Devoted to women of color in business

I am concerned when decisions that may affect millions of people are concentrated in the hands of just a few elite individuals. In Naomi Wolf's book "The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot," she warns that from the historical record, whenever large amounts of power are concentrated in the hands of just a few people, like it is now in the United States, then the end result is a closed, fascist society. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

Recent, disturbing reports (at least to me) of governmental agencies either lying, "faking," or outright withholding data, have prompted me to think more about the importance of transparency and integrity when dealing with the public. If we are to restore sanity, we will demand accountability and integrity from our public officials.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during the wildfires in Southern California, decided to get its information out using a press conference. However, they only gave reporters 15 minutes notice, and they offered a toll-free call-in line but only allowed reporters to listen in, not to ask questions. Instead, their own employees played the part of reporters. No one asked any hard questions (obviously).

Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy director, admits that the means could have been improved: FEMA's goal was "to get information out as soon as possible and in trying to do so we made an error in judgment."

Who ever heard of a fake press conference with fake reporters asking fake questions? What kind of good does this do anyone? Perhaps they should have just released a prepared statement and updated their website.

On top of this, the Los Angeles Times reports that President Bush recently scheduled full-access interviews with 14 reporters, but demanded that they were completely off the record, meaning reporters could not describe or publicize anything they heard. The Times stated that they "declined this opportunity... As a matter of policy and practice, we would prefer when possible to conduct on-the-record interviews with public officials." If you think any kind of commercial media that you read is "fair and balanced," I encourage you to contact individual reporters and ask them if they've ever written a critical piece or if they felt "muzzled" by the current Administration.

Disclosure: I receive no payment from Know More Media for any blog posts: I simply have an advertisment to my web company on the top right corner, which enhances my company's marketing reach. PS) If you enjoy reading these, I am happy to help you get your platform out there on the web.

The president desires to keep secrets from us, the general American public. If the rationale behind this is that any kind of information is "too sensitive" or will cause a "national emergency," the thinking behind this is that we the people are too stupid, too lazy, or too ignorant to understand and take action. If the government is a business, it is dissing its customers, and you and I are footing the bill for their incompetence and personal agendas.

NASA recently received a Freedom of Information Act request and declined it [this is when they decide that, for our own good and because we can't handle it, a handful of individuals may make decisions about what data from this public agency are available for our public usage or not]. However, NASA may be possibly reconsidering their policy of withholding data. Administrator Mike Griffin said "I believe that NASA research and data should be widely available and subject to review and scrutiny." Let's hope so, because space is available to all of our planet, as well as anyone with interstellar travel vehicles, not just Americans.

Finally, the cost of the war is hampering our future generations' ability to be competitive in the marketplace. Bush's latest emergency supplemental funding request is TEN TIMES the original projected cost. It now costs $576 billion (or $200,000 every minute) to deploy our troops in Iraq, and they still can't account for everything. "There's even funding that the Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office identify that they don't have any idea where the funding went," Says Travis Sharp of the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Center. "They don't know if it went for weapons systems, they don't know if it was operating costs in Iraq and Afghanistan."

If you were tasked with a budget for your project and suddenly realized that it would cost ten times extra then you estimated, what do you think the disciplinary action would be? If you estimated $2000 for a client but it ended up being $20,000, what do you think your client would do?

You'd be fired and sued. Our Congress is there to hold the President and Vice President accountable. Is impeachment in the works? If you're concerned, write your congressperson and ask them what recourse we have against our current administration's actions.