The Adler Planetarium and McCain's Fake War on Earmarks
I watched the entire debate and mostly yawned. McCain seemed tired and deflated, his loud breathing sounding like air coming out of a collapsing balloon. Obama was decidedly cool, but very confident.
I was disappointed when he failed to jump on McCain for the Adler Planetarium smear. McCain had previously been making silly remarks about a $3 million grizzly bear DNA project. It turned out that McCain not only never opposed it, but also actually voted for it. They had to find something that would sound equally ridiculous, and they jumped at the first item on Obama's earmarks page, because it was the only one that could be made to sound absurd. The rest are impeccably correct. I urge you to go to the link below and see for yourself what they say about Barack Obama's values.
Obama Announces FY08 Federal Funding RequestsThursday, June 21, 2007
Adler Planetarium, to support replacement of its projector and related equipment, $3,000,000
One of its most popular attractions and teaching tools at the Adler Planetarium is the Sky Theater. The projection equipment in this theater is 40 years old, and is no longer supported with parts or service by the manufacturer. It has begun to fail, leaving the theater dark and groups of school students and other interested museum-goers without this very valuable and exciting learning experience.
The Adler Planetarium slur reveals both the slovenly nature of the McCain campaign's opposition research as well as the cynical and tone-deaf disconnect from reality. This is a high-tech scientific educational project, not an entertainment device. When I was a child and teenager growing up in New York, the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History was among my favorite places to visit. It was an important factor in the formation of my life-long interest in science and technology.
I was also a little disappointed that Obama used a concrete dollar figure -- $20 billion -- to attempt to show the triviality of McCain's obsession with earmarks. Their percentage of the total budget has been estimated as less than 1%. The highest I've seen is 4%. From what I've read, cutting earmarks is not going to affect total spending anyway because they allocate funds that have already been budgeted.
Economist Mark Thoma discussed this at
Earmarks can be a fairly democratic way responding to local needs. McCain fails to appreciate the fact that so many of these budget requests are for worthy projects that are welcomed by constituents. It's not all pork, maybe not even mostly pork. I challenge you to find as single dubious item when you look at Obama's requests.
The Planetarium item dramatizes the know-nothing, anti-science, anti-education attitudes of the McCain voter base, as well as his cynicism. I think this is an opportunity to highlight that. The United States should be financing the world's most effective and entertaining museums, science exhibits and educational facilities. The Defense Department was once a leader in promoting education in many different ways. It was a strong factor in the country's cultural and economic development before the Reagan revolution began pushing non-military science out the window.
Sometimes a small point can be effectively leveraged into dramatizing a major theme that exposes the real differences between candidates that are not revealed by the usual rhetoric. I think this is one of them. People love planetariums and museums. They attract immense audiences. I remember when admission was free or negligible. It pains me and embarrasses me to think of the Museum of Modern Art in New York charging adults $20 and students $12.
When do we get back to government as public service?
Read more reactions to the Obama-McCain Town Hall Debate from HuffPost
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Earmarks sound bad so they use them. The unthinking Republican base which swallows whole the dogmatic message doesn't care about the truth. We need to stop the foolishness.
Joe, earmarks are bad. They are used because politicians are lazy and can attach them to any bill. It is usually used to bring money back to the area they are from for job security. There is little to no oversight to the money so Billions just disappear. And last, the Federal Govt was never supposed to take money from people in FL and give it to people in Chicago for a Planetarium. I too was amazed at the first Planetarium I went to when I was in first grade. I also remember there being a $.50 charge per child for upkeep on the projection equipment. Noble cause or not it's still theft of someones money for the planetarium. Sorry
Actually, it's well within the federal govt's purview to take money from EVERYWHERE and send it to a single location. That's the whole "provide for the general welfare" thing in that one document, you know, the CONSTITUTION!! The fact of the matter is that they are not going to FL (or any other state....) and saying, "Give us money, we need to give it to Chicago (or anywhere else)" They are saying, we have legally collected these funds, and this location which serves the general welfare needs some money, so lets send it there.
Now then, I agree with you on one point. They need to do away with earmarks, and say that any spending amendment to any bill needs to be related to the bill itself. That way there would be a bill out there asking to send $3 Million to Adler, rather than, say a bill funding the military ALSO including $3 Million to Adler!
What a great opportunity to seque to the fact that Alaska gets more from the federal gov't than it pays.
Okay, maybe McCain didn't grow up in or near Chicago (as I did) and get to the planetarium anytime in his youth; by most accounts (including his own), once puberty kicked in, McCain was more interested in a different kind of heavenly body anyway. And presumably he never saw the Griffith Park Planetarium in James Dean's classic film "Rebel Without a Cause." So I really don't blame him for thinking the sky theater in the Adler Planetarium was just an "overhead projector"; literally true, but that's a lot like calling Chicago's Sears Tower "an office building": literally true, but the answer leaves out so much that it's true and false at the same time.
This seems to be the direction McCain/Palin are going, with statements (usually negative) that may be technically accurate but create false, usually emotional, impressions in people's minds. Politicians have used this tactic since civilization began, but it's sad when that's the only club you have left in the bag. I remember when Republicans as a whole were better than that.
"I remember when Republicans were better than that." Yes, it does seem remarkable that both parties once had beliefs in common, such as a sound education made for better citizens .
Planetarium = Science
Science = Bad
Not that hard to figure out. Just Mac playing to the base.
Right on. The irony here is that, as a pilot, McCain must have been taught some astronomy in flight school, to help him find his way in dire circumstances, like after having been shot down...
I've always tried to maintain a little skepticism when it comes to the accusations by my friends that the GOP is "anti-science" but McCain's targetting the Adler Planetarium's upgrade in its astronomical projection instrument as if it were an eggregious example of pork barrel spending just underscores how lame and suprerficial he is and how low he will go. How many millions of people, children and adults alike, will gain a degree of understanding about our natural world by attending one of the Adler's presentations? Instead of lampooning it, he should be advocating the endowment of it so that it is fee to the public and is a pattern emulated across the land. He's also identified studies of grizzly bears and other areas of funding that will influend both our understanding and policies when it comes to understanding our world scientifically. I would say "shame on him", but then he has proven quite adequately that he is beyond shame. Straight talk indeed...more like "tainted koolaide".
Earmarks in budget bills are often just a way of directing funds that are already allocated. That is, they direct spending, typically so as to make sure the state or agency doesn't spend it in a way the Congress doesn't want. Earmarks in stuff like the bailout bill (tax exemptions for wooden arrows) are the true pork that we should worry about - but that's a lot less than the overall earmark number.
Unlike John, who went from well funded private schools to the US Naval Academy - which on top of massive public funding has a huge endowment since its alums (and West Point's) are some of the most sought after people in business for reasons as much influenced by testosterone as sense - most kids in major cities wouldn't know jack about stars, much less astrophysics, without planetariums. They can't see squat at night, they don't go camping, and the science curriculum is being crushed by a lack of funds. So get off their butts about wanting to know what the Milky Way looks like, old man!
Chicago isn't a dirty word in the midwest - it was a badge of honor to my relatives in western Michigan and colleagues in Indianapolis for someone to move there and succeed. Similarly, Chicago politician as a slur only works with Republican political junkies and old people, since its been 40 years since the days of "vote early and often."
I also caught this educational gaffe by McCain, but the absurd way this town-hall had been set up didn't allow rebuttals to completely ignorant statements, therefore Barack said nothing.
Are you sure that McCain voted for that ?I thought republicans were afraid to educate the people that vote for them!
For some reason I am not surprised that Republican John McCain is scorning an important educational tool and considers it unnecessary.
What's next? Railing against the money that was spent on the Hubble telescope and deriding it's replacement The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)?
To oppose money meant for educational tools is foolishly frugal. When it comes to the expanding the minds of the public price shouldn't be much of an object.
Well, there do need to be some limits, but the fact of the matter is that $3 million for the projector at a world famous Planetarium is NOTHING!! This "pork" is nothing of the sort, and I wish that they HAD spent the money!
not only the planetarium.....McCain has insulted all of Chicago on a regular basis....the people and their institutions...I've never been there but I know better
This particular earmark was mentioned because it allowed McCain to utter the word "Chicago", which he's been saying a lot this week. Way more than ever before in this campaign. Has anyone else noticed the ramped up references to Chicago from McCain these past 5 days? I see now that it's not a slam on Chicago politics, but is a way for him to subtly connect Obama with gangsters and crime (what many people think of when they think of Chicago). Note that he also curiously referred to a rifle scope when talking about adressing health care and social security. Whatever he's trying to say, his references to Chicago are not coincidental...
Well that would be very old people. Capone has been dead nigh on ? Hell I don't even know or care how long ago. Next he'll start mentioning the St. Valentine's day Massacre or Speakeasies. Even old people don't think in those terms anymore as far as Chicago.
Geez. McCain dates himself so regularly. Drawing attention to his old age is not a smart strategy on his part. But nothing ever is.
All of McCain's slurs against Obama have been just as empty.
Bill Ayers has been a respected member of society for quite some time. Yes, he was a radical way back when John McCain was in his 30s, but we all know that was long, long ago. Barack Obama was in grade school. In fact, Ayers views are so radical that the Annenberg - a major donor to the McCain campaign - awarded a grant for education projects in Chicago. The success of those led to Ayers being named Chicago's Citizen of the Year in 1997.
Really strange crop of terrorist radicals we have here... Funded by conservatives and citizen of the year award winner. Some people do learn from the mistakes of their youth. That does not seem to include Mr. McCain, who has been caught off base again in a virtual repeat of the S&L scandal that caused him to be censured in the 1990s.
The McCain camp needs to be called out on this crap.
interesting. i was not aware of what mccain's dig at obama was all about and now i know. i think this is very urgent because we must bring education - science, math, all of it - to the forefront of our society once again. to think that we have dropped so significantly in this area is more than sad. it is just plain stupid. it seems mccain's attitude regarding this projector goes hand in hand with his running mate's apparent mental lack. why worry about learning these elitist things? who needs an elitist education anyway? why read? and so on. as if knowledge were a bad thing.
and this is one of the very reason i was attracted to obama's campaign - his pledge to bring us back to the forefront in education.
McCain made it sound like a very expensive overhead projector. I live in California and have been to the Griffith Park Observatory many times in my life. I knew what he was referring to, but I do wish Obama had pointed it out for the greater audience. It was like calling a searchlight a lit match.
I too was disappointed. I grew up in Chicago and knew it was an insult to try to deny equipment upgrades to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Every young student from Illinois/Indiana comes to the Adler at some point and is touched by the education they get there. McCain showed himself to be pompous, elitist and out of touch...as usual.
At a minimum, Obama can make a commercial about this to show what a jerk McCain was and how Obama fights for educational improvements for the people back in Illinois.
There was some involvement with Adler officials & the Obama campaign, which may
be why he'd like for this kerfuffle to subside. Apparently NY & LA got federal grants for
planetarium upgrades, so why not Chicago? Well, they didn't get it, apparently.
Anyway, such 'projectors' are complex & expensive items, and not the sort that you
can pick up at Staples for $250, unfortunately.
I, too, grew up near Chicago. And the museums there, not just the Adler, but the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Art Institute, and the Oriental Institute, have all had lasting impacts on who I am. They were a crucial portion of my education. I am currently in science, and coming from a home full of non-sciencey people, I give full credit to those museums for fostering that love in me. When I heard McCain speak with such disgust about a "projector for a planetarium" I was outraged. He made it seem as if there couldn't have been a worse use of money. And even with his obvious omission of the high-tech nature of the "overhead projector", I was shocked that he thought a planetarium was something whose funding was in some way ridiculous and unnecessary. As the senator from Illinois, I think Obama had a responsibility to ensure that a Chicago treasure like the Adler was being protected. To suggest otherwise is absolutely repulsive. McCain was flat out mocking the idea that we should invest in either science or education. That one comment, demonstrated a total disdain for the idea that government has a responsibility to make such educational opportunities available to all children.
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