Porter isn’t teaching students, she’s grilling witnesses. She’s good at that, and doesn’t need the aids. In the House such aids have mainly been favored by fringe Republicans for performative use; she’s better than that.
The whole point of this exercise is to educate the people following these hearings on the nature of the issue. So in a very real sense she is indeed “teaching students.”
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That is an interesting statistic, but it needs context to be meaningful. For example, what percentage of costs does the funding represent, are there meaningful differences between the types of trials supported by funding versus those that are not supported by federal funding, etc.
I do think that double dipping with a single enantiomer after the racemate goes generic is dirty pool, but this does not extend patent protection on the racemate. There has been nothing other than ANDA approval at the FDA between any generic company and the US market for generic Zyrtec (the racemic version of cetirizine) ever since patent expiry.
Tears of laughter and joy.
I work in a department dedicated to medication access. Our mission is to help people obtain and afford necessary therapies, particularly “specialty” meds like Abbvie’s Humira, which costs insurance plans $6k per month.
Fortunately, we can find uninsured and underinsured patients help with these, too.
Seeing this well-dressed scumbag squirm a little made my day.
Like many fucked up things in this world, follow the money. Well done, Rep Porter!!!
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Your male privilege is hanging out, buddy, tuck it back in.
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All the uninformed C-Span viewers?
I would like the legislature to be a serious place. Perhaps that ship has sailed, but I was just expressing a personal preference as to what I would like to see in a legislator I respect. I’m not going to apologize for that opinion.
I didn’t see any googly eyes or gold stars on those visual aids.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the premise that including data visualization makes a presentation inherently less serious than an oral argument alone, especially when addressing topics that involve comparing numerical values.
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And I respect your disagreement.
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It wasn’t Green Eggs and Ham.
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These sound bites with the visuals are a key way to promote issues using social media. These takedowns get passed around and shared. If the visuals help the layman understand the issue clearly, all the better.
And ask yourself, would you say the same thing of the person with the visuals was a man?
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Sadly true.
Plus, humans generally are bad at understanding exponential (vs linear) differences.
https://manjusweb.com/the-chessboard-phenomenon/
I trust Rep. Porter and her ability to meet the moment.
I think she knows what she is doing.
Among other things, Rep. Porter was a university law professor for years.
I also think that, despite whatever one’s expectations are about the so-called “dignity of the [U.S.] Senate [chamber],” there are plenty of people watching–even her own constituency–who are not physically present in that Senate chamber, who are registered voters and will remember her, and her work, come election time. Some of these people will be grateful for her homespun, unslick visual aids.
The current version of the U.S. electorate is in sore need of civics lessons. Most people my age (and I am middle-aged) don’t even understand how most kinds of government in the U.S. even operate. Younger voters must take it upon themselves to learn how things work (or don’t) because U.S. public school curriculum has been gutted of civics classes for decades.
Handles:
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But it’s not the “right” way to communicate, so it’s instantly “bad”. /s
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Congress people should not require a marketing department and graphics design department to produce their visual aids. If they look like an intern got out the crayons and markers 1/2 hour before the hearing, that’s just fine with me, as long as they are actually relevant to the discussion at hand, and accurate in what they purporting to display
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Yes, of course. I already did, by pointing out that my dislike is partly due to their use by GOPers (who have mainly been men).
Probably this is the source of my dislike of seeing her do it. Obviously she will make her own decisions as to what works, and certainly she is better at politics than I am.
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I really think we could benefit from more educators and former educators in government.
For some reason our society runs on the assumption that elected officials are supposed to come from a background in law or business. Lawyers, executives, maybe an occasional doctor. But someone who actually has a background in proper research or effectively communicating a complex topic comes along and we get dismissive, judgemental comments like “Porter isn’t teaching students, she’s grilling witnesses.”
I say we already have enough people in congress who know how to grill witnesses like a prosecutor arguing a court case. Let’s get more people in there who know how to get others to make informed decisions.
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And lets make more of those people women and people of color and LGBQT+ people… let’s have the people who represent us actually represent who we are as a people… which is not all white wealthy men.
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Agreed.
Yeah, that is definitely one of them empower-y type deals that just sets some people on edge:
Another camp was dead set against letting the people elect the president by a straight popular vote. First, they thought 18th-century voters lacked the resources to be fully informed about the candidates, especially in rural outposts. Second, they feared a headstrong “democratic mob” steering the country astray. And third, a populist president appealing directly to the people could command dangerous amounts of power.
Out of those drawn-out debates came a compromise based on the idea of electoral intermediaries. These intermediaries wouldn’t be picked by Congress or elected by the people. Instead, the states would each appoint independent “electors” who would cast the actual ballots for the presidency.
Heaven forfend that U.S. voters are informed. /s
OTOH, Point #3 in that first paragraph, plus a completely unaccountable and basically anonymous set electoral college electors, is pretty much how we got 
anyway. Ugh.
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Yeah, at least that bit didn’t…
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While we are at it, maybe we should revive the Congressional OTA to deliver our congresspeople with a non-partisan, objective source of factual STEM information.
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STEM is in far less jeopardy than the humanities are. The constant attack by the right on the arts and humanities for literally decades now is part of why we are where we are. STEM fields are generally speaking flush with cash, because they are seen as “non-partisan” while factual representations of historical events are constantly being undermined by lack of funding and right wing revisionism, not to mention cuts to departmental funding at smaller schools at the college/university level. Some smaller schools have cut entire programs to save money.
The NSF has nearly $8.3 billion while the NEH was told by the previous administration to “wind down” their activities.
STEM matters, I agree, but so do the arts and humanities. That’s where we build an understanding of context, our shared humanity, where we learn to build empathy for others, and to express ourselves in healthy ways that enriches the world. We need to stop pretending that the only thing that matters is how much cash we make the the already wealthy.
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