Saturday, December 16, 2017

George Orwell's Fav New Guy: Donald J. Trump and His Speech Patrol, Inc. at CDC

Thought Police Then Speech Patrol Then Trump я Us

Ban My Seven Words or You'll Hear These Two Words
“You're fired...!!!”


Complete, total, and utterly repairable insanity ... wake up America – we are on dangerous path to fascism or worse under the madness of Donald J. Trump. 

How in the world can the damage caused by this man ever be corrected or will it?

Cite this story from the Washington Post vis-à-vis about the “Trump speech police of speech at the CDC” and their English language usage of words Trump does not like.

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The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation's top public health agency (the CDC) from using a list of these seven words or phrases: vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence-based, and science-based.

Okay in all fairness, let’s compare Trump’s seven words he wants to ban to George Carlin's seven banned words (he listed in 1972), which are: shit, piss, fück, cünt, cöcksucker, motherfücker, and tits.

Short Introduction: In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949) by George Orwell, the “Thought Police (Thinkpol)” are the secret police of the super state Oceania, who discover and punish Thoughtcrime, personal and political thoughts unapproved by the Party. 

Herein today we have Donald “Orwell” Trump and his attack on speech at the CDC those 7 words I point out above. This pressure is totally insane, utterly un-American and coming from a very sick man in the White House. 

The specifics of this story: Policy analysts at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing.

I note this critical part from the story: In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. 

For example, instead of “science-based” or “evidence-based” the suggested phrase is now: The CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.” No replacement words were immediately offered. 

I note: Then community like on FOX or Talk Radio that says, “Hey, we don’t like the word public assistance in policy about food stamps, disability under social security, or any reference to gun control.” 

So then, we merely toss those words out to make the community break out into a rightwing conservative Roy Moore-Sean Hannity-Steve Bannon happy dance. 

Then what? We all start speaking Trumpicon?

The question of how to address such issues as sexual orientation, gender identity and abortion rights — all of which received significant visibility under the Obama administration — has surfaced repeatedly in federal agencies since President Trump took office. Several key departments — including HHS, which oversees the CDC, as well as the DOJ, Education, and HUD — have all changed some federal policies and how they collect government information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

For example, in March, HHS dropped questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in two surveys of elderly people. They also removed information about LGBT Americans from its website. The department's Administration for Children and Families, for example, archived a page that outlined federal services that are available for LGBT people and their families, including how they can adopt and receive help if they are the victims of sex trafficking.

At the CDC, the meeting about the banned words was led by Alison Kelly, a senior leader in the agency's Office of Financial Services, according to the CDC analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly. 

Kelly did not say why the words are being banned, according to the analyst, and told the group that she was merely relaying the information.

Other CDC officials confirmed the existence of a list of forbidden words. It’s likely that other parts of HHS are operating under the same guidelines regarding the use of these words, the analyst said.

At the CDC, several offices have responsibility for work that uses some of these words. The National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention is working on ways to prevent HIV among transgender people and reduce health disparities. The CDC's work on birth defects caused by the Zika virus includes research on the developing fetus. This word ban is related to the budget and supporting materials that are to be given to the CDC's partners and to Congress. The president's budget for 2019 is expected to be released in early February. The budget blueprint is generally shaped to reflect an administration's priorities.

Federal agencies are sending in their budget proposals to the OMB, which has authority about what is included (e.g., what lingo they and Trump likes I suppose)?

Neither an OMB spokesman nor a CDC spokeswoman responded to requests for comment Friday. The longtime CDC analyst, whose job includes writing descriptions of the CDC's work for the administration's annual spending blueprint, could not recall a previous time when words were banned from budget documents because they were considered controversial.

The reaction of people in the meeting was “incredulous,” one analyst said and concluded: “It was very much: Are you serious? Are you kidding? In my experience, we've never had any push back from an ideological standpoint. Our subject matter experts will not lay down quietly — this hasn't trickled down to them yet.” (Note: Comments and related News of the ban on those certain words hasn't yet spread to the broader group of scientists at the CDC, but it's likely to provoke a backlash, the analyst further said).

The CDC has a budget of about $7 billion and more than 12,000 employees working across the nation and around the globe on everything from food and water safety, to heart disease and cancer, to infectious disease outbreak prevention. Much of the CDC's work has strong bipartisan support.

Alison Kelly told the analysts that “certain words in the CDC's budget drafts were being sent back to the agency for correction.”

Three words that had been flagged in these drafts were “vulnerable, entitlement, and diversity. Kelly went on to tell the group that the ban on the other words had been conveyed verbally.

My Input: As noted and stated this is totally insane but coming from master controller, Trump is not really surprising, either.

This is a huge story and I suspect it will not play well on the news as it develops.

This is not America by any measurement and if necessary the courts must weigh in.

Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.

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