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Wild Horse Freedom Federation finds out the truth about America’s wild horses & burros

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Source: Wild Horse Freedom Federation

   

Letter from USDA’s Forest Service informing us that they had no records of the Devil’s Garden wild horses for almost a 4 month period of time (Click on each page to enlarge or print)

by Debbie Coffey, V.P. & Dir. of Wild Horse Affairs, Wild Horse Freedom Federation

Wild Horse Freedom Federation has been working diligently, over many years, trying to find out the truth about what is happening to America’s wild horses & burros.

We currently have 9 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits filed for violations of FOIA law by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). More

Top Dem Puts Hold On Trump Interior Nominee, Requests DOJ Perjury Probe

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Source:  Huffington Post

Daniel Jorjani, the nominee to serve as the Interior Department’s top lawyer, appears before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on May 2.

Sen. Ron Wyden said Daniel Jorjani, who has been nominated to be the agency’s top lawyer, may have lied to Congress.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Wednesday announced that he has placed a hold on the nomination of Daniel Jorjani to serve as the Interior Department’s top lawyer, citing concerns that the political appointee possibly lied to lawmakers about his role in reviewing public information requests submitted to the agency.

Wyden also called on the Department of Justice to investigate whether Jorjani perjured himself during his May confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Interior’s FOIA policy is already the subject of an inquiry by the department’s internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Inspector General, The New York Times reported last week.

“I believe Department documents made public through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show Mr. Jorjani may have knowingly misled members of the Committee about the Department’s adherence to laws meant to ensure transparency and accountability in government,” Wyden wrote Tuesday in a letter to the acting head of the DOJ’s public integrity division.

Jorjani, a former adviser for fossil fuel moguls Charles and David Koch, has served as Interior’s principal deputy solicitor since May 2017. Late last year, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order that put Jorjani in charge of overseeing the agency’s FOIA program. The move stripped transparency authority from the agency’s chief information officer and handed it over to a political appointee who once told colleagues that “at the end of the day, our job is to protect the Secretary” from ethics probes and bad press. READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HERE.

Amid Government Shutdown, Trump’s Interior Department Rolls Back Transparency

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Source:  Wildearthguardians.org

Rule Changes Meant to Stymie Public Interest Groups, Undermine Right to Know, Condone Government Secrecy

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UPDATE (12/28/2018):  Interior’s proposed rule was published in today’s Federal Register, you can access it here >>

Although Interior is asking for public comment until January 28, 2019, the agency is not actually capable of receiving and processing comments due to the government shutdown.

Despite a government shutdown, the U.S. Department of the Interior is proposing changes to its transparency regulations that threaten to make it more difficult for Americans to request and obtain records from the federal government.

In a proposed rule slated to be published tomorrow, Interior is calling for sweeping rule changes in order to, in its words, respond to “the unprecedented surge in FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests and litigation.”

Click here to view our annotated version of the most insidious provisions of the proposed rollbacks and how they completely undermine our federal transparency laws.

The proposal is a blatant attack on our democratic right to know.  The Freedom of Information Act is our nation’s bedrock transparency law and it’s meant to ensure Americans have the ability to know what their government is up to.

WildEarth Guardians uses the Freedom of Information Act extensively as we watchdog the Interior Department and other government agencies.  In fact, we post all records we obtain on our website so all Americans have access to information that would otherwise be unavailable.

It’s undeniable there has been a surge in Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation in response to the Trump Administration’s assault on transparency and the public interest.  In fact, the number of lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act has hit record highs under Trump….

Yet Interior’s claim that this is a problem is belied by the fact that the Department utterly flouts the Freedom of Information Act and actively promotes a culture of secrecy, opaqueness, and unaccountability to the American public.

In our experience in dealing with the Interior Department under the Freedom of Information Act, we’ve found the agency regularly ignores deadlines, consistently finds ways to deny access to government records, purposefully drags its feet in responding to requests for information, and refuses to provide the resources and staffing needed to meet its legal obligations under federal transparency law.

To boot, among federal agencies, Interior is one of the worst in terms of making information available online.

It’s no wonder the Department gets sued. Yet rather than truly address the underlying lack of legal compliance and disrespect for transparency, Interior is instead proposing to change the rules.

Without a doubt, the proposed regulatory changes are an assault on transparency. Among the more insidious changes:

Currently, agencies have to honor all records requests, regardless of the amount of times and resources required to search for records. This reflects the fact that the Freedom of Information Act mandates full transparency and does not allow agencies to selectively censor information simply because they believe it would be “hard” to provide records.

This proposal would effectively condone footdragging and deny access to government information. The change would allow agencies to impose baseless “quotas” on information requests.

The Freedom of Information Act requires agencies provide records at no cost to organizations intending to use information to advance the public interest. Although the law requires fee waivers be granted liberally, Interior’s proposed changes would effectively turn the tables on public interest groups.

The new wording would set higher and nearly unattainable criteria, provide more discretion to deny fee waivers, and allow the Department to second-guess claims that information would serve a public interest.

For example, the proposal would allow Interior to deny fee waivers if it deems a request does not “concern discrete, identifiable agency activities, operations, or programs with a connection that is direct and clear, not remote or attenuated.”

This essentially lets the federal government deny fee waivers simply because it believes the requested information isn’t relevant.

Overall, the proposed rule aims to add more subjectivity into the Interior Department’s transparency regulations, clearly intending to give agencies more discretion to deny access to information and to deny fee waivers.

Overall, the changes appear to be blatantly contrary to the Freedom of Information Act. Click here to see our annotated version of the Department’s proposed rule with our comments on how it runs afoul of federal law.

Read the entire article HERE.

 

Debbie Coffey & Carol Walker of Wild Horse Freedom Federation detail Bureau of Land Management’s lack of transparency

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Join us this evening, December 6, 2018 at 7:00 pm CST!

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Opposition Builds To Interior Department Records Purge

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SOURCE:  dcreport.org

Group Says Documents Reveal Efforts to Kill Wild Horses, Land Grabs and Other Outrages

A nonprofit advocating for wild horses, one of the groups opposing a massive proposed document purge at Trump’s Interior Department, said record requests helped the nonprofit learn about a plan to send thousands of wild horses to a tiger refuge in Russia.

“These records are especially important for oversight now that large numbers of wild horses and burros are being ‘adopted’ in larger numbers, and to organizations and to overseas destinations,” wrote Debbie Coffey, vice president of the Wild Horse Freedom Federation. “We will need to access these records in order to ensure that wild horses and burros are not being adopted or sold and ending up in the slaughter pipeline.”

The Trump administration wants to bury science and hide how mining, drilling and logging on public lands devastate our precious natural spaces.

The proposed document purge includes records about endangered species, oil and gas leases, timber sales, dams and land purchases.

The National Archives has said that getting rid of records is standard and has been going on for decades. The schedule’s language gives broad authority to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to destroy records documenting government efforts to protect endangered species and public lands.

“The Trump administration wants to bury science and hide how mining, drilling and logging on public lands devastate our precious natural spaces,” said Meg Townsend, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

The federation learned from a document request that the Bureau of Land Management in 2011 under former President Barack Obama considered shipping wild horses to a sanctuary in Siberia where they could be killed and eaten by leopards and tigers.

“Would we pay for shipping to Vladivostok or allow horses to be placed on a sanctuary with known heavy predator population?” asked Karla Bird, an acting division chief.

BLM ultimately decided against sending our nation’s wild horses to Russia to be eaten by tigers.

But in 2017, the bureau again was looking at sending horses to Russia and also to Guyana in South America.

Under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, passed by Congress in 1971 when Republican Richard Nixon was president, the federal government is supposed to manage and protect the herds. Almost 82,000  wild horses and burros roam our nation’s public lands. More than 50,000 others are corralled.

The Trump administration proposed euthanizing or selling “excess animals” in 2017, but Congress kept a ban on slaughtering the animals.

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ACTION BOX/What You Can Do About It

The comment period about the proposal to destroy Interior Department records has ended.

Contact Secretary Ryan Zinke about concerns about keeping records. Call him at 202-208-3100, reach out to him on FacebookTwitter or send an email.

Write: Department of the Interior / 1849 C St., NW / Washington, D.C. 20240

Wild Horse Freedom Foundation can be contacted online.

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You can read articles on dcreport.org HERE.

NARA Responds to Controversial ICE Records Destruction Request

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Source:  libraryjournal.com

by Lisa Peet

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has requested that National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Records Management sign off on a records retention schedule that would potentially destroy detainee records in 11 item categories, including accounts of solitary confinement, assault, sexual abuse, and investigations into deaths in ICE custody. Proposed retention periods ranged from 20 years for sexual assault and death records to three years for solitary confinement reports; this means that records dating back to ICE’s founding in 2003 could be destroyed as early as 2023.

All federal agencies periodically propose a retention schedule for a series of records to NARA, to determine which must be retained permanently in the National Archives and which can be considered temporary—and how long temporary records must be retained before they can be destroyed. NARA staff reviews each submission, typically meeting with agency subject matter experts, before the records schedule is approved by the Archivist of the United States.

In addition to deciding which records have lasting historical or research value and warrant permanent retention, NARA reviews the retention periods proposed for temporary records to ensure that those spans protect the legal rights of both the Government and private parties. Public input on the proposed schedules is mandated by law, and is solicited through comments on a notice posted to the Federal Register.

ICE’s proposed schedule DAA-0567-2015-0013, submitted in October 2015, represented a new request for the disposition of unscheduled records, rather than a change to an existing schedule. Since it was posted to the Federal Register on July 14, 2017, it has garnered an unprecedented number of comments, received substantial attention in the media, and raised concerns among archivists, historians, and civil liberties organizations.

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BLM claims selling wild horses to kill buyer Tom Davis was selling them to a “good home”

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by Debbie Coffey, V.P. & Dir. of Wild Horse Affairs, Wild Horse Freedom Federation All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2017

On the Bureau of Land Management’s new website, on the Program Data page for the Wild Horse & Burro Program (under the Wild Horse and Burro Sales to Private Care tab), the BLM claims “It has been and remains the policy of the BLM, despite the unrestricted sales authority of the Burns Amendment, NOT to sell or send any wild horses or burros to slaughterhouses or to “kill buyers.”

The BLM claims “Wild Horses and Burros Sold to Good Homes” but then includes a total of 402 wild horses and burros sold in Fiscal Year 2012. (In this 402 total, 320 were horses and 82 were burros.)

BLM sale logs obtained by us in Freedom of Information Act requests indicate that in Fiscal Year 2012, the BLM sold 239 wild horses (almost 80% of the 320 horses that were sold) to kill buyer Tom Davis of La Jara, CO.  Many, if not all, of these wild horses went to slaughter in Mexico.

Does this look like a “good home” to you?

BLM states it has a policy not to sell wild horses and burros to kill buyers, but: More

The Bureau of Land Management is scrubbing their trail on the internet

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After NBC News wrote about the Bureau of Land Management featuring a photo of a coal bed at the top of their website, the BLM changed it… to now feature this photo of an oil & gas pipeline.

by Debbie Coffey, V.P. & Dir. of Wild Horse Affairs, Wild Horse Freedom Federation All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2017

The Bureau of Land Management is scrubbing most of its links off of the internet, and in doing so, erasing much of its history from public view.

Many of the blm.gov links that are still remaining on the internet at this point say “page not found,” or the links are no longer cached.

The BLM also suddenly removed state and district websites. Instead, you will now find “landing pages” that direct you to only one main Bureau of Land Management website. (You can look at the new BLM website HERE.)

I called a BLM Public Affairs Specialist to ask some questions about the defunct websites and links. This person said in the past there were about 90,000 pages (and then a bit later stated that it could possibly be only about 60,000 pages) of BLM content on the internet, but that all of these pages couldn’t be maintained or updated, and weren’t centralized. This person said the BLM’s prior content management system was outdated.

Most importantly, this person also said there were now standards to reduce the amount (of pages/content). More

Is Obama a Congenital Liar & Sadistic Torturer, or Just a Man Caught in a Job Much Too Big for Him?

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J.Speer-Williams (c)copyright 2010

The rudest awakening to the real Obama may be his continuance and advancement of the heinous torture policies of his demonic predecessor, George Bush – The Lesser.

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      The Obamas Party, While the CIA Tortures Men,                                   Women and Children

I could only be called semi-handsome … in a dim light … at 20 feet … while taking a shower, many years ago. 

Good looks may not be everything, but they can give one a head start in life. But, paraphrasing Mark Twain, “God must love plain looking (ugly) people as he made so many of us.” And, I’d rather be loved by God than look like a young Sean Connery, or how Cary Grant looked at any age.

Still, next life time, I’d like to have a six foot, four inch tall body, with muscular, well-shaped limbs, a fabulous throwing arm, jet-black hair (that later turns to a steel gray), piercing blue eyes, weighing in at a slim 235 pounds, all top off with a kill-her smile. I’m talkin’ tall, dark, and devastating. No more Willie Nelson looks for me, unless I can sing and write music like he can.

If God will give me such looks, I promise to try to win his love, in spite of my gorgeousness. Which reminds me of another good-looking chap, who needs to work over-time to win God’s love: Barack Hussein Obama, once known as Barry Soetero. 

Why the name change Mr. Obama? Anybody know?

Not long ago Obama, a relatively unknown African-American, was being sheep-dipped (gaining a new identity, to build creditability) as a Constitutional Law professor (when he – by rights – should have been studying our Constitution) at the very highly regarded University of Chicago School of Law, while he doubled as an Illinois state legislator.

And even though flextime Professor Barack Obama had produced no original scholarship papers on US Constitutional Law, he was offered a tenured position at the lofty Chicago School of Law. But oddly enough, hard working Professor Obama refused tenure, as he must have known he was on a much faster greased track to something much bigger … if … he could only improve his poor teleprompter reading skills of what others wrote for him.

And, Mr. Soetero … er… Mr. Obama applied himself to his trade, which was not statesmanship, but neuro-linquistics. And in time, Obama’s teleprompter reading coaches perfected with their student a slow rhythmic flow of spoken words, broken up with many “uhs,” with the same measured cadence as the words appeared on his teleprompter screens. 

Then strangely, in an unprecedented move, the Democratic Party kingmakers gave lowly state Senator Obama a national stage, when allowing him to display his reading cadence at their presidential nominating convention of 2004.

And even more amazingly, the following year, Barack became a United States senator. Then unbelievably, three years later, Mr. Obama became president and commander-in-chief of the most militarily equipped nation on Earth, without ever serving a day in any military. And, unless one is extremely naive, they know that some powerful interests, made Mr. Obama into Mr. President, and then into the President of Broken Promises.   More

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