Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the default setting for any action by government should be to immediately place it online, in a searchable database so any and every citizen has easy access to it. Today the default is the opposite, to make everything our government does, in our name and funded by us, to be a secret from us, only available by court order. Obviously openness stands in direct opposition to the present paradigm, of everything government does is by default a secret, unless someone has enough money to sue in court for access to information. Which anyone knowledgeable of human history, nature and governments knows, is a certain path to corruption. Sadly, the corruption becomes ever more difficult to deny, day after day of revelations about the Obama Administration… without naming him or it.
Right government, no matter how constituted, works for all of the nation, while wrong forms of government, work for the benefit of a single faction and their cronies only. Any form of government that serves itself rather than firms, shopkeepers, workers, grocers and plumbers, is one that by definition, is corrupt. It goes to the fundamental question of why have government at all? Is it so psychopaths can have an outlet for their perverted lust for power and dominion over others, so a cabal can amass huge fortunes beggaring the rest, or maybe to keep the average person down… by regulations, lack of political favor, poverty, wrong heritage, race or religion? The great thinkers of the ages answered this question unanimously with a resounding… no! Government must work for all.
People in charge, shady or not, will always have dozens of handy reasons their shenanigans must be kept in the dark. There will even be a very few that are legitimate. The reality always is however, that government conducted above the table will necessarily be less corrupt, than government conducted under the table. Take any example you wish. It is human nature to seek an advantage. If we can get a leg up, and no one will ever know, especially if we can make it illegal for anyone to know, it is only human to do it. Don’t kid yourself that you wouldn’t, even I don’t pretend to be superhuman, we are flawed since Eve and Adam ate of the apple. Do you really think that politicians are better human beings than you and I? All a politician need be is charismatic… morality is a liability.
Darkness begets corruption while light is antiseptic. The reason we don’t allow cameras in our bathrooms… is because we do things there we don’t want made public. Not necessarily bad things but embarrassing things. Alternatively, if we all understood that there are cameras in our bathrooms, we would be far more circumspect in what we do in them. Ragweed season would bring with it… terror. Clearly then, from this illustration, we can conclude that we modify our behavior, depending if we are in public or private, under the light or in the dark. Politicians are no different than you and I, (except a much higher percentage of politicians are psychopaths and sociopaths) and so will modify their behavior as well, depending if their actions are scrutinized or not.
So, if we do indeed want less corruption in our governments, we need to make it the default that everything government does goes on the Internet within an hour, unless flagged national security, then it must be reviewed by a court, and if found not to be sufficiently security related, immediately put on the Internet. Cameras should be in every lawmaker’s office, with direct feeds to a .gov cam site. So we can hear and see what our politicians are doing while on the clock. A Dollar General employee is on camera when they work, so why would we hold the most powerful to a lower standard, than we do the least powerful? That doesn’t make sense. To get it done… we must ignore the crocodile tears of our lawmakers, and demand it at the voting booth as special articles and ballot initiatives.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
