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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"

#231

Post by jghn »

afavour wrote: post #191
jghn wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’d suggest your viewpoint is a pretty sheltered one. Many people (relatives of mine included, sadly) marinate in a stew of social media algorithms showing them things that confirm their priors and they aren’t exposed to any oppositional media. Perhaps they don’t deserve a vote. But if they don’t then a lot of voters don’t deserve a vote. And maybe we ought to be asking ourselves “what systems have we set up that hav…

I went through this 2016-2020. This time I'm all in on the "leopards ate my face" stance. Instead of feeling bad, I now laugh at people who voted for this and are getting hurt.

I can't help that people are this stupid. And if they hurt themselves in the process, good. It'll be a cleansing.

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

#232

Post by lazide »

jghn wrote: post #228
lazide wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the senate does matter. The system is setup to balance out two competing interests - the large cities (with large, concentrated populations) and the states (most of which are not so heavily populated, but have most of the land and resources). It’s a compromise. And necessary for the Union to be balanced - unless Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, etc. should now just become (defacto) vassals to Los Angeles…

Again: why do you seem to think I don't understand how the senate works. The senate works the way it does. The house is intended to be the chamber of the populace. Roughly 100 years ago we artificially limited the house of the commons. The senate never changed. So why do you keep bringing up the senate?

I said why. Because if the house hadn’t of been capped, it would have thrown the entire system out of balance, and all but a handful of mega cities would control everything else.

That was never the deal. In fact, that was clearly not the deal.

And since those cities depend on the resources of those surrounding areas too, it can either be a symbiosis or a war.

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

#233

Post by motorest »

noduerme wrote: post #162
motorest wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Practically speaking, when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies, what mitigations are left? As the article states, these actions are illegal and violate the US constitution. If "the people who decided to vote" expressed this decision, that decision would be implemented by an act of Congress to alter or eliminate these rules. Congress up until now passed no such law…

I read the parent as saying that a plurality of voters voted to circumvent the constitution and dismantle the republic, and therefore, a resulting despotism would just be democracy in action, so to speak. Caesar was elected consul. Hitler was elected chancellor. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Hamas in Gaza, came to power democratically on a platform of 'one election - which will be the last election'. Since the…

> I read the parent as saying that a plurality of voters voted to circumvent the constitution and dismantle the republic, and therefore, a resulting despotism would just be democracy in action, so to speak.

From an outsider's point of view, that was not the people voted for.

When repeatedly pressed on Project 2025, Trump distanced from it and reassured the American people those were just vicious rumors to denigrate him. The campaign was centered on how Biden was old and senile and responsible for every problem ranging from egg prices to Trump's retreat from Afghanistan. Trump's promises were that inflation would be eliminated, jobs would be created, and minority rights would cease to be a part of the US government agenda.

What the Trump administration is implementing bears no resemblance to his program, and looks like a complete dismantlement of the United States of America, including a complete rejection of it's core values.

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

#234

Post by true_religion »

sadeshmukh wrote: post #230
D13Fd wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The constitutional remedy for abuse of pardon power is impeachment. It is not. The constitution allows impeachment for treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors only.

Would that not be treason?

You can be impeached for lying to Congress or maybe even substantially misleading it.

Isn’t that how they got Clinton?

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

#235

Post by nathanaldensr »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #220
scarab92 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, the article headline is deceptive clickbait. NIH budgets aren't being cut. The NIH is simply requiring that at least 85% of the grant value goes to the actual grant recipients, rather than being siphoned off by the university for administration expenses. At most universities this change has no impact, since they weren't taking more than 15% to begin with. This change mainly impacts Harvard and similar, a…

I appreciate the facts in our current outrage and misinformation economy.

As do I. I was going to post the same thanks. Hacker News has become Reddit with these stupid political posts. It's crazy how far this site has fallen in such a short time.

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

#236

Post by nathanaldensr »

motorest wrote: post #233
noduerme wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the parent as saying that a plurality of voters voted to circumvent the constitution and dismantle the republic, and therefore, a resulting despotism would just be democracy in action, so to speak. Caesar was elected consul. Hitler was elected chancellor. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Hamas in Gaza, came to power democratically on a platform of 'one election - which will be the last election'. Since the…

> I read the parent as saying that a plurality of voters voted to circumvent the constitution and dismantle the republic, and therefore, a resulting despotism would just be democracy in action, so to speak. From an outsider's point of view, that was not the people voted for. When repeatedly pressed on Project 2025, Trump distanced from it and reassured the American people those were just vicious rumors to denigrate h…

The people who oppose you disagree and see it exactly the opposite. That's why we vote--to see who wants what.

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

#237

Post by defrost »

ETH_start wrote: post #226
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside how completely made up this sounds, how could that possibly be what "shattered" credibility in mainstream science for you?

That ideology is being masqueraded science. That these individuals are abusing their scientific authority in such a flagrant way. Eliminating taxpayer-funded DEI programs is not "white supremacist ideology". And even if you believe it is, and that the SCOTUS — which ruled that DEI admission requirements at Ivy League universities discriminated against Asian applicants — is part of this white supremacist conspiracy, y…

> That ideology is being masqueraded science.

It's a letter to the editor .. it's not being "masqueraded as science", it is openly declared as an opinion held by some scientists.

Scientists are not homogenuous in opinion, there is a long history of differing opinions in letters to editors in science journals.

Are you

* ignorant of this, or

* delibrately misframing it?

> That these individuals are abusing their scientific authority in such a flagrant way.

Again, it's a letter to the editor expressing the opinion of some. The horse you've climbed up upon here appears quite high.

> Eliminating taxpayer-funded DEI programs is not "white supremacist ideology".

^F "white supremacist" in https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq4733 and the only use of the phrase is:

  The current political climate is tremendously hostile for BIPOC scientists. [..]

  ..  institutions must resist by taking legal action against civil liberty violations that result from anti-DEI directives. ..

  As political parties in the US and beyond seek to recodify white supremacist philosophies, STEM leadership must take urgent action to protect and support all members of our diverse scientific community.
As is clear to native english as a first language readers, that does not state that "Eliminating taxpayer-funded DEI programs is white supremacist ideology".

You have badly paraphrased an assertion that "anti-DEI directives" (those directives stronger than simple removal) are resulting in civil liberty violations (ie. the racists feel emboldened).

The only thing I see here is an opinion piece expressed in a letter to the editor and whole lot of puffery, lambast, and smoke in response.

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

#238

Post by locopati »

D13Fd wrote: post #188
throwaway48476 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constitutional remedy for abuse of pardon power is impeachment. In the model where any two branches can check the 3rd if two are of the same mind then there's nothing to do.

> The constitutional remedy for abuse of pardon power is impeachment. It is not. The constitution allows impeachment for treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors only.

Repeated unconstitutional actions seems to fit high crimes.

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

#239

Post by locopati »

motorest wrote: post #233
noduerme wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the parent as saying that a plurality of voters voted to circumvent the constitution and dismantle the republic, and therefore, a resulting despotism would just be democracy in action, so to speak. Caesar was elected consul. Hitler was elected chancellor. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Hamas in Gaza, came to power democratically on a platform of 'one election - which will be the last election'. Since the…

> I read the parent as saying that a plurality of voters voted to circumvent the constitution and dismantle the republic, and therefore, a resulting despotism would just be democracy in action, so to speak. From an outsider's point of view, that was not the people voted for. When repeatedly pressed on Project 2025, Trump distanced from it and reassured the American people those were just vicious rumors to denigrate h…

It is, unfortunately, not illegal to lie endlessly to get elected. Anybody who did vote for him and expected different is a fucking idiot who wasn't paying attention and was too entitled/arrogant to listen to the people who were paying attention.

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

#240

Post by jltsiren »

scarab92 wrote: post #208
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…

The clickbait article title is completely unsupported by the actual content of the article. The NIH isn't being slashed and burned. It's simply redirecting more of it's funding to actual grant recipients, to do actual research, rather than allowing NIH funding to be siphoned off by the universities for largely unrelated purposes. Harvard siphoned off a whopping 69% of the grant amount, and it's not going to funding e…

It doesn't work like that.

NIH grants are awarded in terms of direct costs, and indirect costs come on top of that. If you have a $500k/year grant and your university has negotiated 69% overhead rate, NIH pays the university $845k/year. If the overhead rate is slashed to 15%, the university gets $575k/year.

The remaining $270k/year probably won't be spent on anything, as the entire point is supposed to be cutting government spending.

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