If striking Chicago teachers agree to the new contract framework hammered out with school board officials, perhaps no one will be happier than President Barack Obama, who calls the windy city home.
The increasingly polarized issue of public education threatened to split the Democratic party from one if its biggest bases of support, potentially hurting Obama's campaign. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has been a key Obama fundraiser and was Obama's former White House chief of staff, took a hard line against the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), receiving unsolicited praise for his stance from Republican Vice Presidential Candidate ...
Continue readingNew Study Finds Agencies Slow to Adopt Even Basic FOIA Guidelines
Sunshine Week starts with a new report from the National Security Archive and the Knight Foundation that finds only 49... View Article
Continue readingRahm Emanuel’s White House visitor trail
Today we learned what we knew all week: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is leaving the White House... View Article
Continue readingPotential White House Chief of Staff Replacement?
Tom Donilon, a White House national security advisor, is being touted as a potential replacement for Rahm Emanuel as chief... View Article
Continue readingWhite House releases 2010 financial disclosures for staffers
Last week we requested personal financial disclosures for a few senior White House staffers. These documents list the assets officials own--property, stocks and mutual funds. The documents can be requested on the White House website by clicking here..
In addition to assets, these disclosures also tell you who gave these high profile staffers gifts or paid for their travel. For instance, on page 16 of Rahm Emanuel’s disclosure, we can see that he received tickets to the Bruce Springsteen concert last summer. We previously reported that 18 members of Congress benefited from fundraisers held at the concert (for details ...
The Legacy of Billy Tauzin: The White House-PhRMA Deal
More than a million spectators gathered before the Capitol on a frosty January afternoon to witness the inauguration of Barack... View Article
Continue readingFreddie Mac records exempt from FOIA
Bob Secter and Andrew Zajac of the Chicago Tribune report that, while researching what went at Freddie Mac during the period White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel served on the board of directors of Freddie Mac, they were unable to get minutes of board meetings and other information:
The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel's time as a director. The documents, obtained by Falcon for his investigation, were "commercial information" exempt from disclosure, according to a lawyer for the Federal Housing Finance ...Continue reading
Disclosure is Step One to Earmark Accountability
Friday's edition of The New York Times ran a piece by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) where he brags on passing earmark transparency and makes the case that disclosure is reform. We agree. If disclosure works as it should kudos are in order for all Members of Congress of both parties that supported this key reform.
Emanuel's take on earmarks is close to my own. Earmarks themselves are not necessarily bad way to allocate federal money, but lack of transparency and accountability about them has been a huge problem. "There was no opportunity to review either their sponsorship or their merit before their passage," Emanuel wrote.
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