Bureaucratic openness

Here is a tip – a getting along with government tip.  Never fight a revelation of any sort about a government bureaucracy.  Even if the revelation(s) comes from a long in the tooth, diminished capacity, senator from California who is trying to either do a little political damage or just cover her expanding derriere. Welcome any form of revelation about government bureaucracies and bureaucrats.  Regardless of source.

Yes, welcome the disclosures of Edward Snowden.  This guy paid one heck of a price for just telling us about what everyone kind of already knew.  Think about that – he had to move to Russia or face some solitary lockdown for releasing a few, mind you not very much – just a little peek – at what hundreds of billions of dollars spent by people who are paid by taxpayers do to protect us but decided on their own they can’t tell us about because then they wouldn’t be able to protect us.

Is that the logic of the teenager who doesn’t want anyone to know what he/she did today?  Where they went?  Who they were with?  What they were up to?

Here is one more tip.  If a political candidate says – I will run an open administration.  Accountability will be our standard.  Disclosure first, second and third.  Openness.  Always.  Forget about it.  It means the exact opposite.  It means run, don’t walk, from this person.  You need know no more about them.  Assuming you are not digitally challenged.  Meaning you have all ten fingers.  You will not need all of them to calculate the number of politicians who live by the standard of openness and accountability.  By live by it we mean that – they don’t talk openness, they do openness.

The only cretin on the face of the earth that eschews openness more than politicians are bureaucrats.  Book it – it’s a fundamental.

So if Diane wants to tell us how bad the CIA is – stand up and say – you go girl.

If Ed wants to dress up like a Cossack and do the Kamarinskaya (traditional Russian folk dance), we all should stand up and clap and sway to the music.

If congressmen Issa (CA)  and Gowdy (SC) and Jordan (OH) are willing to take out the time to verbally assault  bureaucrats from the IRS, the VA, the FBI, NSA, etc., etc., etc. don’t be hoodwinked into thinking thoughts like – oh, those poor public servants – oh, they shouldn’t be so tough on them – oh, they’re just trying to (do their best) (protect us) (blah-blah-blah).  No way, José, let ‘em go.  Release the dogs.  Chase ‘em through the fields, make ‘em squirm, make ‘em take the fifth – nothing like an overfed bureaucrat trying to remember the proper way to word their constitutional right to not self incriminate while looking into fifty cameras knowing full well that they may just as well be standing naked in front of the country pretending to act dignified and aloof.