"The most transparent administration EVER!!!!"

[Barbella]

You might say the government is giving us the old mushroom treatment. Burying us in b.s. and keeping us in the dark. And then sending us the bill for it.

Government secrecy doesn’t come cheap, it turns out. The Information Security Oversight Office tracks the cost and extent of classifying secrets. The Obama administration’s secrecy bill in 2010 came to $10.17 billion and in 2011 to $11.36 billion, Reason magazine recently reported.

Well, the Obama campaign motto did promise “Forward!”, did it not? And isn’t $10.17 billion to $11.36 billion forward, in a manner of speaking? Yes, true, the 2008 Obama campaign also promised “an unprecedented level of openness in government.” But maybe that’s another reason the president needed another term.

The sum total of newly classified Obama administration secrets in 2010 was 222,734. That was an increase of 22.6 percent over the previous year. See there — “Forward!” Here’s a good one — and it’s no joke. There was an event at the White House hailing the administration’s efforts in behalf of open government. It wasn’t listed on the president’s schedule and no transcript of the event was released. As Politico later headlined it: Shh! Obama Gets Anti-Secrecy Award.”

When not receiving awards, the administration seems to be receiving subpoenas. There have been news media lawsuits against it for withholding information on the Wall Street bailout and on spy agency eavesdropping. Government agencies ran up 466,872 Freedom of Information Act denials. That was an increase of 66 percent over George Bush’s last year in office, Reason reports. (There you go again: “Forward!”)

Writer Mike Riggs added in the Reason piece: “While the Obama administration invested big money in redesigning old government websites and launching flashy new ones...it continued to behave like its predecessor on transparency issues of consequence.” “Aha! Yesss!” you can almost hear David Axelrod exclaim. “Again, Bush is to blame! He established the pattern!”

You might expect “national security” to be a frequent alibi for withholding information, and it is. But “Exemption 2” has become a popular Obama administration dodge, a favorite “rejection of last resort,” says Riggs. Vaguely worded Exemption 2 applies to “internal personnel rules and practices of an agency.” The Obama administration went all the way to the Supreme Court in an attempt to rationalize its fanciful interpretations of Exemption 2. The court told it is so many words, “Get outta here!”

Later, the administration attempted a new “transparency” initiative authorizing it to deny information in official rejections worded “as if the excluded records did not exist.” Some embarrassing attention persuaded the administration to abandon this quest.

The matter may be summed up with a stirring quotation: “A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency.”

That’s from an old Obama teleprompter script.

http://www.trentonian.com/article/20121111/OPINION04/121119945/secrecy-s-price#full_story

 

[connieb]

I will be honest, I don't think Obama intended to deceive people with those earlier comments about transparency. I think he meant it. But, it was a prime example of his naivete. And, it was an indication of his arrogance.

I think he found out that like Tommy Lee Jones's character said in Men in Black, that if the average american knew that were were living under constant threat that we would not be able to go about our happy little lives. I think that Mr. Obama was one of those ignorant people going about his happy little life, until he got into that position and realized that.... Holy crap! The rest of the world really is a danger to us.

I think he also over-estimated his popularity. He thinks he is likeable. To some, maybe he is. Personally, I like a person who actually gets results not just yammer on about visions, etc. But, that is another thread. But, he underestimated his enemies. Never a good thing for a leader, and an indication of his arrogance. Because he underestimated the lenghts that his political rivals would go to make him look bad. And, I think he realized that if he went as transparent as he lead us to believe he would be he would be unwittingly handing his rivals ammunition to use against him.

In short, I think that he in his naivete and arrogance, that all those secret documents and classified things, and secretcy surrounding the operations of the whitehouse and what goes on behind closed doors was all just a bunch of crap by from an old white boy's era we had left behind... and then he got the job and realized... oh shit... there actually IS a reason why we keep secrets, and why we don't show our hand to the public, and don't give straight answers, etc.

connie