The Way I See It - Death by Secrecy
Permalink +Wed, Jan 27, 2010, 4:59 am // Ham Hayes
If I could see it, I’m sure the Senate Health Reform bill would look like my garage. It would be full of all sorts of things. Some of the items would be gems and some would be junk. It would be huge, with lots of stuff in it, mostly scattered around. Some of the stuff would be hidden, buried under layers of other stuff, all of it resembling nothing less than an archeological dig. Now I’d like to clean my garage out and get some value and use out of the gems. I’d also like to throw out the junk. But the papers and other stuff in there are pressing against the doors and attempting to escape under the sills. Too big a job for me, so I think I’ll hire some help.
Unfortunately unlike the situation with my garage, there is only one company I can hire to clean up the Senate bill. And that’s the Senate itself. And have you seen their references lately? It is lucky for the Senators that the Better Business Bureau doesn’t accept complaints about politicians. My approach would be to open the doors to let the light in, peel back the layers, organize, prioritize and decide what to keep. If I were to use my Senate on the garage (yes, I think the Senate is mine, although they may think I am theirs) the approach would be a little different. First they tell me to trust them. Then they say the doors will have to remain closed and I can’t come in until everything is done. In fact I might have to wait a year or two before I can use my garage again. They also mention I will have to pay them up front, non-refundable of course, and there is no guarantee on the work they perform. And, oh yes, they will decide what are gems and what is junk. Another thing, they can decide to add more junk to my garage if they see fit. They might tell me afterward what they added, but there will be a surcharge of course. And just one more little thing: if they have their way, I have to hire them and no one else.
The ultimate arrogance is secrecy. Secrecy is a deep dark pit for hiding truth. This is why the Obama administration and Congress got skewered last week, by the voters in Massachusetts, no less. Who of us would hire a contractor without the right to see the work in process? We might choose not to inspect, but would we give up that right? Unfortunately for us, our government, independent of party or ideology, whether local or national, past or present, is being dragged and pushed into this pit. One not-so-funny thing about secrecy in government is that the issues we all thought we were working on are made irrelevant. The real agendas, which are hidden, are corrupt by definition. Our voices will no longer be heard.
There was a time when our culture trusted science and scientists. Science was the way to cut through myth and fear of the unknown. Science provided the foundation for liberating us from social injustice, disease and other afflictions. And even as we struggle with secrecy in our government today, secrecy has also crept into science in the form of intentionally suppressed and falsified observations and data. The heart of the scientific method is the accurate observation, reporting and inclusion of all data. The issues that face us on global warming have been made irrelevant by the secrecy and corruption of “climategate.” The corrupt political process used by the Senate on Health Care Reform is the same corrupt process being used by some climate scientists. It has taken attention away from the issues and put the focus squarely on the integrity of the scientists and their methods. The corruption of the process obscures the merits of the issues.
The rise of secrecy and loss of integrity in both government and science is probably more than coincidence. These phenomena are likely to be different symptoms of the same cause. At one level, this cause seems to be the belief by those in power that they are wiser than the rest of us. This apparently gives them the authority, in their minds, to use whatever means they choose to impose their will on us. It's starting to sound like we have an aristocracy once again that believes in ‘divine right.’ It may be we are in a new revolution against oppression. Is it just coincidence that the “first shot” in this revolution was heard in Massachusetts as well?
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Craig Mayberry // Wed, Jan 27, 2010, 11:12 am
Thanks for the article Ham, it was well timed with everything going on. It also fits in nicely with my ethics post last week. One of the key to both political ethics and business ethics is transparency. Doing things in secret gives people, at a minimum, the appearance of impropriety. Everything that went on in Washington with the health care bill may be have been perfectly ethical and completely above board, but because so much of it was done in secret people can legitimately conclude that there were unethical backroom deals. It will be interesting to see if our elected officials got the message, but based on the conversation so far it appears it went completely over their head.
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