Making Government Stupid
In her fantastic article in Nature Magazine, Dr. Gretchen T. Goldman (pictured) writes, “Cuts to science advisory panels for federal agencies will haunt the United States long after the current administration finishes.” She continues:
Political leaders in most functioning democracies have established checks and laws to ensure that their countries are guided by knowledge. On 14 June, President Donald Trump took one of his biggest steps yet to dismantle an important part of this system in the United States: an executive order that federal agencies should cut the number of advisory panels by at least one-third.This is not just another of his ill-informed policies, or one that only wonks care about. It is the government making itself stupid. Ignoring, suppressing or manipulating science advice has been a pattern of this administration; now the very committees that provide that advice are being eliminated. Scientists must sound the alarm.
Powerful stuff. A couple of points:
Making government (and the population around it) stupid is one of Trump’s most powerful weapons in preserving his presidency; this activity won’t cease until he’s gone.
The few remaining scientists in government are trying desperately to sound the alarm. The problem is that scientists are either being forced out or are voluntarily running away out of sheer frustration. In addition, science has been systematically discredited to the point that these people’s voice is a bare whisper at this point.
As I wrote the other day, the Trump phenomenon will some day come to be regarded as a watershed moment in U.S. history. We will either turn this around, or we won’t. We’ll either find a way to conquer the hate and bigotry, while restoring reason and science, or we will descend into a societal abyss.
Craig,
Hmmm,… I can certainly see your point, and even sympathize.
It must be very hard to be terminated from a a government sinecure and forced to find a job in the real world. Not easy at all, when your main qualification is based on your ideological purity or political allegiance.
Yeah, he’s a nasty guy ol’ Donald. Cutting the Federal bureaucracy and all the attendant hangers on, while boosting job creation for all those undeserving “blue collar” workers whose employment and industries you worked so hard to outsource to China and other low wages economies.
How dare he reduce the federal bureaucracy !
How dare he :
1) Abolish a $483,500 per year Department of Defense grant for an advisory panel to study the California Gnatcatcher. (a small bird picked on by another small bird the Californian Cowbird). The advisory panels meet quarterly per year to discuss the day-to-day life of baby Gnatchatchers.
2) U.S. National Institutes of Health advisory panel receives $48,500 per year to advise on the history of smoking in Russia over the past 130 years. The information is already available for anyone who would care to attend a library or just download the comprehensive report by the Kennan Institute up date the report each year with a duplicate $220,000 federal grant.
3) An Obama appointed “Scientific” National Science Foundation federal government advisory panel meets to supervise allocating of $406,419 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study “Does media choice cause polarization, or does polarization cause media choice?”.
The advisory panel has so far cost more than $2.2 million panel to administer the $406,419.
4) In 2012 an National Park Service “rural environment” advisory panel was established at a cost of $265,473 per year to figure out what bugs do near a lightbulb.
In cutting the program, that stupid Trump observed, ” because it’s not like anyone raised in a rural area doesn’t know one way to attract insects is to turn on a light !”
What a fool the man is !
5) In 2013, the Obama government’s “scientific” advisory panels members spent two years and $7.1 million dollars to substantiate a study allowing the US Department of Energy to mandated dishwashers must use no more than 3.1 gallons of water per load.
The industry had already prepared ,and submitted a number of reports pointing out Dishes don’t really get clean with so little water. The industry association held the opinion Americans have to wash their plates twice.
In 2015, the opinion of the “Scientific ” advisory panel prevailed and the DOE mandated was enforced by Presidential executive order.
In 2016, that “stupid vandal Trump” cancelled the Presidential order and disbanded the advisory panel, claiming
“Families already have enough to worry about without adding extra loads of dishes to the mix, simply due to poorly conceived federal regulations,”.
In 2017, the DOE estimated that the policy had cost America (and the environment) $139,800,000.
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The list could go on and on, $ billions wasted on absurd bureaucratic SNAFU’s and spurious government advisory experts.
The one I like the best is a highly paid, and very well funded advisory involving a vast number of academics, advisors, advocates etc, set up by Obama to study solutions to the “trauma of unemployment”.
After four years of scientific endeavor research a report of over 4000 pages was prepared. The report emphasized the need for further study.
In all the deliberations, only one solution was left out,..getting the “traumatized unemployed” a Job! No where in over 4000 pages was such a concept considered valid. Indeed, the idea was dismissed by many of the reports authors as an affront to the “human rights” of the “traumatized unemployed”.
(Well,…now Obama and Hillary Clinton are unemployed, so maybe the report will be of some use after all).
Yeah, he’s a despicable President alright, that President Donald Trump, how dare he try saving taxpayer money by creating real jobs ? What about all those Federal government hangers on? What will they do now ?
(Hey, not to worry, they can read the “traumatized worker’ report !)