If you thought Obama was all for transparency, you know by now that Obama and transparency don’t mix. If you are still holding out the belief that Obama has ushered in a new era of unprecendented transparency, a new AP analysis should put that to rest.
Federal agencies haven’t lived up to President Barack Obama’s promise of a more open government, increasing their use of legal exemptions to keep records secret during his first year in office.
An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.
Among the most frequently used exemptions: one that lets the government hide records that detail its internal decision-making. Obama specifically directed agencies to stop using that exemption so frequently, but that directive appears to have been widely ignored.
Major agencies cited that exemption at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies. Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.
Departments used the exemption more even though Obama’s Justice Department told agencies to that disclosing such records was “fully consistent with the purpose of the FOIA,” a law intended to keep government accountable to the public.
It seems to me, and anyone else paying attention, that Obama has not lived up to his end of the bargain. Be it about transparency, or bipartisanship. He campaigned on lies. Plain and simple. And for someone who attacked anything and everything about George W. Bush, Obama is only doing a good job making people realize how much better things were when we had a real leader in the White House.
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