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The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

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Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#171

Post by arp242 »

hayst4ck wrote: post #166
arp242 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO it's kind of meaningless to count the popular vote as it's not a popular election, which influences the results. Why vote in Texas or California? You already know who will win. Will that balance each other out? Unclear. That said, I do agree with the broader point that a narrow victory shouldn't give full control of the complete (federal) government, especially considering how they're going about things. But fix…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_(politics)

I'm not responding to a lazy condescending Wikipedia link dump where I have to guess what you could perhaps mean with it. If you have something to say, then say it. Otherwise don't post.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#172

Post by afavour »

shakna wrote: post #96
afavour wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did Trump pledge to destroy the NIH? He did also specficially disavow Project 2025 and is now enacting a whole bunch of it.

He said he wouldn't in statements, however every single one of his proposed budgets included cuts that would do so. https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/30/donald-trumps...

> He said he wouldn't in statements

So he specifically did the opposite of campaign on it then. Most voters weren't going to go and read through his proposed budgets and everyone knows that.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#173

Post by jghn »

afavour wrote: post #137
jghn wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when it came out that Project 2025 was going to be the playbook? And Trump disavowed it but all evidence pointed to the contrary? And our priors pointed to him not being inclined to tell the truth? That's when we knew this would happen.

Yes, those of us paying attention knew that when he disavowed Project 2025 he was talking nonsense. But OP said Trump "campaigned on doing exactly these things". He didn't. He campaigned on literally disavowing these things. "we knew this would happen" !== "he campaigned on doing exactly these things"

Yes, and that's my point. Anyone who truly, honestly "didn't know" doesn't deserve to have a vote.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#174

Post by IAmGraydon »

btilly wrote: post #109
bbor wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the perspective, and I know it's trite, but it's important: how would you feel about a resident of 1933 Germany writing your comment? Some good people fled, true, but staying and complying because mass protest seems "unlikely" is almost definitely something posterity will frown upon -- not to mention the rest of the world. I think that's something that should give one pause. Remember, mass protest to (pu…

FDR was more extreme than Trump so far. For instance consider banning private ownership of gold by executive order. Mind you, Trump could still declare himself dictator. But based on what's happened so far? FDR was more extreme.

FDR's order regarding gold was part of a broader effort to combat the Great Depression by stopping gold hoarding, allowing the government to inflate the money supply and stimulate the economy. It wasn’t a total seizure — people were compensated at the then-official rate of $20.67 per ounce.

The comparison doesn't hold water whatsoever.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#175

Post by SubiculumCode »

duskwuff wrote: post #39
llm_trw wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralise government so a single election doesn't destroy everything. In short: states rights.

Alternatively: we need to rein in the powers of the presidency. Right now we've got a dynamic of "the president says what to do and the legislature obeys" (or, recently, "the president does stuff on his own"); we might be better off with "Congress decides what to do and the president makes it happen".

The problem is that the president can direct funding to primary a congressman. There are ways to make that harder to do, but they have to try

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#176

Post by seanmcdirmid »

LanceH wrote: post #164
alabastervlog wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many actions the administration has taken are illegal. Not sure if those related to NIH are, but if they’ve been firing people, odds are good, since they’ve been doing that wrong most of the time it seems like. Congress could change the laws, but they haven’t. Lots of this junk is simply against the law. The courts are moving relatively fast, as such things go, but it takes time. Congress is supposed to control spend…

> Lots of this junk is simply against the law. Perhaps. A lot of it is also the flip side of an executive order conjuring more government into existence. The escalation of executive order from administration to administration, and the reliance on courts to make law results in what we have going on today. Everyone was perfectly fine with the President doing whatever he wanted a couple months ago. Everyone was fine wit…

> Everyone was perfectly fine with the President doing whatever he wanted a couple months ago.

Everyone was fine with the president doing whatever he wanted a couple of months ago because he didn't abuse his power like the new guy is. When you have someone with self control and the best interests of the country in mind, you don't actually need to reign in presidential power like you suggest, and we just haven't had a Trump in the presidency enough to call a constitutional convention.

> At some point one party needs reign in the presidency while they have it. Democrats chose not to, then ran a losing campaign with a candidate voters did not nominate.

This is impossible given the threshold for a constitutional convention. 2/3rd for proposal and 3/4th for ratification, we are just way too divided for that unless Trump messes up really really bad and we actually survive as the same country to pick up the pieces. The supreme court is the only other body that could interpret the law to restrict executive power, but it is stacked with Trump appointees who have new interpretations of unrestricted executive power, so we shouldn't expect much from them.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#177

Post by SubiculumCode »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #170

When some other state-power, perhaps the Chinese, starts sucking up American intellectual capital, then the US will collapse. So long as the US still offers the highest standard of living for high-wage workers, there won't be any sort of collapse. Grants from the NIH will presumably move to the private sector. Is this a good thing? Perhaps not, but in the eyes of our new overlords the lifeblood of the economy is not…

Companies don't like to do basic research..It doesn't pay off for decades

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#178

Post by IAmGraydon »

gedy wrote: post #66
ivraatiems wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I am not at all convinced any further elections in the US will be free or fair given who is currently in power and what they've openly said about elections and what they want to do to them. The only real functional way forward at this point is some form of mass protest or resistance, which I see as unlikely to occur (and which I am not necessarily advocating for here on HN). Barring that, the reality is that…

> The only real functional way forward at this point is some form of mass protest or resistance, Maybe, just maybe, the opposition party could quit offering these shit sandwich candidates as an alternative? I can't believe there's no Democrat politicians out there who could've beat Trump handily. But the DNC seems totally disfunctional in picking candidates.

Dean Phillips could have been their easy ticket to a victory, but they decided to make the worst possible choices. This is simply a result of hubris and incompetence.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#179

Post by defrost »

arp242 wrote: post #157
sitkack wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people voted against Trump than voted for. • 77,302,580 voted for this administration (49.8%) • 77,935,722 voted against this administration (50.2%) From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43191410

IMHO it's kind of meaningless to count the popular vote as it's not a popular election, which influences the results. Why vote in Texas or California? You already know who will win. Will that balance each other out? Unclear. That said, I do agree with the broader point that a narrow victory shouldn't give full control of the complete (federal) government, especially considering how they're going about things. But fix…

> But fixing that requires serious changes to the d̶e̶m̶o̶c̶r̶a̶t̶i̶c̶ s̶y̶s̶t̶e̶m̶

the United States of America's electoral system.

The Heath Robinson contraption in the US is hardly synonomous with Democracy, at best it's the oldest, creakiest example of a modern democracy.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#180

Post by btilly »

jachee wrote: post #155
closewith wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure that the rule of law in the US is strong enough to avert a dictatorship?

If the military upholds their oath to the Constitution, we should never have a dictatorship.

That's why Trump just did a purge of top generals and lawyers in the military.
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