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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (3862)	1/4/2009 11:14:54 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Hawk, actually, overall Fed R&D on science & tech is up from when Bush first took office, but those numbers are deceiving. Science & tech research is actually down, but the total numbers are buoyed up by DOD/military weapons development. So science and tech spending that benefits the economy most has declined under Bush. See below. Federal Research Investments Continue to Decline in 2009 Budget aaas.org Although high-priority investments in physical sciences research, weapons development, and human space exploration help to keep the federal R&D outlook brighter than the bleak outlook for domestic programs overall, the FY 2009 budget continues the recent trends of declining federal support for research. The federal investment in basic and applied research would fall in real terms for the fifth year in a row if the FY 2009 budget is enacted. Federal research did very well between 1998 and 2003 because of the campaign to double the budget of NIH, the largest federal supporter of research. Other agencies also increased their research investments in that time period because a string of budget surpluses freed up resources for domestic appropriations. But with the return of budget deficits in 2002 followed by restraints on domestic spending thereafter, growth in research funding for NIH and other domestic agencies slowed in 2004 and then reversed. At the same time, DOD research support lagged as the Pentagon went to war in 2003 and shifted resources away from research toward near-term projects, and NASA research fell even within a stable R&D budget as it shifted resources from research to development. As a result, federal support for research is now in decline, with potential gains in the physical sciences more than offset by eroding support for biomedical research and other disciplines. The 2009 budget would continue the downward slide in federal research funding and leave the federal research portfolio 9.1 percent below the 2004 level in inflation-adjusted dollars. Federal research investments are shrinking as a share of the U.S. economy, just as other nations are increasing their investments. As shown in the Figure below, the federal R&D investment exceeded 1 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) until recently, buoyed by big increases in weapons development, but is now declining sharply. Federal investments in development, mostly in DOD, have held steady as a share of the economy, but the federal research/GDP ratio is in free fall down to a projected 0.38 percent in 2009, below the long-term historical average of 0.4 percent after gains in the late 1990s. Despite an increasingly technology-based economy and a growing recognition among policymakers that federal research investments are the seed corn for future technology-based innovations, the U.S. government research investment has so far failed to match the new realities despite the rallying points of innovation and the American Competitiveness Initiative, and has also failed to match the competition. Asian nations are dramatically increasing their government research investments: both China and South Korea, for example, are boosting government research by 10 percent or more annually.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (3862)	1/4/2009 11:28:04 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Hawk, remember what I said about Saddam being a counterweight to Iran and how when we removed Saddam, we unleashed Iran? Well, the article below is more evidence of that. In Gaza, the real enemy is Iran Israeli attacks must not stop until Iran's proxy, Hamas, is defeated. By Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren January 4, 2009 latimes.com ...But widen the lens and the true nature of this conflict emerges. Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, is a proxy for the real enemy Israel is confronting: Iran. And Israel's current operation against Hamas represents a unique chance to deal a strategic blow to Iranian expansionism. Until now, the Iranian revolution has appeared unstoppable. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s ended with Iranian troops occupying Iraqi territory. Iranian influence then spread to Saudi Arabia's heavily Shiite and oil-rich Eastern province, and to Lebanon through Hezbollah. Since the fall of their long-standing enemy, Saddam Hussein, Iranians have deeply infiltrated Iraq. Syria has been drawn into Iran's sphere, and even the Sunni sheikdoms of the gulf now defer to Iran, dispatching foreign ministers to Tehran and defying international sanctions against it. Iran has co-opted Hamas, a Sunni organization closely linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, transforming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a jihad against the Jewish state. But Iran's boldest achievement has been to thwart world pressure and approach the nuclear threshold. Once fortified with nuclear weapons, Iranian hegemony in the Middle East would be complete. ... No less crucially, the international community must not allow the Gaza crisis to divert its attention from the imminent -- and ultimate -- threat of a nuclear Iran. Intelligence sources now measure that threat in months rather than years.