More Info Missing...

Science, labor, energy, and now women... it is 1984.
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Making women's issues go away
A damning new report reveals that the Bush administration has quietly removed 25 reports from its Women's Bureau Web site, deleting or distorting crucial information on issues from pay equity to reproductive healthcare.

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By Rebecca Traister, Salon

April 28, 2004 | If you'd logged onto the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau Web site in 1999, you would have found a list of more than 25 fact sheets and statistical reports on topics ranging from "Earning Differences Between Men and Women" to "Facts About Asian American and Pacific Islander Women" to "Women's Earnings as Percent of Men's 1979-1997."

Not anymore. Those fact sheets no longer exist on the Women's Bureau Web site, and have instead been replaced with a handful of peppier titles, like "Hot Jobs for the 21st Century" and "20 Leading Occupations for Women." It's just one example of the ways in which the Bush administration is dismantling or distorting information on women's issues, from pay equity to reproductive healthcare, according to "Missing: Information About Women's Lives," a new report released Wednesday by the National Council for Research on Women.

You've probably heard about some of the other examples in "Missing" -- for instance, the time the Centers for Disease Control removed an online guide to condom use and changed the fact-sheet language to indicate that studies on condom use were inconclusive, focusing instead on abstinence. But the power of "Missing" comes not from its dozens of individual examples, but from the depth and breadth of its findings about the small ways in which the Bush administration is draining the well of dependable public scientific and sociological information.

"When these instances are taken individually, perhaps we don't see the cumulative pattern of what's happening," said Linda Basch, president of the 23-year-old NCRW, an alliance of 100 women's policy, research and education centers, including the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, Planned Parenthood, and the Girl Scouts. "But when we gather the information together, and see the distorted or disappearing information about the economic opportunities, the situation of violence against women, health and particularly reproductive health, it is a very distressing pattern."

Released just three days after an estimated 1 million people gathered in Washington for the March for Women's Lives, "Missing" exhaustively catalogs the ways in which government information about women's health, labor and education has been altered, removed or obfuscated during the Bush administration. "This is really undermining a nonpartisan legacy of government," said Basch, referring to a history of reliable dissemination of scientific data by the federal government. Of concern to NCRW researchers is the possibility that this morphed or absent information will hurt future researchers, policymakers and citizens who in the past would have relied on federal sources of information in their advocacy for women's equity and access.

In an e-mailed statement to Salon, New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney said, "I'm grateful to the National Council for Research on Women for confirming what many of us in Congress have insisted for years -- we can't continue to advance as women if the cold, hard facts of our status are unknown. We've seen a disturbing trend toward hiding the information that helps us improve women's lives. I hope that this is the beginning of a successful effort to uncover the missing data."

California Rep. Barbara Lee also sent a statement, saying, "This report outlines a disturbing pattern of decisions by federal agencies to close down, delay, alter, or spin data about what is happening to American women and girls. Science must not be sacrificed and silenced like this. We must take every opportunity to point out the Administration's attempts to twist, distort, and subvert science to advance its right-wing based political agenda."

Many of the shifts in federal agency information have been reported in the past, but, when seen together, look even more impressive -- or horrifying. Some individual examples -- like the observations about the DOL's Women's Bureau -- will look new.

The report notes that in 1999 the Women's Bureau mission statement, printed on its Web site, described its responsibilities "to advocate and inform women directly and the public as well, of women's rights and employment issues" and "to ensure that the voices of working women are heard, and their priorities represented in the public policy arena." Back then, the Women's Bureau claimed that it "Alerts women about their rights in the workplace, proposes policies and legislation that benefit working women, researches and analyzes information about women and work, [and] makes appropriate reports on its findings." The NCRW researchers noticed that by February 2002, the Bureau's mission statement looked very different. Its asserted goal was "To promote profitable employment opportunities for women, to empower them by enhancing their skills and improving their working conditions, and to provide employers with more alternatives to meet their labor needs." The 2002 "Vision Statement" reads: "We will empower women to enhance their potential for securing more satisfying employment as they seek to balance their work-life needs." In other words: less information about helpful policy and legislation, more potential-enhancing tips on balancing "work" and "life."

Then there are the missing fact sheets, and the popular handbook on the rights of women in the workplace, called "Don't Work in the Dark -- Know Your Rights," that's not to be found. The "1993 Handbook on Women Workers," which was available in 1999, is no longer. Though it is scheduled for rerelease sometime in the future, NCRW researchers who contacted the Women's Bureau learned that no publication date is set.

Irasema Garza, the director of the women's rights department for the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, and the former director of the Women's Bureau from 1999 to 2000, had seen parts of the "Missing" report that pertained to her former department. "As soon as I saw the report, I went to my old Web site and found that the majority of all of our fact sheets were gone," she said. "In my old job, I traveled all around the country giving speeches -- but all the women wanted were these fact sheets. Women really used this information to protect themselves in the workplace."

Contacted by Salon for a response to the report, a spokeswoman for the Department of Labor said that the Women's Bureau director was traveling, but e-mailed a response to the queries about the changing mission statement and publication list. That e-mail said, in part, "Congress created the Women's Bureau in 1920 to 'formulate standards and policies which shall promote the welfare of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment.' Under that mandate, the Women's Bureau's focus, programs, publications and website are changed and updated periodically to reflect the priorities of the current Administration, the Secretary of Labor and the Director of the Women's Bureau. The Bureau continues to work with internal and external partners and stakeholders to develop programs to address the needs of 21st Century working women." The White House press office, contacted for comment, did not respond by press time.

"The fact that 25 reports on issues of equality and access have been removed from this Web site is enormously distressing," said Basch of the findings about the changes at the Women's Bureau. She pointed out that the public, as well as researchers, journalists and policymakers, turns to agency Web sites for information about rights and government policies. Basch claimed that last year there were more than 250 million hits to government Web sites.

Those 250 million hits will have also turned up some changes in language at the Census Bureau, which reported on its Web site's "Facts for Features" page for 2003 Women's History Month that the earnings gap between women and men -- about 76 female cents to every male dollar -- means that women's salary are "at an all-time high." That's a considerably more cheerful outlook than the 2000 Census Bureau posting about an earnings gap figure that was only about 1 percent different than 2003's. According to "Missing," in 2000 the Web site told visitors that "Women have almost achieved parity in educational attainment ... but not earnings equality," and that "Men working fulltime, year round, consistently earned more than comparable women in each of the educational levels." According to researchers, the newer, more positive spin on issues like earnings figures is dangerous because it diminishes the notion that there are massive strides to be made before earnings parity is possible.

"Basically, the administration seems to have the assumption that there is a level playing field and that paying attention to a particular subgroup is divisive," said Martha Farnsworth Riche, a demographer in private practice and the Bill Clinton-appointed director of the Census Bureau from 1994 to 1998. Basch noted the effect that changing information and modified spin could have on the future of advocacy for women. "When the information doesn't exist, when no one is there watching out for the interests of certain categories of populations, it's bad," she said. "There are still far too many gender-based inequalities for us to take our eyes off of what is happening to women."

Census Bureau Public Affairs specialist Robert Bernstein was unable to find the language quoted by "Missing" in the 2000 "Facts for Features" edition, though the page contains a link to a press release that is no longer available. Bernstein, who has been with the Census Bureau for 14 years, said that he doesn't believe there is any new spin on earnings information. "What we try to do is present data in a positive light about different groups. It was a fact that that ratio at the time did represent an all-time high." Bernstein also noted that the "all-time high" language would have come straight from the news release about the Bureau's annual Income and Poverty Report. And though he doesn't think that there's been a noticeable upturn in the language of the Bureau, Bernstein did confirm one of the fears of the NCRW. "The point of 'Facts for Features' is to give information to reporters, allowing them to do a particular feature story [pegged to] a particular holiday or observance," said Bernstein. "They're trying to do upbeat stories."

When it comes to issues of women's health, agencies like the CDC, FDA and the Health and Human Services Administration don't fare much better than the DOL or the Census Bureau with the NCRW researchers. One of their chief battle cries -- and arguments about why a study like "Missing" can be valuable in the future -- is over the changed language on a National Cancer Institute Web site. "Missing" cites the case of the 1997 New England Journal of Medicine study that conclusively proved that there was no link between breast cancer and abortion, a favorite claim of anti-abortion advocates. The NCI had a fact sheet with reference to the study posted on its Web site until November 2002, when the Web site was changed to indicate that studies about the link had been "inconclusive," an assertion that lent implied credence to the claims of the anti-abortion advocates. According to "Missing," members of Congress forced the convention of a panel of experts who reinforced the New England Journal's findings, and the NCI again posted information that there is no link between breast cancer and abortion.

Over at the Centers for Disease Control, the NCRW researchers claim, posted fact sheets were revised to suggest studies on the effectiveness of using condoms to prevent the spread of HIV and other STDs were "inconclusive." Instead, the revised fact sheet focused on abstinence -- a favorite of the family values crowd -- as the only effective path to sexual health. As was reported at the time, the CDC also removed an online guide to proper condom use (replacing it later with a revised edition) as well as a list of successful sex education programs and studies that showed no rise in sexual activity among teens taught about condoms. "These are debates that scientific research has closed," said Riche. "The people who provide the information are now reopening those debates, taking away the scientific certainty. It's more subtle than putting out wrong information or simply removing all the information -- and, frankly, more effective."

According to the researchers behind "Missing," the pressure of right-wing ideology has also led scientists to stop using words like "gay," "sex worker," and "transgender" in their grant applications. This comes in the wake of the Traditional Values Coalition's very long and damning list of 150 researchers and 200 grants in the field of high-risk sexual behavior. Then there's the case of the morning-after pill, which has yet to appear as an over-the-counter medication, despite the two scientific advisory committees that urged the FDA to make it one. According to "Missing," it was pressure from conservative groups that led FDA commissioner Mark McClellan to postpone his expected February 2004 decision on the matter by 90 days.

"Missing" doesn't concern itself only with absent online information. It also lists some of the actual governmental bodies that have disappeared or been threatened during the Bush administration. In 2001, George Bush disbanded the President's Interagency Council on Women, a group appointed in 1995 by Bill Clinton to implement strategies developed at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, as part of the U.N. Platform for Action. The council was chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala and then by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. "One of the things the office did was make sure the president's policies reflected women's issues," said Garza. "That office is gone. It was one of the first things that was done away with under this administration."

Reversals are possible. When the Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality changed the wording in a mandated report on the disparities in healthcare along racial and socioeconomic lines, suggesting that "disparities" in the diagnosing and treatment of HIV, diabetes and hypertension among women of color were actually "differences," people noticed and complained. A spin like that could be very detrimental to attitudes and eventual action on behalf of women of color who are at a disadvantage. The document was restored to its original wording in February. "Missing" cites this example, and hopes that by getting people to pay attention to so many others, information will be restored.

"In my experience, I would say we are probably just seeing the tip of the iceberg with this report," said Riche. "If we know about all these examples, that means there are many, many more." To that end, the NCRW is establishing a Misinformation Clearinghouse Web site through which people can submit examples of information that is no longer available to them. The Clearinghouse will also collect and publish a list of sources for dependable information.

 

From Scientific American...
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Bush-League Lysenkoism

The White House bends science to its will

By The Editors

Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of Lysenkoism, a fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You would think that bad precedent would have taught President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he is no better at history than at science.

In February his White House received failing marks in a statement signed by 62 leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science, and advisers to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. It begins, "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy. Although scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective to avoid perilous consequences.... The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle."

Doubters of that judgment should read the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) that accompanies the statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making" (available at www.ucsusa.org). Among the affronts that it details: The administration misrepresented the findings of the National Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate change. It meddled with the discussion of climate change in an Environmental Protection Agency report until the EPA eliminated that section. It suppressed another EPA study that showed that the administration's proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination of fish. It even dropped independent scientists from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug abuse in favor of ones with ties to industry.

Let us offer more examples of our own. The Department of Health and Human Services deleted information from its Web sites that runs contrary to the president's preference for "abstinence only" sex education programs. The Office of Foreign Assets Control made it much more difficult for anyone from "hostile nations" to be published in the U.S., so some scientific journals will no longer consider submissions from them. The Office of Management and Budget has proposed overhauling peer review for funding of science that bears on environmental and health regulations--in effect, industry scientists would get to approve what research is conducted by the EPA.

None of those criticisms fazes the president, though. Less than two weeks after the UCS statement was released, Bush unceremoniously replaced two advocates of human embryonic stem cell research on his advisory Council on Bioethics with individuals more likely to give him a hallelujah chorus of opposition to it.

Blind loyalists to the president will dismiss the UCS report because that organization often tilts left--never mind that some of those signatories are conservatives. They may brush off this magazine's reproofs the same way, as well as the regular salvos launched by California Representative Henry A. Waxman of the House Government Reform Committee [see Insights] and maybe even Arizona Senator John McCain's scrutiny for the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. But it is increasingly impossible to ignore that this White House disdains research that inconveniences it.

 

April 26, 2004

 

Also, check this article out...

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=30&articleID=0000FF81-A7DD-1084-A73E83414B7F0000

 

Ornicus on Salmon...
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Salmon and Bushamentalism
Friday, April 30, 2004

It seems that, as we count down to the 2004 election, the Bush administration is almost counting on outrage fatigue: Erecting one insane policy after another in such an endless stream that, after awhile, the citizens aware enough to be outraged by it all simply can't keep up.

The most recent: The administration's decision, announced yesterday, to count hatchery salmon as part of the same runs as wild populations in determining which salmon will be protected under the Endangered Species Act:

The decision, contained in a draft document and confirmed Wednesday by federal officials, means that the health of spawning wild salmon will no longer be the sole gauge of whether a salmon species is judged by the federal government to be on the brink of extinction. Four of five salmon found in major West Coast rivers, including the Columbia, are already bred in hatcheries, and some will now be counted as the federal government tries to determine what salmon species are endangered.

This may seem to everyone else to be a mere regional problem affecting mostly the Pacific Northwest. But its ramifications are far broader: If the administration pulls this off, it means that Team Bush can get away with ignoring the Endangered Species Act simply by moving the goal posts.

It is also indicative of what we have long known about Bush's environmental approach: If serious, well-grounded science runs against the administration's preferred pro-business policy, the Bu****es merely declare it "bad science" and then concoct a policy based on pseudo-science engendered by the business interests they serve.

In other words, it's another case of Bushamentalism: The administration decides what its policy will be based on narrow political interests, and then goes looking for anything it can find in support of it, meanwhile excluding the wealth of evidence to the contrary.

In this case, it's ignoring its own scientists:

A federal advisory panel of scientists convened by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has concluded that hatchery fish cannot maintain populations of wild salmon in the long term and should not be used to justify proposed removal of federal protections for wild salmon. But these findings appear to run contrary to the policies of the Bush administration, which told the panel that its conclusions go beyond science and into policy and are thus inappropriate for official reports.

The committee, which was formed to serve as an external review committee for the Pacific salmon recovery efforts, published its findings in the current issue of the journal "Science," a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The scientists said the decision to publish was taken out of the panel's concern for the recovery of wild salmon in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. They want to ensure the policy implications of their findings are not suppressed but reach a wide audience.

"We should not open the legal door to maintaining salmon only in hatcheries," said University of Washington ecologist Robert Paine, coauthor of the report and chairman of the panel. "The science is clear and unambiguous -- as they are currently operated, hatcheries and hatchery fish cannot protect wild stocks."

The administration's current decision comes at the behest of business interests that are combating the effects of listing Northwest salmon under the ESA:

The policy change was applauded by development and farm groups who have spent millions of dollars altering how they build or irrigate farms to accommodate plummeting runs of wild salmon. Builders often must avoid allowing runoff into streams from nearby construction. Farmers sometimes can't get as much water as they would like.

"It's about time," said Timothy Harris, an attorney with the Building Industry Association of Washington, which has been battling National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries in court over salmon listings. "I'm hoping this will finally result in de-listing of some of these salmon populations."

Predictably enough, the administration is denying that it is listening to such interests:

"I assure you there is no political judgment or political expediency," said Lautenbacher, who appeared before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries and Coast Guard.

"We are trying to make sure our decision is based on the best synthesis of scientific opinion we have today," he added. "The policy will guide decisions about whether species are listed."

Right.

This policy is such obviously bad science, however, that the administration so far has not even been able to present a single scientist who could defend it. Because everyone who studies fish knows that hatchery fish are substantially different in nature from the wild species:

Many scientists, however, say naturally spawned fish are the most likely to conserve much-needed genetic variations. Genetic variability has allowed salmon to survive thousands of years in streams as varied as the steep, cold creeks of the rain-drenched Olympic Peninsula and the slow-moving, warmer waters where the Snake River creeps through arid high desert -- all the while hustling to survive through droughts, floods, stream-altering volcanoes and earthquakes, and in an ocean whose hospitality regularly surges and swoons.

Fish born outside a hatchery are genetically programmed to spread their risk.

For example, some lay their eggs in the well-washed gravel of those cool Olympic streams, where they are very likely to survive and hatch. Others nest in the beds of lower-level, warmer streams where they are more likely to be smothered by dirt. However, suppose a drought comes along. The fish in the lower river are most likely to have water throughout the summer. The upper mountain streams might run dry. Later, descendants of the survivors can climb high and recolonize the upper reaches.

... Meanwhile, hatchery fish compete with and overwhelm wild fish. Because they are typically released before wild fish hatch, hatchery fish early in life are larger -- so they gain an advantage competing for living space and food.

Also, the sheer number of hatchery fish allows fishing seasons to go on when they otherwise would be shut down for lack of fish -- yet some fish from struggling wild runs get caught, too. And diseases caused by hatchery conditions can be transmitted to wild fish.

As Joel Connelly points out:

What's the difference between a salmon that grows up in a tank and a fish raised in a river or lake?

Casting for an answer, I dialed up a one-time Orofino, Idaho, lumberjack and angler -- Cecil Andrus -- who went on to serve four terms as governor of Idaho and a four-year stint as interior secretary.

"Of course you can tell the difference," Andrus explained. "A wild salmon is a heartier, stronger fish. A hatchery-raised fish does not have the genes in it for survival. A wild salmon is, well, a creature of the wild, and will fight to stay that way."

Up on the Skagit River, home to the greatest wild-salmon populations left in the Puget Sound basin, an expert fisherman who once edited the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's editorial page had a similar take.

"A fair number of hatchery fish are deformed, diseased and small," Jack DeYonge said. "They return from the ocean at a rate of slightly under 1 percent. Wild salmon come back at a rate of 3 percent.

"What the Bush administration proposes to do is wipe out the most efficient breed of fish and replace it with the least efficient."

The long-term ramifications of the Bush policy are profound. Because not only salmon are affected: Indeed, some 150 species -- including, of course, the native orca populations -- are directly dependent on the salmon. Even more species depend on a secondary level on their presence, including birds that feed off the insects that rely on the nutrients provided by the carcasses of returned salmon spawners. Under this policy, their gradual decline is simply inevitable. And the appearance of a hatchery-borne disease could wipe out entire runs in a single swoop, and with it all the animals that depend on them.

In other words, the Bush plan is the first step in transforming the Northwest into the sterile plains that infect so much of the rest of the nation. As Connelly puts it:

Rich Steele, a retired nuclear technician from Richland, has fought since the 1960s to protect the 48-mile-long Hanford Reach, the lone stretch of Columbia River between Bonneville Dam and the Canadian border that has not been turned into a reservoir. Its population of fall chinook salmon is the river's last great wild fish run.

"The new policy is going to get the feds, and the counties and property owners, off the hook when it comes to protecting fish habitat," Steele said.

"When you can dump millions of hatchery fish into a river, why limit pesticides? Why limit logging along streams? It allows them to curtail the streamside protection we have talked about for years and years."

And, added Andrus, "Cold, clear unpolluted water not only sustains salmon; it sustains us."

This is true not only for the Northwest. It is true for the rest of America -- and, indeed, the world.