Galt's Gulch

Freedom Of Information Act problems .......

Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 3 months ago to Government
29 comments | Share | Flag

and if it isn't FOIA stonewalling, it's private mail servers
and cover-ups ... and They Work For Us!

What Do You Think?! -- j
.
SOURCE URL: https://jonathanturley.org/2016/08/25/the-farce-that-is-foia-the-state-department-stonewalled-the-associated-press-for-three-years-on-foundation-donor-story/#more-103347

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  • Posted by ChuckyBob 8 years, 3 months ago
    I used to work for a public agency. We received FOIA requests all the time. I even sent some out to other agencies. Sometimes lawyers would come in with their own scanner because they wanted so many documents and we charged for the copies we made. Anyway, after going through that period of my life it REALLY bugs me to have these Yahoos in the federal government obstruct like they do. I would like to make one change to the FOIA law. Whenever a denial is made an officer of the agency must sign the denial under penalty of perjury that the denial is correct. Then if it is found to not be correct and it is obvious that the officer was just obstructing they would be subject to criminal prosecution for perjury. I would also make them personally liable for the plaintiff's legal costs, plus punitive damages. With that I think the obstructions would soon disappear.
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    • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 3 months ago
      Seems to me that Government should not hide anything, except, perhaps, we are attacking this country on such and such a date or we now have this weapon and will use it, kind of stuff. EVERYTHING else should be made public and discussed on a regular basis.
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      • Posted by ChuckyBob 8 years, 3 months ago
        Well, the agency I worked for did deal with foreign countries, but we did not attack them. Everything was fair game for a FOIA request except matters dealing with personnel private info, on-going negotiations and internal communications dealing with litigation. Other than that you could ask for anything and get it. So, when I was doing some maintenance on the network and found one of our guys was keeping his pornography collection on the file server I was kind of sweating bullets until he "left" our office and we deleted his account.
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  • Posted by chad 8 years, 3 months ago
    Once you have applied for the information and the government begins stonewalling what would make one believe that if you ever got the information it wouldn't be the information you were designed to get rather than what information had once actually existed? If I had control of the information you wanted while you contested for it for three years I would be busy rewriting it to suit my needs.
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 3 months ago
      As my kid said after watching the 25th anniversary of the JFK assassination and referred to the locked up classified documents. "What would make me believe they were the same ones from those many years ago?' She also figured out on her own that nine ninety nine was not a good deal but a gimmick to spend more and continued. "Notice they didn't mention the sales tax?" I explained that was a cost of government add on and not done by the retailer who was only required to collect it and pass it on. "Same pocket getting picked."
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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 3 months ago
    The FOIA, like every other branch of the Obama administration suffers from a major case of constipation. They will not release any information on anything negative about people who are in the administration, supporters, Black activists, and any Muslims who do not commit heinous acts. In this, they are aided by a sympathetic press who can no longer be called journalists, but biased reporters instead. What is so bad about this is that once upon a time, not so long ago, this kind of thing was done under cover, but now, the Clintons and the Obama administration have gotten away with the most blatant acts that are actual felonies and against the Constitution, that covering up is hardly needed.We are no longer anything like what the Founders created so that even if Trump wins in a landslide it will, at most, only slow down the slide into oblivion.
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    • Posted by KevinSchwinkendorf 8 years, 3 months ago
      And there are 100 million armed Americans who are getting more pissed off every day!
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      • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 3 months ago
        One WAG was 200,000,000
        Your closer at 100,000,000
        NBC thinks one in three and another picked 30% down from 50 %
        DEA says two million weapons including 488,000 needing the tax stamp (auto matic short barrel, silenced
        Statista.com shows 41%
        Many of these figures are listed by household not individuals

        Why the disparity?

        There is no central firearms compiled register and neither is there one for owners.

        The percentage of households that have a gun has been falling pretty steadily since the 1970s, to 31% in 2014, as shown in a report this year from NORC, a social sciences research group at the University of Chicago that has been surveying Americans for decades.

        When you look at the adults who actually own a gun themselves, rather than those who merely live in a household that has one, the numbers are even smaller—just 22.4% of the American adults surveyed owned a gun in 2014:

        Even then the figures are skewed. Assuming they are talking citizen the definition of a child in gunrelated deaths is under 21 years of age.

        How many do I have as an American Citizen with a carry permit.

        None of your business. But take the number of residents (assume they mean citizens) at 425 million and subtract those under 21 including three years worth of Millennials it would take half to make 200 million it would be 127.5 million at 30%

        So you are in the ball park but it's apples and oranges and figs since we're not sure 425 million is residents or citizens.

        No central registry and everyone taking WAG Shots unless you want to research each state.
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        • Posted by KevinSchwinkendorf 8 years, 3 months ago
          I agree that "the best way to lie is with statistics," and you've hit on a central point: you really have to pay attention to the way the statistic is stated. The one number you quote that I really believe is way off is your number for the total population of the USA. You say 425 million, but I have heard many times the number is around 320 million, which probably includes illegals. So, several of your percentages should be revised significantly if they are based on 425 in the denominator. I also heard (10-15 years ago) that over half of households had at least one firearm, but that fraction may have decreased more recently with fewer people per household on the average (assuming higher divorce rates have something to do with it). At any rate, there are indeed many ways to slant the figures, and as you point out, its hard to know for sure because there is no actually gun registration. But, I do know there are an estimated 300 million personally owned firearms in the USA, and if the 100 million gun owners is accurate, that would imply an average of 3 guns per gun owner. But then, if a husband and wife household has one gun in the house, and the husband is the "owner," does that mean the wife is "not an owner"? - and who knows whether she actually has access to it or not, or whether she has learned how to use it (a valuable skill if someone has broken into their house and killed or disabled him, and now she has to defend herself before 911 gets there). Now, most gun owners probably own only a single firearm, but there are some who have quite a collection. Another reason I think the USA population is closer to 320 million is that I remember hearing that our population was closer to 200 million back 30 years ago, when the NRA membership was 3 million. Now, the NRA membership is 5 million, and 320 million population would imply a roughly constant percentage of the population that becomes a "joiner" in the NRA. Also, 20-30 years ago, the estimated number of gun owners was still the often-quoted figure of 63 million, and now its 100 million (same percentage increase along with population). So, is the number of gun owners increasing because the population is increasing, or is there an increasing percentage of citizens becoming gun owners because of gun-control fear? I'm not sure, but it looks to me like a lot of the increase in gun owners has come more recently, correlating with Clinton-Obama gun control hysteria. Again, there are distributions within distributions. Interesting though...
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 3 months ago
    How could there be any FOIA problems?
    Our wonderful pathological Liar-In-Chief promised us that his banana republic styled regime would be the most transparent administration in history,
    I know at about that same time he was denying access to his college education records. But what the hey? Who's perfect?
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 3 months ago
    Where was that stonewalling when Carter was allowing all the classified documents to be sent to whomever and anyone. Plans for the Oklahoma City Bomb ring a bell?
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