Friday, October 11, 2013

WH Visitor Logs Down

This is so lame.

The 17 percent government shutdown means the White House visitor logs can't be accessed by Americans.

From The Daily Caller:

The White House has taken down online White House visitor logs and blamed Congress.

The logs, which were posted beginning in December 2009 “as part of President Obama’s commitment to government transparency,” are the latest victims of a partial government shutdown that has temporarily idled 17 percent of the federal workforce.

“Due to Congress’s failure to pass legislation to fund the government, the information on this web site may not be up to date. Some submissions may not be processed, and we may not be able to respond to your inquiries,” reads the index page for the visitor logs.

“This dataset is currently private,” says the exact location on the page where the visitor logs used to be.

It is unclear how much money it costs to keep the visitor database up on the site, but the Obama White House has a history of overspending for web services. The Daily Caller reported today that taxpayers spent $634 million to build its non-functioning Healthcare.gov exchange for Obamacare.

This is also one of many cases in which the shutdown has been cited as a reason to disappear information that is potentially embarrassing to the administration. The Bureau of Labor Statistics quickly deep-sixed its September unemployment statistics as other employment proxies indicated the work situation has worsened once again. The Department of Agriculture has buried its September food stamps statistics which are also expected to show increased poverty, dependency and economic regression under Obama.
I guess Obama's promise of transparency is "nonessential."

Changing the tone in Washington is another "nonessential" Obama promise.

And that whole call for civility--remember that?

Forget it.