Hmm… like BTeV? …
It’s very unfortunate that flavor physics gets “voted off the island” in the US HEP program…

I can’t see a strong argument for the support given to the airlines after 11/9, particularly given that many of their problems predated that event. SouthWestern would, in any case, have been prevented from achieving monopoly by the purchase of competitors, wouldn’t it, in the normal way? It’s not as if the support achieved anything very much anyhow, if you look at the fates of those airlines since the bail-out. I don’t see capitalism as a competitive environment until you get really big, at which point you have an effective gun to government’s head. The Chrysler bailout of long ago was a mistake too, I think. Hopefully, GM won’t be the lucky recipient of a large wodge of taxpayer’s money to keep them afloat, either.

Could you elaborate further?

…we have big problems…

Oh, I don’t disagree. And I do think the article you link to gets it generally right. The budget is in miserable shape, and if we’re lucky Katrina will force the current administration and congress into rethinking its patently absurd pork barrel politics. Now, I have little hope of this actually happening, but the US is still (by far) the wealthiest country in the world, and there’s no sign of that changing soon, Katrina or not, pork barrel politics or not, China and globalization or not. I just think posts like this need this sort of perspective. Things today might not be as good as things were last month, or before Bush arrived, but that doesn’t mean we’re toeing the line on some cliff of great despair, sure to fall off, never to recover.

(* from the Christian Science Monitor, via VPR.)

The incompetence during the late 1970′s caused inflation to spike up to 20% per annum at its worse in America towards the end of the Carter administration.

Sure, but Weimar Germany hit 3.25 million percent per month. That’s qutie a difference. Again, I’m pretty confidant the Federal Reserve can keep us from a Weimar Germany-esque hyperinflation.

n the bankruptcy of the airlines, there is government intervention at work, too. E.g., Government didn’t let some airlines fail after 9/11, which would have let the remaining airlines be able to hold fares steady, instead of dropping them further.

Yeah, but had the government not stepped in, it’s possible, Southwest would currently have a monopoly… I’m certainly not capable persuasively arguing the merits of the decision to keep the airline industry afloat after 9/11. My only point was that saying that an airline can’t afford to staff enough employees to take care of their customers in a timely fashion is evidence for the very fabric of society being shredded is a bit over the top.

The incompetence during the late 1970′s caused inflation to spike up to 20% per annum at its worse in America towards the end of the Carter administration. For a period of time, the Treasury Department actually had to issue US Treasury debt securities in foreign currencies because hardly anybody would buy any of the debt securities denominated in American dollars.

In other countries it was even worse, such as inflation spiking up to 600% per annum at its worse in Israel during the mid 1980′s.

Hopefully the feds will not resort to extreme measures such as trying to solve all of the world’s problems by printing up more money. A Weimar Germany style hyperinflation would surely completely destroy today’s society, into something possibly worse than New Orleans and/or Iraq and Afghanistan.

*sigh* I’m pretty confidant the Federal Reserve is smarter than that…

Today, from where I sit, it’s not just a matter of the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots; the very fabric of this country is shredding apart.

While I agree that the state of things is a bit depressing, that’s being a bit melodramatic, isn’t it? It may be a bit trite to say, but to find cases of a country who’s fabric is being ripped apart, I look to countries like Haiti and Uganda. Or possibly to Indonesia, where their tsunami was a much more devestating disaster in a country much less equipped to handle it, even with our FEMA blundering.

First, a bankrupt airline might be an inconvenience, but it’s nothing more than capitalism at work. As for the funding situation, what you describe is terrible. But I find it difficult to be so distraught over the state of the nation when as a country we have so much money to throw around that people get upset when multi-billion dollar programs which the general public doesn’t understand get questioned.

Sure, basic science should be better funded. As a recipient of said funding, I’m all for it. Sure, money is being poorly allocated, but while in the case of the N.O. levees, this poor allocation might be extraordinarily disastarous, it’s not like our government has ever been a model of benighted budget policy. And quite frankly, as a student at Fermilab, I question the monetary benefit of continuing the program full tilt into the LHC era. It’s not to say the Tevatron can’t do very good and important physics, but it may be that the most useful physics will be done in smaller, more efficient, and more innovative collaborations not operating in discovery mode. But it’s not obvious the lab sees it that way.

I will say, I think the suggestion to cut off RHIC is a very poor one. I’m rather impressed by their results and have a hunch that they’ll turn to be very important some day.

Anyway, when the HEPAP report comes out, I’d be very interterested to hear your point of view on it, regardless of the content.