GTM March 16, 2017

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Farmers Market by the beach March 15, 2017

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Mose, Stokes and beach March 14, 2017

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science today

I remember the fellow traveler Sputnik blinking across the night sky

As my family stood in our back yard watching awed and amazed, not realizing

Being eleven years old I would benefit from the fearful reaction funding science

Investing massively in education and research and development.

That satellite flashing like a beacon for all the world to see

The technological superiority of the Soviet Union

Spreading panic among the rulers that their demise was on the horizon

Such irony to name their answering exploding rocket launch Vanguard.

The elevation of science in those days to the curriculum priority

How different from today when science is disputed by the government

When science is only funded privately to produce agribusiness and pharmaceutical profits

When schools teach against evolution and climate change is questioned.

The science advanced back then connected pollution to human health

Like acid rain downwind caused by power plants burning coal

Like lung disease caused by automobile exhaust and trash burning smog

Like cancer caused by pesticides and industrial wastewater discharge.

Activists mobilized to stop such harmful poisoning of the earth

As if the government’s purpose is to ensure the public good

Enacting environmental protection regulations to restrain the worst offenders

Rules that get dropped now as an oppressive burden to business.

Today science in the service of capitalism is a contradiction

When social costs and benefits are ignored by the policy makers

The notion of the scientist as independent from politics is untenable

As the basic research budget gets cut and given to military aggression.

As they hasten to eliminate the EPA science to boost polluter profits

Rousing even the otherwise apolitical to want to resist

Plans for a massive march in support of science take shape

Building a resurgent opposition to the capitalist business imperative.

The facts remain, stubbornly arguing against the deniers

Inviting any honest person to explore alternative government structure

Leading to an investigation of scientific socialism as the solution

To bring about a science dedicated to serving the needs of the people.