I am becoming less and less tolerant of businesses that are on the dole.  Corporate welfare mothers.  Crony capitalists.  Call them what you like.  I blogged previously here about a “not for profit”business funded by the state of Oklahoma that teaches pickpocketing.  Seriously.  With tax dollars. These guys provide instruction and guidance to unfunded upstarts on how to maximize their take of federal grants.  That your and my pockets are the source of federal grants is something they hope you’ll miss, I guess.  

Denise Bode, former member of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and now CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (connecting the dots yet?) writes in The Oklahoman a whiny lobbyist’s editorial, for continuing the subsidy to the wind energy cronies.  Quite simply, this business, without the subsidies doesn’t work economically.  In other words, it doesn’t work economically.  My understanding is that more energy could be produced from the oil necessary to lubricate these blights on the countryside than is produced by these blights on the countryside.  Bode says, basically, that unless we allow this rip off to continue, folks will lose their jobs.  That’s kind of like whining about the robber losing his “job” because you have locked your house.  

But since this is a medical blog, I’ll also relay a letter to the editor that was on the very same page as Bode’s plea.  James George, M.D., a professor at the teaching hospital in Oklahoma City, states his plea for sparing the NIH (National Institute of Health) any budget cuts.  He basically says he knows we are bankrupt, but don’t touch my source of research funding!  Politicians love guys like this, as folks can be counted on after reading a letter like his,  to send a big check to D.C. with a “leave the NIH alone!!” note attached.  

Actually, that the government is involved at all in the funding of medical research guarantees the politicization of research priorities and subsequent mal-investment.  Remember Bastiat.  It is not just what “cures” have been discovered to consider.  It is what cures have not been discovered due to the mal-investment of limited resources, sending the dough to gifted and connected grant writers, not necessarily where the market would direct research money:  to the cause most likely to benefit the greatest number of people.  

Re-read the part of “Atlas Shrugged” where the State Science Institute makes its appearance.  This is what has happened to medical research in this country!  Anytime Uncle Sam gets involved in anything, whether it is wind energy or medical research,  remember that it is your money that is being spent and that it will line the pockets of those who have greased the political skids.

G. Keith Smith, M.D.