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February 10, 2025 at 9:19 pm (This post was last modified: February 10, 2025 at 9:26 pm by Angrboda.)
Quote:A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the National Institutes of Health from cutting research funding in 22 states that filed suit earlier in the day arguing that the plan would eviscerate studies into treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and a host of other ailments.
The order leaves out states that did not join the lawsuit, which will still face the funding cuts. They include some states that receive generous research awards, including Pennsylvania, which receives about $2.7 billion in N.I.H. funds, and Alabama, which receives about $500 million in agency funds. Georgia and Missouri were also not part of the lawsuit, and each draws about $1 billion in the medical study grants.
Quote:If you’re wondering how such an idea even reached the Trump administration in the first place, it’s worth emphasizing for context that it originated with — you guessed it — the Project 2025 blueprint.
Making matters far worse is the degree to which this is a battle in a larger war on science. Consider the related developments that have unfolded as Donald Trump’s second term as president has gotten underway:
Online information critical to scientists and physicians has been taken down.
Scientific research funding is being restricted through keywords that Republicans find objectionable.
Taxpayer-subsidized scientific information was withheld from the scientific and medical communities for the first time in generations.
Prominent proponents of discredited scientific ideas, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have been chosen for powerful leadership positions in the administration.
Team Trump has reportedly “unleashed chaos” at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the scientific agency commonly known as NOAA that provides weather forecasts through its National Weather Service.
Political appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency fired all of the members of the EPA’s most influential science advisory panels.
Did I mention that we’re not yet one month in Trump’s second term in the White House?
Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California recently said, “My fear is that the chaos the new administration is sowing will be enough to leave our science and technology enterprise in ruins, with Chinese Communist leaders in Beijing popping champagne corks.”
(February 10, 2025 at 12:25 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: If that's the goal, we should be using auditors, not programmers.
This. I am a "programmer" with over 30 years of experience working on systems that move and track multiple billions of dollars in payments every year
I'm slightly more qualified to do a financial audit than a golden retriever.
We're all for meritocracy. Just like Hesgeth. The most loyal and whatever. Loyalty is the only merit.
"The order leaves out states that did not join the lawsuit, which will still face the funding cuts. They include some states that receive generous research awards, including Pennsylvania, which receives about $2.7 billion in N.I.H. funds, and Alabama, which receives about $500 million in agency funds. Georgia and Missouri were also not part of the lawsuit, and each draws about $1 billion in the medical study grants."
I sincerely hope efforts have been made to transfer information to locations beyond Washington's reach.
Quote:I don't understand why you'd come to a discussion forum, and then proceed to reap from visibility any voice that disagrees with you. If you're going to do that, why not just sit in front of a mirror and pat yourself on the back continuously?
Now the Republicans are trying outright to stop women from being able to vote. With Trump pushing through everything to include banning exploding paper straws they are now trying to make it so that to be able to vote your name has to match what is on your birth certificate...which is not the case for many married women. This year will make fifty years since I was first able to vote and these fuckwits are trying to take that away.
(February 10, 2025 at 12:25 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: If that's the goal, we should be using auditors, not programmers.
Yeah, it seems to be very much a bull-in-the-china-shop approach. Didn't computer guys used to say "move fast and break things"? That seems to be the idea here.
It's further evidence of how far things have fallen, that this audit -- which I think is very important and should be done by serious non-partisans -- is being conducted by a showman. But the serious people never got around to it (if there are any serious people left) so this is what it's come to.
We have an Office of Government Accountability to investigate fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. There's no reason the president can't aim it at what he considers priorities.
(February 11, 2025 at 12:59 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: We have an Office of Government Accountability to investigate fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. There's no reason the president can't aim it at what he considers priorities.
I'm sure there are a number of agencies tasked with keeping an eye on the money. For example, the office that audits the Pentagon every year, and fails every year. There is reason to be skeptical that the agencies are effective.
I haven't been following the Office of Government Accountability. I don't know their budget or remit, exactly. In your experience, have they been effective?
For example, Elon has been alleging that USAID paid for Chelsea Clinton's wedding. And then bought her an expensive house. This should be the sort of thing that could be checked fairly easily. Is there a reliable government web site which lists this? Did any government agency make this public? Did anyone try to justify it?
Given the revolving-door hiring policies between government and the private sector, and the fact that watchdog agencies may have incentive not to watch very closely, I feel it's best to be skeptical about all sides.
If Trump ordered the OGA to be more open and more aggressive, do you think they would do it? I don't know.
We have known for decades that a lot of USAID projects are CIA or State Department political missions, intended to support regime change or other political foreign policy goals. If you see a trivial-sounding project with a huge budget in a volatile part of the world, there is a good chance that the real goal of this project is not what's stated on the public announcement. So there is still another layer to be uncovered here -- what USAID says it's doing, vs. what it's really doing.
Here is what Julian Assange wrote about USAID, over 10 years ago:
The received wisdom in advanced capitalist societies is that there still exists an organic “civil society sector” in which institutions form autonomously and come together to manifest the interests and will of citizens. The fable has it that the boundaries of this sector are respected by actors from government and the “private sector,” leaving a safe space for NGOs and nonprofits to advocate for things like human rights, free speech, and accountable government.
This sounds like a great idea. But if it was ever true, it has not been for decades.
Since at least the 1970s, authentic actors like unions and churches have folded under a sustained assault by free-market statism, transforming “civil society” into a buyer’s market for political factions and corporate interests looking to exert influence at arm’s length. The last forty years have seen a huge proliferation of think tanks and political NGOs whose purpose, beneath all the verbiage, is to execute political agendas by proxy.
It is not just obvious neocon front groups like Foreign Policy Initiative. It also includes fatuous Western NGOs like Freedom House, where naïve but well-meaning career nonprofit workers are twisted in knots by political funding streams, denouncing non-Western human rights violations while keeping local abuses firmly in their blind spots.
The civil society conference circuit—which flies developing-world activists across the globe hundreds of times a year to bless the unholy union between “government and private stakeholders” at geopoliticized events like the “Stockholm Internet Forum”—simply could not exist if it were not blasted with millions of dollars in political funding annually…’
Assange has an extremely good record for accuracy.
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