Since I've been resting here in my undisclosed location in the aftermath of the Canadian parliamentary crisis and the U.S. presidential inauguration, I've been very busy lately reading the conservative blogs and listening to the talk radio they pump into the lounge 24/7 to get the truth that the liberal MSM won't tell - you know about the victory in Iraq and how Barack Hussien Obama is really Malcom X's love child - that kinda stuff. This post started, as so many posts do, as a comment over on RossK's Gazetteer, so if it seems I am repeating myself, rest assured I am and that your engraved apology is on its way from the Woodshed's department of redundancy department.
One of the members of our blogging posse, RossK, is troubled lately. Troubled because grant money for research is drying up fast and as a researcher, that grant money not only pays for him to further humankind's knowledge and probably save lives in the future, but it also allows him to "put food on his family."
Science, bah! What has science ever done for us? Okay, the Internet, but what else? The only things more useless than science are liberals and maybe the roman empire.
Fund basic research to encourage breakthroughs that might lead to new technologies as a way to stimulate the economy? That's crazy talk! Everyone knows that is the moneymen - the brokers, the bankers, the leverage and arbitrage artistes - that drive economic innovation and deserve all the stimulus money! Who else could come up with a way to sell loans made to people who had no hope of paying them back as a AAA investment! Hooray for capitalism! If only government could be run like a business.
Come on RossK, science has its place in high school and stuff, but do you think those freewheeling capitalist Masters of the Universe can get by on a measly half a million dollars a year (plus whatever they can steal) without a big fat bonus? Do you think those Lexuses and 3,000 square foot ski condos are going to buy themselves?
Don't you realize that if the government takes the $120,000 grant that supports your biomedical research and pays the salaries of the three people you work with, and instead gives that money to a needy bank, brokerage or multinational corporation, those companies can pay the bonuses they need to pay to keep the kind of executive talent around that got them where they are today. And that money filters down into the economy through sports car dealerships, caviar importers and expensive escort agencies. That bonus money plays a vital role in the economy in other ways too. Do you really want the banker in charge of asset-stripping a borderline profitable small manufacturer that the bank has foreclosed on being distracted by wondering if he can afford another Rolex or a third country club membership? Do you want the people who run our economy stressed out over not being able to get a decent tee-off time just so your "research assistants" can squander the money that could have been spent building a private company golf course on bulk lentils, bus passes and cheap instant ramen noodles and clothing imported from China (a nation of communists)? Do you RossK? All in the name of "learning" and "scientific inquiry" and all that other egghead stuff? My god, you science geeks are a selfish bunch!
Any conservative will tell you that science is overrated. Whether its climate scientists yammer on about melting ice caps and drowning polar bears or biologists with all their "Darwin this" and "evolution that" -- don't they know it snowed in Delisle, Sask. just the other day and that God made the world -- as is -- in 168 hours. Just look at the success the new government of Canada has had removing science from such areas as food inspection and nuclear regulation. Industry can take care of itself, why can't science? If you Pointedexters are so smart, how come you're not rich?
huh? What's that nurse? It's time for my medication? NO! NO! NO! I like the voices in my head, they are my friends! They want me to be a success, just like the other blogging tories here on the ward! Don't come any closer! PUT DOWN THAT NEEDLE! I'M GONNA REPORT YOU TO STEPHEN HARPE........zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
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In all seriousness, Astro, one of the commenters over at RossK 's joint, suggests its time to stop letting the economists run things and start listening to the scientists. He's right, but I'll go him one better.
It isn't just time to listen to the scientists instead of the economists and moneymen, it's time to take most of econmists out behind the barn and put them down like diseased cattle. And it's long past time to take most of the moneymen and other latter-day would-be robber barons, strip them naked, and kick them out of the back of a moving van in Kabul or Dhaka or Port-au-Prince or Kitcisakik and see how far the Harvard MBA and the old boys clubs get them then. As far as I'm concerned, every single one of these bonus babies should be put in the stocks and the government should subsidize truck farmers by buy all their rotten produce and handing out to people to throw.
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