More than 40 former lobbyists work in top positions in the administration, including three cabinet secretaries and the director of Central Intelligence.
#1) Your first link makes absolutely no reference to the Bush administration. It supports my point, though, Obama created stricter guidelines instructing the agencies to fulfill more FOIA requests. And the agencies are falling short for whatever bureaucratic reason, seemingly that they can't work through the pile fast enough. Rome wasn't built in a day and all that. Thanks for the link though, I didn't know Obama had done that. I approve.
#2) Some aides met with lobbyists off of white house ground to avoid logging the meetings? You mean to avoid the policy that Obama put in place and that had never existed before he was elected? Seems like he's working in the right direction, to me. Now we just need Congress to implement a similar rule.
#3) Yeah, again, not perfect just yet. Want to compare/contrast with the number of former lobbyists who worked in the Bush white house, on the McCain campaign, or on John Boehner's staff?
If you're reasoning backwards from "I've decided I don't like Obama", you can believe whatever you want.
But the guy's history and all of his public pronouncements since taking office have been on the side of openness, and consistently against the influence of lobbyists. He's actually created a bunch of initiatives for more openness, the lobbyist visit thing and the data.gov thing being two of them.
It's just plain disingenuous to claim that Obama is less in favor of openness than Dick Cheney.
EDIT: Wow. Not usually one to whine about the voting but the guy's links actually say the opposite of what he's claiming. And he's upvoted. Just goes to show, you can believe whatever you want and vote that way too.
> It's just plain disingenuous to claim that Obama is less in favor of openness than Dick Cheney.
If you want to prosecute to Julian Assange, you are not for openness in Government. If you put Bradley Manning not in jail, but under the jail, and refuse to let even Congressmen like Denis Kucinich even visit Manning to witness first hand the conditions under which he is being held, you are not for openness in Government. http://antiwar.com/radio/2011/03/12/rep-dennis-kucinich/
If you fire State Dept Spokesman P.J. Crowley because he makes an off the record comment at MIT about the deplorable treatment of Manning, you are not for more openness in government. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
I voted for Obama. In many ways he is a huge improvement over Bush, but let's be realistic, and face the facts.
Well, he has a better record on openness than his predecessors and everyone else in both 2008 primaries with a couple exceptions (Kucinich and maybe Ron Paul).
I mean, he did get into office and immediately push a bunch of initiatives regarding openness. Maybe it didn't go as far as you or I would want but even slowing the descent is an improvement.
The guy has a long track record of saying he's going to do something, and not doing it. Take his proclamation, upon entering office, that the detention center at Guantanamo would be closed within a year. It's still open. Take his statements back around 2004-2006 that we needed to decriminalize marijuana. It took two years of the same issue rising to the top of polls for the guy to even address it, and he brushed it off. Take his promise to fight for better healthcare -- except during the voting, I heard more from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid than I did from Obama. Or the whole "let's talk diplomatically to Iran".
Many of those things can't be done unilaterally. The president can't force something threw that Congress isn't interested in (medical marijuana, the Gitmo closing).
I was a huge Obama supporter towards the end of the campaign, primarily because I believed -- and still believe -- that he was a much better choice than McCain/Palin, and because there wasn't enough of a margin of error to vote third-party.
That said, I naively expected Obama to do a much better job of holding to the platform that he ran on than he actually has. Aside from the Wall Street Scandal, there are regular stories of various parts of the Obama administration selling out to special interests or making decisions that are simply not in the best interests of Americans (e.g. TSA tactics & body scanners; net neutrality; etc.).
I am hugely disappointed in the President's administration in that regard. As a voter, I have no options left; I have to conclude that there is no hope of the Federal government acting in the best interests of Americans, regardless of which party is in charge.
He may not be as bad as Cheney, but that's a long way from adhering to the principles of his campaign.
One time FDR was meeting with some activists who felt really strongly about an issue, but the status quo had dug in and it didn't look easy to affect the change.
He told them: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."
In the current environment, Fox News is one half of the discourse and CNN is the other half, while the pundits split the difference in the name of "balance". If you want change, get active, make him do it. We all live here.
What poll numbers are Obama and the others in government waiting for? I believe it was around 77% in favor of a public option for health care, why didn't they put that in?
How are we supposed to "make them do it" besides letting them know through poll numbers, protests, etc. what the public is feeling? They're elected to be representatives who in most cases side with a clear majority except where that would overstep their authority. If FDR wanted to have real democratic voting processes on specific issues, for which he is mandated to carry out whatever the final result is, he should have said so.
(I also don't like the false equivalency of Fox News and CNN/MSNBC/NPR/whatever-alternative-to-Fox, but that's another issue.)
A) He was waiting for 60 senators, not poll #s. 40 Republicans were guaranteed to filibuster anything he put out, even the final result which was basically the Republican counter-proposal to Hillarycare a few short years ago. So a couple of those 60 got to drag it out for ridiculous and crooked concessions.
B) Totally agree on the false equivalency, was trying to highlight that rather than propagate it.
But if you get active, assume that the media will characterize you and your picked group as being radicals and use the one-or-two whackjobs who attach themselves to every group to make everyone look like and idiot. Also, don't expect your "intelligent" friends to not believe the media in this regard.
I agree with you on getting involved, by the way. I've been getting involved in some of the local stuff, gradually working my way up. I've no interest in spending my time in politics, but I do want to be able to influence things.
...because, if I can't, I'll have to take Chile up on their offer.
Chile has been serious about recruiting startups to their country. $40,000 incentive, all the help you need to get started, they take no stake in your company, only obligation is to stay there for six months and do your best to be successful. (http://www.startupchile.org/)
Chile isn't without its own problems, but a lot of the climate is similar to California, they're enthusiastic and well-developed, great people overall, beautiful country, great food, great environment, lower cost of living. So far I haven't read any negative reviews of their program, only positive ones.
If you're not especially tied to the U.S., I'd recommend applying. Even if you go and it doesn't work out, you'd get a tremendously worthwhile experience from it.
And that's out of how many requested in each year?
Just to get this straight, you're contending that this is a matter of deliberate policy by Obama in direct contravention of all of his public statements and his official memorandums on the subject? Like, there was a "wink, nudge" in there? He met them over coffee and said, "I just published that memo to look good, I actually want you to deny more requests"? What's your allegation, exactly?
Both of your links emphasize that Obama has published regulations instructing the agencies to grant more FOIA requests than they were previously, but that the agencies are struggling with the implementation. Just going to restate that one more time.
> you're contending that this is a matter of deliberate policy by Obama
I don't see where he's saying that. Where does the buck stop, anyway? Does Obama get a pass because he's an ineffectual leader, a gold star for trying?
Creating a system that people have to actively circumvent? (the admin responded "need more conference rooms" regarding the location of the meetings across the street, which is reasonable provided that they're implementing the lobbyist transparency measures there).
Anyways, yes, creating a system that people have to actively circumvent is progress. Any meeting in the white house has toe be disclosed, and staffers have to use tricks in order to not disclose a meeting. As compared to before, where no meeting was disclosed, ever, and there was nothing wrong with that (and no gotcha articles, either!).
Oh, and #3 is basically a nonpoint what with the overly vague "40 officials" and total lack of comparisons or context. I clicked through and one of the first names was Tom Vilsack, who spent 30 years as a politician and then a couple as a lobbyist in between gigs. Another was a lobbyist from the ACLU, which really does not match up with most people's definitions of "lobbyist" as far as being paid a lot of money and having an expense account.
The Obama administration has already failed to respond to more FOIA requests than the Bush administration.
http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=11758
Obama Administration Aides meet with lobbyists off the White House grounds to avoid logging meetings:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50081.html
More than 40 former lobbyists work in top positions in the administration, including three cabinet secretaries and the director of Central Intelligence.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/former-lobbyists-seni...