If this continues, we might end up with a bunch of American scientists in Europe and Japan, the way that the reverse has been true for the last 40 years or so.

You call yourself a liberal. What does
that mean? Does it mean that you're
as liberal as these guys. Believe you
me, the focus from DC is not conservatism.
There's a helluva lot of money getting
thrown around.

Its just getting thrown into the hands of
corporations. 78% of americas tax burden
on my back, and if it breaks, no medicine.

scientists are running from both sides
of this stupid debate. evangelical liberals
who want to tell you that a little tadpole
isn't alive (it is) and evangelical liberals
that want to tell you its a living being (its not).

Here's a simple acid test: take every good
idea in the past three years. now look
at the coverage. which ones could have
sold more advertising? There you go.

Now, which issues are still thorny. Hey -
looky there - the ones that don't sell
advertising. Now, how did that happen?

Science is not important to
certain lobbying elements of
the advertising industry. Watch how, just
before a story breaks, you've got the
people who know what ads are going to be
run - doing politics.

Hint: those people are not your friend.

I would add to that "nor should they be funded by the public sector."

Not all research is federally funded, but federally funded research has created limitless weapons against humanity throughout the years.

Why is this such a big issue, or is it?

Also, re Classical Liberal, much of the basic and initial applied medical research in this country is federally funded.  Without federal research, we wouldn't have many of the vaccines and cures that we have today. Not everyone who works for the government screws things up.

I truly believe that the Republican coalition is made up of the 1% of the population that benefits from their policies and the 49% of the population that is of below average intelligence. Increasing the percentage of stupid people would only help them win elections.

  For generations, all Americans pragmatically supported advances in science and technology, recognizing that our economic prosperity arose substantially from being a (perhaps THE) world leader in science and gadgetry.

Like many wealthy countries in history, we take our prosperity for granted, and many nitwits in this country actually think our wealth has been miraculously granted through Providence or "God's grace".  Competition in scientific technology/advance is fierce, and we were already starting to lose the race, with many developing countries starting to turn out more engineers, scientists than increasingly complacent, slack brained America.

The Bush Republicans' decision to lame us in the biomedical industry (which we created!) is emblematic of our new creed: ideology trumps pragmatism.  Like the Spanish Empire, such a choice dooms us to economic defeat and political disaster.