Gingrich's presentation was most interesting, and while it presented some exciting ideas it also ignored some harsh realities.

Clearly, Gingrich's current thinking is dominated by his background as a history professor - and the debate between ideas and economic forces as drivers of human behavior has been going on for some time. Note that he omitted entirely from his talk any funding for development of the social sciences.

As a highly illuminating example of his thought, his analysis of Britain's failure to develop technological industries made no mention of the effects of colonialism on its internal development, but instead focused on its class system. Britain had the science, but it also had high interest rates. The disasterous effects of the high interest rates which colonialism helped to continue are felt to this day not only in Britain, but also in many of its former colonies such as Canada and Australia.

Alas, ecnomics is called the dismal science, as often it leads you to certain umpalatable but easy to understand conclusions, such as you can't spend money you don't have. You can't cut taxes AND increase defense spending without creating a deficit, inflation, and/or running a massive foreign trade deficit. While the effects of such a policy might be sweet in the short run, in the long run they are disasterous, as Gingrich only now seems to be understanding.

While the needs Gingrich speaks of are real, one of the kay reasons they have not been addressed is because of Arrow's Possibility Theorem and its disasterous effects on the formulation of spending policies. Arrow effectively put an end to much government spending, to the delight of many, by attacking cost benefit analysis as a method for directing public taxation and spending. Of course social factors had a role as well: while Arrow was rewarded for this theoretical work with a Nobel prize, it is interesting to note that the authors of some of the 5 other papers which called his results into question have never been recognized.

I thought about putting the header "GINGRICH CALLS FOR TAX INCREASE" at the top of this comment, but Gingrich's omissions go beyond simply economics. In point of fact, racism has had a massive effect on US education. There are no economies of scale in education in the US, which Gingrich calls for, simply because there is no "scale". In the US, schools are financed and run on a local level, and people of African descent have been concentrated in urban areas by the ruling factions use of different social means. This has reached a point where sadly many Afro-American youth have given up the struggle against racism and wallow in a self destructive rage.

Omissions of very real factors of this type lead to a certain shallowness, which limit to some extent the usefulness of his insights. Gingrich speaks of advertising and marketing, but what if the idea you want to communicate is not very pleasant or appealing? For example, Gingrich speaks of the threat of terrorist attack with a weapon of mass destruction, but fails to speak about why "terrorists" would undertake such a difficult task in the first place. At the known risk of being labeled as an anti-semite (and this is a sad joke), could it be the the reason they want to attack us is that we are about the only country on Earth supporting Israel while it continues to seize Arab lands?

Having infuriated many so far, I want to close with some items of agreement. Gingrich was right in seeking the closure of OTA, which did some really bad science for political ends. But he was wrong in not assuring that OTA's work on these problems was not taken over by either the NSF or Congresssional Research Service before this closure came.

Second, there is a tremendous need for the climate studies which Gingrich proposes. The more that science is done, the more scientists will become aware of the climatic spikes which were produced by impact events in the recent past.

And this is the unexpected factor - a factor which has had and will have historical effect as well.

Welcome to the third greatest threat.

EP