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."

Comments

Open.gov

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone feel it was ever "open" ?

Coal Mines unusable...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Obama was an exception, not Trump

[iMadeGhostzilla]

"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.

Re:Obama was an exception, not Trump

[spire3661]

Reductio ad Absurdum

Re:Obama was an exception, not Trump

[ganjadude]

its not about "good" or "bad"

with the way people are getting blacklisted for even meeting with trump or his team it makes perfect sense on why they wouldnt want to let that info out

Re:Obama was an exception, not Trump

[king neckbeard]

There were three past presidents that could reasonably be expected to have a transparency website. Clinton is arguably grandfathered in because he largely predated mainstream internet usage. Dubya is a war criminal, so that leaves Obama, who had a decent but very much inadequate start.

We should be very insistent that transparency is a one-way ratchet, as sunlight is a very effective disinfectant.

Re:Obama was an exception, not Trump

[vux984]

""Mr. Trumpâ(TM)s policy is a return to the one followed by presidents who preceded Mr. Obama." (NYT). No mention of that in the summary."

vs

" White House communications director Michael Dubke said the decision to reverse the Obama-era policy..."

Hints: "the Obama-era policy" means a policy introduced in the Obama administration.

And if Trump had created a completely new policy, it would not have been a 'reversal'. A reversal of direction implies going back where you came from.

It should be fairly reasonable to anyone without a bag of hammers standing in for a brain that *reversing* a policy Obama instituted defaults to a return to the previous policy. aka ... the policy followed by presidents who preceded Obama.

Yes, its not as explicit as coming out and saying it, but its a SUMMARY, if it included every explicit detail of the full article it would not be a summary. So the summary implied a detail that was made explicit in the full article... so what was your problem?

Re:Obama was an exception, not Trump

[tsqr]

If you're that much of a coward to not suffer the consequences of your actions, what else are you trying to hide?

Why does this have a familiar ring to it? Oh, yeah. It's the essence of the "If you haven't done anything wrong, why is your privacy so important to you" argument.

Re:Obama was an exception, not Trump

[Raenex]

You quoted Judicial Watch 2 times. They aren't a reliable source.

Your disparaging assessment as an Anonymous Coward with no evidence to support your claim is unreliable. He also linked to a Huffington Post article, well ok it was by Andrew Breitbart, but that article links to a New York Times article:

"Here at the Caribou on Pennsylvania Avenue, and a few other nearby coffee shops, White House officials have met hundreds of times over the last 18 months with prominent K Street lobbyists -- members of the same industry that President Obama has derided for what he calls its "outsized influence" in the capital.

On the agenda over espressos and lattes, according to more than a dozen lobbyists and political operatives who have taken part in the sessions, have been front-burner issues like Wall Street regulation, health care rules, federal stimulus money, energy policy and climate control -- and their impact on the lobbyists' corporate clients.

But because the discussions are not taking place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they are not subject to disclosure on the visitors' log that the White House releases as part of its pledge to be the "most transparent presidential administration in history." "

Re:Obama was an exception, not Trump

[AmiMoJo]

When you become president you give up some privacy in exchange for a huge amount of power. That power must be scrutinized by the electorate.

Re:This is better than what Obama did

[Aqualung812]

Trump will release full visitor logs five years after the current term ends.

Sure he will. Right after he released his tax returns.

$70k?

[Enigma2175]

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.

Re: $70k?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think savings is important wherever you can find it. The fact that Federal govt. spends such amazingly huge amounts of our money (and it *is* our money, after all -- since it comes from taxes) shouldn't mean they can ignore wasteful spending on a small scale.

That is foolish, it is better to realize that that sum is meaningless and unimportant, that way you aren't deceived into cheering over an empty victory.

Much like Trump's oversized check to the Park Service. It cost more to hold that press conference.

I'm not exactly a Trump supporter, but things are so polarized right now, I hear nothing but negative talk about pretty much any decision the guy makes in office.

Then you should notice how the Trump supporters cheer and praise everything they can about his empty accomplishments, and it would do you a lot of benefit to recognize that boasting for the hollowness it has.

In reality? I see no value in making visitor logs immediately available for anybody who decided to visit the White House? I would expect they'd have a bit tighter security than to just make that info openly available, actually. So Obama, IMO, went about that the wrong way.

Ah, the value is that you know who did go into the place, and don't have to wonder who let David Nunes into the building.

Obama did to right.

Re:$70k?

[sh00z]

If you want to get upset, get upset about the cost of those golf weekends. We the taxpayers are paying seven figures for each of Trump's golf weekends. Guess where the money for the hotel rooms for His Orangeness and the Secret Service entourage are going. That's right, into Trump's pockets!

Re:$70k?

[Altrag]

Oh, so $70,000 is meaningless to you?

No, but as the GP mathed out, its pretty meaningless in relative to an entire country. And spread over 4 years no less. The proper comparison is whether or not 0.00018 cents is meaningless to me (it is.)

I think savings is important wherever you can find it.

Agreed.

they can ignore wasteful spending on a small scale.

So having government transparency is wasteful to you? Sure this is a small drop in the transparency bucket but its still something they let us know before that they no longer will be. And just like every thousandth of a penny counts (apparently,) so does every bit of truth we can wring out of the government -- especially under Trump who seems to like lying to the people even when he's got absolutely no reason to do so.

I hear nothing but negative talk about pretty much any decision the guy makes in office

Because he makes basically nothing but bad decisions. Even his best decisions are questionable depending on your brand of ethics.

I see no value in making visitor logs immediately available for anybody who decided to visit the White House

Good for you. That doesn't mean nobody else sees value in it. And of course while I personally give few to no craps about who visited the White House, we get back to the issue of transparency -- its just one more thing they're hiding from the people.

Re:$70k?

[king neckbeard]

If the website stops 1 Tomahawk missile from being fired, it's paid for itself several times over. The problem isn't that there's an attempt at financial responsibility. It's that the only time some people seem to care is when it's something useful, and never when it's a corporate handout or war profiteering.

Re:$70k?

[Dutchmaan]

"Oh, so $70,000 is meaningless to you? I think savings is important wherever you can find it."

I'm just going to say "Mar a Lago" and "go fuck yourself"... and leave it at that.

Re:$70k?

[Xyrus]

Exactly. All these fucks bitching every time Obama ordered a god damn sandwich aren't saying jack shit about the millions of dollars that's being blown for hist weekend golf trips and making sure Rapunzel stays in her tower in NY.

Nothing but a bunch of fucking hypocrites.

Re:$70k?

[Enigma2175]

“Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf. Worse than Carter.”
-Donald Trump

I guess all the country's problems are fixed now since Trump is playing so much golf. Way to go Donald!

Re: Good, it saves money

[sh00z]

$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).

Re: Good, it saves money

[sh00z]

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.

Re: Thanks DNC!

[ArmoredDragon]

I think that under Bernie it would be more like France.

Peanuts

[EnsilZah]

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.

Re: This is better than what Obama did

[darthsilun]

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.

Re:Once again, Hillary did not win.

[RatPh!nk]

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

Re:Once again, Hillary did not win.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Once again, Hillary did not win.

[king neckbeard]

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.