While there are a hundred reasons I prefer Obama for one major criticism of him, there are major criticisms of him and this is one.
The basic point is: President Obama has taken more actions against whistleblowers than all other US Presidents - combined.
This is not the policy his base prefers, far from it.
Now the discussion needs to go to whistleblowing in general, IMO.
There is a tradeoff in governing, between 'legitimate state secrets' - citizens don't need tax information leaked to the public, we don't need codes to security at airport gates released to enemies of the US - and the fact that the 'vast machine' that can be abusive
- we can use the extreme example of the German government's Holocaust being secret, but we can also use milder examples such as the government involved in corrupt activities, or lying to the American people about war (Vietnam, WMD in Iraq) - can well serve the public interest by exposing corruption; massive government corrupt activities require many to keep secrets covering them up, and many feel revealing wrongs to the public is right.
And of course it gets political. One person's saying that revealing Watergate or the Pentagon Papers has another person calling the whistleblowers 'traitors'.
But there is a basic support for whistleblowing of wrongdoing, and it's less political when what's revealed in criminal - which is why a 'whistleblower protection act' was passed.
But it's following that 'protection' that the government's attacks on whislleblowers is at a record level, so it's not protecting them very well.
This is one of those areas that makes clear Obama isn't really 'the candidate of progressives', but rather 'less bad overall than the Republicans'; but many from all sides of politics can hopefully agree that this is a problem area and we should have more respect for whistleblowers and the good that sunlight has on governing.
When President Kennedy was approving the Richard Nixon planned operation for Cuban exiles to invade Cuba, the new York Times patriotically respected the government's request to not publicize what it had learned of the training camps and indications of the coming invasion, when the government still thought it could hide its involvement.
After the operation was a disaster - Kennedy learning the CIA had betrayed him - he told the Times' publisher he wished the paper had publicized the info and blocked the operation.
Daniel Ellsberg, faced with helping the government keep the secrets how it had lied to the public about the Vietnam war or leaking them, and a life sentence in prison for exposing the truth, only avoided prison because of the government doing wrong things in his prosecution (the original activity of the Watergate burglars). Did he really deserve prison for his loyalty to the American people not being lied to? But that's the law.
Wikileaks is controversial, but they've exposed a lot of wrongs. Not everyone agrees with preventing governments from having huge bureacracies that make it easy for them to lie to the public about their policies whe possible - but their doing so helped the people in dictatorships for decades get told truths that led to popular uprisings in the 'Arab Spring' and the overthrow of corrupt regimes, for one positive.
Learning that Middle Eastern nations secretly supported curtailing Iran not only helped expose wrongs by Iran, but raised issues with possible problems with 'secret policies'.
Abu Ghraib's torture and abuses were another scandal the government would have kept secret, that it had allowed, and which good was done by exposing the truth.
Another - less widely publicized - is how the large majority of Guantanamo inmates, which we were told were 'the worst of the worst', were apparently innocent.
Another - even less well publicized - is how the CIA evaded anti-torture laws with extraordinary rendtion to contries such as dictatorships in former USSR satellites, the favorite being one whose 'specialty' was boiling people alive. Funny, we are slowly creeping back closer to the Holocaust, if not in scale.
Democracy needs truths to be told, and whistleblowing is an important counter to the government being able to hide not only legitimate secrets but lies with classification.
I think people should support the whistlblower laws with both parties - both of whom too often abuse secrecy. But right now, it's Obama undermining whistleblowers.
We can at least call our Congressional representatives and complain and ask for more protections for whistleblowers - often exposing simple things like corrupt contracts.
Save234
The basic point is: President Obama has taken more actions against whistleblowers than all other US Presidents - combined.
This is not the policy his base prefers, far from it.
Now the discussion needs to go to whistleblowing in general, IMO.
There is a tradeoff in governing, between 'legitimate state secrets' - citizens don't need tax information leaked to the public, we don't need codes to security at airport gates released to enemies of the US - and the fact that the 'vast machine' that can be abusive
- we can use the extreme example of the German government's Holocaust being secret, but we can also use milder examples such as the government involved in corrupt activities, or lying to the American people about war (Vietnam, WMD in Iraq) - can well serve the public interest by exposing corruption; massive government corrupt activities require many to keep secrets covering them up, and many feel revealing wrongs to the public is right.
And of course it gets political. One person's saying that revealing Watergate or the Pentagon Papers has another person calling the whistleblowers 'traitors'.
But there is a basic support for whistleblowing of wrongdoing, and it's less political when what's revealed in criminal - which is why a 'whistleblower protection act' was passed.
But it's following that 'protection' that the government's attacks on whislleblowers is at a record level, so it's not protecting them very well.
This is one of those areas that makes clear Obama isn't really 'the candidate of progressives', but rather 'less bad overall than the Republicans'; but many from all sides of politics can hopefully agree that this is a problem area and we should have more respect for whistleblowers and the good that sunlight has on governing.
When President Kennedy was approving the Richard Nixon planned operation for Cuban exiles to invade Cuba, the new York Times patriotically respected the government's request to not publicize what it had learned of the training camps and indications of the coming invasion, when the government still thought it could hide its involvement.
After the operation was a disaster - Kennedy learning the CIA had betrayed him - he told the Times' publisher he wished the paper had publicized the info and blocked the operation.
Daniel Ellsberg, faced with helping the government keep the secrets how it had lied to the public about the Vietnam war or leaking them, and a life sentence in prison for exposing the truth, only avoided prison because of the government doing wrong things in his prosecution (the original activity of the Watergate burglars). Did he really deserve prison for his loyalty to the American people not being lied to? But that's the law.
Wikileaks is controversial, but they've exposed a lot of wrongs. Not everyone agrees with preventing governments from having huge bureacracies that make it easy for them to lie to the public about their policies whe possible - but their doing so helped the people in dictatorships for decades get told truths that led to popular uprisings in the 'Arab Spring' and the overthrow of corrupt regimes, for one positive.
Learning that Middle Eastern nations secretly supported curtailing Iran not only helped expose wrongs by Iran, but raised issues with possible problems with 'secret policies'.
Abu Ghraib's torture and abuses were another scandal the government would have kept secret, that it had allowed, and which good was done by exposing the truth.
Another - less widely publicized - is how the large majority of Guantanamo inmates, which we were told were 'the worst of the worst', were apparently innocent.
Another - even less well publicized - is how the CIA evaded anti-torture laws with extraordinary rendtion to contries such as dictatorships in former USSR satellites, the favorite being one whose 'specialty' was boiling people alive. Funny, we are slowly creeping back closer to the Holocaust, if not in scale.
Democracy needs truths to be told, and whistleblowing is an important counter to the government being able to hide not only legitimate secrets but lies with classification.
I think people should support the whistlblower laws with both parties - both of whom too often abuse secrecy. But right now, it's Obama undermining whistleblowers.
We can at least call our Congressional representatives and complain and ask for more protections for whistleblowers - often exposing simple things like corrupt contracts.
Save234
