Category: government transparency

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What a Day for an Insult

Freedom of Information

Much of politics is timing. When you release information is key.

One favorite “statesman” trick is to bury unflattering information by “releasing” it on a Friday, right before the weekend.

This gives politicians a respite. Surely world events will have spewed up some worse (that is, more interesting!) story over the weekend, so on Monday, when journalism and its followers are back into the work week, coverage will be distracted and lessened.

I guess that’s why the White House waited till last Friday to explain it was officially removing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the burdens on its Office of Administration.

Barack Obama, when he was running for office, proclaimed that his administration would be “the most transparent in history.” But he’s been following President Bush in keeping the administrative side of the White House as opaque as possible.

White House flunkies say this “cleanup” of FOIA regulations is “consistent with court rulings that hold that the office is not subject to the transparency law.”

Accept that, arguendo, and it still looks bad for the “most transparent” prez of all. He didn’t have to do this. He just wanted to.

Adding insult to injury, as noted by Gregory Korte in USA Today, “the timing of the move raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, coming on National Freedom of Information Day.”

This all relates to the current Hillary email scandal, too. It just so happens that the White House office now unencumbered by FOIA requirements is in charge of filing . . . old emails.

Coincidence?

Perhaps that’s why they risked announcing this on Freedom of Information Day. The irony was lost over the weekend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ballot access Common Sense general freedom government transparency

Pierce Petition Power

Jerry Gibbs

Pierce County, Washington, Executive Pat McCarthy charges that “a majority of the County Council bowed to political pressure, even though this could set a terrible precedent that the most basic administrative actions of government can be derailed by the simple act of signing a piece of paper.”

Yeah, right.

At issue is a $127 million construction project to build a new county administration building. Back in February, the Council voted 4-3 to move forward on the project.

The total cost of the new building, including financing fees and interest, will add up to $235 million according to Jerry Gibbs and a group called Citizens for Responsible Spending. These activists filed a petition to demand a public vote on the issue next November.

As is all too common these days, their grassroots effort was quickly countered by the big guns: the city filed a lawsuit against them, attempting to block the referendum.

The lawsuit didn’t sit well with people in Pierce County.

“Why don’t they want this voted on by the people?” asked Gibbs.

“This is absolutely an abuse of power,” decried resident Sheila Herron, “this is bullying of a private citizen.”

Council Chair Dan Roach argued that the power to launch a court challenge must come from the council, which had not discussed it. He warned his fellow city officials: “you are sending a very chilling” message to citizens not to “dare try to challenge what we’re doing as the government.”

Last week, the County Council voted 4-3 to drop the lawsuit, bowing to political pressure . . . from the people they represent.

In short, good government broke out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly government transparency incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall meme term limits too much government

Stop Phony Crony Pay Grab

Arkansas Tricksters

Are people in Arkansas as stupid as their legislators think?

Last November, legislators tricked enough voters to narrowly pass Issue 3.

I’ve addressed before the measure’s dishonest ballot language, mis-identifying a doubling of allowed terms as the “setting of term limits.” And about a much-ballyhooed gift ban that has proven so weak that now most legislators are offered “free meals nearly every day.”

Perhaps the biggest of the tricks used to pass the measure was this: Hide from voters the measure’s establishment of an “Independent Citizens Commission” . . . a majority hand-picked by those same legislators.

This “Legislative Cronies Commission” (as it should be called) has announced it will unilaterally hike pay by an outrageous 150 percent!

The commission claims to have looked at legislative salaries in nearby states, except Texas and Mississippi — two states that just so happen to pay lower salaries. Economic factors were also considered, supposedly, but household income in Arkansas has actually dropped in the last decade.

The commission held only one poorly publicized hearing — at, get this, 10:00 am on a Monday, when most folks were working. No surprise, public comments have run ten to one negative. Letters and emails contain words and phrases such as “shameful,” “insult,” “actually sick to my stomach,” “a joke,” “ludicrous,” “appalled” and “slap in the face.”

This led Larry Ross, chief crony on the commission, to rudely dis citizens, telling the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he would look at the “quality” of comments, not the “quantity.”

Only a tsunami of public anger can stop this rip-off of Arkansas taxpayers. Act fast. A March 16 meeting is set to finalize the increase.

Tell the Independent [sic] Citizens [yeah, right] Commission what you think: call (501) 682-1866.

This is Common Sense. Paul Jacob.

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government transparency

How Earnest Is The IRS?

Sometimes those who wield power over us seem less than honest about whether they’re following their own professed rules, including rules mandated by law.

The latest example comes to us courtesy of the watchdog group Cause of Action, which filed a Freedom of Information request for correspondence between the IRS and the White House about tax returns. The correspondence may reveal something about, say, political targeting of  taxpayers by IRS and/or Obama administration officials and/or others.

The IRS admits that it has more than 2,000 documents related to the request. It has been ordered by a court to release them. But the agency refuses to do so, citing confidentiality requirements. Yes, Gentle Reader. Because taxpayer information must be kept confidential, no information relevant to whether confidentiality requirements have been violated may be divulged.

How about releasing the communiqués after scrubbing any taxpayer addresses or Social Security Numbers? I mean, if taxpayer confidentiality is a genuine concern.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest either joshingly or earnestly assures The Hill that the Obama administration has been “very rigorous” in enforcing proper communication between the IRS and the White House. I fear that his knowledge of the 2,000 documents — and of the Obama administration’s record of truth-telling — is not exhaustive. . . .

How likely is this obstructionism motivated by concern for taxpayers?

I bet it’s motivated by concern to protect the posteriors of bureaucrats and politicians.

I salute all those refusing to let the stonewallers get away with it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability free trade & free markets government transparency

The Dark Guardian of Opacity

Sen. Harry Reid has his reasons that reason does not know.

Well, Nick Gillespie of ReasonTV (and .com) doesn’t know them. But he has his suspicions.

While the House has passed the Federal Reserve Financial Transparency Act, aiming to audit the Fed, Senate Majority Leader Reid balks at bringing the proposal up to a vote in Congress’s upper chamber. (Gillespie says it won’t happen, not while Reid has his say.)

In the House, both parties supported the audit — a majority of Democrats, and all Republicans save one lone holdout giving a Nay vote. But Reid, whose commitment to corporatism and opacity is well known, presumably fears the upwelling of good old republican values in the Old Man’s Club that is the U.S. Senate — Reid’s romper room for so many decades.

Egads, he must be thinking, even Senators Elizabeth Warren and Rand Paul agree on the need for some sunlight into the dark corridors of America’s bank cartel.

And they don’t agree about much of anything!

Gillespie spells out the whys of transparency. He also explains the basic context: “The central bank is explicitly tasked with the fundamentally incompatible duties of conducting stable monetary policy, promoting full employment, acting as a lender of last resort, and regulating the banks it works with. Good luck with all that.”

Who needs luck when you have power? Some do benefit from the current Old Boys’ system. They’re just not the general citizenry. Or republican governance.

A free society would have a very different banking and monetary system. Adding transparency might begin the process toward such a system.

Next step? Boot Harry Reid out of his cushy position of power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency

Candid Cameras for Cops

Should policemen be required to wear cameras?

Some already do. The rationale for the proposal is this: when police wear cameras that — with a few carefully defined exceptions — must be on whenever officers are on the job, they do their jobs better.

With respect to the furor in Ferguson, Missouri, a big question is what exactly happened there the day a cop shot and killed Michael Brown.

Officer Darren Wilson claims self-defense; he and eyewitnesses disagree about details.

It would have been helpful to have video of what happened. (We do have video of an immediately preceding incident: of Brown, a large man, robbing cigars from a local store and shoving the protesting store owner, a much smaller man.)

Or consider another case I’ve discussed, that of Eric Garner, the New York City cigarette seller killed by an officer’s chokehold despite Garner’s repeated insistence that he couldn’t breathe. That death was recorded on a bystander’s cell phone. What if it hadn’t been? The shock has spurred renewed calls to begin outfitting NYPD with cameras.

But there’s no reason to limit pilot programs to the Big Apple.

Some police work, like meetings with confidential informants, cannot be recorded without making the work impossible. But cops who are on the beat, entering a home, stopping motorists and the like should be recorded while doing these things. With appropriate safeguards against “malfunction,” the cameras could both prevent unnecessary violence and support officers who are in fact justified in using deadly force.

Until the advent of universal peace and harmony, let’s give the cameras a try.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment government transparency ideological culture insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

The Dog-Ate List

It’s hard to keep track of things. It helps to make a list.

I’m trying to follow all the IRS-scandal stonewalling, the latest example of which is how emails inculpating Lois Lerner and others have mysteriously disappeared; with, allegedly, no server backups (see my latest Townhall column, “The Dog Ate My Country”).

How many ways have fedgov officials fudged, fabricated, prevaricated, and otherwise non-cooperated with investigators after news broke that IRS had targeted for special harassment sundry conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status?

  • When the head of IRS’s department overseeing nonprofit applications, Lois Lerner, felt compelled to admit that IRS had specially targeted right-leaning organizations applying for nonprofit status, she and others put the main blame on a few low-level clerks.
  • Lerner twice formally refused to testify to Congress about the doings of her own department. Yet she also asserted, formally, that “I have not done anything wrong.”
  • IRS says it’ll take many years to comply with congressional requests for relevant documents. IRS was prompter when it handed abundant confidential information on conservative nonprofits to the Justice Department so that they could be selectively prosecuted.
  • DOJ selected an “avowed political supporter”  of President Obama to lead a meaningless “investigation” of the targeting of Obama’s critics. No prosecutions of wrongdoers are in the works.
  • Initially professing outrage at the IRS’s “inexcusable” targeting, Obama later airily dismissed the affair as a “phony scandal.” On which occasion was he lying? (Hint: both.)
  • Major media outlets do all they can to abet the stonewalling.

What did I miss?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency ideological culture insider corruption obituary

One Cheer for an IRS Man?

I’m hesitating. But given the way many IRS honchos have too often behaved throughout the agency’s history, including today — yes, I’ll applaud Randolph Thrower for saying no to a President.

Thrower died in March at the age of 100 as the “IRS Chief Who Resisted Nixon.” He had headed the agency from 1969 to 1971, before getting fired for challenging the administration’s political hardball. Nixon henchman John Ehrlichman delivered the pink slip.

White House staffers were pressuring the IRS to audit various activists, journalists and congressmen. These were persons that Nixon felt deserved government harassment.

Too often, IRS officers have been all too eager to politicize tax procedures at the behest of those in power. Not Thrower. He may have been guilty of naïveté. When asking to meet with the President, he said he felt sure that Nixon knew nothing of the pressure coming from underlings and would repudiate “any suggestion of the introduction of political influence into the IRS.”

Thrower’s request for a meeting was denied. The record shows that Nixon soon demanded his removal and also that the next IRS commissioner be a “ruthless [s.o.b.].”

My problem with Randolph Thrower is his failure to say anything publicly about why he was fired. By speaking out, he might have prevented some of the evildoing the White House would perpetrate over the next several years.

He owed that much to his employer: us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency meme porkbarrel politics too much government

Don’t think legislators deserve a 150% pay raise?

The Arkansas legislature is on track to receive a massive pay hike. You can stop it.

Call (501) 682-1866

Learn more here.

 

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government transparency

The Tax Agency and the Tortoise

We are indebted to a publisher of tax information called Tax Analysts for its efforts to make the Internal Revenue Service slightly more accountable.

The IRS finds itself beleaguered, sort of, by scandal — the fallout from their practice of impeding applications for tax-exempt status of Tea Party and other “patriot” and “constitutionalist” groups. But the agency doesn’t always cooperate with investigations of its conduct.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, Tax Analysts has sued the IRS to obtain all materials used since 2009 to train Cincinnati personnel in the art of handling applications for tax-exempt status.

Folks at the IRS had at first “agreed” to comply with the FOIA request for these instructions ─ which will shed light on what, exactly, employees have been told at various times about how to deal with applicants of various ideological hue. But the agency kept dithering, first telling Tax Analysts that it would supply the stuff pronto, then saying it needed more time; then saying the same when the next-named comply-by date arrived; etc., ad infinitum.

Like the ever-slowing competitor to Zeno’s tortoise, the IRS found it impossible to ever cross the finish line or actually supply any documents.

Yet these guys slap us with penalties if we’re late with the taxes. . . .

Well, Tax Analysts has seen the IRS’s delaying tactics before. So now the matter is in court. Sooner or later we shall learn whether the agency’s own written instructions counsel ideological discrimination, or these instructions are untainted by such but have been flouted by IRS officers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.