Trump Muzzles Federal Employees; Reporters Start Asking For Leaks

from the we'll-see-how-this-goes... dept

Reports started coming out this morning that the new Trump Administration had told the EPA that it needed to stop doing anything publicly without first getting approval from the White House (in addition to freezing grants and contracts). According to a memo that was sent around to EPA staff:

If you can't read that, the key parts say:

• No press releases will be going out to external audiences.
• No social media will be going out. A Digital Strategist will be coming on board to oversee social media. Existing, individually controlled, social media accounts may become more centrally controlled.
• No blog messages.
• The Beach Team will review the list of upcoming webinars and decide which ones will go forward.
• Please send me a list of any external speaking engagements that are currently scheduled among any of your staff from today through February.
• Incoming media requests will be carefully screened.
• No new content can be place on any website. Only do clean up where essential.
• List servers will be reviewed. Only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press.

Why yes, such messages may end up in the press.

Of course, it quickly became clear that this was not just for the EPA. The USDA received similar marching orders. Same with the Department of Health & Human Services and possibly others as well, including the Department of Commerce, being told it can't even publish the basic research it releases for US companies.

It's possible to say that this is just the Trump administration hitting the pause button to figure out what's going on before moving forward again, but many in these agencies are quite worried that they're going to be muzzled for political reasons. Most of the people working in these agencies are civil servants, not political appointees, and their work is not at all political. The press releases and blog posts are generally to release new findings, research and data from taxpayer funded studies. This shouldn't be controversial or reviewed for political motives.

Of course, this kind of thing is hardly unprecedented. For many years, we wrote about the ridiculousness of then Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper gagging Canadian scientists from talking about factual research that was politically inconvenient (including a study on fish stock). This kind of gagging on "politically sensitive" but factual science was only lifted last year once Justin Trudeau came into office. Of course, just a few months before that, the UK similarly started muzzling scientists to stop them saying anything the politicians didn't like.

One hopes the Trump administration will not be putting in place similar policies.

Of course, if that is the plan, it should be a huge boon for investigative journalists. And they're already hunting for sources. As the reports on the gag order came out this morning, lots of reporters stepped up on Twitter with notes on how to contact publications with information:

So, perhaps this kind of gag order will lead to a golden age of whistleblowing. Unfortunately, it may also lead to further crackdowns on whistleblowers. Once again, as we've explained over and over again the past few years, the Obama administration was the most aggressive and proactive in cracking down on whistleblowers and the press, and they've now handed off that power and precedent to the Trump administration, which will have a pretty big opportunity to use it.

Filed Under: commerce department, donald trump, epa, gag order, hhs, leaks, reporters, usda

DailyDirt: Stop! Don't Eat That...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Eating healthier is a common new year's resolution, and it might be good to start simple and stop consuming one unhealthy snack item. However, a completely healthy diet is a totally different task. There are countless fad diets that don't really work or aren't as healthy as they're supposed to be. On top of all that, we should also keep an eye out for the outbreaks of foodborne illnesses and food safety recommendations. Maybe people who drink all their calories aren't totally crazy....

• Fish and other aquatic animals caught from the Passaic River in New Jersey should NOT be eaten -- because toxic waste has been dumped into that waterway for decades and proposed cleanup projects would cost well over a billion dollars (and have not yet started). The Lower Passaic River Study Area Cooperating Parties Group (aka the Lower Passaic CPG is offering a "fish exchange" to swap frozen tilapia for any fish caught from the Passaic. Yum. Three-eyed fish [url]
• California, Oregon and Washington produce the most Dungeness crab in the US, but right now, the ~$60 million industry isn't doing so well. Domoic acid is being measured in marine wildlife along the West coast, caused by a bloom of algae in the Pacific, and levels are decreasing. With justified caution, though, crab catchers are staying away from their usual crop until levels are deemed safe, saying "We are not like the beef industry. We don't do recalls." [url]
• The Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (a joint effort for the CDC, USDA and Food Safety Inspection Service) published a report on foodborne illness, covering hundreds of outbreaks between 1998 and 2012. If you don't eat beef or any vegetables grown in rows, what's left to eat? [url]

If you've been thinking about learning how to code, take a look at our Daily Deals for a collection of online courses to help you program and/or master some professional skills.

Filed Under: cdc, diet, domoic acid, dungeness crab, food, food safety, foodborne illness, fsis, health, ifsac, lower passaic river study area cooperating parties group, poison, pollution, seafood, soylent, superfund site, toxic, usda

Shocker: Billions In Broadband Subsidies Wasted As Government Turns Blind Eye To Fraud

from the dysfunction-junction dept

As we've covered at length, the United States' 2010 National Broadband Plan was a bit of a dud. It paid a lot of lip service to improving broadband competition but was hollow to its core, using politically-safe rhetoric and easily-obtainable goals to help pretend the government had a plan to fix the nation's uncompetitive broadband duopoly. But while the NBP was a show pony, the companion plan to use $7.5 billion of the Recovery Act stimulus fund to shore up last and middle mile networks was supposed to have been notably more productive.

Or not.

Of that $7.5 billion (out of the Act's $840 billion total), $3.5 billion was set aside to help improve broadband connectivity in the nation's harder to reach areas. The funds were managed by the USDA's Rural Utilities Service (RUS), who then doled out the funds as needed to those who applied with sensible business models. But a recent report by Politico suggests that the program has what you might call a spotty success record:

"A POLITICO investigation has found that roughly half of the nearly 300 projects RUS approved as part of the 2009 Recovery Act have not yet drawn down the full amounts they were awarded. All RUS-funded infrastructure projects were supposed to have completed construction by the end of June, but the agency has declined to say whether these rural networks have been completed. More than 40 of the projects RUS initially approved never got started at all, raising questions about how RUS screened its applicants and made its decisions in the first place."

If these programs don't pull their full awarded amount by September, the awards are forfeited, and can't be used by areas that would have otherwise benefited. Of course if you've followed the broadband industry at all over the years, you might recall that these broadband gaps aren't supposed to exist in the first place. We've thrown billions upon billions in tax cuts and subsidies at incumbent companies like AT&T and Verizon over a generation, and the result has fairly consistently been broken promises, zero accountability, and a government that repeatedly makes it clear they're ok with that.

And just like these programs of old, the RUS broadband effort threw money around without actually knowing where it was going:

"We are left with a program that spent $3 billion,” Mark Goldstein, an investigator at the Government Accountability Office, told POLITICO, “and we really don’t know what became of it."

And here's the kicker: the Politico report doesn't even highlight some of the worst fraud seen in the program. Earlier this year we noted how West Virginia was the poster child for this program's dysfunction, with Verizon, Cisco and Frontier convincing the state to spend millions in broadband subsidies on over-powered, unused routers, redundant, useless consultants, and "upgrades" that appear to have benefited nobody. The state then buried a consultant's report highlighting how companies and state leaders engaged in systemic, statewide fraud on the taxpayer dime. Nothing much has happened since.

While the continued failures of broadband subsidies will be used as an example that broadband subsidies don't work, they're more an example of how we're utterly unwilling to fix campaign finance reform. Spending and tracking this money shouldn't have been all that hard; we just aren't willing to clean up a political system beholden to unaccountable giants before throwing billions of dollars into its angry maw. Meanwhile, when you have armies of politicians consistently and proudly running on the platform that government can never work, the fruit of this labor can't be all that much of a surprise.

Filed Under: boondoggle, broadband, oversight, recovery act, rural broadband, rural utilities service, rus, stimulus, usda

DailyDirt: July Is National Hot Dog Month

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

In 1972, a guy could eat just 14 hot dogs at the Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest and win. The highest number of hot dogs consumed since then is a nauseating impressive 69 hot dogs, but if you can eat more than 60 or so, you can still compete with the best of them. If you like hot dogs, but maybe don't want to eat more than a couple at a time, check out a few of these links.

• Hot dogs are the 'perfect' size and shape for little kids to choke on, so how can the traditional hot dog design be improved? Several kid-friendly hot dog concepts redesigned for safety have been created, but these designs probably won't make it to ballparks or backyard grills any time soon. [url]
• Maybe you don't really want to know how the sausage is made, but it's actually one of the most common questions -- so the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council gives people the answer. If you've imagined some weird parts being chopped up and put into hot dogs, rest assured that the USDA requires a label indicating the product was made "with variety meats" -- an uncommon product in the US. [url]
• According to Guinness World Records, the world's most expensive hot dog costs $169 from a Seattle-based food truck Tokyo Dog, and this bratwurst is topped with Wagyu beef, foie gras, shaved black truffles and caviar. The former record hailed from Sacramento and cost just $145.49. People actually have to buy at least one at full price for the record to count, so if you want to get your name out there... make sure you have at least one wealthy customer who might like gold flakes or caviar on an overpriced hot dog. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: eating contests, food, food truck, hot dogs, national hot dog and sausage council, sausages, tokyo dog, usda, world records

DailyDirt: Life Finds A Way...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are more common than many people think. Diabetics nowadays who rely on insulin shots aren't getting their medicine from pigs/cows or other mammals -- and haven't been for decades. Modern sources of insulin come from vats of genetically engineered bacteria. So what about GMOs and GMO-produced products in our food supply? Most Americans have definitely eaten some GMO food, but is there any end to GMO experimentation in the wild now?

• In France, a lamb that was genetically modified with jellyfish DNA got into the retail food chain -- and some people have probably eaten it without knowing. This wasn't an accident, apparently. A disgruntled worker (and possibly some co-workers) purposely sold a lab animal to a slaughterhouse. It's probably not going to kill anyone, but this is how the dinosaurs get out of Jurassic Park World, IRL. [url]
• In 2013, the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) found genetically engineered wheat in Oregon -- where it shouldn't have been. Since then, there has been some concern that more GMO wheat is growing in the wild without anyone knowing.... [url]
• You can thank GMOs for making billions of pounds of cheese sold today (ie. most of the cheese you see in US stores). Fermentation-Produced Chymosin (FPC) is used instead of a calf stomach extract -- and it just wouldn't be possible to make as much cheese as we do without FPC (unless the veal industry suddenly exploded). [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: bacteria, biotech, cheese, dna, food, fpc, gmo, insulin, jurassic park, usda, veal, wheat

DailyDirt: Serious Food Regulations That Don't Sound So Serious...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of cases where food regulations are reasonable safety measures, but sometimes there are serious government decisions that sound a bit ridiculous (eg. the Supreme Court deciding that a tomato is a vegetable in 1893). Here are just a few examples of more recent politically-charged food proposals.

• Pizza is not a vegetable, but just 1/8 of a cup of tomato paste counts the same as a half cup of vegetables, according to Congress. It's actually not that easy to directly compare the nutritional value of various servings of fruits and vegetables, but plenty of people simply see highly-processed foods as an unacceptable component of school lunches. [url]
• The USDA had a suggestion to try out a "Meatless Monday" recommendation, but it quickly backed off doing so. The proposal would have encouraged corporate and school cafeterias to offer a vegetarian meal on Mondays, but there were obvious objections from parts of the agriculture industry. [url]
• California's Proposition 37 would require labels on genetically modified foods -- and consumers will likely be surprised at the amount of GMOs in their diet. If it passes, the result of this vote could make GM foods a larger national issue. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: food, gmo, meatless mondays, pizza, prop37, regulations, usda, vegetable

DailyDirt: Dead Body Removal

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There's the old saying that "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." But how is it that when you have big dead animals to get rid of, people reach for dynamite? Clearly, people just like to blow things up.

• The Colorado Forest service wants to remove six frozen cows from a mountain cabin, and they've looked into using explosives to try to get rid of these carcasses. There's a bit of urgency for removing these frozen cows because if they aren't removed soon, they'll thaw out, decay and potentially ruin a popular hot springs attraction nearby. [url]
• The infamous "Oregon Whale" isn't an urban legend. In 1970, the Oregon Dept. of Transportation tried to vaporize a beached sperm whale, but the explosion just created a big, smelly mess. [url]
• The US Department of Agriculture actually has an official procedure for "Obliterating Animal Carcasses With Explosives" published in 1995. So that makes everything cool—don't forget to put on your goggles. [url]
• To find some more bizarre/crazy stuff, check out some things that other StumbleUpon users have found. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: animals, carcasses, colorado, forests, oregon, usda

DailyDirt: Tracking Down Your Food

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Poking through your fridge for a snack doesn't quite count as hunting for food. Not too many of us actually kill what we eat or farm fruits and vegetables, but there are a few online tools that'll help people see where they're food is coming from. Here are just a few examples of food-tracking projects that could bring some aspects of farming closer to home.

• Keeping track of nearly every aspect of a pig's life and "afterlife" seems like a huge project, but the pork industry is starting to collect data on where your sausage and pork chops grew up. Who needs to play Farmville when there'll be real-time systems keeping track of actual farm animals that you can eat in real life...? [url]
• Chicken trackers have been available for a few years now, allowing people to easily see where their poultry came from. Stalking your chicken could make it more appetizing. [url]
• The US Department of Agriculture has an online mapping tool for finding "food deserts" -- not desserts -- where there is limited availability of healthy foods. This online map doesn't show where there isn't any pizza delivery service, but maybe it should so it gets more traffic. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: data, food, food deserts, mapping tools, tracking, usda

DailyDirt: Better Food Through Science

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The art and science of cooking has a bright future, especially given all the different cooking shows and TV networks dedicated to food. As more and more people discover and learn about the science behind cooking, it stands to reason that there will be a growing number of interesting ways to cook. Maybe cooking is the key to teaching the scientific method to kids...?

• The all-American hamburger might be improved upon if the meat was quickly dipped in liquid nitrogen before being deep fried. Perhaps a dry ice slurry would be more practical, though. [url]
• The USDA has revised its recommended cooking temperatures for various meats. But only the chefs at America's Test Kitchen actually measure their cooked meats at home... [url]
• Using a solar-powered pizza box oven to cook food sounds pretty impractical. A solar-powered microwave oven sounds like a better idea. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: cooking, hamburgers, meat, usda