Clinton: 'I've Been The Most Transparent Public Official in Modern Times'

What?

New Hillary Clinton claim: She is the "most transparent person in American history"

I spit my coffee because when I here Hillary utter this lie. No one ever claimed Hillary didn't have 'chutzpah.'

Most transparent administration ever sets new record for FOIA non-compliance

Heh...

Via AP:

For the second consecutive year, the Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press. …

The government’s new figures, published Tuesday, covered all requests to 100 federal agencies during fiscal 2014 under the Freedom of Information law, which is heralded globally as a model for transparent government. They showed that despite disappointments and failed promises by the White House to make meaningful improvements in the way it releases records, the law was more popular than ever. Citizens, journalists, businesses and others made a record 714,231 requests for information. The U.S. spent a record $434 million trying to keep up.
The government responded to 647,142 requests, a 4 percent decrease over the previous year. The government more than ever censored materials it turned over or fully denied access to them, in 250,581 cases or 39 percent of all requests. Sometimes, the government censored only a few words or an employee’s phone number, but other times it completely marked out nearly every paragraph on pages.

Most transparent administration ever is removing regulation requiring transparency...

You can't make this up...

Via USA Today:

WASHINGTON — The White House is removing a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject all requests for records to that office.
The White House said the clean-up of FOIA regulations is consistent with court rulings that hold that the office is not subject to the transparency law. The office handles, among other things, White House record-keeping duties like the archiving of e-mails.
But the timing of the move raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, coming on National Freedom of Information Day and during a national debate over the preservation of Obama administration records. It’s also Sunshine Week, an effort by news organizations and watchdog groups to highlight issues of government transparency.
“The irony of this being Sunshine Week is not lost on me,” said Anne Weismann of the liberal Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.
Keep on reading…

The most transparent administration in history is forced by judge to be transparent...

It's about time someone helped Obama keep his promises...

Scandal: A court tells the White House to ac knowledge the existence of a probe into whether one of its advisers used private tax records for political gain. Transparency is being forced on an administration that's anything but.
In 2010, an attorney for industrialists and libertarian political donors Charles and David Koch told the Weekly Standard of a senior Obama aide telling reporters on background that the Kochs "do not pay corporate income tax" through their company, Koch Industries.
How, the attorney justifiably wondered, did the White House get his clients' private information from the IRS?
The anonymous official has since been identified as former White House senior economics adviser Austin Goolsbee, and his remarks were aimed to besmirch the Koch brothers and their group Americans for Prosperity, the bête noir of Democrats and the White House for helping expose Obama administration failures and the dangers of its policies.
In a conference call with reporters, the Washington Post reported, Goolsbee used Koch Industries as an example to back up an administration claim that half of all business income went to companies that manage to avoid paying corporate income taxes.
Goolsbee could not have made his claim without access to the Kochs' private tax data, something a White House official is not supposed to have. The administration's early excuses were that he obtained the data from an unidentified government board and later that he must have read about it somewhere.

Image of the Day: Page 25 of NSA report detailing FISA Amendments violations

This is what transparency looks like in the Obama administration...

Via ProPublica:

Flashback To Obama 2009: Transparency Will Be Touchstone (Video)

Change...

Unlikely: Harry Reid calls Mitt Romney the most secretive candidate in modern presidential history..

You got to give it to Harry Reid. If you are going to lie, lie big.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lambasted Mitt Romney for refusing to release several years of tax returns, suggesting that no other presidential candidate in modern history has been as secretive.

"Never in modern American history has a presidential candidate tried so hard to hide himself," Reid said in his speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The Nevada senator said Romney has asked the country to "take his word" that there are no damaging revelations in his tax returns.

"Take his word? His word?" Reid said sarcastically. "Trust comes from transparency and Mitt Romney comes up short on both."

Here is a list of the top 10 things Obama is still hiding.

10. State senate papers. In the 2008 primary, Obama criticized Hillary Clinton for not releasing papers from her eight years time as First Lady--but failed to produce any papers from his eight years in Springfield. “They could have been thrown out,” he said.
9. Academic transcripts. His supposed academic brilliance was a major selling point, but Obama (by his own admission) was a mediocre student. His GPA at Occidental was a B-plus at best, and his entering class at Columbia wasweak. Can he prove his merit?
8. Book proposal. Obama’s literary agent claimed he was “born in Kenya”--forsixteen years. His original book proposal exists--biographer David Maraniss refers to it--and seems to have embellished other key details of his life. Yet it has never been released.
7. Medical records. In 2000, and again (briefly) in 2008, GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain released thousands of pages of his medical records. Obama, who had abused drugs and continued smoking, merely provided a one-page doctor’s note.
6. Small-dollar donors. In 2008, the McCain campaign released the names of donors who had contributed less than $200, though it was not required to do so. But the Obama campaign refused, amidst accusations it had accepted illegal foreign contributions.
5. The Khalidi tape. In 2003, Obama attended a party for his good friend, the radical Palestinian academic Rashid Khalidi. The event featured incendiary anti-Israel rhetoric. The LA Times broke the story, but has refused to release the tape--and so has Obama.
4. The real White House guest list. Touting its transparency, the Obama White House released its guest logs--but kept many visits secret, and moved meetings with lobbyists off-site. It also refused to confirm the identities of visitors like Bertha Lewis of ACORN.
3. Countless FOIA requests. The Obama administration has been described as “the worst” ever in complying with Freedom of Information Act requests for documents. It has also punished whistleblowers like David Walpin, who exposedcronyism in Americorps.
2. Health reform negotiations. Candidate Obama promised that health care reform negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN. Instead, there were back-room deals woth millions with lobbyists and legislators--the details of which areonly beginning to emerge.
1. Fast and Furious documents. After months of stonewalling Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder asked President Obama to use executive privilege to conceal thousands of documents related to the deadly scandal--and Obama did just that.

Video: Asked Why Executive Privilege Invoked, WH Chief of Staff Says Obama Admin "Most Transparent Ever "

The most corrupt ever would be closer to the truth...

Irony on Steroids: VP Joe Biden Attends Closed Door Meeting on Transparency

The irony meter exploded on this one.

“At 1:00 PM, the Vice President will attend a meeting of the Government Accountability and Transparency Board in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. At 2:30 PM, the Vice President will meet with representatives of the National Sheriffs' Association in the Roosevelt Room. These meetings are closed press.”

(It was only two months ago that State Department officials briefed reporters on transparency efforts but refused to have their names be printed; and in March, the White House postponed a pooled-press ceremony for President Obama to get an openness award -- it was later rescheduled and carried out in an undisclosed meeting.)

Irony: President Obama accepts “transparency” award in secret

You just can't make stuff like this up.

(POLITICO) — President Obama finally and quietly accepted his “transparency” award from the open government community this week — in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House on Monday.

The secret presentation happened almost two weeks after the White House inexplicably postponed the ceremony, which was expected to be open to the press pool.

You Just Can't Make Stuff This Good Up

VP Biden holding closed meeting on government transparency today. (accent is mine)

Possibly the most important event of the vice president's day Tuesday is to meet at 2:15 with Earl Devaney. Everyone knows him as chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board -- the top guy monitoring the gazillion-dollar stimulus and the overdue economic recovery, and ensuring that the taxpayers financing same know all about it.

However, no one outside the room will know what goes on in that Biden-Devaney meeting. That's because the government meeting on government transparency has been closed.

Most Transparent Administration Ever Eliminates "Transparency Czar"

President Obama has finally found a czar he doesn't need anymore. The choice of which czar to get rid of is very telling. President Obama has eliminated his "Transparency Czar."

The Washington Examiner reported:

President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by government and politicians.

Obama transferred "ethics czar" Norm Eisen to the Czech Republic to serve as U.S. ambassador.