Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Obama Administration Unethically Altered Report

Is anyone shocked?

The Interior Department’s inspector general says the White House edited a drilling safety report in a way that made it falsely appear that scientists and experts supported the administration’s six-month ban on new drilling.

The inspector general says the editing changes resulted “in the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed.” But it hadn’t been. The scientists were only asked to review new safety measures for offshore drilling.

The investigation is the latest in a string of incidents where the Obama administration has been accused of overstating the science behind official reports and political decisions made after the massive Gulf oil spill. In the wake of the April 20 disaster, the administration struggled to portray that it — not BP — was in charge of responding to the blowout, which killed 11 and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Last month, staff for the presidential oil spill commission said that the White House’s budget office delayed publication of a report by federal scientists that forecast how much oil could potentially reach the Gulf’s shores. Federal scientists initially used a volume of oil that did not account for the administration’s various cleanup efforts. A smaller volume was ultimately presented.

(6) Comments
Posted by Owen at 1722 hrs
Politics + Politics - General

  1. Is anyone shocked?

    Nope.

    Kinda sounds like the IPCC report/CRU email “leak” dustup.  And they wonder why people are skeptical.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 10, 2010 at 1847 hrs


  2. Nope.

    Will this make the 24/7, wall-to-wall news cycles, as something like this would have under the previous administration?  Nope.

    Will anything of substance be done about it?  Nope.

    Posted by hsgbdmama on November 11, 2010 at 0224 hrs


  3. You missed at least one paragraph.  Call it an editting error to make your case stronger if you’d like.

    ““Following a review that included interviews with peer review experts, the Inspector General found no intentional misrepresentation of their views…The decision to implement a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was correctly based on the need for adequate spill response, well containment and safety measures, and we stand behind that decision,” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said.”

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 11, 2010 at 0602 hrs


  4. So, grumps, a refutation by the administration that fudged the report is all it takes to ease your skeptical mind?

    I guess you are only a skeptic when someone of the appropriate ideological bent is under scrutiny, huh? If this had been the Bush administration bending the information to support offshore drilling you would have been making flaming cynical posts.

    Of course these people all say there was no deliberate attempt to misrepresent the information, or the scientists…. The scientists like to get public grant money, and the inspector general likes to continue to get paid to do little or no work….

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 11, 2010 at 0647 hrs


  5. ““Following a review that included interviews with peer review experts, the Inspector General found no intentional misrepresentation of their views…The decision to implement a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was correctly based on the need for adequate spill response, well containment and safety measures, and we stand behind that decision,” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said.”

    Grumps, you are a classic!  You read that and find refutation?  So the IG reviewed the work with experts and they all agreed that they think there was no intentional misrepresentation?  It is obviously irrefutable that there was misrepresentation, or they would have refuted it.  So a panel of experts on the subject matter, not experts in criminology, have decided that none of the obvious misrepresentation was intentional...Goody for them.

    All that paragraph says is:  We are in power, our decisions are correctly based on our opinion so facts are unnecessary.  Nothing to see here, go home and shut up.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 11, 2010 at 0919 hrs


  6. If the misrepresentation was not intentional, the next best explanation is that it was incompetence.  Now, you could convince me of that argument, because I don’t think Obama did more than return favors with most of his appointees who then favored people when hiring their staff arther than looking for competent help. 

    The question is, do you really want to try and convince the conservatives here that the administration you favor are just a bunch of incompetent idiots, rather than a pack of opportunists who are doing their best to prove point A when the facts do not support point A.  Good job, I believe you, the liberals you ‘hired’ are idiots.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 11, 2010 at 0926 hrs


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