The Bush Administration and Economic Competitiveness

Tom Friedman actually has a column I can whole-heartedly agree with.

One of the things that I can't figure out about the Bush team is why an administration that is so focused on projecting U.S. military strength abroad has taken such little interest in America's economic competitiveness at home - the underlying engine of our strength. At a time when the global economic playing field is being flattened - enabling young Indians and Chinese to collaborate and compete with Americans more than ever before - this administration is off on an ideological jag. It is trying to take apart the New Deal by privatizing Social Security, when what we really need most today is a New New Deal to make more Americans employable in 21st-century jobs.

We have a Treasury secretary from the railroad industry. We have an administration that won't lift a finger to prevent the expensing of stock options, which is going to inhibit the ability of U.S. high-tech firms to attract talent - at a time when China encourages its start-ups to grant stock options to young innovators. And we have movie theaters in certain U.S. towns afraid to show science films because they are based on evolution and not creationism.

The Bush team is proposing cutting the Pentagon's budget for basic science and technology research by 20 percent next year - after President Bush and the Republican Congress already slashed the 2005 budget of the National Science Foundation by $100 million.
(snip)
It's as if we have an industrial-age presidency, catering to a pre-industrial ideological base, in a post-industrial era.

This is exactly right. It's one thing to be conservative-- it's another thing to be completely backwards. This is seriously fucked up. Particularly with the prospect of oil-supplies running out, we need a forward-looking technology-based strategy to deal the situation, NOT the prospect of more war.