American government has always tried to operate in the open. Transparency was built into the original constitution by protecting the press. A press free to publish without fear of retaliation is like a fourth branch of government, at least it used to be so in America. Today the press is spied on by government. The parallel issue is the willingness of the press to fawn all over Obama, the Left, the Democrats and act as a brick wall against Republicans, the Right and especially the Tea Parties. In those latter cases the press has been converted to another tool to disseminate Government Propaganda.
But the press is not welcome in the meetings of the political parties. Even if or when 3 Northampton Supervisors show up at a Republican Committee meeting, the committee people will never rat them out to the press and because the press and political opponents are forbidden to attend the supposedly public committee meetings, no effective dissent is ever heard in the meetings. Their lips are sealed.
Pennsylvania’s “Sunshine Act” is supposed to pry the information from government but it doesn’t work anymore. The politicians and the public office holders as well as the bureaucrats who run the systems day to day learned how to defeat transparency. They often deny the requests outright. They claim they do not have the info. -they resist transparency because… well, some of the actions of the local committee’s don’t follow the rules. Other actions are criminal but lack proof because the political class works hard to keep itself secret.
The Political Parties are government employees since they joined government at their Primary Elections. Individuals, Private Parties and businesses are forbidden to hold public elections where voters must register with the government to be able to cast a vote. The entire private sector cannot use the government apparatus for an election. Only two political parties can do that so the two parties are part of government, not separate from it and the public pays for the Primary Elections.
When Government’s actions are secret, like the Northampton Republican Committee Meetings, government cannot be held accountable. That’s the point. America’s governments should be for the people and by the people but they should be transparent to the people. Secret meetings institutionalize dishonesty and other types of corruption. A good example of political secrecy was the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking project because it broke the law as soon as the first act in support of it was taken. Secrecy protected it, just like the secret operations of the NSA were off limits until Edward Snowden saw it as his duty to disclose the secret program to spy on people including innocent Americans.
The arrest of Dinesh D’Souza for campaign contribution violation shows the danger of a rogue government. So did the arrest of the video maker who allegedly according to the testimony of President Obama at the United Nations, made a video that caused the Benghazi murders. All of the backroom secret meetings by government led to the police state tactics against private citizens but similar tactics are used in local politics including in Northampton township and the tactics to intimidate and malign private citizens who speak up and speak out at public meetings.
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