Where You Meet Actually Matters

Politico posted an article yesterday showing how the Obama Administration is claiming to be transparent while holding meetings outside the White House so that those meetings will not appear on the released White House visitor records. There are also private email accounts used to keep the emails out of the public record.

The article reports:

A House Energy and Commerce Committee report out Tuesday is stocked with emails sent from private addresses and meetings scheduled away from the building to avoid official record. Among these are several sent to a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist by Messina, then President Barack Obama’s then-deputy White House chief of staff, making promises about language for the health care reforms despite the resistance of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the measure.

The article cites an email from a private account of Jeff Smith, a senior adviser to the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, to Jim Kirkland, an executive from the GPS industry, which involved an invitation to meet away from the White House:

“Jim – coffee at Caribou Coffee – across the corner from the WH – would work at 11:30 a.m. on Friday…plus getting you through the new WH security rules these days almost takes an act of Congress almost (and you know how well that’s going these days),” Smith wrote. “[P]lus you’d appear on an official WH Visitor List which is maybe not want [sic] you want at this stage …”

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), the chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, said in a statement accompanying the report that he isn’t alleging illegal activity — just that the administration’s actions has fallen far short of its transparency promises.

I might be more tolerant of these meetings if they hadn’t involved under-the-table deals which impacted legislation under consideration.

The article points out:

Rick Weiss, the director of strategic communications for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a statement that “Jeff Smith played no role in the LightSquared-GPS process.”

After POLITICO published a story in February 2011 on meetings arranged at offices on Jackson Place near the White House, White House press secretary Jay Carney said “the guiding principle here is transparency, and we believe that — nobody is, that I’m aware of, is hiding where they’re meeting.”

“It is routine for the White House officials to meet with all types of people, including lobbyists, and frequently here,” Carney said. “The suggestion that we’re not being transparent is laughable given the unbelievable precedent this administration has set in its — closing the door, the revolving door, and releasing these records.”

It really is time for these people to go back to Chicago.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Problems For The Global Warming People And For The Obama Administration

Aerial view of the Greenland village Qaarsut, ...

Image via Wikipedia

One of the things that is supposed to make our government work is transparency. With the Freedom of Information Act, we the taxpayers can follow the path of a concept as it is discussed and eventually made into some sort of law. That transparency is supposed to be part of the system–except when it is purposely avoided.

Yesterday wattsupwiththat.com posted a story stating that the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official  correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA. This ‘cloud’ serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.”

The article at wattsupwiththat states:

CEI reminds OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy) that this practice was described as “creat[ing] non-governmental accounts for official business”, “using the nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications”, in a recent analogous situation involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff. CEI expects similar congressional and media outrage at this similar practice to evade the applicable record-keeping laws.

This effort has apparently been conducted with participation — thereby direct assistance and enabling — by the Obama White House which, shortly after taking office, seized for Holdren’s office the lead role on IPCC work from the Department of Commerce. The plan to secretly create a FOIA-free zone was then implemented.

Man-made global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Obama Administration to pave the way for a government takeover of the energy sector. The government policies that would be enacted in the name of global warming will make all Americans poorer (except those invested in green energy). This is truly a ‘follow the money’ issue. Had the Cap and Trade bill been passed in Congress, the demand for solar panels made by Solyndra would have increased, Solyndra would have raised its prices, and many democrat contributors would have made a profit. Had Cap and Trade passed, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), which traded carbon credits would still be in business and investors such as Al Gore and many of our leading congressmen would have made a profit. If Cap and Trade can be implemented through federal agencies, it may not be too late to save the portfolios of some of the major Democrat contributors. It really is all about the money.

Please follow the link to wattsupwiththat.com to read the entire article. There is a lot of very good, but very technical information in the article that I did not fully understand. Hopefully it will make sense to you!

Enhanced by Zemanta

If You Are Going To Lie, At Least Do It Well

Today Bob Beauprez posted an article at Townhall.com about the LightSquared scandal. Before I go into the details, I would like to comment that cronyism was easier in Chicago–it wasn’t looked at as closely as it can be in Washington, and if it was discovered, everyone knew how to sweep it under the table without too much effort. Washington sometimes looks at such things a little more carefully.

The question about LightSquared is whether or not the Obama administration interfered with the testimony of witnesses appearing before Congressional committees. There were a number of witnesses from different agencies, but there were some striking coincidences. The article reports:

Further, entire portions of the supposedly independent opinion submitted to a Congressional Oversight Committee regarding LightSquared from four separate government agencies contained “identical language in their written testimony” – a truly remarkable coincidence. 

That’s just laziness on the part of the people involved in skewing the testimony. Couldn’t they at least have been original?

The article further reports:

On September 20, 2011 separate letters were sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requesting documents related to the Administration’s involvement with LightSquared.  The letters were signed by Science and Technology Committee Chairman Ralph Hall (TX), James Sensenbrenner (WI), Rep. Broun and four other committee members.  The letters document the apparent attempts to “Tamper with Testimony” and “Muzzling Officials” for possible political objectives.  “Sugarcoating testimony over critical matters that include the lives of Americans is irresponsible, and inevitably raises questions about the Administration’s priorities,” wrote the lawmakers. 

The letters express frustration that earlier requests by the Committee for LightSquared related documents from DHS, NOAA, NIST, and the Commerce Department have been ignored.  The lawmakers also cited the stonewalling by the FCC of Senator Charles Grassley’s request for LightSquared documents made last April, and the refusal of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to testify at a Senate hearing. 

The Chicago-way has come to Washington. Let’s evict it in 2012.

Enhanced by Zemanta