Courtesy of Pam Martens
Jay Clayton, Chair of the SEC
In towns across America there are laws that prevent government officials from meeting secretly. Typically, the officials must first publish a notice to the public with the date and time of the meeting; circulate the notice in a widely read publication and post the notice on the official website in order to give the public advance notice and the ability to attend the meeting or hearing.
The ability of the U.S. public to attend government meetings; hear firsthand what is being done with taxpayers’ dollars; ask questions about any perceived conflicts that might exist; and file Sunshine law requests for documents is how citizens hold government officials accountable.
When we lose that, we lose the entire concept of America as a country of the people, by the people and for the people. Thus, any effort at all to whittle away at open government laws must be viewed as a dangerous encroachment on democracy.
Tragically, the mainstream media and much of America were so enamored with President Obama’s statesmanship and his status as the first black to sit in the highest office of the United States, that he was able to preach transparency while delivering darkness to a vast part of his government. Under President Donald Trump, the dark curtain has enveloped more and more parts of the Federal government with new details coming out just this week. We’ll get to those details in a moment, but first some necessary background to show that Wall Street Democrats have failed the American people as well as Republicans.
President Obama took office on January 21, 2009. On that very day, he issued an Open Government memo that promised the American people a new era of transparency. On March 19, 2009, under the President’s orders, the Attorney General’s office issued detailed guidelines on how Federal agencies were to respond going forward to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Federal agencies were instructed as follows:
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