Is America Losing its Competitive Edge? A Presidential Debate on Science and America’s Future
“Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.”

At the time there was really no chance the candidates would actually debate but I am happy to see Barack Obama took the time to answer the fourteen questions submitted by the organization.

Washington (August 30, 2008) – Barack Obama today answered the 14 top science questions facing America, according to ScienceDebate2008.com, the group leading the effort to make key science issues a larger part of the election.

“Most of America’s major unsolved challenges revolve around these 14 questions.  To move America forward, the next president needs a substantive plan for tackling them going in, and voters deserve to know what that plan is,” said Shawn Otto, CEO of the initiative.  “We’re pleased that Senator Obama has provided voters with that substantive plan, and we’re hoping for similarly thoughtful responses from Senator McCain.”

Senator Obama’s full responses can be found here.

The top 14 questions address energy policy, national security, economics in a science-driven global economy, climate change, education, health care, ocean health, biosecurity, clean water, space, stem cells, scientific integrity, genetics, and research.

The 14 questions were developed from over 3,400 questions submitted by more than 38,000 signers of the ScienceDebate2008 initiative.  The questionnaire is a joint effort led by ScienceDebate2008, with Scientists and Engineers for America, AAAS, the National Academies, the Council on Competitiveness, and several other organizations, together representing over 125 million voters.

“Ensuring that the U.S. continues to lead the world in science and technology will be a central priority for my administration,” said Senator Obama.  “Our talent for innovation is still the envy of the world, but we face unprecedented challenges that demand new approaches.”

Recent national polls have shown that 85% of voters would like the see the candidates debate these challenges, and the majority of voters are much more likely to vote for a candidate that has a plan for tackling these issues.

“We are grateful for Senator Obama’s detailed responses and look forward to receiving the same from Senator McCain,” said Matthew Chapman, president of the initiative.  “After that we hope the candidates will want to discuss their differences.  Science Debate 2008 and its partners once again extend an invitation to both candidates to attend a televised debate or forum where these vital issues can be discussed in front of a broader audience.”

ScienceDebate2008.com is a citizens initiative started by six individuals whose signers now include nearly every major American science organization, the presidents of nearly every major American university, and dozens of Nobel laureates and top American CEOs.  For more information, to see a list of the signers, or to see the results of the national polls,  please visit http://www.sciencedebate2008.com

I answered there but decided to put my answer here as well since I took the time to think about it.  I know there are things I should have included and I may well add to the list but for now this is a good start.

I just want a leader who knows the difference between fact and opinion.

I want a leader who can give proper weighting to the opinions of scientists who have spent their adult lives working for the US government or for international research bodies to help understand the complex world around us when comparing their opinions with those scientists working for industry organizations funded by groups like the American Petroleum Institute.

I want a leader who – when confronted with complex foreign relations issues involving the US and other countries – realizes that ignoring those countries is not an option.

I want a leader who realizes deficit spending does actually matter.

I want a leader who understands that if we are going to gamble on the future by spending money we don’t have we should put that money towards things that will help the nation. Spending money on subsidies for wind and tidal and solar power is not morally or economically equivalent to spending money on the invasion and occupation of another country.

I want a leader that understands that the American people are grown-ups and can decide for themselves who to marry and that the government has no more moral authority in this matter now than it did back when interracial couples were denied the right to marry.

I want a leader who truly respects the fact that there are many people of faith in the USA and that there are many atheists as well and that the government can best serve both kinds of people by staying out of the religion business.

When did you get yours?

Earlier tonight in the BC Political Forums Mark posted a link to an article about an anti-Obama ad that American Issues Project, a nonprofit 501(c)4 organization, is running. Fox News refused to run the radical ad without saying specifically why they refused the $2.8 million dollar ad buy.

In the original article, the American Issues Project spokesman promised to identify the contributions used to pay for the ad. They did that today. It turns out that there was only one donor. You may have heard of the organization, Billionaires for Bush, and seen some of their oh so stylish rallies and events, but in this case, the anti-Obama ad is funded by a real Billionaire for Bush – Dallas billionaire Harrold Simmons, who made his first fortune in chain pharmacies and is now listed as the 73rd richest person in the world, with a net worth estimated by Forbes at $2.1 billion.

A quick check on OpenSecrets.org shows that the Simmons family has given $50,600 to the RNC and a variety of Republican candidates so far this year. It gets a little more interesting when you go back to last year during the Republican primary. The Simmons clan, including Harrold Simmons, his wife Annette, his brother Glenn and Glenn’s wife spread their money across all the main GOP primary contenders. Between February 21st and March 23rd of 2007 they gave $4,600 to Mitt Romney, $6,900 to Rudy Giuliani, and $9,200 to John McCain.

Harrold Simmons is also listed as a major fund raiser on the McCain website in the $50,000 – $100,000 range. Harrold Simmons also donated $100,000 to George W. Bush’s 2004 inaugural ball. Luckily he could afford easily. In 1997 Simmons made a $5 million investment in T. Boone Pickens, Jr. first fund BP Capital Energy Commodity Fund, by 2005 this had grown to $150 million.

Harrold Simmons has a long history of over-the-top campaign donation problems. About ten years ago, Mr. Simmons had to fend off a lawsuit brought by his own daughters. This brought to light techniques that Harrold Simmons used to get around the weaker campaign contribution limits in place back then.

Daughters Do Battle With a Corporate King Lear

… The daughters, one from each of his first two marriages, present themselves in court papers and in interviews as victims of a tyrannical father who set up their trusts solely to fend off creditors, tax collectors and ex-wives, and who now use their inheritance for contributions, some of them illegal, to Republican dinosaurs they would never go near.

As an example of what Andrea calls her father’s coerciveness, she said in an interview that he gave her $1,000 for each of at least 10 blank political donation forms she signed a few years ago. Mr. Simmons confirms this account, , while calling it not a quid pro quo, but fatherly affection. ”When she would sign forms for me,” he said, ”I would feel loving toward her and kind and I would give her extra money.”

Mr. Simmons was fined $19,800 by the Federal Election Commission in 1993 for breaking campaign donation limits, and already, disclosures demanded by the daughters have pushed him into another retreat. Each, he says, will receive $15,000 from his many political action committees to correct what he now says was a tactic that ran afoul of the $5,000 limit on individual contributions.

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NOTE: Harrold Simmons pathological hatred of taxes was tearing his family apart as shown in the info below.

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That almost all his wealth accumulated in his daughters’ trusts passed with little notice until about 1991, when the Internal Revenue Service began asking questions. Why were his homes, his jet, even the jewelry his wife wore, accounted for as corporate purchases or expenses? How could he say that all his holdings formed one huge tax-exempt trust when he treated them as properties he still owned, managed and enjoyed?

The I.R.S. wanted to tax the trust’s past and future payouts to his daughters at 73 percent, including estate and income taxes, he said. Mr. Simmons agreed to pay more than $600,000 to settle back taxes for five years, then hit on a novel strategy to preserve his tax advantages.

UNDER a recent Texas law, he split the trust evenly in two. He counted one as his contribution, the other as that of his former wife, Sandra, but remained the trustee in charge of both. Sandra’s trust could then still make payouts tax-free.

But he had solved only half his problem. The I.R.S. wanted to treat the Harrold trust as no trust at all, taxable upon his death at 55 percent. Paying the hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes would have forced a broader and ruinous liquidation of his investments, he said.

By early 1996, he and his advisers had a solution: dissolve the Harrold fund and put the proceeds in a charitable trust. He and his wife could enjoy the proceeds while they lived and then his children could parcel out the money after the parents died. But this plan required a court filing — a lawsuit, really — against his children and grandchildren, and then his children’s signed agreements.

New York Times: Daughters Do Battle With a Corporate King Lear

The lawsuit mentioned above was eventually settled with Simmons paying his daughters $50,000 each. In the news coverage of the lawsuit it came out that Simmons filed what he had hoped would be procedural, uncontested lawsuits against his daughters two years ago to dissolve one of his two trusts for tax purposes.

They said they had never known that virtually all his companies, his homes and his $18 million Falcon 2000 jet were owned by the trusts, and that his charitable and political contributions were made from the trusts. They demanded his removal as trustee, an event that Mr. Simmons said would cause the liquidation of his holdings and tax bills high enough to ruin him.

According to Newsweek, the RNC spent about three million dollars to air a thirty second TV spot in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The advertisement is (ironically) titled “Balance”.

The announcer speaks over a series of images and has this to say:

Announcer: “Record gas prices. A climate in crisis. John McCain says solve it now with a balanced plan: Alternative energy, conservation, suspending the gas tax, and more production here at home. He’s pushing his own party to face climate change. But Barack Obama? For conservation, but he just says no to lower gas taxes, no to nuclear, no to more production. No new solutions. Barack Obama: Just the party line. The Republican National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.”

The Newsweek story takes a little time to explore the misleading claim about Obama’s position on nuclear energy and goes on to point out that while Barack Obama does tend to vote with his party (97% in 2007), John McCain voted for President Bush’s position on Senate matters 95% of the time in 2007.

The people at FactCheck.org at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania go further and analyze the ad’s content line by line and claim by claim.

No to Lower Gas Taxes

Yes, its true that Obama, like many independent energy analysts, opposed the Memorial Day to Labor Day “Gas Tax Holiday” that McCain supports. Obama looked to the experts who pointed out that this “solution” would not do much to help American consumers in the near future and could quite likely create higher prices down the road as a result of the increased consumption and demand that typically accompanies reduced prices. The ad fails to mention that McCain’s “lower gas taxes” credentials are based on a three month period and will probably leave some less news junkie viewers feeling that McCain’s proposal to reduce gasoline taxes are meant to be permanent.

No to Nuclear

This claim by McCain and the RNC was already debunked in Distorting Obama but FactCheck goes into more detail in this analysis. Obama has clearly stated supports nuclear energy as long as its safe and clean and the industry addresses the long term storage of its waste products. In his comprehensive Energy plan he says “it is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table.” McCain is more aggressive about building nuclear power plants but does not address the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency that show that the price of uranium has also increased fivefold since 2001 and will continue to increase with increased demand for nuclear energy. The IAEA does expect that supply will be able to keep up with demand for the next seventeen years, but there is a lot of doubt beyond that point.

No to More Production

While it is true that Obama opposes new drilling Outer Continental Shelf the ad does not mention that both McCain and Obama oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

The offshore drilling debate is a HUGE red herring in this debate. FactCheck and other sites have pointed out that lifting the ban put in place by Presidents Reagan and Bush would not help American consumers. The potential harm – both economically in terms of tourism money and environmentally – to coastal communities aside, any new drilling would not bring more oil to market before 2017.

The Department of Energy itself says:

The The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher—2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case. Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

Ignoring all that, the fact is we couldn’t drill for oil off shore right now even if 100% of American citizens and 100% of American politicians and 100% of American oil companies wanted to begin immediately. The NY Times reported last month that a Dearth of Ships Delays Drilling of Offshore Oil and says “Demand is so high that shipbuilders, the biggest of whom are in Asia, have raised prices since last year by as much as $100 million a vessel to about half a billion dollars.” This increased demand is spurring shipbuilders to construct more drilling ships but thats not going to solve the problem.

The NY Times article says: “Robert L. Long, the chief executive office of Transocean, the world’s largest drilling company, said he has nine deepwater rigs under construction, eight of which are already under contract for periods ranging from four to seven years once they leave the shipyards. He expects to receive the ships between the beginning of 2009 and the end of 2010.”

No New Solutions

The claim that Barack Obama has “no new solutions” for energy is an attempt to keep the Republican spun taking point alive that claims that Obama’s call for change is all frosting and no cake. This has been a central theme of the RNC ads and press releases since it became clear that Senator Obama would get the Democratic party nomination.

The FactCheck.org analysts saw this as the most misleading claim in the entire ad, saying:

The ad’s most misleading claim is that Obama proposes “no new solutions” to the intertwined climate change and energy crises. In fact, Obama has an entire Web page dedicated to his proposals for the future of energy policy. One is a 10-year, $150 billion spending plan that would go toward clean coal technology; further development of plug-in hybrid cars; and commercialization of wind, solar and other renewable fuels. The RNC and McCain may not like all of Obama’s ideas, just as Obama may not support all of McCain’s, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. While McCain recently proposed The Lexington Project, which includes spending $2 billion annually toward clean coal technology advancement, McCain doesn’t have a plan comparable to Obama’s in scale of spending. In addition, Obama’s spending proposal predates McCain’s Lexington Project by over six months.

One of the most depressing aspects of American politics for me is the basic fact that many people assume that campaign ads on TV must have some basis in fact. There are laws preventing Johnson & Johnson from claiming that, in addition to not causing tears, their baby shampoo can also cure cancer and reduce your home heating bills. The Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies, Inc. has a team of lawyers who will keep thier marketing department from stepping over the line and making the company vulnerable to lawsuits.

When it comes to political ads, like this one from the the Republican National Committee under the leadership of President George W. Bush, there is no such team to slow things up when the truth gets thrown out the window. Unlike J&J, with a brand name and reputation to maintain to guarantee future earnings, the twin brands of “George W. Bush” and “Republican party” have been so devalued over the last 7 years that there is no real incentive for the RNC and other party bodies from throwing bull manure in every direction and hoping some sticks.