Obama Citizenship

#certifigate: Those Hawaiian Officials Don?t Like to be Questioned!

By Phil

Following up on my previous posting reporting on The Post & Email’s breaking story on allegations of conspiracy to perform opposition research on concerned citizens asking legitimate questions of the Hawaiian Department of Health (original story here), Nellie (better known as “Butterdezillion”) reports that she believes that she is specifically being singled out due to her requests for DoH records.

In her FReeper posting, she states, in part, the following:

The “Vexatious Requestor Bill” is moving forward. The Office of Taxation wants to fine people who are labeled “vexatious requestors” and Fukino has said there are 4-6 people who are all set to be labeled this. I am certain I am one of them. Fukino is asking for “facilitated passage” of this bill.

Readers can view my reporting of this and a companion bill here.

First, there is the following document wherein Director of Health Dr. Fukino testifies before the State’s Senate Committee on Judiciary and Government operations that “[f]or more than a year, the Department of Health has continued to receive approximately 50 email inquiries a month seeking access to President Barack Obama’s birth certificate in spite of the fact that President Obama has posted a copy of the certificate on his former campaign web site.”

Sb2937 Testimony Jgo 02-23-10 Late

The letter goes on to say that “[w]e have been able to identify about four to six individuals who engage in a pattern of repeated requests. The time and resources it takes to respond to these often convoluted inquiries are considerable. The responses ultimately have required the time and involvement of the Attorney General’s office and the Office of Information Practices.”

The real pull quote: “We believe having to respond repeatedly to essentially the same request or a variation of the request all centering on whether or not President Obama was born in Hawaii is a frivolous use of department time and resources, particularly since the outcome will not change no matter how many times we respond to these requests.”

Nellie claims exactly the opposite has occurred with her correspondence with the department. In fact, she lays out the complete set of emails between her and the department, also making the claim that the Department specifically deleted emails when making a claim that they did not understand her request:

Now, with all that history, look at the e-mail history I enclosed in the last e-mail to them and compare it with the e-mail history on theirlatest e-mail to me. I didn?t cut any of the e-mail history from my e-mails. There should have been 13 communications in the communications log of the last e-mail the DOH sent me. There were 6. They removed over half the communications in that history, which also deleted them from my e-mail history when I responded to them. Most critically they took out the whole interaction involving my letter to Hawaii officials, which clearly stated the legal requirements for a standard birth certificate.

Communication #10 shows the standard line used when the DOH wants to get rid of somebody. They claim the requested information is confidential. (See another blatant example where HI officials were caught using this response to ?get rid of? requestors they perceived had an anti-Obama agenda) I had asked for a BLANK form ? which is required to be made public.

Communication #14 shows the latest approach. Cathy Takase, OIP Director, testified before a Hawaii Senate committee regarding Espero?s ?Vexatious Requestors Bill? that the bill to label persistent requestors as ?vexatious requestors? and blacklist them for 2 years is necessary because there are MENTALLY ILL people who don?t recognize when their request has already been answered.

As you can see, the DOH has deleted from their e-mail the parts of the communication history which show that I was very clear in what I was asking and did NOT receive what I requested. This would allow them to send this to the OIP and claim that I am a mentally ill person who just can?t seem to understand that I got what I requested.

It took specific action for the DOH to delete those communications from the communication log. This was not an accident. The particular e-mails deleted were the ones showing that I had NOT received the proper responses to my requests.

It?s bad enough that the DOH wants to label and blacklist people at all. It?s doubly bad when they falsify the record so they can MIS-label people and excuse their own incompetence or refusal to obey the laws.

If I understand what the dear Director is claiming, she says that her department receives 50 emails per month (approximately) apparently having something to do with Mr. Obama’s background documentation. To her credit, the Department has posted a web page with the relevant links and what not for the curious to inspect.

However, what I think she’s failing to take into account is that individuals such as Nellie are making legitimate requests of the Department with respect to nuances of the law. As long as Nellie remains within the bounds of the law to make her requests, what, then is the problem?

The Department realizes that they must respond to all requests for documentation and that they have to take all questions seriously else they are in potential trouble. So, Dr. Fukino would then — as Nellie puts it — like to “blacklist” anyone who makes any request that even remotely appears to be regarding Mr. Obama’s records. So, when does such blacklisting stop?

Also, did you notice Dr. Fukino’s characterization of what, allegedly, Mr. Obama posted “on his former campaign web site?” I didn’t know that the FactCheck.org blog was a campaign web site! Or did she mean FightTheSmears.com? She doesn’t specify. Furthermore, is she now stating, for a fact, that it was Mr. Obama who actually posted a copy of the certification of live birth — from 2007 — on these sites? Nobody else has ever come close to making such a claim, not even the FactCheck.org blog site.

To me, her testimony raises significantly more questions than it proposes answers, and those answers are highly suspect, essentially labeling anyone who questions this President a “vexatious requester,” worthy of being blacklisted.

Anyone who has an even remotely libertarian streak to their political beliefs should find this repugnant.

Dare I say that some of the folks in Hawaii are taking pages from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, specifically:

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. ?You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.?

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O?Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city?s reputation.

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don?t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

And the opposition to questioning this President continues to believe that the eligibility issue a dead issue. We do live in interesting times.

-Phil

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Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on March 09, 2010 (boomark / email).