Many people take the promises of politicians with a grain of salt, and no wonder, since so many pledges are made solely to attract votes on Election Day, then swiftly forgotten. Still, government credibility ultimately rests on how faithfully our leaders do what they say they will do, especially on issues that go to fundamental democratic values like transparency and accountability.
This is an area in which President Obama made some particularly ambitious and welcome promises during his 2008 campaign, most notably that his administration would practice an unprecedented level of transparency and that lobbyists would not be welcome in his policymaking councils.
Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, held a hearing Wednesday to examine how well Obama has fulfilled those promises. Unfortunately, there is abundant evidence suggesting Obama's promises of transparency and accountability were made with little if any intention of actually keeping them.
Take the matter of who is visiting the White House, a key indicator of special-interest lobbyists' influence. Although Obama made much ado about releasing White House visitor logs in 2009, Stearns pointed to a Center for Public Integrity investigation showing that Obama fought their release tooth and nail:
» The new policy was adopted only after settlement of four protracted lawsuits against the government seeking such records. A federal judge repeatedly ruled that, contrary to Obama's claims, White House visitor logs are subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act.
» Even after the much-ballyhooed posting of logs on the White House website, only 1 percent of the more than 500,000 meetings held with visitors during the president's first eight months in office have been made public.
» Many of the entries that have been released do not reflect all the visitors and officials participating in the meetings.
» Approximately two-thirds of the 1 million names released to date were visitors on guided group tours who were not at the White House on official business.
» Thousands of people known to have attended meetings in the White House, including numerous lobbyists, are nowhere to be found in the logs.
Read more
This is an area in which President Obama made some particularly ambitious and welcome promises during his 2008 campaign, most notably that his administration would practice an unprecedented level of transparency and that lobbyists would not be welcome in his policymaking councils.
Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, held a hearing Wednesday to examine how well Obama has fulfilled those promises. Unfortunately, there is abundant evidence suggesting Obama's promises of transparency and accountability were made with little if any intention of actually keeping them.
Take the matter of who is visiting the White House, a key indicator of special-interest lobbyists' influence. Although Obama made much ado about releasing White House visitor logs in 2009, Stearns pointed to a Center for Public Integrity investigation showing that Obama fought their release tooth and nail:
» The new policy was adopted only after settlement of four protracted lawsuits against the government seeking such records. A federal judge repeatedly ruled that, contrary to Obama's claims, White House visitor logs are subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act.
» Even after the much-ballyhooed posting of logs on the White House website, only 1 percent of the more than 500,000 meetings held with visitors during the president's first eight months in office have been made public.
» Many of the entries that have been released do not reflect all the visitors and officials participating in the meetings.
» Approximately two-thirds of the 1 million names released to date were visitors on guided group tours who were not at the White House on official business.
» Thousands of people known to have attended meetings in the White House, including numerous lobbyists, are nowhere to be found in the logs.
Read more
3 comments:
500,000 meetings in 8 months? That would leave little time for golf!
He has a look-a-like at the meetings while he plays golf and basketball.
Thats because it's no longer a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people"....it a government ruled by bribery and special interests. Those logs would show it. How arrogant of our leaders to want to hide the names of the people that come to see the person THE PEOPLE elected to do THEIR political business! They are imperial rulers now, not even concerned about acting like they ANSWER to us in any way.
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