Protect life-destroying research at all costs
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
But that’s the scenario in California, as Wesley Smith explains it.
During the campaign over Proposition 71, I warned that even if the Golden Gate Bridge fell into the ocean and an earthquake devastated Los Angeles, “the scientists” would be constitutionally entitled to $300 million of borrowed taxpayers’ money each year.
The media was so caught up in “thwarting Bush,” it never reported these kinds of problems until after the election. But what else is new?
Well, that kind of a crisis has hit California, metaphorically speaking.
Governor Schwarzenegger has been in the news declaring a fiscal emergency in the state. But you won’t find this story in mainstream media reporting.
For what it’s worth, Wesley found it in one paper in the state. Take a look at that editorial. It’s a ‘whats wrong with this picture?’ snapshot of cronyism, greed and corruption that mirrors the larger financial crisis nationwide.
From the editorial:
On Thursday, the Little Hoover Commission held its first hearing into the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the quasipublic agency financed with $3 billion in bonds that voters approved in 2004. The hearing revealed, once again, that this institute’s 29-member governing board is rife with potential conflicts; that it is overly large and unwieldy; and that it awards multimillion-dollar grants in a manner that favors secrecy over accountability.
The most striking testimony came from Kenneth Taymor, executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy. Taymor, who has been watching the institute’s operations for three years, noted that nearly everyone on the institute’s governing board–medical school deans, university officials–has some sort of financial interest in the grants being awarded. Even with officials recusing themselves, the board’s deliberations, he said, have the feel of “a club that was allocating money among themselves” based on preordained decisions.
As Wesley points out…
…this is what happens when rich men are allowed to buy laws.
And voters are easily deceived.
