The leftward and other blatherings of Span (now with Snaps!)

Sunday, June 12, 2005

why isn't this front page news?

Bush's reports on climate change were being heavily edited by someone with absolutely no scientific training, but a background in the oil industry. I only know about this because I heard it briefly on Nat Rad and then Googled to find out a bit more, but there's hardly anything out there.

This is incredibly corrupt - if it's happening in this area whose to say it isn't happening elsewhere in the Bush Administration?

3 comments:

Brian Boyko said...

Um... it is. Bush has altered government information about health, about women in the workplace - any government information that paints the Bush administration in a bad light is a target.

I mean, this is a president who 1) edited the costs of his Medicare bill in order to lie to congress about it to get it passed, 2) did not publish terrorism statistics when it showed that terrorism worldwide has been on the rise since the "war on terror", 3) stopped publishing the OMB's "Budget Information for States" the document individual states use to determine how much funding they recieve under each federal program 4) stopped a Labor department program to track and report massive layoffs by companies, 5) removed information about earning differences between women and men from the Department of Labor website, 6) removed information about women's rights in the workplace from the Department of Labor website...

The list goes one. Everything from environment to condom usage to the non-existant link between abortion and breast cancer (which, even though there's no scientific basis for it, three states now require doctors to lie to their patients about it.)

It is trying to control politics by controlling information and, you're right. I can't believe this isn't front-page news.

Commie Mutant Traitor said...

Oh, they openly admit it happens elsewhere.

"We have an interagency review process when it comes to issues like climate change and the environment. There are some 15 federal agencies that are involved in that interagency review process. It includes policy people; it includes scientists."

It's not clear just how wide the definition of "issues like climate change and the environment" is, but it appears that _any_ scientific report is going to be reviewed by "policy people" and altered if the findings don't fit Bush's agenda. And we know it isn't just science - the Iraq fiasco showed clearly how military intelligence is manipulated.

Span said...

good lord that's depressing :-(

why are these practices ok?