The marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco has long urged scientists to abandon the habitual reticence of the research community and spend more time engaging the public and public officials about scientific and technical issues.

Now Dr. Lubchenco, a professor atOregon State University, is following her own advice all the way to Washington to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the government’s premier science agencies.

This is only the latest step in a long career of practicing what she preached. In 1997, as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Lubchenco called for “a new social contract” for science, aimed at helping policy makers take steps to sustain the biosphere.

A radical idea is flooding through the American political discourse: that the only way to “repair” government budgets is to make extreme cuts to spending on social services, like education, healthcare, parks, infrastructure and public safety. The fact is: any public official who argues there is no option besides slashing spending on quality government programs is not creative enough and cannot be said to be fully equipped to govern.

Polls now show between 80% and 90% of Americans want “cuts” only to areas of spending that are legitimately wasteful, fraudulent or abusive. Only 11% support education cuts, for instance. There is no support for cutting Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security benefits, only waste, fraud and abuse. Officials who have promised budget-busting tax cuts in order to curry favor with voters and financial backers are not serious about fiscal solvency.

(Source: independentsofprinciple.com)

The nationally syndicated writer Neal Peirce has a great column out this week on the nation’s infrastructure woes.  It basically confirms what we all have thought as we drive over ridiculously broken roads, try to crowd into too-few buses or subway cars, or read horrifying stories about a bridge collapsing, not to mention the tragic levee failures in Louisiana. 

Peirce quotes Pennsylvania governor Rendell as reporting that “in 1960, 11.2 percent of federal non-defense spending went for infrastructure; today it’s 3.5 percent. In 1987, America spent 1.17 percent of its gross domestic product on infrastructure; most recently it’s .057 percent.” 

(Source: nrdc.org)