Bush Turned Government Into GOP Spin Machine - U.S. Politics Online: A Political Discussion Forum

Angry American · #1 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

We knew the Bush administration has already politicized the DoJ, NASA, PBS, DoE, and now we hear just how bad it has gotten at the Surgeon General's Office.

Is the reasoning behind this mass politicization of our government an attempt to make our government so dysfunctional, people will blame government? This administration has show us just how fragile our system of government really is to a all-out assault from an unchecked executive branch.

Quote:

Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised

Former Surgeons General C. Everett Koop, left, Richard H. Carmona and David Satcher testified on Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. All said they had felt political pressure.

By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: July 11, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

When asked after the hearing if that “prominent family” was the Kennedys, Dr. Carmona responded, “You said it. I didn’t.”

In response to lawmakers’ questions, Dr. Carmona refused to name specific people in the administration who had instructed him to put political considerations over scientific ones. He said, however, that they included assistant secretaries of health and human services as well as top political appointees outside the department of health.

Dr. Carmona did offer to provide the names to the committee in a private meeting.

Bill Hall, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the administration disagreed with Dr. Carmona’s statements. “It has always been this administration’s position that public health policy should be rooted in sound science,” Mr. Hall said.

Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said the surgeon general “is the leading voice for the health of all Americans.”

“It’s disappointing to us,” Ms. Lawrimore said, “if he failed to use this position to the fullest extent in advocating for policies he thought were in the best interests of the nation.”

Dr. Carmona is one of a growing list of present and former administration officials to charge that politics often trumped science within what had previously been largely nonpartisan government health and scientific agencies.

Dr. Carmona, 57, served as surgeon general for one four-year term, from 2002 to 2006, but was not asked to serve a second. Before being nominated, he was in the Army Special Forces, earned two purple hearts in the Vietnam War and was a trauma surgeon and leader of the Pima County, Ariz., SWAT team. He received a bachelor’s degree, in biology and chemistry, in 1976 and his M.D. in 1979, both from the University of California, San Francisco. He is now vice chairman of Canyon Ranch, a resort and residential development company.

His testimony comes two days before the Senate confirmation hearings of his designated successor, Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr. Two members of the Senate health committee have already declared their opposition to Dr. Holsinger’s nomination because of a 1991 report he wrote that concluded that homosexual sex was unnatural and unhealthy. Dr. Carmona’s testimony may further complicate Dr. Holsinger’s nomination.

In his testimony, Dr. Carmona said that at first he was so politically naïve that he had little idea how inappropriate the administration’s actions were. He eventually consulted six previous surgeons general, Republican and Democratic, and all agreed, he said, that he faced more political interference than they had.

On issue after issue, Dr. Carmona said, the administration made decisions about important public health issues based solely on political considerations, not scientific ones.

“I was told to stay away from those because we’ve already decided which way we want to go,” Dr. Carmona said.

He described attending a meeting of top officials in which the subject of global warming was discussed. The officials concluded that global warming was a liberal cause and dismissed it, he said.

“And I said to myself, ‘I realize why I’ve been invited. They want me to discuss the science because they obviously don’t understand the science,’ ” he said. “I was never invited back.”

Dr. Carmona testified under oath at a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee headed by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California. The topic was strengthening the office of the surgeon general. Dr. C. Everett Koop, surgeon general in the Reagan administration, and Dr. David Satcher, surgeon general during the Clinton administration and the first year of the administration of George W. Bush, also testified.

Each complained about political interference and the declining status of the office. Dr. Satcher said that the Clinton administration discouraged him from issuing a report showing that needle-exchange programs were effective in reducing disease. He released the report anyway.

Dr. Koop, said he had been discouraged by top officials in the Reagan administration from discussing the AIDS crisis. He did so anyway.

All three men urged major changes in the way the surgeon general is chosen and the way the office is financed.

-full story-

If recent events have shown us anything, it's that the executive branch needs to be stripped of some of it's powers, to prevent further damage to the republic by future over-zealous administrations.

I don't think our government has ever been so fucked up, in such a short period of time.

Hank · #2 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

So in laymen terms, what this bullshit blog from the N.Y. Times written by an ass-clown staff writer “sworn to bring down the evil president Bush”, is that president Bush wishes to prevent moonbat propaganda to lean toward support for abortion, stem cell research on little dead babies and emergency abortions being a good and healthy thing for a little girl to do.
Dude, read between the lines man, I mean -damn…

Bacon King · #3 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hank

So in laymen terms, what this bullshit blog from the N.Y. Times written by an ass-clown staff writer “sworn to bring down the evil president Bush”, is that president Bush wishes to prevent moonbat propaganda to lean toward support for abortion, stem cell research on little dead babies and emergency abortions being a good and healthy thing for a little girl to do.
Dude, read between the lines man, I mean -damn…

"Reading between the lines"?

Sounds to me like you're just trying to put a blatant conservative spin on the article.

MattLarson · #4 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

It's too bad this thread started out with such a partisan slant.

It might have been an interesting issue, otherwise.

Matt

CowboyTed · #5 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattLarson

It's too bad this thread started out with such a partisan slant.

It might have been an interesting issue, otherwise.

Matt

It's a pity. But if the story hangs true, interferring with the SG is a serious allegation. People not only in the US but worldwide look to his office for the truth behind the mulititude of differing scientific reports and gain the truth behind them. This could be a very sad state of affairs for people who like to hear the truth and make up there own mind.

Hank, people deserve the truth, editing and delaying important scientific documents for politics is highly dangerious and anti-democratic... I like alot of other people be it left, right, US national or not like to hear the ungarndered truth. You have the choice to take it or leave, but you have no right to tell me or anyone else that we should be 'softened up' to what the SG has to say on an issue.

varrussword · #6 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by CowboyTed

.Hank, people deserve the truth, editing and delaying important scientific documents

Who determines the importance of the documents? We are talking life and death aren't we? Do we really want to leave such important matters in the hand of these evil corporations?

Varus

Angry American · #7 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattLarson

It's too bad this thread started out with such a partisan slant.

It might have been an interesting issue, otherwise.

Matt

I think the issue is that there are government institutions that should be insulated from partisan control; they should be protected from undue influence--whose sole purpose is to prop up partisan ideology.

Science should be left to the scientists.

How we use science is another matter, but for an administration to impede and/or distort science should not be tolerated, regardless.

It's hard not to discuss what has become of our government today without what you call a "partisan" slant.

Just because I rail against the failings of this administration doesn't make me partisan. Or would you rather I change the names and locations to make totally generalized statements, with no ties to the guilty?

Angry American · #8 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by varrussword

Who determines the importance of the documents? We are talking life and death aren't we? Do we really want to leave such important matters in the hand of these evil corporations?

Varus

What evil corporations would you be speaking of, the POTUS?

The Surgeon General's Office isn't a corporation, is it???

MattLarson · #9 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Angry American

I think the issue is that there are government institutions that should be insulated from partisan control; they should be protected from undue influence--whose sole purpose is to prop up partisan ideology.

Science should be left to the scientists.

I agree - and note that the article shows that several administrations, not just this one, have tried to influence the Surgeon General.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Angry American

How we use science is another matter, but for an administration to impede and/or distort science should not be tolerated, regardless.

It's hard not to discuss what has become of our government today without what you call a "partisan" slant.

Not at all - you could have brought the article up in a thread on the role of the Surgeon General without the hype very easily.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Angry American

Just because I rail against the failings of this administration doesn't make me partisan. Or would you rather I change the names and locations to make totally generalized statements, with no ties to the guilty?

That's just the point - the article you posted clearly demonstrates that past administrations - Democrat and Republican - applied political pressure on the Surgeon General to replace science with political direction.

But rather than look objectively at the office, it's role and how to insulate it from politics, you chose instead to play the partisan game (which is characterized by political one-sidedness).

From this sort of thing to Stem Cells, I too am appalled by the way this administration substitutes political (or religious) correctness for science.

But to approach it from the view that this administration is unique in so doing is incorrect, IMHO.

Matt

Angry American · #10 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattLarson

But to approach it from the view that this administration is unique in so doing is incorrect, IMHO.

Matt

I disagree.

This administration may not be alone in partisan meddling, but it is unique in its scope; and it is the degree to which this administration has crippled our government, which deserves extra scrutiny, IMHO.

MattLarson · #11 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

So everyone else did it but Bush did it more, so we must ignore the trend and concentrate only on one administration?

Pretty short-sighted IMHO.

Bush will be gone in 2009. The office of the Surgeon General will remain. Do you think the next administration will not engage in the same political spinning of the science?

Isn't that far more important that harping on this one administration?

Matt

wrxsti · #12 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Now that has become highly politicized, I do not see it going back. I will agree it will not be finished in 2009, rather whoever is in charge will not give up the influenced previously gained. Imagine when president Hillery has the Surgeon General issue reports on the health benefits of abortions.

Angry American · #13 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattLarson

So everyone else did it but Bush did it more, so we must ignore the trend and concentrate only on one administration?

Pretty short-sighted IMHO.

Bush will be gone in 2009. The office of the Surgeon General will remain. Do you think the next administration will not engage in the same political spinning of the science?

Isn't that far more important that harping on this one administration?

Matt

I think it's pretty silly to harp on past administrations (can't do anything about the past--except learn from it), and I don't think hammering the current administration is ignoring the trend, rather, it's addressing abuses of power as they happen.

What you're implying is like saying, ".... oh there have been forest fires in the past, and the forest still survives, so don't pay attention to the forest fire over there it will burn itself out ... let's just focus on how to reduce the risk of future forest fires ...."

That is short sided, IMHO.

Eagle88 · #14 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Angry American

I think it's pretty silly to harp on past administrations (can't do anything about the past--except learn from it), and I don't think hammering the current administration is ignoring the trend, rather, it's addressing abuses of power as they happen.

What you're implying is like saying, ".... oh there have been forest fires in the past, and the forest still survives, so don't pay attention to the forest fire over there it will burn itself out ... let's just focus on how to reduce the risk of future forest fires ...."

That is short sided, IMHO.

Angry,

I don't want to seem rude here but he wasn't talking about the past, he was talking about the future. He said "next administration".

Honestly, I think I am inclined to agree with him on another comment he made. That being that I do believe this thread started with a partisan bias. Plus, on my own note, I can't help the feeling that this thread is somewhat branding all Republicans as exactly like George Bush which is no more the truth than would be a comment that seemingly brands all Democrats as exactly like Al Gore, John Kerry or Hillary Clinton or something.

Angry American · #15 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle88

Angry,

I don't want to seem rude here but he wasn't talking about the past, he was talking about the future. He said "next administration".

Honestly, I think I am inclined to agree with him on another comment he made. That being that I do believe this thread started with a partisan bias. Plus, on my own note, I can't help the feeling that this thread is somewhat branding all Republicans as exactly like George Bush which is no more the truth than would be a comment that seemingly brands all Democrats as exactly like Al Gore, John Kerry or Hillary Clinton or something.

Fair enough--or like all Muslims are Islamic terrorists, or like Iranians hate America....

I guess we should just cut off the head, and then the GOP will be free.

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