"I am goddamn sick and fking tired of gangs of five, or eight, or 22, meeting in secret"

[kpete]

Tell Me What Is Being Done In My Name
By Charles P. Pierce
at 9:00am


.................


I am goddamn sick and fking tired of self-government being run on automatic pilot -- of gangs of five, or eight, or 22, meeting in secret, wise old bone-worshippers, and deciding things that, a decade later, get murderous religious whack-jobs flying airplanes in to buildings. Because what gets decided in secret gets played out in public, always. (Recall the famous Doonesebury cartoon in which the two Cambodian peasants are asked about the "secret bombing" of their country. "It wasn't secret," one of them says. "I said, 'Look, here come the bombers.'&quot You people jack around with some people on the other side of the planet and, pretty soon, I'm picking pieces of a Starbucks out of my hair, if I'm lucky.

Just tell me what is being done in my name.

..................


the rest:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/A_Simple_Question

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[charlyvi]

2. All these "gangs of" whatever

sound sooooo North Korean to me.

[newfie11]

3. America

Where everything is a secret.
Us peons get told only a few scraps the great ones decide to feed to us!

[Erose999]

4. I think they should settle it like men. With finger-snapping, dance fighting, and a Bernstien score

[ColumbusLib]

32. (:

Yes!

[maddiemom]

33. Good one!

[BrotherIvan]

5. The whole piece is worth the read

The won't tell us what they're doing because then we might ask them to stop.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. No, because it doesn't work if people find out they're being played for fools....

[kentuck]

6. Amen...

A gang is a gang is a gang... What about the other 92 Senators? What are they? Wallflowers?

[kenfrequed]

7. Agreed

They always are full of rather corporate or "moderate" democrats and ideologically right wing republicans. When do progressives actually get a little of what we want?

[clyrc]

8. Exactly

I agree completely.

[KansDem]

9. It's all about this man...

And many, many more like him.

[KansDem]

10. "Recall the famous Doonesebury cartoon..."

November 10, 1973--

http://assets.amuniversal.com/9bd2b3008e4f012f2fe200163e41dd5b



(More Doonsebury: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/doonesbury_at_40/2010/10/doonesburys_200_greatest_moments.html )

[RevStPatrick]

12. I vividly remember that strip...

...and will never forget it.
I was about 10 or 11 when it came out, and it greatly affected my worldview.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

14. I grew up with Vietnam- and Watergate-era Doonesbury.

Has a lot to do with how I think, now that I look back on it. The copy of "Doonesbury's Greatest Hits" was rarely in my junior high library as I had it checked out for most of my time there (I don't imagine many junior high librarians can put Trudeau's work on the shelves these days without getting flack from weak administrators or paranoid parents).

Wonder if he realizes how much his work influenced the generation behind his own.

[Laelth]

16. Yep. In American political parlance, secret = secret from the American people.

And our politicians don't seem to care whether the rest of the world knows or not. The key is to keep these things hidden from us.

-Laelth

[SomeGuyInEagan]

11. Voice votes, too ... they are gutless and cowardly, IMO. n/t

[rhett o rick]

13. Can you handle the truth?

[Laelth]

17. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[BillyRibs]

18. It's amazing

how, By just turning on the lights you can cause all kinds of vermin to skater and head back to the cracks they crawled out of to hide in alone and frightened. without light this will never happen.

[Hekate]

19. Oh. Kay. "It wasn't secret...I said, 'Look, here come the bombers.'"

"It wasn't secret," one of them says. "I said, 'Look, here come the bombers.'"

I remember that cartoon, now that you remind me. I also remember when -- long, long ago -- we used to be the good guys, and how that's approximately when that went away.

and Rec.

[mbperrin]

20. This is why I support whistleblowers coming out with information,legally or not.

We need to know; hell, we DESERVE to know!

Our dollars and our souls.

[snot]

21. This rhymes with Assange's thinking: the more secrecy, the higher the chances that

they're hiding things because they know we'd probably try to stop them if we knew about them.

[avaistheone1]

22. True.

K&r

[Kahuna]

23. Tell me about it...Ugh!

[Mr. Evil]

24. Anything our government does secretly or keeps secret

is either immoral, unethical and/or illegal.

[Babel_17]

25. Incumbents must be re-elected

Transparency is not conducive to that. Our elected officials would be held accountable for how they bargained, what they stood for, and what they didn't stand for.

The formation of gangs that operate behind closed doors can have a useful place, imo, but they should be called into being only under extreme circumstances and only after things have been thoroughly hashed out in public, and for real.

Otherwise the little people will get sold out. They don't have money, only their votes. And when they get sold out in a diffuse manner there is no one left to feel their electoral wrath.

[HiPointDem]

26. hell yeah. sick of lies, sick of crap imposed on people covertly, sick of the whole sick mess.

[RainDog]

27. k&r n/t

[mtasselin]

28. gang

If this gang of what ever number are suppose to be the intellectuals of the senate that shows you how much trouble this country is really in. When you can not get elected people in the same room because they don't want people to know that they are compromising we have the wrong elected people, time to vote their asses out.

[Bluenorthwest]

29. Gangs is what they are, organized criminal outfits.

Furtive criminals who we should be putting in jail.

[hatrack]

30. Out. Of. The. Park. nt

.

[treestar]

31. How should it be done then?

my name? It is our name. These are representative bodies.

What narcissistic self righteousness.

[pmorlan1]

34. Totally Agree

I posted my disgust about the Gang of 8, 4 or 22 on HuffPo. Who are these masters of Congress? Who elected them to be super Reps? They get these small groups and make them feel all superior and the rest of Congress learns very little. Well it's blowing up in their face this week. We most certainly need to put an end to this. Each rep represents their citizens. I'm tired of having reps I didn't vote for getting briefed and representing me.