They’re certainly not getting honest, but at least they’re learning that they can’t get away with the obvious lies.
It’s been over 30 days since I submitted my Petition for Correction Under teh ONDCP Information Quality Guidelines regarding their misuse of NHTSA study data to claim numbers of impaired drivers. They haven’t yet responded, but it appears that they got the message.
On the Drug Czar’s “blog,” they report about soon-to-be-resigning Deputy Director Tom McLellan speaking at an event about drugged driving. Note the caution:
Speaking at the closing luncheon of the national conference, Deputy Director McLellan stated that according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s 2007 Roadside Survey, 16% of weekend, nighttime drivers tested positive for the presence of an illicit or licit drug, the most common of which are marijuana and cocaine. This Study marks the first time that a Roadside Survey included a test for the presence of drugs among drivers.
All true. Carefully avoided this time were words like “impaired” or “under the influence.” And, of course, the paragraph is completely useless for making any kind of conclusion about drugged driving. But, pathetically, it’s the best they’ve got. So they just have to hope the listener will make his/her own false assumption.
It also says something about the character of the ONDCP staff that, faced with a correction of fact, they choose to weasel around it rather than face it.
I know if I worked in such a place, I wouldn’t want to stick around long. I’d probably make some sort of comment about how I was just “ill-suited to government work.”
I think they waited too long,caution should have been their byword from the day they started. Now they have millions of people that will try to hold their feet too the fire at the slightest provocation.
They keep exchanging one lie for another, a recycling program of sorts.
I think Bob Barr has “seen the light.”