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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
the u.s. government over the last several months has been a massive binge of re-classifying previously declassified historical documents. i think they've done maybe 50,000 of them. this administration has a culture of secrecy and limit of access to information and this move is nicely in keeping with that ideology. my source on the document reclassification is here.
2 1337 4 u!
For a more useful story, please see http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6365379.ht ml
Some points:
- The information will be made available online
- The information will be available through library loan
- Not all the libraries are closing
- Bush is not defying Congress. He sent them a budget which they either approve or amend
Boy, it certainly made for a good story though! For about 2 minutes... *sigh* Do some research before posting or blogging next time.
The Republican War on Science
Despite the inflammatory name, the book doesn't assert that Republicans are inherently anti-science, but it is a chronicle the past few decades of politicization of science, and how 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. It's a rather impressive, well-documented book that I highly recommend showing a trend of scientific limitations and games like today's story.
Ryan Fenton
As a fellow government worker, I can attest to the fact that all this "consolidation" stuff is not just restricted to the Libraries & EPA stuff. We're feeling it in pretty much every branch, some worse than others.
Wars are expensive.. And the money's gotta come from somewhere.. Rather than raising taxes (which I'm sure they'll do anyway), they're cutting expenses elsewhere... Rather than fire people, they're "consolidating". Sounds better, but it's the same thing.
If, unlike the person that submitted the story, you did some research you'd find that the EPA is scanning things themselves to make them publically available online. Additionally you may get them through inter-library loan at any of the libraries that are still going to be open (despite the claims of the sensationalist story). So, um, no.
Hopefully the trains will run on time.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Has any other US president ever done as much damage to the institution of science in the US as Bush has?
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.
My book, podcast
What came into my mind as i read this was a documentry i once saw on Discovery channel which talked about china.
China used to be one of the most advanced civilisations in the world. They developed so many stuff before any other country. Then suddenly some idiot in there decided to cut off china from the rest of the world and not only stop building technically advanced ships but actually destroy its unmatched fleet of ships. Shortly afterwards Britan was able to conquer the country using the technology that chinese themselves invented.
The fact that US seems to be closing libraries makes me wonder if its another version of the same events.
In France, one of our best (but dead) comics, Coluche, said that politicians spend more public money for building jails than schools because they know they won't go to school again.
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?
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.
If you think that because an article attributes a decision to "the EPA" that means that the decision was not made by political appointees implementing administration policy, you're incredibly naive. Bush may well not have been personally involved in this decision, but it sure looks like a political decision, not something that EPA scientists and lawyers have come up with.
Yep, I missed it because it isn't in the article. What the article says is that "all EPA-generated materials will continue to be available by inter-library loan. That excludes material not generated by the EPA. You need to be more careful about accusing people of not reading the article. I've obviously read it more carefully than you have. Furthermore, even if this does mean that the boxed materials will be available by interlibrary loan, how easy do you think it will be to find what you need, and how long a delay will there be in getting the boxed materials out of storage? I know from personal experience that it can be a real impediment to research to have to wait several weeks or even days to get something out of storage, and that often it is difficult to identify what you need if you can't go look at it on the shelf online.
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.
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.
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.
Getting vaguely back on topic, the US federal government has imposed an anti-R&D approach for decades.
Ask anyone in the US trying to do medical cannabis research if they've had any luck obtaining research materials, permits, or approval to do useful studies. In the meantime, the federal government denies the validity of all "foreign" research in Canada, the UK, Israel, Australia, etc.
What was the purpose of the IBM breakup a few decades ago, if not to stop a company from leveraging their own investment in R&D to continue growing their business? In theory it was because IBM had grown to a near monopoly, yet no action is taken against Microsoft when they are far closer to a monopoly than IBM ever was. Obviously market dominance was not the reason for the breakup.
Pharmaceutical research is often forced offshore because US regulations don't permit the kind of testing that would be needed to determine the efficacy of some drugs. Plus that means the US government and US pharmacorps don't have the embarassment of another national Thalidomide debacle -- future mistakes will be kept out of sight in foreign nations.
Bottom line is the US government has done a great deal to ensure that true R&D doesn't happen, because what is a great new product/service line to the owner is a huge threat to the status quo that pays the lobbyists and thereby the government's members. R&D is profitable for new companies, but it's a loss for the ineffective and staid "competition" that cuts R&D budgets in favour of short-term profits to satisfy the stock market.
Therein lies the crux of the matter: The US corporations and federal government, or rather their management, will happily let anything crumble and die, provided they can turn a profit now.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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?