Vote NO for poisons and censorship!

Some in this town have gotten a political mean streak and passed it on to their kids. Kids, or another immature group, have been roaming the town late nights and early mornings stealing political signs and in darkness ringing doorbells of people who might be signaling that they are open minded. Pella is poisoned with such bigotry.

I can’t understand why people here are so afraid and define themselves by opposition to others.  Maybe they hate something inside themselves. How deep does the censorship urge go in these people? Do they want scientists to be censored? The real fear of many scientists is yes, they do. 

I’m proudly displaying signs and I’m here to confess to one more reason I’m a Democrat—science policy. I admit, science policy isn’t going to sway the vote of a low information voter. But do you think even those voters want to pave the ways for cures and sharing of information that could lead to those cures? Who should own these cures? Will they be only for the rich? Might they be curious about new sources of energy? Do they want protection from toxins and a healthy life? Do they use weather forecasting and knowledge about weather and climate to keep safe or at least comfortable? Do they want to invest in basic science? Science can bring security to our lives, security that could be tossed out with the wrong president or party in charge. 

In general, Republicans don’t like science or take advice from scientists. Remember when Trump said COVID would go away and Iowa Governor took advice from Moms about masks—even saying that people should be able to make their own healthcare decisions. As Christina Bohannan pointed out, Iowa’s policy will make it harder to keep people safe should another pandemic arise.  Even before this, Republican presidents rejected even fundamental science such as evolution in favor of weapons of war, some of which couldn’t even be made. 

Why should government be involved in science? The government has long led the way in innovations, especially in computers and the life sciences. Every new drug since 2010 has started off with tax-payer funded basic research. Basic research is the study of a phenomenon or set of observable facts to understand them without a product in mind. Funding for basic research can come from the government, academia, or business. The federal government provides funding for about 40% of basic research, much of it health related. One thing that is good about government funded research is that it is shared with the public. Accessibility to scientific findings funded by the government was implemented during the Obama years. Biden has kept that legacy alive. This means that important discoveries won’t be made secret from the public and all of us, especially other scientists, can benefit and move things forward. As Isaac Newton said, science stands on the should of giants. 

Private funding of discoveries has a few downsides. For one thing, private organizations often have CEOs making huge salaries and sometimes these people can be huge jerks. Privatized research often has less oversight and has the potential to harm human and animal subjects. It doesn’t have to share research results and thus, hoards information that can be valuable to everyone. We could even see scientific advances being made available to a select few. Think about the harassment people get in Pella simply for having a sign! 

Although it often depends on Congress, basic science could be highly disrupted by Trump’s rearrangement of federal offices. You may be familiar with the principle CEOs use when they have to look like they are doing something—reorganization. Trump has said this is something he would do and institutions such as the Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation could face disruptions. He’s tried this before. The only silver lining is that he failed at his reorganization attempt, just as many of these strategies fail in the long run. Sadly, he appointed many unqualified people to science positions, prompting Scientific American to endorse Harris.

Scientific freedom is another consideration when deciding which party to vote for. Remember when George Busch stopped stem cell research and set back cures for things like cancer and Parkinson’s disease? Here in Iowa, we have had a requirement to teach about HPV and vaccines for it removed from the public school curriculum, a furthering of dumbing down science literacy. Why this happened, nobody is saying.  But let’s be real—Protect My Innocence is probably hiding under your bed on this one. 

Trump has already done things that alarmed scientists such as altering a FEMA Hurricane map. In fact, he has interfered with science based decision making over 200 times. (As a comparison, Biden has done this two times.)

In stark contrast, Biden-Harris has moved to regulate and eliminate toxic substances such as endocrine disruptors from our lives while Trump issued an executive order that for every new regulation, two regulations had to be eliminated. Biden-Harris made limits and laws against toxic substances a priority. They even have worked to limit polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS. (Read here) Meanwhile, Trumps speaks highly of asbestos.  

 There are more comparisons and you can find them here, where I got much of my information. For further analysis, click here.

It’s sad that some in Pella are prompted to engage in censorship. Just remember, according to this book if you aren’t a Puritan, you are the enemy within. But Puritans respected science, so under Republicans, things have gotten much worse. Now even scientists are the enemy within. We saw how things went when a pandemic was downplayed. Let’s not do it again.  Vote NO for poisons and censorship

And by the way, putting American flags on a sign might make it harder to steal.