"Reality has a well-known liberal bias" & W's consistent response

From Thnik Progress:

Bush Administration Hides More Data, Shuts Down Website Tracking U.S. Economic IndicatorsThe 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’s negative coverage and insisting the United States is not headed toward a recession, despite what economists are predicting.

The Bush administration’s latest move is to simply hide the data. Forbes has awarded EconomicIndicators.gov one of its “Best of the Web” awards. As Forbes explains, the government site provides an invaluable service to the public for accessing U.S. economic data:

This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration and 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. The site simply links to the relevant department’s Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself–say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau’s site–is such an exercise in futility that it will convince you why this portal is necessary.

... sure enough, a visit to the page (EconomicIndicators.gov) reveals this greeting:

Due to budgetary constraints, the Economic Indicators service (http://www.economicindicators.gov) will be discontinued effective March 1, 2008.

I really want to see the economic analysis behind this decision.

We can't kill even one Pentagon weapon system - none is too expensive, I guess... BUT we think the few bucks it takes to maintain a useful webpage (that happens to link to perhaps embarrassing data) will put a dent in W's budget?

On the bright side: apparently they're leaving all the primary websites intact, so, with a little patience and luck, you can still track down the data you seek.

(An aside: I've had pretty good luck finding data from census, commerce, and treasury dept websites directly... it does take patience and a little guesswork, but with perseverance I've been able to find stuff.)