Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Rep Darrell Issa - What Are You Thinking?!?!

Sometimes, lunacy, idiocy, hypocrisy, and power even infects the most logical and sound amongst us. I can only pray that Rep Darrell Issa signed this without knowing what he was signing. Otherwise, it makes absolutely no sense.
US Representatives Darrel Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced a bill into the House of Representatives in mid-December that would roll back the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy, which mandates that any published research that was funded by the federal science agency be submitted to the publically accessible digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication in journals. The bill, H.R. 3699, would also make it illegal for other federal agencies to adopt similar open-access policies.
In case you are wondering, who might be behind this effort....
The legislation, referred to as the Research Works Act, is being applauded by the Association of American Publishers, a book publishing industry trade organization that claims the NIH policy and others like it undercut the scientific publishing business
Yep. Because the book publishers depend on the money from government privacy, seclusion and ingrained protectionism, they refuse to allow our government to produce content online.

Hello people. We are in a paper-less society. Remember? Oh.... and if I recall correctly, we are in the digital age. Time to give up on publishing. Especially using books that no one wants to buy.

Rep Issa, I pray that this is a late-night drinking mistake. I'm not sure why else you are teaming up with a Socialist Democrat on an anti-openness and anti-transparency bill. Didn't the secretive and lying Obama administration teach you anything? Didn't the hidden agenda behind Climategate reveal to you what must be kept open? Keeping anything secret, let alone information created through tax payer funding, allows corruption and lies to foster and flourish.

But then, shouldn't you know that already?

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