freedom of information act

The Obama Administration’s “Open Government” Empty Rhetoric

by Hans Bader on March 20, 2011

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Legal

Liberal “open government” advocates are giving the president a medal for supposedly promoting “government transparency.”  He shares their liberal ideology, but not their alleged commitment to transparency. In reality, President Obama is so hostile to open government that “the Obama administration censored 194 pages of internal e-mails about its Open Government Directive,” according to the Associated Press. For example, “it blacked-out one e-mail discussing how to respond to AP’s request for information about the transparency directive.”

Moreover, “the Obama administration has developed a reputation for ruthlessly prosecuting whistleblowers for leaks to the press.” It recently demoted a whistleblower who revealed to Congress how the Department of Homeland Security was violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The administration discriminates in responding to requests for documents under FOIA. It illegally forces its critics to wait years for the documents to which they are entitled — well beyond the 20-day legal deadline for responding — or refuses to even respond to their requests for documents. Meanwhile, it gives many of its supporters the documents they seek in just a few days.  These are just a few of the ways that Obama has broken his promise to have the most transparent administration in history.

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CEI Weekly: CEI Sues NASA to Uncover Key Global Warming Docs

by Ryan Lynch on May 28, 2010

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Environment, Features, Global Warming, Natural Resources, Odds & Ends, Zeitgeist

CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the Weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.

CEI Weekly

May 28, 2010

>>CEI Sues NASA to Uncover Key Global Warming Docs

CEI is suing NASA in federal court! We have asked the court to order NASA – which has evaded our Freedom of Information Act requests for three years – to turn over documents related to global warming activities undertaken by federal employees. Chris Horner, along with the law firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, is leading the charge to determine whether NASA facilities and staff were employed to push a specific policy agenda. As Congress ponders legislation that would increase the price of energy, thereby creating a massive new tax on Americans, it is vital that the general public know the extent to which the government’s own scientists have been fueling the alarmist political agenda while ostensibly being paid by taxpayers for impartial climate research. The text of CEI’s court filing is here (PDF). The Washington Times covered our lawsuit in a front page story, which can be read here.

>>Shaping the Debate

Kerry-Lieberman plan has ‘something to harm everyone’and lacks bipartisan support.

Myron Ebell’s quote in The Orange County Register

Regarding climate change, Kerry should heed science

William Yeatman’s letter in The Hill

Liberate to stimulate – Live in the UK!

Iain Murrary’s op-ed in The Examiner Opinion Zone

Pests over people

William Yeatman’s op-ed in The Washington Times

Cuccinelli Is Following the Law; Mann Up, UVa

Chris Horner’s op-ed in The Richmond Times-Dispatch

John Kerry* Imitates the Onion

William Yeatman cited in The Wall Street Journal

The Other Blumenthal Scandal

CEI cited in The Wall Street Journal

Outlook for broadband policy and net neutrality grim

Wayne Crews’ quote in San Jose Mercury News

>>Best of the Blogs

CEI Statement on Senate Passage of Restoring American Financial Stability Act

by John Berlau

Senate Passes Financial “Reform” Bill, 59-39; Will Wipe Out Jobs and Increase Credit Card Costs

by Hans Bader

In Letter and Spirit: Equal Treatment Under the Law

by Angela Logomasini

>>LibertyWeek Podcast

Episode 94: The Nanny State Diaries

Richard Morrison and Jeremy Lott welcome guests Marc Scribner, William Yeatman, Lee Doren, and Angela Logomasini to episode 94. We tackle politics in the Aloha state, freedom of information at the University of Virginia, Bureaucrash’s best and brightest, and the attack of the nanny state.

>>Support CEI

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Obama Justice Department Sued Over Stonewalling and Cover-Up in Black Panther Case

by Hans Bader on May 26, 2010 · 2 comments

in Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Judicial Watch is suing the Obama administration over its stonewalling in the Black-Panther voter intimidation case, where the administration has flouted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in order to hide how it protected members of the racist, anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party. Although FOIA requires that documents be released within 20 days, the administration has withheld for over a year the records Judicial Watch requested about how the administration dismissed a lawsuit that career Justice Department lawyers had won against Black Panthers who used a nightstick and racial epithets to drive white voters away from a polling place.

Earlier, a career Justice Department lawyer resigned after the Obama administration illegally defied a subpoena from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The Civil Rights Commission is investigating the administration’s politicization of the Justice Department and its selective refusal to enforce the Voting Rights Act against the Black Panthers and black political bosses.

A former Justice Department lawyer describes the Obama administration’s stonewalling, cover-up, and deceit at this link. The Black Panthers that the Obama administration sought to protect by dropping the lawsuit included a local Democratic official and Obama poll-watcher.

One of the Panthers, who has been videotaped saying “that he wanted to kill white people,” is shown in a recent documentary talking about “how much he hates and wants to kill white people, including white babies.” He called a terrified black poll watcher a “race traitor,” and told him there would be “hell to pay” if he interfered with the Panthers’ campaign of voter intimidation.

In their campaign of voter intimidation, the Panthers told a white former civil-rights lawyer and former publisher of the liberal Village Voice, “Now you are going to find out what it is to be ruled by the black man, cracker.” They called a white poll watcher who lives nine blocks from the polling place a “white devil” and a “cracker,” telling him he would be ruled by the black man the next day, and he would have to get used to “living under his boot.”

The New Black Panther Party, which has a venomous hatred for what it refers to as “bloodsucking Jews,” is designated as a hate-group even by the liberal SPLC, because of its anti-Semitism.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that discrimination against whites is prohibited under federal law (including voting discrimination). The Obama administration seemingly disagrees with those rulings (which include a 9-to-0 Supreme Court decision).

Firing Blanks in Response to FOIA

by Iain Murray on September 17, 2009

in Economy, Energy, Environment, Features, Global Warming, Regulation, Zeitgeist

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, CEI has used the Freedom of Information Act to find out what the administration thought its proposal to introduce cap-and-trade would cost the economy. CBSNews’s Declan McCullagh can fill you in on the details:

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama’s transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: “Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.”

Politico‘s Ben Smith posted a story on this, to be greeted by an angry harrumph from the League of Conservation Voters:

Specifically, the original White House plan had 100% of emissions permits being distributed by auction; the plan that passed has just 15%.  “Can you say ‘irrelevant analysis’? It would be like pricing the health care bills currently in front of Congress based on a single-payer system,” he writes.

Well, CEI never said that the documents refer to the cost of cap and trade as it passed the House (for the record, the 15% is a bait-and-switch payoff to industry, with the percentage moving to 100% over a number of years), but the figure accurately reflects the likely cost of the president’s proposal, which is, amazingly enough, also the actual position of none other than the League of Conservation Voters:

By embracing a mandatory cap-and-trade program, the Obama energy plan would provide incentives to cut production of carbon dioxide and other pollutants that cause global warming.  In addition, because this program is a 100% auction, this system will generate significant revenues for reinvestment in job-creating, clean energy industries.

So what’s going on here? Is the LCV now fully behind the 15% plan? Or is it annoyed that it has been established that its favored 100% plan is actually just as expensive as everyone now realizes it is?

Oh, and the LCV spokesman added the “postage stamp” canard (the idea that the cost of cap and trade will be less than a postage stamp a day). That only works if you deposit your postage stamp cost in a guaranteed interest account today and withdraw it when the bill comes due in 2020, and even then it will only pay for the real cost, not the nominal cost (see here for a full analysis of the postage stamp claim). One thing even the current bill will not cost is just “a postage stamp a day per household . . . in 2020.”

But the real problem with the postage stamp claim is that even that figure is more than people are willing to pay. Polls show that only 10% are willing to pay more than $100 a year for cap and trade. That’s considerably less than a postage stamp a day.

Even the LCV’s Doublethink won’t get it past that one.

Of course, even the basic premise of the “irrelevance” argument can’t stand when the Administration is still projecting massive revenues (p33) as a result of cap-and-trade.

Meanwhile, how does the Huffington Post repsond?  EXXXXXOOOOOONNNNNN!!!!