January 7, 2007

How To Gut A Government Agency

Here is yet another story that has flown completely under the radar. At least, I know I hadn't been aware of it till now.
How do these things get past us?
***
It seems that, last winter, Bush slashed funding for the EPA--requiring it to close its libraries. Meanwhile, he ordered it to research topics such as nanotechnology, air pollution and drinking water system security as part of his “American Competitive Initiative."
See here for the complete text.
***
Maybe he's smarter than he looks. [OK, I guess he would have to be, wouldn't he?]
But, if he ties the agency's hands by cutting funding to the libraries while, at the same time, ordering it to research these topics, he can then label it a do-nothing waste of taxpayers' money and shut it down completely.

Paranoid thinking? Maybe. But you know the old adage: 'Even paranoids have real enemies.'

4 comments:

TomCat said...

TC, I think this was first made public when you were out of touch during your trip. I blogged how he was cutting funds to the EPA libraries, and how he was trying to have the data they contained erased, so that they could not be recovered and used to interfere with the lies being spread by Big Oil and Big Energy, areas in which the Bush family fortune is heavily invested.

Paranoid thinking? Not in the slightest.

two crows said...

oh. I don't feel so badly about missing it, then. I was a tad overwhelmed at the time.

and, cutting off the EPA's primary research tool while simultaneously giving it 3 new topics that require intensive research is a pretty shrewd move when you come right down to it.
I wonder who gave him the idea?

TomCat said...

Rove?

two crows said...

probably.
he could nver have thought of it on his own.