On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama ordered federal officials to “usher in a new era of open government” and “act promptly” to make information public.
As Obama nears the end of his term, his administration hasn’t met those goals, failing to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, according to an analysis of open-government requests filed by Bloomberg News.
Nineteen of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the law requiring the disclosure of public information: The cost of travel by top officials. In all, just eight of the 57 federal agencies met Bloomberg’s request for those documents within the 20-day window required by the Act.
“When it comes to implementation of Obama’s wonderful transparency policy goals, especially FOIA policy in particular, there has been far more ‘talk the talk’ rather than ‘walk the walk,’” said Daniel Metcalfe, director of the Department of Justice’s office monitoring the government’s compliance with FOIA requests from 1981 to 2007.
Remember all the wailing from the left over Bush’s super-duper secret surveillance tactics in the United States. Are we hearing any now when it’s being reported that real-time monitoring of electronic communication inside our borders has climbed 60%….that’s SIX ZERO. This far surpassed the Bush era.
But no crying. No wailing. No screams of injustice.
We have a President who promised more transparency but instead is more secretive and less transparent then any other President.
We have a President who promised ch-ch-change but instead is wiretapping everybody and their grandmother.
What hypocrisy.
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