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Obama Administration Transparency Getting Worse
schwit1 writes "The government's own figures from 99 federal agencies covering six years show that halfway through its second term, the administration has made few meaningful improvements in the way it releases records. In category after category — except for reducing numbers of old requests and a slight increase in how often it waived copying fees — the government's efforts to be more open about its activities last year were their worst since President Barack Obama took office."
“This is the most transparent administration in history,” -- Barack Obama, February 2013
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." -- Napoleon, Animal Farm, by George Orwell
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Unless someone is planning to pull a Kennedy on him, he's got 34 months to go...
Yep, I went there!
See folks, no thanks to Dick Chaney, the Bush Administration grabbed more power for the Executive branch.
And when folks like me protested, we were labeled "Liberal" or "UnAmerican" or some such derogatory term.
Now, the next guy has all that power.
See?
Our Constitution has checks and balances for a reason. A BIll of Rights for a reason. And when we try to be selective in there application, it backfires.
Also, this just shows how corrupt our Ruling Class is.
For those of you who were "In Living Color" fans and remember Damon Wayans character "Homey the Clown"; I'd like to say that Obama is "Obama the Man."
..
Captch...."whimper" - ain't that right ....
in what manner?
From a POTUS that is the most secretive about his own past?
Mod this up. Slashdot is not a political blog. This is a pure politics story that does not belong here. End of story.
I'm curious about the limited scope of the article. Wouldn't it be more useful to compare the 6 yr average vs. previous administrations instead of last year vs. the previous few years.
fuck this fake ass democracy, establish dictatorship of the proletariat
Spying on citizens is one thing, but to think the CIA was spying on Dianne Feinstien and her Senate Select Committee on Intelligence really crosses the line.
“This is the most transparent administration in history,” -- Barack Obama, February 2013
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." -- Napoleon, Animal Farm, by George Orwell
I appreciate that.
What I think we the people should be doing now is, instead of picking on individual office holders - who happen to be a member of a particular party - we should be picking on the ruling class.
See, there WILL be folks who think that you are partisan and a Fox News junky and they will not get they subtleties of your post.
I think all of us need to just hold all parties to the fire - ignoring the false separation created by corporate interests to boost ratings of their networks (Fox and MSNBC).
Our political class has been very adept in selecting topics that create heated and divisive fights - not debates - but fights. It's been going on for quite a while but now, it's gotten to the point of being ridiculous.
I blame the profit motive of mass media and the fact that people get sucked into listening too what they want to hear.
For example, I am Pro-Choice or Pro-Murder (as you see fit), but at the same time, .....I watched an abortion and cried - it wasn't even my own.
Then I see the kids who are put into the foster care system and see how fucked up they become. Only White babies get a chance at a loving home - and even then - if they have developmental problems, all bets are off (You WILL see them on death row.).
I am troubled.
The last 5+ years of Obama's failure to forgo the criminal secrecy of the previous administration only demonstrates the raw genius of Bush.
He was just that fucking brilliant.
At least third parties have stepped up, and I would say are doing a far better job at Government transparency.
And who cares about transparency? Great, now I can see in minute detail the human rights abuses, and constitutionally illegal practices of the government on a constant and institutional level. Yay, that totally fixes the problem.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
it sounds pretty reasonable, i think hitler got a bad rap.
He promised change.
...
He was too busy Shilling healthcare.gov
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Really? You (schwit1) must be disappointed on a regular basis.
Sorry, even if Obama really wanted to change things, he's still an elected. The bureaucracy marches on and very rarely cares about the comings and goings of temporary staff, even if they are the boss.
I politician *lied* to me?! I feel so disillusioned....
He wasn't lying, we all just heard him wrong. He made us hope for change. I'm sure hoping for a change right now. Right now I'm just hoping for a GOOD president next time, liberal or conservative hardly matters. Either Kennedy or Reagan would be a thousand times better than our last few presidents.
Is anything critical of this administration right wing or are they so wonderful in their totality that they are like pony, butterfly farts? Anytime something is posted that is published you proglocrats look like a bunch shambling, drooling zombies. Wake up, you got snookered, get over it and open your eyes. This guy is the worst president every and you fucks need to own it and fix it...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
When Obama talked about transparency, he meant of the citizens.
Sorry I couldn't resist. Let the flame wars begin
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
Thats what change looks like.
Well, he did promise change.
Since taking the Office of the President of the United States of America President Obama has erected the "Security" wall along the Canada and Mexico border.
Mr. Obama, "Tare down this wall !"
a law that would simply require the president to obey the law!
When the executive is subject to the law, you have a democracy or a republic
When the exectuive is able to write or change the law, you have monarchy and tyranny
I never thought the Democrats would be able to out-evil themselves in Presidents - their guy, Woodrow Wilson, was my previous bet for the absolute worst as he, among other things, segregated the US government by race (that's right, if you were educated by unionized school teachers (Democrat activists) you probably thought the US was ALWAYS segregated by race and that this ended with the civil rights act under Johnson in the 1960's). Black Amercians were always free in the northern colonies and they even participated in the Revolutionary war. The southern colonies had slaves before, during, and after the Revolutionary war (until the civil war). The Constitution DID NOT count blacks as 3/5ths of a person... it counted "non-free" persons as 3/5ths (i.e. blacks in the north were always full people and only southern slaves were 3/5ths for purposes of allocating seats in congress (to prevent southern states getting so much power in congress that they could spread slavery further)). The REAL introduction of OFFICIAL race-based segregation within the US federal government was by Democrat President Woodrow Wilson. Even on his WORST day, however, Woodrow Wilson did not imagine he was above the Constitution and could write and re-write laws on his own.
ALL politicians use trite slogans.
"Hope and Change" ring any bells???? "Four more years"??? "reduce, reuse, recycle"?
There's quite a range and a long history, but for some reason you only think such slogans are evidence of an idiot when they are used by Palin? I guess that makes you "anti-woman"... :-)
For all the swagger of Obama and his Palin-hating mindless-minions, the man has thus-far proven himself to be exactly the sort of brainless, foolish, dishonest dirtbag I expected a coke-snorting (by his own admission) dope-smoking (by his own admission) "community organizer" (rabble-rouser) with no history of ever doing anything productive to be. I'm neither surprised nor disappointed, execpt in this one way: Sooner or later the country was going to have a "first black president" (just as it will someday have a first woman-, a first hispanic-, a first asian- etc president) but it's truly sad that with so many brilliant and accomplished black Americans to choose from (many in science, medicine, the military, etc) who could have been amazing role models and true uniters, the man who will hold that spot forever in our history will be this hyper-divisive dishonest idiot (Obama).
you can keep your transparency
In one organization, unless someone wins 2/3rds of the vote, they draw straws from among the finalists. It works quite well, achieving what campaign finance reform is intended to achieve, without the free speech issues involved such as potentially making it illegal for a blogger to speak their opinion.
It makes a lot of dog-eat-dog campaigning unnecessary because the candidates aren't fighting tooth and nail for that extra 0.1% of the vote - just put up a pretty good candidate, who can get at least 20%-35% of the vote to get their name in the hat. Primaries, and therefore pandering to the extremes, aren't critical when someone can get elected without being chosen by either major party.
On the other hand, if JFK came back to life he'd win 2/3rds and win, as he should.
Why is it that when a Slashdot discussion tries holding a leftist to some neutral standard (like truth) you lefties go nuts? Has a Left-Wing Bot begun pasting responses on Slashdot?
It's a simple thing, but beyond the grasp of some idiots. If you only see "bad" when the other team does it (like spying on average citizens) then you are just a brain-dead partisan hack with nothing of value to say.
I was a right-leaner who was outraged by many of the things Bush43 did, and I feel entirely free to maintain my consistency and integrity by attacking Obama for this stuff too. If you defend Obama on this stuff, you have NO legitimate right to attack Bush for any of it.
I can relate to what you're saying. However, if by "the ruling class" you mean people in leadership positions - people who have built a successful business, people who have successfully organized large events like the Olympics, etc., you end up attacking anyone who has proven they can do a good job on big things - precisely the people we need to have leading.
Another option takes more work, but gets better results:
Identify the bad leaders, the morally corrupt and the incompetent. That would include Bush II, Obama, Ray Nagen, etc. Get rid of the bad ones and find good leaders. Good leaders might include Colin Powell and Robert Gates.
Third, along with identifying and eliminating bad leaders, we need structural changes. Other countries have better election systems we should consider, where you have to build a broad coalition to get elected. We need to look at ways to move away from the "American Idol" style popularity contest. There's some truth to calling Obama "President Kardashian" - many of his voters had no idea why they were voting for him, zero knowledge of the issues. We need to try to fix that.
Is the government trying to achieve transparency by shrouding its activitties in a cloak of invisibility?
No one in this forum thus far has stepped up to defend Obama's actions. This leaves me to believe that you're making stuff up. Mostly I hear people complaining that Obama is doing the same crap that Bush did which was just more of what Clinton was doing which was more than Bush Sr which was more than Reagan. Reagan seems to be where things spun out of control. The Clinton administration righted a good number of wrongs but they made a quite few as well.
As long as the rich make government do whatever they want we'll continue with the system we have. Ask yourself why even Reagan was able to solve childhood hunger but all presidents past him couldn't handle it despite a vastly larger economy?
So how would you propose fixing it? Besides shouting at invisible adversaries that is
"Same as the Old Boss..."