shortfall at our lab just by applying the IRS refunds that were sent to invalid mailing addresses to it. I'm sure there are all kinds of hard choices that have to be made with limited resources here but this is small potatoes on the scale of things.

So I blame the Republicans for being morons and messing up our economy. And I blame the Democrats for being morons and making bad choices based on the crappy economy the Republicans gave them. When I think of something to blame on the independents I can safely say that all politicians suck and have done with it.

[fallen42]

Yeah, we took it from both sides of the asile over here. Nobody seems to want to pay for basic science these days. Government can't seem to do it, and industry gave it up years ago.

[avivalasvegas]

The corn-based ethanol crap is really making me twitch...not only from the research money perspective, but also from the tremendous farm subsidies that Congress refused to slash (in the recently passed farm bill) that in turn continue to promote the growth of MASSIVE amounts of corn (a very small percentage of which is actually eaten in a form resembling corn). That corn is turned into HFCS and other crap that is then used to make cheap, processed food. It's sickening any way you look at it.

[fallen42]

Yeah, the corn lobby has the US government wrapped around it's bloated fingers. Additionally, the corn lobby has the US heavily tarrifing imported ethanol, and subsiding corn ethanol by the gallon. Also, the sugar lobby heavily tarrifs imported sugar taking away a very large cheap source of raw material to produce ethanol. This all adds up to US ethanol production being nothing more than a system for funneling tax dollars into the hands of special interests that in turn spend resources to get their political supporters elected. Until the money is forced out of politics, this system and others like it will be the norm in American politics.

Pork

[demercio76]

Here is a site you can go to if you're interested. It discusses the pork spending over quite a few years.

http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_pigbook2007

[mkwilson]

Science funding is seriously messed up these days. NIH has had cuts, as has NSF. It's rather scary and saddening that people with no understanding of the various scientific fields are in charge of deciding how much money is needed.

My dad used to work on ITER. I wonder what he thinks about the US pulling out.

Corn...do not get me started on that. It's so damn wasteful from an ecological and a financial point of view.

[fgnord]

I completely agree about the corn thing. I don't know a lot about it, but it certainly sounds like there are vastly more efficient crops you can use for ethanol. Or you could just not use bio matter at all in vehicles and use this crazy technology called "batteries" to power our cars instead. Funny how we've solved a problem already, and yet not only do we not apply the solution, but we waste massive amounts of money searching for a different one.

[groblek]

I fully agree with you (and everyone else who's commented). My suggestion though is to write your congresscritters and let them know - if they don't hear from people, they'll assume everyone's fine with it. Physical mail tends to count more than phone or email for that too. Don't mean to be preachy, that's just one of my major new year's resolutions. :)

[fgnord]

Hey Brian! Long time no talk. Hope everything is going well.

You know, I thought it didn't matter at this point since the legislation is over and done with, but it sounds like there's a movement starting (spearheaded by Barak Obama, since it's in his district) to pass emergency legislation to restore funding to Fermilab, and hopefully other science projects too. I just posted a template for letters+instructions on sending it to Congress that anyone can use if they feel motivated about the issue.