If more money had been available to research the cause, and cure, for ebola, would we be further along now than we are? Common sense tells us the answer is probably yes.
That is why President Obama and his fellow Democrats spent a considerable effort during this campaign season to convince voters that Republicans, by underfunding research on ebola, are a cause – maybe the cause – of our unreadiness to deal with it.
The Republican-funding part of this has already been debunked by me and numerous others: Under President Bush, National Institute of Health (NIH) and Center for Disease Control (CDC) received major increases. And, this year, President Obama was the one proposing cuts to their budgets.
Unfortunately, relatively few people know any of this, since our wonderful “neutral” media have largely kept it under wraps. To paraphrase Rahm Emanuel, never let a good attack on Republicans – even a bogus one – go to waste.
But now we have additional information on the subject.
Read these excerpts from Melissa Quinn\’s article for dailysignal.com, an adjunct of the American Heritage Foundation, and you\’ll see what I mean:
Seekinga more robust defense in the event of a bioterrorist attack on theUnited States, the Bush administration created a $6 billion fund toprepare the nation for such threats, including the deadly Ebolavirus.
TheObama administration, however, has not used the range of tools andbudget provided by the post-9/11 project, focusing instead ononly three targets and diverting at least $1 billion to otherpriorities, a review by The Daily Signal found.
Nearlyfive years ago, in fact, the administration\’s own biodefensescience board warned that project funds “should not be diverted tosupport other initiatives, regardless of the merit of otherpurposes.”
Repeateddiversions of funds “raise doubts about the intention of the U.S.government to consistently fund the enterprise,” the science boardadds.
Of$3.3 billion budgeted under Project BioShield over the past decadefor medical countermeasures to Ebola and a dozen other “materialthreats” identified by the Department of Homeland Security, fully90 percent – $3 billion – went to address only three: anthrax,smallpox and botulism.
InSeptember 2006, then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoffcalled Ebola a “material threat against the United Statespopulation sufficient to affect national security.”
Butthe Obama administration decided to take Ebola off ProjectBioShield\’s hit list even after President Barack Obama singled outthe virus in his first official State of the Union address
Tell us again, Mr. President: who is to blame for our lack of ebola preparedness?
There is more in this article. A lot more. And it is at least as damning as what you just read.
Unfortunately, based on countless examples in the past, this information is going to be withheld from viewers/readers/listeners by most mainstream media.
The right to know, in other words, is superseded by the preference for Democrats – even Democrats who may be responsible for our current unacceptably poor progress in fighting ebola.
Keep \’em ignorant and you own \’em.
