Politics: Obama education policy bad news for science
By Anon E. MouseApril 24th, 2008
Yesterday I stumbled across an opinion column by Lee Cary that dissects Barak Obama’s science “priorities.”
While I do think that, in a very short period of time, private enterprise is going to usurp government access to space, that time has not yet arrived. We need to close the gap between the Shuttle and Orion, not increase it. It would not make sense to abandon - and that is pretty much Mr. Obama wants to do - outer space to the Russians and Chinese.
The spin-offs, the high-tech jobs, and yes, the inspiration that NASA provides is really an incalculable by-product - both at home and abroad.
If Mr. Obama truly aspires to the mantle of JFK, then he should not forsake one of JFK’s most monumental and important legacies.
Some people ask, why go to the Moon?
They may well ask, why climb the highest mountain?
Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?
Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the Moon
We choose to go to the Moon and do other things,
not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Because that challenge is one that will serve to measure the best in us.
It is one we intend to win
We did win…and then we quit.
Now we are on the verge of completing another monumental task in space (and on the ground) - working together with dozens of other countries - some former enemies - to build a working science platform in low earth orbit. We feel the need to reach out further, again. Now is not the time to quit.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:58 am
The article had me until I read the resources the author linked, many of which were misrepresented, then the fact that he was comparing billion-dollar space missions to $50,000 life-saving heart surgery. But judging from the source, I’m not surprised. That site is infamous for right-wing hackery and blistering ignorance.
Among the things the article DID get right is Obama’s desire to “trim” NASA’s budget. I don’t agree with this. I also think shuttle missions or mission delays should be at the discretion of NASA, not the president. If anything, he should be cutting the over-bloated military budget. ~700 billion dollars a year is pretty damn excessive. There’s no excuse for it.
Spending $18b on math and science education, however, doesn’t go far enough in my opinion. He’s right–other countries are leaving us behind. Part of it has to do with funding, sure. Part of it comes from fundamentalist brainwashing that convinces people science is evil and seeks to destroy their beliefs. But the majority of it, in my opinion, comes from the attitude, complacency and laziness of society. Also, urban schools are in the gutter for a plethora of ADDRESSABLE, FIXABLE reasons. If you ask me, we ought to be taking $100 billion of the military’s budget and putting it into education, not a paltry $18 billion. To complement this, we ought to have a specialized Job Corps for kids who just don’t want to be there, so they’ll at least have SOME kind of skill to get them by.
Anyway, nobody believes Obama is out to destroy NASA, like you make it sound. I’d recommend a reliable news source next time, Anon.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Oh, one more thing, you might want to change the article of your title. Let’s just say “misleading” is about as polite as I can put it:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/
April 24th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Take out the costs associated with the Iraq deployment and isn’t it more like 250-300?
He should have gotten a story from KOS, huh?
You still crack me up Reno.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:24 am
The baseline to keep the military running for fiscal year 2008 is 481.4 billion. Add 73 billion dollars for the War on Terror plus 145 billion dollars in supplemental funding. That is $699.4 billion dollars bub. So I rounded up a few hundred million. Pardon me for my lack of preciseness.
And I don’t read the Daily Kos, Vonster. In fact, the only reason I know it exists is because you’ve pointed it out over and over. It’s free advertising for them, but I still don’t read it. news.google.com and a few magazine/newspaper subscriptions do it for me, with the occasional TV thrown in for good measure.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Oh, that’s on the low end of estimates too, by the way. Some estimates say 900 billion dollars to slightly over $1 trillion when adding defense systems, weapons/equipment procurement, etc. It also takes well over half of the U.S.’s total discretionary spending. Or, maybe I’m just interpreting it “too liberally.”
Try harder.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Sorry - I forgot I’m not supposed to talk to you.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
What?
April 24th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I wasn’t all that aware of the history of the writer, but he quoted the entirety of Obama’s plan - a very worrisome plan, at that.
Even if you lop off the commentary, Obama’s science and education priorities are seriously out of whack.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
How so? Bush signed a bill that increases the science budget from.. I think it was $5b to $25b. It’s a good start. But Obama’s plan puts emphasis on science and math. I’m not so optimistic about the proposed federal daycare system, but beyond that, the plan seems pretty solid.
By the way, he didn’t quote the entirety of his plan. You can read the plan itself at the link I posted up above.
Which parts did you disagree with/think are out of whack?
April 24th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Careful, Mouse. He’s gets mad and frustrated when you don’t agree with him.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
No, Vonster, it’s little petty comments like this that do it for me. That’s why you were banned.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
From the King of Snark. LOL
April 24th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Obama wants to take a minimum three-year gap between Shuttle and Orion and make it a minimum eight-year gap. THAT is out of whack, in and of itself.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1285
April 24th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Yeah, I don’t agree at all with that. Like I said, it should be at the discretion of NASA. But one point doesn’t invalidate the whole plan, either.
Vonster, honored though I may be, when the hell did I become king?
April 24th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
I think it does. This is way, way more than the dollars and cents.
What I see is Obama saying that we need to stop trying to be creative and inventive. We need to deny our urge to explore. Let’s not climb that mountain now - mostly because it is too expensive. Well, guess what? It isn’t going to get any cheaper sitting on our hands.
It is more than dollars and cents. It isn’t just about what’s “out there” but also what’s inside us, as a human race.
I see this as an indicator of timidity, and I don’t think that is a trait I want in a president.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
“I see this as an indicator of timidity, and I don’t think that is a trait I want in a president.”
Yeah, like hiding in the National Guard, and then going AWOL even from THAT, to avoid real duty.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
John McCain served in Vietnam. No timidity in him.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I get your point, C.J. If B.J. thinks that George W. deserves criticism for serving in the Guard and for :ducking” duty in Vietnam, making him unqualified to order men into War, then it must logically follow that McCain must deserve praise for serving in harms way and is qualifies to send men to war.
Personally, I’ve never been proven to me that George W. ducked out of anything. Flying fighter jets even during peacetime is not an activity for cowards.
The real chicken shits are the ones went off to Canada.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Or Oxford….
April 25th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Maybe BJ can remind us which camp really ducked out…
April 25th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Anon, you’re kidding right? I don’t see him even implying that we should stop trying to be creative and inventive. Think about it reasonably: would anybody, especially a politician, ever say or imply that we should be stagnant? If someone did have that position, could they even be running? The apathetic don’t have the drive to jump through hoops to get a job they don’t want to do. It doesn’t make sense. That, and he didn’t say it… or imply it… or give any indication that this is his attitude.
Anyway, if you’re going to apply that standard to space exploration, you need to apply it to embryonic stem cell research as well. No offense or anything, but with all the extrapolation, it just looks like any excuse to paint him in a negative light will do.
No grey area, no “this part is bad, but this other part is good.” It’s either all good or all bad, and I don’t understand it. The world isn’t black and white.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
No, I am not kidding.
I call a minimum eight year break in American human spaceflight stagnant.
NASA is such an incredibly small part of the budget and is capable of producing huge, positive returns, both scientific and political.
Stem Cells/Space exploration = apples/oranges
And, if you’d note any of my previous political posts, you would see I am, as a rule, not critical of Mr. Obama. In this case, I found an issue that is important (Human Space Exploration) to me in which someone (in this case, Mr. Obama) took a position that I disagreed with.
April 26th, 2008 at 12:15 am
[…] agree with cutting funds to NASA and over-meddling in their space program (which is what prompted the pundit article), and have a few reservations about certain areas of the program, overall it’s pretty […]
April 26th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Blahh, criticize him all you want. It’s nice to hear someone actually talking about his policies for a change. It’s just… what? One crappy part of the plan invalidates the rest? NASA not launching a shuttle is not the same as the whole country or education system being stagnant. Why isn’t there any give on this?
Besides, if they have to put off the next shuttle, it’s not like the would or even can cancel the current program.
One more thing: Stem Cells = scientific research. Space Exploration = scientific research. Apples and apples. Providing funding for one and not the other is a double standard, plain and simple.
April 27th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Stem Cells may be scientific research, but there are serious ethical questions about it. I don’t think there are any major religions opposed to human space flight. That’s why it is apples and oranges.
Huge differences.
April 27th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
The only difference between them is in the perception of certain, non-scientific groups. These people also ignorantly extended embryonic stem cell research to include all stem cell research, regardless of the source. Anyway, they’ve solved the ethical dilemma: they can revert skin cells back into their stem cell state. They can be created in a petri dish, and can produce any cell in the body.
The only possible ethical dilemma has to do with human cloning: the creation of egg and sperm cells, which could simply be banned. They haven’t been able to create viable sperm cells anyway, so it’s a non-issue at this point.
There really needs to be more education about this. The real ethical problem is how many more opportunities we’ll miss for scientific advancement that could benefit the human race and cure disease or ease the suffering of millions. I mean, is it just me, or does religion seem innately opposed to making people’s lives better?
April 27th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Something that never would have happened if Bush hadn’t held firm on banning federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
April 27th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
I had considered this as well. Moral of the story, where there’s a will there’s a way?
April 27th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Moral of the story: Science isn’t stymied by staying within ethical bounds.
April 27th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
*snort* Yes, because they got SO much closer to curing genetic diseases and creating applicable uses of stem cells by spending years figuring out a way to circumvent a ban born out of a very narrow, eclectic definition of ethics.
Due to the subjective nature of ethics, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.