151 Bottles of Beer on the Wall
Posted by BuelahMan on January 29, 2008
Wait…that should be “Signing Statements”, not bottles.
Open the Government issued their Secrecy Report Card 2007, which lays out what secret, conniving, back-stabbing robbery the Bush Administration has been pummeling America with. From their pdf (please visit the site to read the entire thing):
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
OpenTheGovernment.org’s fourth annual report, Secrecy Report Card 2007, shows both a continued expansion of government secrecy across a broad array of agencies and actions and some, limited, movement toward more openness and accountability.
While every administration wants to control access to information about its policies and practices, information created by or for the federal government belongs to the American public and should be open (except in strictly limited and specified contexts). As this principle is often honored more in the breach than in the observance, public access to government information has varied over time. The current administration has exercised an unprecedented level not only of restriction of access to information about federal government’s policies and decisions, but also of suppression of discussion of those policies, their underpinnings, and their implications. It has also increasingly refused to be held accountable to the public through the oversight responsibilities of Congress. These practices inhibit democracy and our representative government; neither the public nor Congress can make informed decisions in these circumstances. Our open society is undermined and made insecure.
HIGHLIGHTS
• In six years, President Bush has issued at least 151 signing statements, challenging 1149 provisions of laws. In the 211 years of our Republic to 2000, fewer than 600 signing statements that took issue with the bills were issued. Among recent presidents, Reagan issued 71 statements challenging provisions of laws before him; G.W.H. Bush issued 146; Clinton, 105.
• Since 2001, the “state secrets” privilege has been invoked a reported 39 times—an average in 6.5 years (6) that is more than double the previous 24 years (2.46).
• On average since 2000, non-competed contract funding makes up more than 25 percent of all awards: 26.2% ($559.9 billion) In 2006, 25.9 percent ($107.5 billion) of federal contract funding was given out without any competition; another 5.1 percent ($21.3 billion) was awarded without competition because of specific requirements. In 2000, 45 percent of contract dollars were awarded under full and open competition; by 2006, only 34 percent followed such open procedures.
• A 2007 Justice Department Office of the Inspector General report on secret wiretap warrants indicated that the government made 143,074 National Security Letter requests in the period 2003-2005. The number for 2006 remains classified.
• With 2,176 secret surveillance orders approved in 2006, federal surveillance activity under the jurisdiction of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court more than doubled in five years.
This is important, not to point out that Bush is a crook and liar… hell, everyone knows that. This is to highlight that his latest Signing Statement added to the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, basically is telling Congress that whatever they put in to their quaint little law is only good if he deems it good.
His “Memorandum of Justification” carries the waiver.
He says that some of the issues contained “could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations.” So he signs a law, then adds a little memo that says, “Whatever!!! I’ll do what I want!”
