Change? What change?

After 911 President Bush was accused loudly and often of using the tragedy as a means to forward his political agendas. I would like to say that President Obama (agree or disagree with the man, the office deserves respect) is living up to his promise to bring change to politics, but he and his administration are continuing the tradition started long before the Bush administration - the biggest differences between when Bush did it after 911 and Obama doing it now is, President Obama is openly admitting it, and no one is screaming foul the they did when Bush was doing it. In fact using a bad situation to further political ends appears to be not just A tactic, but THE tactic of this administration.

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” Mr. Emanuel said in an interview on Sunday. “They are opportunities to do big things.” This from the NY Times.

Speaking to young Europeans on March 6th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "Never waste a good crisis."

In his radio broadcast the same day, President Obama said (more wordily) with great crisis comes great opportunity.

These statements set the stage for the Obama administrations economic restructuring of the U.S. And no time is being wasted to set that restructuring in motion. In his podcast of March 7th, President Obama briefly discussed his desire for healthcare reform, and it's importance to the economic recovery of the U.S. The problem is, healthcare reform is not important to our economic recovery. Our current economic situation is directly due to bad practices in the financial sector. The healthcare industry has little or nothing to do with it. In fact, nationalizing healthcare will require increased government spending and increased taxes. Both practices put a damper on investment, research, and economic growth. In the same speech quoted earlier, Hillary Clinton sees this as a time to force industry to reduce greenhouse gases. At a time when the U.S. and world economy is reeling, the billions of dollars needed to do this will not be easy to find, if they can be found at all.

It becomes obvious that the Obama administration is not trying to devise an economic recovery, but to force social change, regardless of the effect on the economy. In fact, a large part of the plan seems to be to remove money and freedom from the taxpayer and use it to give the government as much control over both industry and individuals as can be managed while appearing to most that the idea is to return things to the way they were, but without the risk of another economic disaster.

The most frustrating thing is that the American people could put a stop to this, if they were paying attention, but they're not. Being people, the majority just want to live their lives with as little muss and fuss as possible. If they bother to vote, they vote for someone who sounds like he will keep things going, and then ignore him until the next election. Come on people, you have the power, USE IT!

Wow, I'm right

I haven't been posting it here, but I've been saying since November that bailing out the banks, then GM and Chrysler, is a bad idea. It escalates the national debt and props up businesses who have shown an inability to adjust to changing conditions and manage their resources. Now a nationally recognized economist has said the same thing. The best thing government can do in bad economic times (or any economic times, really) is get out of the way and let the free market take care of itself. Let businesses fail. Face it, GM isn't going to close it's doors. It will go through debt reorganization and hopefully come out leaner and more competitive. But with Uncle Sam Barack Obama and company pumping $30,000,000,000 into GM's coffers every few months to keep it from going under, is it any wonder there is no real effort to decrease expenses in an economically sensible fashion.

It should be obvious that propping up businesses whose problems arise from bad business practices is, believe it or not, bad business. Banks who give loans to people who can't afford them should face the consequences of their bad decisions. And saying that everyone deserves their shot at the American Dream is not a justification. We seem to have forgotten that the American dream has two parts, the first part being that if you work hard and use your money wisely, saving, investing, and being frugal, you can get the second part: a home, a car (or two) and 2.5 (or is it 1.5 now?) kids. In other words, you work hard to be able to buy the American Dream. If you can't afford the home you want, you save more, or find a home you can afford.

Two years ago my wife and I were looking for a new home. Our family had grown, and we needed a larger home. We were offered some truly wondrous ARM's and those fun loans that allow you to pay only the interest for the first 5 or 7 years, then hit you with payments that are 4 or 5 times what you were paying. If they couldn't guarantee I would be making enough to make those payments by that time, I wasn't going to get a loan that would require I make them. If the mortgage company was going to be so irresponsible as to give me a loan that was much higher than I could afford, it was my job to say "forget it" and look for a loan I could afford. But the bank should never even have made the offer.

Twelve years ago my wife and I bought our first home. And we almost didn't get it. We knew we could afford the payments for the home we wanted, but according to the formulas the bank used, we couldn't. We did eventually get a loan, but it was nerve-wracking. And it should have been. Today we have a financial meltdown with banks closing and loan defaults at epidemic levels because it has been too easy to get loans. It shouldn't have happened.

Granted, this is not just a problem caused by the banking industry. Bush was anything but fiscally conservative. He ran the deficit up to record level, which is detrimental to the health of the economy. It would have been nice if Obama would have turned around the spending policies of Bush, but he has taken the ball and is running with it. The world may not come to an end in 2012, but if we keep trying to spend our way out of this economic crisis, the world economy might.

Fetal stemcell research now ok (sort of)

Obama is going to ease restrictions on fetal stemcell research...well, lets be honest. He's going to ease restrictions on government funded fetal stemcell research. The truth is, stemcell research has not really been hampered by lack of government funding. To quote the USA today story linked to in the title:

Work didn't stop. Indeed, it advanced enough that this summer, the private Geron Corp. will begin the world's first study of a treatment using human embryonic stem cells, in people who recently suffered a spinal cord injury.

So why, in these troubled economic times, when everyone is looking at ways to save money, is Obama opening up the federal coffers to researchers who have little need of the additional funding? And that ignores another branch of stemcell research, one that is far ahead of fetal stemcell research, at least in some areas: adult stemcell research.


Osiris Therapeutics, a seventeen year old company who has long been in the forefront of adult stemcell research, sees no reason to change direction with the change federal opinion. They have several therapies currently in clinical trial using adult stemcells, and may even have one FDA approved before all the details of how federal money would be allocated for fetal stemcell research are ironed out.

It's been several years since I read that evidence showed adult stemcells could be used to form cell types other than the types in the organ they came from - that is the only major advantage of fetal stemcells, they can become any cell type in the body. So if adult stemcells can also become any type of cell in the body, why are we wasting money on a highly controversial and unnecessary technology?

If you want to learn a little more about the issue of fetal stemcells and adult stemcells a good brief look at it can be found at the governments own stemcell info site Stem Cell Information