US Research Open Access In Peril 237
luceth writes "Several years ago, the U.S. National Institutes of Health instituted a policy whereby publications whose research was supported by federal funds were to be made freely accessible a year after publication. The rationale was that the public paid for the research in the first place. This policy is now threatened by legislation introduced by, you guessed it, a Congresswoman who is the largest recipient of campaign contributions from the scientific publishing industry. The full text of the bill, H.R. 3699, is available online."
dufus decisions (Score:5, Insightful)
Congresspeople doing favors for donors (Score:5, Insightful)
Color me shocked.
This will never change until lobbying and donations on a corporate scale are either severely limited or outright made illegal and enforced with harsh punishment. However, since it would be Congress that would need to change those laws, it's never going to happen.
Who watches the watchers, fox guard the henhouse, etc.
Why are bribes even legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, this should be good.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Congresspeople doing favors for donors (Score:5, Insightful)
This will never change until lobbying and donations on a corporate scale are either severely limited or outright made illegal and enforced with harsh punishment.
Thank all the gods that the Supreme Court figured out that campaign contributions don't "necessarily" buy politicians. Otherwise we might be tempted to jump to an uncharitable conclusion, in cases like this.
Re:The feds can't mandate openness, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Name and party affiliation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:dufus decisions (Score:4, Insightful)
While many bitch that Obama is a socialist/marxist (even though nobody in this country can describe what these are) it seems these people are hell bent on creating a Soviet Russia of sorts.
Rather than trying to comprehensively define subjective and inherently nebulous terms, I prefer to keep it simple. Obama is a statist.
Unlike myself or the Founding Fathers, he does not view government as a necessary evil that's only a little better than having no government, nor does he view it as a deserving object of mistrust. He doesn't want legitimate matters of governance to be handled by the smallest and most local level of government that is able to manage them. He likes centralization for its own sake and accepts the regimentation that comes with it. He subscribes to the belief that people should be commanded and controlled rather than reasoned with, that they should not only tolerate this but also welcome it.
He may claim to be a Christian, a few may believe he is actually a Muslim, but his true religion is Statism. A lust for power is part of this religion, but only part. It's not quite that simple. It also involves a genuinely-held belief that people are unable to manage their own affairs, that they need and should desire for their "betters" to decide what is good for them and what should be important to them, that only the collective matters, that individual life and individual thought and individual liberty are meaningless. It's a form of dehumanization in favor of institutionalization.
If you understand what this really is, then you see why baser things like greed or desire for power are naive oversimplifications. Believe it or not, these people are not stupid. They know their policies cause more problems than they solve. They are not merely ignorant or misguided. People like Obama and most of Congress believe they are working towards some kind of greater good, that the damage they knowingly do to society will somehow be worth it when their utopia (really a dystopia) is finalized. The label "Marxist" is a feeble attempt to describe this quality.
Other than a few rare exceptions, this does not merely describe Obama. It also describes nearly anyone capable of acquiring the funding and the political backing it takes to win a federal election. It's sort of like an elite club and anyone who would seriously change things or otherwise rock the boat isn't invited. During the history of this nation, what we have changed from the statesman to the politician to the career politician to the ruling class with an extremely high incumbency rate. Average Joes don't stand a chance of winning a federal election. Candidates don't emerge; they are groomed.
Like they said on Monty Python's Life of Brian, "blessed are those with a vested interest in the status quo."
Re:Why are bribes even legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are bribes even legal?
Because the people accepting the bribes are the people deciding what is and is not legal.
Re:dufus decisions (Score:5, Insightful)
I might agree with that. The problem would then be that we've dropped the moderation.
Re:Name and party affiliation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tell your congress critter - POPVOX (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Congresspeople doing favors for donors (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:dufus decisions (Score:4, Insightful)
You've asserted an interesting collection of terrible motives to the president with no supporting evidence. But, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and now we know yours.
Re:dufus decisions (Score:1, Insightful)
Rather than trying to comprehensively define subjective and inherently nebulous terms, I prefer to keep it simple. The parent poster, Causality, is a child rapist.
Blah blah blah, baseless statements about his beliefs, blah blah, eloquent but unsupported assertions about his goals, yadda yadda, claim that anyone who really knows what's what would realize this, blah blah, end with with a Monty Python quote for bonus karma.
Why don't you just repost that article from a while back that asserted, with the same lack of supporting evidence, that Obama is following the mentality of a Kenyan tribesman?
Or, if you'd prefer to actually add to the discussion, come up with something, anything to support the assertion that Obama is knowingly causing harm with the end goal of a state-run utopia. His opposition to single payer health care, among many, many other things, seems to fly in the face of this.
Re:dufus decisions (Score:4, Insightful)
Times change. Before telecommunications/airplanes breaking things down to the lowest level made sense on an efficiency grounds: a large amount of resources had to be spent to move things around/get decisions from the central government to Nevada by buggy. That isn't the problem anymore. I'm not saying central govenment is always efficient but it can be. Some things make sense on a country wide basis: education standards, labor law, criminal law etc. People have a fundamental right to these services/consistency of expectations of what they can and can't do and they shouldn't be different from one area to another because the local county voted on spending the money on a new water fountain in front of town hall or the mayor happens to be religion X and is opposed to evolution on personal grounds so says that the vast majority of scientists opinions shouldn't be heard in science class.
Re:dufus decisions (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the country supposed to remain exactly the same even if a large part of the population no longer agrees with a 55 guys that have been dead for nearly 200 years and chief complaint was the accessibility of horse and buggy parking in front of the local dry goods store?
What is this kind of asinine hyperbole supposed to signify? Oh, that we're backwards because our Constitution is outdated and doesn't recognize your right to health care, filet mignot, and a new smart phone every year? Since you seem to have forgotten what the grievances were that prompted people to go to war to oust their leaders from power, I'll remind you:
Re:dufus decisions (Score:1, Insightful)
He may claim to be a Christian, a few may believe he is actually a Muslim, but his true religion is Statism. A lust for power is part of this religion, but only part. It's not quite that simple. It also involves a genuinely-held belief that people are unable to manage their own affairs, that they need and should desire for their "betters" to decide what is good for them and what should be important to them, that only the collective matters, that individual life and individual thought and individual liberty are meaningless. It's a form of dehumanization in favor of institutionalization.
OK, now you are just parroting Rush Limbaugh, and every other right-wing conspiracy theorist out there. You apparently know the president really fucking well, don't you? Seriously, that's the best criticism you can offer us? You don't realize Obama has given your right-wing congress everything they have ever wanted and more? You don't realize he is as right wing as you are? Jesus fucking christ, you are a demagogue -- your religion may be American conservativism, but that doesn't mean everyone in America thinks of their politics as a religion the way you do, and that is probably true of the president as well.
If you understand what this really is, then you see why baser things like greed or desire for power are naive oversimplifications. Believe it or not, these people are not stupid. They know their policies cause more problems than they solve. They are not merely ignorant or misguided. People like Obama and most of Congress believe they are working towards some kind of greater good, that the damage they knowingly do to society will somehow be worth it when their utopia (really a dystopia) is finalized. The label "Marxist" is a feeble attempt to describe this quality.
I can sympathize with this point, but really, it is just another conspiracy theory. It's just stupid to think Obama is just some fascist emperor who is doing everything he can to attain power. That's just what Limbaugh and his ilk want you to believe. As if all of our problems are so fucking simple that it boils down to evil guys being in power, and that's the root of the probelm. That's bullshit and you ought to know better.
Other than a few rare exceptions, this does not merely describe Obama. It also describes nearly anyone capable of acquiring the funding and the political backing it takes to win a federal election. It's sort of like an elite club and anyone who would seriously change things or otherwise rock the boat isn't invited. During the history of this nation, what we have changed from the statesman to the politician to the career politician to the ruling class with an extremely high incumbency rate. Average Joes don't stand a chance of winning a federal election. Candidates don't emerge; they are groomed.
I agree with this 100%, but do you even agree with youreslf and what you are saying here? Would you apply this same logic to all the right-wing elitists you have ever voted for? Don't be naive, seriously, you have described here not just the majority of all democrats, but every Replublican candidate you have ever voted for. Why don't you vote for someone else for a change, like Ron Paul. Believe it or not, even the progressive Liberals are fighting on the right side of issues that you care about, just give them a chance. I really think you and I are not so terribly different, but I do think you are totally deluded. Stop listening to the right-wing propaganda machine and think for yourself.
Re:dufus decisions (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh god, where to begin.
Firstly, Marxism by itself is strictly a theoretical school, Marx used it to conclude things was fucked and to devise a solution which was the communist manifsto(the ideology).
The main point of communism was the absolution of the state, when workers could organize the manufacturing and distribution of goods without one group/actors gaining leverage over the other(the point of the classless society).
Amiable goal but the means to reach it the way Marxism foresaw was just plain wrong.
Same thing with Mussolinis pet economical theories, Italy never had what mussolini intended, what were suppose to be a bunch of autonomus syndicates with worker and business cooperation with the state as mediator turned into the backers from finance and industry community saying, "fuck that shit go smash some commies and bust up the unions".
Fascism's traits have never been defined by their economic theories, when they began as early movements they marked it as a third-way but was quickly abandoned once people supported them to fight the communists, having their own theories of social justice was a liability they got rid of.
Its just plain stupid to define fascism by focusing on a single quote from Mussolini, while ignoring the Irredentism and Nationalist identity and norms everyone had to comply to.
They were not liberal free markets, nor socialist planned economies, they were just a variation of mixed economies.
Which we have ALLWAYS had.