Slashdot Mirror
White House Clamps Down On USGS Publishing
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."
I can't wait, for the congressional hearings to start. Actions like this scream for the congressional oversight which has been sorely lacking over the last 6 years. Polowski has insisted that she won't press for impeachment, but I'm guessing that she is waiting for the evidence to come to light. The real question is where to start, the Energy policy dictated by energy companies, Halliburton corruption and it's 'loyalty tests' to get government work, or torpedoing the careers of military men who are unwilling to tow the party line. However, the squashing of 'liberal' scientific opinion is as good as any place to start, I suspect that hundreds of them would be willing to come forth.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
... your unfriendly neighbourhood big brother.
In all seriousness, does this actually surprise anyone?
"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. Anything that might have a negative impact on the economy or the current Administration's plans for despoiling our environment must be inaccessible to those of us who live on this planet and will be adversely affected by changes allowed through keeping our population uneducated about the environmental impacts. Any scientific/geological information that will allow anyone to question current Administration's energy or (lack of) environmentally friendly plans must remain inaccessible to the general public."
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
The Executive branch has forgotten it can't make laws.
Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney
From the article: "This is not about stifling or suppressing our science, or politicizing our science in any way,'' Barbara Wainman, the agency's director of communications, said Wednesday. "I don't have approval authority. What it was designed to do is to improve our product flow.''
They aren't even trying to justify their actions anymore. They're just filtering science from public view, and insisting that it is improvement.
Ryan Fenton
We must ensure that our scientists are entirely in accord with the Marxist-Leninist principles of eternal socialist brotherhood underlying the glorious people's revolution!
Same shit, different century. And it worked out sooo well the last time.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Riiight, I'm sure the giant government conspiracy to hide global warming is the main reason that this is being set up. Nice spin there, poster.
I'm sure you can come up with an equally valid reason to have USGS information screened for "politically-sensitive" reasons?
Translation: either they want to be alerted in advance of stuff they can take credit for, or they want to tweak press releases of embarassing info. It's a classic CYA move.
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
I don't understand why you Americans are so agreeable when it comes to having your civil liberties squashed. Why don't you all speak up and remind your representative that you used to live in a free country and would like to once again. Enough of the government spin masters controlling everything.
Riiight, I'm sure the giant government conspiracy to hide global warming is the main reason that this is being set up.
Things of a "policy-sensitive nature"? Is this the new codespeak for "think of the terrorists!" or are they actually serious about restricting the flow of information regarding stuff that is not a national security issue?
Until someone says otherwise, it's clear that this is specifically referring to things like global warming, which has always been a "policy-sensitive" issue for Bush.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The only way to stop Bush from using "politics" to subvert our government to his destructive corporate agenda is to impeach him. He doesn't care about "accountability moments" anymore, because he's a "lame duck", no reelection carrot to discipline his manners. And losing his Republican Congress means he's extremely dangerous, because he has nothing left to lose except his Executive privileges. Which are huge, especially since Bush has spent his 6 years remaking the government according to the Unitary Executive "theory" that is his only real ideology other than unlimited money and power. He's spending OVER $3 TRILLION of your money (paid over the rest of your life) every year, on his priorities, not yours.
Stop him now. Impeach him now. It's the only way to stop the damage before he starts "upgrading" the impeachment process itself.
--
make install -not war
What part of Democracy does this administration not understand?
It's not that this administration doesn't have a coherent position, it's that that position is nearly impossible to audit because most individuals who might wish to don't command the resources that the government has, and it becomes a war of wills with the money (and hence the odds) stacked against the common citizen.
There are things in the world that require actual secrecy. It's useful to have the codes to launch the missiles be secret. But that doesn't mean it has to be secret that you have nuclear missiles. In fact, it's the kind of thing one might want to know in order to decide if one likes the government that they elect in a supposedly informed way. How can one be informed on a matter without information?
Democracy is a grand experiment. It seems an open question as to whether it works. But weirdly, though Bush and his cohorts speak about bringing Democracy to the world, they don't seem to believe in it. I'd think their position a lot more coherent and believable if they said "We're the party of 'Democracy has failed.'" They could be about political self-determination rather than democracy and they wouldn't sound like hypocrites. They could then say "You, the American people, decided democratically that "you can't handle the truth."". But I think they worry people might not be able to handle that truth.
And hiding one truth soon begets hiding another, until soon it seems like it should be S.O.P., where we just don't let the people have access to any facts, not even political facts, because they might misinterpret them.
And that's like a cancer. Because every fact you withhold becomes political by virtue of withholding it. So it feeds itself.
The whole reason science uses something called "peer review" and not just "review" is to distinguish it from other kind of "review". Like, say, "government review". Blurring the two is to give take meaning from the word "peer". Which sounds quite a peery-loss endeavor to me.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
The USGS is one of very few federal agencies that is actually useful to the people. Their research is valuable to all of us, and it should not be tampered with. I regularly check their seismic network web pages and read the Oat Mountain drum recorder. Why does the administration think it's bad for people to see this stuff?
The world is my oyster. That's why it's always in a stew.
The people VOTED for CHANGE. And dammit they deserve a change for course.
The agency's director, Mark Myers, and its communications office also must be told -- prior to any submission for publication -- "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.''
Yeah. They have to be sure that the public isn't unneccessarily exposed to things like "facts". What kind of "communication strategies" need to be developed to communicate a new finding? What's wrong with just reporting the science? I guess that some facts have too much "truthiness" behind them:
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.
Damn facts... always getting in the way of MONEY.
The rule of the state, in importance ranked above the people that make up society.
Scientific facts don't stop being scientific facts, just because the administration demonstrates the political need to ignore/bend/distort and supress such facts. Thus, the scientific governmental organization founded for the good of society is overruled by the good of the current administration of the state. That is a fascist method of operation.
My dream is that both republicans and democrats will condemn these attempts. My sense of reality says that will never happen.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Plate tectonics? Fossils? When the USGS has reports that involve even basic science which goes against the literal word of God, will we see omissions and redaction? "Peer review" should not include a political pass.
You are certainly correct about that. Which is why no federal agency will ever release a report that even hints at the dangers of marijuana being previously overstated. If such evidence were ever discovered it would be promptly destroyed in order to keep from undermining the highly lucrative drug war. This kind of information control for political purposes is nothing new and has either officially or unofficially been part of pretty much every large bureaucratic organization, as the organization must sustain itself in as large of a form as possible.
Geeze, it's so hard to choose. For starters, how about picking on a few of his more egregious violations of the law:
And those of you who've been paying attention will realize that we're just scratching the surface here. These are only a few of the more obvious crimes for which there is publicly available evidence, despite complete lack of congressional oversight for the last six years.
If the Dems have any balls at all we should be swimming in viable charges by this time next year.
--MarkusQ
I guess people would rather just bushbash than take a critical look at the USGS in specific...
In case people don't remember, the USGS was the same agency that in 1998-2000 (under the clinton administration oversight) was accused of falsifying many research documents in support of the proposed nuclear waste processing facility in Yucca Mountain. I believe some of their scientists that were involved with this research falsification are under federal investigation for this today.
I'm not saying all of their scientists are bad apples (they do some good research there), but the agency as a whole untainted as unbiased scientific researchers (as they know who butters their bread) and all the stuff that comes out of the door there should be taken with a grain of salt.
In response to this and other problems, in 2004 (under the bush2 administration oversite), the USGS started a procedure of external peer review for their papers. This new "alert" of course goes beyond external peer review, so isn't all that great news, but I think the USGS has a long way to go to clean up their act before they cry idea censorship.
Just my 2-cents worth...
Are you seriously comparing the government to a company?
You work for the company. It owes you your salary, but not much more.
The government is supposed to represent you. It is, by definition, public. It is accountable to you. It shouldn't keep (too many...) secrets.
The USGS is an organ of the United States government. You're right that it should be answerable to its employer. Its employer is the people of the United States, not Mr Bush.
When a company does it, it's "good policy" (well, no, not for anyone outside of the company, especially if they were on vioxx or some other case where such suppressed information led to death, but I digress on an already digressed digression) when a government does it, it's "censorship".
Look at it this way: if you work for a company, your boss pays you for your time and tells you what to do with it.
Now, who is paying for the USGS to do this research, and who should have the right to decide what to do with it?
That's why America is not a democracy, but a constitutional republic. The constitution was designed to protect us from the good intentions of the people on both the left and the right.
Even before George W took the oath of office, I knew this was the type of man to do this sort of thing.
I'd seen too many guys who lucked into a position way over their head not to recognize the type. When confronted with unpleasant truths, ignore them. Operate in an alternative world where everything is wonderful, and any subordinates thinking unhappy thoughts get wished out under the cornfield.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That would be funny, but too many demagogues throughout history have felt the same way, and believed in the absolute rightness of what they were doing for just that reason. And it's the scariest reason of all, for it leaves no room for doubt or self-evaluation.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If you goto google news and read through more than just the one article it seems that although the White House was the originator for the changes - I havent seen anything saying that the White House has to be informed about anything - just the leadership of the USGS itself (who in turn report higher, but thats nothing new). I often have to show my presentations and outputs to my boss and dont automatically cry censorship - as do most of the people on this site I suspect. I understand that people are reacting to the concept layed out in the Slashdot lead and original article but sometimes you need to read a little further to have a reasonably well thought out opinion. I think the posts to the effect that Bush should be impeached, whether he deserves it or not, are way - way offtopic.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
The US is showing you amateurs how to do censorship correctly.
First you subvert the population, then you censor. None of this "revolution by force", "censorship by edict", oh no. The correct way to do it is get the population on board with a completely bogus set of threats and rationalizations they think are their own -- "terrorism", "homeland" security, "for the children" -- then the population's own representatives willingly subvert the country's founding documents and the people like it.
Everywhere I look, I see sheep.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You are woefully uninformed (despite your absolutely ridiculous "informative" moderation), not to mention completely wrong. I say this because:
Bush and crew lied about the reasons for attacking Iraq. Iraq had no WMD. Iraq was not threatening us or our interests. Iraq was not threatening an ally or an ally's interests, someone with whom we had treaty obligations to defend. In fact, subsequent to the first gulf war, Iraq was not threatening anyone or their interests. Not even tiny little Kuwait. All of Iraq's pitiful military actions were confined to within its own borders. Therefore, in fact, there was no reason for the USA to attack them. But it isn't this simple, is it? No. Because in order to generate popular support for his attack on Iraq, Bush and his crew lied to the public. They claimed that aluminum tubes were being imported to centrifuge nuclear materials. Yet no such thing was occurring; the only tubes being imported were not of the type that could be used in that application, which was a known fact at the time. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld specifically claimed they knew where the WMD were. And were they there? No. The administration repeatedly and specifically claimed that Iraq's administration had direct and unequivocal ties to Al-Quida. And has that been found to be so? No.
Now, let me remind you of the federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."
This is the basis for both calling these acts a foundation for impeachment, and for calling the war itself illegal. It does not, unfortunately, address the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in pursuit of this illegitimate war; nor the loss of Iraqi lives; nor the loss of US soldier's lives, and the lives of those soldiers from other countries who ill-advisedly entered into combat with the US in this criminal action.
Yes, telecomm law. That's the specific set of laws that says that no one, including the government, may tap a US citizen's phone call, no matter who they are talking to, without a warrant. but Bush and crew did that. There is a another set of laws that sets up the FISA court, which says that taps may be made if permission is gotten from FISA within a certain number of hours after the tap; but Bush and crew did not do that. This leaves absolutely no door open to make tapping a US citizen's phone call legal. The bottom line is that yes indeed, Bush and his crew broke the law in this regard.
I mean the company that gets all the major contracts in Iraq. All of them.
In order to suspend any part of the constitution, you have to modify the constitution. Otherwise it will be (and always has been) found to be illegal. Bush has not modified the constitution; ergo, he violates it. The constitution, which you so blithely dismiss (as does Bush) is the single operating legal document that authorizes our government. It is the framework that describes not only how it functions, but what the specific limits of its operations is. If the government operates outside the constitution, it is completely illegitimate in its actions. That is why in the president's oath of office, this phrase has primacy: "I promise to preserve, defend and uphold the Constitution."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.