Re: "open and transparent" government

Ronnie P.Old Faithful

How does this square up with Obama's campaign promise of open and transparent government?

The head of C-SPAN has implored Congress to open up the last leg of health care reform negotiations to the public, as top Democrats lay plans to hash out the final product among themselves.

C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb wrote to leaders in the House and Senate Dec. 30 urging them to open "all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings," to televised coverage on his network.

"The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of the sessions LIVE and in their entirety," he wrote.

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...e-talks-tv-coverage/

1/5/103:47 PM

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TheMeInTeamPost Master

I'm conflicted on this. On one hand, it's hard to be against more transparency in government. But on the other hand, we all know how politicians act in front of cameras. It would be great if we could see how this process works, but when the cameras are on, all we'd see would be a bunch of carefully prepared statements so that there's nothing that could be taken out of context or used against them later. And meanwhile the real work would probably still be done behind closed doors, just by their staffs rather than our representatives themselves. In practice, putting more government meetings on camera likely means more actual work taking place in informal settings outside of those meetings, which means even less accountability. All C-SPAN would accomplish would be the illusion of transparency.

1/5/109:49 PM

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