{"id":3688,"date":"2019-10-22T06:41:15","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T06:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/?p=3688"},"modified":"2019-10-22T06:44:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T06:44:31","slug":"the-white-house-didnt-like-my-agencys-research-so-it-sent-us-to-missouri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/10\/22\/the-white-house-didnt-like-my-agencys-research-so-it-sent-us-to-missouri\/","title":{"rendered":"The White House didn\u2019t like my agency\u2019s research. So it sent us to Missouri."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Crane-Droesch – Washington Post<\/a> – 10\/21\/19<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Out of the blue, in August 2018, agriculture secretary George \u201cSonny\u201d Perdue announced that my agency and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture would relocate from Washington, D.C., to some yet-to-be-determined location. He claimed that this would lower costs and bring us closer to \u201cstakeholders.\u201d That stated justification was a fig leaf for the administration\u2019s true intentions. We didn\u2019t need to sit next to a corn field to analyze agricultural policy, and Perdue knew that. He wanted researchers to quit their jobs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t take the threat seriously at first: Federal relocations tend to be incredibly complicated, and I basically believed that the Trump administration\u2019s incompetence would get in the way their malevolence. But apparently, the politicals in the Office of the Secretary were motivated. They didn\u2019t like it when our research was at odds with the administration\u2019s narratives. The USDA wanted to restrict access to food stamps, for example \u2014 but according to our models, food assistance programs were often a positive multiplier for local economies. They certainly didn\u2019t appreciate my colleagues\u2019 paper showing that the 2017 tax cut would give the biggest benefits to the wealthiest farmers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…<\/p>\n

That\u2019s over now. Our union estimates that of 180 employees who were assigned to relocate, 141 declined. They weren\u2019t willing to uproot their families, sacrifice their spouses\u2019 careers, or in some cases disrupt their medical treatment, for an agency that remained firmly in Trump\u2019s crosshairs. The agency has managed to hire a few sharp new researchers in Kansas City, but they\u2019re just a drop in the bucket compared to what\u2019s being lost, and it\u2019ll take them a long time to learn their fields.<\/p>\n

All the people who study genetically modified organisms left. The team that studies patent law and innovation is gone. Experts on trade and international development, farm finance and taxes all left. Many people transferred to other agencies in USDA, where they\u2019ll help implement programs, but will no longer have a mandate to produce the essential research that\u2019s needed for sound policymaking. Because the publishing staff all left, dozens of reports on subjects from veterans\u2019 diets to organic foods are delayed. Projects that have been years in the making, studying issues from honeybees to potentially harmful herbicides, will never see the light of day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Crane-Droesch – Washington Post – 10\/21\/19 … Out of the blue, in August 2018, agriculture secretary George \u201cSonny\u201d Perdue announced that my agency and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture would relocate from Washington, D.C., to some yet-to-be-determined location. He claimed that this would lower costs and bring us closer to \u201cstakeholders.\u201d … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,11,13,14,15,17,19],"tags":[2197,2196,2198,1972],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-sergneri","post-3688","format-standard","category-climate-change","category-ethical-and-green-living","category-it-failures","category-politics","category-racism","category-science","category-thinking-about","category-trump","post_tag-economic-research-service","post_tag-george-sonny-perdue","post_tag-politicals","post_tag-usda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3688"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3694,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688\/revisions\/3694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}