{"id":1905,"date":"2008-02-14T22:09:17","date_gmt":"2008-02-15T03:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2008\/02\/14\/remember-the-iron-curtain\/"},"modified":"2008-02-14T22:09:17","modified_gmt":"2008-02-15T03:09:17","slug":"remember-the-iron-curtain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2008\/02\/14\/remember-the-iron-curtain\/","title":{"rendered":"remember the iron curtain?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2008\/02\/13\/economic-indicators\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Bush Administration Hides More Data, Shuts Down Website Tracking U.S. Economic Indicators<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\">The U.S. economy is faltering. Family debt is <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/issues\/2008\/02\/econ_snapshot.html\" target=\"_blank\">on the rise<\/a><\/strong>, benefits are disappearing, the deficit is <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kansascity.com\/382\/story\/475064.html\" target=\"_blank\">skyrocketing<\/a><\/strong>, and the mortgage crisis has <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/issues\/2008\/02\/housing_downer.html\" target=\"_blank\">worsened<\/a><\/strong>. Conservatives have attempted to deflect attention from the crisis, by <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2008\/02\/12\/rove-economy\/\" target=\"_blank\">blaming the media&rsquo;s negative coverage<\/a><\/strong> and  insisting the United States is <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2008\/02\/10\/bush-experts\/\" target=\"_blank\">not headed toward a recession<\/a><\/strong>, despite <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/economy\/2008-01-28-survey_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip\" target=\"_blank\">what economists are predicting<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The Bush administration&rsquo;s latest move is to simply hide the data. Forbes has awarded <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.economicindicators.gov\/\">EconomicIndicators.gov<\/a><\/strong> one of its &ldquo;Best of the Web&rdquo; awards. As Forbes <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/63.240.4.179\/bow\/b2c\/review.jhtml?id=7136\">explains<\/a><\/strong>, the government site provides an invaluable service to the public for accessing U.S. economic data: <em>&quot;This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration and <strong>combines data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, like GDP and net imports and exports, and the Census Bureau, like retail sales and durable goods shipments<\/strong>. The site simply links to the relevant department&rsquo;s Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself&ndash;say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau&rsquo;s site&ndash;is such an exercise in futility that it will <strong>convince you why this portal is necessary<\/strong>.&quot;<\/em><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">Yet the Bush administration has decided to shut down <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.economicindicators.gov\/\">this site<\/a><\/strong> because of &ldquo;budgetary constraints,&rdquo; effective March 1&#8230;<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">&quot;Well, all the economic indicators say we&#8217;re in a Recession. What shall we do?&quot;<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">&quot;Shut down that damn web site, that&#8217;s what we&#8217;ll do!&quot;&nbsp;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bush Administration Hides More Data, Shuts Down Website Tracking U.S. Economic Indicators The U.S. economy is faltering. Family debt is on the rise, benefits are disappearing, the deficit is skyrocketing, and the mortgage crisis has worsened. Conservatives have attempted to deflect attention from the crisis, by blaming the media&rsquo;s negative coverage and insisting the United [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}