From The Half-Red House

I now make my living working with something called “indicators”, which are kind of like “statistics with a goal, presented understandably”.. For a good introduction to what our group at U Mass Lowell is trying to do, you might want to watch Hans Rossling’s presentation of GapMinder or just play around with the GapMinder tool.

I am dismayed with the choice of Judd Gregg for Commerce Secretary not only because I have seen his reactionary political activities up-close from New Hampshire, but also because he may have a hand in stifling the work my research group is doing, which I see as a highly-important democratizing force.

Well, Obama chose Gregg, and
I refreshed my memory on what the Department of Commerce does, and it is very important to all of us.

Where would we be without the Weather Bureau? How can we approach solving global warming without the accurate measurement s provided by NOAA. Would Obama’s meteoric rise have been possible without the groundwork of the Minority Business Development Agency? The list goes on and on…

One very important part of Commerce is the US Census Bureau. The 2010 census will determine, not just how much knowledge about ourselves as a people we have stored in some dusty vault, but what our economic future will be (all policy, except the Bush administration’s “faith-based” initiatives, is driven by science based on statistical facts. The funding of every social program is tied to the census data, millions of out-of-work people are expected to survive the current depression by working for the census bureau, and businesses make billions by repackaging ad selling what the government provides for free, just for a start.). Judd Gregg has in the past called for the dismantling of the Commerce Department, and will now be in charge of it. His overarching desire as a Senator has been to cut public expenditures and privatize more and more government functions, so I assume he will stifle funding for the vital but boring daily statistical work the department does.

Gregg is also a champion of US “intellectual property rights”, and I expect him to start enforcing bad legislation such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in ways that stifle innovation here and abroad. The only check on these tendencies will be whatever “micromanagement” the rest of the Obama team may impose on Gregg’s policymaking activities.

One good thing about Gregg is that he is not a religiously-based social conservative and will tend to give science its due, My fear is that he may not give science and information gathering enough money and autonomy to accomplish what is needed at this critical time in

My one remaining New Hampshire Republican senator may a be named Commerce Secretary in the Obama administration, and I’m alternately puzzled, dismayed and impressed.

Puzzled, if Mr. Obama sees anything positive or progressive in Gregg’s record. Gregg is a militarist and an extreme fiscal conservative from an old patrician family. At least he’s not a gung-ho social conservative. but that’s praising with faint damns. To take just one random example, Gregg authored a proposal for drastic cuts in safety-net programs such as medicaid, food-stamps, medicare and school aid when the was chair of the Senate Budget Committee in 2006 (http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=1921&issue_id=139). He has a long record of wanting to cut programs for the poor and help out the rich. Also in 2007, “The Senate voted 82-16 to adopt a Judd Gregg (NH) measure (S Con Res
20) to oppose any congressional action endangering U.S. forces
currently serving in Iraq, including reducing or cutting off funding
for the war. (http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=2277&issue_id=35)”, as an alternative to the Bush “Surge” in Iraq. He has opposed winding down the war in Iraq and has voted with George Bush on almost all key issues.

Dismayed if the Commerce Department actually does something. There is probably a lot of harm that a died-in-the-wool Republican ideologue could do there… lots of ways he could sabotage programs aimed at helping the poor and disadvantaged or converting the economy to renewables.

Impressed if Obama has worked out a way to flip a senate seat from Republican to Democrat in exchange for a sinecure in a backwater government department. That could be a master-stroke. But today the talk is of putting another Republican in his seat; if that happens, Obama has won nothing and given away something potentially valuable to his adversaries. WHY?

The missing piece of the puzzle for me is what exactly does the Commerce Department do? If Gregg is to be in charge, I hope it really has no power but to soothe the sensibilities of of anxious big-businessmen. I need to find out what this department does; we all do; and we need to be prepared to confront disastrous decisions. I wish Bill Richardson had not backed down. This could be a disaster in the making