Harlingen, Texas, 2009: It is a tale of ancient Greece.  Diogenes, the Cynic wandered the earth most of his life, holding his lantern high and searching for an honest man.  For him the task was impossible, because he believed that men and women lived lives dictated by specific rules and therefore no one was truthful or honest.

Most Americans today feel that if the lantern of truth were shined on Washington, it would reveal just what Diogenes saw during yesteryear, a District where men and women live lives dictated by their political beliefs and therefore are incapable of any honesty when addressing the people they have sworn to serve.

A variety of polls conducted over the past decade reveal that almost 75% of Americans feel Congress lacks honesty and integrity.  But, the dogma of party politics is even at work in these poll numbers.  For example, almost 70% of Democrats feel Hillary Clinton is honest.  Only 16% of Republicans have that same feeling.

With the start of the Bush Administration second term there was a continuing erosion of public confidence in the federal government.  Seeing this distrust as an opening, Representative Henry A. Waxman and the Democrats on the Government Reform Committee concocted a list of six proposals to restore government honesty and accountability.

The first of these proposals was to Ban secret meetings with lobbyists and close the revolving door.  The committee said that with the Democrats in power they would require full disclosure of contacts and end secret meetings.  However, according to the Washington Post, lobbying efforts have markedly increased since the Democrats assumed control of the government, with hundreds of millions being poured into lobbying efforts and millions more being placed in Democrat campaign coffers.  We don’t know about secret meetings.  They are secret.

The second proposal hawked by this Democrat committee and even pledged by President Obama, was to Restore open government. How did that work out?  Bills have been prepared in secret with no Republican input.  They have been placed on the floor for vote without being read.  The Obama promise to put all planned legislation on the Internet for five days before any vote is cast never saw the light of day.

We must Clean up federal contracting, said the committee.  But, has that happened?  According the Representative Tom Davis, a Republican from Virginia, there were extended committee meetings that resulted in nothing much happening. He says the inquires “will help feed the Democrats’ anti-war base and will highlight two or three examples of waste without instituting any real substantive outcome.” The real boon to contractors Davis said, “Is the $800 billion-plus stimulus package.”

Block the appointment of cronies, said the committee.  Did that happen?  No need to get into total numbers here.  Just look at the laundry list of Obama’s Czar Team.  Not one of them was screened, vetted, or approved by the Senate.

The committee also said it would Take politics out of science. Never again would there be manipulation of science for political purposes.  A look at the so-called clean energy bill that just scraped through the House of Representatives makes a lie of any statement that politics has been removed from science.  Highly questionable and widely disputed science is that basis for the entire bill.

Protect federal whistleblowers is the sixth and final proposal of the Government Reform Committee. Admittedly, the new Administration is only about six months into a four-year term.  Still nothing has taken place to resolve the issue of more than 1,000 whistleblowers that have been silenced by government order.  Some of them have been held silent for years.  Added to that is the legislation of the False Claims Act has a six-year statute of limitations and the time frame under that statute starts the minute a claim is filed.  Thus, for many whistleblowers, time could expire before any of their charges are heard.  The sad thing is, a Congress that deplores honesty in any form passed this legislation to keep honest comment silent.

So, we return to that man with a lantern, searching for honesty.  The question in most scholars’ minds is, “If Diogenes the Cynic believed there was no such person, why did he keep looking for an honest man?” In today’s Washington that same question would be even more perplexing.

Semper Fidelis,
Thomas D. Segel