Transparency

Since the beginning of ‘leadership’, those in charge have omitted or warped information. The reasonings are many, but one consistent is that they do it to preserve their own power. Especially in this day and age, knowledge and information are power. So when this power is stripped, we are left defenseless and at the mercy of those who wield it.

Just recently, a TSA leak revealed that only a very small percent of airline flights actually have U.S. Air Marshals on board. In response to this fact, the TSA launched an internal investigation to find the source of the leak. They might say the reasoning is that letting terrorists know that air flights are not as secure as we would like them to think.

In truth, there are likely a few more non-philanthropic reasonings behind the cover-up. Lying about the number of Air Marshals in the air allows them to not spend the money to actually hire them, saving the company (as even government is a company these days) money, and profiting the people at the top who manage the books. As long as the people believe they are safe, they are less prone to probe into the workings of the agency as well.

That is not to say there are certain instances were privacy and with-holding information are completely invalid. The exact identities of those marshals should not be revealed. Having detailed reports on spies and undercover officers would put them into harm’s way. However, the government has no right to suppress that they are paying for a thousand air marshals, when only a hundred are being employed, or that they are giving millions of taxpayer money to support a new bill, and hiding how it is spent and where it goes. It is bad enough to manipulate the power of money, but they compound their offense to the people they are meant to serve by manipulating information as well.

Government should be mandated to reveal all internal workings to the public, with very specific cases being allowed to be masked when safety for specific individuals is at risk. It is heinous that they hide from us, and then chide the idea of true democracy as foolish since people will make incorrect decisions, which is a certainty if the agencies serving the public hide information. They continue to take money and information, take the power of the people, increasing their own and lie to our faces and say it is for our own good. Of course government could always get worse, and it is a popular idea to not fix something that isn’t ‘broke’, but not searching for a way to make things better is complacency and foolish.

- Justin

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