WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants(scientificamerican.com) |
WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants(scientificamerican.com) |
What's Happening to Science in America
Science should be guided by science, not ideology.
Voters can always choose to turn over those decisions to scientists they trust. For much of the 20th century, that’s what voters did. But if they don’t trust the priorities of the current scientific establishment, they can also choose to put that control back in the hands of political appointees. The institutional principles of science cannot override the prerogative of voters to decide how their money is spent.
Those are the only people who get to decide. Congress can’t turn over the expenditure of taxpayer funds to people who aren’t politically accountable.
Congress being neutered is not an accident, hopefully it will be less fucked if the power balance shifts.
And as the OP is inherently political in what it's calling out, that is not the motivation -- it's the science. I get the fact that in the end, everything's political but partisanship itself is a cancer on the body politic. Just as we seem to be in late-stage capitalism, we are entering late-stage democracy. It pains me that we effectively arrive here by choice.
The executive branch does not hold the power of the purse, and the fact that you can casually use that phrase in reference to the executive branch shows how far we’ve fallen as a country in a decade.
A very sad state of affairs.
At times they don't even cotify their subservience through the usual measures like legislation and committees, except where needed to slap down any roadblocks to the unitary executive.
It doesn't assume that. It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution. And the institutional principles of particular fields are subordinate to the constitutional structure.
What you're overlooking is that everything is just people. Political appointees are people. But "institutions" are also people. "Science" is just people. And the important question is: who are the people who have the power to decide how taxpayer money is spent?
The only possible answer in a republic is that people accountable to the political system are allocated that power. People in the scientific establishment--people with degrees from universities and credentials from professional organizations--cannot be granted power to spend taxpayer money independent of the political system. They only have power over those decisions to the extent the political system chooses to confer that power.
If Congress doesn't stop the executive and the Supreme Court overrules any legal blockades then ... I guess they can and are doing so RN.
Congress won't stop the executive because the party that won the executive also won Congress by almost 4 million votes. That's not a sign of the system not working, it's a sign of the system working as intended.
The system is fundamentally broken.
The executive branch obviously is going to wield as much power as it can, but only one party is actually advocating for the executive as king.
So yes, both parties are the same when it comes to the corruption of the party leadership, but there are distinctly different platforms and ideals espoused -- and that difference matters.
We are never going back to where we were. That is past us now. There is only forward.