Information Control #321
By Hank Silverberg
I am not one of those people who has panicked over the first two weeks of the Trump administration. He has been doing exactly what he said he would do, so as annoying as it is, no one should be surprised.
But there are a few things that are making me very nervous. At the top of the list, something many Americans may have missed, is the administration's efforts to control ALL news and information coming out of Washington, not just from the White House, but from the entire federal government.
For example: since 1996, the Centers for Disease Control has been publishing the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). It keeps the state health departments, doctors, and the public up to date with things like flu outbreaks, Measles, West Nile Virus, Covid-19, and other respiratory viruses and illnesses. It allows doctors to watch out for symptoms in their patients and nip possible outbreaks in the bud before they spread across the country among other things.
But information like that is now temporarily frozen under a blanket public communications freeze from the Trump Administration. There was no MMWR last week for the first time in decades. There's no indication when such information blackouts may end.
But it's not just the CDC. It's across the board at every federal agency. Getting information from the government, a government you pay for, is becoming very difficult.
So you say okay, lets stick to the White House or the Pentagon on the big things. That too is now under more control.
And there are changes at the Pentagon as well. NBC, NPR, The New York Times and Politico have been told to vacate their press offices on "Correspondents' Corridor" in the Pentagon, in favor of The New York Post, Breitbart Radio, One America Network (OAN) and The Huffington Post. It doesn't mean NBC and the others are being banned from the building, but taking away their offices makes it harder for them to get inside stories, work sources, and cover the Pentagon 24/7 as they have in the past. I note that two centrist outlets have been evicted while three right-wing outlets have been added. Supposedly this will be a rotating thing for office space at the Pentagon, but we shall see.
It's all part of an effort to control what you see and hear coming out of Washington. It's Orwellian in nature and it's a danger to democracy. It will make it harder to trust anything you hear, see or read.
ts-health-news/2025/01/24/g-s1-44613/cdc-nih-hhs-health-data-mmwr
https://wonder.cdc.gov/nndss/nndss_weekly_tables_menu.asp
News You May Have Missed!
If the information blackout noted above didn't worry you enough, here's something that should.
The Associated Press is reporting that DOGE, the
The Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, David Lebryk, who has been in that job for 30 years, has apparently resigned over this issue after trying to prevent it.
DOGE is tasked with cutting out wasteful federal spending, though it is not a government agency and has no oversight from Congress.
That means DOGE will have access to the personal information about millions of Americans, and it raises the question, "What does Musk plan to do with it?"
Such information could give Musk control over financial transactions and identity verification.
Musk responded on X:
While that might be an argument for more oversight at Treasury, it is not an argument for an unofficial, small group of people led by an unelected billionaire, who also have no public oversight, to have access to sensitive personal data of millions of Americans. It gives access to the machinery that makes billions of dollars in payments to individual citizens and sets up tools for possible retribution against people who oppose the Trump Administration.
Asteroid on Collision Course?
Mark December 22, 2032 on your calendar. There's a 1% chance that's when Earth could be hit by a tiny asteroid that has just been discovered! It's estimated to be only about 130 to 330 feet across and was first spotted last month by a telescope in Chile.
Asteroids this size hit the Earth every few thousand years, and this one now tops the list as one destined for a possible Earth strike. The astronomers can't tell now where it might hit. NASA says no other large asteroids have an impact probability above 1%.
https://apnews.com/article/newly-discovered-asteroid-nasa-space-6f81d82acc55c899764d2a900d33f1d0
Dumbest Quote of The Week!
This week's dumb quote ranks right up there as one of the dumbest ever. It comes from Republican Georgia Congressman Rich McCormick. It centered on President Trump's Executive Order to freeze all federal aide. That E-O was challenged in court and later rescinded. But while it was active the reaction was fierce. It would have halted many programs for young children, including free or reduced price school lunches. Appearing on CNN, McCormick expressed support for cutting the funding, saying that some children should be working instead of receiving free school lunch.
"Before I was even 13 years old, I was picking berries in the field, before child labor laws that precluded that. I was a paper boy, and when I was in high school, I worked my entire way through. You’re telling me that kids who stay at home instead of going to work at Burger King, McDonald’s, during the summer, should stay at home and get their free lunch instead of going to work? I think we need to have a top-down review."
CNN's Pamela Brown pointed out that the free lunches included many low income children in the Head Start program between the ages of 3 and 5. Others are elementary school students, not of working age.
Is the Congressman suggesting we put little kids to work???
You suggestions and comments are welcome)
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