Homestead mailing list

[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

Guess where and by which Maximum Leader.  Hint---it isn't Putin, bad as 
he is, not China's Hu either, and news travels fast even in Iraq's 
"No-Bid-Halliburton-Land.

It is here in the good old U.S. of A. that  the black hole of Federal 
Government snuffs out the citizenn's "Right to Know".
Ah-h-h---isn't it wonderful that our Maximum Leader brought this kind of 
integrity to the Oval Office---the kind of integrity found on toilet tissue.

The Boston Globe <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/>
RENÉE LOTH


 Bush's passion for secrecy

By Renée Loth  |  September 21, 2004

SOME MAY be tempted to dismiss this column as more self-interested 
whining from the media, but stick with it -- it's really about the 
/public's /right to know, not the media's. The Bush administration, 
resistant to scrutiny even before Sept. 11, has drawn a cloak of secrecy 
over its official actions that has steadily insulated it from the 
taxpayers. John Dean, counsel to Richard Nixon during the Watergate 
scandals, says the administration is using regulations and 
administrative actions to achieve what it could not get through 
Congress: an official secrets act.

ADVERTISEMENT
        

"Their secrecy is extreme -- not merely unjustified and excessive but 
obsessive," Dean writes in his book, "Worse than Watergate." Indeed, 
when it comes to closed government, the Bush administration makes the 
Nixon White House look like the public library.

Bush has expanded the number of agencies with authority to classify 
documents as secret, including Health and Human Services, the 
Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Agriculture. In 
March, 2003 he signed an excutive order allowing a broad range of 
documents to be kept beyond the reach of the public for up to 25 years. 
The number of documents classified in the Bush administration increased 
by over 50 percent since 2001. Freedom of Information Act requests, 
meanwhile, are increasingly subject to delays, costly fees, and exemptions.

The president doesn't read newspapers much, considers the press 
"filters" that get in the way of his message to voters, and simply 
rejects what they teach in journalism school: that the press is an 
important two-way conduit between the government and the governed.

Fine. But even on the campaign trail, supposedly the one opportunity 
every four years when voters get direct access to the candidates, Bush 
is staying under wraps. The Republicans screen ticketholders to campaign 
events and require signed loyalty oaths for attendance at some rallies. 
The home-viewing public sees nothing but adoring crowds. Anyone sneaking 
past the radar to protest is summarily escorted from the room.

California congressman Henry Waxman released a 90-page study last week 
detailing what he called "an unparalleled assault on the principle of 
open government." It describes whole realms of information that have 
been pulled from public view: reports of chemical releases taken off EPA 
websites; auto and tire safety information sealed by the Traffic Safety 
Administration. The so-called "critical infrastructure" provisions of 
the Homeland Security Act, passed in 2002, even allow private companies 
to protect damaging information from public disclosure and civil 
lawsuits. Any government official who releases the information faces 
criminal prosecution. Waxman has filed legislation to correct the most 
egregious coverups.

The administration is aided in its moves to shut off public access not 
just by national security concerns since Sept. 11, but by Americans' 
growing mania for privacy, especially with the advent of the Internet. 
For most Americans, privacy trumps openness.

A vivid example occurred in February 2001, when the race car driver Dale 
Earnhardt was killed in a crash in Florida. The Orlando Sentinel 
newspaper asked to examine the autopsy photos, not because editors 
intended to print them, but as part of an ongoing investigation into 
NASCAR safety. The reaction from the greiving family and Earnhardt fans 
was swift and fierce. Within days, Governor Jeb Bush had signed 
legislation making it a felony to release autopsy photos, and several 
other legislative assaults on the state's "sunshine laws" followed.

But under the guise of enhancing privacy, the government often actually 
enforces secrecy -- to the harm of average Americans. The federal 
Drivers Privacy Protection Act can prevent parents in some states from 
discovering whether school bus drivers have drunken-driving arrests on 
their their records. The "critical infrastructure" cloak in the Homeland 
Security Act can prevent citizens groups from learning if toxic 
chemicals are being stored or released in their neighbrohoods, or to use 
the information in court if they do find out.

White House aides deny the Bush administration has a particular penchant 
for secrecy, saying all presidents try to control access to sensitive 
information. But this administration has done something about it. In 
2001, Bush issued an executive order rolling back the Presidential 
Records Act. The order shifts the burden of accessing presidential 
archives to the public; scholars could be forced to sue for memos and 
records of former presidencies. So even history may never know what Bush 
really intended when he pulled the wool over the people's eyes. **