Gunpowder Chronicle posted on June 17, 2008 9:06 PM | Rating:
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As Brian Griffiths has already noted over at Red Maryland, O'Guvnah has pledged to spend $1.1 billion of your hard-earned money on new biotechnology research initiatives in order to make the state of Maryland a "hub" for this kind of work.
But what Brian doesn't get into, is why are we spending even more money when we already have a large and established set of incubators at Maryland's premier research institution -- the University of Maryland, Baltimore?
Several years ago, UMB launched the University of Maryland Biopark -- a redevelopment effort that has already built two buildings (with several more on the way) to serve as incubators and labs in the state effort. The effort has been very successful. Not just in redeveloping some of the worst parts of West Baltimore, but in bringing some top-flight researchers to Maryland. Combined with the university's Insitute of Virology on Lombard Street -- which hosts Dr. Robert Gallo in his AIDS/HIV Research -- Maryland is already a key hub in this type of research.
When you add in the efforts at Hopkins on the East Side, there is a lot of work already going on to establish Maryland as the hub. So why the need for more public money?
Why are we putting more public money into an industry where private money is more appropriately used? Liberal socialists like O'Guvnah rail against pharmaceutical companies and how they spend money on drug development (and the resulting high prices of many drugs). Do they think there is not a cost to taxpayers when states do the same?
More importantly, why are they providing vast sums of corporate welfare to things like embryonic stem cell research, which have never proven to provide even a single cure? If this type of research has the real potential O'Guvnah says it has, why isn't private capital flocking to it? Investors are not stupid, and if there is money to be made, they will invest in it. Hell, as the dotcom bubble and the housing bubble have shown, investors will put money in things without a guaranteed return.
Is it any coincidence that the pledged $1.1 billion is the same amount as the tax increases from the Special Session and the regular session? Or is really close to the so-called "structural deficit"? It's a good question to ask.