WikiLeaks: Assange Delivers On Obama’s Promise Of Transparency

[Donnachaidh]

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/12/04/wikileaks-assange-delivers-on-obamas-promise-of-transparency/

A bit more than two years ago, America and most of the world were infatuated by the new President-elect. Barack Obama was promising “integrity, transparency and accountability in government, politics and the law”. Pointing out that the Bush administration had been “one of the most secretive in US history”, President-elect Obama vowed to drastically increase government openness to citizens with a never seen before new level of transparency and accountability.

“The Bush administration has been one of the most secretive closed administration in America’s history. An Obama presidency will use cutting-edge technologies to reverse this dynamic, creating a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens,” said the site set up by the President-elect.

On the site, one of the ambitious and unfulfilled many promises of the new administration on ethics and government was to “conduct regulatory agency business in public”.

“Obama will require his appointees who lead the executive branch department and rule making agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can see these debates in person or watch them on the internet.”

An additional quote is even more damaging for the Obama administration “truth meter” standard, especially it it is put in the context of the key source of WikiLeaks: Private Bradley Manning. Manning is currently in military jail, and could face a sentence of up to 52-years. As matter of fact, President-elect Obama, back in November 2008, was pledging to “protect whistleblowers”.


More at the link ---

[Catherina]

1. pledging to “protect whistleblowers”, pffft. Ask PFC Manning about that. Rec'd. n/t

[treestar]

2. These are CLASSIFIED documents!

That has nothing to do with transparency!

[ananda]

3. Psst.

These are documents conveniently designated as classified in order
to prevent transparency.

[hedgetrimmer]

9. SWEET!

[davidwparker]

11. +1

[malaise]

22. Ding ding

We have a winner :applause:

[bemildred]

4. So what do you think transparency is about, if not government secrecy? nt

[Angry Dragon]

6. Just read this recent post on DU

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9689900

To me this is not the way to conduct a government done in my name.
By conducting government in this way puts my life in danger.
It says that other governments and individuals can do anything
they want to me.

If you want a government like that, then okay, however I do not.

[avaistheone1]

7. Let's see...

[JackRiddler]

8. Yeah, like what's the relationship of opacity to transparency?

[EFerrari]

13. LOL

[ThomCat]

23. If they are routintely classifying everything,

then there is no transparency, and the whole concept of transparency becomes a campaign promise with no meaning.

The whole concept of classifying documents based on need for secrecy also becomes almost meaningless because nobody is evaluating what really needs to be kept a secret, or why. They are just burying Everything under a blanket of secrecy.

Classifying everything hides stuff that should be open to the public.

Classifying everything hides corruption that should be purged.

Classifying everything hides mistakes that otherwise would have been corrected. As long as the mistakes are classified they can be simply buried or continued without ever being fixed or acknowledged.

Classifying everything hides stuff that would, in the past, have been fodder for academics studying government and public policy, and whose reviews and commentaries might have resulted in improvements.

Some of that stuff has reasons to be classified, but it it is very clear at this point that the amount that should have been classified in a truly functional government is much less that what our dysfunctional government is routinely mass-classifying.

[tekisui]

24. Not anymore! lolololol.

:rofl:

[ProSense]

5. President Obama

delivered on his promise of transparency.

Assange is simply breaching security for the entertainment of people who think anything leaked is the Pentagon Papers.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[EFerrari]

14. Oh, geeze.

lol

[bvar22]

15. "Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press"

NY Times

"The indictment of Mr. Drake was the latest evidence that the Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks.

In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions. His administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights with the press.

<much more>

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/politics/12leak.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&hp

[laughingliberal]

18. +1 nt

[ProSense]

19. He should promote leaks?

He also put whistleblower safeguards into Wall Street reform and the Food Safety bill.

[EFerrari]

21. Jailed Whistleblower: US Lawmakers Held Offshore UBS Accounts

Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez discusses his interview with UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld one day after Birkenfield’s Tax Day clemency request to President Obama. Birkenfeld is serving a forty-month sentence despite playing a key role in exposing the biggest tax evasion scheme in US history.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/16/ubs

[Octafish]

26. US lawmakers - elected and appointed Federal officials - are hiding money offshore through UBS...

Thw Swiss-owned and operated UBS was one of the largest beneficiaries of Fed largesse during the Wall Street meltdown. Many, many billions went to UBS. What they did with the dough, no one knows, they weren't required to report how they used it -- even whether they used it to buy US Treasury bonds at a higher rate of interest than what they were paying for the original loan. Pure thievery on behalf of the plutocrats.

Sorry to report I'd forgotten about the miscarriage of justice in the case of Mr. Brad Birkenfeld, the treasons pass by so rapidly and in such profusion. Essita, You know who became the vice chairman of UBS, Mr. Birkenfeld's employer after selling out the American people from the U.S. Senate, where he led deregulation on behalf of Reaganomix and its Reverse Robin Hood?

[EFerrari]

27. I'm afraid to guess.

:(

[Octafish]

29. Senator Phil Gramm (R-once a D-Texas). It gets worse, though.

Phil's the guy who was helping shape the economic policies of McCain-Palin.

They are loverly.

[ThomCat]

30. Um...

That first link is The Fed, not Obama, releasing information.

That second link is an executive order that might eventually result in information becoming more available. It hasn't been implemented yet so we haven't seen the results to be sure that we'll get what we've been promised. But if we get what has been promised then it will be once good step forward.

So that will be once step forward.

However, Since taking office Obama has defied more FOIA requests at a rate almost twice that of Bush.
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/10/03/18/1851243/Obama-Adminstration-Withholds-FoIA-Requests-More-Often-Than-Bushs?from=rss
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/16/surprise-obama-administration-defies-more-foia-requests-than-bush-wh/

The Obama administration also routing FOIA requests in many agencies to political advisers to deciding whether or not to fulfill them, making it a political decision instead of a routine matter.
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/08/obama_administration_politiciz.php
http://www.floppingaces.net/2010/07/22/obama-administration-delayed-foia-requests-based-on-political-party/
http://missoulaeditor.com/?p=1799

Several studies of concluded that Obama failed to improve transparency. Despite Obama's claims that he was implementing changes in all departments, they found no concrete changes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/us/politics/15open.html
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/06/19/obama-closes-doors-on-openness.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/16/obamas-broken-promise-fed_n_500526.html

Here is one specific real example of how that promise to make releasing information the default gets turned around so that withholding information becomes the default, and this administrations approves of withholding all these documents despite claiming that transparency is their goal.
http://www.ombwatch.org/node/10067

You cannot claim with any legitimacy that Obama is keeping his promise in the face of all of this. The most optimistic possible view could be that maybe Obama is trying to turn this around so that by the end of his term a broken promise might become a promise kept, but throughout his term so far this has been an abysmally broken promise. Worse than even Bush by total numbers!

[populistdriven]

32. PLONK

[xchrom]

10. recommend

[stray cat]

16. Really? I have not seen Assange post any legislative discussions

[tekisui]

25. Yet.

[laughingliberal]

17. K & R nt

[Octafish]

20. Whistleblowers are people, too.

ITK:

Obama More Aggressive Than Bush In Targeting Whistleblowers

[Jeffersons Ghost]

28. If it was an "unfulfilled promise" it wouldn't be on the web!

[kgnu_fan]

31. Kick and Recommended