Stonewalling & Silence: My Trip Through the Kafkaesque World of FOIA
An effort to unearth information on the SEC's green disclosure rules served as an eye-opening test of the public’s right to know versus the bureaucracy’s right to “no.”
The 'Freedom of Information' Bureaucrats Have Our Number: Catch-22
Frustrated over what they see as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s stonewalling, Senate Republicans fired off a critical letter this summer to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
An ordinary American, they grumbled, “would be entitled to receive more records from the SEC” via Freedom of Information Act request than the powerful Senate Banking Committee lawmakers had received to date to perform their duly ordained oversight of the agency.
But contrary to popular opinion, FOIA isn’t “so easy a caveman [or journalist] can do it.” I had months earlier made virtually the same request as the Senators – for records behind the financial regulator’s proposed landmark climate-disclosure rules – only to run into similar brick walls.
The experience, moreover, reveals cumbersome, little-publicized conditions placed on federal FOIA requests in the ever-escalating conflict between the public’s right to know and the protective bureaucracy’s right to “no.”
You can read about my trials and tribulations—and those experienced by requesters across the political spectrum and on a broad array of topics—with a particularly “deep” part of the administrative state in my latest report for RealClearInvestigations.
In a sidebar there, I also dive into FOIA’s surprisingly fascinating history, a road to bipartisan acrimony paved with the best of (stated) intentions.
My Take on Biden’s ‘Threatysburg Address’
At Straight Arrow News, I discussed President Biden’s chilling, Independence Hall-sullying speech, and the even more chilling reality that the administration’s republic-threatening actions have already far surpassed its rhetoric.
You can watch my commentary below:
