US Action News

In his letter, Issa cited the Times story and said “not only are administration officials intentionally circumventing [federal law] by using private e-mail accounts, but the White House staff are also skirting the president’s own transparency initiatives, such as the online publication of White House visitor logs, by holding meetings with lobbyists outside of the White House to avoid creating records of the meetings.”

President Obama is finally uniting the left and the right — in joint opposition to his administration’s chronic sabotage of transparency and public disclosure rules.

Every effort to erode liberty and free speech always is disturbing. What is truly alarming about these recent examples is how new and proposed violations of individual rights are lathered in transparency rhetoric. As an advocate of real transparency, I’m concerned that such a masquerade impedes both free speech and transparency.

Positions charged with ensuring transparency and accountability languish unfilled.

The once clear line in America that separates the private sector from the public sector is quickly disappearing, and Washington D.C. is emerging as the financial, as well as political capital of the country.

When it comes to financial reform, before we know where we’re going, we need to find out where we’ve been. The government was intimately involved in the meltdown of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and Rep. Barney Frank was at the center of the scandal.

“It will give pretty left-wing groups a forum for criticizing the U.S.,” Ruse told CNSNews.com. That internal criticism will then end up at the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The Obama administration promised increased transparency in government but has rolled back rules proposed by the Bush administration that expanded the financial disclosure statements required of labor unions and their leaders.

In a real effort at the transparency that we hoped was supposed to change Washington, Pelosi urges passing of the health care destruction bill “so we can find out what’s in it“.

The Obama administration is seeking to exclude from federal oversight its new $30 billion dollar small-business lending program. Obama’s rhetoric about transparency during the campaign was as phony as his vow to end the era of lobbying (last year was that industry’s best year ever in Washington).