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While the EPA is often portrayed as a massive bureaucracy, about half of its budget goes directly to other organizations through grants. While many of these are focused on cleanups and reducing environmental risks, the agency also funds scientific research into various health and environmental risks. The money for these research grants has historically been allocated based on a combination of scientific merit and environmental concerns.
All that started to change in August. That's when the EPA issued a new policy dictating that all grant programs must be run past a political appointee from the EPA's public affairs office. Now, a new report indicates that this PR specialist is cancelling individual grants.
The appointee is named John Konkus. He occupies the position of Deputy Associate Administrator for Public Affairs, which is a public relations position. Konkus has a bachelor's degree in government and politics, and he appears to have no scientific background—the closest is having worked for former Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) back when Boehlert chaired the House Science Committee. Since then, Konkus worked for then-Lieutenant Governor Rick Scott in Florida, spent time at a political consulting firm, and then got involved with the Trump campaign.
Despite the complete lack of scientific qualifications, however, the EPA decided to put him in charge of grants. In August, E&E News obtained a policy document stating that any proposals for grant programs need to be run through the Office of Public Affairs, specifically John Konkus. No funding program is allowed to go forward if Konkus does not approve it. This can include scientific funding, as well as grants for educational or environmental programs.
Now, The Washington Post is reporting that Konkus isn't only reviewing future grant programs; he has cancelled millions of dollars in grants that had already been through the review process and deemed worthy of funding. Some of these grants went to universities and so were likely involved in funding basic research. In addition, the report notes that the EPA briefly suspended funding for grants to Alaska at a time when the Trump administration was feuding with one of its senators.
According to the Post, "Konkus has told staff that he is on the lookout for 'the double C-word'—climate change—and repeatedly has instructed grant officers to eliminate references to the subject in solicitations."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 07 2017, @05:49PM (10 children)
It works just fine. The people are getting exactly what they voted for, and what they were promised. Now, what was promised may change since different, contradictory promises were made, but 1) inevitably, one of those many promises will be upheld, even though the others won't since they're contradictory, and 2) overall, the people are getting what they voted for because this pattern of making contradictory promises was plainly evident, and the people voted for this candidate regardless.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @07:35PM (8 children)
If that was true, Trump's numbers should be going up.
...instead of down. [talkingpointsmemo.com]
His base keeps shrinking as they come to realize what a complete fraud he is.
Note also that his numbers being above 40 percent is a novelty.
That slim margin in swing states which gave Trump the Electoral College (an elitist notion that was an anachronism even when it was invented) wanted JOBS.
So far he hasn't delivered on that.
He's pulled some PR stunts claiming he made a difference but he hasn't actually done shit for workers.
He hasn't gotten a single thing through Congress.
Trump is The Anti-Obama.
His plan is to undo anything that The Black Guy did--even if Trump once said he liked that particular thing.
The Republican plan is to negate the 20th Century and any gains made by workers/consumers/Joe Average.
For generations, the Republican plan has been 2 things: tax cuts for The Rich and austerity for everyone else.
There are 2 types who vote GOP: There's The Rich (obviously) then there's The Stupid who will vote against their own self-interest.[1]
.
Even if it's not Trump himself doing it--even if it's his minions, even if it's folks who have left/been fired from his administration--there are folks working on that.
John Nichols is on a book tour, discussing those folks in Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America.
He's been all over Pacifica Radio. [kpfa.org]
Because of a sloppy siteadmin, that list doesn't show the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. [ralphnaderradiohour.com]
[1] ...which is not to say that folks who vote for Neoliberal Dumbocrats are at all bright.
Both of the Big 2 parties get their money from megacorporations.[2]
In the case of the Repugs, the item in TFA makes it clear that they get theirs from Dirty Energy, who knew about Global Warming 2 generations ago and squelched the studies and want to continue the denialism.
[2] ...and when The Donkeys had a guy who tried something different, they made sure that they stabbed him in the back.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @08:10PM (1 child)
If hatred of Obama is enough to imply that conservative/republican/right people have a thing against blacks, and of course you couldn't possibly hate blacks, then...
I'm so glad you now like Clarance Thomas, Ben Carson, Condoleezza Rice, and Herman Cain.
Or are they not proper blacks because they don't act the way you require black people to act?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @08:30PM
Some people (incorrectly) call those types "Uncle Tom"s.
Actually, Uncle Tom allowed himself to be beaten to death rather than betray his own people.
The people who beat him to death were the black overseers.
The correct term for those sellouts is "Sambo". [google.com]
In particular, the individuals you point out benefited from affirmative action but now say the paradigm should be abrogated.
The Reactionary mantra: "I got mine; fuck you."
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 07 2017, @09:11PM (5 children)
[2] ...and when The Donkeys had a guy who tried something different, they made sure that they stabbed him in the back.
And then when that strategy proved to be a total failure and result in the election of Trump, they wrote a book blaming everyone else for the failure, including the guy who was stabbed in the back.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @09:46PM (4 children)
Yup. This guy sums it up pretty nicely when he says a woman who does not, cannot, does not want to learn from her mistakes.[1] [google.com]
The choice of party loyalists ("superdelegates") as to who would be the nominee, because, apparently, it was her turn, was what lost those states for The Donkeys.
Lots of folks who had voted for Bernie in the primary just couldn't bring themselves to vote for 4 more years of O'Bummer-style do-nothing-for-working-people Neoliberalism in the general election.
Some wrote in Bernie and some crossed over to The Orange Clown (a pig in a poke with zero governmental experience).
42 percent of eligible voters didn't cast a ballot.
[1] He says "socialist dictator of Iraq" and "socialist dictators of Libya and Syria", which is completly wrong (an oxymoron, no less).
"Benevolent dictator" would have been a better term.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @01:21PM (3 children)
If you must post links to search results, would you please at least post DuckDuckGo, IxQuick, or Ecosia? Ecosia would probably be best for this purpose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @08:15PM (2 children)
Here ya go:
https://duckduckgo.com/html [duckduckgo.com]
https://www.ixquick.com/do/asearch [ixquick.com]
The reason I don't use those steaming piles of shit is that they try to obfuscate everything behind scripts and don't give re-postable URLs.
or Ecosia?
Hey! I finally got the half-assed piece of shit to work.
https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=a.woman.who.does.not.cannot.does.not.want.to.learn.from.her.mistakes#resultsContainer [ecosia.org]
Ecosia would probably be best for this purpose.
No. Despite its foibles, Google remains the best search engine.
If you don't like my choice, then right-click the link and cut & paste the search string into your preferred search engine.
Good luck getting the same results that I did.
Now, among the 3 that you like, Ecosia is the "best".
...but only if you consider that:
Ecosia doesn't treat what I fed in as a phrase the way that Google does.
It also highlights stupid shit that isn't in my search string.
(The S/N comments engine fucks with e.g. %22 in a hyperlink, so Google's Verbatim Search and putting dots between words is the ticket to get around that.)
It also says "Powered by Bing", which I avoid like the plague when it comes to pagehits.
When I find a search engine that is superior to Google, I'll start using that.
In the meantime, if you're so paranoid, I'm sure you're already behind 7 proxies.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @09:32AM (1 child)
I'm a Tor user. Google, of late, consistently redirects me to a page with a Captcha. Solving it, I assume, requires Javascript.
> The reason I don't use those steaming piles of shit is that they try to obfuscate everything behind scripts and don't give re-postable URLs.
With scripting turned off, I was able to craft the URLs below. Due to the limitations of SoylentNews they're not linkable here.
https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=%22a%20woman%20who%20does%20not%2C%20cannot%2C%20does%20not%20want%20to%20learn%20from%20her%20mistakes%22
https://www.ixquick.com/do/search?cmd=process_search&query=%22a+woman+who+does+not%2C+cannot%2C+does+not+want+to+learn+from+her+mistakes%22&language=english&cat=web&dgf=1&pl=opensearch&ff=
> Good luck getting the same results that I did.
You obviously had a particular essay in mind. I didn't view Google's results, but I'm guessing you wanted us to find "Despite Everything, I Am Happy Hillary Lost" by Ted Rall, perhaps the version posted at Counterpunch. If so, I wish you had just said so, or said so and provided a direct link. Sometimes a search engine results page is the best thing to link to. This doesn't appear to be one of those times.
> Despite its foibles, Google remains the best search engine.
When I used it, it gave the best search results. I would use it if I were allowed to use it anonymously without scripting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @04:07AM
Google Images just turned into mostly-shit.
I asked it to limit the search to 2 domains and it farted in my general direction.
I gave the same information to ixquick and that gave me what I asked for. Huzzah!
https://www.ixquick.com/do/search?cat=pics&cmd=process_search&query=cardioid+two.circles+site:quora.com+OR+site:matheminutes.blogspot.com+intitle:heart.maths+OR+intitle:astroid [ixquick.com]
In your URL, multiple instances of %2C (an ASCII comma) are unnecessary.
&ff= is a null parameter and, as such, is just noise.
I'm not sure that &pl=opensearch is useful, so I left it out and my search turned out OK.
Same deal for &dgf=1
Leaving out &language=english made the URL shorter (heh) and didn't hurt anything this time.
Turns out, even &cmd=process_search is noise.
Note that I positioned cat= just after the question mark and changed that from =web to =pics
That positioning makes the URL more useful as a (boilerplate) bookmark for me (easily reusable; easier to edit).
Now, the "URLs" for the images/pages on the results page are still a long-winded obfuscated proprietary mess, but this does give me 1 more tool to use on appropriate occasions.
...especially if Google's goofballs never correct their recent screwup.
Thanks for the push-start.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Thursday September 07 2017, @08:45PM
To be fair, most people didn't
-Love, ants_in_pants