{"id":491,"date":"2004-01-16T22:56:56","date_gmt":"2004-01-17T03:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/01\/needtoknow_basis\/"},"modified":"2004-01-16T22:56:56","modified_gmt":"2004-01-17T03:56:56","slug":"needtoknow_basis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/01\/needtoknow_basis\/","title":{"rendered":"Need-to-Know Basis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazettetimes.com\/articles\/2004\/01\/14\/news\/nation\/wednat01.txt\">this story<\/a>, the Bush administration wants emergency information to pass through a political clearinghouse before a federal agency releases it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis.<br \/>\nThe White House Office Management and Budget is trying to gain final control over release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies responsible for public health, safety and the environment.<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\nOn Friday, a nonpartisan group of 20 former top agency officials sent a letter to the OMB asking the White House watchdog agency to withdraw its proposal, saying it &#8220;could damage the federal system for protecting public health and the environment.&#8221;<br \/>\nOne of the signers, David Michaels, said: &#8220;It goes beyond just having the White House involved in picking industry favorites to evaluate government science. Under this proposal, the carefully crafted process used by the government to notify the public of an imminent danger is going to first have to be signed off by someone weighing the political hazards.&#8221;<br \/>\nMichaels, a former assistant secretary for environment, safety and health at the Department of Energy, is now a research professor at George Washington University&#8217;s School of Public Health. He added: &#8220;OMB is not a science agency. The ramifications of it attempting to insert itself into a time-proven system of having the most knowledgeable scientists available evaluate proposed policy or regulations is a disaster in the making.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Michaels sounds a little skeptical, doesn&#8217;t he?  I can&#8217;t imagine why.  The administration has demonstrated that it will freely disseminate health and safety information in the <strike>president&#8217;s<\/strike> public interest.  Just look how well it kept people abreast of health hazards at ground zero following 9\/11.<br \/>\nVia <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blah3.com\/graymatter\/archives\/00000889.html\">Blah3.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/01\/needtoknow_basis\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Need-to-Know Basis\"><p>According to this story, the Bush administration wants emergency information to pass through a political clearinghouse before a federal agency releases it: Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}