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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (239245)	12/4/2013 12:33:05 AM
From: koan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542970

Political battle between the politicos and social scientists is actually what goes on in most states, most of the time, to varying degrees. It ends up being a fight and that is where having a dem or pub gov matters. E.g. when I was state director of alcoholism and drug abuse the pubs hated those programs and wanted to kill them. The haven't changed, since like forever. The pubs when in power (senate finance committee and others) would bring me up to the capitol and whip me with a cat of nine tails and try to cut my programs But if we had a dem gov he would appoint a powerful commissioner who would protect me and give me cover to do my job. One time a dem gov tried to cut my program and a statutory advisory committee told him NO. I was like a rag doll being flung around in that battle caught between my fidelity to that committee (it was a great one) and my commissioner (who was pretty good too, but getting his marching orders from the gov, who was getting his from god only knows where that power lay. The political tension works like this. The gov is really the top dog as the top administrator. Then s/he appoints pubs or dems to unclassified positions (usually campaign worker payoffs). They try to bend the programs to the govs will. But the classified folks who are protected by a unions (if they are), are usually educated in the social sciences (a college degree is usually a prerequisite for most of the upper level classified positions). There are also laws and regs that protect social gains when a stupid tyrant like a Scott Walker tries to take them apart. It is called constructive conservatism. It stopped many of the pubs bad ideas over the years. In our state for 30 years. The classified workers know the science and work within the space they have or can find. Take fisheries e.g. The classified biologists know what to do, but their bosses may have political pressure to do the wrong thing. Perfect example would be Yukon river king salmon. The have been declining is size for 50 years. It is believed because they allow too large of mesh (in river gill nets) which catches mostly only the very large fat females. The biologists know this, but the power of the commercial lobby is too strong for them to overcome; but when they have sufficient political strength they will make the proper adjustments. The 2013 run is at a record low and that is generating organic power for the biologists to insist on smaller mesh sizes. The south is so far behind because they keep electing nut case govs who demand crazy gov workers who will follow their crazy ideas. And too often there is no union protection for gov workers. Perfect example. North Dakota? (one of state up there) wanted the scientists to study why anthropogenic global warming was not happening. As it was PHD scientists they were directing, they had enough power to just say no. But employees with lesser power have to capitulate to keep their job. H&SS in my state is probably going nuts over the gov not taking free medicade.