White House Clamps Down On USGS Publishing 417
An anonymous reader writes "The White House has begun implementing a new policy toward the U.S. Geological Survey, in which all scientific papers and other public documents by USGS scientists must be screened for content. The USGS communications office must now be 'alerted about information products containing high-visibility topics or topics of a policy-sensitive nature.' Subjects fitting this description might include global warming, or research on the effects of oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve."
Re:Riiight (Score:5, Informative)
"The Bush administration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, who study everything from caribou mating to global warming, subjecting them to controls on research that might go against official policy."
The communications office must be notified "of findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed.' and finally.... "In 2002, the USGS was forced to reverse course after warning that oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would harm the Porcupine caribou herd. One week later a new report followed, this time saying the caribou would not be affected."
It may be.... (Score:3, Informative)
It may be that the government doesn't want to be caught unaware when the media gets a hold of a report with newsworthy or politically sensitive information. Other parts of the government already have similar practices in place.
Re:Now that is really annoying. (Score:2, Informative)
What the USGS has to say about this: (Score:4, Informative)
"Recent news reports suggesting the Bush administration is trying to muzzle scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) by placing new controls on approval and release of research plans and products are off base and misinformed about the intent of the changes being formalized at the agency. Speaking as the senior biologist at the USGS, I am deeply concerned that longstanding legitimate scientific peer review processes that have been the basis of scientific practices at the USGS and other scientific agencies and organizations have been mischaracterized as inappropriate political controls on research. Peer review is the bedrock of processes in any credible science organization that ensures scientific conclusions or findings are robust, independent and objective.
The USGS has had such processes in place for many years. As with any science enterprise, policies are periodically reviewed and updated to keep pace with changes in the organization. Our recently revised policy is an effort to do just that and has been developed by scientists and science managers (not political appointees) in an effort to coordinate existing review processes.
Research supervisors in the review chain are simply charged with ensuring all USGS information products have addressed peer comments and are in compliance with USGS procedures with regard to the review and release of scientific information. Furthermore, the notion that senior leadership in an organization should not be alerted to significant findings that will directly impact policy development and decision-making is disturbing. Under current policy this information is transferred to policy makers as it is released to the public.
Characterizing these reviews as an attempt by the Bush administration to control and censor scientific findings is inaccurate, is a disservice to those scientists who developed those processes in the spirit of continually improving our commitment to excellent science and undermines the bedrock of the peer review process as an arbiter of the credibility of individual science products and facilitator of science progress and discussion."
Re:Or translated into "Reality" instead of "Spin" (Score:5, Informative)
"Who is Mark Myers? That's what many US geologists are asking in the wake of an announcement that President George W. Bush will nominate Myers to head the US Geological Survey (USGS).
Re:I can't wait, (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Another right bites the dust (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You can't handle the truth!! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Brought to you by... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the vast majority of them are funny, but the one that says 'the Republican Party will attempt to control science to meet political needs' deserves a prize. How about a 'Medal of Freedom', I hear they are going pretty cheap [washingtonpost.com] these days [medaloffreedom.com].
Re:Riiight (Score:5, Informative)
Try this one on for size. Your division is supposed to make 20 million dollars selling new improved widgets. You've been telling the main office that they've way underestimated the development and production costs all along. Now the financials this quarter make it undeniable: if they don't pull the plug immediately, the company will lose $20m not make it.
So... the main office lays down a policy that any data going into the SEC filings has be cleansed of information that indicates that their product plans are, financially speaking, a load of bullshit.
Is the business run to guarantee senior management their bonuses, or to make money for the stockholders?
We the people are the United States are the stockolder of US Government Inc. It's fine if management wants to make policy conclusions about the findings, that's their job. But they can't cook the books.
Re:For what you ask? (Score:3, Informative)
That objection held more water before we learned that the WH selectively presented intelligence, cherry picked and edited things to support their position, and then had the nerve to say, over and over, that "congress saw the same intelligence we did" when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Add to that their vicious attacks on any and all critics (many of whom later turned out to be correct) and their extensive system of planting news stories that later turned out to be incorrect, I'd say yeah, it's a morally acceptable reason to impeach. The only reason it was "politically expedient" as you say was that they had done such a overreaching job of lying to everyone that would listen.
If anything, this is the best reason to impeach.
--MarkusQ
Re:Another right bites the dust (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I can't wait, (Score:3, Informative)
The new element is that the Speaker of the House would become president.
Re:For what you ask? (Score:3, Informative)
So at worst, impeachment does no harm to the partisan majority pursuing it. Even when it's a blatant witch hunt on BS charges. At best (for that party), it chokes a president for years, destroying his "legacy", especially electing a preferred successor, even on BS charges.
At best for the country, on real charges, it stops a criminal president. Even if the Senate doesn't have the 67 votes to convict and remove, because of partisan priorities of politics over justice. The impeached president's "political capital" (the influence with which most politics is transacted) is bankrupted. And the country can see some of the costs of high crimes. Which can also form the basis for civil and criminal charges, once the president leaves office. And of course deters future presidents from the same kind of unacceptable behavior.
Re:I can't wait, (Score:3, Informative)
No, Clinton did not lie to a federal grand jury. In pre-testimony documents, he was given a definition for 'sex' which did not include 'blow job', and correctly stated on the stand that he did not have sex. However most people include a 'blow job' as sex, so when he repeated his assertion on TV, he was wrong to do so, but certainly not under oath. It is true that they not yet caught Bush or any of his Administration lying under oath, as they have never testified under oath, the Republican congress has never required it.
Was the most 'reasonable' reason I have ever heard that Bush has given for our invasion of Iraq. Perhaps congress will make the distinction that leading us into a disastrous war for a personal grudge, or to shovel money at 'loyal' contractors would be a bribery, or other 'high-crime', since the Constitution is clearly vague as to the definition of every crime except for treason. Speaking of teason, it might be hard to get them on it, unless we can prove that they knew that their buddies in Saudi Arabia where involved in the 9/11 attacks. However, since it isn't "treason, bribery, and other high crimes", two out of three will work just as well. I suspect the impeachment will involve influence peddling, and almost certainly also involving Halliburton and Saudi Arabia.
Waxman is about to take on Bush in this area (Score:4, Informative)
The Bush administration's secrecy mania is about to run into Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). He's the ranking minority member of the House Government Reform Committee. On January 20th, he will become chairman. And he will then have subpoena power over the Executive Branch.
This is the congressman who published "Bush Administration's 237 Misleading Statements on Iraq" [house.gov]. He is totally fed up with the lying and secrecy. Expect to see many officials of the Bush administration being questioned by Waxman's commiteee on TV. Under penalty of perjury.
Remember when all the cigarette company CEOs had to testify under oath about what they knew and when they knew it about addiction and hazards? That was Waxman.
And climate is on his agenda. He's very interested in things like the Clean Air Act; he represents Los Angeles.
Re:I can't wait, (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I can't wait, (Score:5, Informative)
How about...
Re:It may be.... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, you're wrong (sort of).
My mom, Ethel McIntosh, worked as the Executive Assistant [druglibrary.org] to Chairman Raymond P. Shafer on the 1972 National Commission on Marihuana[sic] and Drug Abuse (sometimes called the "Shafer Commission").
Their report, Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding [druglibrary.org], which was QUITE well researched, concluded that MARIJUANA SHOULD BE DECRIMINALIZED.
Without going into all the fascinating details about how Nixon wouldn't let them present the Report to him in the Oval Office (as is the norm for these types of Commissions), but rather made them go to some little hotel on the other side of town to "present" it to an AIDE (thus GUARANTEEING zero Press coverage!), suffice it to say that this report p.o.'ed President Nixon SO badly that he BURIED the report. Which is why you could make your statement with a clear, but ill-informed, conscience.
BTW, I do agree that this report WAS buried for no good reason, and that the 'War On Drugs', just like every other 'War on [x]', is little more than an excuse for Gummint to encroach further and further upon our liberty as Amurikans.
Although I have not personally read this book (but I will now), apparently, the rejection and burial of the "Shafer Commission" report has been very well researched and documented in this book, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure [knoxandbaum.com], by Dan Baum.
Re:Another right bites the dust (Score:3, Informative)
What that experience taught me was that I'd best never find myself on trial for anything serious because there's no way I'd ever get a jury of my peers. Not that I'd necessarily want my peers sitting in judgment of me either, but don't expect the system to select for intelligent, educated people capable of making rational decisions because it doesn't.
Re:I can't wait, (Score:4, Informative)
"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."
Lincoln, I think, is covered. Bush, not so much.
Re:I can't wait, (Score:3, Informative)
When the mandataed spending by Agency S reaches the point that income no longer exceeds expenses(which they're predicting will happen in a few years), it's going to want to start cashing in those bonds. Which Agency A will have to cough up, but remember, it doesn't have the money sitting in a bank account somewhere, nor is it a business generating a profit to be used to pay the debt.
So, how are all those Bonds/IOUs going to be paid? Either through taxes, or extra issued bonds to the public, which leads to inflation/higher interest rates which leads to less economic growth. Your social security taxes might not go up, but your general ones will have to unless the rest of government tightens it's belt and stops spending money on all sorts of wasteful stuff.
With less economic growth, we're all worse off.
Re:I can't wait, (Score:0, Informative)
Telecomm law? WTF? The Dems were pissed they didn't think of it first, because no law was violated.
Same goes for the terrorism suspects. Just wish that they would be certain of who they were grabbing first (kinda like cops doing no-knock raids).
Gangsterism . . . Halliburton? You mean the Hurricane machine?
Every war we have ever fought has suspended Habeas Corpus. What else is new?
Holding the US citizen who was making plans to detonate a radioactive bomb in a major metro area? You mean that POS? We haven't even gotten that slime out of the country to administer a REAL beating . . . but wait . . . they don't DO that, do they? They do horrible things like SLEEP DEPRIVATION!!! and WATER BOARDING!! The HORROR!!!! and they didn't even get out the car batteries . . . like the jackass no longer in power in Iraq.
Re:Civics 101 (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly my point. The administration assured us they did know; they lied.
Let me actually finish that sentence for you: "Iraq regularly fired upon US aircraft flying in their airspace." And let me also point out that if Iraqi aircraft were flying in our airspace, we'd be firing on them, as well. Not just the government, but every mother's son with a rifle, a rocket kit, or a potato gun. We'd be focusing lasers on their cockpits, running into them with our civilian aircraft, using our jumbo jets to crack them up using wake turbulence. We'd foul up the GPS data, unlink the old school LF navigation systems, and we'd shoot at them from kites, mountaintops, balloons and church steeples. And we'd be right to do it — every one of us. And why, again, is it that you are so offended that they shot at our aircraft flying in their airspace?
You mean like when Bush tried to kill Saddam in the very first bombing of the war? When we sneakily dropped all manner of high powered weapons on a major city in Iraq using aircraft that were invisible to Iraqi defenses? Without having been provoked? Without truth in representing the supposed threat? Is it OK for the Iraqis to bomb us, since we do have WMDs, and have used them to far greater effect than Saddam and crew ever did? Where does our "right" to bomb the Iraqis come from here? Where does our "right" to attempt to assassinate Saddam come from? Do we assign to Iraq an equivalent right to attempt to assassinate our president, then? Where does our right to invade Iraq come from? Where does our "right" to stay, when they clearly want us to leave, come from?
If Iraq or some other actor does something terrible, does that give us the "right" to do something terrible? Or should we stand our ground on higher principles? If we don't, why do we have them at all, eh? We had the choice of many, many actions post assassination attempt and post 9/11. The fact that we chose an entirely unjustified war from all those options is nothing to be proud of. And in fact, I am not.
Ah. So, Israel cannot respond to this alleged threat? We have to bomb the country back into the stone age because Israel is what, unwilling to cross borders? I don't think you can make the case. Israel has shown more than a token willingness to deal directly and militarily with any threats to them. Just ask the Lebanese, the Palestinians, or that motley group of fools who took the hostages in Entebbe. I fail to see how, despite any treaty obligations we have with Israel, this called us into action in any legitimate manner. If Israel had wanted Saddam's hindquarters, they would have had them, I believe. We never needed to act in the first place, post the first gulf war.
You mistake me. I am not anti-war. War is a problem solving tool that at times, is quite appropriate. It is just that this "war" is not. This war is stupid, was based entirely on lies, has generated entirely useless and troublesome results, is extremely costly, and shows no particular benefits. We are not going to "get democracy" in Iraq, we are not going to control the oil, we are not going to save any of the various sects of Islamists, we are not going to get any of the lost lives back, we are not going to stop losing lives there — there is literally no point in being there. At all. I'm not anti-war. I'm anti-stupid, which makes me pretty much anti-Bush by definition.