p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In less than two weeks in office, president Barack Obama has proved himself to be the stereotypical two-faced lying politician that he is.

According to Politifact.com’s Obameter The Prez (some call him “Golden Boy”, some “The Savior”, others just refer to him as “The Chosen One”) had made over five hundred campaign promises, many having to do with transparency in the government and letting the people have a voice.

According to his campaign website, “Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.”

Politifact reports that on his ninth full day, Obama broke that major promise.

“The first bill Obama signed into law as president – the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – got no such vetting.

“In fact, the Congressional Record shows that the law was passed in the Senate on Jan. 22, 2009, passed in the House on Jan. 27, and signed by the president on Jan. 29. So only two days passed between the bill’s final passage and the signing.

“The legislation was not posted to the White House Web site for comment in any way that we could find.

“Obama signed the measure at 10:20 a.m. About two hours later, the White House posted the bill on its Web site with a link that asks people to submit comments. But the bill was already signed at that point.”

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act overturns a Supreme Court decision made during the last administration that had limited the amount of time when workers could sue for pay discrimination. The bill is retroactive to the date of the court decision, but it was not at all an “emergency”.

Politifact sent numerous requests to The White House for an explanation, but as of this writing, the White House hasn’t responded.

Whether one agrees with Obama’s decision to overturn the court ruling, or not, isn’t an issue for this article. The point is: the people he serves had been promised a five-day window of  opportunity to publicly review and comment on all non-emergency bills before (if, and/or when) they’re signed into law.

In less than a fortnight, our new leader has shown his true colors. He’s a politician. He’s a liar. And all politicians everywhere are liars.

Politifact also outlines another promise he broke, but it’s considered a “compromise”.

“No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration.”

Originally, Politifact rated it a “Promise Kept” when Obama signed the bill on his first day. But it’s come to light that a waiver clause is included in the bill and at least one or two waivers are “in the works”.

From Politifact »»»

William J. Lynn III, the appointee to be Deputy Secretary of Defense was formerly a lobbyist for the giant defense contractor Raytheon.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked about Lynn at a press conference on Jan. 22, said the waiver process is necessary to allow uniquely qualified people to serve.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he asked for an exception for Lynn because “he came with the highest recommendations of a number of people that I respect a lot.”

The waiver clause states that an exception to the rule should serve the public interest, and it has to be signed by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. That might sound like an independent party, but OMB is part of the Obama White House, so it essentially means the administration would decide on its own who merits a waiver.

That last bit sounds like only something GWB would have done.

If this is an indication of how the president is going to administer his duties and decide which promises he’ll keep and which ones he won’t over the next four years, the American public and the world at large have a lot to worry about.

So although president Obama really isn’t interested in us voicing our opinions directly to the White House, he’s very interested in what we think, say, buy, read, where we go and what we do as long as we don’t know he’s doing it.

The NSA is working on a system it hopes could possibly find out not just where people are and what they’re doing, but what and how they think.

Author and film maker James Bamford who’s been writing about the NSA for twenty-five years, discusses the new “thought police” in his film The Spy Factory, produced with PBS Nova.

“The project, known as ‘Aquaint’ – Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence – would collect data by scouring phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records.”

Aquaint is being developed as part of the  “Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity” (IARPA).

The program would “determine which Americans might likely pose a security risk—or have sympathies toward a particular cause. The Aquaint robospy might then base its decision on the type of books a person purchased online, or chat room talk, or websites visited – or a similar combination of data”, writes Bamford.

“Such a system would have an enormous chilling effect on everyone’s everyday activities—what will the Aquaint computer think if I buy this book, or go to that website, or make this comment? Will I be suspected of being a terrorist or a spy or a subversive?”

The NSA’s new IARPA lab is located on the campus of the University of Maryland.

“Their budget is classified, but I understand it’s very well funded,” said Brian Darmody, the University of Maryland’s assistant vice president of research and economic development. “They’ll be in their own building here, and they’re going to grow. Their mission is expanding.”

“The Spy Factory” was shown on PBS yesterday. The full one-hour film will be available to watch online starting February today.

Or you could probably find a torrent for it.

Sources:

Politifact’s Obameter:
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

The New Thought Police
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/police.html

The Spy Factory online
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/program-w-220.html

PS – I just went to the PBS website and the video can only be accessed by IP addresses in the US.

But there is a torrent online.

Catflap – p2pnet

February , 2009

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 1:46 pm and is filed under P2P, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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