A Bright Spot in Michigan

Things are apparently not so bad after all. If they were that bad, could we spend money on something like this?

Even with the federal government nearly $2 trillion in debt this year alone. Even with the state of Michigan facing a nearly $1 billion shortfall. Even with the city of Detroit hundreds of millions in debt, prisons being forced to close and criminals released, roads buckling and pitted, campgrounds closing, and many public school systems in this state hacking away at teaching positions and programs in a desperate attempt to try and make ends meet.

Hallelujah! We have a bright spot!

Despite the doom and gloom of a horrible economy created by Republicans and its most evil of henchmen, Dick Cheney, big oil, and the rich, at least one vitally important study being spearheaded by Dr. Xiaoming Li, director of the Prevention Research Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, will be moving full speed ahead.

(CNSNews.com) -- The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will pay $2.6 million in U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job.

Dr. Xiaoming Li, the researcher conducting the program, is director of the Prevention Research Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.

The grant, made last November, refers to prostitutes as "female sex workers"--or FSW--and their handlers as "gatekeepers."

"Previous studies in Asia and Africa and our own data from FSWs [female sex workers] in China suggest that the social norms and institutional policy within commercial sex venues as well as agents overseeing the FSWs (i.e., the 'gatekeepers', defined as persons who manage the establishments and/or sex workers) are potentially of great importance in influencing alcohol use and sexual behavior among establishment-based FSWs," says the NIH grant abstract submitted by Dr. Li.

"Therefore, in this application, we propose to develop, implement, and evaluate a venue-based alcohol use and HIV risk reduction intervention focusing on both environmental and individual factors among venue-based FSWs in China," says the abstract.

The study had to be held in China because, as is well known in Motown, Detroit prostitutes don't drink.

Aside from the fact that China practically owns the US already by buying up all of our debt, why should we borrow another $2.6 million dollars from the Chinese so that we can send the money back to China in an attempt to get prostitutes in that country to act more responsibly?

This is wrong on every possible level and yet it made it through the budgeting process being merely one example of the thousands of incidents of carelessness that are routinely perpetrated by those we elect to represent us.

This is insanity.

I need another tea party.