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One of the reasons I’m not a huge fan of having the government do things is that the government is incredibly wasteful. Sure, many of the stories of wasteful spending lack nuance, but there are plenty of others that aren’t lacking anything except for sanity leading to those decisions being made.
What’s more, when an administration gets into power, its priorities can change how things are done, particularly with regard to where the money goes. Congress gives far too much leeway to the executive branch, after all.
But while I’m not a fan of the government doing any spending not expressly listed in the Constitution, a lot of people disagree.
Yet we should all be able to agree that this is nonsense.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the federal government established in 1950. Its original mission was to promote the advancement of science and engineering through funding and support for research and education.
Nowhere in that mission statement do the words diversity, equity, or inclusion (DEI) appear. The NSF was intended to promote and support ground-breaking research and development that would help this nation (and perhaps all mankind as well). It was not intended to be a social welfare agency.
But in the Biden Administration’s push to foist DEI on this nation, a staggering amount of money has gone to promote this racialist travesty. The pace of funding distribution has increased exponentially: In 2021, only 0.29% of NSF grants funded DEI projects; by 2024, this increased to 27% of grants.
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Rather than spending the money on projects related to real science, here are some examples of what Team Biden diverted it to:
Examining “sex/gender narratives” in undergraduate biology ($569,851)
Identifying “systemic racism” in mathematics teacher education ($644,642)
Transforming engineering classrooms towards “racial equity” ($323,684)
And more than a quarter of all that funding went toward this BS.
Now, Trump is returning to office and one would imagine he’d put an end to stuff like this, but for how long?
The problem here is that while Trump might fix things during his time in office, he’s out after four years. While Trump has joked about people amending the Constitution so he can run for a third term, the reality is that it just isn’t going to happen.
That means that in 2028, he’ll be on his way out. We can’t know who will follow him into the Oval Office, either. Will it be JD Vance or will it be someone else entirely? We not only don’t know but can’t know.
That means the mechanisms that allowed this to happen will remain in place, more or less, unless some kind of action is taken.
What I mean is that we need to legislatively put the kibosh on this kind of nonsense.
None of what was proposed would advance science. They were all social studies projects designed not to see if something was a problem but to figure out ways they could say what they were looking for existed. It was predetermined these things were a problem, they just needed research to “prove” it. They weren’t looking for truth, just a pretext.
That’s not science.
But the truth of the matter is that while I get why some stuff is left to the discretion of the executive branch, the executive branch cannot and should not be trusted with that discretion.
Let’s be real, though. This isn’t overly unusual. We know how priorities change as we get new presidents in. What was a pressing issue under one is a non-issue under another. Either way, we the people aren’t really getting much of a say in the matter.
If Trump wants to leave a lasting legacy, this is an area he could do it.
As it stands, Republicans have control of the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. If they can’t get something like this done, it’s because they don’t want to.
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Politics, culture, a dose of snark, and a profound love of personal and economic freedom.