When President Obama promised transparency he meant to say opacity, really. Sneaking executive orders past the press corps is transparent because they’ll wind up in the Federal Register where someone’s bound to find them sooner or later.
One executive order expanded the National Economic Council to 25 members, and the additions are certainly intriguing. Obama appointed the open HHS Secretary to the NEC, as well as Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Two other appointments should have provoked some controversy: “climate czar” Carol Browner and adviser Valerie Jarrett, last mentioned in the Blagojevich scandal. Adding a “climate czar” to an economic council sends the signal that Obama takes the global-warming issue a lot more seriously than he does the economy — which is probably why the White House buried that EO.
Another EO halted review of regulations in federal agencies, pending the installation of a new review process. That seems less controversial, as most administrations have their own regulatory procedures. However, since the EO stopped review altogether, transparency would have called for disclosure of that fact and of the EO itself.
Transparency, opacity – just words.
