Help confront the Republican attack on science and rationality.

I received the following email from ScienceDebate.org and figured I should share.  If you can help please do.  If you can help wake up friends and neighbors please do.  This is for keeps and so far we are only putting up enough of an effort to think we tried - but not enough to actually accomplish anything.  So sad.  USA's citizens general apathy will have devastating consequences in the coming years.  (undated, with additional information below the fold, Dec.22, 5:30PM)

{ OH AND WHAT ABOUT A FOCUSED NATION WIDE EFFORT TO FORCE DEMOCRATIC SENATORS TO VOTE ON MERRICK GARLAND JANUARY 3RD ??? }

 Support the push for evidence in our democracy! Donate today!

There has been, for many years now, a growing war on science, and that's part of what we here at ScienceDebate have been engaged in fighting, with your help.

This war goes far beyond partisanship; it is an attack on the fundamental idea that there are objective facts that can be discovered, and that these are the fairest and most just basis for public policy—the idea that if anyone can discover the truth of something for him or herself using the tools of science and reason, then no king, no pope, and no wealthy lord has any more authority to govern than anyone else, a truth that is self-evident. The idea of democracy.

That idea—democracy—is what is really under attack in this war, for as go science and facts, so go the tools the people may use to govern themselves. And as the press ceases to hold the powerful accountable to evidence, and instead "balances" their reporting between competing claims to the truth as if they are disinterested arbiters in a playground spat, they have opened the way for the sort of well-funded public relations campaigns that are now the scourge of the democratic process.

I, along with Matthew, Lawrence, Sheril, Michael, Nancy and others, have sought to mitigate this through ScienceDebate, through exposing its relationship to democracy in writing THE WAR ON SCIENCE, through speaking worldwide, though top quality television and online videos, and through reaching out to president-elect Trump as a bridge to the science community, since ScienceDebate was the ONLY place that asked him about climate change and other science-related questions during the election. Unfortunately, Trump and his team have ignored these and other outreach efforts.

Instead, president-elect Trump has appointed well-known science deniers and their funders to top government posts, as Lawrence recently pointed out in The New Yorker, and now his pick for budget director, the man that oversees the office that develops the president's budget including the science agencies, has asked on his Facebook page: 

“Do we really need government-funded research at all?” 

We need your help!

Clearly, much, much more needs to be done.

We have lots of ideas, but frankly, most of our supporters for the last eight years have been complacent, and we have been perpetually underfunded and unable to do what needs to be done to help turn the tide for science and democracy. We need to raise $5 million to achieve all of our initial goals:

• We have the organization and connections to marshal resources for much broader public education and outreach, but we need the funding.

• We see a need to hold science debates at the congressional and gubernatorial level, with chapters in every state, to help the public and members of congress better understand the crucial role of evidence and its importance as a measure in making electoral decisions, but we need the funding.

• We see a need to produce much more excellent online video, radio, and television content about the intersection of evidence, civil rights, justice, equality, and democracy, but we need the funding.

• We see a need to build a much more robust social media presence to marry the ideas of science, evidence, freedom, equality, opportunity, and justice, and to counter fake news and disinformation, but we need the funding.

• We see a need for nonpartisan public events on capitol hill, at national museums, at DNC and RNC events, and before wealthy vested interests that fund science denial, and to focus like a laser on this intersection of evidence and democracy, but we need the funding.

• We see a need to do much more to educate journalists and the media about the need to dispense with false balance and start reinvesting in the idea of holding the powerful accountable to the evidence, but we need the funding.

Some of you have given generously, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But the fact is not nearly enough have. So I'm sending this to our whole list because it's that important. It isn't just your lab funding that's at stake, its the idea of democracy. And ScienceDebate isn't the only answer, but it's a critical part. And because of what we do, we don't get grant funds from government sources or even from many foundations. We rely on you.

So before the end of the year, please make a tax-deductible gift to ScienceDebate, and know you're doing your part for democracy.

Thank you.

Shawn Otto

Chair, ScienceDebate.org

Science Debate is a 501(c)(3) non-profit.  Donations are tax deductible.  

PS: We are still seeking to gather your concerns about how the election of Donald Trump may be affecting US science and your work specifically. Please donate today to fund our efforts to build this data.

PPS: If you have read The War on Science, thank you. If not, please do and pass it along to others, because it is a deeply documented report to help people understand what is happening, why it is happening, who is doing it, and what we can do to counter it, and an account of the ScienceDebate effort, full of interviews with top scientists and thought leaders.

Donate today to support the continued push for evidence in our democracy

____________________________________________________________________________

This is still a work in progress - I'll be back later to do some more.

Considering what we have done to our United States of America government.  

Giving it over to the plutocrats who believe they can ignore physical truths by fabricating fictions to distract people from learning about what is happening upon our planet.  People who can see no further than their own self-enrichment, people who feel nothing but contempt for others.

Against that we have the crap shot of global warming caused climate change as exhibited through the increasing tempo and intensity of extreme infrastructure destroying events impacting our global economy and lives as we know them - A thing people are doing their best to ignore.  It's fantastically crazy, rather than focusing on preparing for increasingly intense weather patterns and other related challenges, that we know for sure are coming at us, they are still trapped in childish King Of The Mountain games. They will not be happy until their nothing left to consume.

Then we have their very successful PR campaigns that are effectively trying to disintegrated our social contracts, including all agencies within our government that offend their personal (read self-serving) religious faith.  Ethics, good manners, inherent sense of "fair-play", respect for others and their accomplishments, honesty, learning from mistakes, none of that means a thing, all that matters to them is winning for dogmatic beliefs, and making lots of money in the process.  

 January 3rd, 2017 - tell Democratic Senators to vote on Judge Merrick Garland's nomination.

This is going to get terrifying.  
President of the United Stated of America or CEO of the Corporation of Amerika