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

To: RetiredNow who wrote (5020)	2/15/2009 5:28:31 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 86356

The states have no not so vital expenditures they can cut back? I don't believe it. As far as $51B on renewable energy, I think it is a drop in the bucket on what we need to invest. "energy and water, including smart grid, renewable energy, and energy innovation" isn't very informative. What exactly will that go for? Let me guess - that includes the $2 billion for a Futuregen coal plant in Mattoon, doesn't it? It's far less than what our government spend every year on the oil industry. Baloney based on the idea most of our defense budget is a subsidy for oil. As far as broadband glut, not by a long shot. In fact, the US is lagging behind all of our major competitors in broadband penetration. This is sad considering we invented the Internet and most of the advanced broadband technologies. Do we really have a national problem in not having enough teens playing games on the net, or downloading songs and videos? Isn't our broadband network mostly privately owned? How do we invest government money in it anyway? As far as increasing our investments in science R&D, many of the major innovations (like the Internet) have come from a virtuous partnership of public and private investment in R&D. Many of the key breakthroughs in technology come from university students working with government grants. Without those, science innovation plunges. This has been the key to our prosperity for decades now. Under Bush, that spending dried up No, it hasn't dried up. We're not scrimping on this kind of stuff. Bush Asks Congress to Double Science Spending January 29th, 2008 scienceprogress.org Bush Asks Senate to Raise Science Spending Posted on: Saturday, 8 July 2006, 12:00 CDT redorbit.com TNPR.org, February 6, 2006 · .... That's the Bush Administration's message to the scientific community in this year's budget request. It calls for adding nearly $1 billion to spending on basic research in the "physical sciences" such as chemistry and physics. But other fields -- such as biomedical and environmental studies -- would see spending stagnate or decline. And that has some politically powerful researchers ready to rumble. The Bush plan -- dubbed the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) -- calls for science spending to grow significantly at three civilian science agencies. The National Science Foundation, which mostly makes grants to university scientists, would get a 7.8 percent increase to $6 billion. The Department of Energy's science programs, which fund things like giant atom smashers and lasers, would get a 14 percent bump to $4.1 billion. And core science programs at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, which does fundamental studies and helps industry develop new technologies, would get an 18 percent boost to $467 million. The White House argues that these investments -- the down payment on a $136 billion, 10-year plan -- will eventually produce new technologies and products that will strengthen the U.S. economy. npr.org