When will .GOV Domains be Reset to Comply with the First Amendment?

Guest essay by Leo Goldstein

Government publications, including websites, must be free of partisan propaganda. The Obama administration violated this rule and turned government websites into propaganda outlets of the left wing of the Democrat Party. It was especially shameless in promoting climate alarmism. Even worse, it used those websites to attempt to establish the climate cult as the state religion. As of the day of this writing (March 19, 2017), Trump’s administration has not stopped this ongoing violation of the Constitution. Even www.epa.gov/climatechange does not seem to differ from its January 19 version.

The promotion of the climate cult on government websites harms the public in two ways:

First, it gives government endorsement to climate alarmism and climate cult. U.S. government publications used to be the most authoritative source on almost every matter, and many people still view content created under Obama’s administration as such. Climate alarmists use this trust by referring to government websites as a proof of their positions, and some abuses are beyond imagination (The Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, 1, 2, 3 is an example.)

Second, the government websites (easily distinguished by their .gov domain) from Obama’s administration contain outgoing links to climate alarmism websites. It’s known that search engines heavily weigh (favor) links that come from .gov domains. There is a good rationale for that. Government websites are supposed to have few links to non-governmental websites, and those non-governmental websites must be carefully vetted for accuracy and neutrality.

Examples of external linking policies on government agency websites:

EPA.gov:

“External links: Connections to any website not under the control of EPA or another federal government agency. …

Required Steps:

Develop a rationale for the categories of web sites to which your pages will link. We strongly encourage you to document this rationale for your files. All external links must:

Be relevant to, or generally support, EPA’s mission. … Clearly enhance the value of the information that EPA is providing on its web site. Help the reader understand the information on EPA’s page. Go to reliable web sites that reflect high standards in quality, site operations and maintenance.

Do not link to external sites, in any location within that site (not only the location that you are directly linking to), that

Advocate, or are likely in the future to advocate, for or against any partisan political party, candidate or election or that solicit political contributions. Advocate any activity with respect to any federal, state or local statute, legislation, regulation, or proposed regulation.

…

Solicit membership in an organization, or are likely in the future to do so. Have solicitations to buy products or services, or are likely in the future to do so. Make requests for monetary donations or contributions of any kind, or are likely in the future to do so. Note that this includes state and local governmental sites. Advise people, or are likely in the future to advise people, to contact an elected representative or to otherwise take action on, or become involved with, a partisan political candidate, group or election, or advocating for or against any federal, state, or local legislation, or any treaty ratification regulation, or proposed regulation.”

From www.epa.gov/web-policies-and-procedures/procedure-external-site-links (archive.is/90Doa), in effect from 2006.

USA.gov:

“The USA.gov staff evaluates all links [to non-government websites] using the following criteria:

…

Is the website’s content relevant, useful and authoritative for citizens, businesses and/or government officials?

Does the website’s information appear to be accurate and current?

Is the website’s approach to the privacy of personal information consistent with the government’s privacy and security policies?

Is the primary intent of the website to educate and inform, rather than persuade, convert, or sell? The site may include advertising but must be free from heavy marketing or promotion of products.”

From www.usa.gov/linking-policy (archive.is/8wLvu)

All these rules have been blatantly violated by Obama’s administration in the climate debate. Illegal external links from .gov have boosted climatist and leftist websites, including websites that are under the control of foreign governments and outright hate sites. Additional weight is propagated from directly linked sites because links from highly ranked web pages are given higher weight by search engines. Thus, inappropriate links from the .gov domains to climate alarmism/cult websites boosted (and continue to boost) the search rankings of alarmist websites in general. Ordinary web users assume that the sites appearing at the top of search results in Google and other search engines are trustworthy, and accept climate alarmism claims as truths.

I conducted research into inappropriate (possibly illegal) links on government websites and, consequently, boosted certain climate cult and other partisan websites.

Research into Inappropriate Links from .GOV websites

The research included only subdomains under NASA.gov, NOAA.gov, and EPA.gov. The research excluded Climate.gov and GlobalChange.gov (formerly USGCRP.gov) for their obvious mission to drum up climate alarmism and for their probability of containing illegal (for governmental publications) content and links. Links to the website in the domain .edu were left out of the scope of this research, despite government financing of almost all existing educational institutions. The websites of the former mainstream media and other popular websites were left out of scope of the research as well. The research included only some climate alarmist and partisan websites, and there were technical limits to the ability to discover links.

Google and other search engines probably give additional weight to links from NASA.gov and NOAA.gov on scientific topics. Thus, EPA.gov, NASA.gov, and NOAA.gov must have become major providers of “link entity” to the websites of environmentalist groups, the Center for American Progress, climatist hate sites, etc.

The following table shows examples of alarmist and leftist websites and which among the Three (EPA.gov, NASA.gov, NOAA.gov) are linked to them, thus giving them “link equity” (links rel=”follow”).

Destination \ Source on .gov EPA.gov NASA.gov NOAA.gov Notorious Climatist Hate Sites desmogblog.com desmogblog.com NASA NOAA skepticalscience.com skepticalscience.com NASA NOAA Michael Mann & Fenton Communications PR realclimate.org realclimate.org NASA NOAA Democrat Party & Hard Left Center for American Progress americanprogress.org, thinkprogress.org EPA NASA NOAA motherjones.com motherjones.com EPA NASA NOAA MoveOn.org moveon.org NOAA Big Green, Domestic Environmental Defense Fund edf.org EPA NASA NOAA National Resources Defense Council nrdc.org EPA NASA NOAA National Wildlife Federation nwf.org EPA NASA NOAA World Resources Institute wri.org EPA NASA NOAA Sierra Club sierraclub.org EPA NASA NOAA Union of “Concerned Scientists” ucsusa.org NASA NOAA Big Green, Foreign Greenpeace greenpeace.org NASA NOAA WWF panda.org NASA NOAA Foundations Pew Charitable Trusts (assets > $4B) pewenvironment.org NASA NOAA Packard Foundation (assets > $5B) packard.org NASA NOAA Energy Foundation (pass thru) ef.org NOAA Other Notorious Examples Alliance for Climate Protection (Al Gore) climaterealityproject.org NASA Rainforest Alliance Network ran.org NASA climatedesk.org climatedesk.org NASA takepart.com takepart.com NASA NOAA treehugger.com treehugger.com NASA NOAA Center for International Environmental Law ciel.org NASA Environmental Law Institute eli.org EPA NOAA Grist grist.org EPA EESI eesi.org EPA Earth911 earth911.org EPA Environmental Justice OLT ejolt.org EPA Ocean Conservancy (linked to Senator Whitehouse) oceanconservancy.org NASA Certain Foreign Governments Al Jazeera (Qatar Emirate Broadcasting) aljazeera.com NASA Government of China .gov.cn NASA NOAA Pravda (*) english.pravda.ru NASA Weirdly High–Ranked Individual Pages Bad Astronomy blog (**) www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html NASA Andrew Revkin of the NY Times dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com NASA NOAA

The raw data is available at https://defyccc.com/docs/GovLinksAnalysis.zip (50 MB)

(*) Pravda.ru is a descendant of the main publications of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but is privately owned now.

(**) Bad Astronomy (what a disarmingly honest name!) is a blog of Phil Plait. This blog has been smearing climate realists and peddling alarmist pseudo-science for years. Phil Plait, the confessed bad astronomer, wrote a script for a new movie of Bill Nye, the fake Science Guy. On March 19, 2017, some links from NASA.gov pointed to URLs under badastronomy.com, which forwarded them to www.blastr.com/tags/bad-astronomy, featuring more writing by Phil Plait.

DesmogBlog, Skeptical Science, the Center for American Progress (the likely nerve center of the Democrat Party), MoveOn.org, Greenpeace, WWF, Sierra Club and other Big Green, Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection (climaterealityproject.org), Al Gore’s friend and benefactor Al Jazeera, the Chinese government, and even Pravda.ru – all of them benefitted, and probably continue to benefit, from illegal links from one or more of the three investigated governmental subdomains (the Three).

The analysis has been done using data collected from September 2016 to December 2016. Only some of the most familiar outside sites are mentioned; the total number of improper external sites is hundreds for each of the Three. Only links carrying link equity were considered. Link equity helps boost the leftist and climate alarmism websites to appear high in climate-related searches. These websites also pass their link equity to other alarmist and extremist websites. Nevertheless, a link to cato.org on NOAA.gov has been noticed.

All Climate Cult Content and External Links must be removed from Government Websites

In my opinion, President Trump’s cabinet must remove all leftist propaganda, including climate pseudoscience and the climate cult, from U.S. government websites. As far as the websites of agencies whose sole mission is inflaming with climate hysteria (climate.gov, globalchange.gov), they can be replaced with a single page that reads, “We apologize for the lies, exaggerations, support of evil agendas, and the abuse of public trust committed through this website.” This can be done even before those agencies officially close.

Of course, when all illegal leftist and climatist propaganda is removed from governmental websites, pandemonium in the media is sure to ensue. Leftists, environmentalists, and the former mainstream media will bellow that science has been silenced and freedom of speech is being trampled – but they would be shouting the same accusations anyway, whether Trump’s cabinet removes the propaganda or not! One example of this type of behavior is the absurd accusation that Trump’s administration intended to destroy collected climate data. The former MSM widely reported this as a fact, despite the absence of any factual foundation behind this fantasy. Multiple projects, with funny names like “The Data Refuge Project,” were created to preserve allegedly “endangered data.” These projects might serve a good purpose, though – they will make it harder for Gavin Schmidt and his accomplices to destroy evidence of data fabrication.

Leftists, enviros, and their accomplices cannot be accommodated. The George W. Bush administration bent itself backwards to try to accommodate them on science and climate politics. In 2001, George W. Bush appointed John Marburger, a Democrat, to the position of Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he remained for eight years. Nevertheless, the wolf pack of enviros and the hand-fed media kept accusing the Bush administration of “manipulating science for political purposes,” “censoring scientific results,” and “silencing the science” the entire time.

While serving as Director of GISS NASA (a high-ranking governmental position) in the period of the George W. Bush Administration, notorious James Hansen gave hundreds of speeches promoting climate alarmism. Dr. James Hansen has collected more than a million dollars from special interests for these speeches and other alarmist activities. Nobody moved a finger to prevent Hansen from using his governmental post for promoting his personal views and interests. Despite this, the media chorus still claimed that Hansen was being muzzled!

Today’s media is even more dishonest and left than it was during the time of George W. Bush. However, a large segment of the public has caught on and lost trust in the former MSM. Clearly, there is no benefit in trying to accommodate the left and the former MSM. There is no gain in pandering to it and no loss in standing up to it. But there is gain in fulfilling the expectations of the silent majority and a duty to restore the integrity of the government’s communication with U.S. citizens.

Even more importantly, all individuals and organizations responsible for turning U.S. government websites into climate cult mouthpieces should be removed. An investigation into the financial links between them and private corporations should be conducted. Putatively “non-profit” and “charitable” corporations are not exempt from the relevant laws.

Thanks to H.J. for collaboration in writing this article.

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