From Brent Orell's article on AI: "In 2019, the GAO created a Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) team to replace capacity lost when the congressional Office of Technological Assessment was eliminated." Twenty four years. That's how long it took after Republicans killed the OTA in order for a decent replacement to be sto…
"In 2019, the GAO created a Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) team to replace capacity lost when the congressional Office of Technological Assessment was eliminated."
Twenty four years. That's how long it took after Republicans killed the OTA in order for a decent replacement to be stood up. It wasn't until 2008, the first time after 1995 that Democrats had complete control of government, that Congress established technology assessment as a permanent function within the GAO, and it apparently took another 11 years to centralize disparate TA capabilities into a single, public facing entity (to what extent this was simply a formal rather than functional restructuring is hard to say).
But it's important to understand what a key role this had in the molding of the Republican alternate reality that has now run amok over our institutions. Newt Gingrich, an alleged "science nut", wanted elected representatives to be proactive in "educating themselves" regarding important S&T matters. What could go wrong?
There was, of course, perfunctory blather about government waste and reproduction of work done elsewhere — a risible justification for an office with a low seven-figure annual budget. But the real point of it all was to silence those credentialed eggheads and their inconvenient conclusions so that the party of Creationists, climate change deniers, and other assorted right-wing reality distortion field generators could, as we say today, "do their research". Thus enabling people like, for example, Jim Inhofe, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, to cherry pick contrarian scientists to support his theory that man was incapable of despoiling the fruit God's providence, otherwise known as "climate change is a hoax".
According to at least one Congressperson at the time, abolishing the OTA was like Congress "giving itself a lobotomy". The same can be said for much of the American right since then.
From Brent Orell's article on AI:
"In 2019, the GAO created a Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) team to replace capacity lost when the congressional Office of Technological Assessment was eliminated."
Twenty four years. That's how long it took after Republicans killed the OTA in order for a decent replacement to be stood up. It wasn't until 2008, the first time after 1995 that Democrats had complete control of government, that Congress established technology assessment as a permanent function within the GAO, and it apparently took another 11 years to centralize disparate TA capabilities into a single, public facing entity (to what extent this was simply a formal rather than functional restructuring is hard to say).
But it's important to understand what a key role this had in the molding of the Republican alternate reality that has now run amok over our institutions. Newt Gingrich, an alleged "science nut", wanted elected representatives to be proactive in "educating themselves" regarding important S&T matters. What could go wrong?
There was, of course, perfunctory blather about government waste and reproduction of work done elsewhere — a risible justification for an office with a low seven-figure annual budget. But the real point of it all was to silence those credentialed eggheads and their inconvenient conclusions so that the party of Creationists, climate change deniers, and other assorted right-wing reality distortion field generators could, as we say today, "do their research". Thus enabling people like, for example, Jim Inhofe, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, to cherry pick contrarian scientists to support his theory that man was incapable of despoiling the fruit God's providence, otherwise known as "climate change is a hoax".
According to at least one Congressperson at the time, abolishing the OTA was like Congress "giving itself a lobotomy". The same can be said for much of the American right since then.