Year 3, Month 5, Day 19: Chuckleheads Everywhere.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune writes about one of their state’s politicians, a Republican named Chip Cravaack, who would from all the evidence seem to be an utter and complete moron:

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack is leading a Republican effort in the House to block funding for a climate change initiative that provides money to education programs around the nation, including at Carleton College in Northfield and the Como Zoo and Conservatory in St. Paul.

Cravaack’s proposal, offered as an amendment to an annual spending bill, made the first-term Minnesota member of Congress the focus of an intense legislative duel Wednesday over climate change, with Democrats and environmentalists rallying against the GOP measure.

Cravaack’s amendment to the Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill would eliminate $10 million in annual funding made nationwide through the National Science Foundation’s Climate Change education program.

Cravaack said the money “duplicates the already inherent ability of the [NSF] to fund worthy proposals through its rigorous, peer-reviewed process.”

He cited Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports showing a range of overlapping programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education that are funded by 13 government agencies.

“A redundant global warming program can hardly be justified,” he said.

(facepalm).

Sent May 9:

A crucial element of any important mission, like last year’s successful strike against Osama Bin Laden, is redundancy. When that first helicopter went down, the Special Operations personnel on the scene weren’t left high and dry by what could have been a politically and strategically devastating failure. Why? Because there were backup systems — redundancies — in place.

When people collaborating on a project have overlapping job descriptions, that’s an additional layer of protection against mistakes or omissions; more important projects require more robust backup systems.

Which is why Chip Cravaack’s proposed elimination of “redundant” climate change programs is a breathtakingly bad idea. Addressing the effects of Earth’s rapidly metastasizing climate crisis is too important a project to leave up to any single government program. Rather, it will require an all-out effort involving both public and private sector organizations at all levels of society: more redundancy, not less.

Warren Senders

Published.