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US Government Restricting Research Libraries
An anonymous reader writes: "In a move that has been termed 'positively Orwellian' by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Executive Director Jeff Ruch, George W. Bush is ending public access to research materials at EPA regional libraries without Congressional consent. This all-out effort to impede research and public access is a [loosely] covert operation to close down 26 technical libraries under the guise of budgetary constraint. Scientists are protesting, but at least 15 of the libraries will be closed by Sept. 30, 2006."
Has any other US president ever done as much damage to the US as Bush has?
I believe the article and editorialization need to be marked (-1, Troll)
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
even though Liberals do their own part to misrepresent science, the overwhelming lions share of open distortion percieved by the overwhelming majority of scientists has been unfortunately solidly Republican
Ah, but that doesn't matter in today's politics. All you have to do is find a single instance of someone from the other side doing something similar to what you're doing, and that makes it magically okay for you to continue doing it.
There are no ethics anymore. Instead of people striving to be ethical, they just strive to find other people being unethical so they can excuse their own unethical behavior.
1. Scan news for "Bush"
2. Figure out how to write/re-write article to ensure that Bush looks as evil as possible
3. Leave out any actual facts in favor of baseless speculation, particularly facts that might help to explain Bush's actions in a reasonable way
4. Comment on the demise of society, blaming it all on Bush
5. For an extra bit of irony, mention/imply that only Republicans are responsible for dividing this country
6. Sell news bits for profit
No "Step 2: ???" necessary.
The always progressive and forward thinking Bill Clinton has proposed legislation that will modernize the nation's research libraries by making all of the information contained in the libraries available online, eliminating the wasteful need for old-fashioned brick-and-mortar facilities. At least some people in the federal government are embracing technology. Kudos, Bill!
Am I wrong?
This is getting really old, too. This marks about the sixth time I've seen someone trying to compare Bush's presidency to Carter's. There is NO comparison. Carter was a nauseatingly honest individual who was elected largely in response to the nauseatingly dishonest Nixon administration. He entered the political game playing it straight at a time when the opposition was patently playing it crooked, and inherited (as another poster has mentioned) a terrible situation at a terrible time. What he didn't do was leave a huge mess for future generations to clean up -- most of the situations of Carter's presidency that people didn't like were strictly temporary.
On the other hand, Bush has destroyed a huge budget surplus and left trillions in debt to my kids. His deliberate neglect has more or less wiped one whole American city right off the map. He has ruined America's standing as the leader of the free world with his farrago of lies on Iraq, and he has opened a gaping crack in the Middle East which seems destined to consume innocent lives for decades to come. He has fundamentally damaged the conscience of the nation by actively condoning torture, and actively assaulting our cherished civil liberties -- the one aspect of America that truly makes us American. He has starved the middle class and pushed millions into poverty with his patently worker-unfriendly policies (better known as his "Ownership Society" initiative). He has contributed to the further decline of public education, ensuring that millions can't compete in a modern job market, through his unfunded No Child Left Behind. He has bitterly divided America with his lies and hateful, cynical rhetoric. He has flaunted his authority recklessly and led with all the gravitas of a 21-year old fraternity prankster. In a simple character evaluation of Jimmy Carter versus George W. Bush, there is no question who I'd rather have in charge.
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I am no Bush apologist (please read that again before modding me flamebait), but I was more than a little perturbed by the editorial tone of the article. So, I Googled the subject and I can find dozens of blogs and opinion pieces dating back to around March or so on this, but nothing from a traditional news source (I gave up after about 5 pages of search results).
I would like to read an objectively written fact based story behind this and not just a lot of reactionary Bush bashing.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
At which library?
Doesn't anybody bother to look at the source data before flaming? Or is this news "too good to check"?
This is the EPA engaging in political tactics. To begin with, they haven't yet been asked to cut their budget, and they may never be. The closing of libraries is not Bush's idea--it's EPA bureaucrats saying "Look what you made us do!"
The proposed budget cut constitutes a fraction of of a percent of the EPA's budget, and it could be achieved with a minor reduction in the EPA's bloated administrative costs.
This is a standard tactic in every government in the world. Faced with budget cuts, the bureaucrats respond by threatening to terminate one of the few things they do that actually provides a service. The mystery is that they often get away with it.
The special irony in this item is that the EPA isn't planning to cut the service—just the way it's delivered.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
...there is a limit to the amount of criticism that can be heaped on a president who puts on a sweater to cut down on the White House heating bill. Just PR, maybe, but my kind of PR.
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
2. Figure out how to write/re-write article to ensure that Bush looks as evil as possible
most of the time thats not entirely necessary, the actions speak for themselves. unconstitutional actions, obvious power grabs, dumbing down the education system, its all pretty clear. bush is trying to gather as much power as possible for himself/his office.
3. Leave out any actual facts in favor of baseless speculation, particularly facts that might help to explain Bush's actions in a reasonable way
because nobody pro-bush would EVER do that. shock, horror. especially bush himself. more shock, horror.
4. Comment on the demise of society, blaming it all on Bush
strike bush, replace with democrats, and its the basis for a solid republican "talking point"
5. For an extra bit of irony, mention/imply that only Republicans are responsible for dividing this country
slow down. rumsfeld YESTERDAY claimed youre with us, or youre appeasing the fascists. par for the course of rovian politics, if youve been paying attention.
im not a republican, im not a democrat. id just like a little sensibility in our government.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Am I wrong?
Yes.
Clinton got bashed back in his day. The reason it seems we bitch more about Bush than we did Clinton is because Bush is a big fuck-up.
Bush supporters get a little tetchy about criticism of this administration, forgetting that all administrations are taken to task when watchful (and slightly paranoid) people catch them with their hands inside the cookie jar of liberty. The Bush administration just happens to be raiding it a lot more than previous administrations, and a lot more blatantly.
As has been pointed out by others, this story is potentially misleading. I'd write that off to many of us being a bit jumpy around Bush. When the school bully tends to walk up behind you and smack you on the head, you start jerking your head around at the oddest moments. It might look silly when the bully isn't behind you, but it might just save you a few headaches.
But, had Clinton tried doing this, he would have received much the same treatment.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I think this is an extremely important thing to realize. People have been able to justify things way too easily nowadays. When a politician lies they say "well they all lie" and just accept it as part of the territory. Instead of striving toward excellence and taking exception at the failures of striving toward this ideal, the American public seems to like just putting up with mediocrity by thinking that everyone is corrupt liars who steal and the crook you know is better than the one you don't so why even bother punishing them for it. It's a ridiculous mindset. Unethical is unethical, it's the adult equivalent of the "Well Jimmy's dad said he could" argument.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I'm one of those "libs." Actually, more socially libertarian and fiscally somewhat liberal. We need to *get the hell out of Iraq*, stop involvement in the Middle East (which is a lost cause IMHO) and concentrate on our own New Deal. Massive government subsidies for energy conservation, clean energy production, environmental, space, and automation research are in order. We need to reduce our dependence on countries that are poorer than us and have laxer environmental laws for manufacturing while maintaining our high standard of living. This can only be done through automation of manufacturing so that high-value workers can produce more. The environmental stuff is self-explanatory. First, it'll reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which has been one of the driving forces of our worst foreign policy decisions over the last 30 years. Secondly, there's a very high liklihood - I'd call it a certainty - that global warming is real. Enough said.
Why space? Humankind needs breathing room - somewhere for the born adventurers to go and explore. In addition, the Earth won't last forever, and humankind should continue on even in the case of the worst happening.
Cheers,
-b.
I've been to China. Any notion that the Chinese Government controls all those people is strictly illusory. As soon as the government's eye is not on them, they go on and do whatever it is they need to. And especially during the period in question, there was almost no real contact between the people who ruled from the Forbidden City, and the people who were ruled over. When you contrast that to Bush's stage-managed presidency wherein he has rarely if ever come into contact with someone who was not a carefully screened supporter or piece of harmless hugmeat, the parallels become unpleasant. Furthermore, the kinds of advances that used to take decades now happen in weeks. We are already being left behind by other nations. I've also been to South Korea. Their adoption of technology and modern lifestyle has happened at a seriously breakneck pace. I talked to people who were younger than me (and I'm merely a GenX-er) who had grown up in thatched-roof houses. They now have something like 90% of the country wired for broadband.
The Bush Admin's open hostility to science is no secret. This isn't an isolated incident; it's part of a total trend of deliberately ignoring information which is inconvenient. And to suggest that we could possibly petition this Congress to do something about it is absurd.
Finally, we are reading an article that is obviously skewed in the direction of an environmentalist PAC. Perhaps we should hear both sides of the story---or is the witch hunt too far underway to surrender to reason?
As I've noted already in this thread, we've been getting our news for the last several years from networks who think that fake JonBenet Killer news stories are worth our 24-hour-a-day attention. And if this news story is somehow not factually true I'm sure evidence to that effect will surface, but in the meantime we don't need to balance our news consumption with fiction.
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Ingredients: 1 Potato, 1 Pat of butter.
You place the butter in the middle of the potato. Lots of butter on that one spot, but wouldnt you prefer to spread butter all over? Try it, and find that one spot now has a lot less butter than it used to.
Everyone knows butter doesnt just spontaneously appear, if you want to spread something to another area, you need to reduce it in some other area!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I look at it like this. Those people--our representatives in the government--work for US. Each of us is one of their managers and we aren't doing our job of telling them what they should do. We instead let them manage us.
We are a society of poor managers. We'd rather manage by gut feelings rather than the facts. We'd rather vote on our beliefs and what the TV preachers (fox news) tell us instead of what works. That's the real problem. And we are learning the hard way that employees left out of control are going to do what works for them, not us.
There IS an election coming up in November. I hope that people will vote not based on commericals but on facts. The problem is that the media who is supposedly providing us with facts is not doing it correctly either. I see a trend though, towards the positive. It all starts with your immediate representatives, the people who help to run your city. They work for you, tell them what you want. Then to your county government, they work for you, tell them what you want. State, federal, they work for you, tell them what you want. And if they don't do it, well, you're going to learn what all managers do: If you want it done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself. And that means, *gasp*, actually going out and getting involved.
Stop watching 60 hours of television a week and dedicate 10 hours to doing something that actually benefits you. It takes time, it takes a lot of work, but we citizens are more empowered than ever. All we have to do is TRY.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
How on earth do things like this get posted? The first link is to an "op-ed" site that is so obviously anti-Bush that it defies credibility. The article itself is a hysterical mish-mash of fact(?) and opinion that exists only to throw around needlessly inflammatory catchphrases. "Orwellian?" Check. Reference to "Fahrenheit 451?" Check. "Who could have ever envisioned that Ray Bradbury's vicious, futuristic, dystopian society would ever come to fruition; but it may indeed have done just that!" Yeah, it MAY have! Or maybe not... Dude, chill out.
At least the link from PEER is more factual. And of course the facts aren't all that exciting, at least compared with visions of vicious, dystopian futures:
1. Nowhere is George Bush mentioned.2. PEER seems to be mainly concerned with being able to use a library "to locate [...] information and have it produced to a court house in a timely manner." No impression is given that, as a result of these budget cuts, access to all important materials is going to be forever lost. It just sounds like it might be a bit harder to get it in certain cases, hence their concern.
3. The summary of this story makes it sound like this is a grave issue for members of the general public, and said public's access to information of general utility will be severely curtailed in the near future. However, the PEER summary clearly states in its headline: "Prosecutions [of polluters] at Risk from Loss of Timely Access to Key Documents." That is, the usefulness of this information is limited in scope to certain legal proceedings. Of course these cases are very important, but it's not like the libraries that you and I visit all the time are closing their doors.
I know I'm going up against a bunch of knee-jerk leftists here (wow, look at some of these comments!), but I had to at least try and appeal to reason. Slashdot, please stick with tech and science news. If you're going to delve into politics would it be possible to at least provide the most basic quality control to stories that get posted? This story isn't inherently biased, but the way it was presented is just appalling.
It's Godwin's cousin, only about 1984 instead of Nazis?
While this is obviously a bad thing for science and public education, any similarity to 1984 is sketchy at best.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Every economist worth their salt will tell you that soaring debt is the sign of a great economy. Debt is good, because it means we're spending like crazy and our kids will pay for it and not us.
Carter refused to nuke the Middle East by Gawd and he even suggested we go all flowery and stop being so dependent on oil and stuff.
Now excuse me while I gas up my 20 foot long stretch SUV, yeehaw!!!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
When you are a world leader, you are supposed to lead; if you aren't capable of handling the existing situation, please don't run for office. With the cold war, Watergate scandal, oil crisis, and post-Vietnam situation, those were difficult times, it's true. But Carter managed to make it worse by his weakness.
His one great achievement was the signing of the Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt, but why couldn't he have followed it with other diplomatic accomplishments? It was while he was in office that the civil war in Lebanon began, the Iranian Islamic revolution happened, and Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was arming at such a rate that most experts predicted they would be able to invade Western Europe around 1985.
If you think about it, a US president who inherited a messy situation was Nixon. Vietnam was the biggest blunder in US history, Nixon (and Kissinger) had to accept some very bad compromises to get out. The political defeat caused by the impossible military situation presented an image of weakness, which the Soviet Union used to create the largest expansion of communism after the 1945-1950 era. The "domino theory" used to justify the intervention in Vietnam proved true, since not only the neighboring countries, Cambodia and Laos, fell to communist dictatorships, but distant countries such as Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia as well.
Presidents such as Ford and Carter, like Daladier and Chamberlain, show how much damage can be done by leaders who may be well-intentioned, but are weak and ineffective when confronted by determined dictators. The same thing can be said of Bush Sr. too, had he done the right thing and taken Saddam out in 1991, the world would be a different place today.
He should have gone off to hide at Camp David and play golf like Dubya did after 9/11.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Or perhaps scientists just don't like it when some politicians are telling them that yes, why, the bible is a perfectly truthful historical recording, and yes the earth is 6000 years old, and yes evolution is just a figment of your imagination and you were created out of dirt by a bearded old man sitting on a cloud, and yes it should be taught in school, and no, no one cares about the difference between the notions of "stupid bigotic retardation" and "scientific theory".
Funniest part is that people always quote that education is left-winged, but no right-winger ever wonders why it is so.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Yes, President Carter. Double-didgit inflation, taxes so high that they broke the econom, etc.
I remember this period well.
Note that legally there is not much effective that a President himself can do about inflation, as the most critical factor involved is the money supply, which is controlled by the Federal Reserve. In addition, the economy was still reeling from the impact of high energy prices on entrenched energy inefficiencies. The result was stagflation: a brutal combination of economic stagnation and inflation.
There's not much you can do to make an economy energy efficient overnight, but what Carter did about this was appoint Paul Volcker as Fed chairman, who proceeded to change the one variable that could be changed quickly: the money supply. Volcker who took office in August of 1979, proceeded to attack inflatoin vigorously, at tremendous political cost to Carter.
Check out these graphs: prime rate, Consumer Price Index, and unemployment.
This is the story they tell. Roughly in the middle of his term, Carter hires Paul Volcker as Fed Chairman, with the job of stopping inflation. Volcker starts the cut off the money supply in order to break the back of inflation. Immediately, the rate of inflation starts to drop, economic growth stalls, and unemployment begins to rise.
Right around the time of the 1980 election, the prime rate is approaching it's historical high of 21.5. This continues to strangle economic growth and drive rising unemployement.
But inflation IS responding to Volcker's shock treatment. Carter gets no political boost from this, becuase he's only succeeded thus far to change the second derivative of prices. Which is to say that prices aren't dropping, they are continuing to rise at historically high rates. But the inflation rate is moving rapidly in the right direction, something that is only apparent when looking at data graphs, not when you go to purchase a quart of milk. What ordinary people see is high prices that continue to increase at a high rate, reduced economic growth, and decreased job security. This experience of economic insecurity creates a new class of voters: the Reagan Democrat. Ronald Reagan successfully argues that Carter has mismanaged the economy, and the voters buy it because everywhere they look, they see pain.
In the first half of Reagan's term, far too early for his economic policies to have had such a dramatic effect, inflation returns to its approximate historical average. Immediately the Fed release their death grip on interest rates, and economic growth ensues. Unemployment continues to rise for a short time as weak companies shed workers, but overall in the context of an economy poised to resume growth, this is a good thing.
Unemployment hits its peak in 1983. By this time, Reagan's fiscal policies are having an effect as well. The biggest thing he can influence strongly is federal spending, and he has embarked on a program of unusually high levels of peacetime deficit spending. Wikipedia does not have a nice graph but you can look it up from the CBO: The last Ford budget had a deficit of 4.1%; Carter's budgets had deficits of 2.7,2.7, 1.6, 2.7 and 2.5%. Reagan's first term budgets had deficits of 3.7, 5.6, 4.7, and 5.1%. An economy is primed for rapid growth responds rapidly to the stimulative effects of federal spending unchecked by offsetting taxes. When the 1984 election rolls around, Reagan looks like an economic genius: inflation under control, economic growth back on track, unemployment rapidly dropping.
Carter of course looks like an economic idiot even though arguably Carter's fiscal restraint and Volcker's severe anti-inflation policies made the strong recover of the 80s possible. Reagan's spending policies would have be
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Technically
We've had Reagan talk about "The War on Drugs" and Bush talk about "The War on Terror" and the media LOVES to talk about "The War in Iraq", but none of these are "Wars"
In some ways I think his current actions with the libraries and Iraq are good examples of Bush's presidency. Using Executive action and Executive order to create sweeping changes in the way things are done.
The framers of the Constitution wanted the ability for centralized control in times of crisis (instead of relying on congress to do anything rapidly), but feared centralizing too much power. Bush has been running roughshod over the Checks and Balances that are supposed to be in place to govern these sort of actions, when there ISN'T a crisis (and not every day after 9/11 is a crisis).
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Much to my surprise, most Americans don't equate Iran Contra with the hostage crisis even though they are one in the same. President Elect Ron Reagan should shoulder a significant amount of the blame for the length of the hostage crisis.
After being elected in November, he opened back channel negotiations with the Ayatollah. The gist is Reagan offered to supply Iran with arms on the condition that Iran held our hostages until he took the oath. That's two months those innocent people had to live in captivity so Reagan could score political points.
The only justice in the whole thing is that Reagan is forever stained by Iran-Contra. That's little consolation to the hostages, I'm sure, but it's something.
Carter worked tirelessly in the months before leaving office to secure their release. There was little he could do outside of ordering an invasion of Iran. I think we can agree that would not have been a good thing.
I'm reading these articles, and the only occurrance of the word "Bush" is in a deragatory comment. This looks like it is something the EPA is doing, but the articles are too inflammatory to explain why they are doing it. I've never heard of these libraries, so I don't know who has access to them or what is in them or what the real impact is. Was the problem that these were not used by anyone? Or is the information redundant and out-of-date? Is it already in other libraries? The article doesn't even bother to answer the who/what/where/why/when so it is impossible to make a judgement.
This reminds me of a chain-email I got a few months ago about how George Bush Senior was working with some company to try and strip-mine some place in Brazil. I was enraged - then I read the article and realized it isn't a strip-mine, it doesn't involve George Bush, and it isn't an American company, and that the local supported the effort. I don't know if this is a competitor trying to start fake grassroots efforts by using anti-Bush sentiment, or if it is political enemies, or if there is something real happening here.
. So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large stock holdings in Occidental (Oxy) Petroleum? As executor of his family's trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas.
While some who care about the environment would, and did, dump stocks in corporations like Oxy, there is something stockholders can do that others can't. Stockholders can put pressure on the corporations they own stock in to cleanup their act. This is one of ideas behind mutual funds, funds pool money from many people and invest in corporations. With stock in hand they have more clout with the board of directors and ask for changes in how the business operates. Now whether Gore does or did this I don't know but just because someone owns stock doesn't mean they aren't doing anything to clean up the environment or other sri issues.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Ah, Zheng He's fleet. If the Pacific weren't so darn wide, maybe Columbus would have run into Chinese colonists when he reached the American shores, eh? But the dissolution of the treasure fleet was motivated largely by economics. The voyages didn't pay for themselves; they were funded by the sale of an enormous tract of land that the Mongols (the Yuan Dynasty) had turned into a park. When the land had finally all been sold, the federal budget shrank, and it ended up as a historical blip and not much more.
I'd consider Japan's isolationism policy, which lasted over two centuries, to be a more striking example.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Let's break down the posting.
"In a move that has been termed 'positively Orwellian' by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Executive Director Jeff Ruch,
The post directly quotes and attributes the quote correctly. You might not like the piece it's quoting, but the post accurately represents it.
George W. Bush is ending public access to research materials at EPA regional libraries
His administration is doing so, not him. Being as Presidents do almost nothing personally--the bulk of their work is accomplished by staff and appointees--it's a little unreasonable to expect to trace every decision all the way back to him. As Eisenhower said, "The buck stops here." I would not call this totally inaccurate. Give it 1/4 accurate.
without Congressional consent.
The action is being taken prior to Congressional review of the EPA budget. Accurate.
This all-out effort to impede research and public access
The degree to which this is the intent is a matter of opinion. Certainly EPA would never admit this whether or not it were true.
However, there is simply no question as to whether this will impede research and public access. It will. It will now introduce a delay and review process to accessing information that did not previously exist. Rather than walking in and copying a document, a person would now have to wait either for an inter-library loan delivery, or a no-deadline-defined scanning process to complete. This delay substantially reduces the capability for quick-response litigation. And since I'm guessing you think I'm a "knee jerk leftist" now (since I disagreed with you), I'll point out that this also impedes the ability of businesses to quickly access research materials to fight EPA regulation changes, fines, or stays. The business community is just as interested in EPA transparency as the enviros are.
1/2 accurate.
is a [loosely] covert operation
Accurate--the import of this decision was gleaned from a leaked internal EPA memo, not a public communiction.
to close down 26 technical libraries
Accurate--this is the plan.
under the guise of budgetary constraint
Budgetary constraint is the reason given. The degree to which that is a guise is up for debate. 1/4 accurate
Scientists are protesting,
Accurate.
but at least 15 of the libraries will be closed by Sept. 30, 2006."
Accurate.
Of 9 assertions in the post, I scored it about a 7, so about 77% accurate.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
While it may be true that we now know Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction
It was known before Bush Jr order the invasion that there were no WMDs, the chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter kept stating this. However there were some in both the White House and in the press that did what they could to discredit him because they wanted the invasion to take place no matter what the truth was. As early as 2000 the PNAC had plans on it's website with the plans for the invasion.
had no ties to international terrorism
Saddam did have ties to "terrorists", Palestinian terrorists, but not with al qaeda or bin Laden. Saddam knew bin Laden wanted him dead as his government was sectarian not religous based, a theocracy, and because he persecuted Muslims in Iraq. In the December before the invasion bin Laden in a radio broadcast talking to Iraqis said they should rise up and overthrow Saddam and to fight invaders when invaded. To bin Laden Saddam was worse than the US because whereas the US wasn't Muslim, Saddam was.
FalconShould there be a Law?