As if Trump weren’t bad enough,
The United States is currently experiencing a nightmarish epidemic of disgusting blood sucking parasites, and no, I am not talking about our politicians. There is a full blown bed bug epidemic happening all across America and it just seems to get worse with each passing year.
What is Team Trump’s response to this epidemic? Especially when it comes to environmental justice and poor communities? Put a political hack in charge of reviewing all scientifically-reviewed and approved Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) research grants who then nixes
a $20,000 award to the Midwest Pesticide Action Center to train Flint residents on how to combat bedbugs.
bedbug infestations have spread over time in the Michigan city — which has grappled with lead-contaminated drinking water since 2014 — and the center’s past sessions attracted packed audiences. “People really do need this,” she said. “For low-income communities, it’s a really desperate situation.”
Just $20k, who cares … and, well, so what …?
John Konkus reviews every award the agency gives out, along with every grant solicitation before it is issued. According to both career and political employees, 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.
Who is this Konkus? The Deputy Associate Administrator for Public Affairs at EPA with a career of Republican political (including lots with Trump’s presidential campaign) and administrative work. As to his academic background to be reviewing literally $billions of EPA grants? A BA in political science from the University of Maryland.
“The double c word” is clearly in the cross-hairs (though there is also research work being suppressed about impacts of mining, pesticides, … along with life-saving grants supporting, for example, deployment of clean stoves in developing nations) of eminent scientific authority Konkus.
Seemingly ages ago (with all the Trump crises du jour) but less than two weeks ago, Dr. Jennifer Bowen broke into the open that EPA staff were telling scientists who had received grants to remove “climate change” from their abstracts.
This is what censorship looks like. pic.twitter.com/NU44HAiRVx
— Dr. Yana Weinstein (@doctorwhy) August 25, 2017
At least some reacted, ‘well, she was awarded the grant, why bother to edit out the words’ (not asserting Weinstein is one of those) and that she shouldn’t do so because “this is what censorship looks like”—that she should simply ‘resist’ this odious recommendation.
With the news of Konkus’ focus on “the double C word”, it does look like the staff workers were seeking to protect Bowen’s (and others’) research from the Konkus political hack hacking. That email, in fact, might actually best be seen as ‘deep state’ efforts to protect substantive, valuable science funding from ‘the double C-word’ hack hacking.
While the nation faces climate catastrophes from coast-to-coast, the worst catastrophe of all might just be what Donald Trump and the GOP are doing in Washington, DC.
'Exposure to cookstove smoke leads to roughly 4M premature deaths each year & is 4th worst health risk in world.' https://t.co/FqgjgkIVpp https://t.co/5g19nDWJh2
— John Walke (@jwalkenrdc) September 5, 2017
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1 Documenting Trump Administration Silencing of Climate Science // Sep 18, 2017 at 8:55 am
[…] there is a horrific grinding reality across the US government: the science denial forces are hard at work to make it harder for quality scientific work to be done and to adopt a ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ path toward climate change: […]