DelCOG Meeting — The State of FOIA Activity

Charles Davis, Executive Director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition spoke to the DelCOG group on Thursday and delivered a very interesting talk about the state of FOIA activity in the US and the increasing push by governments at all levels in the US to try to build a wall around their actions and deliberations.

The good news, according to Davis, is that interest in government transparency is very high — largely an unintended gift of George W Bush. People for all parties are clear about the need to have the government operate in the open, given the insistence on (and the consequences of) the obsessive secrecy of BushCo. This is a real advantage for Open Government partisans — it is much easier to change the conversation towards greater openness, since now everyone knows exactly what you are trying to accomplish. Interestingly, he noted Texas as being a famous Open Government state and John Cornyn (!) as being a pretty good friend of Open Government as well as Shield Law efforts. The Texas politics that he came up in rewarded politicians who actively supported Open Government issues. Go figure.

The big issues for Open Government (besides the fact that we don’t really have it — yet! — here in Delaware):

Recovery Deal

According to the NYT (and the BBC who is reporting this now), the Dem leadership plus the so-called moderate group reached a deal on the recovery package. As of now,…

Talking Point Smackdown — Honeybees!

One of the resident wingnuts brought up a portion of the recovery package that is supposed to support honeybees — of course, you consider the source and presume that you are dealing with more manufactured outrage over something silly. Little did I know. Yesterday evening, I found out exactly what she was talking about (column by Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times):

What in heaven’s name does Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have against honeybees?

That question haunted my days after I saw the Kentucky Republican on TV fulminating about a provision he found in the proposed government stimulus package. The provision, he said, would provide $150 million for “honeybee insurance.”

“This is nonsense,” he said, as if he took it personally. You had to think he got stung as a kid or maybe caught a local swarm in the act of recruiting aphids for Al Qaeda.

So I resolved to get to the bottom of this scandalous expenditure.

Hiltzik provides some more background here, so make sure you go read it all, but here is the good part:

Good Bank, Bad Bank

There's no quick and easy way for me to copy this masterpiece to this blog, but just click here to read the story of American Banks if Dr. Seuss was…

A Center Right Nation No More

Gallup mines all of the data they collected over the past year to provide various analyses of the state of the political nation and looks at political party affiliation: Open…

Different Day…

...same bullshit.  Take a look: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpRK42W9st4[/youtube] If you could mask the time markers here, you'd swear you were listening to CNN this week.  It is the same GOP script, with…

Delaware Coalition For Open Government Meeting 5 February

From my email, notice of a DelCOG meeting next week — Thursday, 5 February, to be exact.  They do want you to try to RSVP so they can have enough seats.  Let us know if you are planning to go….

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You are cordially invited:

THE DELAWARE COALITION FOR OPEN GOVERNMENT PRESENTS

Freedom of Information: A National Perspective
Speaker: Charles Davis, NFOIC Executive Director
University of Delaware’s Goodstay Center
2600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Wilmington, Delaware
Thursday, February 5, 2009
6:30 p.m. – social gathering / light refreshments
7 p.m. – program
FREE and open to the public

Scroll down for directions to the Goodstay Center.

Charles Davis, the National Freedom of Information Coalition Executive Director, will take an in-depth look at why freedom of the press, guaranteed by the First Amendment, and the unrestricted free flow of information — both cornerstones of democracy — are under attack. Freedom of Information laws have been weakened, reporters are being subpoenaed to reveal confidential sources and the business of the federal government is increasingly shrouded in secrecy.