Tuesday, March 2, 2004

Right Wing's Attacks on Science Jeopardize More than Scholarship. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The Junk Science of George W. Bush. Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration--aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals--are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own. Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact "for partisan political ends." [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] Fifty years ago, the US embraced science, and we changed the world. Now we stick our head in the sand and pretend changes aren't occuring 11:59:34 PM     Comment []

Once again, the ignorance of voters astounds me. Facing a serious crisis, California voters were given the option of doing something now to fix the problem or to pass the problem on to our children. The State has a huge budget deficit and it had the chance to fix the problem or compound it. The fix wasn't great, but it was a step in the right direction, reduce the threshold for passing taxes and the budget from 66.7% to 55%. The alternative was borrowing an additional $15 billion on top of our already extreme debt. The voters passed on making substantive changes, and passed our debt to our children. I guess that I can no longer be disgusted with politicians, they are simply acting like voters. 10:44:59 PM     Comment []