As F.G. Fitzer notes, yesterday the Senate held a hearing on “Making Government More Transparent And Accountable.” The topic of the day: finding ways to make it easier for citizens to gain information about government activities and to hold government officials responsible for those actions.
The Homeland Security Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security was called to order yesterday afternoon by subcommittee chair Thomas Carper. When Carper brought witnesses to testify on Capitol Hill last month, the Senate halted the hearing before the first witness was through her first minute of remarks. This month, Carper listened and smiled and joked with witnesses as he made his introductory statement, then noted:
My statement says, “I will now recognize Senator McCain for his opening statement,” but he has not joined us yet. He may during the time that we are all here. I hope so; we will recognize him when he arrives.
John McCain never arrived. Also absent from the hearing were these subcommittee members:
Daniel Akaka
Roland Burris
Tom Coburn
John Ensign
Carl Levin
Claire McCaskill
Mark Pryor
George Voinovich
Indeed, Tom Carper was the only senator to actually show up to the hearing; no other senator considered the subject of government transparency and accountability to be worth his or her while. At a loss for what to say at the end of the short hearing, Senator Carper asked witnesses if they would each make another statement of some sort, perhaps with something new that they hadn’t already said before. Then he gaveled the one-man committee hearing to a close and walked out of the room.
Perhaps they took the whole “transparency” idea a bit too literally.
Fucking perfect. How I loathe them all-with a ferocity they could never dream of. Great post.
Just wait until I run this universe, just wait.
Good one, Steve.
“What if they had a war (or an election) and no one came?”
Here’s what we have:
http://economic-undertow.blogspot.com/2010/04/broken.html