Transparency in general is a good thing in most cases.
We haven't seen transparency in this administration, however.

It would be nice to hear government officials say certain items are on a need-to-know basis, rather than outright lying about them.

Now jb that's transparent.

Here's my question. We elect our congressmen by what say they are going to do then most of us forget about them. Some voters will write or email or even call. Does our senator or rep even know about it or do the staff handle them like Lois Learner

I had not heard that quote before. I need to remember it.

Thank you.

Jan

During the Carter time I was a member of an organization primarily concerned with the gas pump price spike from .35cents a gallon to .75 cents a gallon, later to end around a $1.00 a gallon. At first we all purchased shared in a "fuel card" when there were no "fuel lock cards". The rules and bylaws mailed to each member looked really great at first. Then we found out we were investing in a "alternative fuel research group" It had a name something like Sierra Alternate Fuel. I have long forgotten. I don't have any old Mother Earth magazines. I probably could find it in one of them. Maybe one of you recalls this scam. It wasn't a scam at first because most of the Mother Earthers were "true believers" in clean air, water, and the American genius to go back to basics and discover / rediscover solutions to problems we had only been tolerating for so long. We were supposed to also get reduced gas prices if we presented our discount cards because we were told the Sierra Alternate Fuel organization had purchased huge quantities of gasoline and was passing the discount on to subscribers. NOT I never could get the card recognized in any gas station in California. Joke was on me for being a true believer in organizations / governments. I was in my 20's then and had sent in three monthly payments of $20.00 Joke was on me. I started distrusting organizations / governments then. In the early 1980's I was introduced to the John Birch Society. I learned a whole lot there and became a Libertarian. Governments of the democratic variety are always democratic. It is a very bad form of government because it always concentrates power in leaders and blocks of sentiment. Anarchy is better but often reverts to a "strong man" dictatorship. I am sitting presently on a comfortable spot on the Bull's head between the horns of dilemma. Point being, there is only one group behind every government in the "real world". The New World Order is backed by ONLY global central banking. From the Rothscheilds to the present funds all governments and wars. Here's a bully with a badge, ignorant of the law. Needs a shrink to get over his pleasure in his professional misbehavior.http://www.geekwire.com/2014/hey-denver-police-harrass-riding-uber/?utm_content=buffer86bb2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

To think how far we've drifted, when all the government we really required could once be described on less than two dozen pages...

As I have stated before, the reason we need government is because the human race is not mature enough to exist without one. In a non-government society, all it would take is just one clever bad guy to wreck the entire system. Therefore, some rules must be set down, and in order to assure that they get obeyed an enforcement organization of some sort must be devised. That may change in the unforeseeable future, but not now, and not in the immediate future. It would take more room than we have here to devise and set down the tenets of the way our corrupted government should run, and the ways to correct its downhill slide into total decay. However, if someone wants a useful project to accomplish, devising the proper way a government should run in the 21st century, go to it -- I'm all ears.

That doesn't make any sense. Perhaps you mean without the possibility of evil we would have no idea of what good is since we cannot contrast good with evil; but no the absence of evil doesn't mean the absence of good. The absence of evil means the absence of evil.

Also an expansion on my first comment; the term "necessary" presupposes a purpose. A necessary means to achieve one's purpose. Government, Paine is saying, is a necessary means of achieve a civil society. As an
Objectivist I hold that it is not necessary for the government to behave evilly to achieve a civil society -- a good means is available and necessary to achieve a good purpose.

Indeed they were.

Your last sentence mirrors this statement by John Adams: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

What he was getting at was that when people self-govern (ie control themselves to live moral lives), you have a greatly reduced need for a police force in the first place.

Without evil, their would be no good. Sad, but true.

We should want the least amount of evil possible. But someone's evil is another's good.

Truly, but his pamphlets and work were critical to prime the pump of democracy in America.

Or as someone wisely stated, “Big government is the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.”

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

The reason governments fail is humans can be corrupted with money sex and most of all power.The more power the more corrupt they become

It is a necessary good. Evil is not necessary.

We've talked about this before, I think. But mightn't it be worth talking about it again?

Rand, in "The Nature of Government," held that men need a publicly supported police force, military service, and judiciary to manage the use of force in retaliation and to protect individual rights. She showed exasperation with those who in her view accepted the statists' idea that policing and so on were no different from running a municipal power station or other "public utilities," and then suggested replacing the police completely with private contract security forces, replacing the armies and navy with mercenaries and sea raiders (think Ragnar Danneskjöld as an admiral instead of a mere captain), and law courts with private arbiters.

And for all the exasperation she expressed, Mulligan's Valley/Atlantis/Galt's Gulch had no state of any kind. They did not have police. The only military they had was Ragnar Danneskjöld's never-named ship, plus the air-and-land militia Ragnar hastily assembled to rescue John Galt from Project F. And instead of a judiciary, they had Judge Narragansett as a contract arbiter and surrogate (wills, etc.).

Of course the only reason that could ever have succeeded, was that residency in Galt's Gulch was by invitation only.

People say he popularized the ideas for the masses. I must be like the masses b/c he's probably favorite writer involved with founding the US.

But ironically Paine was not at the convention for the Declaration of Independence.

Paine was a brilliant writer with a prescient mind for politics and consequences.

Calling our current government intolerable would be a massive understatement. Tyrannical would be more accurate.