Let's Not Lose Sight of Our Common Goals When it Comes to Whistleblower Protections ... (POGO)

[struggle4progress]

Let's Not Lose Sight of Our Common Goals When it Comes to Whistleblower Protections and Government Transparency
Jun 14, 2011
By DANIELLE BRIAN

There is currently a petition circulating asking POGO and other groups to withdraw the award we participated in giving President Obama this spring for his commitment to open government. There is no doubt that the petitioners, many of whom I respect, are right that there are many things to bemoan in the Obama Administration’s implementation of its open government goals. We share many of the reform objectives as the petitioners. While we may at times disagree on how to best achieve those objectives, we shouldn't lose sight of our common goals ...

It's undeniable that the Obama administration has achieved more openness than any other recent president ...

Obama himself joked during the meeting, saying something to the effect of “I know how this game works. Yes, you are giving me an award, but you want to use the opportunity to talk to me about what I’m doing wrong.” I was able to highlight not just the pattern of prosecutions, but specifically the Tom Drake case. It was after this meeting that the Justice Department backed down on both the Thomas Tamm and Drake cases. Of course this meeting wasn’t the only reason for the change of course in these cases—but I believe it might have been one of many pressures that came to bear on the over-zealous prosecutors ...

Of course, the fact that this rescheduled meeting wasn’t on the President’s calendar made it an easy joke. When we discovered this, we described it as “crazy stupid.” But the fact that the meeting wasn’t open to the press didn’t strike me as unusual—I have meetings all the time with policymakers that are not open to the press. I had announced the meeting on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere, and several of us blogged about the meeting immediately afterwards—this was no secret meeting ...

http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2011/06/lets-not-lose-sight-of-our-common-goals-when-it-comes-to-whistleblower-protections-and-government-tr.html