As if we needed another reason to turn the president out of office, Bloomberg News recently released an internal analysis of the Obama administration’s criminally (both in the figurative and literal sense) deficient adherence to federal law.
In the wake of endless federal spending scandals and government investment snafus plaguing these last few years, one would think that the president’s often promised move towards government transparency would be a major concern for the image-conscious ad-men that run the Obama machine. Of course, this leap of logic relies on the premise that Obama and his cronies actually have an interest in exposing government waste. It is so much simpler, after all, to say you want transparency and then quietly embrace policies that guarantee the exact opposite.
While I simply assume that this dishonest path is the way of the Obama administration (given my adopted city’s experience with the men that trained the president in politics), the good people at Bloomberg decided to put the current administration to the test.
For this test, Bloomberg requested the 2011 travel records of the top administrators of 57 cabinet and non-cabinet level government agencies. By law, these agencies have to respond within 20 days, either with a denial (which is entirely unreasonable in this case, given the non-sensitive nature of the information) or the fulfillment of the request.
This simple request, which (in my experience) even the tiniest and most-understaffed municipalities seem to have no trouble fulfilling within 7 days, was plainly too taxing for the disgustingly bloated federal government.
In an abysmal showing more reminiscent of Cuba or the Soviet Union than the United States, all but one cabinet level agency out of the 20 either refused to answer this simple request or directly disobeyed rules set out under the Freedom of Information Act. Of the 37 non-cabinet agencies 13 refused to release information and 17 took longer than the legal time period to respond.
This means that only 14% of the Obama administration’s agencies are reasonably compliant with transparency laws. This shocking result reverberates quite sharply against the faint echoes of Obama’s often repeated mantra of increased government transparency.
Remember those heady days in early 2009 when the newly-minted president signed a memorandum promising a new era of open government and commanded his Attorney General to push all agencies to limit FOIA denials? The dewy-eyed public, still wreathed in the pleasant afterglow of electing a sexy new rock star to the highest position in the executive branch, took this memorandum at face value. They were still blissfully unaware of what sort of backstabbing Machine politician they had put into office.
Of course, those of us in Chicago should have known better.
2 Comments
I have to wonder what Bloomberg’s original intent was in requesting this information, and right before the election.
Was this a fishing expedition to try to find a new “issue” to inject into the presidential election? If they had received the information they sought would it have turned into a “government wastes too much money” story in which every expense account item of every functionary is scrutinized to the nth degree? Oh my, look at what they spent on Continental Breakfasts!
Since Bloomberg didn’t get the travel expense information they sought to pick apart they turned the story into a “lack of transparency story” instead. Obama promised transparency! Where’s the transparency? Harrumph!
Whatever.
Voters are more concerned with big, important issues that will be decided by the outcome of this election. They are concerned with Republican plans to dismantle Medicare and Social Security. They’re concerned with rich people getting MORE tax cuts while everyone else loses tax deductions. They’re concerned with Republican obstructionism in the Senate and Congress. They’re concerned with the potential loss of Obamacare. There’s a lot at stake in this election.
There will be plenty of time to deal with the transparency issue after the election during Obama’s second term.
Clearly you are an Obama supporter. Please vote for him again this year so that we can really see what great things will follow. I challenge you to come back here in 4 years and honestly assess his performance.