South Carolina Policy Council to women and sick people: it's money wasted on the likes of you.

Cotton Boll Conspiracy has off days, as do we all. Today's an example, with another pom-pom-waving snark fest over a list of the 10 worst stimulus grants in SC according to the SC Policy Council, to which CBC seems to have some connection.


Given CBC's razor-sharp analyses of shenanigans at SC financial institutions- drilling way way beyond what  you see in the newspapers- it's disappointing to see a post that starts off: "$55K for picnic shelters? Why not?" All the more so since it links to a Policy Council post. The Council has been preening itself lately over launching a site called The Nerve, where they say they aim to raise blogging to real journalism.


This sort of snarky stuff goes back to Senator William Proxmire's Golden Fleece Awards, which the Wisconsin legislator established in 1975. What characterized them was that they sounded funny. Proxmire never gave the grant requestors, or the grantmaking entities, a chance to explain why the project was worth applying for funding for, or why it got funding. It was pure mockery and unless you did a lot of research on your own you never got to see both sides of the issue. Maybe it was a waste, maybe it wasn't. When you frame the argument to support your own point of view, who knows?


But it's not a Nerve story we're looking at here, it's one "written by SCPC."


So the first question one might reasonably ask is, what do the authors know about any of the subjects they've defined as the 10 works stimulus funded projects?


No idea.


So let's start with the picnic shelters. It's a Corps of Engineers project, we know that much from the Policy Council's link to the tracking site Stimulus Watch. It's for large and mini shelters.


But how many? And where? And are they planned to last for decades (presumably a bit more cost there_ than the sort of cheap, short-term crap that defines the welcomes centers the state is closing and the general state of, say, SC roads generally?


We don't know. The Policy Council apparently couldn't be troubled to call the Corps or the contractor to ask. It was enough to envision "the Taj Mahal" of shelters and leave it at that.


Next: does the Policy Council really believe every penny of a grant to fund an academic study will go to pay one six-figure grad student? They can't be bothered to say. They just snark it, complete with a base-rousing and irrelevant post note: 

A six-figure salary for a graduate research assistant? We should all be so lucky to land jobs like that. Hopefully, these studies will focus on the injustice of taking taxpayer dollars and wasting them on projects such as these. But at least it’s not another global warming study.

Now that is certainly helpful.


What's the candida fungus? SCPC won't tell you: 

Likewise, do taxpayers really need to be paying for this? If it’s so important, private investors would fund it.

A quick Google search pulls up dozens of sites on candida, which is anything but obscure: 

Yeast infections are very common. About 75 percent of women have one during their lives. And almost half of women have two or more vaginal yeast infections.

Wikipedia:

Candidiasis or thrush is a fungal infection (mycosis) of any of the Candida species, of whichCandida albicans is the most common.^[1][2] Candidiasis encompasses infections that range fromsuperficial, such as oral thrush and vaginitis, to systemic and potentially life-threatening diseases.Candida infections of the latter category are also referred to as candidemia and are usually confined to severely immunocompromised persons, such as cancer, transplant, and AIDS patients.

Superficial infections of skin and mucosal membranes by Candida causing local inflammation anddiscomfort are however common in many human populations.^[2][3][4] While clearly attributable to the presence of the opportunistic pathogens of the genus Candida, candidiasis describes a number of different disease syndromes that often differ in their causes and outcomes.^[2][3] Commonly referred to as a yeast infection, it is also technically known as candidosis, moniliasis, andoidiomycosis.^[5]:308

Ecological research? SCPC says:

Sediment research for the benthic ecology field: $591,351

Jobs “created”: 2

The average public school teacher in South Carolina earns $42,207. Instead of funding this obscure scientific research project, policymakers could have hired 14 more teachers.

Inquiring minds wonder: how does SCPC define "obscure"? Something they've never heard of? It seems a broad field if that is true. Two other questions- 1) if you put jobs "created" in quotes, it's pretty clear you don't think there were two jobs created. 2) if you could create 14 teacher jobs for the same amount, how would you reprogram the money? Could the granting agency do it, or would it require an act of Congress? And if you pulled it off, how many years would the grant money fund the 14 teaching positions?


What about myelin lipids research?


Here's the intellectual blockbuster analysis the SCOP  summoned up:

This funding is dedicated to hiring 1 postdoc scholar at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). At Stanford University, the minimum starting salary for a postdoc ranges from $37,368 and $51,552 based on years of experience. So even if MUSC is on the same scale, where is the remaining $88,579 going?

Turns out it's research to try and cure a weird, rare disease that attacks kids:

spasticity at 4-6 years of age. The disease is restricted to the lower limbs with no cognitive or speech impairment in two patients from one family. In contrast, the disease rapidly progressed in seven patients from other two families. They required walking aids at 7 years age and presented with spasticity extended to the upper limbs; dystonia involving trunk, limbs, and face; upper-motor neuron deficits; decline in cognitive abilities; cerebellar dysfunction. Thus, it became necessary to perform additional behavioral analyses to uncover any potential neurological deficits of Fa2h knockout mice in order to fully understand the function of Fa2h in the mouse. These analyses would also help define the utility and limitation of Fa2h knockout mouse model as a disease model for FA2H deficiency. The ARRA award enabled us to conduct behavioral studies (motor coordination, locomotor activity, and spatial memory) to uncover neurological deficits of Fa2h knockout mice. The neurological deficits of the mice found in this study could be utilized to test potential therapeutics for human FA2H deficiency.

Once again- why are the SCPC "scholars" too lazy to call up anybody and ask the questions they claim are unanswered?

Just wondering. You could do a lot better, Cotton Boll.