Very disturbing news day

Most disturbing;
tax payers forked up the money, long ago, to install video
cameras in the NM State Legislature.

The idea being,
stakeholders have a right to know what's going on.

Now tax payer stakeholders are paying to
take the never used cameras out. link

Most of the opposition to transparent government comes
from in hiding. Although, there are legislators who have
articulated their justifications for government in secret.

Their justifications amount to a hill of beans, compared to
the overwhelming public support of transparency.

By definition, representative government represents the will of the people. Representatives are supposed to gauge and forward the will of their constituents.

Our representatives in Santa Fe are obliged to to forward
the public interests, even at the expense of their own.

These folks are not getting it a little wrong;
they are getting it a lot wrong.
Secrecy and transparency are polar opposites.
The will of the people and the will of their representatives
are diametrically opposite.

You can't order an out of control servant to do anything.
Out of control means, out of control.

You are not going to litigate control back.
You are not going to legislate control back.
You are not going to get it back by executive order.



You will take it back, or you will not get it back.

What more proof do you need that you have lost control
over power and resources that are fundamentally your own,

than to watch them take the cameras down in Santa Fe?

Public servants are accountable to the public interest.
But they will not hold themselves honestly accountable to
the public interest.

The good ol' boys have had hundreds of years, literally,
to install standards and accountability enough
to protect the public interest.

They made a deliberate decision not to;

• write meaningful standards of conduct and competence for public service, and then,
• provide accountability to those standards by means of an impartial system, powerful enough to hold them accountable, even against their will.

They chose instead, to create and maintain systems;
legal, legislative and executive,
that they control.

That control is illegitimate.

No more ethically indefensible secrecy.

The control over the spending of our power and resources,
is ours.



But only if we can summon the courage to take it back.



How many people would have to go to Santa Fe
and stand in the lobby of the legislature, to make transparency,
the first order of business?




How many people would go?