Posted on 01/04/2002 5:34:10 AM PST by tberry
The major role of government in the support of scientific research one of the greatest threats to American science today.
There is Charles Murray's principle:
When you subsidize something, you get more of it and the cost goes up."
Because of the availability of government reseach grants, and the limited effectiveness of review procedures in determining that grants go the those most likely to achieve significant results, scientists of marginal ability who would otherwise have been satisfied with the "fat, lazy slumbers" of academia pursue a career as a reseach scientist in parallel with their academic career. The result is that journals fill up with crap, libraries are forever running out of room to house them and the serious scientist finds it nearly impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Perhaps even more serious is the fact that granting agencies tend to be dominated by one scientific point of view (not necessarily reflecting the current administration's view) where there are political repercussions, and research not reflectiong that view is unlikely to be supported. For example, it is my impression that meteorological research by someone not supporting the existence of global warming and the major role in it of human activity would not be likely to be funded. There are other examples,(even in paleontology) but this is too long already. I would say that the granting agencies are likely to be made up predominately of people with liberal political views.
Historically, scientific innovations are generally produced by younger people. But young scientists are the most likely to be in need of research grants to supplement their incomes, and thus will be under pressure to adjust the reseach goals to be politically correct, where that may be relevant. This is very bad for science.
Hardly. It took a state matter and made it a federal one. And ever since, the feds have been passing bills mandating special treatment for women going to abortion clinics, such as limiting what protestors can do around clinics - once again, that would typically be more of a state issue than a federal one.
"1)internet " = Private
"2)post office " = Being replaced by private internet
"3)railroads" = Worst of industrialized nations
"4)airports" = stifled by federal regulation
"7)cleaner air and water " = Fabricated excuse for federal regulation
"8)all sorts of materials, metals, business methods" = Private enterprise
"all kinds of medical breakthroughs " = Private enterprise hindered by federal regulation.
"10)public education and great public universities" = Bastions of liberal revisionist history and brainwashing.
Here is one, a particularly egregious one:
Texas v. White (74 US 700). The state of Texas sought an injunction to restrain the defendants from using Texas Indemnity Bonds paid to them by Texas after secession for supplies for the Confederate States of America and to obtain the restoration of fifty-one of the bonds. The defense argued that Texas, by seceding from the Union and later waging a war against the United States, had lost the status of a state in the Union and therefore had no right to sue in the United States Supreme Court. The state of Texas argued that the Union was indestructable and that Texas's status in the Union therefore had been unchanged by the war. In a 5 to 3 decision issued on April 15, 1869 the Supreme Court found for the state of Texas. Chief Justice Chase, writing for the majority, wrote:
"When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into a indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The Act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the Union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the States.
Sad, but OH so true! LOL!!!
I thought it was created by Al Gore.
Thanks for your help.
Ah, that old commerce clause. The bane of lovers of freedom everywhere. The impetus behind so much that is unconstitutional.
The commerce clause was put into place for one reason, and one reason only. To make sure that when one state shipped products to another state that it would not be taxed in any state it happened to pass through on it's journey. This was to ensure two things. That their power to regulate foreign commerce could not be abrogated by simply shipping foreign products to a more favorable state, and to "ensure the domestic tranquality" by ensuring that trade between states was fairly taxed. Read the debates of the Constitutional Congress and the Federalist papers, especially Federalist #42.
Fortunately, lately the USSC has seen fit to start throwing out laws passed under the auspices of the commerce clause. But they clearly don't go far enough as they still allow the federal government to regulate how much it costs to ship a product from state to state, and many other things which would have been anathema to the founders. In addition, they regulate anything that even remotely might pass in interstate commerce, clearly not what the founders had in mind when they included this as a power in the Constitution.
This is the problem with people reading things into the Constitution that is clearly not there. Two words that are very important in reading the Constitution, limited and enumerated. Especially enumerated. If it's not enumerated by a simple reading of the Constitution, it's not allowed. If you want it to be a power that the government has, then get an amendment passed and ratified. Otherwise, they can't do it.
But this is neither commerce nor interstate. No money or goods changed hands, and nothing involved in the suit ever left the man's property. What this did was to grant federal government to power to regulate virtually anything you own because you might sell it to someone in another state. Do you believe that this is what the plain language of the commerce clause means, and that it comforms to the original intent of the founders when they wrote it?
Anything that has made the internet actually useful by the majority of the users was done by private interprise.
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