Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

White House Office of Administration Not Subject to FOIA, Says White House

Posted by timothy on from the well-they-certainly-are-transparent dept.

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.

10 of 334 comments (clear)

  1. Transparency in Government is good! by Peter+Simpson · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...except when it applies to us?

    This is not the kind of "hope and change" I voted for, Mr. President.

    1. Re:Transparency in Government is good! by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Transparency in Government is good! by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Funny

      At this point, I have come to the conclusion that Obama has difficulty distinguishing between "transparency" and "invisibility."

    3. Re:Transparency in Government is good! by knightghost · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Neither major party supports the country. Vote for a 3rd option.

    4. Re:Transparency in Government is good! by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Incorrect. They did have an open discussion; I watched parts of it. However, it appeared GOP had already decided before the meeting that they wanted to kill ACA rather than shape it. Because of that, the "discussion" quickly morphed into the usual culture-war lectures and slogans rather than bill details.

      I do credit O for trying it.

      To give an IT analogy, it would be like a GUI design meeting where one side adamantly wanted a command line interface and thought all GUI's stank.

      Fred: "Bob, do you think the button should go on the top or the bottom?"

      Bob: "Screw buttons, GUI's are for sissies and encourage OS bloat dependency."

      Fred: "Mark, how about you, where should the button go?"

      Mark: "I'll tell you where to shove the button! I refuse to participate in the GUI take-over of computers. This will ruin the fabric of computing society and kill IT jobs!"
           

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    5. Re:Transparency in Government is good! by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

      WTF? Nobody that voted Nader was sane.

      You seem to misunderstand the point.

      No one who voted for Nader cared about his sanity - 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.

      We literally have political dissidents seeking asylum in Russia - Really think about that for a minute. Russia. The big enemy (drugs and terrorism and copyright violators and Cuba aside), notorious for its human rights abuses and opaque near-totalitarian government. And our political refugees flee there?

      People didn't vote for Nader to vote for Nader. They voted for Nader to vote for "anyone else".

    6. Re:Transparency in Government is good! by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The wags would say that if voting could change anything, the politicians would make it illegal.

      Actually, I don't really buy that. But, voting only changes something when the electorate is educated and voters take their voting duty seriously. This doesn't happen in the U.S. for a majority of voters. We only need to see who gets elected and their track records to know this.

      For every person who is making an informed decision based on their beliefs, and their understanding of the candidates and their positions (and I would guess that the /. audience has more than its share of these), there are several low-information voters who are deciding solely on whose commercial hits all the right notes.

      Normally, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but there is way too much evidence, given the kinds of polls you see about the level of general knowledge of the average American, to believe that most Americans are making educated decisions on whom to vote for. There are other issues, such as our voting system pretty much forcing a two-party system to arise, but just watching the nonsense that comes out of the mouths of many of our elected officials says a lot. In a better world, a lot of these people would have been laughed off of the ballots.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
  2. Most transparent Admn ever.... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ....man, I'm glad he's kept so SOOOO many of his election year promises. Transparency was one of the big ones I actually liked in what he was saying.

    Oh well....

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re:Most transparent Admn ever.... by HBI · · Score: 5, Informative

      He wasn't ready for the job. He can't work with people - if Clinton managed it with Gingrich, he could have done the same today. Hell, Gingrich was smarter than these boobs today. He has a Nixonian level of paranoia and vindictiveness. Lastly, he has Valerie Jarrett to insulate him from reality. He gives a good prepared speech and has the best political team money can buy, but he's a freaking cipher otherwise and entirely lacks the personal touch unarmed with a teleprompter.

      Given the disconnect between his public persona and his actual performance, is it no wonder that most of the promises were broken? The promises were made by Axelrod and Plouffe...

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    2. Re:Most transparent Admn ever.... by AntEater · · Score: 5, Insightful

      His election was the triumph of marketing over substance!

      --
      Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....