Bay Area Cat wrote:If that post was directed my way in full or part .... vetoing a bill passed by both houses of Congress to fund this kind of research certainly qualifies as "suppressing" that research, regardless of one's partisanship or lack thereof.
California is funding it (voters passed a $3B bond funding measure) ... I can't tell from your post if you already know that or not.
1) My post wasn't directed at any individual, but if you feel like your personal feeling of dislike against George Bush doesn't allow you to fairly evaluate his actions based on logic and rational thinking perhaps you might want to check your emotions.
2) If failure to fund means suppressing research than by definition the federal government will always be repressing research, because the government is unable to provide unlimited funding. Currently the Federal Government provides $30 million per year in funding for hESC research - this bill was about increasing funding, not starting funding. Fundamentally I disagree with the basis of your statements that there is automatically repression if the government doesn't fund something - it is like the artist arguing that he is being censored if the government doesn't fund his art - it implies that the government has an obligation to fund everything, and in fact you need the federal governments permission and funding to do anything, and if the government doesn't provide it the government is preventing it.
3) I am somewhat familiar with proposition 71 - my understanding is that over 10 years it will cost cost California taxpayers $6 billion to provide $3billion in funding for research. Some of this $3 billion will fund a bureaucracy to oversee the funding and make sure it complies with the law, but I don't know how much goes to the direct funding and how much to actual grants, though. Of course the grant recipient will also use some of the money to cover overhead and administration that can run anywhere between 25% for a cost sharing University to 75% or higher for a private lab. Probably a good estimate is that of the $6billion taxpayers will spend, $1.5 billion will actually go to the direct costs of research, or $150 million per year, which is still a good chunk of change, and far more than would have been provided even under the funding promised by Kerry. Still to be determined (in the courts I'm sure) is who will get the royalties and profits from whatever becomes of the research, so there is potential for offsetting some of the taxpayers costs, although more any revenues would go towards increasing research, not decreasing taxpayer funding.
My understanding is that since the law was passed by 57% of California voters in 2004 about $12million has been given in grants. By the way my understanding is that backers of the bill gave $30 million to get it passed - to bad this money couldn't have been donated directly to the research and the bill pass on its' own merits - opponents spent $400k.
