{"id":750,"date":"2006-09-06T03:17:33","date_gmt":"2006-09-06T07:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2006\/09\/06\/transparency-and-accountability\/"},"modified":"2006-09-06T03:17:33","modified_gmt":"2006-09-06T07:17:33","slug":"transparency-and-accountability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2006\/09\/06\/transparency-and-accountability\/","title":{"rendered":"Transparency and accountability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1307'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Sen. Ted Stevens<\/span> (R-AK) is one graft-happy congressman.&nbsp; Of course as any Tammany lad could tell you, graft is only natural&#8230;&nbsp;&nbsp; Stevens is the only actively blocking a recent bill supporting strong transparency of the use of government funds &#8212; as I understand it, the bill mandates that any project or organization that receives funds would have an entry on a website that specified the purpose and dates of the funds.<\/p>\n<p>Stevens placed an <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">anonymous hold<\/span> on the bill &#8216;for [indefinite] <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">consideration<\/span>&#8216;, in accordance with Senate procedures, but a call to other Senators to deny they had been responsible for the block quickly winnowed the field of potential blockers.<\/p>\n<p>The idea that not having this level of basic transparency is an option &#8212; something to debate seriously &#8212; is almost as embarrassing as the idea that some of the pork handed out around the US (including the $200M+ <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">bridge<\/span> Sen. Stevens snagged last year, and the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Big Dig<\/span> many times over) is allowed to continue &#8212; <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">over active opposition<\/span> by members of these bodies pointing out the waste involved.&nbsp; A system built on social censure and acquiescense as much as formal rules is only as good as its second-bravest member.<\/p>\n<p>As for <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Stevens<\/span>? Well, my father liked to say of such people, &#8220;By the time a man is forty, he is responsible for his face.&nbsp; This man does not have a good face.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href='http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2006\/POLITICS\/08\/30\/secret.senators\/index.html'>Transparency and accountability &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) is one graft-happy congressman.&nbsp; Of course as any Tammany lad could tell you, graft is only natural&#8230;&nbsp;&nbsp; Stevens is the only actively blocking a recent bill supporting strong transparency of the use of government funds &#8212; as I understand it, the bill mandates that any project or organization that receives funds [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chain-gang"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-c6","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}