On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 8:15 AM, KZK <evil.ke...@gmail.com> wrote: > More brilliance from a one-term president: > > > http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Obama-closes-curtain-on-transparency-468557-100595914.html > > 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. > ... > Bauer's own words -- gathered by the diligent folks at the Sunlight > Foundation -- show disdain for openness and far greater belief in the good > intentions of those in power than of those trying to check the powerful.
Did you read the article? I can't find one fact in there that shows opposition to transparency on the part of the "partisan ex-lobbyist," who clearly has much more meaningful credentials than that. And what is really, really awful about this column is that it leaves the impression that the Sunlight Foundation was criticizing Obama's decision. Hardly. What the author (who took one journalism class and started calling himself a reporter) did was dig up a two-year-old Sunlight Foundation press release and twisted into a criticism of current events. Sleazy. Unethical. http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2008/06/10/reflections-on-election-laws/ The item's concluding paragraph: "As Bauer cautions, we should take great care in what we regulate. And many of the issues are complex, requiring difficult and careful decisions. Legitimate citizen organizing and association should not be discouraged. But made clear by the convention loophole, there are still some easy decisions left unaddressed." The Sunlight Foundation was praising Bauer (two years ago) for his insights into regulation and politics, not criticizing Obama for giving Bauer responsibility for transparency. To really get at the facts here, go to the comments Bauer made, which prompted the Sunlight Foundation item. http://www.moresoftmoneyhardlaw.com/news.html?AID=1277 Obama chose a man who defended the FEC's decision to leave Internet media such a blogging, unregulated. Terrible blow to transparency, was that? "I am all for deliberative democracy. The opposite has little to commend it. Progressive political action depends, too, on finding and building strengths in numbers, in raising any one voice by amplifying it with the voices of others. Alliances must be fashioned and coalitions built. This is work done on the streets or the phones or the on web, wherever support can be recruited and energies toward a common goal can be mobilized. This comes about not only through the protection of "free speech," important as it is: the right of association, broadly construed and vigorously defended, captures an aspect of this political work that has been seriously neglected." Of course, the first clue that the column might be deliberately biased was that it appeared in the Washington Examiner. But there is no excuse for twisting the Sunlight Foundation's report this way. Nick
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