The Necropolitan Sentinel

Bruce McQuain takes on the sticky subject of just how much basic research should be conducted by the Federal government, and just what Dwight Eisenhower would have thought of the coziness that now exists between academia and Washington, D.C.

Those of you who write grants for a living will want to place your hands over your ears and chant “la la la la la la, I can’t hear you.” The rest of you can read on from Bruce’s entry in Q&O:

If you’re any student of history, you’re aware of the speech President Eisenhower gave upon his leaving the presidency. It is often referred to as the “Military/Industrial complex speech”.

In it he warned against the future problems we’d encounter by the establishment of a permanent “military/industrial complex” (something we’d never had prior to WWII).

But are you also aware he warned against the establishment of something else that it took WWII to create (think Manhattan Project)? You’ll recognize it immediately:

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

. . . [I]t is something which has indeed come true and is alive and well in the current “science” of global warming.

Then add this – because this hasn’t been changed or disproven. From S. Fred Singer’s book, “Unstoppable Global Warming – every 1500 years” (2007, 2008):

…[T]he Antarctic ice cores tell us that the earth’s temperatures and CO2 levels have tracked closely together through the last three ice ages and global warnings. However, CO2 has been a lagging indicator, its concentrations rising about 600 to 800 years after the temperatures warm. Oregon State climatologist George Taylor explains the significance of this fact:

Early Vostok analysis looked at samples centuries apart and concluded correctly that there is a very strong relationship between temperatures and CO2 concentrations. The conclusion for many was obvious: when CO2 goes up, temperatures go up, and vice versa. This became the basis for a number of scary looking graphs in books by scientist Stephen Schneider, former VP Al Gore, and others, predicting a much warmer future (since most scientists agree that CO2 will continue to go up for sometime). Well, it’s not as simple as that. When the Vostok data were analyzed for much shorter time periods (decades at a time rather than centuries), something quite different emerged. Huburtus Fischer and his research team from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography reported: “the time lag of the rise in CO2 concentrations with respect to temperature change is on the order of 400 to 1000 years”. In other words, CO2 changes are caused by temperature changes.

Yet somehow the science has been perverted over the years to now characterize CO2 as not only a current indicator of warming but a cause of warming. As far as I’ve been able to determine, what is written above has yet to be disproven or disputed.

So here we are with a government which is interested in increasing revenue by literally creating a tax out of thin air, and we have a well funded government “science” – a $103 billion dollar “gravy train” (that figure was quoted quite often at ICCC6) and we wonder why we’re getting the conclusions we’re getting from those scientists?

Ike was a pretty smart guy. He saw all of this coming from way off. Whenever government takes control of science (or any other field) to serve its purposes by providing huge incentives to do so, it’s going to get what it wants. And it has, at least to a point. What it hasn’t gotten, however, is indisputable truth concerning its theories concerning CO2. That means its taxation scheme is dead.

However, as long as it continues to fund science and scientists with massive amounts of money, it will provide tremendous incentive to get at least a portion of those who call themselves scientists to serve government’s policy aims. That’s incredibly dangerous. . . .

We need to get government out of science. Wasn’t this the administration which said it was going to “restore” science to its proper place? That proper place is without government subsidy or, as we’ve experienced through the AGW fiasco, “[t]he prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money …”, perverts science and makes it a servant to political policy. That, friends is infinitely more dangerous to our freedoms than the military/industrial complex.

I have mixed feelings about this, because there are some areas where one can at least argue that government-subsidized research has done humanity an awful lot of good–the biological sciences come to mind, and I think this despite the fact that I know the Center for Disease Control (to cite the obvious example) is not above making policy proposals that are informed by a progressive mindset. And yet, when there is an outbreak of highly infectious disease, we trust the CDC to recommend appropriate quarantines, and we know that although they are paid by the people of the U.S., they track diseases all over the world.

And they have to: when it comes to certain viruses and bacteria, this is a pretty dimunitive planet.

I also want to know how the human brain works, and how much of what we are is determined by genetics. I’m cool with the government chipping in to figure out the cerebral cortex and the coding of DNA.

But climate science is so flagrantly politicized that researchers’ bread is only buttered on one side: the side of apocalyptic scenarios, and malevolent carbon dioxide hiding under our collective beds in the dark. The whole thing has become completely absurd, and there is no reason that a government as broke as ours should be supporting the nomenclatura merely because they possess Ph.Ds.

And you’ll recall that the costs of wrong-headed policies based on a misreading of global warming are very, very high, particularly in developing countries. Attitudes that simply lead us to recycle silly things a bit compulsively here in the richer countries cause death and starvation elsewhere in the world.

We have the means to fund more research privately; when it comes to more controversial issues, we ought to make this happen, rather than letting middle-class taxpayers be the pawns in the great debate over greenhouse gasses.

Mexican officials and legislators are starting to get very very angry about Operation Fast and Furious, which after all killed a lot more Mexican citizens than it did Americans.

Fox News:

U.S. Officials Behind ‘Fast and Furious’ Gun Sales Should Be Tried in Mexico, Lawmaker Says

While the investigation continues into the U.S. operation that helped send thousands of guns south of the border, Mexican lawmakers say they’ll press for extradition and prosecution in Mexico of American officials who authorized and ran the operation.

“I obviously feel violated. I feel my country’s sovereignty was violated,” Mexico Sen. Rene Arce Islas told Fox News. “They should be tried in the United States and the Mexican government should also demand that they also be tried in Mexico since the incidents took place here. There should be trials in both places.”

Arce is chairman of Mexico’s Commission for National Security, a congressional panel similar to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

His point of view is shared by many Mexican politicians, including Sen. Santiago Creel, a former Interior Minister and the likely presidential nominee next year of the National Action Party to succeed Felipe Calderone, also of PAN.

“I think we should at least try to prove that what happened in Mexico must be sanctioned by Mexican laws and under our sovereignty,” Creel told us. “What can’t happen is that this now ends on an administrative sanction, or a resignation. No, no, no. Human lives were lost here. A decision was made to carry out an operation that brought very high risk to human lives.”

Also, we’ve learned from Jake Tapper and the crowd at Sipsey Street that while the President isn’t angry about the loss of life in Operation Fast and Furious, he takes it seriously. So, the dead have that going for them . . .

TAPPER: About the Fast and Furious program, I know that there is this investigation going on internally. Weapons from the Fast and Furious program are now showing up in the United States attached to criminal transactions. The ABC station in Phoenix last week reported on several of these weapons from Fast and Furious turning up in crimes. How come we know so little — the public knows so little — about this program? And what is the administration doing to get to the bottom of these weapons, which are now showing up in crimes in the United States?

CARNEY: I think there’s an investigation going on precisely to get to the bottom of this. And I can’t comment further on it because there is an investigation going on.

TAPPER: Can the acting head of the BATF be permitted to go to Capitol Hill to testify? My understanding is that the — that he’s not been allowed by the administration to go there and explain what’s going on.

CARNEY: I’ll have to refer you to Justice on that. I’m not — I don’t have any information on that.

TAPPER: It’s not something that you guys are worried about and incensed about? This is something that —

CARNEY: Well, Jake, I think it’s being investigated for a reason. And obviously, it’s a matter of concern, and that’s why there’s an investigation. But it would be a mistake for me to comment further on — or to characterize further what happened or — you know, how — to rate our unhappiness about it from here. So I think that I have to refer you to the Justice Department for that.

TAPPER: It — lastly, I mean, we have heard at times, you know, when the president was upset about something — “plug the damn hole” is one such anecdote that was shared exclusively with every single person in this room by the White House. Did you — is this president upset about this? I mean, this is a government operation where now weapons — I mean, the Mexicans are upset that guns are now turning up –

CARNEY: I think you could assume that the president takes this very seriously.

TAPPER: No one’s lost their job.

CARNEY: And we don’t — there’s an investigation going on, so to comment on people’s jobs and that sort of thing is inappropriate. But the president takes it very seriously. I think he made clear when the — during the Mexican state visit and the press conference he had then that he found out about this through news reports. And he takes it very seriously.

BTW, the Sipsey Street Irregulars should be your daily stop for news about the Gunwalker Scandal; they are all over this story.

There was a story in the Washington Post this weekend by David A. Farenthold about the House GOP’s decision to do away with votes on symbolic resolutions like this one:

“The resolution, as offered, acknowledges how vital bees and other pollinators are to our ecosystem,” said Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.), advocating for the resolution on National Pollinator Week last July. He spoke for three minutes and 51 seconds.

“I urge all of my colleagues to become members of the Congressional Pollinator Protection Caucus,” Hastings said.

All members of the House were summoned for a vote, which came out 412 to 0 in favor of the pollinators.

Now, to be clear, I honor and esteem pollinators as much as the next girl, but this is a bit silly, isn’t it?

“I do not suspect,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) wrote to other legislators, “that Jefferson or Madison ever envisioned Congress honoring the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius or supporting the designation of national ‘Pi’ day.”

In the previous two years, the House had honored both–and a great deal more. In 2010, the roughly 260 commemorative resolutions accounted for 36 percent of all the bills the House passed. That was a sharp difference from the 1960s, when they accounted for less than 10 percent of legislation.

One can easily imagine how these novelty votes might provide our public servants with a welcome respite from the grueling, day-in, day-out work of power-grabbing and pocket-picking, but 36 percent seems like a bit much. It’s not only a waste of time and “resources” (if you can use that term for some of our congressional reps’ time), but it doesn’t even keep them out of trouble.

And even when they’re just legislating commemoratively, they’re getting it wrong:

For other recipients, the lack of a House resolution was less of a blow. “We never got it in time anyway,” said John Janik, the president of the National Flag Day Foundation in Waubeka, Wis. In past years, Janik said, Congress usually worked so slowly that its official resolution would arrive after the ceremonies for the June 14 holiday were over.

But the real punch line is that the House has merely ended the voting on symbolic resolutions; members continue to spend their time and our money on the House floor expatiating upon the virtues of backcountry airstrips, college dance marathons, and square hamburgers. And the Senate–that world-class center of bloviation where no one has ever tired of the sound of his own voice–is still resolving away:

This year, the Democratic-controlled Senate has gone on passing resolutions. On Thursday, it declared July 23 “The Day of the American Cowboy.”

What chumps we are for tolerating these people. The Legislative Branch is a joke, and it’s on us.

Cross-posted at P&P.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation has been doing stellar work in reminding us about the most important thing President Reagan accomplished: defeating the slavery of Eastern European-style communism. That is, as some might suggest, a big effing deal. In some ways, it was the deal: the pivotal deal.

Over the past week, Reagan statues went up in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary. And now, one went up in the gardens outside the American Embassy in London (the embassy will be moving soon, though not the statue of Reagan, nor the ones of FDR and Dwight Eisenhower).

The New York Times:

Passers-by at the American Embassy, in the heart of London’s upscale Mayfair district, were greeted Monday morning by the disembodied voice of Ronald Reagan drifting through the air from large speakers — a prelude to the unveiling of a $1 million bronze statue of the former president here to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth.

In defiance of the usual Fourth of July sentiments, American and British flags were intertwined and placed into perfectly trimmed hedges in leafy Grosvenor Square. Hundreds of guests demonstrated the much-vaunted special relationship by lining up patiently, in the accepted British style, for American cuisine in the form of Fresh ’n’ Tasty Jumbo Hot Dogs and Dippin’ Donuts.

As the brass band of the United States Army Europe struck up “America the Beautiful,” an assembly of grandees — most of them conservatives like Reagan’s former speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — as well as a Congressional delegation led by the House majority whip, Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, mingled with leaders of Britain’s governing Conservative Party.

Among those representing the British government were the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne; the minister of defense, Liam Fox; and the foreign secretary, William Hague.

The statue of a smiling Reagan, dressed in a crisp suit, was paid for by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation as part of a worldwide effort to promote his legacy, according to the organization’s executive director. . . .

Inscribed on the statue is a quote from his friend Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister. “Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War,” it reads, “without firing a single shot.” (Some British commentators suggested that ignores the contributions of Eastern European dissidents.)

Though Mrs. Thatcher is in poor health and did not attend, she provided a statement that was read by Mr. Hague. “Through his strength and conviction,” she wrote, “he brought millions of people to freedom as the Iron Curtain finally came down.”

That is, she snubbed President Reagan! Why would she do a thing like that?

The Brits should put a statue of Churchill up there, as well . . . I hear there’s an extra one rattling around Washington, D.C.

The Examiner is also covering the statue-unveiling.

UPDATE: “Smart diplomacy.”

You ever get one of those feelings that this might not work out?

Forbes sounds the alarm:

Should Beijing be allowed to buy a part of Mark Zuckerberg’s site? Business Insider tells us there is “little need” for concern about Chinese censors looking at the photos and postings of the 700 million people who trust Facebook with their personal online activity.

First, China’s position won’t be large. A billion-dollar investment does not buy much influence in a site expected to be worth a hundred times that when it goes public. Second, Beijing will be acquiring nonvoting stock. Third, shareholders don’t get the right to look at what’s on the site. All of these arguments from Business Insider ring true.

Yet they are all beside the point—and there are other reasons to be concerned. The business site says that “sovereign wealth funds are pretty distinct from their governments.”

Perhaps Norway’s fund is, but not China’s. The Communist Party, despite three decades of economic reform, insists on its monopoly of political power. And to maintain that monopoly, it tightly controls its own instrumentalities. That’s especially true at this moment because the Party is in the midst of the most comprehensive crackdown on society since the 1989 Beijing Spring. Chinese leaders clearly view social media as a threat to their rule, especially after seeing its force-multiplying effect in the ongoing Arab Spring protests that have toppled governments.

In short, China’s sovereign wealth fund, which is no more independent of the Communist Party than the Beijing municipal government, wants to buy a stake in the world’s most prominent social networking site because Chinese leaders want to control social media. And they hope to do that as part of their comprehensive campaign to dominate the conversation about China—not just inside the country but around the world as well.

I get, I really get the idea of subverting communism by injecting capitalistic values that will give people a taste for entrepreneuriship and creative expression. However. This is a clusterfark of an idea, and Zuckerberg’s mommy should sit at the foot of his bed and explain the facts of life to him.