By now, it's obvious that standard operating procedure at Dubya's White House is to cover up or otherwise hide any facts which have the temerity to disagree with the official ideology.
For example, earlier this week the New York Times revealed that a 2005 Rand Corporation study criticizing the government's planning (or lack thereof) for occupying Iraq was kept under lock and key. The apparent object of burying the report was to avoid making any of the politically powerful people mentioned as having screwed up - President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, etc - look bad.
This is hardly unique. After all, the Bush Administration has hidden away other inconvenient truths, from increases in terrorist attacks and factory closings to everything in between. But their latest duck-and-cover-up is raising a few eyebrows even in shell-shocked Washington.
The government's Economic Indicators website gathers financial data from a myriad of official agencies and makes it readily available to the public for free. Presenting current information on everything from home construction to personal income to retail sales, the site is so useful that Forbes gave it a "Best of the Web" award.
Now, as it happens, economic numbers have been heading south lately, despite Bush's breezy reassurance that "we're not in a recession" and that any fiscal misery being endured by the American people will be over soon anyway. Because the facts don't jibe with the statements, the facts are by definition wrong and must go to the guillotine.
So the site is being shut down. Yes, visitors are being greeted with a notice saying that, "Due to budgetary constraints, the Economic Indicators service will be discontinued effective March 1, 2008." (It seems that with a $3.1 trillion budget, they still couldn't come up with a few hundred bucks to keep the data flowing.) It will still be possible to get the numbers, but it'll be a lot tougher, with a lot more digging needed. Or you can cough up $200 annually (per person) for one-stop shopping via the Commerce Department's STAT-USA website.
This is typical Bush Administration arrogance. Anything which makes them or their rhetoric look bad must be hidden away and never see the light of day again, blaming it on anything other than their own obsessive need to cover up.
For example, earlier this week the New York Times revealed that a 2005 Rand Corporation study criticizing the government's planning (or lack thereof) for occupying Iraq was kept under lock and key. The apparent object of burying the report was to avoid making any of the politically powerful people mentioned as having screwed up - President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, etc - look bad.
This is hardly unique. After all, the Bush Administration has hidden away other inconvenient truths, from increases in terrorist attacks and factory closings to everything in between. But their latest duck-and-cover-up is raising a few eyebrows even in shell-shocked Washington.
The government's Economic Indicators website gathers financial data from a myriad of official agencies and makes it readily available to the public for free. Presenting current information on everything from home construction to personal income to retail sales, the site is so useful that Forbes gave it a "Best of the Web" award.
Now, as it happens, economic numbers have been heading south lately, despite Bush's breezy reassurance that "we're not in a recession" and that any fiscal misery being endured by the American people will be over soon anyway. Because the facts don't jibe with the statements, the facts are by definition wrong and must go to the guillotine.
So the site is being shut down. Yes, visitors are being greeted with a notice saying that, "Due to budgetary constraints, the Economic Indicators service will be discontinued effective March 1, 2008." (It seems that with a $3.1 trillion budget, they still couldn't come up with a few hundred bucks to keep the data flowing.) It will still be possible to get the numbers, but it'll be a lot tougher, with a lot more digging needed. Or you can cough up $200 annually (per person) for one-stop shopping via the Commerce Department's STAT-USA website.
This is typical Bush Administration arrogance. Anything which makes them or their rhetoric look bad must be hidden away and never see the light of day again, blaming it on anything other than their own obsessive need to cover up.
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