Science and Culture
Issue | Research | Q&A | Positions | Official Platform Plank | All Topics | Help
RESEARCH
Promote increased tax-funding of scientific research in all fields, especially into alternative energy sources. At the same time require increased public scrutiny of all research programs and more opportunity for public input or control of such programs.
- Corporate Welfare: Do not allow select favored companies to enjoy exclusive benefits from the research, but rather, require all the results of tax-funded research to be made available to all companies and individuals.
- Resume full federal funding to embryonic stem cell research, so the U.S. remains a leading promoter of scientific advancement in this field. For similar reasons grant more latitude to cloning research, though not lifting all restrictions.
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING
Do more to enforce laws against false advertising, in all media, but especially in broadcasting, imposing appropriate penalties on violators. For example:
- Do better policing of ads on radio and TV which promote various investment and "get-rich-quick" schemes, including various "home business" schemes.
- Do more to police advertising of products which promise to reverse the aging process or cure or prevent cancer and other illnesses, also weight-loss and hair re-growth products, and also products which promise fantastic increases in the user's I.Q. or reading speed.
- Grant jurisdiction to the FDA (or appropriate agency) to test vitamin and mineral products to ensure that their labels accurately inform consumers of the product's contents.
- Require the labels of food products to clearly denote health issues associated with modified or engineered ingredients, such as trans fats and corn syrup, that do not appear naturally in foods.
- Do better testing and inspection of bottled water products to ensure the safety of the contents and also to verify the original source of the product.
ANIMAL PROTECTION
Animals serve many roles in our society, providing companionship, entertainment, food, clothing, services, and other products which make our lives better. These uses are a legitimate part of our culture. But since there are cases of mistreatment of animals, reasonable steps toward minimizing their pain or suffering are called for:
- Research Guideline: While recognizing that research on animals is needed for scientific progress, adopt the general guideline that those experiments which would be too cruel and painful to ever be done to a human are also not to be done to animals, especially if the aim of the research is only to develop cosmetics or other non-medical products.
- Enact reforms to protect livestock animals from being confined for extended periods within spaces so small that they are virtually unable to move or turn around or walk.
- Investigate alleged practices, in some rodeos and circuses, of inflicting severe pain to animals to induce them to perform better for spectators, such as through electric shocks or a tight body strap impinging into the animal's groin to make it leap, and take steps to restrict whatever such practices may be found prevalent.
- Require major animal holding facilities, including slaughterhouses and research labs and livestock yards, to be available to public view or scrutiny, in a manner which is non-disruptive and respects the rights of the proprietor, but which enables the general public to directly verify that animal protection laws are not being violated.
- Make allowance, out of practical necessity, for procedures or devices which might involve limited discomfort to animals, such as bridles and cattle prodders, but impose guidelines distinguishing these from unacceptable procedures according to the degree or level of pain permitted, and its duration, and also taking into account the necessity and urgency of the procedures and the priority of their intended purpose.
- Even if inflicting discomfort to animals is sometimes necessary, at least curtail those practices which inflict harm to animals and the only purpose being served is that of providing entertainment to spectators.
Due to the varied uses and pervasiveness of animals in society, enact animal protection laws mainly at the state and local, rather than federal, level.
PROMOTING ART & CULTURAL GROWTH
- It is important for government to foster cultural growth. While the Government's job should not be to restrict cultural activities unless they run counter to the Constitution, there is the implication that the Government should have a hand in supporting activities that benefit the public at large.
- Commit to fully funding the Public Broadcasting System, as it benefits the public directly.
- Commit to funding the National Endowment for the Arts and other programs that help to keep the United States a world leader in the arts, but reassess the practice of bestowing grants onto selected artists to the exclusion of others.
RELIGION AND THE STATE
Let "Separation of Church and State" be understood to mean that the state should not pro-actively promote religion in any form, but not that it should impede religion or discriminate against religious activities or groups, and that interaction between the state and religion is no less or more legitimate than interaction between the state and other private non-religious institutions.
Public display of religious or other symbols
- Allow all private organizations, including religious groups, access to public space in order to erect symbols or displays of their choosing by which they may communicate their ideas to the rest of society in a peaceful and lawful way.
- Have such groups pay a price to the appropriate jurisdiction for this access, so that this use of public space may become a source of needed public revenue not just for maintenance of those public properties, but for general public purposes.
- Set the access or leasing prices high enough, perhaps using a bidding process for those spaces which are in greater demand, so that limits are put on the amount of these displays and they do not tend to "clutter" up those spaces or cause a crowding-together problem.