This and the next three posts are from a friend of mine. I have always respected his thoughtful approach to issues and his compassion for others and society as a whole. While this essay is long, it is well researched and well-thought out. It is worth the read. It reminds me of the quote by Lincoln: "You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time. "

Griff originally wrote it with all sorts of formatting that helps reading, but blogger doesn't work very well on internet explorer on a macintosh, so I cannot add back all his formatting. I wanted to get this out before the election so people could see it.


Hello fellow voter. My name is Griff, and I live in Portland, Oregon, though I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, and have lived in Virginia and Michigan along the way.

I am writing to try to help make some sense of some things regarding the election next week, both for myself and maybe for somebody else. I should say from the start that I strongly oppose the reelection of George Bush. I have my reservations about John Kerry, but those don't hold a candle to what I feel is the appalling and frightening record of the Bush Administration. I have come to where my objections to the current administration are so wide and numerous that I can hardly even keep track of them in my own head anymore.

Thus I decided to try to organize my thoughts. At the same time, with family and friends in both Ohio and Florida (the two states that may well decide this election) I thought I could help the cause by giving some other fellow voters something to chew on.

In Oregon we vote by mail exclusively, and we have a robust intitiative process, so we get huge books of material to read for every election, and i value those dearly. i feel best when i have read the opinions of those both for and against every measure and candidate ... those I agree with and those I don't.

In that spirit, I hope you will be willing to forward this to others that might find it helpful, whether you agree with me or not. I have tried to be as honest and fair as possible, and to write and research with integrity, though I have no intention of being "impartial."

I believe that the Bush Campaign relies on so much smokescreen that they think no one can ever find their way through it. As I have tried to see through the smoke & deception, I have been staggered by the depth of it all. I think the best I've been able to do is construct representative examples of the administration's methods and strategies. i hope this is helpful.

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Dear Mr. Bush & Co.

I strongly oppose your reelection for three primary reasons:

1) I believe you have proven yourselves the most deceitful, dishonest, and disingenuous administration I've ever seen.

2) I believe you are jeopardizing our safety and security with a clumsy, belligerent, and inept foreign policy that does not respect statesmanship, international law, or the vital support of allies.

3) Your reckless fiscal policy has erased over a decade of very difficult and bipartisan work to overcome the federal deficit. This is an irresponsible course that we will pay for for decades or generations to come.


Below I will address the first two of these only.


A) HONESTY, DISCLOSURE AND INTEGRITY.

You have built nearly an entire presidency of one simple idea: "if we say it enough, and stand by it with conviction, then it will be true."

but many of us beg to differ.


The Scientific Community Calls You Out

Please recall the days when scientists were censored and punished for proposing the earth is round. This suppression was based on religious grounds, as the flat earth model was central to the theology of the time, and the church and state were inextricably intertwined. Now, certainly, no one today would propose that belief in a spherical earth is heretical. No, the science was not the problem, but rather, the dogmatic religious conservatism, unwilling to seek, face, and embrace a richer understanding of God's creation with honesty.

On February 18, 2004, over 60 leading scientists–Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors, and university chairs and presidents–signed [a public statement] voicing their concern over the misuse of science by the Bush administration.

This statement came from the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-partisan group representing esteemed scientists from many disciplines.

The UCS states "When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions. This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government’s own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice. Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front. Furthermore, in advocating policies that are not scientifically sound, the administration has sometimes misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies. - From Union of Concerned Scientists statement. 2/18/04

According to CNN on 2/19/04:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's administration distorts scientific findings and seeks to manipulate experts' advice to avoid information that runs counter to its political beliefs, a private organization of scientists asserted on Wednesday.

The Union of Concerned Scientists ("UCS") contended in a report that "the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented."

"We're not taking issue with administration policies. We're taking issue with the administration's distortion ... of the science related to some of its policies," said the group's president, Kurt Gottfried.

I want to reiterate that point ... this group is not "taking issue with administration policies. We're taking issue with the administration's distortion ... of the science related to some of its policies."

In other words, these distinguished scientists are not objecting because they have different opinions about what policy choices we should make. They are objecting to dishonesty and manipulation in the decision making process itself. It would be very different if the administration was approaching the issues with integrity and genuine concern for relevant evidence, and if they were candid about the process. Then some scientists might agree with the decisions and others might not (and the same for the larger public), ... that's part of Democracy ... we have honest debate and then those empowered to do so make policy choices based on the information gleaned from that debate. But that's not what's happening here.

How does this work? There are many ways. This statement from the UCS gives some examples, including federal advisory committees being stacked with unqualified representatives from regulated industries, and suppression of studies that do not support administration policies.

According to the UCS, for instance, in November 2002, an advisory committee of the Center for disease Control ("CDC") was considering whether to make federal standards for lead poisoning more stringent, a move opposed by various affected industries. A few weeks before the scheduled meeting, the Bush administration stacked the committee with members opposed to the change in standards. Now in order to do that, the administration had to dump or turn away highly qualified experts that were recommended by the CDC, according to standard procedure. The move included dismissing a leading expert and researcher who had been on the committee for four years, as well as rejecting the recommendations of the CDC staff. "According to Dr. Susan Cummins, who chaired the CDC’s lead advisory committee from 1995 to 2000, this was the first time an HHS secretary had ever rejected nominations by the committee or CDC staff." The replacement members included two appointees with financial ties to the lead industry, including at least one that other experts describe as holding a "'fringe' view in his field (far from even the normal extremities of mainstream expert scientific discourse)." "As one medical researcher explains it, Banner’s position either ignores or willfully misreads some four decades’ worth of accumulating data on lead exposure in children." But the one clear commonality among the "replacement appointees" was that the administration was certain they would oppose the changes in standards. It didn't really matter to the administration whether they were actually qualified or not, or whether they had a conflict of interest or not ... it only mattered that they would support the administration's position.

Science cannot effectively operate under such conditions.

Now, the UCS acknowledges that, "researchers may well reasonably debate whether the government should tighten its standard for lead poisoning. The public needs and deserves such an informed debate. In this case, however, the Bush administration effectively denied the public an informed policy recommendation by tampering with the integrity of the advisory panel nominating process."

This approach flies in the face of scientific integrity, and even political integrity. In the end, science is only one factor in making policy decisions, to be weighed along with many others, including economic impacts, ethics, etc. But while it is perfectly legitimate to consider the impacts of environmental policy on industry, for instance, it is not legitimate not try to distort the scientific information that is designed to inform that policy decision with the best information available.

As George Bush Sr. has said, "Science, like any field of endeavor, relies on freedom of inquiry; and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity. Now, more than ever, on issues ranging from climate change to AIDS research to genetic engineering to food additives, government relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance." - President George H.W. Bush, April 23, 1990

But with the current administration "we’ve seen a consistent pattern of putting people in who will ensure that the administration hears what it wants to hear," says Dr. David Michaels, a research professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at George Washington University’s School of Public Health and former assistant secretary for environment, safety and health at the DOE during the Clinton administration. "That doesn’t help science, and it doesn’t help the country."

As Russell Train, former EPA Administrator laments, "In all my time as EPA administrator, under both Nixon and Ford, I do not recall ever receiving even a suggestion, let alone an order from the Whitehouse as to how I should make a regulatory decision. How times have changed." (quoted from a 2/18/04 National Public Radio ("NPR") story on the UCS statement).

You can check out this whole UCS statement, the signees, and other examples at:

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/page.cfm?pageID=1320.


For a related story:

Tue Jun 22, 9:40 AM - Chicago Tribune


By Jill Zuckman Tribune national correspondent

Forty-eight Nobel laureates denounced President Bush on Monday for "compromising our future" when it comes to scientific research and the environment, and said Sen. John Kerry "will restore science to its appropriate place in government and bring it back into the White House."

The star-studded scientific endorsement for Kerry came on a day when the presumptive Democratic nominee stood in Civic Center Park and told several hundred rain-soaked voters that the way to build the economy is to invest in science, technology and higher education.

"We need a president who will once again embrace our tradition of looking toward the future and new discoveries with hope based on scientific facts, not fear," said Kerry, vowing not to let "ideology and fear stand in the way."

Many scientists have complained that the Bush administration has filled science advisory panels with conservative ideologues rather than individuals with sterling scientific credentials.

In an open letter to the American public, Nobel Prize winners including Caltech President David Baltimore and cancer researcher Harold Varmus said "the Bush administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice in the policy-making that is so important to our collective welfare."

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Now Mr. Bush, the reason I've started out talking about science is that it is an ideal illustration of the willingness of your administration to distort facts for political ends. While you seem willing to do this on any and all fronts, it is most clear and apparent in the realm of science, specifically because of the stark contrast with the scientists' dedication to actual facts, research, and evidence. We all know that we can find an "expert" to say anything we want to support, but that doesn't make it a legitimate or realistic debate. As your administration has systematically positioned itself against mainstream science, substituting "fringe" opinions, in so many areas (climate change, forest management, endangered species, clean air, mercury emissions, health education, mining, breast cancer, etc. etc.) it becomes ever clearer that you are really not concerned with facts, research, or science, but driven only by half informed ideological dogma.