Flopping Aces ^ | 07-01-12 | DrJohn
Let's crank up the Wayback Machine to 2008 and see what President-elect Barack Obama promised us about whistleblowers. What you are about to witness is a collection of words from the most gullible among us- the left wing MSM.
From Rick Piltz
The Obama-Biden transition website says: “Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out…. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance.” This is a critical area for the new administration to make good on its promise.and...
Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.Joe Davidson at WaPo
Whistleblowers May Have Friend in Oval Office
While Barack Obama's election victory led millions of Americans to cheer and shout, a much smaller group of government watchers had reason to blow their whistles. Whistleblowers in the federal government and those who work to protect them see a longtime friend in the next president.Will Obama Keep His Promise to Federal Whistleblowers?
"Attorney Obama and Senator Obama and candidate Obama and President-elect Obama have all supported whistleblower rights," said Adam Miles, the legislative representative for the Government Accountability Project, a public interest group that bills itself as the nation's leading whistleblower organization.
Obama's whistleblower trail starts before his days in public office. .....
When Rahm Emanuel, Obama's incoming chief of staff, was a congressman, his office released a list of government workers who "lost their jobs in the Bush administration for telling the truth."
An Emanuel press release said "one of our most important weapons against waste, fraud and abuse . . . is federal whistleblower protections."
Will Barack Obama, a champion of whistleblower protection when he was a state senator, act as strongly to protect them when they blow the whistle on his administration? Whistleblowers tell ABC News they are encouraged by recent signs from the White House about possible efforts to protect them from retaliation. But, they say, they are still wary after years of brutal confrontations that left many of them jobless, financially drained and emotionally spent.It will surprise only liberals to learn that this, as with so many other Obama promises, has gone straight down the memory hole. The reality?
Late last week, President Obama appointed two individuals to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an administrative panel that hears employment appeals from federal employees, including cases that fall under the recently-passed Whistleblowers Protection Enhancement Act of 2009.
The picks - Susan Grundmann, general counsel for the National Federation of Federal Employees, and Anne Wagner, general counsel for the Personal Appeals Board of the U.S. Government Accountability Office – were hailed by whistleblowers and watchdog groups as a first step in overhauling federal whistleblower protection laws.
"Unlike Bush administration appointees who compiled a 1-44 track record against whistleblowers, these leaders are seasoned veterans with a proven track record of commitment to the merit system throughout their careers," said Tom Devine, legal director of the nonprofit public interest group Government Accountability Project.
Devine called the appointments "a weathervane that the Obama Administration is serious about its good government rhetoric."
This is not your father's hope and change. You elected a fraud. This is the real Barack Obama.
The Secret Sharer
Few people are more disturbed about Drake’s prosecution than the others who spoke out against the N.S.A. surveillance program. In 2008, Thomas Tamm, a Justice Department lawyer, revealed that he was one of the people who leaked to the Times. He says of Obama, “It’s so disappointing from someone who was a constitutional-law professor, and who made all those campaign promises.” The Justice Department recently confirmed that it won’t pursue charges against Tamm. Speaking before Congress, Attorney General Holder explained that “there is a balancing that has to be done . . . between what our national-security interests are and what might be gained by prosecuting a particular individual.” The decision provoked strong criticism from Republicans, underscoring the political pressures that the Justice Department faces when it backs off such prosecutions. Still, Tamm questions why the Drake case is proceeding, given that Drake never revealed anything as sensitive as what appeared in the Times. “The program he talked to the Baltimore Sun about was a failure and wasted billions of dollars,” Tamm says. “It’s embarrassing to the N.S.A., but it’s not giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” Mark Klein, the former A.T. & T. employee who exposed the telecom-company wiretaps, is also dismayed by the Drake case. “I think it’s outrageous,” he says. “The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers.”Jane Mayer on the Obama war on whistle-blowers
And that’s to say nothing of the full-scale immunity also given thus far to Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Merrill, and the mortgage fraudsters who have essentially stolen people’s homes. About what motivates Obama’s conduct — his virtually complete reversal from the campaign pledges — Drake offers this speculation: “I actually had hopes for Obama,” he said. He had not only expected the President to roll back the prosecutions launched by the Bush Administration; he had thought that Bush Administration officials would be investigated for overstepping the law in the “war on terror.”Obama's War on Whistle-Blowers:
“But power is incredibly destructive,” Drake said. “It’s a weird, pathological thing. I also think the intelligence community coöpted Obama, because he’s rather naïve about national security. He’s accepted the fear and secrecy. We’re in a scary space in this country.”
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
