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Shhhh! It's a Secret …
And apparently the public no longer has a right to know,
Know what their elected-Representatives are plotting and scheming and dealing — behind closed doors.
There’s the Senate Health Care bill that the GOP won’t let see the light of day — for fear of the fallout, from the users and the providers of Health Care …
[...]
None of these critical features of democratic lawmaking — public education about the health care system, public debate between politicians over how to fix it, or basic knowledge of the political arrangements that drive lawmaking — are present now as the Senate prepares to vote on its health care bill. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has announced there will be just ten hours of debate on a bill that will affect the health of hundreds of millions of Americans, before a vote next week to meet the arbitrary deadline of a summer holiday.
This is no way to make policy. And it would take just three of McConnell’s Republican colleagues to reveal what is happening behind closed doors.
[...]
Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who chairs the finance committee that has jurisdiction over Medicaid and Medicare, has joked with reporters that he doesn’t know what it’s in the bill. Mr. Hatch is 83 years old and has been a US senator since 1977. Is he really that disinterested in the bill?
[...]
Any three of those four legislators could force the bill into the public eye simply by telling their leader, “we won’t vote on it until there’s just one hearing.” Apparently, they fear the leader will reply that “this is the only way to cut taxes.”
— Quartz, June 20, 2017
And then there’s the Secrecy that’s engulfing the Trump Administration itself — which is rapidly setting modern day records for its widespread lack of Transparency …
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CNN's senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta was channeling other reporters on Monday when he threw his hands up in the air and said the administration is "stonewalling."
The president's anti-media defenders may support the administration's approach, but it's hard to justify the rollback in accountability. It's not just the White House, either: the State Department and the Pentagon have all but stopped holding on-camera briefings, too.
[...]
By almost every measure, the Trump White House has reduced transparency about the workings of government. Trump reversed the Obama administration's policy of releasing White House visitor logs, for example.
The rollback is even visible on the main White House web site, which contains a lot less information than it did during the Obama years.
— CNN, June 20, 2017
And then there’s the Secrecy (and the arrogance) about just fulfilling their basic “Sunlight” responsibilities, we’ve come to expect as a basic tenant of American governance …
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“I see a bureaucracy that doesn’t want documents and the truth out the door . . . and just flipping the middle finger at Congress,” Chaffetz said.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats are furious with federal agencies and White House offices that have not answered their requests for information on a wide range of subjects — from the role of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, to specific policy changes being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department and other agencies.
[...]
By early June, House and Senate Democratic aides had compiled lists of more than 400 written requests that they said had been ignored by the White House or federal agencies.
— Washington Post, June 19, 2017
...
The Trump Administration is not only dead-set on stonewalling us, the Voting public, but also they are smugly (and/or incompetently) — ignoring the official requests of our elected-legislators, in their attempts to get basic information — from the so-called “Executive Branch” …
This must be what Trump meant, when he said he was going to run Government like a Business,
— where No Transparency is required … or at least as little as inhumanly possible.
In the corporate world “trade secrets” are the currency of the realm,
sadly the “exchange rates” on those “secrets” in the public arena,
is leaving the vast majority of us, decidedly short-changed.