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Trump Administration Kills Open.Gov, Will Not Release White House Visitor Logs (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: It will never be said that the Trump presidency began with a presumption of openness. His pre-election refusal to release his tax returns set a bit of precedent in that regard. The immediate post-election muffling of government agency social media accounts made the administration's opacity goals um clearer. So, in an unsurprising move, the Trump administration will be doing the opposite of the Obama administration. The American public will no longer have the privilege of keeping tabs on White House visitors. TIME reports: "The Trump Administration will not disclose logs of those who visit the White House complex, breaking with his predecessor, the White House announced Friday. White House communications director Michael Dubke said the decision to reverse the Obama-era policy was due to 'the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.' Instead, the Trump Administration is relying on a federal court ruling that most of the logs are 'presidential records' and are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act." So, to further distance himself from the people he serves (and the people who elected him), Trump and his administration have shut down the transparency portal put in place by the previous Commander-in-Chief: "White House officials said the Administration is ending the contract for Open.gov, the Obama-era site that hosted the visitor records along with staff financial disclosures, salaries, and appointments. An official said it would save $70,000 through 2020 and that the removed disclosures, salaries and appointments would be integrated into WhiteHouse.gov in the coming months."
Did anyone feel it was ever "open" ?
I know Trump wants all the coal jobs back - but I'd think it would be hard to get back in the mines, with all these dead canaries piled up everywhere.
I'd call these warning signs of horrors to come - but the man has always been the living symbol of arrogance and greed, and if anyone didn't expect exactly the raw ineptitude and pride in that ineptitude that we're getting, I'd be amazed.
Republicans claim that Government can't solve any problems, and then make it their solemn job to prove that at every opportunity, and Trump is the latest in growing line of leaders exemplifying that determined inability to provide basic governance while wasting endless amounts of resources.
"Mr. Trump’s policy is a return to the one followed by presidents who preceded Mr. Obama." (NYT). No mention of that in the summary.
Trump will release full visitor logs five years after the current term ends.
Sure he will. Right after he released his tax returns.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Wow, we're saving $70,000 over 4 years. Why would you even say something if it's such a low figure? Seriously, it's 0.000000018% of the budget. That's like a guy that makes $100k trumpeting the fact that he saved $0.0018. Less than 2/10s of a penny. I'm sure nobody expected anything different from this president, when your whole reason for getting elected is so your family and friends can loot the treasury "openness" isn't high on your agenda.
Enigma
$70,000 is one HOLE of golf at Mar-a-Lago on any given weekend (using the standard $3M/trip metric, and assuming he plays two rounds).
That wasn't the math I was doing. Cost of running open.org for four years = 5% of a single weekend of Darth Cheeto charging the US population for wasting time.
Can someone please point me to the law or regulation requiring a sitting president or president-elect to release his or her tax returns?
Can someone please point me to the law or regulation that requires our government or government officials to maintain social media accounts?
Can someone please point me to the law or regulation that requires the executive branch to make White House visitor logs available for public review?
If you are going to be upset that they are no longer willingly providing this information, then perhaps the best thing to do would be to pass a law requiring them to do so. For those unfamiliar with our process here in the US, that would involve action from the legislative branch. Contact your legislative representatives and demand they do something if you are really that upset.
It really seems most people who would complain about the shuttering of open.gov let their outrage get the best of them before they finished the article, as it clearly states, "and that the removed disclosures, salaries and appointments would be integrated into WhiteHouse.gov in the coming months.". Ergo, all that information is going to be retained, its just moving locations.
Firstly, tax returns are not presidential records. Secondly, from the summary, which starts with a negative tone but includes a few tidbits at the end:
"the removed disclosures, salaries and appointments would be integrated into WhiteHouse.gov in the coming months"
It seems they mostly ended the contract to host open.gov. Perhaps the contractor was an Obama friend, who knows.
Of course, we can't know the truth just yet since both the White House and the press (ex. Techdirt) have no credibility.
I think that under Bernie it would be more like France.
No, it's vital to national security that the government be responsible to the people. You know what happened when there wasn't transparency about Iraq? ISIS happened.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Trump Administration Refusing To Disclose Names Of White House Diamond Elite Members
23K a year may sound like peanuts, but imagine, if it saves him but one trip to Mar A Lago to meet with undisclosed donors, we're starting to talk real money here.
It's not suddenly important. It's been important all along. Trying to claim otherwise is one of those Alternate Facts that Kellyann likes to blather about.
I couldn't care less if he used a loophole. Actually, I do care – I want a loophole too. Or I want his loophole closed. What I really care about though is that he might have sources of income that would indicate he has conflicts of interest. We already do have laws that prohibit conflicts of interest by executive branch members. Google "emoluments" for more info. While some claim those laws don't apply to the president, no court has yet ruled on it, and every president going back to at least Reagan has both released his taxes and put his assets into a blind trust to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest.
In the end, it's about how it looks. And Trump just looks bad for refusing to do those things. And a lot of other things too.
Hillary is no longer relevant.
No ties to Russia? So those bank loans and all the rest don't count? I think Trump has a bridge to sell to you if you are that gullible.
You mean the uranium deal regarding Russia’s nuclear power agency when it bought a controlling interest in a Toronto-based company? Which owns mines, mills and tracts of land in Wyoming, Utah and other U.S. states equal to about 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity (not produced uranium)? When Clinton was secretary of state, but didn’t have the power to approve or reject the deal and the State Department was only one of nine federal agencies that signed off on the deal, and only President Barack Obama had the power to veto it? That uranium "scandal"?
I tried to look up "Clinton campaign contributions". But mostly got Breitbart and FoxNews.....oh! and the ever accurate "shadowproof.com"
Of course Trump doesn't have annnny connections to Russia except "ornate gold" - I think in particular he FBI, NSA, CIA and both House and Senate Intelligence committees are investigating this love, in fact. Nothing at all there....probably
Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
It's the essence of the "If you haven't done anything wrong, why is your privacy so important to you" argument.
The salient difference being that privacy is to be enjoyed in abundance by citizens qua private individuals, but should to be afforded only sparingly to public officials qua public officials. Transparency, not privacy, is the the expectation we should have of government.
History shows that the privacy enjoyed by individual citizens is inversely proportional to the privacy government officials are permitted in the exercise of their power.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Furthermore, as the politifact link says, despite purchasing the extraction rights as part of a larger deal, they they never acquired export rights. So all that uranium was never at risk of leaving the US anyway.
But holy shit the lies about that so-called scandal are deafening. Almost like there was a vast conspiracy to bamboozle the american public.
The guy literally campaigned on not golfing.
Yet another promise broken.
"Because I'm going to be working for you, I'm not going to have time to play golf. Believe me! Believe me. Believe me folks."
08/08/2016
“I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” Trump, 69, tells ITK. "I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.”
TheHill.com 06/23/15
Oh please, the Russian plot narrative is ridiculous because of how much of a manchild Trump is. He's far too temperamental to reliably be part of a coherent plan. Focus on his actual shitty policies instead of trying to pretend that Clinton didn't ruin her own campaign.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Furthermore, as the politifact link says, despite purchasing the extraction rights as part of a larger deal, they they never acquired export rights. So all that uranium was never at risk of leaving the US anyway.
Likely they bought it for the interest in the Kazakhstan. You see, Kazakhstan is number 1 exporter of uranium. All other countries have inferior uranium.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Trump kills open.gov! He hates openness! He's a horrible person! I hate him and so should you!
vs.
To save a bit of money, the content on open.gov is moving to whitehouse.gov.
I know that Trump isn't well liked (especially here), but come on, guys. You're acting like children.
Love sees no species.
Oh good. Keep repeating "ignorant butt-hurt Socialists". Over and over. That'll win you some friends.
I'm not a Socialist – I'm actually a capitalist. I'm an honest capitalist. I'm a pragmatic capitalist. And 66M Americans – 3M more than voted for Twitler – aren't Socialist either. And your side's endless blathering about (((Socialists))) isn't going to magically make them Socialists either. (And I'm betting you live in one of those "socialist/welfare states" by which I mean your state receives more federal dollars than it collects in taxes, while my state pays more. I'd love to end that little "entitlement" you've got going there.)
And speaking of willful ignorance. Just keep on ignoring the fact that he's a facist, racist, misogynist, draft dodging, lying, cheating, tax dodging, pussy grabbing, bully, serial adulterer, and did I forget anything else? I'm sure I did. Go back and watch the video where he mocked the reporter with the speech impediment and tell me you're proud of that. Watch the videos where he told his jack booted thugs to kick the crap out of people, and then come back and tell us that that's how you want the rest of the world to see us. Go read the stories about the people he did business with and then didn't pay them what he agreed; then come back and tell us that's a guy you want to do business with. Go on.
There is no "get with the program." You, and the rest of the people like you can just forget that. We're not going to "get over it because we lost." We're just going to turn it around on you and tell you "we're not going away, just get over it." You drove around with your "Impeach Obama" bumper sticker for eight years. Now we're going to to exactly the same thing. Get over it.
And his tax returns are significant, not matter how many times you try to claim they're not. So again, "get over it." We're going to keep pushing for them for as long as he's in office. We just are, so STFU about it already you whiney little turd. And in the mean time, just so we're on an even footing, we'll call you an ignorant butt-hurt loser fascist. And you are a fascist, don't kid yourself. Because a real American wouldn't be the least bit threatened by other people speaking their minds. This is like First Amendment kind of stuff. You know that, right?