With record unemployment, depressed income levels, stagnant investment, declining academic achievement and rampant crime, obesity and disease, it’s good to know that the State of South Carolina has plenty of cash to blow on a powerful lawmaker’s pet project.
Taxpayer-funded workers on the H.L. Hunley confederate submarine, which has been the publicly-paid for phallic obsession of Senate Majority Leader Glenn McConnell for years, boasted new “discoveries” over the weekend in their ongoing effort to justify the tens of millions of tax dollars being spent on this bucket of bolts.
And once again, rather than doing its job the state’s mainstream media is along for the ride.
From the Sunday editions of the Charleston Post and Courier, which continues to serve as an “eager, gaping mouth” wrapped around the Hunley’s phallus …
Clemson researchers have been investigating whether subcritical water could preserve iron artifacts. They’ve tested the process on several of the Hunley’s rivets, and so far, the subcritical technique has successfully preserved these pieces 10 times faster than other processes.
Paul Mardikian, the Hunley’s senior conservator, has described the process as a potential “turning point in the history of archaeology and conservation.”
This work also has led to new looks at how metal can be protected from corrosion, research that bolstered Clemson Restoration Institute’s successful proposal to the federal government for a national wind turbine drive train test lab.
The $98 million wind lab will be built next to Lasch lab.
“Metal and the sea. It’s all connected,” (Professor Michael) Drews said. “The Hunley showed what happens to metal in the long term, and we’re using what we’re learning from the Hunley and applying it to modern metals.”
Wait … are these people effing kidding us?
South Carolinians have spent tens of millions of scarce tax dollars so that Clemson “scientists” could create glorified Rust-Oleum?
Sheesh …
In case you’re wondering whether or not this is meaningful science or the latest in a long line of “discoveries” aimed at fooling people into thinking the Hunley project is actually doing important work, well … wonder no longer.
In fact, as FITS exposed in an exclusive report back in February, the Hunley project is nothing but an effort by Clemson University to ingratiate itself with McConnell, who was clearly unable to find sufficient private funding for his beloved phallus.
“We are in a legislative state where a close relationship with the President Pro Tem of the Senate is good for Clemson,” reads one of the internal memos from the University that FITS obtained for our reports.
Mmmm-hmmmm.
A follow-up report exposed additional details of the scam.
No wonder McConnell has fought at every step of the way to keep the details of his homoerotic boondoggling top secret.
Look, people, we’re all for preservation and conservation – but these “Hunley innovations” clearly lack any practical benefit whatsoever for the State of South Carolina.
If McConnell wants to conduct additional Hunley research, then he should pay for it himself or find a private donor willing to pick up the tab.
Otherwise, as far as we’re concerned it’s time to dump this rusty brown turd back into Charleston harbor.
By Recovering Lobbyist December 28, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Will, Clemson is becoming a serious player in automotive research. I think studying how to prevent metal from rusting is an important research objective, particularly to that industry. I suppose we all should be thankful that you are not in charge of deciding where research money is spent. Otherwise we wouldn’t have GPS, cell phones, or the Internet for that matter.
By fitsnews December 28, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Recovering lobbyist,
You’d also not have $150 million (soon to be $300 million) blown on an empty hydrogen fuel cell research campus in Columbia.
Oh, and if that research is so damn important to the industry, why don’t they pay for it with their automotive profits? Oh right … Big Brother is driving in Detroit these days, we forgot.
Roger Milliken has been paying for his own textile research for years now. Should we now reimburse him for that?
What about FITS? Should government pick up the tab for our market research?
Government picking winners and losers in the marketplace is and will always be wrong.
-FITS
P.S. – What step are you on?
By max December 28, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Concur with Fitswilliam on this —
I probably speak heresy to paleoconfederates here — but unlike the USS Monitor with approximately 27 different patents, a truly innovative machine of it’s time — the Hunley’s an old cast iron railroad boiler, the metallurgy of which was established centuries ago, and which can probably yield nothing in the way of research.
And despite it’s one time record of sinking the USS Housatonic on a dark night in 1864, it was a deathtrap, killing nearly all of the men that who had the unfortunate circumstances to serve in her. Hardly a stellar combat record, unlike the Union monitors and ironclads that made amphibious warfare into a science on the Cumberland, Mississippi Tennessee and Ohio rivers.
Stop the research, put it in a museum, drop it back into the drink as an underwater reef, use it as a second receptacle for Mark Sanford’s ego, but quit flushing away badly needed tax dollars to support this rust bucket.
By countryboy December 28, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I agree, sink it back into the harbor from whence it came (or further out in the Atlantic as part of a fishing reef). Recovering it and removing the contents is one thing and probably should have been done, but beyond that, junk it.
By Todd December 28, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Hey! Don’t knock research like this! The US Space Program created Tang which gave Strom Thurmond a color for his hair! And for that, we are all forever grateful.
By Liberty For Me December 28, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Gee…do you think if we could come up with software to take say 10% of peoples pay when they deposited their checks.Then we take those stolen funds and pay Sherwin Williams to find a rust resistant paint to preserve historical metal…Would that be a crime?..If so,why do we have to live by laws the government does not have to?….Is this where Harry Reed says taxes are voluntary?
By Doyle December 28, 2009 at 11:56 pm
I can actually name a perfect place to put it, right up Glenn McConnell’s ass. That might be worth a few million to see.
By Old Bike Dude December 29, 2009 at 7:58 am
“pssst OSPHO” (a la The Graduate)
By Myles Keogh December 29, 2009 at 9:49 am
I am history person and supporter of preserving our military battlefields (particularly the Civil War) and naval monuments but this is absurd. It has become a huge waste of taxpayers money. As I understand it all the contents from within the Hunley have been removed and preserved a while ago. It is long past time to place the Hunley in a museum and stop wasting the taxpayers money on this and that boondoggle Innovista project.