I think everybody realizes by now that Obama is a complete prick (at least judging by his approval ratings). The guy is an arrogant ass but being a career politician that’s not at all surprising. During a town hall meeting in Atkinson, Illinois a local farmer asked the Obamessiah about upcoming rules and regulations that may be put into place to further fuck our farming communities over. Obama told the farmer to call the government and ask them. Guess what? A reporter did exactly that and found out that getting an answer from the government is kind of like finding teeth on a hen:
When this POLITICO reporter decided to take the president’s advice and call the USDA for an answer to the Atkinson town hall attendee’s question, I found myself in a bureaucratic equivalent of hot potato — getting bounced from the feds to Illinois state agriculture officials to the state farm bureau.
Here’s a rundown of what happened when I started by calling the USDA’s general hotline to inquire about information related to the effects of noise and dust pollution rules on Illinois farmers:
Wednesday, 2:40 p.m. ET: After calling the USDA’s main line, I am told to call the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Here, I am patched through to a man who is identified as being in charge of “support services.” I leave a message.
[…]
10:40 a.m.: A spokeswoman for the Illinois Natural Resources Conservation Service calls me, to whom I explain my multiple attempts on Wednesday and Thursday to retrieve the information I was looking for.
“What I can tell you is our particular agency does not deal with regulations,” she tells me. “We deal with volunteers who voluntarily want to do things. I think the reason you got that response from the Cambridge office is because in regard to noise and dust regulation, we don’t have anything to do with that.”
After playing a game of phone call hot potato that spanned across two days the reporter was unable to get an answer from the government. So is there anymore helpful advice that you can bestow upon the people Mr. President? Perhaps you have a little additional work to do before your promise of a transparent government comes to fruition.