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Federal Officials Routinely Rewarded for Lying and Punished for Telling the Truth

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posted on Jul, 12 2006 @ 01:06 PM
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I missed this one - maybe others did too. Some excellent information here.



“DISINFORMATION SYNDROME” AFFLICTS FEDERAL GOVERNMENT - Officials Routinely Rewarded for Lying and Punished for Telling the Truth

Washington, DC — The federal government suffers from a “severe disinformation syndrome” in which agency specialists are pressured to alter reports by managers who are promoted for breaking the law, according to congressional testimony delivered today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a consequence, scientific and technical papers, particularly within environmental agencies, are routinely censored, altered or manipulated for political purposes.

“The Bush administration obsession with controlling the flow of information means that factual information that does not serve its political agenda rarely sees the light of day,” ...The PEER testimony outlines a pervasive effort to edit out vital but discordant information across the range of environmental activities:
* Science. PEER and the Union of Concerned Scientists have conducted surveys among federal scientists showing a high degree of political intervention to amend scientific findings;
* Land Management. Federal agencies are routinely issuing documents that do not withstand judicial scrutiny because the documents are at variance with the agency’s own internal data; and
* Public Health. Whistleblowers lack meaningful protections so that professionals who raise concerns are banished or terminated as a result.

“If agencies can lie with impunity to Congress, why should they be expected to tell anyone else the truth?” Ruch asked, calling for Congress to put teeth into laws forbidding interference with or retaliation for transmitting information to elected representatives. “Right now, the federal civil service is scared to death.”






Also see:

PEER Congressional Testimony pdf.

POLITICAL APPOINTEES POLLUTE WATERS AT OCEAN AGENCY - Survey Shows Special Interest Influence and Altered Scientific Findings

POLITICS TRUMPS SCIENCE AT U.S. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE - Survey Reveals Inappropriate Orders to Alter Scientific Findings, Decisions



posted on Jul, 12 2006 @ 03:01 PM
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Soficrow don't you have anything newer that a year old? I have no doubt the Bush Administration has appointed some real losers to a number of federal agencies, committees, etc., but it would be nice to see some specifics that are current.



posted on Jul, 13 2006 @ 07:42 AM
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good find soficrow

I am suprised that there are not more responses to this.

Unfortunately this is what I have come to expect from our govt. at this point.
Does Alex Jones have it right? "Infowars". Apparently there IS a war on for our minds. This Administration has made a career out of lying, cheating, stealing from the American people.

The question is, for me, why is this allowed to continue? Especially since this practice is documented. Where is the accountability?
Where is the justice?

"I am the Decider"
"I am the Deceiver"
"I am the Dictator"

"read between the lines" is now "read between the lies"



posted on Jul, 13 2006 @ 01:14 PM
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Originally posted by Astronomer70

Soficrow don't you have anything newer that a year old?





Of course. I just posted a good one that I had missed.

Here is a short selection of current stuff.




10,000 EPA Scientists Protest Library Closures

WASHINGTON, DC, July 7, 2006 (ENS) - Representatives for 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists are asking Congress to stop the Bush administration from closing the agency’s network of technical research libraries.

In his proposed budget for FY 2007, President Bush deleted $2 million of support for EPA’s libraries, amounting to 80 percent of the agency’s total budget for libraries. Without waiting for Congress to act, EPA has begun closing libraries, shutting down access to collections and reassigning staff.

In their letter, the EPA scientists say the library closures are "one more example of the Bush administration’s effort to suppress information on environmental and public health-related topics." ..."EPA library services are [now] greatly reduced or no longer available to the general public" in agency regional offices serving 19 states, the EPA scientists write.




And how 'bout this one?



Medical journal reveals that 70 percent of drug decision-making panel members have financial ties to industry

The journal Nature has published studies showing that 70 percent of the drug decision panels run in this country are rigged with decision-makers who have strong financial ties to the very drug companies whose products are affected by these decisions.

So much for evidence-based medicine. Drug approval decisions have little to do with evidence and everything to do with materialistic greed and cold, hard cash. That cash is doled out to decision-makers in the form of research grants, consulting fees and outright bribes. These decision-makers, who are often physicians, generally do not reveal their conflicts of interest. Yet they accept positions on decision-making panels where these so-called experts sit around and decide what should be the standard practice for various diseases, symptoms and conditions. Write-ups of those practices are then distributed to physicians around the country who follow the procedures. The journal Nature has revealed that 70 percent of these panels are rigged with decision-makers who have conflicts of interest.





Or this one?



Senate Committee Press Release: ‘Brokaw’s Objectivity Compromised in Global Warming Special’

In a fine example of life imitating a Marx Brothers movie – which should give you a clue as to what should be done with your drinking vessels! – Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works issued a press release Wednesday concerning a documentary that former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw has done for the Discovery Channel about global warming (hat tip to NRO’s Media Blog). No matter how hard you try, you just can’t make this stuff up...

...it’s good to see our tax dollars are finally going to good use.




Also see: Brokaw AND Global Warming Attacked by Gov Paid Media Attack Artist


Also interesting:


Tsunami Threat to Hawaii and West Coast Underestimated: Models Do Not Account for Multiple, Bigger Waves Inundating Populated Areas
By: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility

New evidence from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami is causing civil defense modelers to reassess recommended evacuation zones and the hazards of multiple waves, according to scientific presentations to be given today at a planning conference and released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). These new analyses suggest that the tsunami threat to Hawaii, particularly the south shore of Oahu, and California may be much greater than previously calculated.




More, some new, some not:

US scientists back bill for free access to publicly funded science research. ...UPDATE


BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Leading U.S. Scientists Condemn White House Censorship and Distortion of Science Data

US scientists back bill for free access to publicly funded science research. UPDATE



posted on Jul, 13 2006 @ 02:42 PM
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Ask and yea shall receive--thank you. The links you presented made for some very disturbing reading. It seems pretty apparent the religious conservatives are exerting a tremendous amount of pressure on the findings, conclusions, etc. of various government panels, commissions, etc. I suppose I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was quite this bad. Do you have any suggestions for trying to correct the situation?



posted on Jul, 13 2006 @ 02:52 PM
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Originally posted by Astronomer70

Do you have any suggestions for trying to correct the situation?




Erm. Impeach Bush?


...Sorry, I just reviewed a few other threads and am left totally PO'd at the way these guys bully and stomp - and get away with it.

Every regime needs a frontman - but getting rid of the lead puppet doesn't necessarily harm the puppetmasters.

So I dunno. What do you think?



posted on Jul, 13 2006 @ 10:21 PM
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This one warranted a pair of applauses. I'm always impressed with the amount of work Sofi puts into documenting the issues she brings to our attention, but especially with the insight of the response re: impeaching Bush. It's always a kneejerk reaction to just can the front man, but that's the reaction that THEY want. The partisanship of it only reaffirms our loyalty to the Republicrat oligarchy that gives us the illusion of choice while keeping the wealthy firmly in ownership of America.

My advice, rather than to cut off one of the Hydra's heads and smile contentedly until the next president does something wrong, is sieze on the incredible public awareness that something is wrong with our system right now to pass constitutional amendments which
1. Reaffirm the WEAK EXECUTIVE system that is implied by the constitutional lack of enumerated powers in Article II.
2. Break the Republican/Democrat dichotomy by redifining our balloting and electoral process.
3. Create greater recourse for the people against the government by opening up a national ballot initiative process.



posted on Jul, 14 2006 @ 12:23 AM
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Originally posted by The Vagabond
This one warranted a pair of applauses.



Thanks Vagabond.





My advice, rather than to cut off one of the Hydra's heads and smile contentedly until the next president does something wrong, is sieze on the incredible public awareness that something is wrong with our system right now to pass constitutional amendments which
1. Reaffirm the WEAK EXECUTIVE system that is implied by the constitutional lack of enumerated powers in Article II.
2. Break the Republican/Democrat dichotomy by redifining our balloting and electoral process.
3. Create greater recourse for the people against the government by opening up a national ballot initiative process.



Sounds like a plan. ...Does it require legal action?




[edit on 14-7-2006 by soficrow]

[edit on 14-7-2006 by soficrow]



posted on Jul, 14 2006 @ 12:32 AM
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I like it Vagabond. Course we'll need Bill Gates or someone to fund the effort, but what an appealing thought.



posted on Jul, 14 2006 @ 02:11 AM
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It would obviously never go through congress. The state legislature path to ammending would have to be taken. You'd have to successfully lobby or capture 2/3s of the state legislatures to get them to call an amending convention and choose delegates who could be trusted. The good thing is that this convention could propose ALL of the needed amendments with just one nod from the legislatures. The other good thing is that the parties would have a hard time finding enough loyalists or enough money to fight such an idea in every single state legislative district.

I figure it would have to start with a nobody who had a good idea, and he'd have to build a network around the idea and pitch it tirelessly to the people who've got social influence and money. If you can get the money on board though, you start putting out the message, you pick your candidates for the legislatures, you push for the signitures... that in and of itself would be a huge wakeup call. It's very rare for anyone to be able to get enough support to get on the ballot on a wide-spread basis- no independent movement has put itself on every ballot in America since Ross Perot, and to find one before Perot, I think you have to go all the way back to Eugene Debbs, though I'm not sure.

You should choose your targets wisely here: Except in those cases where the political climate of a large state is extremely favorable, it is best to target only 2/3s of the states, with a preference for the small ones where you have fewer people to reach with your message.

Thats when you've really got to pour out the money. If America had believed that Perot had a chance, he might have won. You've got to saturate the country with your message so heavily that people don't even see you as an underdog. No amount of "The Crisis" is going to rally the sheeple; the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots can be done without in a war but not in an election, so you've got to create a sense that the parties are about to reap the whirlwind and that people need to come out and vote just so they can say they were a part of it.

You don't actually have to win 2/3 of the legislatures though. If an attempted revolution like this had serious success... for instance if the legislature of California were to fall into independent hands, the parties would be placed on notice, and would see a tremendous opportunity perhaps. At that point, some legislators who feared for their jobs would probably come over to your side and the call for an amending convention would start going forward.

IF you got that far though, you're still only half way there. You've got to get 3/4 of the states now to either ratify them in the legislatures or to ratify them through their chosen delegates. That part would be VERY tough, because you can bet your hat that the two major parties aren't going to sit on their hands and not fight back.


And then, when it's all over, you've still got to contend with the possibility that the SCOTUS will just interpret its way around your amendments.

Frankly, we're screwed. It wouldn't work. It's the only peaceful way I can see to unseat the machinery that controls this country, but it wouldn't work. You'd need way too much money and way too much fervor. It's easier to get people to riot than it is to get them to vote; don't ask me why.

I have every confidence that if the city council in my town did something really offensive, that with my speaking ability and knack for stirring the stuff I could probably start a riot, but I am equally sure that under the same conditions I could not get myself elected to the city council to change it.

By the time this country is ready for peaceful change, we'll already be in the throes of revolution... to the extent that you can call getting your teeth kicked in by the national guard a revolution.

[edit on 14-7-2006 by The Vagabond]



posted on Jul, 14 2006 @ 10:48 AM
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Originally posted by The Vagabond



Frankly, we're screwed. It wouldn't work. It's the only peaceful way I can see to unseat the machinery that controls this country, but it wouldn't work. You'd need way too much money and way too much fervor. It's easier to get people to riot than it is to get them to vote; don't ask me why.

I have every confidence that if the city council in my town did something really offensive, that with my speaking ability and knack for stirring the stuff I could probably start a riot, but I am equally sure that under the same conditions I could not get myself elected to the city council to change it.

By the time this country is ready for peaceful change, we'll already be in the throes of revolution... to the extent that you can call getting your teeth kicked in by the national guard a revolution.





Ouch.

So we're in the end-stage of an economic-political takeover huh?

Nothing much left to be done?

Except pay taxes to our new Lords?



posted on Jul, 14 2006 @ 12:22 PM
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Originally posted by soficrow
So we're in the end-stage of an economic-political takeover huh?

Nothing much left to be done?

Except pay taxes to our new Lords?


Pretty much. I suppose you could burn the whole thing down just to spite them, but the people have spoken. And what did they say? "Baaahh".
Sheep aren't well known for biting the hand that feeds them.

The way I see it, unless somebody comes along with the organizational capacity to kick the sheeple in the butt so hard that it changes their whole paradigm, there are two choices.

1. Ignore the larger matter of principle and just look out for your own liberty by breaking the law when necessary.

2. Decide that the only way to save the country is to destroy it.

As things currently stand, we're treated like idiots and others get a bigger cut of our labors than we do ourselves- those are the unescapable offenses of the current system. Everything else is pretty much just a nuissance that you can get around by breaking the law. They can outlaw gay marriage but they can't stop two people from acting as a married couple. They can outlaw pot but they can't keep you from smoking it (which means you'll have to exercise a little common sense on your own, because smoking pot is probably a bad idea). They can abridge our second amendment rights, but they aren't going find out about or take my guns. and the list goes on.

We could collapse the whole system and start from scratch (because as I said, even though you can't get people to vote you can always get them to riot) but we'd actually be less free for our trouble. As it stands now, as screwed up as America is, I can choose my destiny to a pretty heavy degree.

Collapse the system, and pretty soon you might be free on paper, but as a practical matter you can't do anything that gets in the way of your subsistence farming, constantly fighting off criminals, etc.


So, until the general public is ready to make good laws, I'll settle for just breaking the law when I have to, because its not screwed up enough yet for me to want a riot. As long as our government doesn't do anything that I can't simply ignore (like starting a nuclear war, letting bird flu kill us all, letting the economy collapse so badly that i can't feed myself, etc) I'm prepared to deal with the fact that this is what the people will settle for and therefore this is what the people deserve, and I'll just find my own way around it.

Before you get the impression that I'm completely disillusioned though, do keep in mind that I am a political science major for a reason. I do intend to fight the good fight. Maybe I'll get a lucky punch in and make things better than they were, or maybe I'll have one of those oh-so-common airplane crashes that often befall politicians. (did you ever notice that the richest people always seem to ahve the worst pilots?)

I guess I'm just realizing that we're up against a catch 22. You're living with the lesser evil. If you want to get away from all evil though, you've got to stray from the lesser evil, and you could easily run into greater evils then.



posted on Jul, 14 2006 @ 02:25 PM
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Ok, read through, and something I don't get, were are the Republicans?

I mean, DJ, Carseller, where are they? You'd think they'd jump on the chance to defend Bush, again. Or are they getting tired of defending every evil/illegal thing Bush does?

Solution... Vote Democrat/Libertarian in 2006! Then, with enough Democrats, they can impeach Bush, and unlike when the Republicans impeached CLinton, they will have more then a stain on a dress!



posted on Jul, 14 2006 @ 05:21 PM
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Well Johnny Ohm I'm a Republican and I'm here. Just because I am a Republican does not mean I can't see the damage being done to many of our institutions by the religious right. I recall seeing a lot of the damage some of the zealots associated with Clinton were doing also. Frankly I don't give a damn about who, or what particular party, is currently in power just as long as they don't do stupid things. However, stiffling creative thought and discussion--as is being done by some of the appointees of the Bush Administration--is a stupid thing.



posted on Jul, 14 2006 @ 10:10 PM
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I should have been more clear, the Republicans who believe outing a CIA agent is a good thing, the Republicans who think Saddam was a threat and defend the President whenever it is proven that Saddam was as much of a threat as Canada, except less cause Canada can actually hit us.



posted on Jul, 15 2006 @ 04:48 AM
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With all due respect to the "impeachment is a panacea" line of thought, which for some strange reason tends to come from those who've been eating right out of their chosen party's hand, whether we're talking Bush's impeachment or Clinton's, I think I'll sing a little song for you... "Meet the new boss. The same as the old boss."
And by the by, there aren't enough senate seats up for grabs in this election for Bush to be impeached. There are 15 Republican seats up for grabs. If the Democrats swept the Senate election (a near impossibility) they'd have 60 votes in a party-line split.
They need 2/3s of the senators present to vote for a conviction even if they got him to an impeachment trial in the house (that also is unlikely)

This means that unless 10 Republican Senators just didn't show up, or 6 defected in the vote, they wouldn't get an impeachment. Getting defections against the "nuclear option" is very different than getting defectors in an impeachment trial. No one from a solid Republican district could possibly defect without losing their job in the next election- only swing state senators in class 2 or 3 would even dream of it, and then only because if worst came to worst they might be able to barter a party change and get on the Democratic ticket to save their jobs. You think the Republicans will pour the money out for someone who turned on them? No way.

But hey, suppose we got Bush AND Cheney. Just for the sake of argument. We get another good ol' boy and the only chance of him keeping us happy for long is if he doesn't get caught.

We need something more substantial than an impeachment. If the people are gonna get themselves in gear and elect a congress to impeach Bush, why not just elect a congress that won't serve either one of the mainstream power structures? The only motive is because it's easy- the democrats are an easy option. But why is it easy? How would they stand a chance if they weren't taking the same big money for many of the same corruptions of their offices?
If we're gonna vote our conscience, let's vote it all the way- not just cut our losses with Bush and hope it doesn't happen again for a few years, but try something that might stop it from EVER happening again.

Besides that, impeachments, generally speaking, are not good for a country. That's all inclusive. Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, Bush, and probably anyone else who may ever be in danger of it. Grevious misbehavior is one thing. Granted we've had presidents who have greviously misbehaved, but you have to draw a line, in my humble opinion, between policy-related behavior and other.
If the President has a political rival jailed or killed- impeach him. If he accepts bribes- impeach him. If he pursues bad policy though, a certain hesitation is in order. Bad policy happens, and any policy, good or bad, can necessitate certain misbehavior. I'm not condoning it, I'm not saying we should seek to elect men who are going to do it, I'm just saying that we should pick our targets very very carefully when it comes to rectifying that through a policy which is going to weaken and intimidate future leaders. Let us not forget that we have at times been better off because a president took a risk, and brought us along for the ride by deception. I point to FDR taking us to war as an example. What if we had previously impeached a president for unpopular/covertly achieved policy? Would FDR have dared to take us to war? Would our cold war have been not merely with Communists but with Nazis then, and against that, might it have become a hot war? I don't know, but it's a thought that causes me to want and stop to think before embracing ANY impeachment that is remotely tied to policy. Voting them out is much safer- maybe even worth a couple of bad years.

So I reitterate my support for fixing the probelm at the root with minimal collateral damage. I scarcely differentiate between a riot and a policy-motivated impeachment. They both amount to burning it down in the name of the principle- essentially cutting your nose off to spite your face.



posted on Jul, 15 2006 @ 05:01 AM
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Great job, Sofi and missed you while you were gone~!

We know this goes on but to see it posted from credible sources reinforces what we believe to be true. The road to Dictatorship is paved with slippery marbles and lies.

Its the way to go.



posted on Jul, 15 2006 @ 08:17 AM
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Thanks dgtempe, Vagabond.

Here's a critical piece of the strategy - much further along than I expected:

Controlling the Net: International Corporations Want Joint Cybersecurity Plan with US Government

How Washington will shape the Internet


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