White House Gets More Transparent with Visitor Logs and Declassification

Obama and national security team

According to Obama's policy set forth earlier this year, Obama is making good on his promise of transparent government, releasing names of visitors. These visitor logs have gotten wingnuts out of sorts because they've made stupid assumptions about the names on the list. But if you want to peruse the list for yourself, visit here. Remember, some of the names, such as Bill Ayres, isn't THE Bill Ayres. Don't jump to conclusions.

Today’s release also includes visitor information for the Vice President and his staff at the White House Complex. Consistent with the voluntary disclosure policy, the Office of the Vice President is releasing the names and dates of visitors to the Vice President’s Residence for official events between Sept 16 and Sept 30, and the visitors to the Residence who appear on the daily schedules of the Vice President and Dr. Biden. At this time, it is not possible to release visitor information for the Vice President’s Residence in an identical format to the White House Complex because the Residence is not equipped with the WAVES system that is in place at the White House Complex. The Vice President’s staff is working with the Secret Service to upgrade the visitor records system at the Residence. When the electronic update is complete, visitor information for the White House Complex and the Residence will be released in a common format.
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Today’s release is only one example of the many steps the President has taken to increase government transparency over the past year. This Administration’s concrete commitments to openness include issuing the Open Government Directive, putting up more government information than ever before on data.gov and recovery.gov, reforming the government’s FOIA processes, providing on-line access to White House staff financial reports and salaries along with the President and Vice President’s tax returns, adopting a tough new state secrets policy, taking steps to improve policies concerning controlled unclassified information, reversing an executive order that could have previously limited access to presidential records, issuing an executive order to speed declassification and reduce over-classification, reaching an accord to restore White House emails from the previous Administration and webcasting White House meetings and conferences. The release also compliments our new lobbying rules, which in addition to closing the revolving door for lobbyists who work in government have also emphasized expanding disclosure of lobbyist contacts with the government. More at WH

Yesterday, Obama also moved to declassify certain government information:

President Barack Obama on Tuesday ordered the federal government to rethink how it protects the nation's secrets, in a move that was expected to declassify more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents and curb the number of government records hidden from the public.

Among the changes is a requirement that every record be released eventually and that federal agencies review how and why they mark documents classified or deny the release of historical records. A National Declassification Center at the National Archives will be established to assist them and help clear a backlog of the Cold War records by Dec. 31, 2013. More at MSNBC

Obama To Freeze Pay for Senior Staff

Dancing at the Commander in Chief ball

CNN: "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," Obama said.

Among other things, Obama said he would issue a pay freeze for his senior staff.

The new president has also promised swift action on the beleaguered economy. House Democrats, at Obama's urging, have signed a $825 billion economic recovery package that the president says will save or create up to 4 million jobs and invest in health care, energy and education.

House Republican leaders, however, asked to meet with Obama on Thursday to offer major changes to the recovery proposal.

"The challenge as we see it is to create a plan that helps middle-class taxpayers and small businesses without wasting money or exploding our national deficit," the leaders wrote in a letter to the new president.

The era of secrecy is over, Obama said. Obama advocating for an honest and transparent government:

Obama To Announce Who's at the Table

Obama's promise of transparency in government is coming to life:

MEMORANDUM
From: John Podesta
To: All Obama Transition Project Staff
Date: December 5, 2008
Re: “Seat at the Table” Transparency Policy – EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

Overview:
As an extension of the unprecedented ethics guidelines already in place for the Obama-Biden
Transition Project, we take another significant step towards transparency of our efforts for the American people. Every day, we meet with organizations who present ideas for the Transition and the Administration, both orally and in writing. We want to ensure that we give the American people a “seat at the table” and that we receive the benefit of their feedback.

Accordingly, any documents from official meetings with outside organizations will be posted on our website for people to review and comment on. In addition to presenting ideas as individuals
at www.change.gov, the American people deserve a “seat at the table” as we receive input from organizations and make decisions. In the interest of protecting the personal privacy of individuals, this policy does not apply to personnel matters and hiring recommendations.

Scope:
The following information will be posted on our website:
1. Documents: All policy documents1and written policy recommendations from official
meetings2 with outside organizations.
2. Meetings: The date and organizations represented at official meetings in the Transition
headquarters or agency offices, with any documents presented as noted above.

This scope is a floor, not a ceiling, and all staff are strongly encouraged to include additional materials. Such materials could include documents (recommendations, press releases, etc.)
presented in smaller meetings or materials or made public by the outside organization without a connection to an official meeting.

If you have any questions as to whether documents should be included, please email [Redacted].

Process:
Prior to an official meeting with an outside organization or organizations, Obama-Biden Transition Project staff members will inform attendees that any documents provided will be posted on our “Seat at the Table” website found at www.change.gov. Suggested language for email invitations is: “By presenting or submitting any document at a meeting with the Obama- Biden Transition Project, you agree to allow the document to be made public and posted on
www.change.gov.” At the completion of each meeting or upon receipt of such documents,
                                                            
1 This policy does not apply to non-public or classified information acquired from the Agency Review Process and
internal memorandum.
2 An “official meeting” is defined as a meeting with outside organizations or representatives of those organizations
to which three or more outside participants attend. 

Transition staff will provide the documents to [Redacted] with the date of the meeting, a list of
the organizations in attendance, and the topic of the meeting.

Obama in Wisconsin on Transparent Government

No more secrecy. No more waste.

Obama Works in Missouri McCain Mocks

Today, Obama is in Missouri campaigning and McCain is releasing videos mocking Obama. Hmmmmm. Which candidate do I want? The one who has no ideas so he has to mock the other candidate? Or the other one out promoting his ideas everywhere and anywhere? 

Here's some of what Obama talked about.
Obama talked about offshore drilling. "I understand how desperate folks are," he said, because of high gas prices. "If I thought by drilling offshore we could solve our problem, I'd do it." 

The oil companies have 68 million acres of leases that they are not using. They are holding land they're not using and now they want some more. 

The soonest you'd see a drop of oil off our shores is 10 years from now. The most you'd save would be a few cents then and gas could be $20 a gallon. 

The polls say that most Americans want offshore drilling but this is not real, Obama said. The oil companies are shoving this down the throats of congress, he said.

Make the oil companies drill where they already have leases. We need to look at oil speculators and let's get serious about alternative energy. Let's.

Obama did a wee bit of rightful mocking today.

Obama said the argument the McCain camp is making: "He doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills. He's risky."
The Q&A portion of the town hall

Social Security: Social security is one of the most successful programs America has ever come up with, he said. We have to stop raiding the SS trust fund, he said. They've been using SS money to cover up the deficit. Unlike McCain, Obama said he doesn't think SS shouldn't be privatized. The stock market inherently has risks. People should buy stocks but not with their SS money. To get more money into the system, one of the fairest ways is to raise the cap on the SS taxes. You stop paying SS if you make $102,000 or more.

How to stop the bleeding:
He's calling for a second round of stimulus, closing corporate loophole tax cuts. McCain's tax plan gives tax cuts to Exxon Mobil, one of the most profitable companies in the world. "I want to give tax cuts to you."

Let everyone deduct a portion of the their mortgage on their taxes.
Eliminate income taxes on seniors' social security.

These things will give a cushion but then we have to deal with the long term problem. We need to use less oil.

There are plug-in hybrids that are ready to go right now. But we haven't helped bring them to market, he said. 

We have to make healthcare more efficient and change our political system so that healthcare isn't about lobbyists.

Q How do you move the auto industry forward?
We need to invest in an Apollo program for energy, he said. We have to set goals.
Solving the energy problem could serve double duty: Cutting our reliance on foreign oil and creating 5 million new jobs on various energy programs, he said.

Q on Medicare: Here's the problem, more people are using it and healthcare is getting more expensive. Instead of making it efficient, we stop paying providers what they need. We need a comprehensive overhaul of our health system, including Medicare. We need to pay more attention to prevention, which eliminates costs in the long run. Obama says his daughter, Malia, has asthma. She got early treatment and it helped solve the attacks, he said. But some are in the emergency room every two weeks because they couldn't get early treatment.

The last questioner asked about holding business accountable for the environment. I'm going to hold them accountable by letting you know what's going on so you can hold me accountable. In other words, government will be more transparent so we'll know what's going on.
Americans voices have to be heard as much as big business.

We're going to post legislation before I sign it on the Internet so you can comment on it. We're going to continue to have town hall meetings like this one.

"We're going to shut down the revolving door." People work in government and then they go lobby.

We want every legislator to be accountable to Americans not business.
 

Here's McCain's new stab at being presidential.