The White House Now Has Zero Science Advisors (cbsnews.com)

DogDude shares an article from CBS News: The science division of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy was unstaffed as of Friday as the three remaining employees departed this week, sources tell CBS News... On Friday afternoon, Eleanor Celeste, the assistant director for biomedical and forensic sciences at the OSTP, tweeted, "Science division out. Mic drop" before leaving the office for the last time...

Under Mr. Obama, the science division was staffed with nine employees who led the charge on policy issues such as STEM education, biotechnology and crisis response. It's possible that the White House will handle these issues through staff in other divisions within the OSTP.

Comments

Re:Efficiency

[LynnwoodRooster]

Exactly. Seems like redundancies are being eliminated. We have thousands and thousands of scientists at NASA, NOAA, EPA, DOE, etc. These nine were really "policy wonks" who were tasked with fusing political goals with desired science and research directives. And according to the source article, there are still 35 people working in that department, though it's been greatly downsized from the 100+ of the Obama Administration.

Re:The New Formula

[LynnwoodRooster]

When it comes to shedding blood to export our system to other nations, we're rank amateurs compared to the old colonial powers of Europe. You know, the ones who instititionalized slavery in the Americas and most of the rest of the world, who set up Apartheid, genocide, and fanned the flames of two world wars (and the resulting communist revolutions) that killed hundreds of millions of people.

Re:How many in NASA under Obama?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Your Google Fu is weak. Pay attention to the Youtube video where you can watch Charles Bolden, NASA Chief under Obama, state unambiguously that he was directed to reach out to the Muslim world to make them feel good about their contributions to science and engineering.

Re:Kind, compassionate idiots

[Megane]

But we didn't "provide healthcare", we simply required people to buy health insurance at higher premiums and with higher deductibles than before. Thanks for putting the insurance companies in our pockets, guys! And Obamacare is crumbling, most of the "exchanges" will be defunct by next year if it is left just as the Democrats (it was passed by a partisan super-majority) and Obama intended. Except for the bit where they expected a Democrat to be in the White House to declare it defunct so they could replace it with something worse.

Re:Kind, compassionate idiots

[colinwb]

"I'm not quite sure how fighting the Axis after being attacked by it counts as generous" - Well, before December 1941 the US with Franklin D. Roosevelt as President was doing quite a bit of prodding the Axis (rightly, in my British view), for example:

• Lend Lease "...This program effectively ended the United States' pretense of neutrality and was a decisive step away from non-interventionist policy, which had dominated United States foreign relations since 1931 ... In December 1940, President Roosevelt proclaimed the U.S. would be the 'Arsenal of Democracy' and proposed selling munitions to Britain and Canada ..."
• Battle of the Atlantic "... By 1941, the United States was taking an increasing part in the war, despite its nominal neutrality. In April 1941 President Roosevelt extended the Pan-American Security Zone east almost as far as Iceland. British forces occupied Iceland when Denmark fell to the Germans in 1940; the US was persuaded to provide forces to relieve British troops on the island. American warships began escorting Allied convoys in the western Atlantic as far as Iceland, and had several hostile encounters with U-boats. ..."
  Escort Duties: ... From May 1941 the US Navy became a British ally in the struggle in the Atlantic. By taking over escort duties in the western Atlantic, it became involved in a shooting war with Germany, and on Halloween 1941, the inevitable happened. While escorting a British convoy, an American warship, the destroyer Reuben James, was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine U-562. This was at a time when Roosevelt still faced fierce opposition from isolationists within the USA, and escort duties in the Battle of the Atlantic had so far been the most that the President could do to bring the USA into the war on the British side. However, eventually this undeclared German-American naval war probably played a role in Hitler's decision to declare war on the USA - in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. ...
• US aid to China: ... In 1940 and 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt formalized U.S. aid to China. The U.S. Government extended credits to the Chinese Government for the purchase of war supplies, as it slowly began to tighten restrictions on Japan. The United States was the main supplier of the oil, steel, iron, and other commodities needed by the Japanese military as it became bogged down by Chinese resistance but, in January, 1940, Japan abrogated the existing treaty of commerce with the United States. Although this did not lead to an immediate embargo, it meant that the Roosevelt Administration could now restrict the flow of military supplies into Japan and use this as leverage to force Japan to halt its aggression in China. After January 1940, the United States combined a strategy of increasing aid to China through larger credits and the Lend-Lease program with a gradual move towards an embargo on the trade of all militarily useful items with Japan. ...

Re:The New Formula

[acrimonious howard]

What data do you have to the contrary? ...what basic needs do we not take care of?

https://web.stanford.edu/class...

Every other advanced industrial nation has virtually universal access to decent medical care, at much lower cost than in the United States.