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'YouCut' Targets National Science Foundation Budget
jamie writes "As some of you may have heard, the incoming Republican majority in Congress has a new initiative called YouCut, which lets ordinary Americans like me propose government programs for termination. So imagine how excited I was to learn that YouCut's first target — yes, its first target — was that notoriously bloated white elephant, the National Science Foundation."
The smart move is to cut YouCut, because your Congressman should already be cutting the crap you dislike,
Look, I'm not an American, I'm just looking over the fence and respectfully trying to make sense of what I'm seeing. But that's just obscene.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
yes, that should be the first thing to cut money from indeed ! because, then, texas education board can claim that jefferson was a godless whore, and instead put the name of an obscure preacher in front of him as a founding father. of course, right after approving school curriculum books that say 'world has been created in 6 days' is a valid theory ...
kudos americans. you have succeeded in giving a second chance to the morons who have awarded the world with a neverending war on terror, a turmoil in middle east, violation of all constitutional and modern civil rights, kidnappings, torture, wall street DEregulation (and corresponding scam), and body scanners and many, many more !
heaven knows what they will do to you (and the world, if they can) with this second chance. maybe the first thing they will mandate will be mandatory cavity searches in airports.
Read radical news here
Cuts hurt. Taxes hurt. Our economy is in shambles and both solutions make no sense. I guess the only stance worth fighting for anymore is legalizing marijuana, at least that way I won't care what happens.
With our national debt at 100% GDP and our unfunded mandates at 8 times that, we're more than broke. We're spending our grandchildren's tax dollars.
When it comes down to choosing between "free" healthcare, "free" medicine, and everything else "free" the government owes people, why is it a surprise that what people think here is "honest" and "important" will fall by the wayside.
Welcome to Idiocracy.
you should move more focus from form, to content. that mindset, is causing all the troubles like the one in this article.
Read radical news here
.... same acronym.
Not Sufficient Funds.
Have gnu, will travel.
Since the Federal Government has no business in education... (it's the state's job). And if you think individual states are doing it wrong, well, perhaps we should just stick to basics.... like mathematics and English. The NEA and the other drains on our education system have screwed up schools so much, we can't be certain students are learning a fucking thing. Well, just go to McDonald's and you'll see our kids aren't learning shit.
And instead of buying computers for every little snotnosed curtain climber, let's just focus on getting them able to READ and WRITE... because a computer is not something necessary, even in a high-tech world. Once you have the fundamentals (removing the self-esteem, pluralism, and multi-clutural studies (the "it's Europe and America's fault" classes), learning a computer is a cakewalk.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
OK, all you hyperventilating science lovers, just relax!! No one is going to cut all of NSF's funding!!! All that will be cut are grants that are just idiotic, like the ones cited at the YouCut site!! So, just chill!!!!!!!
Private companies typically do not engage in long-term research that isn't likely to lead to directly commercializable results. I know this flies in the face of red-blooded 'merican "all socialism is evil" doctrine, but public sector research, funded by tax-payer money, is needed to build the foundations for tomorrow's industries. Quantum computing, like many other bleeding edge fields, is too immature, too high-risk, and with pay-offs that are far too distant for the private sector.
Research and education are both investments that can yield fantastic returns, but they are long-term investments that require steady commitment rather than periodic outbursts of zeal punctuating long periods of apathy. A minor cut now might help balance the books today, but the lost opportunities down the road will more than negate that. Top researchers don't hang around after you cut the funding they run their labs and pay their students and post-docs with. They won't wait a few years until times are good again. What they will do is go where the money they need to work is, and if they can't find that in the U.S., they'll likely find it in Canada, China, Australia, etc.. The U.S. is far from the only country doing quality research in QC these days.
Unfortunately, some U.S. politicians are of the opinion that they can make political hay by screwing over those "pinko" scientists. They're smart enough to know what they're sacrificing, but votes for them are a worthier cause! The only way to fight this kind of thinking is to call up your local representative/senator/etc. and let them know you're not buying it. The only way to make them stop this kind of thing is to make them think they'll lose votes today, because that's all they care about.
We put the other party in charge of everything. They changed nothing.
Cut "defense" spending, airport security, congress critter perks, and tax breaks for those who least need them. That should bring our deficit to negative. The republicrats can thank me later.
Great Intellect...
Cut the NSA, CIA, FBI, ATF, DEA, and all that anti-democratic shit.
Circumcision is child abuse.
It works for me. Where are the "get the government out of my choices" voices for this?
If nothing else, it would cut part of the prison population and increase the tax base.
All you need to do is make it a multiplier for other crimes. Murder? And high? Looks like you get an additional 5 years.
And how about fixing the tax system a bit? Why does Bill Gates need a tax cut? Why does he need a tax cut MORE than a guy who makes $30K a year? Why does Paris Hilton need to protect more of her inheritance?
Can some enterprising person divide up the budget of the House of Congress itself onto a YouCut type site.
I am sure some people would like less brass in the new bathrooms.
Or perhaps cuts to "fact finding" missions.
Maybe we could do with fewer congress critters. Save lots of $ there.
-- Or perhaps the salaries could be cut --
In 2006, congresspersons received a yearly salary of $165,200.[173] Congressional leaders were paid $183,500 per year. The Speaker of the House of Representatives earns $212,100 annually. The salary of the President pro tempore for 2006 was $183,500, equal to that of the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate.[174] Privileges include having an office and paid staff.[122] In 2008, non-officer members of Congress earned $169,300 annually
There are two specific projects being put on the table to be cut, and their scientific merit is questionable. So far, no "hard sciences" like quantum computing are proposed for cuts. However, that's not good enough for the author, he wants everything to retain funding. To make his point, he wants to sabotage the whole thing by asking readers to ensure that hard sciences like quantum computing do get put on the list of cuts. In effect creating a straw man to attack.
Ironically, it's precisely this mentality of entitlement that needs to be stopped. He doesn't care how minor the science is, he believes everything that the NSF calls "science" should receive funding. Right, and every other agency believes that every self-important thing they do should also receive funding. So everything, basically, gets funding, something that it might be true to say that Democrats were more in support of, regardless of the public's ability to pay for it. And ultimately, that's how the Republicans won the last round of elections in the first place. This is what's called a reality check.
This is exactly the kind of framing that brings joy to those with a grudge against effective government - playing entirely in their end zone, scoring point after point when they're supposed to have the ball.
Corporations have proven that, given the option, they will simply not do basic research. Now, we're using recent tax breaks (plus extra double tax cuts for the rich) causing further massive deficits to argue that huge swaths of basic research be eliminated, because they're too luxurious for us to afford (compared to the utter non-luxury of war-time double-tax-cuts for the mega-rich).
Basic science is really our only path towards actually knowing how to solve a lot of deep, inherent, and growing problems in our world. Problems that will only get worse as more resources are pulled into the hands of the few who will never let that money out of their small investment circles and estate holdings by choice.
The rich (frequently) aren't villains - they're just those that are good at gathering resources, the natural end result of selecting for people who can best acquire resources from others. The dynamic of a glut of rich getting more controlling over more resources is an ancient dynamic - the very word Crass is an example of this - take a little time to read up on Marcus Licinius Crassus adventures in emergency real estate acquisitions if you want a little insight into to today's real estate capitalism. Of course, he did die getting gold poured down his throat after his overreach - but he also created an empire too.
Sacrifice research on the alter of making room for tax breaks, however, and you're selling the very soul of your nation's future. You're creating an empire at the cost of drowning your future in your acquired gold.
Ryan Fenton
If you go to the site, they're not saying we should cut ALL of the NSF funding. They're asking people to suggest specific grants that are not good uses of tax dollars. The OP is essentially saying that there can't possibly be waste anywhere in the NSF budget at that anyone who would even suggest such a thing must necessarily be anti-science.
There is no "incoming Republican majority in Congress" because Republicans will only have a majority in the House. Congress = House + Senate.
Cut the IRS and go to flat tax!
Yes, it's been said on /. a million times before: end the freakin' wars. Stop the runaway military spending. It's that simple. NSF's annual budget = $7.4 billion (source: NSF). That's about a week in a half in Iraq, if memory serves.
Many were just elected... votes today don't matter anymore. Any politician will say what it takes to get elected- the truth comes out once they are in office.
Um, at first glance this looks like this is a bunch of Republicans inviting citizens to go through and try to spot dodgy expenditures and grants given out by the NSF.
You know, transparency, holding the government accountable, stuff like that. Basically half of Obama's platform, really.
They are ridiculously wasteful and artificially prop up the price of ethanol when we should be producing them with grasses and weeds instead of corn stalks.
Or how about the TSA?
If progressives use this weapon aganst them, they can be forced to put their money where their mouth is.
Private companies typically do not engage in long-term research that isn't likely to lead to directly commercializable results. I know this flies in the face of red-blooded 'merican "all socialism is evil" doctrine, but public sector research, funded by tax-payer money, is needed to build the foundations for tomorrow's industries.
Could you name a few things that 'public sector research' has come up with 'as the foundations of tomorrow's industries' which private companies wouldn't have done themselves for far less?
This is wrong on so many levels. First off the NSF budget is just pitiful, 6.85 billion in 2009. The physical sciences are flat out starving. Come on, this is the groundwork of our entire technical civilization...how many trillion is that worth a year? And most importantly the examples that he gives...soccer grant, and grant for video game sound. Well all right. The video game industry (which is entirely predicated on math math math more math -- insert joke [head shots]) is like 50+ billion. I think that research may well pay off. The NIH budget is 29.5 billion. I am in the biosciences and if you cut that in half and it would make no difference to the health of this country. Cancer...the same...Alzheimers...Schizophrenia...no progress... My point is that of all the Government research agencies, the NSF is in the most need of some love. This is just shameful.
How does the blogger conclude what he does from this short video?
It basically boils down to the Baby Boomers fucking up yet again. It's something they've done every decade since the 1960s.
In the 1960s, their naivety resulted in protests and riots, along with the rise of "isms" like feminism.
In the 1970s, they started to make their way into power. Their energy and economic policies were absolutely terrible. Stagflation crippled many Western nations' economies during the 1970s.
By the 1980s, they were reaching higher and higher levels of power in business and government. Their total avarice again stunted real growth of the American economy.
They achieved the ultimate level of power in the 1990s. Thanks to their horrid economic policies, they almost single-handedly enabled the Chinese economy to grow so quickly, while at the same time ruining the American economy using "free trade".
They retained power during the 2000s, fucking up the corporate landscape and the American economy even further. Getting older in age, they started turning to religion, leading to shenanigans like this.
Never has a single generation caused so much trouble.
First, we will take a look at the National Science Foundation (NSF) - Congress created the NSF in 1950 to promote the progress of science. For this purpose, NSF makes more than 10,000 new grant awards annually, many of these grants fund worthy research in the hard sciences. Recently, however NSF has funded some more questionable projects - $750,000 to develop computer models to analyze the on-field contributions of soccer players and $1.2 million to model the sound of objects breaking for use by the video game industry. Help us identify grants that are wasteful or that you don't think are a good use of taxpayer dollars.
http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/Review.htm
If we stopped the wars, and doubled the NSF budget, we'd be so much better off in a couple years.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Rocket technology
Early computers
Internet
Countless advances made by publicly funded scientists
Of course you could argue that EVENTUALLY, all these would have been done by private interests. I don't believe that is true, but even if it is... the question is becomes how long would it have taken and how closely would it be controlled?
Great Intellect...
*cut the military budget, it's the single largest section of the federal government weighing in at 800 billion a year.
*kill the NEA, we're locking away people for harming themselves... at a cost of nearly 200 billion a year and we aren't getting any tax money from sales tax on legalized drugs. Also gangs are like under alcohol prohibition funded by illegal activities like drug dealing.
*farm subsidies because we Americans so don't need more HFCS.
*clean up the entitlement programs, maybe even relegate them to the states.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I think the average person has no idea what useful or good science is. I'm pretty sure that if it isn't directly related to medicine, energy, or climate change (...if they even think it is true...) most people would consider it useless. I do cognitive science/neuroscience research, and all the time people are confused why people pay us to figure out how the brain works without intentions to directly "help people." Hell, even that "soccer efficiency" study or whatever can probably be applied to some other thing our government likes that involves people working in teams, ie the military.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
If you can find a defense for NASA in Article 1, Section 8 let me know, I sure can't - http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec8.html
Yes, I could. You could too, with a few basic google searches. Give it a try and answer your own post. Of course you won't because your question was for the sake of argument, not because you want to learn something new.
Here, I will even help you, so you don't think I am just trying to be your typical AC asshat.
Google search for basic science research profit
all that's written in that 'foaming' post, have come to pass. more, is on the way.
this indifference and self delusion of YOU americans, is what is causing all these issues youre suffering.
you call someone who calls bullshit as it is, a troll on one day, and the day after you complain about various liberties youre losing. despite this repeats every 2 days, you people seem to be incapable of identifying the sequence that is looping in there.
Read radical news here
I've worked 10 years in biomedical research both in academia (where I got my paycheck from the NIH), and in industry (pharma & diagnostics).
I am ABSOLUTELY in making very deep cuts in the National Institutes of Health budget. It should be cut in half over the next 10 years.
I have witnessed the efficiency and progress in industry, and it make some of the top academic researchers look like true money and time wasters. The amount of truly useful work to come out of academia does not justify stealing from taxpayers.
It is the moral position to support cuts to the NIH, military, NSF, Dept of Ed, etc.
Understanding global warming, basic nuclear physics, basic quantum mechanics and the number theory underlying public key encryption come to mind. There is no profit in laying the groundwork for things like that. Such things aren't a specific thing you do and then market what came out of it. It's a rising tide of understanding that enable you to even think the thoughts involved in making products based on it.
if public sector research developed something, how can you prove that private companies WOULD have done it for less? Unless they both happen to develop simultaneously, without knowledge of the other (so no cross contamination of work) you can't prove it. You also can't prove that if the private sector developed something that the public sector would have for far less (or more).
Annual defense budget: $700,000,000,000
Average annual taxes per American adult to defense: $3,050
NSF budget: $7,000,000,000
Average annual taxes per American adult to NSF: $30
I read recently that Newt Gingrich said he'd like to triple the NSF budget
I could never imagine I would ever come to the point of saying this: but Newt Gingrich is one of the few people left in the Republican Party I can respect.
I disagree with a lot -maybe most- of what he's saying, but he does have a brain, and he uses actual arguments, with premises and statements and conclusions and all that stuff. He's fluent in the English language, well read, and rather eloquent.
Now for the rest of his party..
And you know this how? Historically, scientific and technological progress has happened because it has produced near future benefits and advantages for those who engage in it. Even for the basic sciences. Claiming that the private sector isn't interested in research ignores that the money supplied from public funding is far greater and less accountable. You basically have a bunch of researchers with the business model "spend public fundings and look busy".
I see no reason to expect we'll get "quality research" merely because big checks are written. The remaining non-monetary incentives to conduct research are similarly being undermined. For example, peer evaluation runs into a game theory problem. If everyone gives out lazy evaluations, then their own research has a lower bar to meet. And anyone who doesn't play ball (say has a reputation for hard work or excellence can be undermined). I don't think it's prevalent today, but I don't see mechanisms in place to keep publicly funded research from sliding into complete mediocrity over the next few decades. The current generation being educated faces significant incentives to cheat, even at the graduate education level. I think a poor ethical upbringing will result in poor scientific output.
Ultimately, the only research that consistently produces quality results is stuff that someone discerning pays money for. Sure, the National Science Foundation is still to a degree such an organization. But the private world is chock full of people who pay for scientific results and get them. Further, there's still profitable private research. That has strong positive feedback for scientific quality.
Yes, random lay people who probably have an axe to grind for one reason or another is definitely a better way to review science funding rather than the actual scientists who approve the grants.
I for one welcome our populist overloads.
In the back of my DeLorean, that's where!
Ain't 'em de commies whut put up nekkid pichers and pretended they wuz art?
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
In other words, we don't train scientists in this country without NIH/NSF/DOE funding. It simply doesn't happen, because it is too expensive to do any other way. If those three agencies were all terminated this afternoon, grad schools across the country would suffer immediately. Eventually the number of new degrees issued would plummet and employers looking for PhDs would have to hire from abroad.
In other words, congratulations you just expressed support for accelerating the brain drain.
The amount of truly useful work to come out of academia does not justify stealing from taxpayers.
Just because you don't understand the work - or the value thereof - coming from academia does not mean it has no value.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Seriously... how much more science does the general populace need, anyway?
And I'm talking the new mythbusters aka "blow'd up", not the actual quasi-interesting stuff they used to do.
From time to time, I act as a grant reviewer and panelist for the NSF. I can quite frankly attest that the NSF is anything but bloated. The number of excellent and virtuous projects that do not get funded is always a crying shame. Of course, some proposals are utter rubbish. However, far fewer projects get funded than are deserving of funding. Not only that, the NSF provide us with a small *per deium*, from which we have to pay our own hotel, meals, transportation and everything else, apart from travel costs. One is lucky to break even, when working for the NSF. In addition, it is hard work! Our lunch break is usually just long enough to run across the road to a food court and then we eat as we work. In the evenings, there are summaries to write. I only do it because I believe that it makes the world a better place. However, if this is what the Republicans are intending, there will be no need for more business bailouts, as they will just outsource the whole country to multinationals (who usually don't pay tax, due to off-shore 'arrangements'). Thus, this is a strategy only Osama bin Laden could rationally endorse.
I think the average person has no idea what useful or good science is.
And the government is full of below average citizens. Pretty sure they have no place in determining what is useful or good science.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Unfortunately, some U.S. politicians are of the opinion that they can make political hay by screwing over those "pinko" scientists. They're smart enough to know what they're sacrificing, but votes for them are a worthier cause! The only way to fight this kind of thinking is to call up your local representative/senator/etc. and let them know you're not buying it. The only way to make them stop this kind of thing is to make them think they'll lose votes today, because that's all they care about.
Unfortunately, some U.S. politicians are right. Politicians only care about votes but that's exactly how it ought to be because votes represent the will of the public. The problem here isn't with politicians. It's with the people who elect them; people who, apparently, want to cut NSF.
To quote a song on my iPod "Majority rule don't work in mental institutions"
also, notice that there is not a "vote for" option, so really any small number of votes (maybe a couple thousand trolls) against anything can be used to discredit any potentially ground-breaking work. Looks to me like a very well disguised plan to provide ammunition against whatever research the politicians desire.
Witch hunt of the 21st century anyone?
Also the two examples they use, couldn't the research in soccer player dynamics be applied to swarm robot technology, potentially resulting in advanced search and rescue applications? Couldn't the sound of breaking glass modeling be applied to similar goals, or maybe security systems ("window just shattered in room X, according to the analysis it was a high-speed impact, likely bullet impact" vs "window just shattered in room Y analysis indicates slow projectile, i.e. thrown rock")
for the rich who got us into this economic mess, we increase the NSF grant by 8 times? I would love to have our economy powered by scientists who actually better the human condition, instead of those who play games with the stock market or con people out of their homes.
And I know the right will come back and complain about hurting "small business owners". I'm sorry Mr. CEO, but if raising your personal income tax by 2% means you can't hire someone, you have no idea how to run a business. Employees are supposed to generate revenue. Anyways, for every employee you supposedly can't hire, we're training a far more useful scientist.
For 60 billion a year, we could fund a million PhD students. How's that for an economy?
OK, after we get rid of all the "wasteful" spending at the NSF, can we take a look at the DoD? I have several hundreds of billions of dollars worth of recommendations for spending cuts on that front...
The government could hire me at less cost than they pay. They pay more to my company than they would pay if I were a government scheduled employee, and It would work in my favor if they did so, even figuring benefits in... But apparently paying 5-6 times the rate is a good bargain.
I realize that the government does this, in part, because it is easier to fire people, but this doesn't follow through in practice. There aren't many people that apply for openings, and many that do are put off by the lag between hire and start. As a result, the company is hard pressed to fire people because it would mean that there would be less people and they're less likely to meet their SLAs. In the end, I end up doing a lot to cover for those lacking because I've been around for a while, and many people have ended up exausting all options and just asking for myself or others with a good reputation. Or they'll just do repeated requests until they get the person that actually fixes the problem. Those people are also the ones that keep me at my otherwise unsatisfying job, they add an element to my job that makes me at least happy to do it. They're thankful, which in IT support is kind of rare, given that we're kind of treated like janitors in other environments. Even though I definitely don't get paid enough, I like a lot of my users and they like me, they make my job easier.
So with the crappy job market, I put up with it. The other argument is that the government won't have any obligations later on, but when you figure in the cost that they pay now to my employer, compared to entitlements, it really does just figure in ditching the contract. This just scratches the surface.
Republicans will truly be the death of this country.
And Democrats will just sit by and let them do it.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
And lets not kid ourselves that cutting science and education funding is the wet-dream of the religious extremists in the United States.
"Remember when I said I would never lie? Well, that was the first time."
no really how bad and stupid do they want you americans to get? i think area 51 is a way to make you uber stupid drones...
Cut the congressional pension.
Everything and nothing. Everything because when the public sector does the research, the private sector does not bother. Nothing, because when the private sector does the research, budgets matter; that's the problem. The innovation over the horizon is not visible to the research when they have to think about budget, and when the private sector invents a nice wheel, then the world stagnates under the weight of the Innovator's Dillema and Planned Obsolence.
The Energy Department, of course. It has completely and utterly failed to live up to its stated goal at inception: to reduce our nation's dependence on foreign oil.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
What the hell is wrong with them? They vote to lose $700 billion in government funding by keeping the tax cuts and sustain two wars, but go after chump change science programs? It's clear that either the Republicans don't know money management, or are just anti-science. It's most likely the latter. I am always baffled at how hard the Republicans work to make America a bad country. They claim "reduction of government spending" yet invariably call for the cutting of budgetary drop in the bucket programs of infrastructure improvements, welfare, medical care, science, and anything remotely beneficial to America. Yet they let wars rage on for years and always find ways to cut more taxes on the rich. And yet they took the House and almost the Senate. What the hell, voters, what the hell?
Is there a way on Slashdot to say "block any story labeled Politics"? Because it appears that saying I don't want to see stories that are labeled politics only blocks those that are only politics, which defeats the purpose.
Advice: on VPS providers
1) Cut pay for elected Federal Congress people.
2) In order to get a pension for serving in the Senate or the House, you actually have to be elected and serve for a minimum of 20 years.
3) Tax any CEO's compensation of over 1 million dollars annually at 100%
4) Eliminate any Federal funding of anything religiously oriented.
5) Tax any off shore outsourced jobs at 100% of the wages that America just lost.
6) Fully fund our public education system. It'll payoff big time in the future.
7) Cut Corporate welfare. (Exxon and GE should pay income taxes just like the rest of us.)
Okay people, add a few of your own.
If the scientists have a problem with their funding being under the scrutiny of the taxpayers who are paying for it, they're welcome to get their funding from some place else.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Could you name a few things that 'public sector research' has come up with 'as the foundations of tomorrow's industries' which private companies wouldn't have done themselves for far less?
Therapy methods and assistive technologies that allow people with developmental disabilities to become educated and employable, thus making many of them contributing members of the economy rather than 100% welfare-dependent wards of the state.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
I think the average person has no idea what useful or good science is. I'm pretty sure that if it isn't directly related to medicine, energy, or climate change (...if they even think it is true...) most people would consider it useless. I do cognitive science/neuroscience research, and all the time people are confused why people pay us to figure out how the brain works without intentions to directly "help people." Hell, even that "soccer efficiency" study or whatever can probably be applied to some other thing our government likes that involves people working in teams, ie the military.
Shit, the average scientist can't evaluate the importance of someone else's research. If I were to summarize my study to a brief paragraph (something teabaggers reading a website can absorb) it wouldn't sound like much. That's why NSF (although my stuff is more likely to be funded through NIH or ED) makes you write long, boring tl;dr grant applications about it (that YouCut visitors certainly won't bother to read).
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
How about cutting pay and benefits for the idiots in Washington. They're always ready to bend the working class over, how about a little payback.
Never ever ever happen. Never.
Even if it appears that it's been cut. It won't be.
Never.
Would a person or person(s) smarter than I please do the following:
1. Get a detailed, accurate accounting of congressional spending for a recent year.
2. Divide said budget into a managable list of categories, associated with respective dollar amounts.
3. Create a tool by which users can adjust the budget (perhaps using sliding bars) within the same categories to provide their dream budget.
4. Aggregate the results of such voting, while requesting pertinant political background information (such as "which party do you prefer" or "would you describe yourself as left or right, etc?)
5. Generate some median and average preferred budgets, showing us what we would all come up with if we were one voting block, what is different between self proclaimed leftists / righ wingers, etc.
6. Compare the various results with the original budget as implemented by congress.
Yeah - lots and lots of work, but I bet it would be worth it.
My hypothesis:
The differences between even the far lefts and far rights would prove smaller than those between any given group and the actual budget as created by congress. We'd find out that American's don't have a problem with each other, but we have a huge problem with congress.
The NEA has just as much to do with this topic as Peyton Manning starting at QB does.
The Republicans want me, an ignorant, uninformed American, to decide what to cut from the US Government budget?
I vote we cut the Republican Party.
Who's with me?
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Bullshit. Instead of the Internet, companies were more focused on isolated, for-pay environments. Such as CompuServe and AOL.
The irony is if biz had had its way, you'd be posting on Prodigy or Compuserve.
From Computer networks and the Internet: A brief history of predicting their future:
The Republicans don't have a majority in Congress, they have a majority in the United States House, one of the two houses of Congress, the other house, the United States Senate retains a Democratic majority.
"The YouCut Citizen Review will look at grants issued by the National Science Foundation and identify those that you consider wasteful"
This should be an interesting exercise since there seems to be nothing to stop non-US citizens submitting ideas. Don't like the way that US IT firms are so successful, well clearly any NSF research to do with computers must be a waste of time. Fed up with better security technology catching all your terrorist plots? Well obviously all those innovative sensor projects should clearly go.
The war in Afghanistan costs ten billion dollars a month. Let's cut that. End the war. Bring the troops home. Go to youcut and suggest that.
I understand what you are trying to say here but you have to realize that if it is not seen as directly helping people live their lives on either end of the investment then it is a waste of money in the present. I do believe things like quantum computing could be used to better our livelihood but at what cost? What is the point if only a select group of wealthy individuals prosper from a countrywide investment? The purpose of industry driven research is to parallel the science with practicality. After all what good is science to people if it cannot be applied to a wide range of peoples problems. The main problem isn't whether to fund public research, it is to educate our people so that they can realize the research opportunities in the private sector.
One might wonder how society invented anything prior to government's funding everything.
One might wonder about Thomas Edison inventing and plowing the profits into research labs.
One might wonder about JP Morgan bank rolling Nicoli Tesla.
One might wonder about the CEO of RIM, who made his fortune building blackberries... then funnels a large sum to the Perimeter institute of theoretical physics.
This is not to say government funded science doesn't lead to results.
But left alone, smart intelligent people seem to discover things on their own.
If you're truly smart enough to do ground breaking research... chances are you're going to do that with or without government help. You're naturally curious that way. Just like a musician is going to produce music regardless of whether the government funds them or not.
About the only thing I used to think government would do is provide big funds for things like the particle accelerator... but then I think... the CEO rim might fund that. Bill Gates is giving his billions in wealth to charity. Were there some scientist with a need to build it and governments were not doing it, they would probably do it.
Just like people will say things like 'the government started the internet'. Well sure.. but networks were not exactly groundbreaking. We would have ended up with digital communication regardless of the government's involvement. Lots of private companies were involved in their network business. It might not be called 'the internet'... but in the big picture, it would fulfill the task.
Truly brilliant people like einstein would do basic research on their own.
Other ideas are more practical and businesses would invest in the promise of profits.
Maybe government funded science speeds up the process... possibly...
but I don't think the world would be at a loss of discoveries if the government stopped funding science.
History seems to have found plenty of discoveries without government projects.
If it doesn't generate revenue directly, indirectly or by other means, it is frivolous by definition. Throwing politics into the equation is diverting attention from the realistic purpose of what government should be doing. We have no money anymore. Our currency is becoming a subset of the Chinese Yuan. At what point will you say this or that needs to go away to make the financials of our government sound? No one seems to talk about that. What is the limit? It is really bad when Hillary goes to China asking them to buy more American bonds and they look at our country like we are a bunch of spoiled rotten kids with a checkbook that is out of control. Apparently many do not understand that is the way they view us.
So, pick a republican backed fundamental program (probably one which subsidizes big businesses) and this intelligent community can all go over and intelligently propose the same thing to YouCut. If they can shape media, so can we.
Maybe they could have come up with the internet, rockets, and various medical procedures, but they didn't. That slow clunky inefficient government got it done first. You can argue hypotheticals all you want, but private industry didn't invent these things. They had time. They had money.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
And the government is full of below average citizens. Pretty sure they have no place in determining what is useful or good science.
And they don't. At NSF, grants are given funding by a panel of scientists with expertise in appropriate fields. These are current researchers who take time to serve at NSF for some amount of time.
It takes about 8 highly trained people quite a long time to distinguish good grant applications from bad ones. How do you think the general population will do?
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One might wonder about the literacy rates prior to public education.
"Scientists" will. They just wont be U.S. scientists, because they will become rare. If you play your myopic view out to conclusion, the U.S. will be a technological backwater. Well, we'll have whatever we can manage to buy from more advanced countries that fund scientific research.
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We have something called "social security benefits" and something else called "social security tax". Despite the similar-sounding names and date of origin, they are in no way related.
Taxes are taxes, and money is money. There is no sense in imagining distinct pools of money. We can use income tax to pay social security benefits, and social security tax to pay for the military. Arguably, we do! Every dollar is like every other, so how could you possibly say that we don't? You can't!
> Of course you could argue that EVENTUALLY, all these would have been done by private interests. I don't believe that is true, but even if it is... the question is becomes how long would it have taken and how closely would it be controlled?
It's worse than that. The rest of the world still exists. If we leave something important to private industry, that often means that what *really* happens is that another country's publicly funded researchers figure it out before our private researchers. On that note, you made some great choices for your short list of examples... lots of rocketry was done through German government funding, and lots of early computer work was done by UK government funding.
Today, there are rising powers increasing their research funding, and existing powers that aren't cutting theirs. If we cut, they'll do to us what, traditionally, we do to them - invent it first, generate an entirely new industry, profit from selling the new products to the world, and watch everyone else scramble to catch up for decades.
im not an american. english is not even my first language. and i am not speaking it in my daily life even, at any measure. im just typing it, on internet, to communicate.
Read radical news here
Disclaimer: I am funded by the NSF.
/rant.
First of all, having people who probably have little-to-no scientific training, let alone any training or expertise in the field that the grant is in, decide whether a particular research project is "a waste of time" is beyond stupidity. It is equivalent to allowing the average american to micro-manage troop movements on the war-zone, allocate ad hoc rations/supplies to each region of the world, etc. In other words, the solutions provided by the "people" will be far from efficient, far from optimal, and indeed probably just dead *wrong* (i.e. soldiers would starve because people thought "nah they don't need this cooking fuel there, they can use firewood!" or something along equally stupid lines.
Another example would be letting people decide civil engineering matters. Like, let's use the cheap steel for the bridge, it's good enough! Or, let's route this highway right through over there, look it's wide open! -- without understanding all the effects and repercussions that taking any of these actions would have (which a properly trained civil engineer etc. would be more likely to recognize).
Of course, one of the explicit stated purposes of the NSF is to broaden appreciation and understanding of science. It's so important that it's almost impossible to get a grant without being able to convincingly show that your project will have broader impacts outside of your subfield. Of course, the people who would be going through the grants by this YouCut thing wouldn't understand why certain seemingly retarded research projects are important (e.g. why bother measuring the weight of the Earth's core, who cares? I want a new car and a TV.) when really it could be a very serious question that many other projects hinge upon (e.g. geothermal energy, satellites that might be affected by the magnetic field that is generated by the core, etc...). Unless people understand this they would vote against it as wasteful. A lot of projects, and the goal of the NSF, is to make it easy for people to understand these relationships and to respect the science, but I have a feeling that people won't go out of their way to even bother to try to understand it.
Anyways,
What is the scientific basis that public review like this is a "good thing"?
ignores that the money supplied from public funding is far greater and less accountable.
Uh, that's because industry is choosing not to make more investments in research, we're talking about less than $7B in total grants vs the $2T in cash reserves private industry is sitting on. They could fund 10x more research than the NSF for 30 years only touching the interest on that money!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
My dad was a protesting baby boomer. He was and is a republican. He strongly supported the Vietnam War. He strongly supported building more nuclear weapons, more bombers, more submarines, and so on. He loved Reagan's proposed defense against ICBMs.
Yep, he'd be out there holding a sign to protest against nuclear treaties, defense cutbacks, etc. He got arrested for chopping down political signs for liberals. He would attend rallies for republicans. He did his best to support Goldwater. He wrote to congresscritters and talked to several in person. He wrote letters to the editor.
These days he spends his time at Tea Party meetings. He's certain that Obama wasn't born in the USA, based on an admission by Obama's own grandmother.
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Do you think so? Because *my* Congressman *doesn't* seem to be cutting much of anything.
The cuts always seem to be "scheduled." When does that "schedule" happen? What does it mean when they say "the cuts are scheduled."?
And when they cut, isn't total spending supposed to go down? What do they mean by "cut"?
Where can I get me one of those Congressman of which you speak?
I'm _really_ confused.
The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind.
then proceed to saying
In times like these when biz is sitting on trillions of cash, govt needs to step up to prevent suffering and encourage the continuing advance of innovation. Our creativity is what keeps our currency strong, by producing things others want.
these two contradict.
in a dog eat dog world you eventually end up with one very fat dog, or a pack of very fat dogs.
who's going to do innovation, when the established wealthy are sitting on top of all resources. or, owning patents. or owning the means of distribution. and when you, god forbid, attempt to innovate by inevitably making them partners, you inevitably get bought/ousted in the end. just look at how many i.t. pioneers had to sell out and leave, because of the pressure they have been put under for doing so. the few which resisted, and had the good fortune to startup without having to get owned beforehand by major investors, are known as internet celebrities today. and even today they are too under pressure from various sources - the established corporate machinery is trying to squash them and subdue them.
and you come up saying that the problem is not economical.
yeah. you give the ownership of 80-90% of resources/services in a land to 3-4 major dukes. and then you say the system is not the reason of so many being unwilling to active in economic/political life.
indeed the problem is not economical. its mental. because people like you, can make 2 consecutive, contradicting, ignorant statements.
Read radical news here
"House Overwhelmingly Approves New $725 Billion Military Spending Bill" -> just a few hours ago.
Read radical news here
So, this is the result of the big Tea Party Revolution? We're setting our national budgets in the method of American Idol? Budget decisions made according to how many people send texts on cellphones?
Then you take a look at the magnitude mismatch between these programs and the budget deficit, and the whole thing screams of ludicrous. The budget deficit is 1.5 trillion dollars. The biggest program on this list is 25 million. If you were to cut one 25 million dollar program every day, it would take 160+ years to balance the budget. Cutting the NSF isn't going to get us anywhere - the problem is too big.
This is just grandstanding. They aren't solving problems, they're creating sound bites for the next election.
I vote for YouFund over YouCut any day.
New York Times already came out with something like this. It doesn't let you work with individual programs, but it only takes a few minutes of clicking before you realize that scrutinizing every detail of a (deliberately distorted) bad NSF decision actually doesn't save you much money compared with, say, raising taxes back to Clinton levels or ending the war in Afghanistan.
It makes me despair for the Republican party, because it makes me think that they might actually be drinking their own KoolAid. And that is never a good sign.
Both the American and German early rocket programs were funded by private interests.
Good research is usually applicable in other places as well. For example, this "frivolous" research such as understanding sound might translate into advances in sonar or sonic weapons or sonic manipulation, and "frivolous" research into soccer player dynamics could translate into better AI for robotic warriors, UAV's, etc. People researching pointless game theory for making Checkers AI can translate into improvements in AI such as robots that can play Jeopardy or outsmart opponents on the battlefield. Even completely unrelated things can be useful when there are mathematical or computational similarities that aren't obvious at the surface. For example, the problem of moving a jointed arm is essentially identical to the problem of reconstructing a 3D camera, and it might be solved using a technique that was originally invented as a path-finding algorithm for a soccer player. If you only fund research specifically related to, say, military designs, then these happy accidental discoveries wouldn't happen so much and fewer people would be interested in doing research in 1 particular area that is deemed "worthy."
When I did my Ph.D. I had the good fortune to meet Charles Townes, the inventor of the maser. According to him he was told it was very interesting, but there would never be any real use for it.
Hope there's nothing to do with finding out how old the Earth is. Here in Alabama we all know the answer to that already!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Given this Gallup Poll then perhaps the backers of science ought to be worried. After all it is the domain of the liberal,elite, socialist atheist fascists. All god-fearing Christians know that everything is described in teh bibul, no need for this science nonsense.
The age of scientific discovery and enlightenment will fall back to Europe and China. The products those nations develop as a result of their science programs will be purchased by the rest of the world ending the United States economic dominance as it sends more dollars off shore, and invsests less in its future.
What I find most amusing about this is the simple fact that your country is doing this to itself.
Just show off any of Nicolelis' research.
Promises of Robot Arms will get you far.
Sye-ens?
That some damn commie plot?
Don't you get it??? It's not the government deciding here... it's popular vote. The votes are being cast by a number of constituents... including those who understand the benefits of science and those who believe in the benefits of welfare and social programs. Understanding this are you really surprised that NSF loses here?
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Here's a proposal where we can cut in the "science" spending: All the pseudoscience projects rooted in some kind of religious bull.
If they have something worth funding at all, the James Randi Educational Foundation has a million dollars waiting for them.
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
This is just one proposal.
Currently up for vote, to be submitted to the house:
Eliminate Unnecessary Congressional Printing -- Potential savings of $35 million + over ten years
Refocus National Archives Activities On Preserving Federal Records -- Potential Savings of $10 million next year and $100 million over ten years
Terminate Broadcasting Facility Grant Programs that Have Completed their Mission -- Potential Savings of $25 million in the first year, $250 million over ten years
If these aren't to your liking, then you can go and submit your own suggestion here:
http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/YourIdea.htm
And again for those that can't RTFA or even visit the site, here are the previous ideas that were presented to the House to be cut:
Week One: Cut the New Non-Reformed Welfare Program ($25 Billion Savings)
Week Two: Eliminate Federal Employee Pay Raise ($30 Billion Savings)
Week Three: Reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ($30 Billion Savings)
Week Four: Sell Excess Federal Property ($15 Billion Savings)
Week Five: Prohibit Hiring New IRS Agents to Enforce Health Care Law ($15 Billion Savings)
Week Six: Taxpayer Subsidized Union Activities ($1.2 Billion Savings)
Week Seven: Prohibit Stimulus Funding for Promotional Signage (Tens of Millions)
Week Eight: Prohibit Sleeper Car Subsidies on Amtrak ($1.2 Billion Savings)
Week Nine: Bipartisan Proposal to Terminate AEITC ($1.1 Billion Savings)
Week Ten: Require Collection of Unpaid Taxes From Federal Employees ($1 Billion Savings)
Week Eleven: Reduce Government Employment to 2008 Levels ($35 Billion Savings)
Week Twelve: Terminate the TARP Program Prohibiting Any Additional Bailouts
Week Thirteen: Terminate Taxpayer Funding of National Public Radio
Week Fourteen: Eliminate Unnecessary Congressional Printing
This is one of the first weeks where I did not see ideas that would cut billions out of the federal budget.
Interestingly, or rather, not surprisingly, the votes to make these cuts were nearly down party lines. I am not going to say that Republicans are more or less fiscally responsible, but rather it seems to me that no matter which party brings in the good idea, the other votes against it, almost in spite because the didn't think of it first.
There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen. ~Author Unknown
Sig? What's a Sig?
Who cares where we start as long as we start. Waste is waste isn't it?
Profile before you optimize. The Pareto Principle applies here -- we're better off cutting the huge wastes before the relatively tiny ones.
See also, "We have to do something; X is something; therefore we must do X."
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
Listen to the voice of the people! What we need is the average citizen deciding on the merits of research in quantum computing, string theory or evolution. What could possibly go wrong?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Um, at first glance this looks like this is a bunch of Republicans inviting citizens to go through and try to spot dodgy expenditures and grants given out by the NSF.
Nope - it's a bunch of Republicans going through NSF grants themselves and picking out ones to spin to the populace as being dodgy by misdescribing them, omitting important facts, and outright lying. See this comment someone made in a previous thread.
Sadly the NSF and Research Councils in the UK are vulnerable, and have fallen to corruption and group think, exacerbated by Seniority and Pork. This is NOT to say that they are not useful, or that is easy to do that job but it is to say that a dose of accountability is urgently needed and it can not be to more OLD BOYS groups.
While the whole matter is complex, and in research, anyway, you are lucky if 1% of your bets come in, BUT the rate of progress in Maths, the Hard Sciences (eg Physics, Chemistry and Biology) as well as in Medicine is disappointing with far too much incremental technology and not expected break-throughs.
This is symptomatic of Government enterprises, lots of Beaurocracy and not a lot of Leadership.
I would suggest the way to do it is to make a short list of headline areas in Science, Engineering and Medicine to get funding priority eg Safe Nuclear Fusion, Cure Virus Diseases, Interplanetary Travel to focus attention on National and International goals and needs. A pure lottery for 10% of the funding to prevent starving of outlier and unfashionable ideas and a Death Squad to go after, mostly fashionable me-too research in The Environment and Social Sciences.
One of the main problems of government is that loosers are never reaped eg the Shuttle and AGW because of beaurocracy, colligiality and face.
This leads to rediculous Political policies, eg Carbon Taxes, Renuables, where as Fission would let us systhesise oil where needed.
for YouCut's critical assessment of people who get money and tax breaks to promote an invisible socialist voodoo king who lives in the sky with a plan to imprison billions of people in pits of fire for all of eternity because he loves them.
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It would be nice to see people (and then congress) make informed decisions about what to cut rather than half baked notions about things they've heard from second hand sources or worse, politically motivated sources. Does anyone know of sites that have a good breakdown of the past or current budget expenditures or a site that visualizes the budget in a meaningful comparative way? Possibly with a time line?
Great ideas for a response:
Someone should make a webpage that lists all of the perks and benefits Congresspersons get: last ten years of salary raises, health care, Franking privileges, their gym, staffers,... be very thorough. They would be listed as check boxes within the UI. After a user selects the ones she wants, puts in an email address, and hits "submit" it sends an email to every member of congress saying "jane@doe.com thinks the 'youcut' effort should be targeted at the following congressional perks: __,___, ___,..." The site could also keep and display statistics for what gets the most "votes".
I know there is someone (probably ten dozen) people on this board who could write this in a few hours or less.... c'mon slashdotters.... make this happen!
First let's make sure that members of Congress get exactly the same pay and benefits as Florida school teachers. Next we can eliminate the Navy and most of the Air Force as that will keep us from invading foreign nations. After all, war is expensive. Next we will eliminate all emergency room care for illegal immigrants as well as all social services for them. Next we can use the Wall Street and bankers to rebuild our roads as punishment for messing up the economy. A few years of wrestling wet concrete and asphalt will sober them up a bit. Then we can pass laws that only allow plain and simple mortgages with no balloon payments, adjustable rates or any other nonsense attached to them. We will also require the original lender to carry the loan until it is paid off. Then we should hold all people caught with illegal drugs for ransom for 180 days. If the ransom is not paid we should execute them.Then we need to tax the hell out of the rich and also tax people a great deal if they have more than one child without regard to how many marriages they may have had.
Can you feel the billions upon billions we could save if we did this?
Uh, that's because industry is choosing not to make more investments in research, we're talking about less than $7B in total grants vs the $2T in cash reserves private industry is sitting on.
The NSF isn't the only source of free R&D. You also have the DoD, NASA, NIH, both DoEs (Energy and Education), a variety of intelligence agencies, and other government organizations.
Wrong. That may have been the case in America, but elsewhere in the world numerous alternative networking technologies were developed.
In Britain, Acorn developed Econet. It dates back to around 1981. This was eventually deployed in many schools, for example, as a school-wide network long before they moved over to Ethernet. My own (large) school had it and I even had fun writing a sort of simple e-mail like program on their BBCs that me and my friends used for a while. ISTR it was called AMP (Another Mail Program - classy name, eh? :-) )
The irony is if biz had had its way, you'd be posting on Prodigy or Compuserve.
What irony? Most of us do. We call them ISPs nowadays.
I have an Idea(TM) why don't we all go to the website and propose cuts we want, starting with cutting their pay to what an average American makes. From the 400+ comments it's pretty obvious that we care about this, I'm sure we can think of some other cuts that would be unpalatable to them. Start twittering about it, make it your face-book status etc. Mobilize and get involved, if they want to hear the people, then lets make sure we are heard!
If non-US citizens participate in this vote, they'll probably vote according to their values. The Republican party's values and policies aren't exactly popular in the rest of the world, and (for the most part) the rest of the world likes science. Remember - basic scientific research is a public good; we all benefit from it, so everyone would rather wait for someone else to do it.
On a side note... do you honestly think the rest of the world is out to get you? You seem to be projecting (perceived) national and corporate political interests onto individuals... as if those individuals had no personal values of their own. That's like believing Swedish fathers are thinking "oh man, the US is beating us in nuclear weapons research... I need to switch professions and donate all my extra income to funding nuclear weaponry!".
Being reasonably alarmed, I actually looked at the YouCut website, which is oddly not linked in the summary. Every week they pick various user submitted ideas to cut spending and have people vote on them. They voted and it turns out people don't want to cut the NSF budget. That makes me feel pretty good, actually.
I have no problem with someone asking the question: "Is the NSF budget bloated?" I would have a problem with a politician who decides the NSF budget needs to be cut without trying to get some feedback first.
Also, the budget may not be huge, but the way NSF money is allocated certainly could be improved. The decades long focus on training has caused problems in the labor market, as you can easily get funding to train a PhD, but not funding to hire one. This results in lower quality work, as you are constantly teaching new people and never taking advantage of expertise. "Research" faculty used to be a common thing in physics (corporate research also used to exist), but you only find those positions in biological sciences now.
Their idea is clearly idiocracy, but the implementation is brilliant. Not only is it impossible to vote for science, its also impossible to leave a comment without voting against it... so if you want to explain why a grant is worthwhile, you have to do so by voting against it. They may be idiots, but they're damn good at it.
Republicans never really think through their online grandstanding. There is an easy solution here, just build yourself a perl script that submits grant numbers, all grant numbers. Or maybe just target fields relevant to defense like engineering, cryptography, number theory, etc.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
To automate submission, write a script that sends posts request to
http://www.mattlira.com/Whip/YCprocessCA.asp
Your post requests must set the variables emailw, awardw, and awardc. Of course, awardw is the important variable that selects the award number. There is currently no email verification for the field emailw, so just generate gmail.com accounts. You should however try placing some text in the comment field awardc.
Does anyone want to compile a list of grants that appear relevant to national defense, especially homeland security?
While I applaud the idea of citizens becoming more involved in their government to help cut wasteful spending, the initiative is looking/starting in the wrong place.
... that would save ~$3.5 billion per year, or less than 0.01% of the annual US budget.
Total annual US budget: $3.55 trillion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget)
NSF annual budget: $6.87 billion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation)
Percentage of total budget: 0.193% (http://www.google.com/search?q=6.87+billion+%2F+3.55+trillion)
Even if the NSF budget were to somehow to cut by half through meticulous scrutiny
Can we start with just one of the other heavy hitters first, Defense/Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, which represent 58.7% of the total budget? (http://www.google.com/search?q=(677.95+billion+%2B+453+billion+%2B+290+billion+%2B+663.7+billion)+%2F+3.55+trillion). No this isn't easy, but, cut 5% of wasteful spending in just one of those programs, much more significant impact. Or is this considered political suicide to talk about cutting any one of these elephants in the room?
Nice little non-partisan pointers to give searchers some direction when looking for things to cut.
"In the "Search Award For" field, try some keywords, such as: success, culture, media, games, social norm, lawyers, museum, leisure, stimulus, etc. to bring up grants."
Instead of cutting our strategic investment in science, why not cut political salaries, number of terms (impose term limits), the influence of lobbyists, cronyism, and the like
I work in the research arm of a Fortune 500 company. Before that, I worked on contracts for DARPA.
The DARPA contracts all had forward-thinking, long term research objectives.
At my current company, all--and I do mean ALL--of the research is targeted towards acquiring new business in under 24 months. At least 75% of our research efforts are so closely tied to new business capture objectives that they actually have marketing money that comes in tow with the research, and a business development supervisor. I'm actually pretty happy with our strategy, and look at it as a responsible use of our company's money.
But to say that I agree with you in that "private companies typically do not engage in long-term research". Well, the evidence could not be more obvious that what you are saying is true.
C//
... is an ignorant citizenry.
"Citizen led" initiatives are great when the rich and powerful know they can easily manipulate what the masses want and believe.
I don't understand how the entire country can be having this conversation about reducing spending without any mention of the defense budget. Last time I checked it was nearly twice all other federal discretionary spending combined, without even counting the wars. And it's still massively disproportionate to the rest of the world. Seriously. No mention of it, at all, on news, radio, or paper? Not even NPR? I don't get it.
Neo-cons and TeaBaggers have been getting their marching orders from overseas for a LONG time. Why else would you create a tax break to encourage the flow of jobs offshore (2004)? Why would you approve the transfer of technology and jobs related to rare earth magnets being used in smart bombs and ICBM's navigation control (2004)? Why would you provide tax subsidies for corn based ethanol (driving up costs of food) as well as Oil and Natural gas companies around the world while trying to abolish subsidies for new American tech? We went through 12 years of neo-cons controlling congress for other nations, namely China, so this is nothing new.
Yeah, but Goddard's work never went anywhere until German scientists working under the Nazis recognized its military potential, and then Uncle Sam figured out these rocket thingies might be a cool thing and spent a bundle on them. Of course Goddard died before he could see what his rockets could really do because private interests with money refused to support him in the 30s, but hey, you can't make a soulless capitalist dystopia without crushing a few souls, or something.
Try to name one private rocket manufacturer not beholden to Uncle Sam between 1950 and 1990 and you'll see what I mean.
Private companies typically do not engage in long-term research that isn't likely to lead to directly commercializable results.
That's not true. In fact companies that fund more so-called 'pure' research are typically more successful than companies that don't. See the following talk for more or search an article on "the myth of science as a public good."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_PVI6V6o-4
Thin end of the wedge. I triple-dog-dare the GOP and/or its apologists to tally up the "bloat" so we can evaluate their aims on the merits of the money it will actually save.
Frankly, if they cared about NSF efficiency, or science at all, they would be calling for stricter oversight of the grants it funds, not cutting its already pitifully small budget.
You mean instead of using that company called Comcast to post on a site hosted by that company called Geeknet? Yes, the irony is very thick indeed!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"the incoming Republican majority in Congress has a new initiative called YouCut, which lets ordinary Americans like me propose government programs for termination."
New initiative my ass, the announcement concerning YouCut was posted on Youtube May 10, 2010. Get your facts straight before posting something...
I think that others will. What you speak of, is so true. So many ppl like to compare Nam to AQ. They are 2 very different things. 'Nam was caused because France Colonized them and then wanted to remain in control of them. When Eisenhower was friends with France, we came to her aide upon their request. Sadly, when it ramped up, France left us holding their bad. Kennedy WAS going to pull us out of there, but then that week was murdered. North Viet Nam wanted france and now, the US out of there. OTH, AQ wants to use Afghanistan (like Pakistan) as a base to launch from. Any effective military must have a base and easy access to goods. Right now, AQ does not have that, and is slowly losing ground that they gained when W helped them (declaring that Afghanistan was won, pulling out, and then spending all of our resources on Iraq was a MAJOR help to AQ; Hell, W/neo-cons did more for recruiting for AQ than OBL EVER DID ).
Right now, if we pull out of Afghanistan and do not solve the issue of AQ, then we will be attacked again and again. There is zero chance of having absolute security, but there is no reason to help them either.
Windbourne.
The US left Saudi Arabia 7 years ago
We also don't have bases in Pakistan, India, or Iran. Three countries with a lot of suicide bombing. How about Russia, Sri Lanka, oh, and Sweden?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Cut all federal entitlement programs. Let the states run and fund them.
Science is about discovering the nature of this world, and this might or might not be directly useful for your day-to-day life.
However, science academia plants seeds for most of the major inventions, and often it takes a long time for anybody including academia and private industry to transform it into something you can harvest.
You're using LCD?
Who first discovered the liquid crystals? Yes, it's an Austrian chemist working at an Austrian university.
Did he invent LCD panel? Hell, no, it was RCA engineer who "invented" the fundamentals of LCD some 76 years later. At about the same time, UK government-funded engineers in Royal Radar Establishment developed long-lasting material that made the commercial application of LCD practical.
You're using GPS navigation?
You know that GPS was first proposed in 1956 as a test of general relativity by an American academic? That is because of the clocks running around in the earth bound orbit would have a different "tick" length than the ones on earth.
And general relativity was of course "invented" by another academic, a guy named Albert Einstein or something, in 1915.
And GPS was not possible without the accuracy of atomic clocks, which is entirely based on quantum mechanics of atomic transition, and the first guy who thought about using is as a clock is Lord Kelvin (1879), a British academic.
Oh, you're using internet? I wouldn't talk about DARPA, but anyway.
Between you and slashdot, your message goes through some fiber connection, and in that fiber travels laser light.
Yes, Laser.
It was Einstein (1917) who "invented" the theoretical foundation of laser, which is the rate equation for spontaneous and induced radiation. But that was of course based on Max-Planck's classical radiation theory.
But of course it was Bell Lab that patented the actual implementation of Laser in 1957 (BTW, unlike many many trivial patents filed by private corporations today, this was totally non-trivial).
And speaking of fiber connection, how about optical fibers, the principle of which was first demonstrated by French and Swiss physicists?
Are you seeing a pattern here?
Can you do without these useless, budget-eating science thingie?
Do the private companies care to invest in fundamental science which might or might not directly profit them in 50 years or longer?
I thought so.
You can wonder or you might look up the facts and actually KNOW.
The internet example you mentioned was not just applied technology. The fundamental mathematics that led to the invention of packet switched networks was academic research by Kleinrock at MIT. Not industrial.
Worse the great industrial labs of the 20th century are all gone. Bell Labs is an empty building in Holmdel NJ and memories of Nobel Prizes (7 at last count), Sarnoff Labs in Princeton NJ, GE Schenectady (the scion of Edison's Menlo Park) and IBM at Yorktown are no more or vastly diminished, working only on short term projects. And even many government programs aren't what they used to be. DARPA is focused on short term goals and doesn't do fundamental work any more.
The only significant sources of money for fundamental work are the DOE, NIH and NSF. And even that is being corrupted by Congress's insane desire for earmarks.
Now we hear from Congress a desire to cut these programs. I cannot think of ANYTHING worse.
Of course they're going to prefer it if the government sponsors that R&D -- but they didn't get to be industry giants by either sitting on their laurels or thinking only of the short-term bottom line.
That Eric "Discrete Hypothesis" Cantor is right. I just searched for "feces" and found 10 awards! Feces has a major role in smelling and monkey ballistic games and can't possibly be used for anything good. Plus, I doubt reputable scientists would try to include tangential applications in attempt to make their research seem worthwhile.
All the science you need to know is in the Bible. Or so the Republicans seem to be telling us.
It is hard to imagine any private company taking on the development of space exploration, yet public funding of NASA has resulted in massive innovation and whole new industries. Communication satellites, innovative materials, technologies for miniaturization of electronics and so on.
The GAO has estimated that the tax revenues arising from industries spun off from NASA's work far exceed the cost to taxpayers from of the space program.
From Wikipedia:
Other statistics and confirmation that "Space pays" may also be found in the 1976 Chase Econometrics Associates, Inc. reports ("The Economic Impact of NASA R&D Spending: Preliminary Executive Summary.", April 1975. Also: "Relative Impact of NASA Expenditure on the Economy.", March 18, 1975) and backed by the 1989 Chapman Research report, which examined just 259 non-space applications of NASA technology during an eight year period (1976-1984) and found more than:
-- $21.6 billion in sales and benefits;
-- 352,000 (mostly skilled) jobs created or saved,and;
-- $355 million in federal corporate income taxes
Other benefits, not quantified in the study, include: state corporate income taxes, individual personal income taxes (federal and state) paid by those 352,000 workers, and incalculable benefits resulting from lives saved and improved quality of life. According to the "Nature" article, these 259 applications represent ". . .only 1% of an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 Space program spin-offs. These benefits were in addition to benefits in the Space industry itself and in addition to the ordinary multiplied effects of any government spending."
In 2002, the aerospace industry contributed more than $95 billion to U.S. economic activity, which included $23.5 billion in employee earnings, and employed 576,000 people--a 16% increase in jobs from three years earlier (source: Federal Aviation Administration, March 2004).
Just 15 firms that received an initial $64 million in NASA life sciences research added $200 million of their own money and created a $1.5 billion return on investment in the form of sold commercial goods and services during 25 years.[9]
I agree with your premise largely. However, rocket technology was privately funded. See Goddard, the namesake is on some of NASA's buildings or facilities.
And early computers--depends on what you mean. There were computational devices for thousands of years. Maybe you mean the electronic computer.
There is a belief on /. that most, if not all, come from publicly funded scientists I find that funny and odd and wrong, given what I've seen. BOTH are necessary. Many of these scientists end up working for private companies, or go to lectures held at the national labs where the speaker is from a private company, where the lab person then thinks, "Hmm, that's a good idea, let's implement it" and throws the weight of the national facilities behind it.
Have the shit you use may have come from national labs, but the products, well, they aren't made in the US. They're exported abroad. Someone above mentioned plasma TVs and the like--sorry, very few jobs making them are in the US. Of course, next you will blame US policy, but the fact remains that scientific knowledge goes across borders REGARDLESS of where it comes from WE do not have to fund it; you want jobs, take the research from abroad and pirate the damn thing.
One might wonder about Thomas Edison inventing and plowing the profits into research labs
Thomas Edison did not do basic research. He did the type of development work that comments in this thread in favor of government research admit private enterprise does.
But left alone, smart intelligent people seem to discover things on their own. If you're truly smart enough to do ground breaking research... chances are you're going to do that with or without government help.
Like Isaac Newton, who invented the calculus without gov . . . wait, no, he was on government payroll most of his life. Though I must admit that in the great tradition of private enterprise, he tried to keep calculus secret for his own benefit for as long as he was able.
Bill Gates is giving his billions in wealth to charity.
And if his dollars funded research that the development of the internet relied on, you would need MS WindowsTM to access the web.
How about we start with lower hanging fruit like weapons platforms that the military doesn't even want or need first?
Why would a propaganda tool designed to increase public buy-in to the Republican Party's policy priorities start with an attack on one of the Republican Party's policy priorities.
After all, if you are a normal stupid person, you can't really understand what all of that "science" stuff is all about. All you know is the damfools who participate in it seem to think that the Lord's Creation is older than 6000 years and that we are descended from monkeys. Imagine that! Monkeys! And what has science ever done for us, really? Compared to, say, Jesus?
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Not what I should be doing on a Friday night :/
This makes me want to throw-up.
Having "the people" review NSF grants, the same people of whom half believe that antibiotics kill viruses (imperiling all of us when they strong arm their spineless doctors into prescribing antibiotics for colds) and think that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, is a freaking ridiculous idea. Furthermore, the idea that targeting grants individually in NSF, whose budget, at $7 billion is 0.2% of the total budget is an effective way of cutting the deficit is asinine. And to top it all off, that measly $7 billion is one of the major reasons the United States is still a power in science and technology at all, especially as private R&D collapses in the face of the recession (in the short term) and Wall Street's fetish for quarterly results.
Fuck you, Eric Cantor. Fuck you, ignorant Republican douche-bags. I am D-O-N-E done. We are going to Hell in a handbasket, and instead of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic (which would be bad enough), you are stealing life jackets from children and setting them ablaze because the water is cold and we need to keep warm.
Good points
Support SETI@home
. . . any topic!, only "for" That's the Republican version of democracy.
Regards, -- Chris Johansen
Repubs want to cut NSF funding but will also (probably) oppose internet censhorship/net neutrality. Demos are more likely to preserve NSF funding but will also follow the UN, including internet censhorship/net neutrality. Take your pick.
Can my karma get any worse than bad? Let's find out!
NSF grants aren't just handed out. There is a great deal of accountability. Projects failing? You can get your money pulled, or will be turned down for your next grant.
Seriously people, the NSF is not the fucking DMV.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
You can wonder... though the impact of public education on literacy is debatable.
Read
The literacy myth: cultural integration and social structure in the nineteenth century by Graffb
One can argue quite realistically that literacy was on the way up due to the introduction of the printing press.
Mass education was implemented more to control the reading so the government could control what the people were taught.
Much like how the in Europe the Church tried to control literacy to the clergy.
We certainly can't rerun history to find out... but I'd certainly say it is a possible alternative.
Did you go to YouCut? Someone is simply putting up their own list of things they'd like to cut. You can "vote" on one of those items -- meaning you can pick one item from their list each week to cut. Vote for or against? No, just a simple vote against. Dialog appears to not be an option -- I couldn't find a "Contact Us" box on YouCut or the parent page. This is pure pandering to the lowest common denominator, complete with YouTube soundbite video from our "leaders". Will farm subsidies, military spending or any of the other very expensive programs show up on any of these weekly lists? Not likely. Frankly, I'm beyond disgusted.
The persons making grant decisions for the National Science Foundation are independent experts in relevant fields of study. I think they are qualified.
Do you need carrier battle groups, Vtol troups transports, attack helicopters and stealth bombers to defend against Al Qaeda?
The rightist rationale is that taxing the rich discourages entrepreneurship or something. Fine. Move taxation away from income and put it on weatlh; that way, people will have EVEN more incentive to make money, but those who just sit on it will be more penalized.
Of course they don't really believe this, as evidenced by their bullshit on the "death tax." If they weren't fundamentally aiming to reinstate feudalism, they would prefer that people be taxed when they don't need the damn money anymore. But what they want is to keep the rich rich,from generation to generation, at the expense of society.
YouCut is a fantastic idea. It's ridiculous we don't have more direct representation given the ease with which we can collect peoples' opinions these days. I say let them cut NSF. Sure, I'll lose my funding, my grad students will have to find another PI, but we'll save a fraction of what we need to balance the budget. Oh sure, we'll have eliminated the very instrument for creating new wealth for America in the future, but hey, it's what Americans want. I don't think we have much to really worry about though. Even if Americans stupidly target scientific infrastructure for the future I think their representatives will continue to fund it, just as they will always fund Defense research.
In the very least the Slashdot advertisers think that this site's readers are insightful and look to learn new things. Most of the public debate calling for deficit cutting to save the republic is ill-informed. The U.S. government if the monopoly issuer of our currency. Households and businesses must earn money to spend it. The U.S. government does not. U.S. government spending adds money to the system. Taxes and payments remove money from the system. Our economy had multiple trillions removed and severely cut demand. The U.S. government can spend thereby creating income which then can support increased demand. Jamie Galbraith presented a brief paper to the deficit commission that explains these points further. Look up Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and learn a little more.
Wasn't ARPNET a military project? Most universitys do military funded research, much to the dismay of pacifist undergrads. Wouldn't it be better to have youfund-it. Everyone gits one vote per hundred dollars of income tax paid.