Once upon a time, President Obama promised to lead the most transparent administration that ever walked the Earth in the history of America. In a memo penned the day after his first inauguration, Obama wrote:
“The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.”
You know you’re in the wrong as a Democrat when you have the New York Times calls you out:
“Withholding the opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the president and executive agencies, is deeply troubling. The office’s advice often serves as the final word on what the executive branch may legally do, and those who follow that advice are virtually assured that they will not face prosecution.”
Well good news folks, Obama’s administration has found a way to keep this promise: just change the information before you have to hide it!
The Washington Times reports that Obama administration actively tried to change numbers to minimize how many jobs would be loss from a proposed new coal regulation:
“The company and its subcontractors initially estimated that 7,000 jobs could be lost and coal production would be affected negatively by the rules… [The Interior Department] asked for another calculation with different variables, and Polu Kai Services refused. The company’s contract with the government was terminated shortly after the story was leaked to the press.”
Brutal. Not only did the administration try to change the numbers they asked an outside contractor to compile, but then they fired the contractor when the contractor refused. No wonder Chicago politics never spread outside of Chicago.
This story makes us here at the Peak wish we had two things:
1) Fractivists that actually gave a damn about the truth and not just pushing their own ideological agenda even if it meant taking the rest of us off a cliff with them.
2) A Senator who wasn’t a rubberstamp for an administration so blinded by the nanny-state, we-know-better mentality that nothing is allowed to stand in their way, even reality itself.
At least one of those things we can fix in November. As for the other? Well, you can’t argue with crazy, we just got to hope it hasn’t spread anywhere else.
It's the Chicago way.