Disagreeing with my peers across the aisle.

Over the past couple of weeks I've seen several references to the World Health Organization's latest major project, the Global Strategy on Health, Diet, and Physical Exercise, and how the Bush Administration is threatening to weaken or dismiss the WHO and cut off funding if WHO continues with what one white-coated government flunky has referred to as "junk science." And this is a case where while I agree with the Bush Administration's objectives, I'm aghast at their methods.

One of the basic premises in the WHO draft document is that goverments must take responsibility for the health and well-being of their citizens, and to this end should pass laws to restrict the advertisement of "unhealthy" foods and mandate food-labeling requirements at restaurants.

It doesn't take more than two brain cells to understand that eating a Big Mac and a shake, with a total intake of 1600 calories, is going to make you fat if you eat anything else that day. I believe people are smart enough to grok this, and I don't believe that the US Government has any business using its power to force people to behave contrary to their wishes.

The US Government is the only organization in America free to use the power of the gun without fear of retribution. When you, the citizens, give an organization that power, you should restrict its activities to only those that require the use of the gun. Anything else distracts it from its responsibilities, and overburdens you, the citizens, with distractions irrelevant to the use of force.

I do not want the only organization in America free to use power of the gun without fear of retribution deciding what I should and should not eat. Period. And I think the Bush Administration is exactly right in telling the WHO to stick it with respect to their legislative recommendations.

I'm aghast at the Bush Administration's tactics, however. They have lined up their bought-and-paid-for white-coats and have said that the WHO's food policies, even the voluntary guidelines, "are not supported by science." Who the Hell are they kidding? The International Journal of Obesity found that kids who ate fast food three times a week were 40% more likely to be fat than their counterparts that did not.

On the whole, this debacle is still a debacle. More on why, later.

Mind Flight

There has been a lot of concern recently, especially among my peers, about the exporting of programming and other information technology jobs overseas to nations like India and Korea. And while there are a lot of factors involved in this international outsourcing issue, Richard Florida has identified another: mind flight inspired by the Bush Administration.

The thesis is intriguing. If any of you watched the Mars landings recently on NASA TV, you may have been struck by the number of Asian, Indian, and otherwise "foreign" specialists working together to make Spirit and Opportunity work. We in America have always been a powerhouse of intellectual development not just because we were economically powerful, but because our intellectual freedom and spirit of scientific inquiry was the best in the world. The best and brightest wanted to work in the U.S. because here is where the action lives.

But, as Florida writes,

By thumbing our nose at the world and dismissing the consensus views of the scientific community, we are scaring off that talent and sending it to our competitors.

In the most telling paragraph, though, Florida lays it down hard. When inquiring as to why the number of research and applications development-related visa dropped 55% since Bush took office, Florida concluded

that the biggest reason has to do with the changed political and policy landscape in Washington. In the 1990s, the federal government focused on expanding America's human capital and interconnectedness to the world--crafting international trade agreements, investing in cutting edge R&D, subsidizing higher education and public access to the Internet, and encouraging immigration. But in the last three years, the government's attention and resources have shifted to older sectors of the economy, with tariff protection and subsidies to extractive industries. Meanwhile, Washington has stunned scientists across the world with its disregard for consensus scientific views when those views conflict with the interests of favored sectors (as has been the case with the issue of global climate change). Most of all, in the wake of 9/11, Washington has inspired the fury of the world, especially of its educated classes, with its my-way-or-the-highway foreign policy. In effect, for the first time in our history, we're saying to highly mobile and very finicky global talent, "You don't belong here."

If this is true, then Bush Co. has encouraged the disintegration of the middle class by discouraging foreigners from opting in to the American dream. They're happier at home than they are fighting the anti-science culture that pervades our nation.

If it's true, then you have Bush Co. to thank for massive deficits from which there will be no economic recovery worth mentioning, and no economic powerhouse to pay them down someday. Because the intellectual capital needed to run that economic recovery will not be living in the United States.