Robert Reich: too many decisions being made in secret, harms democracy:

[amborin]

snip

It seems as if more and more decisions that should be made democratically are being shunted off somewhere to a few people who make them in back rooms. Which programs should be cut, which entitlements pared back, and what taxes raised in order to reduce the long-term budget deficit? Hmmm. Let’s convene a commission and have them decide.

Commissions are a default mechanism when politicians want to hand off difficult issues to “experts.” But reducing the long-term budget deficit has almost nothing to do with expertise. It’s about our nations’ values and priorities. Nothing could be more central to the democratic process.

Democracy requires at least three things: (1) Important decisions are made in the open. (2) The public and its representatives have an opportunity to debate them, so the decisions can be revised in light of what the public discovers and wants. And (3) those who make the big decisions are accountable to voters.

But these principles are in retreat, and I say this not just because of the proposed deficit commission.

The notorious Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) began with a virtual blank check from Congress. Treasury officials then secretly decided which companies were to receive hundreds of billions of dollars. Why these particular entities were chosen and not others remains a mystery. For months, the Treasury didn’t even disclose the identities of the major banks that giant insurer AIG repaid with its bailout money – 100 cents on each dollar AIG owed them.

snip

The debate over health-care reform looked like democratic deliberation until you realize the key negotiations that framed the deal occurred behind closed doors, between the White House and Big Pharma and Big Insurance. The Administration promised these industries some thirty million new paying customers. In return, they agreed not to oppose the plan. Big Pharma even placed a firm limit on how much it would cut its costs over the next ten years – $80 billion, and not a penny more. How do I know this? Not because this crucial deal was made in public, but because it was leaked to the press.

snip

A big piece of the problem is this: Washington is now so overrun by lobbyists representing moneyed interests that it’s become almost impossible to make policy in the open. If the Treasury and Fed tried to decide publicly which industries and firms should get hundreds of billions, they’d be inundated. Wall Street lobbyists are blocking real financial reform. The energy industry has filled the House’s cap-and-trade bill with special subsidies and exemptions. Big Pharma and Big Insurance would have killed off the health-care reform if they hadn’t been bought off. When it comes to the long-term deficit, Congress is incapable of acting because so many special interests have their hands out.

But the answer isn’t to give up on democracy. Back-room policy making can succumb to private interests just as easily as lobby-infested legislatures (much of the public suspects the Treasury of being too cozy with Wall Street as it is).

snip

Yet nobody seems to be talking about these sorts of reforms. They don’t appear on Obama’s agenda. True, they don’t generate lots of public excitement or appreciation, and they’re murderously difficult to enact. But without them our democracy doesn’t stand a chance.

snip

robertreich.org

[saracat]

1. Yup. But some refuse to question this.

[amborin]

2. LOL!

the ________ quickly un-recced this, per usual

[leftstreet]

4. You're not supposed to say that

:spank:

Don't say 'cheerleaders' - say esteemed supporters of the esteemed unRec function

[amborin]

7. 'kay

::):

[Political Heretic]

5. this response along will earn you a ton of unreccs.

From people that either, are offended by being called cheerleaders or are sick of every thread starting with the OP and then an immediate reply from the author of the OP commenting on the unrecc feature.

I know how tempting it is... I've done it myself. But enough if enough. :)

(Rec'ed anyway, though)

[leftstreet]

3. Maybe it's time We, the People start meeting behind closed doors

K&R

[Political Heretic]

6. And planning our non-cooperation and civil disobedience for the streets.

[amborin]

8. it's time!

[BrklynLiberal]

9. Gee...decisions in secret...where do I remember that from.? Oh yes!!

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

An excerpt from
They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
Milton Mayer

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

<snip>

much more food for thought at above link...

[amborin]

10. scary! thank you for posting that!

[amborin]

11. speaking of secrecy:

Obama's Latest Use of 'Secrecy' to Shield Presidential Lawbreaking
What was once depicted as a grave act of lawlessness -- Bush's NSA program -- is now deemed a vital state secret.

by Glenn Greenwald

The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the "state secrets" privilege -- which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney) -- to attempt to block courts from ruling on the legality of the government's domestic surveillance activities.

Obama did so again this past Friday -- just six weeks after the DOJ announced voluntary new internal guidelines which, it insisted, would prevent abuses of the state secrets privilege. Instead -- as predicted -- the DOJ continues to embrace the very same "state secrets" theories of the Bush administration -- which Democrats generally and Barack Obama specifically once vehemently condemned -- and is doing so in order literally to shield the President from judicial review or accountability when he is accused of breaking the law.

snip

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/01-0

[existentialist]

12. I have to agree with this, but

given the divisive, derogatory and uncivil discussion that arises when anyone attempts to bring a serious issue into a public forum these days I can sympathize with the willingness to pass decision making off to a commission meeting in a room with closed doors and no public access.

But if there is no public discussion then that is the death knell of democracy.

So I have to support the statement.

[Wilms]

13. .