Obama Admin Fights Missing White House Email Lawsuit 345
DesScorp writes "The AP reports that the Obama administration has picked up where the Bush administration left off on the missing White House email issue by trying to have a lawsuit dismissed that would have kept investigating whether or not email was still missing. Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President expressed disappointment with the Obama administration's actions. Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, noted that President Barack Obama on his first full day in office called for greater transparency in government. The Justice Department 'apparently never got the message' from Obama, Blanton said."
Re:Just More of the Same Change ... (Score:2, Informative)
Seems like not taxing the rich was a huge mistake.
No, the mistake is claiming that the rich aren't being taxed.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml [cbo.gov]
In 2005, the top 20% paid 86.3% of federal income taxes, and 68.7% of all federal taxes (social security, individual and corporate income, excise). The average pre-tax income in that quintile was $231,500, although that was adjusted for household size. See the footnotes for an explanation.
For the top 10%, it was 72.7% and 54.7%, on average pre-tax income of $339,100.
For the top 5%, it was 60.7% and 43.8%, on average pre-tax income of $520,200.
And for the top 1%, it was 38.8% and 27.6%, on average pre-tax income of $1,558,500.
The same URL provides information about effective tax rates, which range from 25.2% for the top 20% to 31.4% for the top 1%, when accounting for all taxes.
In comparison, the lowest 20% paid 0.9% of all federal taxes, on average pre-tax income of $15,800. The facts are a lot different than the propaganda.
Re:This is getting ridiculous (Score:5, Informative)
"Obama is showing hypocrisy in record time, he's barely been in a month. It's not like he is reneging on a campaign promise, it sure makes it seem like practically his ENTIRE stated message about transparency in government was total bullshit."
Whoa whoa whoa, lets look at the actual facts before accusing Obama of "total bullshit."
The reason this is in the news right now - ie, what actually happened recently - is that the National Security Archive (the good guys who are suing for the emails) filed a response to the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the suit. So what's in the news right now isn't about a recent Obama decision.
The motion to dismiss was made on January 21st, which is right after the inauguration. Now, if Obama's absolute top priority was to change the government's position on defending against this suit, he could have ordered the justice department not to make the motion. But, what's much more likely, this motion was made by staff attorneys at the Justice Department, completing the job they were ordered to do earlier in January. It seems likely to me that they had finished drafting this motion to dismiss on the prior business day. Since the inauguration was holiday, and the day before that was MLK day, and before that the weekend... its likely the motion to dismiss was ready to be filed on January 16th, and that's when the lawyers' bosses ordered it done.
Since Obama wasn't in charge of the Justice Department until Jan 21st, the day the motion was filed, it's very likely there's nothing he could have done to stop it - he, and his staff, probably didn't know the motion was ready and ordered to be filed, and probably hadn't replaced the drafting lawyers' bosses yet anyway.
In fact, that the motion to dismiss was made the day after the inauguration makes it seem very likely that Bush holdovers were just doing everything they could, as fast as they could, to keep the cover up going.
You should hold your outrage until Obama (who's been pretty damn busy - passing a 800B stimulus package in the first month is unprecedented, but more on point is is ordering all agencies to presume in favor of disclosure when making FOIA decisions) actually has a chance to take a stance in this case.
Re:Just More of the Same Change ... (Score:3, Informative)
Your well-formatted, statistically dense post conveniently glossed over the fact that income taxes are not reflective of the entire tax burden.
Is there any other federal tax burden that the poor and middle class, as a whole, bear more heavily than the rich?
Sales tax is local. Property tax is local. Even vehicle tax is, seeing how it's levied by the DMV of each state, local.
At the federal level, the rich have been getting shafted on the income tax and haven't even been getting a word of thanks for supporting the rest of the country (federally-supported-program-wise, which is most of the welfare program in U.S.).
Yes, perhaps the poor pay more sales tax. But sales tax is not part of the presidential (or even congressional) platform.
Re:can you say... (Score:1, Informative)
Crikey did you even look at it? One of the broken promises listed had to do with transparency.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/rulings/promise-broken/ [politifact.com]
Which one are you talking about? The 5 day waiting period? Pfft... that's not about transparancy.
What about his promise that he wouldn't continue Bush's abuse of the state secrets privilege? [judicialwatch.org] Because he has ignored that.
Re:can you say... (Score:3, Informative)
Which one are you talking about? The 5 day waiting period? Pfft... that's not about transparancy.
According to a wide variety of other commentators it certainly is.
http://www.propublica.org/article/take-two-obama-short-on-transparency-pledge-again-090205 [propublica.org]
What about his promise that he wouldn't continue Bush's abuse of the state secrets privilege? Because he has ignored that.
I would not exactly say he ignored it. For example in his first day in office he implemented a roll back of an important Bush secrecy directive which was clearly an abuse of exactly what you are talking about, the state secret privilege.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/22/obama-lifts-bushs-veil-of-secrecy/ [washingtontimes.com]
There has been a roll-back of the Bush position in many cases, however in a few high profile cases he has continued the Bush policy. Speculation is that in some cases he is following the Bush policy because releasing documents would then compel prosecutions of former Bush officials - something he has stated he doesn't want.
Personally I think judgement on this will have to wait a bit for the overall picture to emerge.