Linkmeister

You don't need to know that

Great. Now the Administration wants to control emergency declarations and peer review.

Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis.

The White House Office of Management and Budget is trying to gain final control over release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies responsible for public health, safety and the environment.

And the Republicans deride Democrats as the "nanny" party? But this goes far beyond that; it's massive information control. The trend towards hiding information (Energy Task Force, anyone?) continues, but this is truly scary. It means that political judgment will trump such things as public health. Remember how EPA told New Yorkers that air quality around the WTC site was fine? We later learned that that was not the case, and EPA was rightly vilified.

"Incredibly, OMB's response to this widespread criticism about political interference in public health decisions is to come right out and explicitly propose to take authority over release of emergency information away from health, safety and environmental officials and transfer it into the hands" of John Graham, said Winifred De Palma, regulatory affairs counsel for Public Citizen.

Why does this remind me of the Chinese government's initial reaction to the SARS and AIDS epidemics? This ought to terrify all of us.