Guest laugh by David Middleton
The laugh is the fact that an article demonstrating the nonessential nature of government scientists, is titled “The Shutdown Shows Just How Vital Government Scientists Are”…
ERIC NIILER SCIENCE 01.08.19
THE SHUTDOWN SHOWS JUST HOW VITAL GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS ARE
INSTEAD OF FIGURING out how many Pacific hake fishermen can catch sustainably, as his job demands, scientist Ian Taylor is at home with his four-month old daughter, biding his time through the partial government shutdown.
[…]
Some federal science agencies are open, such as the National Institutes for Health and the Department of Energy, since their appropriations bills were already signed by Trump. Others, such as NASA, are continuing to operate key programs such as the International Space Station, although 95 percent of its 15,000 workers were sent home on Dec. 22.
[…]
The shutdown has led to a hodgepodge of federal science-based activity across the country. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is sitting on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral ready for a planned launch on Jan. 17, but without NASA personnel to oversee testing, that liftoff will be delayed. Crews that fly over the Atlantic to check on endangered Atlantic right whales and send those positions to commercial ships are still working, but they aren’t being paid.
Weather forecasters are working during the shutdown, but hundreds of scientists from NOAA and the National Weather Service have been banned from attending the annual American Meteorological Society meeting this week in Phoenix.
[…]
The Environmental Protection Agency furloughed about 14,000 of its employees, leaving just 753 “essential” workers on the job.
[…]
Leslie Rissler, an evolutionary biologist and program director at the NSF, tweeted last week that she had applied for unemployment benefits.
[…]
So… NASA and the EPA can maintain essential operations with only 5% of their workforce, evolutionary biologists are nonessential drains on the taxpayers, NOAA meteorologists can’t attend the American Meteorological Society convention on the taxpayers’ dime… Maybe I’m just a bit jaded, but how does the word “vital” fit in here? Can you think of a better example of a nonessential government employee than an evolutionary biologist?
Is anyone else laughing at all of the blather about government scientists not being able to attend conventions? I call them conventions as do most people I know, even though the official title is usually “conference and exposition.” If I had a dollar for every time I couldn’t attend the AAPG, SEG or GCAGS* convention because my employer was tightening their belt, I’d have a lot of dollars. For that matter, I’ve even become proactive in belt-tightening… The only times I ever request to attend AAPG, SEG or GCAGS conventions are when they are in Dallas or Houston (where I can keep the costs pretty-well limited to the registration fee). Having survived multiple oil price crashes, I’ve learned that controlling costs enables companies (and paychecks) to survive downturns and to be more profitable during “booms”. I don’t recall any geologists complaining about not being able to attend the 2016 AAPG convention in Calgary because their companies were cutting costs due to the collapse in oil prices. Most of them probably felt like I did: Thankful to still have a job… if they still had jobs.
Regarding the possible delay in the launch of the privately owned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the key takeaway is that the “privatization” of spaceflight is still mostly a buzzword. If “Paul Allen, Larry Page, Eric E. Schmidt, Ram Shriram, Charles Simony, Ross Perot, Jr., Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Robert Bigelow” want to privatize spaceflight, maybe they might think about building their own launch facilities… with their own money. Or, maybe the US government should privatize NASA’s space operations.
*Abbreviations
AAPG: American Association of Petroleum Geologists
SEG: Society of Exploration Geophysicists
GCAGS: Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies
I am of the humble opinion the government can just STAY shut down for 2019.
and 2020? Belgium managed without a government for 20 months
Sweden still hasnt got one after 4 months.
They better reopen soon before people figure out it is not needed
This is exactly correct, and I suspect it will be what finally makes Chuck and Nancy do the right thing in the end. IOW…do the job they were elected to do, and which they took an oath wherein they swore to do it.
“do the job they were elected to do, and which they took an oath wherein they swore to do it” I think those 2 items are mutually exclusive.
At one stage Belgium did not have a govt. for around 18 mo. and no one seemed to notice much.
let me see ….. climate modeller ??
Temperature adjuster? Nope. Not essential.
Which part of their job aren’t they doing? The constitution clearly states that “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.” So clearly the responsibility for the budget lies with the House of Representatives and not the president. It is also worth noting that the shutdown was started when the republicans were in charge of the House of Representatives and did not want to fund the wall either.
@Percy J: ‘raising Revenue’ is taxation and/or fees, not spending, which is ‘appropriation’.
I shall be kind and assume ignorance.
The Republican House of Representatives DID pass a bill with funding for vital border security – including the barrier.
Now, I will admit that the Republican Senate didn’t muster up the guts to overrule the MINORITY of Democrats to finish the job.
Republicans: If we keep the filibuster rule in place while we are in the majority, the Democrats will keep it in place if they regain the majority.
Democrats: Hang the rules, we’re getting rid of the filibuster next time we have 51 votes.
Also note that the Republican senate passed a bill that would have kept the
government open and which funded border security at the level of 1.6 billion.
The Republican controlled house of representatives voted against it and Trump indicated that he would veto it. Since then the Democratic lead House of Representatives have passed the same bill that the Senate approved in December 2018 but currently the Republicans controlling the Senate are not allowing this to come to a vote.
The House did pass a bill funding the wall when the Republicans were in the majority. Senate Democrats filibustered it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-passes-stopgap-funding-bill-5-billion-trump-s-border-n950666
It’s amazing how quickly the Democrats have forgotten the filibuster.
Back when Obama was messing things up, they constantly blamed the filibuster for everything Obama didn’t get to.
Make that “how quickly the Democrat apologists”.
The Democrats in the Senate have obviously not forgotten about the filibuster.
Percy, while Trump had said he was willing to shut the Government down if necessary, he never got that chance. The House of Representatives passed a bill funding the Government (including $5.7 for the border wall) and sent it to the Senate. The shutdown was started when Democrats in the Senate blocked passage of the funding bill because it had the funding Trump requested.
SR
This is how the shutdown will most likely end…
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/424314-yes-trump-has-authority-to-declare-national-emergency-for-border-wall
Note to self: always refresh before commenting to avoid duplicating others.
SR
Yes, and the President can veto the bill.
Congress can break the log jam by over riding the veto. An override requires the votes of 2/3rds of each House. Given the current partisan make-up of Congress, that means about 50 Republican representatives out of 195 and 20 Republican Senators.
Unless some remarkable new event occurs that causes Republicans to abandon the President en masse, I can’t see that happening.
The media is trying to stampede Republicans into abandoning the President. But, they know that they will be primaried if they do.
Bottom line, Trump cannot afford to back down, because if he does his Presidency is over. Congressional Democrats can, because only their crazies will be upset.
“Congressional Democrats can, because only their crazies will be upset.”
Americans have mostly stopped voting for Democrats, so they desperately need more illegals to do the votes Americans won’t do. This is a life-and-death issue for them.
disingenuous, of course.
You just answered your own question.
The obstructing democrats are ignoring the country’s budget needs and requirements.
Their refusal to fund what they have supported in the past is sheer anti-Trump derangement.
They’d much rather government departments and agencies suffer and degrade while citizens are denied services than “do their job!”
And yes, they swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and to perform their duties.
They have performed their duties. They have passed bills and sent them to the Senate. The problem is that the majority leader of the Senate refuses to bring the already passed House bills up for consideration in the Senate.
What does the Constitution have to say about the legislative rules of Congress?
re legislative rules specified in the Constitution:
The Constitution only says that each House of the legislature shall adopt their own rules. Tradition has given the Senate the 60 vote plurality to limit a filibuster. Many think it was wise to do this to prevent the ‘tyranny of the majority’. And remember, the Senate was originally a body appointed by and beholden only to the the party in control of each state so basically, the rule required that 60% OF THE STATES had to agree with an action.
The constitution also states only congress can print money but the private no reserve does it anyway.
Even though the Republicans controlled the House there were too many RINOs who were afraid of what the media would say about them to get the wall funded.
The GOP in the house did push forward a bill with wall spending. It was the Senate where it didnt go through because of the outdated, nonconstitutional (yes non not un) filibuster rules.
But it was a Republican president who now has the formerly reluctant Republicans ready to fund the wall and the communist Democrats about to buckle
I mean after all, Congress overwhelmingly gave US taxpayers money to fund Israel’s massive wall.
https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/135533120?profile=original
And then we supposedly can’t afford $5 billion for a border wall, but we can afford to give Israel 85 billion dollars more; it the very first bill out of the 2019 Congress.
And note that the ‘govt funding shutdown’ does not apply to what he already are giving Israel, of course.
‘Israel’s $38 Billion Scam, Bibi wants more and Congress might deliver’
http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/israels-38-billion-scam/
The “Budget” is proposed by the Executive Branch, it is a request for money from Congress to fund all those government agencies. Congress in turn requests (demands) money from The People since it doesn’t have money of its own.
We’ve passed the “tipping point” on being “vital”
” If Paul Allen, Larry Page, Eric E. Schmidt, Ram Shriram, Charles Simony, Ross Perot, Jr., Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Robert Bigelow want to privatize spaceflight,…”
Paul Allen can’t do much of anything anymore… he’s dead.
See for example:
https://youtu.be/3at_Ev2kOoI
Let is know if there is any change in his condition. 😉
Andrew
I understand he voted in the mid-term elections. Eight times.
It’s a Seattle thing…..
Edited to reflect the facts that 1)the list was quoted from the Wikipedia link and 2)that Paul Allen shouldn’t have been on a list of people who currently want to privatize spaceflight
Paul Allen can’t do much of anything anymore… he’s dead.
Don’t worry, he can still vote for democrat candidates every election.
More than once, if the spirit moves him.
And he can take an eternity doing so.
He doesn’t have a ghost of a chance of voting conservative….
The activity of decomposition is tremendous.
We used to call conventions boondoggles.
Hmm…let’s not be too hasty in determining that scientists are not vital. True they are not vital if you do not want any further progress in understanding things. The time scales of their work do not fit into the 24 hr news cycle and the “what-have-you done-for-me-today” myopic public view. I however, like to set my horizons a bit farther.
Such progress has afforded us all the nice things we have and with such we can coast along just fine. Its simply that NO FURTHER progress will be made or it will be made at a much more torpid pace.
You do realize that there are scientists outside of non-essential employees of the federal gov’t, right?
I’d be willing to bet that the author of the Wired article probably thinks that the only vital scientists work for the government and/or academia.
The only vital scientists to Wired are those that mindlessly spew socialist party dogma and advance their propaganda narrative.
I never suggested that “scientists” in general weren’t vital… Just that “government scientists” were nonessential government employees and that the partial shutdown of the government does not demonstrate that government scientists are vital.
David Middleton,
From above:
First, happy birthday to me. Hopefully, if 95 percent of NASA employees are not essential, I hope Gavin is one of them (he doesn’t do any Space Station work, does he)?
Hmm…let’s not be too hasty in determining that scientists are not vital
You are attacking a strawman. No one claimed “scientists are not vital.” (full stop). what is being said is that they are not “vital” government employees. They are mostly non-essential personal as far as government work goes. And government scientists are not the old scientists in the world. And most real progress takes place outside of the insular halls of government.
“not the old” should read “not the only”.
It is the only way they can argue i.e. attack. When you pose salient observations they segue to bogus strawmen and proceed to knock them down hoping that the public school graduates will be dazzled by their “brilliance” and won’t notice that they changed the subject.
We could probably cut academic and government scientists (really the same thing since academics mostly get government grants) by 2/3 and I doubt anyone would notice.
Teaching and research assistants would notice… Oh wait, they wouldn’t notice… They already do all of the work.
If they’re that vital, someone will pay them to do the vital work.
Reality is, most scientists are a long way from vital, and many are being paid not to progress society but to destroy it.
Everything Eisenhower warned about in his Farewell Address has come to pass.
“the key takeaway is that the “privatization” of spaceflight is still mostly a buzzword. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab
Rocket Lab NZ is well on the way with NASA contracts
Let me know when I can buy stock in NASA, will you?
(Actually, when I can short them from the IPO – that would be about the only way to make a profit…)
Well, I was waiting for an explanation of what happened to the El Nino.
The Russians…
Yah, but… you didn’t need a government scientist to tell you that.
There are only a few things you need to know in life:
1. Shinola
2. CO2
3. Russians
4. Orange man bad
5. 42
Write those down, preferably in stone. I’ll have 5 more later.
Now if you’ll excuse me I have to return to my cave high up in the mountains.
I like to follow the winter ice on the Great Lakes.
I guess it is not really that important:
https://governmentshutdown.noaa.gov/?lake=l&ext=ice&type=N&hr=00
Try this site
https://iceweb1.cis.ec.gc.ca/Prod/page2.xhtml?CanID=11080&lang=en&title=Great+Lakes
Be careful with Jeff’s website suggestion …. those are the metric great lakes and not the imperial great lakes 😉
It comes and goes…
@ur momisugly Steven Fraser,
Yep, you might even say ” what goes around, comes around.”
I’m of the humble opinion that the government can just STAY shut down for the entirety of 2019.
and beyond.
This may give government funded scientists some time for thinking.
“Contest models highlight inherent inefficiencies of scientific funding competitions”
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000065
“ As a result, much of the scientific impact of the funding program is squandered. ….Note that while an investigator will never enter a grant competition against her own self interest, there is no guarantee that the scientific value per funded proposal will exceed the scientific waste ….. Unfortunately, empirical comparisons between the efficiencies of funding competitions versus partial lotteries do not yet exist, to the best of our knowledge”
A Partial Lottery proposal, still models, lots of assumptions, suggest they still don’t know the complete problem, administrators need education to value education, and still the contest fallacy, but maybe a step forward.
Government shutdown demonstrates how vital gubmint science leeche’s jobs are to them. I bet half of them could be fired, and no one would notice a difference.
“but without NASA personnel to oversee testing, that liftoff will be delayed.”
In other words it’s a union shop and the govies stand around while SpaceX personal do the actually work.
Hmmm. How does one “oversee” the testing?
I think you’ve got it in one. They need the NASA personnel to open the front gates and shoo the birds, else nothing gets done.
They need someone to check that the pile of paperwork is taller than the rocket, then they can launch it.
Hake sustainability assessor Ian Taylor should enjoy the time with his 4 mo. old daughter. It is too precious to squander.
The hake fishermen will do just fine without him. Really.
And if the Missus gets cranky, he should just go fishin’ himself, sans gov’t. subsidy. Really.
The Washington D.C. charade is all too predictable.
All the posturing, all the seemingly serious words: “His fault, not mine.”
At least there’s the comic relief of American Gothic and the Game of THR⌽NES banners.
It’s a proverbial Mexican Standoff, first one to blink loses.
“first one to blink loses” Pelosi’s ACE in the hole.
Just to point out the obvious… To all those furloughed government employees, there are jobs out there in the private sector.
Last month they were saying unemployment was at an all time low…more jobs were created, etc
….somehow they will spin this into unemployment at a all time high
wait for it…….
Is it a “vital” government job to spin the unemployment numbers?
Or are we just going to run to ADP for employment number proxies?
ScienceABC123
American climate scientists were offered jobs in France by President Macron.
Isn’t that good enough for them?
I read tonight that the yellow vests are now going to target french banksters
good luck with that!
“…Or, maybe the US government should privatize NASA’s space operations…”
I’ve been thinking along those same lines during this partial shutdown. If it is conceivably possible for the private sector to do what NASA does, then govt should just contract with the private space organizations to do what NASA does now.
I also don’t see why the National Park system cannot be privatized. If turned over to the private sector, the contract or sales agreement must specify that the parks will be operated as parks forever (no development) in the private sector and must always be open and available to everyone in the public.
The Postal Service is still operating (at least I am still getting my mail), but it could be privatized too. Also, maybe the National Weather Service. Threats of severe weather could still be automatically dispensed to the public under federal law with a privatized NWS.
Those who are enamored with Big Government will probably howl at the notion of all this privatization. But at times like this with dysfunctional govt, it starts to make sense.
National Parks ARE developed. There are facilities, sometimes quite extensive. Think Yellowstone.
No ADDITIONAL development.
Well, the National Parks could be turned over to the States they are in…
Just farm the work out to Brazilian agencies. Their staffs comment on how much they get done with one tenth the budget of their U.S. counterpart.
Some 20 years ago, Vancouver’s bus drivers went on strike.
For a week or so.
Everyone got to work and the traffic flowed better.
Sigh,
🙂
I remembe,r traffic flow on Broadway was awesome.
I’m sure Elon’s crews would be happy to launch the Falcon for the Crew Dragon demonstration in a week if NASA simply got out of the way. They will have recordings of telemetry and video for later analysis by NASA if/when they go back to work. Heck they can follow it in real time on the SpaceX feed. NASA is the customer here though and the customer is always right.
BTW the pads are actually rented by SpaceX, not given for free even though they weren’t doing much of anything and SpaceX spent real money refurbishing and modifying them.
The USAF runs range safety for both Vandenberg and Cape launches. And the FAA keeps the airspace clear. Both are funded. The launch critical aspects could proceed without NASA. But that would show how much of NASA is just a self-licking ice cream cone (that is, it exists for its own benefit).
The thought of Gavin and his fellow travelers at GISS on furlough has me all choked up… with tears of joy.
The climate scam is on hold, awaiting more tax dollars. Fitting.
It’s pretty damning that so many government websites are apparently run manually, so that they have to shut down when their handlers go home for a few days.
“Yeah, we have to turn the website off, even if the server hosting the site is still running a site with a ‘this site is turned off’ message.”
Actually, the sites shut down to prevent access to online government services. Even though the websites are simple and cost a few dollars a day to run, the services they link out to can cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars a day.
I’m loving the shutdown as much as anyone else here but having written software for the government and having seen how much money can be spent in a single 24-hour period to keep their digital services up… well, it’s staggering.
That said, it is quite stupid that many of them spent more money just to put up a “Closed until further notice” sign.
It has been said that the government scientists at the PFRA helped prevent Saskatchewan from becoming a desert. Men Against the Desert
That was before the environmentalists got stupid.
“753 EPA workers?”
That still sounds like too many.
Oh no! It’s worse than you think!
Here’s the list …
Many routers have failed overnight!
The price of lima beans set to fall by 3%!
A wheat crop somewhere failed!
Another foreign war might be declared!
Oil runs out! (of the can)
The economy normalizes!
Some flights are delayed!
Nationally this morning at least one hundred different vehicles failed to start first time!
Agghhh! Where are the government scientists ?
/sarc-off
So government employees, get the message all of the items listed above are more important than you who are the servant to the people.
test only
Test 2.