I attended three sessions today: "Voters, Delegates,
Super delegates: How We Nominate, How We Elect," "What
Politicians Need to Know About Science," and "Cuba."
Because I have been so involved in the political process
in Colorado this year I didn't learn much from this
panel. None of them were from Colorado so I, clearly,
new more about how our system works than they did!
There were three really good speakers for the 2nd panel
and they told stories about the abysmal state of
our politician's science knowledge. That having
good science advisers isn't enough if the President
and Legislators don't know enough science to
understand what their advisers are telling them.
And certainly to have a President who does not
believe in Evolution and does not understand what
a Scientific Theory is, i.e. the theory of gravity,
makes for some pretty poor policies. Some of
the things they noted was that our current model
of Health Care isn't going to work. There are
companies and one in particular who is developing
drugs for orphan diseases (like the one my brother
had). This company has developed a drug to cure
a genetic disease that has about 5000 people in
the world who have it and life with it is terrible.
The drug cures this disease, but it costs 300,000
dollars per year. There is no way our current
system can cope with that. And yet, what a
difference it makes for those few people if they
could afford it. Other problems that need work,
were brought up in other panels..the water problem,
peak oil, global warming and so on.
Finally, Cuba. It was clear none of them thought
the embargo should have been carried on for so
long. It hadn't had an inpact on Fidel and now
that Raoul is in charge it probably won't have
an inpact on him either. Although there are some
small changes being made in Cuba and bit by bit
they are changing. One speaker suggested that
having Raoul take over was much like Bush saying
that I've canceled the election and Jeb will
take over now, although Cuba does not call itself
a democracy. They also pointed out that if Cuba
were not just 90 miles away from the US, but 9000
miles, the US would have ignored it.
Apparently the old guard is changing somewhat
because the newspaper which is run by the governmnet
is starting to be critical of the government.
One of the things that Cuba is relaly proud of and
should be is that they have the largest and if not
the best a very good medical school. They train
thousands of doctors and send them all over Latin
America to set up clinics and help the poor. They
also send them to Mali which no one seems to quite
understand how Mali got included.
Another speaker noted that b 2015 Cuba will have
brought literacy to a large portion of Latin
American, performed 6 million surgeries and doesn't
that seem a better way to win minds and hearts
than using bombs?
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