Slashdot Mirror
USDA Scrambles To Ease Concerns After Researchers Were Ordered To Stop Publishing Publicly Funded Science (popsci.com)
Layzej writes: Popular Science reports that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now barred from communicating with the public. [And early this morning, BuzzFeed revealed that] The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has banned scientists and other employees from sharing the results of its taxpayer-funded research with the broader public. From the report: "The memo outlining these new rules has not been made public, but the ban reportedly includes everything from summaries of scientific papers to USDA-branded tweets. Scientists are still able to publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, but they are unable to talk about that research without prior consent from their agency. This is not the first time that public science has been hamstrung by a gag order. To this day, the quantity of oil spewed into the ocean during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil spill remains something of a mystery. Many of the scientists who worked on the spill were hired by BP and barred from speaking on it. But gag orders -- while always troublesome -- have usually been limited to one specific issue. Right now, the EPA and USDA have been forbidden to speak about all of their scientific research. It means that many of the kinds of stories we now cover will never see the light of day." UPDATE 1/24/17: The USDA has disavowed the memo sent to employees at its Agricultural Research Service unit. USDA's deputy administrator, Michael Young, clarified that the gag order specifically applies to policy-related statements in press releases and interviews, which need to be vetted with the secretary of agriculture. He told The Washington Post that peer-reviewed scientific papers from the unit should not be blocked, nor should food safety announcements. The Washington Post notes that "the memo's shortness and terse language seems to have exacerbated the confusion: 'Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents. This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content,' wrote ARS chief Sharon Drumm in an email to employees."
The story is exaggerated. The science blackout is not permanent. The Trump administration just need a little time to get the alternative facts ready.
There is no surprise here, it's difficult to deny scientific facts if your scientists are allowed to share actual facts.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
This is what Trump supporters actually believe.
And we won't be able to see ANYTHING going on. Sounds like a plan!
So then why was there no blackouts when Obama, Bush, Clinton, the other Bush, etc were elected and took over? And does the context of a president that repeatedly and blatantly lies have no relevance?
A lot of things Trump does are over blown in the media when taken individually, but in the context of all that he's done, it's clear that he's actively trying to promote a false narrative, one where he is the lone holder of any 'facts' and that anything that disagrees with his all-knowing decrees are 'fake news'. If he hadn't spent the last 18 months literally saying things on camera and then lying that it happen on camera a few weeks after, it might not be such a big deal.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/six-years-of-deceit-20070628
No, this is not "fake news." It actually happened.
Even Buzzfeed mentions that the policy does not apply to peer-reviewed publications. But it's not clear what else is exempt, even with the follow-up clarifications from the USDA.
My take is that these agencies are trying to control their public messaging from a single source, and scrub anything that hints at policies from the Obama years. That's understandable, given the current White House administration's sensitivity to controlling communication. But it's still chilling nevertheless. What if researchers from these agencies speak at public conferences? Do they need pre-approval of their talks?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It's not just the USDA.
It's also the EPA and the Department of the Interior. Tweets containing non-controversial scientific facts were deleted this afternoon.
http://thehill.com/policy/ener...
http://www.miamiherald.com/new...
Don't be alarmed, it is for your own good. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Our former government didn't have any problem at all with muzzling scientists, their organizations as well as defunding anybody who didn't step up to their pro-oil agenda.
Very disturbing to see an anti-science government, regardless of where it is.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
You can help mirror the climate data. Go to climatemirror.org and grab the torrents, the National Land Cover Database has been completely uploaded (11GB). There's also a mailing list for further info and future efforts.
Is it really surprising to anyone that with a major change of control in the US, that departments want to keep a tighter rain on anything that could look like policy statements for a while?
Yes. Typically when a new president takes office there are some minor changes to EPA rules. Nothing like this. Couple that with Trump's stated goal of eliminating the EPA entirely and this does look like real cause for concern.
"Is it really surprising to anyone that with a major change of control in the US, that departments want to keep a tighter rain on anything that could look like
policy statements for a while? Would seem to be pretty sensible really"
Kindly explain why the tweets from Badlands National Parks' account were deleted.
All tweets were scientific facts and didn't specifically mention climate change.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Once information is fully controlled, police activity to enforce government policy can proceed unabated with little fear of meeting organized resistance. President Trump appears to have learned quite well from history.
Maybe you don't want to face the truth, but that leaked memo was real, true and even confirmed as a USDA memo. They confirmed it, when they attempted to walk it back as badly worded!
"The U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday that an internal email sent to staff at its Agricultural Research Service unit this week calling for a suspension of “public-facing documents,” including news releases and photos, was flawed and that new guidance has been sent out to replace it."
So yeh, a real true memo, even confirmed by the department itself.
And again, Buzzfeed CNN etc. are shown to be true sources of true news. Wait till he lifts sanctions of Russia and releases a report claiming Nato hacked the US electin not Russia, and you'll deny he's a Putin puppet too.
It is legal to eliminate them.
Maybe there was, only it wasn't news since someone the media didn't like wasn't in power. Maybe presidents, and indeed political leaders have been doing much the same thing since time immemorial.
The Dubya Bush administration was under close watch from environmentalists. There used to be a bushgreenwatch.org site.
http://web.archive.org/web/200...
I believe it was the revelation of Frank Luntz's memo advising on changing the language used to address concerns about global warming ,er, climate change
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
So then why was there no blackouts when Obama, Bush, Clinton, the other Bush, etc were elected and took over? And does the context of a president that repeatedly and blatantly lies have no relevance?
A lot of things Trump does are over blown in the media when taken individually, but in the context of all that he's done, it's clear that he's actively trying to promote a false narrative, one where he is the lone holder of any 'facts' and that anything that disagrees with his all-knowing decrees are 'fake news'. If he hadn't spent the last 18 months literally saying things on camera and then lying that it happen on camera a few weeks after, it might not be such a big deal.
Agreed. That trump is not just blatantly lying but doing his damnest to make it so truth itself can be crushed and that all reasonable voices to the otherwise are silenced is scary as hell. The man forced his press secretary to lie his arse off, then his chief stooge tried to explain it, as if she was being the reasonable one as alternative facts. We cannot. We must not normalize this blatant propaganda. We made fun of Bagdad Bob, well guess what, we just elected one. I'm reminded of the lyrics from a song from Evita.
"CHE What's new Buenos Aires? Your nation, which a few years ago had the second largest gold reserves in the world, is bankrupt! A country which grew up and grew rich on beef is rationing it! La Prensa, one of the few newspapers which dares to oppose Peronism, has been silenced, and so have all other reasonable voices! I'll tell you what's new Buenos Aires!"
We cannot let truth remain a casuality, for if that is the new status quo, we might as well call the experiment of America a failure, for a democratic republic cannot possibly choose decent leaders based on lies.
The other thing he did today was to start banning entry from certain Muslim countries, as if some magical process he comes up with is going to create the illusive terrorist detector radar. In some ways I half wonder if the lies were not a way to try to hide this kind of news in the noise. Terrorists will not destroy us as a country, but those like Trump might just manage it.
Dictators and communists usually want to block information. America is now in a state of emergency.
What I see shaping up is a crowding of the space so that you can't tell who is the reasonable or unreasonable voices.
made you click! made you click! HAW HAW!
Gosh.. An administration trying to control its messaging and making sure it's not undercut from Obama hires still within those departments. Shocking!
And about that National Park Service tweeter:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article128506319.html
The tweets have been deleted. Buzzfeed reported that the tweets “were posted by a former employee who was not currently authorized to use the park’s account. The park was not told to remove the tweets but chose to do so when they realized that their account had been compromised,” quoting a National Parks Service official.
What was the oldest Tweet in existence for that account before the deletion?
But here's an explanation: It is easier to delete everything and then put what you want there back later than to leave that stuff out there with something on it that will make your life more difficult.
Couple that with Trump's stated goal of eliminating the EPA entirely
Can you provide a quote for that?
Q: Would you cut departments?
TRUMP: Environmental Protection, what they do is a disgrace. Every week they come out with new regulations.
Q: Who's going to protect the environment?
TRUMP: We'll be fine with the environment. We can leave a little bit, but you can't destroy businesses.
Source: Fox News Sunday 2015 Coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls , Oct 18, 2015
Donald, is that you?
Anyone who has been watching him on TV can provide a quote for that. You're not in the U.S. are you?
You're an edgy fuck, aren't you.
Oh, BTW, you've been reported to the proper authorities.
as opposed to the rude authorities? hes gonna get impeached in a month with all this.
He was, after he received a megadose of gamma radiation while inspecting the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island. Don't make him angry . . . you wouldn't like him when he's angry.
So is language. Unrtst seems to think his quote is sufficient to answer that question in the affirmative. I disagree. Combine that with the fact that people can believe whatever they've been nudged into believing, who knows what the reality is.
Germany, mid 1930s, right-wing... Deutsche Zentrumspartei? It has center in the name, which makes it far right by the standards of the time and place. I'm not positive, but I think that this was the only part that wasn't hard-left that had any influence to speak of in that era. Well, unless your political chart looks like this one.
See that "Preview" button?
Slashdot changed the headline to reflect the new statement made by the USDA's deputy administrator. A statement which is, frankly, backpedaling. When the original order was "Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents." the submitted headline was accurate, albeit overly specific.
I'm sorry, what's the confusion here? Trump said he wanted to cut the EPA. That is exactly like saying that he wants to eliminate the EPA. Do you not know what the word cut means?
The original order was a memo not made public. We don't know what the original order was.
Even if that was the original order, which we have no way of telling, it's entirely possible the person sending it was the typical oblivious bureaucrat that was only thinking about the sorts of documents that they deal with (policy and whatnot) rather than the sort that people outside the organization would care about. (research results)
The media has also been doing a good job of discrediting itself so that a significant portion of the country might actually believe they should go directly to him for the facts.
The article is not to be trusted.
The interviewer clearly thought that he meant to eliminate it entirely, and then in response to being questioned on that he says "We can leave a little bit." That's a conciliatory statement. He's not hellbent on destroying every last shred of the EPA, but he stated a preference to do so.
Further: "leaving a little bit" does not make for an effective regulatory body. Even if there does remain a shred of EPA left after all of this is said and done, the original point of this thread, namely that this gag order is a genuine cause for concern, remains true.
Everyone is lying. Just not all about all the same things at all the same time. One of the potentially fun things in life is to find out which ones. Never trust a person who says they never lie.
Che Guevara was a serial killer. A really creepy, scary individual.
There is a reason they drummed him out of Cuba after the revolution. They could only take things so far. Even Castro had limits.
Please explain how one publishes scientific information without publishing documents?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
So basically just a reset across the board, and not a scrub of just facts the administration doesn't like. Determining on how you like to interpret this it could be terrible, no problem at all, or something that could be either way and we should still wait and see when they make a change that actually matters.
People are acting like the US government has the only facts in existence and a wiping of the public facing data held by that government by order of the head of that government is an attack on fact itself.
You wanted government to be involved in everything everyone does. How's that working out for you?
Move to China and choke on the smog and die of poison in the food.
I like my clean America
First you claim that people are exaggerating, then you basically pull a Godwin on the topic? If that's not hypocritical, I don't know what is.
That, and save billions. For example, the EPA air rules cost $11.3 billion, saved $55–146 billion annually, including 6,800 to 17,000 lives. From 1990 to 2020, that's an expected $65 billion spent to save $2 trillion.
The White House's Office of Management and Budget found that the annual benefits of major federal rules over a decade ranged between $193 billion to $800 billion, with costs of only $57 billion to $84 billion (EPA air regulations were the greatest source of these benefits). Google cache link, because Trump deleted the original.
Trump has the only facts that matter. Listen and believe.
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/24/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
The TrumpenFuhrer can do no wrong in some people's eyes.
They will excuse anything he says. Probably right up until the moment he closes the gates on the camps he's put you in. "Well at least they are made of American steel."
Can you give an example - one example - of this "shitposting" by workers at these agencies? Can you even point to anything remotely partisan in any of the tweets that were deleted?
You are welcome on my lawn.
God, it's not like "eliminate" means KILL. Stop being such a pussy. The constitution has a purpose in this context and it means REMOVE FROM OFFICE. Stop being such a chicken shit and stand up for the law of the land. I hate feeling like I can't talk about problems because of fear I'll be targeted. This isn't America anymore if you can't stand up for yourself and the documents of the founding fathers. No president will EVER take the constitution away from the people, no matter how hard they try.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Q: Who's going to protect the environment?
Clearly the interviewer believed that he meant to cut it entirely.
What's wrong? This is simply government-directed communication on science issues. Didn't you want government involved in everything? Seriously, what could go wrong?
If something could go wrong, does that mean we should rethink having the government so involved?
What fetish? The memo reports he hired women to pee on the bed the Obama's sleep in. It quoted known spies in the hotel, and known spies in the FSB.
It was not 4Chan that made the claim, it was a former GCHQ security analyst considered reliable by US security services, quoting known sources.
It was full of prescient data, e.g. Putin's stance on Ukraine was followed the following week by Trump. Putin's courting of Micheal Flynn was 3 months before Trump plucked Flynn from nowhere as national security advisor.
Other data is post verifiable, e.g. Carter Page's visits to Putin are of record. Cohen wifes *is* of Russian descent, she's been confirmed as Russian with Ukraine family, formerly registered with a Russian Brides dating agency.
Putin has attacked opponents by releasing videos of their private sex lives, and so of course he has footage of Trump in his hotel across from their spy headquarters! Do you think Trump didn't foock women in that hotel room? I find that difficult to believe. I would go even further, Putin will have ensured the prostitutes were underage to give proper leverage over Trump. It's one thing to have embarrasing data, another to have criminal leverage over Trump.
But also Trump confirmed his knowledge of micro cameras in hotel rooms, and he runs a lot of hotels.
and by old, I am starting to worry we are talking german mid 1930s.
Oh please, no more comparisons to Hitler. If you think someone/somegroup is bad, find another bad person to compare them to (which shouldn't be hard if you have any knowledge of history).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Found the archived OMB report.
You mean "part of the article". Because it goes on to say:
Per usual, Trump supporter misrepresents an article. Film at 11.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Minor like classifying c02 as a pollutant? Trump is rolling back the EPA to where it was before Obama. There's nothing wrong with that, elections have consequences.
Going directly to Trump is a great idea, as soon as he allows that communication to be 2-way, we are set... Or do you think that one-way communication from trump with no possibility to question him is a good idea?
CA will continue to have environmental protection, no matter what the federal government. We still have open borders, so if you need to escape US idiocy, we welcome you with open arms. The same goes for IL, NY, and a few other first world nation states. The rest of the country can go fuck yourselves.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
I give it about six months before he does something that steps on your toes and makes you one of those people. Trump is a bit of a blunt instrument as seen with this and the hiring freeze (does that freeze include cronies of his appointments to go on their personal staff? No? I thought not).
or does that "clarification" bear all the hallmarks of an ass-covering exercise ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>which only referred to the "ban" on sharing scientific data
Because that's the only thing coming out of those things that er... matters ? If they stop tweeting you may feel inconvenienced but you can't say you're being robbed. If they refuse to share with you, the results of science you paid for, that's a major civil rights issue.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It is a defining attribute of the authoritarian that they will, soon enough, try to define reality itself by their words. Literature is filled with authors reminding us of just how common this is. In Orwell's 1984 Winston Smith remarks that "Freedom is being able to say that 2 and 2 make 4" and, later, as he is being tortured the party officer declares that "2 and 2 is 5 if we say it is". A not dissimilar scene in Star Trek The Next Generation had Picard being tortured by Cardassian Madred, who would, constantly, show him 4 blinking lights and insist that Picard say there are 5, promising to end his torture when Picard denies reality. At the end of the episode, as the rescued Picard stumbles away, he cannot help but turn back toward his torturer and defiantly declare: "There are 4 lights!".
So this is the context in which we should see Donald Trump starting his term with flagrantly lying about a number everybody can see is wrong - insisting that the populace accept the truth to be, whatever he desires it to be.
This is not just a dishonest politician lying - this is a politician who has declared war on truth itself, and there is no more authoritarian thing than that. This is what dictatorship looks like.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
If declaring your inauguration day a "national day of patriotic devotion" was not seriously out of the ordinary then the US would have had one of those for 300 years.
Could you GET a more Banana Republic move ? All he is missing is the Khaki-Uniform with the dozens of medals and the beret. He already has the cigars.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
" The Trump administration just need a little time to get the alternative facts ready."
The Ministry of Truth is responsible for those.
Yup, This is how it started in Russia. Many people seem confused as to why would they deny something as obvious as the size of the inauguration crowds for example that's easily proven false? Well, it has 3 important effects on american public discourse and media:
1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference.
2. Increasing the separation between Trump's base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong - that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong - they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here - likely to pay off - is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as "fake news" (because otherwise they'd be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)
3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say "clearly the White House is lying," a third will say "if Trump says it, it must be true," and the remaining third will say "gosh, I guess this is unknowable." The idea isn't to convince these people of untrue things, it's to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.
This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump's White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as the crowds at the inauguration, just imagine what else they'll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. This allows them to eventually say anything to the public, and this should be worrisome to Americans regardless of who you voted because this is how totalitarian states get started.
He's setting up his Pravda and being quite upfront about it.
He's still making the claim that 3 million 'fake voters' voted for Hillary to lose him the popular vote. There's no evidence for this, none whatsoever, anywhere. Yet the defense given reads like this::
So to him. He only knows. Truth is what he believes it to be. Where have I read this before?
-1984
I'm not american, but all I can say to Americans is: don't fall for this. Don't let the man divide you even further against yourself and monopolize the truth. You've seen how well that has gone in Russia, a
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Damn. I never thought there would be a day where I would say seriousl that we have always been at war with Eurasia.... The next 4 years will be ... Interresting.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
" The Trump administration just need a little time to get the alternative facts ready."
The Ministry of Truth is responsible for those.
True dat. They're working hard, but are currently backlogged...
@Anonymous Coward: "The blackouts are merely to prevent lifelong government staffers from publishing on political policy issues .."
Do you have any verifiable evidence for this? When was the previous admin instructed to remove the climate change page from its website?
"A copy of the interim procedures memo, dated Jan. 23 .. shows many of the steps reflect either the same or similar measures taken by the previous administration"
When was the previous admin instructed to remove the climate change page from its website?
@Anonymous Coward: "As of this posting, the AC's lie has been modded up twice while the truth modded up once. I think that should show you how much modern-styled liberals care about the truth. All of the gnashing of teeth about lies and context are just projections, like the vast majority of criticisms from the modern US left. It's a sad day that the GOP can just admit it is selfish and shortsighted and look better than liberals.
.. liberals FAP liberals FAP FAP liberals FAP FAP FAP UUUGH!
It's a logical fallacy that all liberals don't care about the truth and why do you have such a hard on for 'modern-styled liberals'
You had me 'til you tried to play the race card.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Exactly this.
What Orwell called blackwhite.
@IHTFISP: "This is a temporary freeze on spewing official agency propaganda by extremists w/in the agencies who may resent their funds being cut. .. Given the 11th hour sabotage salvos launched by Obama in his last weeks as POTUS, any rational person could sympathize w/ a “stand down” order from the new, in-coming administration to prevent far-left partisan policy loyalists from muddying the waters until the new Presidential cabinet members can take office and plot a course."
:)
That's the best alt- drumpf redneck gibberish I've seen yet
Trump administration tells EPA to cut climate page from website: sources
While I checked for "funny" comments, I wasn't expecting to find any, and I don't think this insightful comment was modded correctly... Then again, we're in a post-truth #PresidentTweety world now, so maybe we're post-funny, too. What used to be parody is now just different facts.
You thought there was only ONE reality and one set of facts? You must be nuts!
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Is it really surprising to anyone that with a major change of control in the US, that departments want to keep a tighter rain on anything that could look like
policy statements for a while? Would seem to be pretty sensible really.
Maybe this is the norm in other countries but isn't in the US for quite some decades. Politicians have been quite civilized in leaving publicly funded research out of politics. Very few such agencies cared about administration change beyond the variations in upcoming budgets (multi year budgets are also not messed with after approval by prior congresses; unlike in other fields).
Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents. This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content.
It is easy to get confused by that writing if, you know, understand English.
How so?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Leaving a little bit of the EPA agency is like holding elections in China: A token to say we do have them without really giving a shit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He eliminates my hair. Unless of course you ask for a headcut at a barber's, but I guess he'd probably ask you if you're serious.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's fine. The coasts will always be fine. We have the strongest and most sustainable economies. It's not a coincidence that the counties that went Democrat make up 64 percent of the economy. Trump will cut a bunch of federal funding and programs that help poor people in the "taker" states that receive more federal money than they give (hint: almost all Republican), and Democratic states will replace the cut programs with their own at the state level. You guys wanted more power to the states, right? Now see how that works out for you.
Republicans are dividing the country without realizing that their part of the country is rapidly becoming irrelevant. There's also the fact that Democrats won every state but Kentucky in the under 30 vote so eventually all of you backwards idiots are going to just die out. Looking forward to that.
It may be my bias but I read his reply as him wanting to get rid of the 'environment' and maybe leave just a little bit. He has a dangerously deranged way of speaking and constructing sentences that makes me fearful of his sanity
You know that Evita is a fictional play, right? And also that the Che in that play is not Che Guevara... That quote is basically from Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Reality is anti-Trump. He's pushing the standard alt-right view that his lies should be considered valid opinions. His opinion is that more people came to his inauguration, and that's as valid as any fact and should be reported such.
When some government agency published facts that contradict him, those have equal weight to mere opinions and government workers shouldn't express opinions.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Your claims don't have to be rational as long as their anti-trump they will be upmodded
ARS is the research arm of the USDA.
the only thing they publish is research.
by definition they're public facing documents are publicly funded science, you reality denying twit.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Is it just the media? The government itself is establishing a Ministry of Truth type of system. And that was put together by Obama, but it's scary nonetheless.
Next extended drought or flood you get, make sure you thank the antiquated fuel companies that got you there.
this the same idiot who because the literal words "I would ban muslims" never came out of his mouth, merely and agreement with a statement from someone else, he therefore never said it and wont do it.
to this idiot this: "I will cut the EPA"
is different from this: "Q: What will you cut?, A: The EPA".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
in context, that thing you claim to be using, "leave a little bit" refers to the environment, not the EPA.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
A: the EPA didn't do it, the local contractor did.
B: it wasn't an intentional act.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I'm waiting for the coasts to start demanding the red interior start paying their own way. But then we'll all be paying dearly when the national debt balloons to Trumpian proportions. It will be the biggest, most lovely debt we've ever had.
Trump will have a fix for research too, he'll simply cut money out of the budget for it. No research, no embarrassing facts, only alternative facts generated by the new media industries of the alt-right. It will be called a jobs program.
Reading into die Fuhrer's (he's had a sex change) words is a fools errand. They are mere wisps of notions that were fizzing in his brain at the time. He has to have someone read back what he said to see what he believes on any one day.
When do "the coasts" start feeding themselves, if they start demanding the red interior start paying their own way?
Stop being an ignorant divisive fuck. We're one country, working together. Or, at least, we should be. But people like you are maintaining the status quo of "it's all THEIR fault".
Considering most of the produce I buy at the grocery store is imported from Mexico, I think we would be just fine.
Apparently there were, but the media did not make anything of those: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You can watch the video of Trump actually saying these things.
Unless of course you are referring to Trump as the partisan liar. I can't tell from your post.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No president will EVER take the constitution away from the people, no matter how hard they try
You're so naive, it's cute.
If you think that Bush was the worst President we ever had, you haven't bothered with history much.
Here's a few that were worse than Bush:
James Buchanon - basically caused the Civil War through bungled policy and negotiation that angered both the North and the secessionists.
Andrew Johnson - Impeached by the House, acquitted by the Senate; opposed US citizenship for freed slaves after the Civil War
Franklin Pierce - signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, upheld the Fugitive Slave Act,
Andrew Jackson - supported the western expansion of slavery, conducted forced relocation (read: genocide) of native american tribes living east of the Mississippi, Censured by the US Senate.
Bush wasn't even the first one to start a war without the backing of Congress - James Polk did that with Mexico when Mexico wouldn't sell disputed lands in Texas, which earned him a censure from the House of Representatives.
Bush is probably in the bottom 10, but not the worst.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
the gag order specifically applies to policy-related statements in press releases and interviews, which need to be vetted with the secretary of agriculture
Policy. Allow me to repeat that - Policy.. You do know what policy is perhaps you can tell me.
Science. Allow me to repeat that - Science. You are apparently celebrating that when Science is not in lockstep with Policy, it must be suppressed.
In other words, anything that disagrees with your politics and the policies derived from must be vetted so that it is aligned with that policy, or else it shall be suppressed, or possibly re-written so that the Science is promoting the policy.
Its kind of interesting that You and your team are rapidly becoming the policy equivalent of 1930's Bolsheviks, where Politicians determine whether facts are true, and to be true, they must align with party policy . See Lysenkoism.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That's the great thing about representative government - you do have the possibility to question him through your duly elected Congressional delegation. And, as it turns out, the Congress has the ability to put the President's balls in a fiscal vise should he start doing things that the nation doesn't like.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The story is exaggerated. The science blackout is not permanent. The Trump administration just need a little time to get the alternative facts ready.
Not sure if +5 funny, or +5 informative.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So then why was there no blackouts when Obama, Bush, Clinton, the other Bush, etc were elected and took over?
Twitter was founded in 2006 and IPO'd in 2013. It was not in widespread use w/in gov't until Obama's second term.
As for stifling other forms of communication, it was not until recently (i.e., under Obama) that federal agencies issued communication through informal channels, like personal statements or press releases not filtered through an official agency communications director. Federal agencies are also far more politicized ideologically under Obama then they were under previous administrations.
The temporary “stand down” order seems to address imposing some manner of coherence and message discipline so that each agency can speak w/ a single official voice rather than have partisan dissenters undermine policy via unauthorized communiques, like the anonymous coward quoted in the ProPublica article (referenced in the HuffPo article cited in the PopSci article referred to in the Slashdot summary). The worst offenders appear to be the far-left agitators w/in the EPA, HHS/NIH, USDA and the National Park Service, all of which have been told to cut it out until new cabinet picks can take the reins. This especially applies to rogue tweets and other social media releases on official agency accounts issued since Inauguration Day.
There is enough far-left hyperventilation being perpetuated already w/o operatives inside federal agencies pretending to be whistleblowers who are actually just bitter opponents of administrative executive decisions they wish to subvert or conspire to undermine. Working for the fed means you can lose funding on a moment's notice for purely political reasons. If you don't like that, then don't rely on federal funding. Academia had to learn that hard lesson when DARPA funding started drying up under Clinton due to the so-called “cold war peace dividend”, for example.
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Can you give an example - one example - of this "shitposting" by workers at these agencies? Can you even point to anything remotely partisan in any of the tweets that were deleted?
WaPo had an article on the rogue re-tweeting at the National Park Service (part of the Department of the Interior).
Ref: The National Park Service’s Twitter Has Gone Rogue.
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Please explain how one publishes scientific information without publishing documents?
You hand it to a politician, who yellow lines the parts that do not align with party policy You remove the parts that are not true because the truth has been set by party policy, and if the politician ends up finding the now policy confirming paper acceptable, it gets published.
I have a strong suspicion that in science departments all over the country, that they are making backups to be hidden from the new age of alternative truth we have entered. Kind of like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault for science data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
Because this too shall pass. Ages of alternative facts come and go. Ages of politics determining the laws of physics will come and go. We don't hear much of Lysenkoism these days, though it was once official Soviet Union policy.
I suspect that at this time that physics will be ignored and all research into the greenhouse effect will be suppressed, that creationism will rear it's head again, and a lot of heath science will be suppressed as well.
And? Well these are the times we live in. Scientists are a different breed. An example is in WW2, oddly enough - in Leningrad - 12 scientists chose to slowly starve to death rather than eat the seeds of their seed bank. http://www.popsci.com/science/...
All in all, if The new Politicians see fit to kill me for my views on physics, if the greenhouse effect and my support of it, or any of my other science views that have been banned by policy make me too dangerous to allow to live - then I shall die. Hopefully they are smart enough to know that suppression and killing tend to make truth stronger than policy. I have my grave doubts though.
Because all of this shall pass.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And how was that re-tweeting "shitposting" or partisan?
The National Park Service retweeted a photo of the inauguration and a past inauguration. Both showed hundreds of thousands of attendees. Are facts, or comparisons of facts, now considered partisan?
You are welcome on my lawn.
We have heard that slashdot poster mi is a wide disseminator of fake news, and serves the cause nobly by pointing out that anything determined to be politically wrong is "fake news".
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
When do "the coasts" start feeding themselves, if they start demanding the red interior start paying their own way?
Stop being an ignorant divisive fuck. We're one country, working together. Or, at least, we should be. But people like you are maintaining the status quo of "it's all THEIR fault".
This is an amazing post, and worth pointing out the incredible word salad that passes doe discussion these days.
First AC demands to know when "the coasts" will start feeding themselves. then a defense of the "red interior"
Then demanding that we are all supposed to be one. and after AC's own divisive comments, blames the divisiveness on the person they are replying to.
You alternative truth people really need to publish a playbook so we can figure you out.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Moreover, the hyperbole by HuffPo, PopSci, Buzzfeed and others has now been walked back by actual journalists at WaPo & Reuters:
WashPo: Interior Department reactivates Twitter accounts after shutdown following inauguration
Reuters: USDA disavows gag-order emailed to scientific research unit
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To this day, the quantity of oil spewed into the ocean during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil spill remains something of a mystery. Many of the scientists who worked on the spill were hired by BP and barred from speaking on it.
I'll take, Who the Fuck was President in 2010 for 200 Alex!
Walk with Music;
And, finally, this from WaPo:
USDA scrambles to ease concerns after researchers were ordered to stop publishing news releases
There, so have I redeemed myself sufficiently by backing up my accusations that this was exaggerated reporting, or are you unpersuaded by facts?
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Is anyone going to remind the President that the taxpayers OWN that data since we paid for the research? As such it's not something that should be subject to the whims of government as to what gets released and what doesn't.
From TFA: "The original email, sent Jan. 23, said: "Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents. This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content." I believe this is what you're referring to.
Also from TFA:
USDA officials said that after the email was sent, acting USDA Deputy Secretary Michael L. Young sent out a three-page memo to USDA agency department heads and other key agency officials outlining the interim procedures staff should follow.
A copy of the interim procedures memo, dated Jan. 23 and seen by Reuters, shows many of the steps reflect either the same or similar measures taken by the previous administration. Reuters also saw a memo, dated Jan. 22, 2009, that was sent to agency officials by former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The 2017 memo, however, differs in two main areas.
It centralizes the agency’s media inquiries and social media presence through the Office of the Secretary. As part of that, the memo asks USDA agencies to “review their websites, blog posts and other social media and, consistent with direction you will receive from the Office of Communication, remove references to policy priorities and initiatives of the previous Administration.”
Busy wasn't the first to start a war without congressional authorization? What are you smoking? Which war did he start without authorization?
That's why Trump and Putin are such good buddies. By having Russia flood the internet with fake news, Trump and Putin cast a shadow of doubt over ANY news information. Trumpsters can now take any real news article and say "fake news!" and other Trumpsters will nod and agree and dismiss the facts. This is Soviet style brainwashing at its finest.
Fake reply, your alternate fake reply fake news is noted and exposed. Fake fake fake.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I suppose you think the FDA, FCC, SEC, FTC, USDA, and OSHA are also useless relics and do nothing to protect Americans. You clearly have no idea of the apocalyptic wasteland that America would be without these regulating bodies.
Republicans are dividing the country without realizing that their part of the country is rapidly becoming irrelevant. There's also the fact that Democrats won every state but Kentucky in the under 30 vote so eventually all of you backwards idiots are going to just die out. Looking forward to that.
"Progress advances one funeral at a time." - Max Planck (paraphrased)
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
The Democrats have cobbled together a coalition of identity groups that actually have diverging interests, and don't really like each other all that much. As both parties are in a constant state of evolution, we've now reached a state where the Democrats have run their margins up hugely in some areas, while losing vast swaths of the country. That is a recipe for political disaster due to the structure of the US and State governments. Our system is designed to force everyone toward some sort of consensus and compromise, or to just shut down when that isn't possible.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are working hard at peeling off at least parts of each of the Democrats' constituent groups.
Thinking that parts of the country are irrelevant is beyond foolish. That has resulted in a vast shrinkage of the "purple" in electoral maps over about a decade, while "blue" areas have gotten brigher and brighter blue, and bluish areas first turned purple, and are now bright red.
The bigger problem coming is fiscal. There is flat-out no possible way to cover upcoming pensions and social spending, and that will hit the urban areas first, and hardest. All of these programs were predicated on the idea of a growing population paying in to cover those collecting benefits, and the ratio has shrunken dramatically due to longer lifespans and low reproduction rates, combined with automation reducing the number of workers needed in many industries.
And how were the EPA and USDA employees "shitposting"?
And are we really going to pretend that Donald Trump accusing someone of "shitposting" is not hilarious?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Please stick to your alt-truth websites - alt-truth for the alt-right. Go back to breitbart, there's nothing for you here at Slashdot.
Stating scientific facts is never "smarmy anti-${President} shitposting". Or shitposting. That you think it is is frightening.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Bush. Screw autocorrect.
Do you agree that it was bad?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
He constructs his sentences in a way that gives you plenty of freedom to interpret it how you want. You are right that his final sentence there is extremely ambiguous.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Nope. The White House website has now scrubbed all mentions of climate change and the history of civil rights.
You are welcome on my lawn.
1. Find a statute that requires an agency to publish certain information.
2. Find an executive order that forbids the agency from publishing that information.
3. Sue the executive. (Or, perhaps, prosecute the executive if there is a provision making such interference criminal.)
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
You really have no clue what is clear and what is not, do you?
You're assuming you are the one within reason.
So yes, there was the "Authorized Use of Military Force" - the Iraq vote that hung around Hillary's neck, but no formal declaration of war from the Congress.
Remember when we actually declared war before invading sovereign countries? That was great...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
What's the difference between a resolution titled "Declaration of War" and a resolution titled "Authorization to use Military Force"? Answer, functionally and Constitutionally there is no difference. Now on the other hand if you are going to bomb a nation such as Libya with neither, that would certainly fit your criteria.
You know that Evita is a fictional play, right? And also that the Che in that play is not Che Guevara
Che in Evita is no specific real person (certainly not Che Guevara). He is the "everyman", and his name pretty much means exactly that. "Che" is slang in much of South America that means something like "friend", "pal", "buddy", "guy", etc. (as well as some other uses, such as an interjection used to get attention, like the English "Hey" or the Spanish "Oye", which literally means "listen"). "Che" is a word that you might call a friend, or some random person on the street, which is why it's a good everyman name. Think "Joe Sixpack", though that has some other connotations that Che lacks.
Incidentally, according to Wikipedia, Che Guevara got his nickname because he used "che" a lot.
In the musical, Che plays the role of narrator and commentator.
That quote is basically from Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Actually, Tim Rice. Webber wrote the music, Rice wrote the lyrics. That doesn't change the point of the quote, though. Sometimes quotes have value because they carry the authority of the person who said them, sometimes the words just carry a valuable message. In this case, it's an accurate, brief description of what happened to Argentina under Peron. Does that mean it will happen in the US? Doubtful, but there are enough parallels that we really do need to be vigilant.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If the brownshirt fits...
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
then they should drive for UPS?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yup. By and large, red states receive more in federal funding than they pay in taxes. The same people who voted for the GOP will get hurt most by their policies.
When the populace realizes how badly they've been fleeced - and at some point, no amount of FOX or Breitbart will be sufficient to overcome the cognitive dissonance between what FOX and Breitbart report and what the red-staters experience - anyhow, when they realize that, the GOP will be in trouble, and will split between a rich-money party, a religious party, and some form of economic populism which focuses on the ensuring rising tides for the poor and middle-class as well as the rich.....
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
If declaring your inauguration day a "national day of patriotic devotion" was not seriously out of the ordinary then the US would have had one of those for 300 years.
Could you GET a more Banana Republic move ? All he is missing is the Khaki-Uniform with the dozens of medals and the beret. He already has the cigars.
Much as I dislike the man, I'm going to give him a pass on this one. Other presidents, incl Obama, have issued similar proclamations to mark their inaugurations.
But his statement on showing off the military? Yeah, that's Great Dictator / Springtime for Hitler crap. All that would be missing is a special salute and trademarked dance steps.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
So sad...
Why hello there Mr. President! So nice to see you!
That's because you're listening to what he says and not what's in his heart! You can't take anything he says seriously, but he tells it like it is and I for one trust....
ugh. I can't even finish the sentence.
That is for each of us to figure out for ourselves. But that is not to say we are not to compare notes. The benefit of the current situation is that people are coming around to the fact that they might actually have to do some research to figure out who that is.
and that will hit the urban areas first, and hardest
[citation needed]
I knew Evita was a play. I did not know that Che didn't mean to be referrential to Guevara.
Everybody has always been pretty much free to say anything about anything to anyone. Only when Trump does it, people are more on their guard because they know he did it with the inaguration. You don't run a con with a dishonest face, as the saying goes.
And, just to show how wrong you are with your partisan bullshit (sorry "alternative facts"): Read it and see how wrong you are
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The same way "Defense cuts" mean the Defense Department budget would be smaller
No.
What was asked was, "Would you cut departments?"
Answering in the affirmative regarding the defense department would mean, "Yes, I would cut the defense department", which is very different than "defense cuts".
I do think it's obvious that he rarely speak or writes clearly. In this case, I think what he meant was that he is currently angry with something or someone EPA related, and he intended to do something to them that may be anywhere between fairly significant cuts and complete elimination of the department, but his opinion on the matter had already shifted within 2 back to back phrases, so it's anybodies guess what he'll do today.
I meant without singling out just the facts they don't like, they are going after everything, so it isn't just those. It would be really odd if they got rid of just stuff they were okay with leaving the stuff they didn't like.
No, they're only going after the stuff they don't like. The DoD public-facing website has been left alone.
I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but the DoD official twitter account has been throwing some serious shade on Trump, too. They tweeted this article:
https://twitter.com/DeptofDefe...
You are welcome on my lawn.
While I agree with your second sentence, A day of "renewal and reconciliation" is not similar in my mind. Not even slightly. I didn't go google what every president before that did though, I'm sure there were others with equally disconcerting themes (especially on the right in America nationalism, including ethno-nationalism, and patriotism has always been deemed a virtue - while it seems the left takes the approach of "you should love your country enough to acknowledge it's flaws and imperfections") - but it also isn't an action that stands on it's own, it's wording and approach sits within the context of everything else he did. This includes giving prominent pride of place in his speech to "America First" -the official slogan of the American NAZI movement for almost a century now - right back to their first formation in the 1920s.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The usage of "America First" is definitely worrisome and the entire tone of speech was dark, dank & rank.
Whatever to the GOP POTUSes who spoke of America in glowing terms? The shining city on the hill? The rising nation?
There were Mexicans & decrepit infrastructure back then, too.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Sort of the way Evangelicals work with Corporatists and Oligarchs? ..equal rights, privileges and immunities" REQUIRES that Dirt stops having a vote
Oh, that's the rethuglican coalition.
Good news? Sooner or later we all admit that DIRT DOESN'T HAVE A VOTE and equal voting means popular elections.
14th Amendment "citizens shall enjoy
They should learn what difference a space--or lack thereof--can make.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Farmers supply food. They're sunk without things other people make. It's an interdependent economy, and agriculture is not a big part of it. If the coasts had to, they could import food. It would cost more, but they're wealthy enough.
It would be really nice to be one country, working together. Trump doesn't seem to agree. In the run-up to his inauguration, he referred to people like me as "enemies", not, say, "opponents". Some Trump supporters take the attitude that they count and the people they don't agree with don't, and that Trump's loss in the popular vote doesn't count symbolically because the voters were Californians, not Americans. He's the most divisive President I've seen in my lifetime. Other Presidents have been divisive in the sense of pushing controversial policies that I frequently strongly disapproved of, but they at least tried to get people on board.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
At one time, a friend claimed that the Clinton administration was the most corrupt of the Twentieth Century. I was interested, so I asked "Why do you think it was more corrupt than the Harding administration?" and got what was essentially a blank look. Sheesh.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
One example? Sure:
I think the posting of the pictures of the mall with the smaller Trump crowds by the Dept of the Interior is a perfect example of a fact-based shitpost.
Trump was full of crap. His crowds were smaller. No question. ...so really, Trump's crowds were very comparable to those of previous Republicans, and in fact comparable to 5/7 of previous inaugurations of ANY party.
Then again, the comparison was to 2009's inauguration, why? Because 2009 was a RECORD SETTING crowd?
according to politifact:
Barack Obama, 2013: 1 million
Barack Obama, 2009: 1.8 million (generally considered a record for people on the National Mall)
George W. Bush, 2005: 400,000
George W. Bush, 2001: 300,000
Bill Clinton, 1997: 250,000
Bill Clinton, 1993: 800,000
George H.W. Bush, 1989: 300,000
So, yes: it was factually true. Posting it in the midst of the controversy *verged* on being a shitpost anyway. Specifically comparing it not to the previous inaugural (but instead to the single highest count of people ever seen on the mall by nearly a factor of 80%), or mentioning that it was comparable to any other Republican president, THOSE are the facts that made it clearly a shitpost, *intended* to embarrass.
And where I work, if I posted something deliberately meant to embarrass my CEO, I'd get my ass fired. Most people in normal jobs would.
-Styopa
I'll bet if you think about it, there is a difference between the CEO of your company and the president of the United States.
One of them is supposed to be a public servant. The other is paid by the taxpayers.
Let's say your job is to assemble the annual report for your company. Let's say your company lost $5million last year, and your CEO came and said, "Don't put anything out there that would embarrass me, so change the report to say that we actually made $50million last year." Do you do change the report?
When facts embarrass a dictator, facts will become illegal. Trying to make people believe that they can no longer believe what's true is the hallmark of totalitarianism. How easily Trump supporters have become comfortable with real tyranny.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I know you are but what am I?
Oh bullshit.
It would be one thing if I was told to produce a report and then told to lie. Of course. That's a different context and a frankly bad analogy.
It would be another thing ENTIRELY if I started voluntarily posting embarrassing information contradictory to my CEOs pronouncements.
And yes, the president is 'a public servant' - he's not a 'servant' to his *employees*.
-Styopa
You have GOT to be kidding!!!
If this isn't a move towards Orwell's 1984 society, then how would you define it?
Fellow Americans: The time is NOW to stand up for the right's intended by our founding Fathers, and DEMAND FULL transparency on ALL issues affecting us as the FREE citizens of this country!
It is time to bring the Constitution into this modern age.
It is time to OUTLAW ANY fake news or deceptive speech. Freedom of speech does NOT mean Freedom to Deceive and Lie - especially for political reasons.
Whistle-blowing needs to be classified as FREE SPEECH, and NOT encumbered by bullshit laws to suppress truths that citizens must have to make informed decisions at the polls!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Sheesh, my proofreading sucks. That should have been "whatever *happened* to the GOP POTUSes......."
Pain is merely failure leaving the body