[Rhodes22-list] More about Science and Politics

Ronald Lipton rlipton at earthlink.net
Thu Jan 24 21:52:36 EST 2008


There was an "all hands" meeting today where the Director of Fermilab
described plans for 1 week/ 2 month unpaid furloughs for all employees
and possible plans for layoffs of 200 staff.  All R&D for new projects
was zeroed out, leaving no real path for the future of the field.  It 
will be
almost impossible to regain momentum. 

This was in the wake of a substantial projected increase in the science 
budget
prompted by reports on the loss of American economic competitiveness due 
to lack
of investment in basic research.  Frantic cuts before the omnibus 
package passed
killed many programs in physical science in favor of maintaining pork 
and other
things like farm subsidies.   This was evidently done in haste by
a few congressional staff (I heard that the staffer who "likes" science on
the appropriations committee had an operation that weekend).

There has been some fairly heartening support, including a letter from 
Craig
Barrett, chairman of Intel:

"The United States stands at a pivotal point in our history. Competition is
heating up around the world with millions of industrious, highly educated
workers who are willing to compete at salaries far below those paid here.
The only way we can hope to compete is with brains and ideas that set us
above the competition - and that only comes from investments in education
and R&D. Practically everyone who has traveled outside the United States
in the last decade has seen this dynamic at work. The only place where 
it is
apparently still a deep, dark secret is in Washington, D.C.

What are they thinking? When will they wake up? It may already be too late;
but I genuinely think the citizenry of this country wants the United 
States to
compete. If only our elected leaders weren't holding us back."

/Craig Barrett is the chairman of Intel./

The full letter is at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/20/EDFDUHP1I.DTL
He evidently sent a more harshly worded letter to Pelosi.

Ron





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