Bush and Chaney Moves to Eliminate Open Government

[mk]

Bush and Chaney Moves to Eliminate Open Government

While the Bush administration has expanded its ability to keep tabs on civilians, it's been working to make sure the public--and even Congress--can't find out what the government is doing. One year ago, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) released an 81-page analysis of how the administration has administered the country's major open government laws. His report found that the feds consistently "narrowed the scope and application" of the Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential Records Act, and other key public information legislation, while expanding laws blocking access to certain records--even creating new categories of "protecteda' information and exempting entire departments from public scrutiny.
When those methods haven't been enough, the Bush administration has simply refused to release records--even when the requester was a congressional subcommittee or the Government Accountability Office, the study found. A few of the potentially incriminating documents Bush and Co. have refused to hand over to their colleagues on Capitol Hill include records of contacts between large energy companies and Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force; White House memos pertaining to Saddam Hussein's, shall we say, "elusive" weapons of mass destruction; and reports describing torture at Abu Ghraib.

The report's findings were so dramatic as to indicate "an unprecedented assault on the laws that make our government open and accountable," Waxman said at a Sept. 14, 2004, press conference announcing the report's release.

Given the news media's intrinsic interest in safeguarding open government laws, one would think it would be plenty motivated to publicize such findings far and wide. However, most Americans remain oblivious to just how much more secretive--and autocratic--our leaders in the White House have become.

[hadenuff]

...and then the Democrats call "closed sessions" to keep info from getting out. There is, indeed, too much secret monkey business going on in Washington, but the Republicans can't hold a candle to the Clinton regime on unConstitutional plans. My pet theory is that it's not so much a party-line problem as it is a "puppet master" problem. I think that some of the conspiracy theorists are right; there is an underlying attempt at overthrowing the Constitution and making us just another state in a Socialistic world government. If that's true, no one party is going it alone.

Getting your photo taken with underwear on your head isn't torture. Getting your fingernails pulled out with pliers is. I personally know a man who had that done to him in Vietnam.

[WaTcHeR]

The Nazi Government kept all their "employee" names a secret also!

December 06, 2005 - WASHINGTON - Breaking a tradition of openness that began in 1816, the Bush administration has without explanation withheld the names and work locations of about 900,000 of its civilian workers, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

"Citizens have a right to know who is working for the government," said Adina Rosenbaum, attorney for the co-directors of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group at Syracuse University, who sued under the Freedom of Information act to get the data.

Since 1989, TRAC has been posting on the Internet a database with the name, work location, salary and job category of all 2.7 million federal civilian workers except those in some law enforcement agencies. The data are often used by reporters and government watchdog groups to monitor policies and detect waste or abuse.

Recently, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility used the database to identify and locate U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists for a survey. Many of the scientists complained of political intervention into their research.

TRAC used the data to monitor the Bush administration's promise to increase security along the Canadian border after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Six months later, TRAC found Border Patrol agents on that border were up from 331 to just 346. Another year later, the number had reached 515, but not one was assigned to the Canada-Alaska border despite Alaska's potential strategic targets.

The New York Daily News used the data to find the names of guards at a federal detention center where prisoner abuse was alleged. Another reporter used it to find the names of Transportation Security Administration guards assigned to New York's LaGuardia Airport to pursue cargo theft allegations.

"Secret governors are incompatible with a free government," the TRAC co-directors wrote the federal Office of Personnel Management last Feb. 2 when the agency withheld the data. "Basic information about the employees who carry out the day-to-day actions of government is critical for meaningful public oversight."

They are David Burnham, a former New York Times reporter who directs TRAC's Washington office, and Susan B. Long, a Syracuse University professor who runs its upstate New York office. The suit was filed in federal court in Syracuse, N.Y.

OPM spokesman Mike Orenstein said the agency would not comment until it had time to review the lawsuit.

Using FOIA, TRAC has obtained the data on compact discs every three months since 1989. But the federal government began publicly naming its employees, their job category, salary and workplace in 1816.

The first entry in the 1816 register was James Madison. He was identified as president of the United States in Washington at a salary of $25,000 — and born in Virginia. The second entry was Secretary of State James Monroe, salary: $5,000.

Lower on that page were Treasury Department messenger John Connell, a Marylander who worked in Washington for $410 a year, and Comptroller's Office clerk Richard H. Briscoe, another Marylander working in Washington, for $1,000 a year.

The last complete data set provided by OPM covered 2003. Since then, all records of civilian employees of the Defense Department have been withheld and name and duty locations were withheld for an estimated 150,000 other civilian workers, the lawsuit said. The others work in 650 occupations at 250 different agencies including the Federal Trade Commission, the National Park Service and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

Gary A. Lukowski, OPM's workforce information manager, wrote TRAC in late 2004 that the agency was reviewing its policy "on disclosure of individual employee records as this relates to the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act."

Last spring, Lukowski forwarded the 2004 discs and noted that the "major change affecting your request is that individual records for the Department of Defense are excluded from the file provided." He told TRAC it would have to request the records from the Pentagon directly.

The lawsuit said that, in violation of the FOIA, OPM did not even mention that another 150,000 names and workplaces had been deleted or why and that OPM has not responded to requests to explain its new policy.