Republicans say no to scientific research:scientists to join unemployed

[stray cat]

Republican budget plans mean scientific researchers will be joining the unemployed. The cuts include biomedical research. I wonder if Bush thinks scientists should go back to school and get an education for job retraining. Proposed cuts cover anything good for working Americans and even include Bush's Medicare drug plan. He proposed that only long enough to get re-elected. The boy king giveth and the king taketh away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/politics/09budget1.html

"For the current fiscal year, Congress cut the budget of the National Science Foundation by about 2 percent, to $5.47 billion, and the White House Office of Management and Budget initially proposed a further cut of about 5 percent for 2006. But the agency appealed, with support from allies like Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, and the White House decided to propose a flat budget, instead of cuts.

¶The White House budget office initially sought a small cut at the National Institutes of Health, which received an appropriation of $28.4 billion for the current fiscal year. But after an appeal by Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, the White House agreed to propose a small increase, less than 2 percent, which would not be enough to keep pace with the rising costs of biomedical research"

[Mojambo]

1. The cure for cancer won't be coming from us

And maybe that's a good thing

[Deja Q]

2. Isn't the cost directly related to workers' salaries?

Oops, I really meant CEO salaries, but we always know who gets the boot. x(

[slor]

3. Getting the country primed for the competition...

with China. The competition for which country can pay the lowest wages. Look at the bright side, the outsourcing will stop, and we can live off the bread and water, right?

[roguevalley]

4. expect europe and asia to pick up the slack and sell us their

miracles. Amazing isn't it how much the opposition likes ignorance.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. Scientists should be retrained to stock shelves at WalMart

That's the neoconservative idea of being productive.

[CatholicEdHead]

6. Would the retraining

be at Community Colleges? His debate solution to darn near every problem out there?

[stray cat]

7. I thought I would be teaching college not going back to college

Oh well. I think a community college would be more within my expense range. On the other hand, I am pretty good at checking out grocerys and stocking as I learned that as a teenager. Hopefully I won't have wasted 14 years of training.

Maybe I could be president - I hear that doesn't take much preparation and I heard the vacation time was great.

[acmavm]

10. Nope, you're not qualified. You speak in intelligible sentences and

seem to be capable of rational, coherent thought.

We can't have that after Smirky now, can we?

[Vitruvius]

8. Rethugs do this all-the-time, which is why fewer young Americans are

going into science -- or any technical field.

If you go into government-funded basic research, one way to be sure your career will end early is to go into anything having to do with alternative energy, pollution, global warming, or the environment. The Dems fund those fields, scientists go in and make breakthrus, the Rethugs get in, chop the funding, and you're unemployed. And industry will NOT want to hire you -- industry is run by Rethugs who hate those fields of research, and they will blackball you.

I saw three generations of alternative energy and environmental scientists ruined this way -- under Nixon, under Reagan-Bu$hI, and now under Bu$h II. Rethugs are big on taking "revenge" on people they don't like...

And if you go straight into industry, the Rethugnican management will mark you as unpromotable and treat you like dirt -- especially if you make breakthrus for which they want the credit. In any Fortune 500 company, one of the best ways to get fired & blacklisted is to make a breakthru that is big enough to be featured in the annual report; the Rethugnican manageers (who said it couldn't be done) will smear you, fire you, blacklist you, and give the credit to themselves and their cronies.

Hence the saying: "First it's wrong, then it's obvious, then it's theirs. And you're out on your ass." (Of course, these same managers then proceed to lose your breakthrus to the Japanese; Rethugs are incompetent above all else...)

The same goes in politics; incompetents are dangerous people; they live by the smear; which is why incompetent Rethug phonies smear any public servant who has ever done anything constructive; it was inevitable that Bu$h the Rethug coward would smear the hell out of Kerry the war hero. Why should any lazy & arrogant Rethug do anything constructive (let alone risk getting shot at) when it's so easy to smear the competent, decent, honorable, and constructive?

[leftofthedial]

9. perhaps the scientists can emigrate to a free country

and continue their research

[Vitruvius]

11. Many foreign-born scientists are already going back to their

native countries; they see no future for themselves in the Bu$h's America, which is a bad place to be if you're competent or non-white, let alone both. And they're taking their know-how with them.

If I were younger, I'd go too; many of my friends who have re-emigrated would like me to join them. However, I'm too close to retirement to be allowed in by the host governments.

In the meantime, I've switched to theoretical work; I am not willing to create any new technology that would -- in the current climate -- only benefit the Rethugnican ruling class, with no benefit whatsoever to the average American. (I can do this, because I have a small consulting practice to pay my modest bills.)

My advice to younger scientists: emigrate NOW! As I should have 20 years ago. There are lots of countries -- both in Europe and in Asia -- who want you.

[tom_paine]

12. Naturally a Totalitarian Nation like Imperial Amerika would move towards

being scientifically backward.

The Free World has ALWAYS carried the mantle of science since the Enlightenment CREATED the Free World BushPutinism seeks to eradicate.

Everything is as it should be. Not many scietific breakthroughs will be coming from 2050 or 2100 Amerika...maybe not ANY.