Repubs Anti-Science Agenda Endangers US

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Last week, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, headed by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, approved a bill that would slash at least three hundred million dollars from NASA’s earth-science budget, says the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Colbert. “Earth science, of course, includes climate science,” Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat who is also on the committee, noted. (Smith said that the White House’s NASA budget request favored the earth sciences “at the expense of the other science divisions and human and robotic space exploration.”)

This is just the Republican’s latest effort to cut more funding from those government agencies that provide climate data to help us predict all kinds of natural disasters, such as hurricanes and tornadoes. Have they forgotten Hurricanes Sandy, or Katrina, or the record number of tornadoes that have hit the Midwest and South? House Republicans are now passing bills that are dangerous to everyone’s health, in a word.

It is becoming more obvious why the Republican Party have been so anti-science; in fact anti-all scientific research. It enables them to deny any reality that will decrease the profits of their supporters, such as the Koch Brothers with a net worth of $100 billion, no matter the danger to the environment. They have been denying climate change of any kind in order not to have to put CO2 scrubbers on their power plants that emit so much heat.

Representative Johnson tried to get the cuts eliminated from the bill, but her proposed amendment was rejected. Defunding NASA’s earth-science program takes willed ignorance one giant leap further, says Colbert. It means that not only will climate studies be ignored; but weather data won’t be collected that helps to predict the increasing number of natural disasters.

It takes Republicans’ efforts to dumb down their electorate to a whole new level. Their intentions were first apparent when Wisconsin’s Tea Party Governor Scott Walker recently proposed turning the University of Wisconsin into a trade school, after the Republican-led legislature banned collective bargaining of school teachers, in an effort to dumb down their public educational system.

His latest salvo was directed at the University of Wisconsin. He proposed not only to cut its budget, but proposed downsizing its mission from that of higher education to supply more workers, whoever they might be. Walker’s new budget proposal would slash $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system over the next two years. That’s a 13 percent reduction in state funding.

The vote on the NASA bill came just a week after the same House committee approved major funding cuts to the National Science Foundation’s geosciences program, as well as cuts to Department of Energy programs that support research into new energy sources. As Michael Hiltzik, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, noted, the committee is “living down to our worst expectations.”

This willful ignorance of anything scientific endangers much more than our health and worsening environment. It endangers all scientific research—solely in order to protect the profits of their wealthiest supporters.

The practical implications of the proposed cuts are certainly disturbing. (It’s going to be hard for D.O.E. to find new energy sources if it isn’t even looking for them.) But perhaps even more distressing is the mindset that led to them. The “I’m not a scientist” line that all Republican candidates to date have espoused is basically a declaration of willed ignorance, said Colbert.

It highlights the dangers that such an agenda presents not only to scientific research, but to the health and well being of all Americans.

Harlan Green © 2015

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Governor Scott Walker vs. Education

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It is hard to believe, but prospective presidential candidate Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s main platform seems to be his antipathy towards education, and higher education, in particular. He has obfuscated his near hatred of higher education to date by getting his Republican-Controlled Legislature to first ban public union collective bargaining, especially unions for teachers and public health nurses.

But the veil that has obscured his anti-education agenda is lifting. His latest salvo is directed at the University of Wisconsin. He proposes not only to cut its budget, but proposed downsizing its mission from that of higher education to supply workers, whoever they might be. Walker’s new budget proposal would slash $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system over the next two years. That’s a 13 percent reduction in state funding.

That might be explained by the poor performance of the Wisconsin economy since he took office—an economy now ranked below all other comparable Midwestern states.

A harbinger of what Walker might face came in an immediate uproar on social media this month after his staff proposed changing the university’s focus on the pursuit of truth, known as the “Wisconsin Idea,” to a grittier focus on “workforce needs.”

"Inherent in this broad mission are methods of instruction, research, extended training and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition," is part of the University of Wisconsin's mission statement.

What is wrong with that mission, you ask? It speaks to a well-educated mind, is Walker’s problem, apparently. If Walker gets his way, that sentence, along with "Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth," would be entirely cut from the charter. Walker also seeks to cut statements reinforcing the university's commitment to working with out-of-state institutions and its prioritization of "programs with emphasis on state and national needs."

In its place, Walker proposes language stating Wisconsin only provides a state education because it is constitutionally required and among its top priorities are meeting "workforce needs." So the U. of Wisconsin should be down-sized to a trade school?

On reflection, Walker’s anti-education agenda fits right in with the current Republican Party’s prejudice against modern education in general, scientific knowledge and empirical facts in particular, such as the denial of global warming. Republicans have even proposed abolishing the Department of Education, a cabinet position, which helps to keep their supporters in the poorer red states literally ignorant of those facts that would better their lives.

It was in 2011 that Walker pushed through a law, Act 10, that slashed the power of public employee unions to bargain, and cut pay for most public sector workers.  As a special slap to teachers, Walker exempted the unions of police, firefighters and state troopers from the changes in collective bargaining rights but not educators. 

Teachers protested for a long time, closing schools for days, but the law passed, and the impact on teachers unions in Wisconsin has been dramatic: according to this piece by Washington Past columnist Robert Samuels. The state branch of the National Education Association, once 100,000 strong, has seen its membership drop by a third, and the American Federation of Teachers, which organized in the college system, has seen a 50 percent decline.

Graph: Wisconsin Budget Project

The effect on Wisconsin’s economy has been even more dramatic. The latest comprehensive state employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) reveals that Wisconsin continues to lag both the national rate of job growth as well as the rates of employment gain in most other states. Between December 2012 and 2013, Wisconsin gained 26,816 jobs, posting an annual employment growth rate of 0.98 percent, significantly trailing the national job growth rate of 1.75 percent during the same period.

Thus, Wisconsin’s year-over-year job growth in fourth quarter of 2013 was just slightly over half the national rate – a level of underperformance that has been consistent since 2011. Overall, Wisconsin ranked 37th among the 50 states in the rate of total employment growth between December 2012-13. Wisconsin trailed every single neighboring Midwestern state (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio) in year-over-year employment growth between December 2012-13.

Walker is destroying Wisconsin’s economy, in other words. Right now he is pushing to demolish union organizing once and for all with his proposal to make Wisconsin a Right to Work state, which will further depress its economy. And this man wants to run for President of all 50 states?

Harlan Green © 2015

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen