John Kasich has been on a tear lately…. a tear of endorsing Governor Strickland’s plan to Turnaround Ohio:
Starting at the 6:18 mark:
Kasich: “Now, Larry, at the same time, we talk about: how do you transition? In manufacturing, go up the value chain, you know, make parts for alternative energy, go into avontics and make parts for advanced aircraft. You know, there’s still a chance to make cars, but you just can’t rely on auto parts. You think about technology, our workers out here are good people, they’re smart people, we’ve got a great university system, we can get people from Silicon Valley to come here, but we have to improve the atmosphere in our State….”
I’ll agree with Keeling on this, the plan Kasich just described is a “homerun.” Only problem is that it’s Governor Strickland’s Turnaround Ohio plan.
You know who’s done a lot on promoting the manufacturing of alternative energy technologies in Ohio, John? Ted Strickland.
You know whose Administration already has done regulatory reform and got rid of thousands of overly burdensome and unproductive government regulations? Yep, Ted Strickland.
(BTW, at no time did John Kasich mention once his tax repeals… in an interview billed as “Kasich on Taxes.” He falsely said our budgets haven’t been balanced, when they are REQUIRED to be balanced. He claims Governor Strickland raised taxes… when he’s lowered them. So, not only is John Kasich running to the national media claiming a plan that is actually the Governor’s record, he’s then lying about the record.)
And I admit, I misjudged the extent John Kasich would try to co-opt Governor Strickland’s record as his own. I should have realized that when I didn’t see Jon Keeling writing post after post, Tweet after Tweet, condemning the Third Frontier, it meant that Kasich was going to sign onto it.
After all, John Kasich has wowed the Tea Party crowds throughout Ohio with his conservative populist message as being against “corporate welfare,” so much he claimed that he was a Tea Bagger First, a Republican second.
Except the Dayton Daily Newsreported this morning that the Kasich campaing has endorsed the compromise on Third Frontier worked out between Governor Strickland, the House Democrats, and the Senate Republican leaderships.
So, imagine the gall of Kasich when despite all this, he tries to pivot before the general election and claim that Governor Strickland has no plan to Turnaround Ohio.
Excuse me a minute, I’m sorry Mary Taylor has something she wants to say in response to concerns that Kasich-Taylor have no plans:
“[T]hey’re talking about a plan that doesn’t currently exist,” Taylor said.
Mary Taylor is right. It’s hard to criticize someone if they don’t have anything original to say…
Governor Strickland lays out the case as to why he’s the first real education Governor in Ohio:
And even as we acknowledge the sincere shared sacrifice we have endured in recent years, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we have accomplished some things that no other state has been able to do.
We have followed a plan and defied our circumstances to protect our investment in the future.
California recently announced a 32 percent tuition increase at its state universities. Ohio has held tuition to the lowest increase in the nation over the last three years.
That’s one important reason we now have 65,591 more Ohioans enrolled in our public colleges and universities than we had in 2006.
Next door in Indiana they are in the process of slashing 300 million dollars in state funds from their primary and secondary schools. In Georgia, school funding was cut by 440 million dollars. And at least twenty other states are inflicting serious cuts on their school systems.
But in Ohio, in Ohio, we are not going backward on our schools. Using a combination of state and federal resources, we increased school funding by 5.5 percent in the last budget.
I believe in Ohio because we recognize that a superior education starting from the earliest age is the only path to sustained prosperity.
So we passed a historic education reform plan last year that gives our students and our taxpayers a system that is constitutional, accountable, and incomparable.
Using an evidence-based approach, we have defined the resources our students need inside and outside the classroom. We have redefined our expectations and our practices with one core purpose in mind – to prepare our students to become critical and creative thinkers who will thrive in the workplace and in life.
This month Education Week issued its annual report card on the nation’s schools. The study looks at more than 150 indicators of school quality.
And Ohio’s schools now rank 1st in the Midwest and 5th in the nation. The report notes that Ohio’s standards for mathematics and science have been cited as a model by other states and that our assessment and accountability practices are among the best in the nation.
Our Closing the Achievement Gap initiative has raised expectations and achievements of African American students. Over the first two years of this effort, participating school districts achieved a more than 18 percent increase in the overall ninth and tenth grade promotion rate.
The highly respected Education Commission of the States studies schools and school systems across the country. And they present an award for innovation to the state that has best improved education and put in place what they call “bold, courageous and nonpartisan new policies.” Just today the commission announced that their award for the most innovative education system in the country goes to…Ohio in recognition of the comprehensive education reform we created last year.
John Kasich’s education plan is no different from Ken Blackwell’s. Again this is an issue that Kasich is not going to get much traction on.
Seriously, that has to be it. Think about it. He’s from Strickland’s old Congressional district, and he’s being doing nothing but issuing blog posts that promises to do things that Strickland has already done.
I cannot imagine a more effective vehicle for the Strickland campaign to educate progressives and all Strickland has done in his first term than this guy.
The Ohio Green Party supports equitable funding of all Ohio school districts, and we support the following three goals of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding:
Goal 1: Develop a comprehensive needs assessment of current facilities.
Goal 2: Develop standards that clearly define high quality education for Ohioans; establish a “per-pupil funding level” required to meet these standards; create a new system of funding which will assure each district adequate funds to meet these “per-pupil” standards and which will diverge from “excessive reliance on property tax as a funding source.”
Goal 3: Provide immediate relief to districts operating without the funds necessary to meet the new standards, based on need as opposed to the budget-based emergency assistance of the “School Solvency Assistance Program” or further reliance on property taxes.
…
Current Governor Ted Strickland and the Democrats and Republicans have put education funding reform on the backburner.
“I am deeply grateful for the support of the Coalition. Bill Phillis and the Coalition’s members have been long-time leaders in advocating for a high-quality system of education that is effectively funded to meet the unique needs of every Ohio child,” Strickland said. “The Coalition
has been a partner to both my administration and the House of Representatives as we crafted an education plan to ensure that every Ohio child will have the educational opportunities that will prepare them for success in the modern economy.”
The resolution commends the Governor for his total commitment to giving public K-12 education the highest priority and for proposing an entirely new school funding system that is premised on student needs.
…
“Ohio is on the threshold of a new era of high-quality educational opportunities for all students,”said William L. Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding. “The Governor’s education plan puts Ohio on track for constitutional compliance.”
Yeah, they apparently don’t think the Governor and the Democrats in the General Assembly have put school funding reform on the backburner. Haven’t felt that way pretty much at all.
What’s amazing is that Spisak is a school board member, so you’d think he’d know that the organization endorsed Strickland’s education plan months ago. In fact, you’d think for such a fan of the Coalition, he’d already know the praise its long-time Executive Director had for Governor Strickland’s “personal engagement” in reforming education in Ohio.
In fact, the support between Strickland and the Coalition is mutual and has been for years. (See pages 4 & 5). Ted Strickland has been an active partner with the Coalition during its over decade-long campaign to legally challenge Ohio’s old unconstitutional school funding system. He’s provided financial support to support their litigation, he’s filed his own briefs in support of their cases.
And it’s not just the Coalition. The OEA and every other pro-public education public interest group has applauded Governor Strickland’s education reform and called him the first true education Governor the State has seen in decades. You know who else supported Governor Strickland’s education plan, yeah, the Ohio School Boards Association. You’d think Spisak, a school board member, would have known that.
Let’s recall that one of the media’s earliest criticisms of Governor Strickland’s budget this year was that he thought the General Assembly could address such a weighty subject such as school funding reform during a major recession. They all wrote it off as dead-on-arrival. Instead, Strickland prevailed and got most of the substantive reforms he laid out in his State of the State address enacted into law in less than six months since announcing them.
Seriously, I don’t think John Kasich (let’s stop federal assistance for day care and abolish the U.S. Department of Education and privatize all the schools) or Spisak have anything on Strickland when it comes to education.
Arlington County, Virginia is quite a liberal oasis.
I heard this story this morning on our local, Washington, D.C. NPR station about one of our middle schools. Apparently, while teaching critical-thinking skills to our next generation, a teacher assigned a mock United Nations debate topic where one team of students had to represent the Taliban. Imagine having to learn WHY the Taliban does what it does!
Anyway, the principal pulled the plug on the exercise after some parents complained.
Now, why I love living in Arlington: 1) a teacher actually had the balls to try this exercise and 2) other parents publicly supported the exercise saying “students need to understand more than one side of such a crucial conflict.”
Maybe I’ve just lived inside the beltway too long, but I don’t see parents sticking up for learning about the Taliban in other parts of the country (or even in other parts of my state!).
I haven’t posted anything here in a long time, but when I saw this story, I had to write something.
I have to hand it to Bill Bush, the reporter, for this lead:
School districts across central Ohio learned yesterday that the list of things parents want their children protected from — drugs, predators, violence — now includes the president of the United States delivering a “stay in school” message.
As he notes, George Bush also addressed the nation’s students in a similar back-to-school message and I don’t remember stories about parents ranting and raving then.
The first goal of his plan is “to strengthen our commitment to Ohio’s public schools and public education.” With this commitment comes “increased accountability measures for charters.”
But the Governor admits this won’t happen while Republicans control the legislature. Because, as I’ve mentioned many times before, for-profit charter school operators are HUGE campaign contributors.
So until we can win back control of the General Assembly, we’re going to have to suffer through more and more stories like this:
The state auditor’s office says a charter school in Akron is impossible to audit because of incomplete records.
Phoenix Village Academy-Primary 1 must tell the state within 45 days how it will assemble the documents for an audit. Its sponsor, Ashe Culture Center Inc., is prohibited from opening new community schools while its finances are considered unauditable.
The school, which emphasizes African history and culture, was investigated by state education officials last year for serving drinks tinged with gin to sixth graders. The school said the class’ graduation ceremony was modeled after a Ghanian rite of passage.
A message seeking comment was left with the school Tuesday.
It’s pretty well recognized that college professors as a group are more liberal than the population at large. The unexplored question was always “why?” People like David Horowitz would blindly speculate that it was hostility towards conservatives that drove them from academia, but nobody actually tried to learn why there weren’t more conservatives in academia. Until now.
Politically conservative professor Matthew Woessner – an Ohio State graduate and asst. professor of public policy at Penn State – has conducted a scientific study into political orientation and higher education with his wife (a liberal professor at Elizabethtown, and also an OSU grad), and the conclusions may be surprising to some people.
The Woessners have peered into the psyche of conservative undergraduates to find out why so few of them want to earn Ph.D.’s and become professors. Their paper on the topic, “Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don’t Get Doctorates,” is available online and will be published as part of a book published in August by the American Enterprise Institute.
The Woessners found that liberal students have values and interests that point them to careers in academe, while most conservative students do not.
“The personal priorities of those on the left,” the Woessners conclude, “are more compatible with pursuing a Ph.D.”
Basically, liberals are twice as likely to want to pursue a PhD. It’s not because of their undergraduate experience – in fact, conservatives are slightly more likely to be satisfied with their undergraduate experience than liberals. Conservatives in the university environment don’t experience widespread discrimination. Interestingly, politically moderate students did worse in college than liberals or conservatives; but those two groups performed reasonably similarly in grades. Essentially, what it boils down to is the fact that liberals are far more interested in the things a PhD provides than conservatives: less family oriented, more interest in writing original works, less focused on financial success, more interested in developing a meaningful philosophy of life, and more interested in contributing to scientific knowledge.
Horowitz is, as expected, full of it.
David Horowitz, the conservative activist, has staged a national campaign for colleges to hire more conservative professors, and he tells stories about right-wing students who have been turned off by hostile leftists in the classroom. He even proposed an “academic bill of rights,” which encourages colleges to foster a variety of political beliefs and become more intellectually diverse.
But Mr. Woessner says he never confronted intolerance in the classroom. Even some of his most liberal professors went out of their way to solicit his views.
So, what’s the key to increasing the percentage of conservatives pursuing PhDs (and thus potentially entering the workforce as professor material)? (Emphasis mine.)
The research led the Woessners to conclude that if higher education wants to attract more conservatives to the professoriate, it should smooth the way financially, offering subsidized health insurance and housing for graduate students, and adopting family-friendly policies for professors.
Become more socialist? Boy, that’s a surprise!
Here’s the real irony for me – I work in a university environment, and I’ve current got the most liberal benefits I’ve had over my entire career. The best health care plan I’ve seen. Tremendous leave plans, including paternity leave. Free (if hard to get due to popularity) child care. Adoption assistance. A flexible work environment that allows individuals to adjust their hours to whatever is in the best interests of their families. While I don’t think graduate students get quite the same benefits I do, it seems to me that the benefits provided while working at a major midwestern university are already quite good.
In a troubling reversal, the nation’s teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years, surprising government health officials who had no immediate explanation.
The birth rate had been dropping since its peak in 1991, although the decline had slowed in recent years. On Wednesday, government statisticians said it rose 3 percent from 2005 to 2006.
[S]everal experts said they have been expecting a jump. They blame the increase on increased federal funding for abstinence-only health education programs that do not teach how to use condoms and other contraception.
Some key sexually transmitted disease rates have been rising, including syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia. The rising teen pregnancy rate is part of the same phenomenon, said Dr. Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health.
What’s wrong with giving young adults all of the information – including that abstinence is the only fool-proof way to avoid disease and pregnancy – and then trust them to make good decisions? It’s been shown to work, if you define “work” as reducing teen pregnancy and the spread of disease.
American prominence on the world stage has not been due to some issue of “national character”; our people are not inherently different than people anywhere else in the world. But we have, in the past, had better educational resources, and a greater emphasis on science and engineering. But no longer.
Back in September, I wrote that America is out of touch and behind the times on climate change and economic reform. It is mired in a stagnant war that the rest of the west has abandoned or is abandoning. American global influence is in decline, the country having lost the respect of allies and the credibility to lead. As we’ve seen yet again in last week’s brinkmanship by Turkey, American diplomacy has all the vim and vigour of Fred Thompson. For now America remains the world leader, but it’s moving steadily from superpower to first among equals. Nowhere is this more evident than in the sciences.
In the half-century following the second world war US universities were magnets for students and academics from around the world. Crucially, many foreign graduate students studying the physical sciences, biological sciences, IT and engineering stayed after graduation. As the Gathering Storm report notes: “Government spending on R&D soared after World War II, and … as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) reached a peak of 1.9% in 1964.” In the last six or seven years, however, that tide has turned. Overseas institutions and companies are increasingly competitive, and federal and state funding for science and engineering has fallen significantly, to just 0.8% of GDP. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are sucking up federal money, with President Bush last week asking Congress to raise the war budget for 2008 to $196bn. That’s quite an opportunity cost.
While the US is still a world leader in science and technology, the gap is closing, and rapidly. China and India crank out engineers at a rate that dwarfs ours. As we’ve documented here at Plunderbund, belief in scientific theories are alarmingly low here compared to other industrialized nations around the world. Federal research dollars – the stuff that funds core research with little immediate ROI (and thus rarely funded by private industry) are actually shrinking under the Bush Administration. One area where we remain far ahead of the rest of the world – where we spend more than everyone else combined and more than 10 times the next biggest spender – is in “defense”. That’s really the only thing keeping us afloat scientifically (and I should know – it’s how I make my living, and I see where the research dollars come from).
One interesting note from the AAAS data: the only reason the decline isn’t steeper is America’s increasing support for weapon systems development. This year’s Nobel prizes captured the mood. For the first time this century, Americans were not among those awarded the physics and chemistry prizes.
The era of American Exceptionalism is at an end. And it’s because our leaders would rather ban scientific research into stem cells and “teach the controversy” and undercut solid scientific education in our schools, rather than investing in the technology, infrastructure, and core science research necessary to keep us out in front of the rest of the world.
Someone My good friend and quite awesome blogger Joseph IM’d me this quote from Bush yesterday. Another classic example of how it is possible to have some sheepskin hanging, but still not have a fucking clue:
“As yesterday’s positive report card shows,” Bush said, “childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.”
Here is something the President’s report card won’t show you and something he doesn’t want anyone to know. No Child Left Behind is engineered in such a way as to leave behind a group of kids you wouldn’t think we’d want to leave behind. The gifted.
Personal story. Both of my girls have been identified as gifted. I’m sure this has more to do with their mother than I. She, afterall, has a dual set of sheepskin while I got nuttin’. No certification of any sort of intellectual prowess (lucky for me, I’ve not tended to need them really).
My youngest is way ahead of the curve and some disturbing things are starting to happen. First, she is in a reading group of one because of where she is relative to her class. A reading group, I might add, where you are supposed to pick a partner. I’m hoping this doesn’t induce some sort of talking to herself madness. It has also become apparent that she does not get the attention that other kids get precisely because she is so far along and there is no worry in getting her to levels prescribed by “My Child Left Behind”. What about moving her ahead? Gotta test her for that and they are not allowed to do that, we are told, until later in the year. “Is this another limitation of NCLB?,” we ask. “Don’t get me started,” the teacher tells us.
NCLB is a fraud and a sham. Bush sold it as a system of accountability, but this begs the question. Was student progress NOT tracked before? I seem to remember it. I remember knowing right where I was in terms of grade level, expectations, and how far above or below it I was. I also seem to remember teachers being able to do what is necessary to challenge kids. I read with a grade higher in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. Maybe this is what Emma needs too. What she gets with NCLB is a reading group of one and a teacher who is unable to challenge her with books that she is asking for. You read that correctly. She is asking for harder books because she knows she can read them, but the teacher is unable to give them to her because she can’t test for comprehension on the current ones…due to the system of accountability.
The result? A bored kid who went from loving school and reading to having morning anxiety about going and issues with getting in trouble once she gets there. Heckuva job, Bushie.
Congress is considering changes to the system and I hope they are successful. It’s broken. The ways in which I’d like to see it change will probably never happen. I’d like to see public school run more like Montessori schools with highly trained teachers who learn and cater to each individual kid and let the kid determine more of the curriculum on a daily basis. Politicians and Teacher’s Unions are probably both equally to blame for our lack of vision in that regard.
Bush, in response to recent talk of changes to NCLB:
My call to the Congress is: Don’t water down this good law
I say to Bush: Don’t water down my kid because you want to have something – anything – stand as a legacy for your domestic agenda. NCLB is dumbing down our kids. It might be bringing some kids up to a higher standard…and those kids desperately need that. But a system that does not also take into account that there are kids that don’t fit your square holes of a learning roadmap does a great disservice to our educational system at a time when American kids are falling farther and farther behind kids in other developed nations.
Bush might feel more comfortable if everyone were to dumb down to his level – especially as it concerns grammar – but this system seems to be geared toward giving teachers an uncomfortable incentive to create a modern class of mediocres. No thanks.
We used to sit the troublemakers in the corner by themselves. That’s apparently now where we sit the bright kids.
On average, 15% of incoming college freshmen do not have a parent who attended college. At Ohio State, that number is nearly 23%.
Ohio State’s numbers are fantastic, because we know that many of these students come from families that haven’t traditionally considered college,” said Tally Hart, director of the Economic Access Initiative.
According to the Ohio State Web site, the creation of the Economic Access Initiative further marks the university’s ongoing commitment to ensuring all qualified students, regardless of income, can make the dream of college a reality.
“I knew I always wanted to go to college, but I also knew finances would be an issue,” said Amber Ballard, a first-generation student and senior in human ecology. “Luckily, in sixth grade I was nominated for the Young Scholars Program, so the door was opened for me. Without that, my chance at a college education would have been very slim.”
Unfortunately, it’s not all roses and lollypops.
Despite rising enrollment among first-generation students, graduation rates are still lacking on a national level. Ongoing studies by the Institute of Higher Education Policy show many first-generation and low-income students who do attend colleges and universities are less likely than counterparts to obtain their bachelor’s degree.
In 2005, the National Center for Educational Statistics reported that compared with students whose parents attended college, first-generation students consistently remained at a disadvantage after entering post-secondary education – needing remedial assistance, earning lower grades and completing fewer credit hours.
However, these students have one thing I, as a relative child of privilege (both parents have Masters degrees, both grandfathers attended prestigious Universities – Notre Dame and Carnegie Mellon) did not have: an appreciation for the opportunity to attend college. Due to my background, I grew up thinking everyone went to college. To me, it wasn’t a big deal. These kids have a better understanding of how privileged they are to be going to college, and consequently they often work much much harder at succeeding.
“There is a lot of pressure that comes with being a first-generation student,” Ballard said. “Sometimes you get caught up in the odds being against you, and your family can’t relate to all the things you’re dealing with.”
Ballard said the title of being the first in her family to graduate is enough to motivate those students to give it all they have.
“It’s important for me to graduate because I know I can’t let my family down,” she said. “I’m starting a new era (of college graduates), and that gives me motivation to succeed.”
Jenna Bush, that’s who. Yes, the President’s (blond) daughter. When asked by Diane Sawyer if she supported her father’s “abstinence-only” plan.
No, I mean, not at all, first, because I’m not part of the administration. You know, I’m just my father’s daughter. … I think that when we’re talking about keeping kids safe, and we’re talking about Ana and other kids that are living with HIV or other STDs … kids need to have education; they need to be educated in order to make the right decision for themselves.
Jill has a huge rant up about the costs of education (and I don’t just mean $$$). It is brilliant. She completely captures my objections to profit-motives in education:
For me, it is about the motive. And people who are in education, for-profit, by definition, will not have the outcome of their “industry” – education – as their job number one. Their job number one, as Brian puts it, will be the best “product” for the cheapest cost. That motive for operating, in education, is unacceptable to me as job number one.
The operating motive for educational facilities should be the best “product” – the best education – period. I don’t want educators to reduce the quality of the education provided because it allows for a reduction in costs (and presumably a bigger profit). That’s not how this should work.
It’s also precisely the problem with the health care system in America – insurance companies are profit driven, and providing care to patients cuts into profits.
That headline there is factually correct – an Oregon DA has dropped felony charges against two people who were slapping 13 year old girls’ asses. But there’s a twist – the persons charged (now with misdemeanor sexual assault) are 13 year old boys. (If you read the link, you’ll get their names, but they are minors, and I don’t feel comfortable publishing their names, so I’ve edited appropriately.)
[name redacted] and [name redacted], both 13, were arrested in February after they were caught in the halls of Patton Middle School, in McMinnville, Ore., slapping girls on the rear end. [redacted] told ABC News in a phone interview that this was a common way of saying hello practiced by lots of kids at the school, akin to a secret handshake.
The boys spent five days in a juvenile detention facility and were charged with several counts of felony sex abuse for what they and their parents said was merely inappropriate but not criminal behavior.
The charges themselves are artificially beefed up.
Confidential court records and police reports obtained by The Oregonian showed that other Patton students — boys and girls — were also slapping bottoms. Two female victims later recanted, saying they were friends of the boys and felt pressured to make false statements against them.
And, of course, this is putting tremendous strain on the families of the boys.
The families of both boys have struggled to pay their sons’ legal bills; the [2nd child's] family’s phone was turned off last week because of mounting bills.
“I am very thankful [for the donations people have been making]. I can’t believe it,” said [the father of the 2nd boy], who is a press operator at the McMinnville newspaper. “It’s been really hard. I’m behind on bills and have a hard time sleeping because I’m worried about my son, and his life has really been changed by this.”
[The first boy's] parents, Tracie, a hairdresser, and Scott, a print shop worker, had been preparing to refinance their home to pay for the legal bills. They said they were overwhelmed by the outpouring of support.
“I’ve just been crying all morning because of the way people are supporting us,” said Tracie [redacted].
The kids still face the possibility of being branded “registered sex offender” for life, basically for participating in a desexualized “slap and tickle” ritual that was widespread at their school. Inappropriate behavior? Yeah, I’d say so. “Sex offender” type stuff? Hell no. Give ‘em Saturday School and get on with it. But that would be “soft on crime” (see Genarlow Wilson).
AP, 
American Exceptionalism
by Brian on October 30, 2007 · Comments
American prominence on the world stage has not been due to some issue of “national character”; our people are not inherently different than people anywhere else in the world. But we have, in the past, had better educational resources, and a greater emphasis on science and engineering. But no longer.
While the US is still a world leader in science and technology, the gap is closing, and rapidly. China and India crank out engineers at a rate that dwarfs ours. As we’ve documented here at Plunderbund, belief in scientific theories are alarmingly low here compared to other industrialized nations around the world. Federal research dollars – the stuff that funds core research with little immediate ROI (and thus rarely funded by private industry) are actually shrinking under the Bush Administration. One area where we remain far ahead of the rest of the world – where we spend more than everyone else combined and more than 10 times the next biggest spender – is in “defense”. That’s really the only thing keeping us afloat scientifically (and I should know – it’s how I make my living, and I see where the research dollars come from).
The era of American Exceptionalism is at an end. And it’s because our leaders would rather ban scientific research into stem cells and “teach the controversy” and undercut solid scientific education in our schools, rather than investing in the technology, infrastructure, and core science research necessary to keep us out in front of the rest of the world.
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