Moe Lane

It’s always almost unbearably cute when a journalist suddenly realizes that this administration could care less about media transparency, or in fact anything that the media says that’s more substantial than “Barack Obama, you’re so dreamy!”  Case in point: this article by Salena Zeto, where the author complains mightily that the Democrats are routinely locking out local reporters* from fundraisers attended by Vice President Joe Biden (including one, not incidentally, in Zeto’s home journalistic turf).  Also, John Adams’ Sedition Act makes an appearance, which is generally considered to be bringing out the heavy (if usually inaccurate) rhetorical guns in articles like this one; I must admit, there’s something fun about watching the Other Side get scattershot-targeted like this**…

But I digress. (more…)

We talked this afternoon on South Carolina’s Spending Accountability Act (which was formally signed into law today). To refresh people’s memories: Governor Haley had campaigned in part on a platform of transparency, with a specific focus on the South Carolinian legislature’s ability to vote on funding issues without their votes actually going on the record. The Governor has long been a proponent of reversing this, and the Spending Accountability Act is the result: it requires roll call votes on bills, particularly ones involving the budget. We spoke on this and some other matters:

Gov. Haley’s Facebook page (mentioned at the end of the interview) can be found here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Hot Air, while introducing this clip of the President promising (ha) open government (hee) and transparency (hahaha!) on the first day of his administration:

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” [Obama] says, presumably before lighting a copy of the War Powers Act on fire and laughing.

Doesn’t YouTube just SUCK, Barry?

No, really.  President Obama met with the transparency award givers in private; the award ceremony did not appear on his schedule, and had no press presence whatsoever.  There wasn’t even a staff photographer there, much to the surprise of the transparency/open government people, who are all of them kind of confused that they had to give this award under the rose and in an undisclosed location.

I know that this is a short post, but literally: I got nothing, sorry.  This one is weirder than the time the administration came out in favor of ending whaling bans.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(Via Hot Air Headlines)

Hi!  This post is for the benefit of whomever, starting next January, is going to be in charge of soon-to-be Chairman Darrell Issa’s Oversight and Government Reform investigation team. I think that there’s a non-trivial chance that this New York Times report of the White House evading its own ethics rules by deliberately meeting with lobbyists off site (and thus, without having to to log in lobbyist visits) for ‘coffee’ may abruptly become not available after November, so I’m taking the time to reproduce the names of everybody in the article after the fold.

You know. Just in case anybody in the 112th Congress’s Oversight committee wanted to have a chat with any of them. (more…)

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers. And Ed Driscoll readers.

Contra Hot Air and Instapundit, this isn’t really funny:

…it’s sad. The White House press pool is being given the mushroom treatment; and they know that they’re being given the mushroom treatment. But they don’t want to respond appropriately – which is to say, stop letting Robert Gibbs define what are or are not appropriate questions to ask. Until that happens – and the press corps internalizes the notion that Gibbs and the administration needs them a hell of a lot more than they need Gibbs and the administration – they’ll keep getting the mushroom treatment.

I’d be sympathetic, except that elections have consequences.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I just got tipped on this:

(Background: the Speaker of the House is holding a press conference on the Democrats’ health care rationing bill, and shutting out the public. This video shows security confirming that the restrictions comes from the Speaker’s office.)

The utter arrogance of the Democratic party leadership is only matched by their utter ignorance of the realities of modern communication technology.

You know, new broom sweeping clean, cleaning out the Augean stables, generally showing those people in Washington who was who and what was what – and how there was going to be a new boss, with new rules and expectations on behavior. Well, meet the new boss:

During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings.

High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to internal Democratic National Committee documents obtained by The Washington Times.

H/T: The Conservatives. Note that none of this is actually illegal; it’s just… business. This is how things are done in Washington. People willing to give money to politicians will be generally treated better by those politicians than people who are not, all other things being equal. This may disappoint supporters of the President, who (rightfully) may be feeling that they were at least misled about this administration’s intentions, but that’s not exactly the fault of everybody else. Of course, one way of controlling the underlying problem is by encouraging negative feedback mechanisms; for example, transparency…

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has pledged that his administration will be “the most open and transparent administration in history” and has agreed to make public the names of those who sign into White House visitor logs, though a request from The Times for logs that show visits from his top 45 bundlers has so far gone unfilled.

Requests for guest lists to various White House events, such as a recent cocktail reception surrounding the celebration of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ National Hockey League Stanley Cup victory or the Latin music concert last week, have also been denied repeatedly.

Ah. Never mind.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

…to wit, providing fully justified grief to people who really deserve it.  In this particular case he’s making the clock run out on a bill that had some disclosure provisions stripped from it; as has been noted before, there are many ways that an individual Senator can shut things down in the Senate, and Coburn is happy to explore them in the cause of transparency.  The Democrats are of course mad at Coburn for it, because they can’t be mad at the President for making transparency such an important part of his campaign (if not his actual administration), and they can’t be mad at themselves for dumping out the provisions in the first place.

And why did they do it?  The answer is classic Dizzy City:

The top House negotiator, Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., didn’t recall why his side insisted that the Senate drop the transparency provision. But a Democratic aide said later that there is concern that making every report public automatically might cause agencies to be less candid in their dealing with the Appropriations Committee. The aide required anonymity to speak candidly.

I swear, there’s something in the drinking water here.

(H/T: Instapundit)

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The subject: This administration’s lack of transparency!

The spokesperson for the Left: Jane Hamsher, of FireDogLake!

The battle:

…called on account of mutual agreement, more or less.

(more…)

Don’t they have people for this?

It was Mary Katherine Ham’s article that tipped me to the problem:

Barack Obama’s administration may be promising the “greatest ethical standard ever administered to an executive branch,” and increased transparency over his predecessor, but it seems to be forgoing at least one transparency practice that was routine in the Bush White House— transcripts of the daily press briefing.

It’s been four days since Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ first (and widely panned) appearance before the White House press corps, but no transcript, summary, or video of the event has shown up on WhiteHouse.gov. The delay could be forgiven in a less tech-savvy bunch, but given the Obama team’s considerable online skill, the omission of the the transcript is clearly intentional.

The decision to withhold transcripts is not a departure from the Obama Team’s online posture during the campaign, and signals that’s exactly the posture they intend to take for the next four years. Team Obama got a lot of credit for being an active online presence, which indeed it was, but that presence was built for message control, not openness. (My.BarackObama, the campaign’s social networking platform, is a different story, but it was cordoned off from the official campaign material, which was pretty tightly controlled.)

(more…)