Sequester: Medical researchers should panic, medical providers shouldn’t
We are. Alsotoo, fewer medical researchers.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.
You cannot love your country only when you win.
They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.
Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.
The unpunished coup was a training exercise.
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.
Hot air and ill-informed banter
You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.
“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”
Republicans do not pay their debts.
If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.
Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.
Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.
Fight them, without becoming them!
Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.
Accountability, motherfuckers.
rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius
I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.
This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.
Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.
When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson
Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.
You are here: Home / Yep.
Poopyman
My condolences, TimF. Hope it all works out – and fast!
FoxinSocks
I have a little pet-sitting business on the side. Was having a record year and now…I’m starting to see cancellations. I’ll never get that money back.
Also, my Mom, who works in retail in the DC area, strictly on commission, is losing a lot of sales. I just had to give her a large chunk of my paycheck so she could make rent this month. I’m beyond pissed at the Republicans.
Linnaeus
A couple of colleagues of mine would say, with sympathy, “Welcome to our world.”
Zifnab
Wait till we bump up against that debt ceiling again.
BGinCHI
We are all Christian Scientists now.
Poopyman
@Zifnab:
Good thing we won’t have to worry about that for a long time, right? Oh wait …
Anoniminous
With 100% anti-biotic resistant TB and gonorrhea spreading across the world and the rest of the bacteria death-squad developing anti-biotic resistance …
LET’S CUT MEDICAL RESEARCH!
aimai
Jeezus christ I hate the Republicans. They just really don’t give a fuck about people’s lives. they will weep bitter tears for the wealthy one percent forced, perhaps, to pay a tax on the carried interest of their vast sums of money but nothing for people whose work actually enriches our lives every day: researchers, teachers, police officers, fire fighters, nurses, children who need vaccines, people delivering meals on wheels. It just boggles my mind.
And the thing that most astounds me is that there is no one. NO ONE (pardon my shouting) on the right side of the aisle who has the moral or political authority to bring the House Republicans together and explain to them how this thing called “budgeting” for the country actually works. There is no one inside congress–since Boehner and Cantor have abdicated their responsibility and/or have no moral authority. And there is no one outside congress since the tea party ravers don’t acknowledge any moral authority higher or more moral than the Koch brothers.
Mnemosyne
I’m getting nervous that this will be yet another example of the “win-win” that Republicans have set up for themselves and all of the ensuing chaos from a government shutdown will be yet more “proof” that government doesn’t work, so we should give the Republicans even more power to dismantle it.
Todd
@Anoniminous:
Tax cuts will cure it.
localnebula
Stupid sequester uncertainty already eated our NIST and AFRL funding. This Republican bullshit is absolutely brutal on a lot of sciences. Which I suppose is a feature, not a bug, to them.
beltane
@Anoniminous: You have just given me hope that every Republican member of Congress will acquire some of that antibiotic resistant gonorrhea.
artem1s
the research thing is going to hit every University in the country, many which are the largest employers in their communities. I think there are also cuts that will eventually hit students loans too. enrollment numbers will be down this fall even if they fix this soon.
can’t fathom who thinks the effects of this are going to be gradual. I’m thinking a bunch of people suddenly woke up this morning and realized that trickle down, in this instance, is pretty instantaneous.
Poopyman
@Anoniminous: Well, that’s certainly alarming! We’d better inform Congress ASAP. I suggest personal visits to congresscritters’ offices, and who better to make the point than folks infected with that stuff?
(ETA: I was thinking the TB moreso than the gonorrhea.)
BGinCHI
@aimai: These men are Nihilists, Donny.
beltane
@artem1s: The Village media types will get paid lavish salaries no matter what and that is all that matters.
bemused
It doesn’t appear the sequester effects will be slower to be felt as some have posited. The crazy Republicans won’t budge but I have to hope the not quite as crazy will start to sweat.
I have been listening to Randi Rhodes playing audio clips of Justice White Suprematist Scalia in court mocking voting rights. It is even more horrible to hear him say that Congress feels cowed to vote for voting rights and he can’t trust Congress to vote the way they want to. Sick and twisted. Kagan and Sotomayor were very good questioning him. I wish I could find the short clips of these exchanges instead of listening to the whole thing.
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: Not really. For the sequester cuts, they might be able to play this as “obama is just not very good at his job as these are stupid cuts.” They might even be able to convince the voters in their districts that any layoffs from this are due to purposeful poltical calculations to punish republican voters by the evil president (like they did with auto dealers in 2009). However, my guess is that that will be undone when the spending resolutions run out and we shut down for awhile. That will probably turn the needle back.
This is a dumb system we have. But hey, we’ve had a farm bill passed as an emergency measure every two years for 50 years. One would think that the emergency it was meant to solve would have ended by now.
Linda Featheringill
@FoxinSocks:
You and your mom:
Of course, I don’t have any facts but maybe the two of you could combine resources? In the same place?
At any rate, good luck.
schrodinger's cat
The Republicans are at least the opposition party it is their job to oppose (not to this level of obstructionism, though) what is the media’s excuse. They are useless.
artem1s
@beltane:
granted, but the message for the last couple of days has pretty much been, ‘this won’t hurt a bit’ and ‘you won’t feel a thing’. And, ‘oh never mind, it’s just those lazy teachers who are going to loose their jobs’.
I’m sure the Village will keep plugging that message but I don’t think they are going to get away with it for long because, just like the election, they are dead wrong about how many and how fast the ramifications will come.
Not to say any of them will lose their jobs though.
Anoniminous
@beltane:
We should be so lucky:
David Hunt
@Todd:
Only because death cures everything
Trollhattan
@Todd:
Put some Tussin on it.
It would be impolite for me to request the Republicans diaf, wouldn’t it.
Tim F.
@Poopyman: Depends on the Congressperson.
JGabriel
Tim F. @ Top:
Well, it’s not like medical researchers do anything useful, like, say, discover cures for currently intractable diseases.
I hope that Boehner and McConnell, especially McConnell, develop diseases that could have been cured, but instead cause them years of debilitating pain before killing them.
And I hope they find out — say a year before their now unavoidable deaths, so they can live in pain with this knowledge — that a cure could have been developed quicker, saved their lives, and ended their excruciating pain, if only they’d been less obstructionist.
.
Anoniminous
In moderation. For using the “p” word?
Or, maybe, the “t” word?
PIGL
“in the end, we will welcome the coup.
“
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
McCrory is already whining about the loss of research dollars. I think he expected to fix the NC’s economy by repeating the ‘miracle of the RTP’.
Anoniminous
@Poopyman:
I assumed you were referring to TB.
The Other requires a procedure I’m not interested in engaging in.
Although, YMMV & etc. etc.
gene108
@aimai:
It’s not about having authority – moral or otherwise – to govern, it’s about what will win the next news cycle and ultimately the next election cycle. That’s all Republicans are doing now and have been doing, since Bush, Jr. got sworn into office in 2001.
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
From what my mom tells (she lives in the RTP area), McCrory ain’t exactly following the RTP blueprint; a strong university system laying the ground work to attract business and industry.
He seems pretty intent on gutting state funding for higher education, from what I gather.
FoxinSocks
@Linda Featheringill
Thanks for your concern, Linda! I’m hanging in there. The pet-sitting money just lets me help my Mom out more and gives me a little extra spending money.
Mom really should be OK too, but everytime the Republicans manufacture a crisis, she gets hit hard. She’s been in her line of work for decades and has great benefits, so she’s stuck where she is, I’m afraid.
Jay B.
Sorry Tim. It’s cool though, now that the Administration has given the preliminary OK to the Keystone pipeline, you probably don’t have more than 10 years of wandering in un-to-semi employed limbo before civilization collapses due to global warming catastrophes. We had a 50 year window before the collapse, but thankfully, despite the massive environmental carnage Keystone promises to deliver, we’ll spare no time in implementing the inevitable. No wonder he’s so wiling to give up SS cuts. It’s kind of a moot point.
Mike in NC
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Pat and the Republican wrecking crew in Raleigh could always free up some bucks by cutting unemployment benefits again.
Lavocat
Theodoric of York called. He needs more leeches. Or, if you are out of leeches, Republicans will do nicely.
askew
@Jay B.:
Nice try. The findings released to today in no way give a preliminary ok to Keystone. And the findings aren’t even final yet.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Todd:
Just don’t let them get infected.
Have we reached the point where we can start calling Republicans “flesh-eating bacteria on the body politic”?
SatanicPanic
@askew: You mean OBusha hasn’t sold us out yet? He’s sure taking his time about it.
JCT
We’ve been through bad contractions in NIH funding for biomedical research before — the last one in the 90’s drove out a good portion of research-based MDs in my field (Cardiovascular) because many of them said “fuck this shit I need to make a living” and gave up.
Fifteen years later we are *still* dealing with the effects as not only were those scientists lost, but junior folks looking for mentors to emulate were left high and dry.
The so-called funding line at my institute was 6% on the last go around. So out of 60-odd grants maybe a couple were funded. Mind you, there were *easily* another 10-15 that were meritorious. This is untenable. The terrible part is that cardiovascular biology has been making serious patient-driven strides of late, the science is as good as I have seen, ever. Impressive given the flat-line in funding.
This ridiculous self-inflicted wound is going to terrible damage that will not be easily repaired, once folks give up, they don’t come back. We were having enough problems getting MDs to do research in Cardiology. This will be a hammer blow.
Frankly, if I were a junior cardiovascular MD scientist right now — I would probably say “fuck this” too.
schrodinger's cat
I made you guys a Friday lol and did not eated it. I feels like the kitteh in the lol.
beltane
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: You are too kind. I prefer to refer to them as “the puss filled lesion on the vulva of democracy”.
askew
@SatanicPanic:
I know! People have had to stay in permanent OUTRAGE mode for years now waiting for the inevitable sellout. It’s really not fair to them.
Zifnab
@schrodinger’s cat:
There was a time in US History when the “Opposition Party” didn’t necessarily translate into “Enemy of the Establishment”. Politicians did once sit down at a round table and hash out a reasonable solution that makes sure a large number of people are happy.
Now Republicans will happily spite their own constituents if it means pissing of a Democrat in the process. “Screw up the system, blame the Democrats” has been the game plan for the last four fucking years. It doesn’t have to be like this.
schrodinger's cat
@Zifnab: Oh I agree with you. I am just saying that the media is even more useless than the GOP is.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JCT:
Kind of a heartless thing to do, isn’t it?
schrodinger's cat
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I see what you did there!
Raven
@Lavocat: Throw em in the moat!
Anoniminous
@JCT:
This.
Jamie
fewer employed medical researchers, that is.
Hill Dweller
Jedi Mind Meld
schrodinger's cat
@JCT: My husband is on his 3rd post doc, he is giving up and looking for a position in the industry. He studies proteins.
Violet
I really wish that the first thing that happened when sequester hit is that all the Congresspeople had their salaries frozen, their health benefits frozen for them and their families and they lost any other benefits, especially any perks like the gym and barber shop and dining room. They and their families should be the first people affected and hurt by this mess. As it is, they created it but they aren’t having to sleep in it.
Jay B.
@askew:
Yeah. Sucker.
And of course:
So, the Administration reports that Keystone will be no big deal and, you can’t stop it, and it doesn’t matter anymore. So what, exactly, do you think it means? Obama’s own Administration has already given him cover.
J.W. Hamner
It’s pretty sad that there are people who are going to get maybe the best score of their research careers and still not get funded this cycle. Funding lines of 6 or 7% have been announced for some (NHLBI – ie Hear, Lung, and Blood – is 6% from 10% last year and 16% in 2008) but who knows how low the institutes with less clout might go.
Bad times.
Jay B.
@SatanicPanic:
Are you really that blind? Tim F is actually writing about the sellout and its ramifications. It may have been a gambit to kick the can of the debt ceiling down the road, but this was the compromise. He gave Boehner “98% of what he wanted”. I know, I know, his hands were tied. He was the adult in the room. Yeah, he had leverage during the last debt ceiling impasse which could have ended the sequester, but somehow that didn’t coalesce. The idiotic, shortsighted, stupid sequester is the inevitable result (in one form or another) of continually agreeing with the Republicans that we have a spending problem during a recession. Yes, the bulk of this is because we have a GOP that doesn’t give a shit. But to pretend that the Administration’s hands are clean in this is ridiculous, even for the cheerleaders here.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@gene108:
What he’s intent on gutting are all those useless degrees like African-American Studies. Universities should be preparing people for jobs, donchaknow. He’s been making speeches about the importance of life sciences research for a couple of weeks now.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Jay B.:
Leverage to do what exactly? If no agreement had been reached during the debt ceiling impasse, we would have done the exact same thing back then that we are doing now, only on a larger scale and with more damage to the economy.
Shorter Jay B.: damm you Obama, for shooting us in the foot now, when you passed up a golden opportunity to shoot us in the head back then!
gbear
@gene108:
They’re doing it wrong. Nobody outside the beltway gives a shit about who wins the news cycle any more.
Greg Seargent at the WaPo has a great column about the sequester.
Jay B.
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
That the GOP completely gave up and gave the President basic carte blanche on raising the debt ceiling should have shown you that the President had all the leverage. It also should prove that they got everything they really wanted with the sequester agreement, but somehow I bet you think differently.
I agree the Administration can’t do shit now about the plan they agreed to, the sequester that will cripple medical research and a lot of the other basic, important functions that government provides, but that doesn’t let them off the hook for agreeing to the plan to begin with. It’s what happens when you give terrorists 98 percent of what they want.
Chris
@FoxinSocks:
I know there’s more than one pet sitter in the DC area, but what the hell, just in case: your name’s not Kathy by any chance, is it?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Jay B.:
That would be the first thing you got right in this thread. It’s a start I suppose.
scav
OT. Anyone need a break, if you’re into that sort of thing, The Now Show was especially funny today. There’s a Pope song . . Direct to mp3
Jay B.
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
So…Obama didn’t support the sequester? This isn’t a direct result of giving in to the GOP’s terrorism and the inevitable result of talking about reigning in spending for the last five years? The State Department (part of the Executive Branch) didn’t just say that Keystone isn’t going to impact the environment?
What part did I get wrong, champ?
Chyron HR
@Jay B.:
You forgot the part about how he’s going to abolish Social Security in the SOTU address. You psychotic halfwits are still clinging to that one, aren’t you?
JCT
@schrodinger’s cat: So brutal — I decided not to hire another postdoc this year because of all of this “uncertainty”. This endless postdoc cycle is soul-crushing.
Three of my close colleagues (ages 47-54), board-certified MD cardiologists (two also had PhDs) all with very strong NIH funding gave up and went to industry this year. They gave up something like 5 R01s between them in the process. Madness.
I hope your husband lands with a good company — there are a few real good ones out there!
Ted & Hellen
So…I’ll ask: What is Obama doing to be certain the weight of the cuts fall hardest and most viciously upon red states and districts?
Is he too going to go scorched earth and make Republican voters and officials suffer the most?
Or is he going to spread the pain evenly because “I am not a dictator?”
Which, by the way, sounds awfully whiny.
God, this country’s government sucks.
ArchTeryx
@JCT: I’m REALLY surprised that industry absorbed them. Not long ago, I made a go at an industry job, with some previous industry experience (I’m a Ph.D. molecular virologist) and 200 resumes later, not a single interview. One of my contacts told me (from MedImmune) that he got over 1000 applicants for one Scientist I position at that company.
El Caganer
@Ted & Hellen: This thing was designed to run on autopilot so it would suck for everybody. I don’t think there’s much he could do to fiddle with it, whether he wanted to or not.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Jay B.:
The part where you specify a hypothetical alt-history by holding all variables constant except for one free variable, which is Obama’s negotiating position. You postulate that because the GOP ultimately gave up on the debt ceiling, that therefore Obama could have achieved the same outcome with a different negotiating position than the one which he actually took. Here:
Here’s what’s wrong with this analysis: the GOP gave up on driving the US into default over the debt ceiling because they were motivated by the fear that they would be widely blamed by the public for causing it to happen and would suffer unacceptable losses in the next election as a result. That perception (and we can argue until the cows come home about how accurate it may have been, but subjective or not, that is what their political calculus was based on), includes as a component the President’s negotiating position as it actually was. Change that and you change the potential public perception and apportionment of blame. Change that, and the GOP’s motivations and actions shift as well. Just because the GOP yielded in the case we actually got, does not mean they would have yielded in other cases with significantly different demands coming from the administration.
In other words, you are labeling as independent variables things are interdependent.
JCT
@ArchTeryx: They all had MDs with serious research cred. Big Pharma is dying for guys like this — MD biomedical researchers (especially in Cardiology) are a dying (almost dead) breed.
They were all a terrible loss to academia.
ArchTeryx
@JCT: Maybe so, but at least they found a safe harbor. Not to be selfish, but that’s one hell of a lot more then most of us in the trenches are going to find once Hurricane Sequester really gets going in earnest.
Jay B.
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Right. Not being able to parse anything out of that world salad of ass-covering beyond the normal “Obama got the best possible outcome” mantra of you blinkered idiots, you yet again remind me of the absolute futility of posting anything here. I come for the writing of the hosts, I should know better than to post anything that approaches the obvious truth about the actions, the stated goals, the platform and the results of the Administration’s policies when they turn out as exactly how normal people predicted they would. This was always part of the criticism that this would be how the negotiation would turn out — the sequester, which is what this post was about, would never be overturned by a Republican Congress and the Administration was either naive or complicit in that knowledge. I suppose in the sense that it was preferable to economic collapse it was a win. In terms of responsible policy it was a disastrous choice to play chicken about massive budget cuts with a political party that WANTS DISASTROUS BUDGET CUTS. I mean it really was stupid. And it’s not like people didn’t say so at the time. Now Tim gets to struggle to find grants.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Jay B.:
Good. Go away. You add nothing. You have no sense of humor and your historical analysis is bad, but not so bad as to be totally laughable and thus make up for the lack of any sense of humor. Godspeed and good riddance.
FoxinSocks
@Chris
Nope! My name’s not Kathy. I’m guessing all of us area pet-sitters are getting hit by this.
JCT
@ArchTeryx: I wasn’t equating their trajectory with anyone else’s — none of them were fired. They were lucky enough to have options because of their extensive clinical training and took them.
lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
Wow. You pasted the same idiotic response in two threads?
Good work, Chief.
Mnemosyne
@Jay B.:
Uh, when exactly did they do that, again? Links, please.
They punted the ball down the road (or, more accurately, pushed the potato across the table), but they did not give the president carte blanche to raise the debt ceiling whenever he feels like it anytime in the future. It was a one-time deal.
scav
@lojasmo: Only two? Our low-rent ELIZA is learning. Congratulation are in order if so.
It’s usually the low monotonous drone in most threads.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: IT WAS ALWAYS A DISASTER I TRIED TO TELL YOU BUT YOU WOULDNT LISTEN AARRGHGH I WIN INFINITY.
FlipYrWhig
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Magic beans, a/k/a the trillion dollar coin that totally would have worked to fix everything but stupid Obama stupidly didn’t do it because he’s stupid and opposed to all righteous leftish things, like play money and “leadership.”
FlipYrWhig
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I still don’t know if this “Jay B.” is the same one who posts, with wit and humor, at Roy Edroso’s. If so, he has a kind of doppelganger-slash-division of labor thing going on, or something.
Chris
@FoxinSocks:
Ah well. Just wondering if I’d happened to run into someone I knew in real life in blog-reality. And yeah, I’ll bet it is affecting her, and a fuckload of others.
I remember a couple times since the 2010 election that the federal office I worked in was afraid of a partial or temporary shutdown, and I remember looking around and thinking of all the local businesses who’d be affected. All the restaurants and shops whose customers wouldn’t be stopping in for coffee or lunch, all the cab drivers who’d be getting a lot less customers, etc. But hey, government doesn’t create jobs. And shrinking it’s good for business. Because shut up, that’s why.
mdblanche
@Jay B.: I’m sure this thread is dead, but if anyone sees this I just want to point out that the State Department’s assessment that the Keystone Pipeline will have a minimal environmental impact is because there is another pipeline route outside the US proposed if Keystone is not built and a proposal to ship the tar sands by rail if that pipeline is also rejected. The tar sands are in Canada so the President has no control over whether they get developed. If you want to do something about that, this is the guy you need to contact. Good luck (you’re gonna need it).