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Government Oversight

Your Right To Be Informed

BOULDER, Colo. - As the last few days of the administration wind down, it is worth noting an executive order President George W. Bush quietly signed early in his presidency. On Nov. 1, 2001, he signed Executive Order 13233, overriding the 1978 Presidential Records Act

Posted in Government Oversight

Court Orders White House to Preserve E-Mails

President George W. Bush walks along the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009. A federal judge has ordered the Bush White House to preserve its e-mails, just days before a new administration takes over.(AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

A federal judge has ordered the Bush White House to preserve its e-mails, just days before a new administration takes over.

The court's preservation notice Wednesday stems from an ongoing lawsuit by private groups over allegedly missing electronic messages, and allegations the White House failed to properly monitor its internal communications among staff.

It has been a thorny legal and political issue for outgoing Bush officials, who are in the process of transferring more than 300 million e-mail messages and 25,000 boxes of documents to the National Archives.

Posted in Government Oversight, Politics

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 14, 2009
3:31 PM

CONTACT: Project on Government Oversight (POGO)

POGO Urges Commissioners to Listen to Staff Experts This Time, Not Industry Lobbyists, and Strengthen the DBT

WASHINGTON - January 14 - POGO has learned that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is in the process of making a decision that could improve the security of nuclear power plants. This comes at a time when President-elect Obama has put the expansion of nuclear power on the front burner of his agenda.

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Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is an independent nonprofit that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and honest federal government.
Posted in Government Oversight

Watchdog: Bush Ex-Officials Used Leverage in Private Sector

WASHINGTON - Shortly after leaving his job as U.S. energy secretary in early 2005, Spencer Abraham took a $60,000-a-year post as a director of Occidental Petroleum, which soon became the first firm in 20 years to ship oil to the U.S. from Libya.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge accepted director's fees and consulting work from several firms seeking contracts with his old agency.

Tommy Thompson, the former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has consulted, lobbied or worked as an employee for 42 companies since leaving office in January 2005.

Posted in Government Oversight, Politics

Bush E-Mails May Be Secret a Bit Longer

In this Nov. 13, 2008, file photo, President George W. Bush winks before speaking at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Eventual access to the documentary record of the Bush presidency has been eagerly anticipated by historians and journalists because the president and his aides generally have sought to shield from public disclosure many details of their deliberations and interactions with outside groups.(AP Photo/Seth Wenig/FILE)

The required transfer in four weeks of all of the Bush White House's electronic mail messages and documents to the National Archives has been imperiled by a combination of technical glitches, lawsuits and lagging computer forensic work, according to government officials, historians and lawyers.

Federal law requires outgoing White House officials to provide the Archives copies of their records, a cache estimated at more than 300 million messages and 25,000 boxes of documents depicting some of the most sensitive policymaking of the past eight years.

Posted in after bush, cheney, Government Oversight

Alexander Hamilton's Advice To The Obama Administration

Alexander Hamilton, in 1791, proposed to the United States our first true industrial policy. We adopted it over the next few years, Abraham Lincoln reaffirmed it fourscore years later, and it was again affirmed by every President of the United States until Reagan began his now-28-year "Reagan Revolution" which has disassembled America's industrial base and impoverished our nation.

Posted in constitution, Government Oversight

Obama Urged to Fund Watchdog Agencies

SAN FRANCISCO - As George Bush's presidency draws to an end, watchdog groups are calling for President-elect Barack Obama's administration to fully fund federal agencies that relaxed monitoring of water, air quality and the safety of the food supply and consumer products in the past eight years.

Posted in Environment, epa, Government Oversight, pollution

Probe Sought of Bush handling of Alaska Oil-Spill Case

A sign for a BP petrol station is seen in London October 28, 2008. An environmental watchdog group asked the Department of Justice's inspector general on Monday to investigate whether the department had prematurely halted a criminal prosecution of BP for a 2006 oil spill in Alaska.(REUTERS/Toby Melville)

WASHINGTON - An environmental watchdog group asked the Department of Justice's inspector general on Monday to investigate whether the department had prematurely halted a criminal prosecution of BP for a 2006 oil spill in Alaska.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed the complaint on behalf of Scott West, who as the special agent in charge for the Environmental Protection Agency participated in the federal and state investigation of the spill.

Posted in Government Oversight, oil

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 10, 2008
5:17 PM

CONTACT: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
Naomi Seligman 202.408.5565

CREW Wins Right to Sue White House in Missing Email Case

WASHINGTON - November 10 - Today, D.C. District Court Judge Henry Kennedy upheld lawsuits brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive challenging the White House's failure to properly store and recover millions of emails. In 2002, the Executive Office of the President (EOP) stopped using the Automated Records Management System (ARMS) that had been in place since 1994, which automatically backed up all emails, but failed to install any other backup program.

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Posted in Government Oversight

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 10, 2008
10:46 AM

CONTACT: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

Beth McCollum (202) 265-7337

Less Than 1% of Comments Favor Bush Endangered Species Plan

Proposed Changes Never Reviewed by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Call for Congress to Close the Federal Register Now

WASHINGTON - November 10 - Proposed regulations by the Bush Administration to ease protections for endangered species have generated more than 300,000 comments overwhelmingly in opposition. Rushing to process all of the comments, officials have developed a code to assign a number for each of the more than 100 different policy and legal objections raised by opponents so the comments can be responded to en masse, according to a document posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

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Posted in Environment, Government Oversight
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