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White House Office of Administration Not Subject to FOIA, Says White House
An anonymous reader writes with this story at USA Today: The White House is removing a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject requests for records to that office. The White House said the cleanup of FOIA regulations is consistent with court rulings that hold that the office is not subject to the transparency law.
This is not the kind of "hope and change" I voted for, Mr. President.
as long as the rules don't apply to me and my subordinates.
Because were living in the Roman Empire.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Oh well....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Or the opposite.
And I will harshly persecute anyone who dares to break that secrecy.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
My first thought is "Ok, can I use this logic to find a reason why I'm not subject to paying taxes?"
It's so sad it's funny.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2008/11/the_tmi_presidency.html
The TMI Presidency
How much transparency do we really want from Obama?
By Christopher Beam
John Podesta and Josh Bolten. Click image to expand. John Podesta and Josh Bolten
Nov. 12 2008 8:15 PM
During a presidential campaign, there's no such thing as over-sharing. Barack Obama promised to run the most transparent White House in historyâ"disclosing donations, shunning lobbyists, and broadcasting important meetings on C-SPAN. Transition captain John Podesta reiterated the point Tuesday when he said Obama's would be "the most open and transparent transition in history." ...
Is there such a thing as too much information? Yesâ"but only if there's no way of processing it. The key to increasing transparency, therefore, is to allow people to interpret what they're seeing. That means not just more documents but better databases, more navigable interfaces, and more visual aids to help people analyze information. If you've got that, there's no such thing as over-sharing.
What ugly things are you trying to hide Mr. President?
The fact that you are no longer represent people of this country?
The fact that your actions are exact opposite of your rhetoric claims?
Is it an attempt to remove any possibility for people to learn and act,
provided they will wake up one day?
Makes me wonder ....
To the casual (and admittedly distant) observer of Obama's Presidency it looks as if he has finally had to admit that he will be unable to change things as he initially wished and that ultimately he did not fully comprehend the 'complexities' of the office.
Cynics would say that he was naive in believing that he could effect any fundamental change in areas such as government transparency but we need more people that believe they can or we might as well all pack up and head for that island (away from potential cyclones of course...)
Do as I say, not as I do.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Then it shouldn't receive taxpayer funding. Nor should any other TLA that thinks it is above the law. This concept requires testicular fortitude from congress. A citizenry that cared more for rule of law and liberty over 'identity politics' pity parties would help.
Why isn't there outrage about this in the mainstream media? They are sheeple. Maybe the NSA has the goods on them...
Radar and laser don't apply to me if I'm speeding. Right? Oh.
FCC rules don't apply to me using interesting hardware to intercept cellphone traffic. Right? Oh.
Regulations don't apply to me if I want to sell firearms to people in Mexico. Right? Oh.
Yep, this seems par for the course. We peasants can go fuck ourselves while the ruling class does what they please. I mean we can't expect them to reveal the horrific things that are going on to protect corporate trade secrets. Sheesh.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Some times the only fix is a restart, a people revolution so to speak. When the people in power start to believe they are no longer under the same rules that the rest are its time to remove them any why possible, yes its bloody but that can be the cause of freedom. Look back a few hundred years then look forward again and you may understand. If not then you have no reason to complain.
Ones that watch the watchers
(.)-(.)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment
Transparency and Open Government
Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government
My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.
Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.
Government should be collaborative. Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperateamong themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.
I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.
This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.
BARACK OBAMA
This is not the kind of "hope and change" I voted for, Mr. President.
Apparently he forgot the words of Abraham Lincoln: "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
Subject says it all!
am I right guys?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Considering Republicans fought him at every turn - what did you expect.
Parties fight - it's what they do. If they didn't, their "constituents" might go from slightly upset to mildly upset. Good/great Presidents find a way to compromise through all of the fighting. Do you think Reagan didn't fight with Tip? Clinton didn't fight with Newt? You may not agree with what they got passed, but they got shit done.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
The question is, did you learn your lesson? Will you stop supporting the one party Republocrat system next election?
Never supported it in the first place but for better or worse that does not matter. There is nothing I am going to be able to do that will make it go away. Furthermore it's not as if the (theoretical) alternatives are somehow more compelling. Libertarian? Green? There's nothing out there that I think is likely to be meaningfully better even if I could somehow be convinced that a third party somehow had a realistic chance at attaining power.
The ONLY thing that will make our current "two" party system go away is to change the voting system to something other than first past the post. Until that goes away we are stuck with the two party system and I don't think it is likely to go away any time soon.
Aren't regulations great? When they're no longer convenient they can just *Poof!* make them disappear. When it is convenient to have a new regulation, *Poof!* it appears just as easily.
We need less regulatory fiat in our government. This is the kind of stuff that should be codified into law.
Clear, concise law at that. Not 2,000+ pages of crap nobody has read.
Love sees no species.
Transparency my ass.
That settles it. I made a mistake.
"Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing," Obama declared when he first took office. Except the White house? Fuck Obama, and of course, fuck the government!
Stress is a medical condition that was explicitly mentioned in Prop 215.
So what? That doesn't make weed a medically appropriate treatment for stress that requires a prescription. People drink alcohol to relieve stress too so are you claiming we should start asking doctors to write prescriptions for Jack Daniels?
If you want to smoke weed I have no issue with that but the number of people who smoke weed for any valid medical reason is close to zero. The claim that it is medicinal is a fig leaf people use to circumvent the (stupid) laws regarding marijuana. I think the fact that it is illegal is a huge waste of money, brains and time but please don't insult my intelligence by claiming that it is a medically necessary treatment for stress or glaucoma or any of the other hundreds of "ailments" that people claim so they can get high.
That settles it. The only options are mistakes.
During the McCarthy hearings, this was a primary bone of contention between McCarthy and Eisenhower (who, despite both being Republicans, personally despised one another). Ike insisted that the president's records, and those of the executive branch, could NOT be subpoena'd for McCarthy's hearings.
When the courts tended toward finding that the PRESIDENT's correspondence and files were sacrosanct by the separation of powers rules*, this didn't apply to the State Dept records, so Ike had the State Dept file cabinets physically moved to the Oval Office.
McCarthy, hinting that the President was doing this because he might have something embarrassing in the files, had finally crossed the line by maligning a figure of such public reverence that the public couldn't tolerate it. Logically, he was perfectly correct; it seems unreasonable that Ike would have gone to such lengths to simply defend a presidential prerogative on principle alone, but then again his personal enmity for McCarthy likely played a role as well.
*final curious appendix to this story: one of the Junior Congressmen working for McCarthy, who saw how the courts went to the mat to defend the IRONCLAD sanctity of Ike's files from Congressional snooping would later find that such precedents were little defense in protecting his own files, Mr Richard Nixon.
-Styopa
Oh, damn! I always thought that Obama's 2008 promise of a transparent government meant opening up data instead of sealing it behind a metric shitton of ambiguous laws and executive orders:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU0m6Rxm9vU
So remember this, people: whether you vote for Republicans or Democrats in the upcoming elections you're all voting for the same thing! Forget your political disagreements and forma single-party like China has!
White House not subject to election laws. Do away with that pesky "voting" once and for all. Hey this executive order thing is pretty good isn't it?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Just think how much money will save by not having all those pesky congressman and senators!
it's alright, when we need to know something we can just ask the chinese or edward
Hillary is way ahead of the game already.
Nobody reads anymore:
"In 2009, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the Office of Administration was not subject to the FOIA, "because it performs only operational and administrative tasks in support of the president and his staff and therefore, under our precedent, lacks substantial independent authority."
The appeals court ruled that the White House was required to archive the e-mails, but not release them under the FOIA. Instead, White House e-mails must be released under the Presidential Records Act — but not until at least five years after the end of the administration."
Nothing to see her folks.
There is something to see here, you Obama-pandering fool.
What was that about not reading?
Oh, yeah:
Unlike other offices within the White House, which were always exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, the Office of Administration responded to FOIA requests for 30 years. Until the Obama administration, watchdog groups on the left and the right used records from the office to shed light on how the White House works.
Geez, you're Obama's Monica. How is it under the Oval Office desk?
Why do people keep believing the bullshit that comes out of a politicians mouth? Why?
Rule #1 in life is that you can't trust no one so don't put your life into anybody's hands. Stupid monkeys. Of course Obama was selling you bullshit and he continues to do so today even when we have video and articles online from viable sources(including the government itself) that contradicts Obama.
Obama ended the war on Iraq? NO, Bush Administration and Iraqi government in 2008 set a date for troops withdrawal before Obama took office. Same with the bailouts and tax relief. Obamacare is a huge failure like Medicare D which was passed during Bush Administration. Bush had Georgia and now Obama has Ukraine. So, what does Obama do to step out of Bushes shadow? Nothing really, he continues causing havoc and destruction in the Middle and fucking around with the Russians.
Obama is bush #2. And we will get Bush#3 with Hillary Clinton and so on.
The negotiations over the ACA were all held behind closed & locked doors with only Democrats and lobbyists allowed in. C-SPAN was unable to get any cameras in (so much for Obama's campaing promise that it would all be done live on CSPAN). No republicans were in those rooms (the Democrats even changed the locks on the doors) and the Democrats have never release any document that names the people who were in those rooms.
IF (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here) you saw some "open discussion" on TV, then I'll tell you what you saw: In that spring, facing mounting criticism of all the secrecy, Obama invited a bunch of politicians into a meeting that WAS televised live on TV in which he lectured the Republicans to "compromise" (i.e. "do it my way") and told them he would give them about 2 months to change their minds. When John McCain objected, Obama said "I won, you lost" and left the so-called meeting... then the Democrats broke their word and went ahead and voted on final passage without the promised delay.
Democrats OWN "Obamacare" and every single bad effect. THEY injected the government fully into this aspect of our lives, made it illegal to access healthcare in a not-approved-by-Democrats way (for example, if you are an American citizen it is now illegal to buy a new health insurance policy between March and November of each year - a SHOCKING destruction of freedom). Every person who is harmed or dies is their fault now - twas not so before government was involved in the equation.
This is not as bad as "Hillary Care" was going to be... SHE proposed controlling costs by making healthcare harder to get by reducing the number of doctors (by federal caps on the number of people who could attend medical school) - she TRIED to put a good spin on her plan, but it flopped because people could READ. Sadly, every bad effect of Obamacare was predicted... unfortunately, Obama supporters just proved to bee too gullible to pay attention to basic facts and math... They heard "Hope and Change" and their brains switched off.
When you vote for the lesser of two evils, evil wins every time.
The ACA was NOT written by ANY Republicans. ONE "Think Tank" (Heritage) published ONE paper years ago suggesting an insurance mandate (which was NOT ever the policy of the Republican Party or of any National Republican Candidate, but daily Kos, HuffPo and other lefties ran with that as a way to blame the GOP for "Obamacare". Obama did NOT agree to ANY Republican plan. Go back and look at all the coverage; the Democrats who passed it took complete credit for it at the time, and ridiculed Republicans for opposing it - they claimed the plan would be so popular that Reupblicans would be unable to win future elections based on the bad reputation they would have from opposing it.
It was not until later, when milions of Americans had their health insurance taken away and Obama's "if you like your doctor..." and "if you like your plan..." lies were laid bare, that the left started pushing the gigantic lie that Obamacare was actually a Republican plan and they went digging through obscure think tank archives looking for anything they could present as a smoking gun.
If Obamacare is actually a bad Republican plan, then why do the Democrats refuse to allow it to be repealed and refuse to let the Republicans make any changes to it??????
This was a bad move. They can just deny FOIA requests anyway, or otherwise redact the everloving out of them. Why go through the big public thing of saying no and getting all the bad "nice transparency" fluff.
"Duty" -one of my Favorite misused words!
Robert Heinlein said it well...
"Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect."
http://www.curtisweyant.com/blog/heinlein-on-duty/l for quote in context)
If one if fact believes that voting is 'pointless' or counterproductive then one should make a very public point of not voting.
Possibly also relevant from RAH:
"The two highest achievements of the human mind
are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty".
Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute,
get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself,
but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed."
Irony: $CAPTCHA == "banned"
good thing a democrat is in office...this would be all over the news how we live under some regime otherwise
Start a website where voters can come register and log their votes to be reconciled with the government #'s. I'm certainly not alone in being highly skeptical of the process where I hand in a vote sheet that a worker feeds into a hopped up paper shredder looking contraption and tells me I'm done. No receipt for even showing up. Nothing.
oops. I forgot about the "I voted" sticker...
"Trust us. It's a better way."
I believe we are well past the point now where one could say "elections can't be rigged". And there's no way for us to know/audit/investigate because we have nothing but so-called "polls" to hint at the truth. I really find it hard to believe that 3rd party votes still come in around 3-5%. I could have sworn that almost everyone I talked to the last cycle agreed that it was time for demoblican/repubocrat thieves to go.....
For me, the greatest weakness likely being exploited in politics(after voter..... well, just voters) is likely unremovable from the process....... the secret ballot. Your right to vote secretly without coersion or consequence makes a great screen for tomfoolery.
Unless.... a statistically significant percentage of us are willing to put aside our right to a secret ballot and are willing to publically display our votes for the purpose of establishing court worthy evidence to investigate official vote outcomes that appear statistically unlikely. Perhaps all participants could indicate willingness to sign affidavit if needed?
I could see a website with anything from just a voter ID #'s and their votes database to a full featured, wizbang, get jiggy wid it US politics portal where you can record your cats vote preferences once they're allowed to vote.
But, we've got to have an alternative tally for the US vote, and, voting intentions. For all to see that there is in fact support for non dem/rep candidates, and to provide legally admissable evidence to pursue vote fraud investigations.
Does anything like this already exist?
Any web designers around here? Database admins? Security experts? ;)
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
RomneyCare, which ACA is based on, has had a decent reception in MA; and EVERY other industrial country has a gov't-assisted healthcare or healthcare insurance system. It's not like it's uncharted territory. True, the details can use tuning, but the big picture is not new.
Table-ized A.I.
Burning the whole fucking thing down and start over looks a hell of a lot more appealing than yet another four years of the slow erosion of our rights
I dunno about you, but what happened during the past six years of Obama administration was definitely not a _slow_ erosion of our rights !!
If this was a Republican White House, the story would be mostly tagged "republicans". But because it's a Democratic White House, it's tagged "government". Obviously, this is a story about a Democratic administration, but somehow most of the slashdot readershit is too dumb to believe that it is because of the principles of the Democratic party that this is happening and not despite of them.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
A politician lied. What are the odds?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
...sunshine isn't the best disinfectant after all. Or the White House has an infection it doesn't want cured.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!