So Much for Transparency

Below is a post taken from The Corner by Jonah Goldberg and my husband's response.

So Much for Transparency [Jonah Goldberg]

From the Politico:

In his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations, realigned and expanded two key White House policymaking bodies and extended economic sanctions against parties to the conflict in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire.

Despite the intense scrutiny a president gets just after the inauguration, Obama managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps.

The moves escaped notice because they were never announced by the White House Press Office and were never placed on the White House web site.

They came to light only because the official paperwork was transmitted to the Federal Register, a dense daily compendium of regulatory actions and other formal notices prepared by the National Archives. They were published there several days after the fact.

A Politico review of Federal Register issuances since Obama took office found three executive orders, one presidential memorandum, one presidential notice, and one proclamation that went unannounced by the White House.

Re: So Much for Transparency by my husband as posted at The Corner

It looks like that regulatory review is all about reducing the power of Cass Sunstein's OIRA. CEI's crack investigative team summarizes as follows:

It appears that Obama is rescinding Bush 43's EOs 13258 (drafted by John Graham) and 13422 (drafted by Susan Dudley) in order to revert to Clinton's EO 12866 (drafted by Sally Katzen). The differences are very subtle, but include the following:

a. 13258 and 13422 applied OIRA review to guidance documents as well as rules.

b. 13258 and 13422 required agencies preparing draft rules and guidance docs to "identify in writing the specific market failure (such as externalities, market power, lack of information) or other specific problem that [the rule or guidance] intends to address (including, where applicable, the failures of public institutions) that warrant new agency action, as well as assess the significance of that problem, to enable assessment of whether any new regulation is warranted." Whereas EO 12866 requires agencies to "identify the problem that it intends to address (including, where applicable, the failures of private markets or public institutions that warrant new agency action) as well as assess the significance of that problem. . . . examine whether existing regulations (or other law) have created, or contributed to, the problem that a new regulation is intended to correct and whether those regulations (or other law) should be modified to achieve the intended goal of regulation more effectively. . . . [and] identify and assess available alternatives to direct regulation, including providing economic incentives to encourage the desired behavior, such as user fees or marketable permits, or providing information upon which choices can be made by the public."

c. 13258 and 13422 require the establishment of a Regulatory Policy Office in each agency to pre-clear proposed rules and guidance docs before they get sent to OIRA.

The biggest change is that guidance docs will no longer go through the OIRA review process.

Those were sensible policies that Obama has removed. Between the sneakiness and hypocrisy of his actions and the growing lack of ethics, Obama is really showing his true nature - I Told You So.