Originally posted by bigbert81
Bush Administration Hides More Data, Shuts Down Website Tracking U.S. Economic Indicators
thinkprogress.org

The U.S. economy is faltering. Family debt is on the rise, benefits are disappearing, the deficit is skyrocketing, and the mortgage crisis has worsened. Conservatives have attempted to deflect attention from the crisis, by blaming the media’s negative coverage and insisting the United States is not headed toward a recession, despite what economists are predicting.

The Bush administration’s latest move is to simply hide the data.

(visit the link for the full news article)

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced plans to close several libraries which were used by researchers and scientists. The agency called its decision a cost-cutting measure, but a 2004 report showed that the facilities actually brought the EPA a $7.5 million surplus annually.


* On November 1st, 2001, President Bush issued an executive order limiting the public's access to presidential records. The order undermined the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which required the release of those records after 12 years. Bush's order prevented the release of "68,000 pages of confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his advisers," some of whom had positions in the Bush Administration. More here. Bush did the same thing with his papers from the Texas governorship.


* A new policy at the The U.S. Forest Service means the agency no longer will generate environmental impact statements for "its long-term plans for America's national forests and grasslands." It also "no longer will allow the public to appeal on long-term plans for those forests, but instead will invite participation in planning from the outset."


* In March 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services took down a six-year-old Web site devoted to substance abuse and treatment information for gays and lesbians, after members of the conservative Family Research Council complained.


* In 2002, HHS removed information from its Web site pertaining to risky sexual behavior among adolescents, condom use and HIV.


* Also in 2002, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission removed from its Web site a document showing that officials found large gaps in a portion of an aging Montana dam. A FERC official said the deletion was for "national security."


* In 2004, the FBI attempted to retroactively classify public information regarding the case of bureau whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, including a series of letters between the Justice Department and several senators.


* In October 2003, the Bush administration banned photographs depicting servicemembers' coffins returning from overseas.


* In December 2002, the administration curtailed funding to the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program, which released monthly data on the number and size of layoffs by U.S. companies. His father attempted to kill the same program in 1992, but Clinton revived it when he assumed the presidency.


* In 2004, the Internal Revenue Service stopped providing data demonstrating the level of its job performance. In 2006, a judge forced the IRS to provide the information.


* Also in 2004, the Federal Communications Commission blocked access to a once-public database of network outages affecting telecommunications service providers. The FCC removed public copies and exempted the information from Freedom of Information Act requests, saying it would "jeopardize national security efforts." Experts ridiculed that notion.


* In 2002, Bush officials intervened to derail the publication of an EPA report on mercury and children's health, which contradicted the administration's position on lowering regulations on certain power plants. The report was eventually leaked by a "frustrated EPA official."


* Also in 2003, the EPA withheld for months key findings from an air pollution report that undercut the White House's "Clear Skies" initiative. Leaked copies were reported in the Washington Post.


* For more than a year, the Interior Department refused to release a 2005 study showing a government subsidy for oil companies was not effective.


* The White House Office of National Drug Policy paid for a 5-year, $43 million study which concluded their anti-drug ad campaigns did not work -- but it refused to release those findings to Congress.


* In 2006, the Federal Communications Commission ordered destroyed all copies of an unreleased 2004 draft report concluding that media consolidation hurt local TV news coverage, which runs counter to the administration's pro-consolidation stance.


* After Bush assumed power in 2001, the Department of Labor removed from its Web site "Don't Work in the Dark -- Know Your Rights," a publication informing women of their workplace rights. (via the National Council for Research on Women)


* The Department of Labor also removed from its Web site roughly two dozen fact sheets on women's workplace issues such as women in management, earning differences between men and women, child care concerns, and minority women in the workplace. (via the National Council for Research on Women)


* In February 2004, the appointed head of the Office of Special Counsel -- created to protect government employees' rights -- ordered removed from a government Web site information on the rights of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals in the public workplace. (via the National Council for Research on Women)


* In early 2001, the Treasury Department stopped producing reports showing how the benefits of tax cuts were distributed by income class. (via the Tax Policy Center, from Paul Krugman)


* In 2006, as a number of groups sought records of visits by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates to the White House, the administration quietly made an agreement with the Secret Service, making sure that White House visitor records would no longer be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.


* On October 19, 2007, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a "final rule" that thwarts "public access to early warning information about motor vehicle safety hazards." According to Public Citizen, "today's final rule restricts public access to much of the 'early warning data' submitted by the auto and tire industry under the 2000 Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation Act (TREAD Act) to assist in the early identification of motor vehicle safety defects."


* On November 2007, a U.S. District Court judge issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the White House from destroying back-up copies of millions of e-mails deleted (the White House says accidentally) between March 2003 and October 2005.


* On May 23, 2007, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) "sued the Department of Education for violating the Federal Records Act (FRA) by failing to preserve copies of emails of official Education business sent by agency employees through the use of non-governmental email accounts."

Originally posted by mmmeat

Originally posted by bigbert81
Bush Administration Hides More Data, Shuts Down Website Tracking U.S. Economic Indicators
thinkprogress.org

The U.S. economy is faltering. Family debt is on the rise, benefits are disappearing, the deficit is skyrocketing, and the mortgage crisis has worsened. Conservatives have attempted to deflect attention from the crisis, by blaming the media’s negative coverage and insisting the United States is not headed toward a recession, despite what economists are predicting.

The Bush administration’s latest move is to simply hide the data.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Oh, boo hoo.

Another non-news article. No one uses economicindicators.gov for anything; all the information on that site is from the Census Bureau.

While it's not unexpected that there's the standard 'blame bush' nonsense and dog piling, I continue to find it simply amazing that no one bothers to know what it is they're attacking ... or why. And, more often than not (especially here, for some reason) the dog pilers are jumping on the wrong person.

Furthermore, it's NOT President Bush who shut the site down, it's the Department of Commerce's Congressional Oversight Committee - a Congress which (while it hasn't really done anything other than name bridges and post offices) is run by D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T-S.

A non-news article causes people to hate bush for something he didn't do, while the actual villans - the democrats - do nothing but let the village burn down. To all this, I say: what a freakin' surprise.

Catch a clue, sheeple, catch a clue.

Your pal,
Meat.