Great article. HIs point about our elites running our government and our economy very poorly is right on. The government is our government, by and for the people. Yet that isn't how it's been run, more like by and for the oligarchs and elites! Taxation and general economic policies have transferred many, many trillions of dollars from the middle class to the 1%.

That wasn't an accident, that was the plan. And they keep coming back for more, with the Trump tax cuts and the new ones the GOP is itching to put in place and the way the Federal Reserve is attacking inflation by destroying the economy for the working class and eroding their wages rather than going after the real culprits and breaking up monopolies and taxing excess profits.

And there are so many other ways our government has been hijacked and turned into the rich's lapdog! We have our work cut out for us to restore our government and economy so that they ensure that all citizens are healthy and secure financially while working and retired. This is what the government is supposed to do, not spoil and only serve the wealthy!

Government For the People Shouldn’t Keep Secrets From the People – Ian Welsh https://www.ianwelsh.net/government-for-the-people-shouldnt-keep-secrets-from-the-people/

#MoneyIsNotFreeSpeech
#GovtByN4ThePeople
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GovtByN4TheRich

"This is hard to talk about, because we live in a debased period.

Government’s job, in a democracy, should be to increase the welfare of the people and represent their will.

Because people elect the government, they need to know what the government is doing and has done in order to choose who to elect.

This is fundamental.

When people do not know what the government is doing, they cannot make good decisions.

Further, elected representatives (in principle, not in current practice) are the employees of the population. As employers, the population has a right to know what the representatives are doing. (Or if you prefer another metaphor, perhaps better, they are trustees.) They don’t have the right to know everything, but anything related to the job, including corruption and double dealing, they do.

The only possible exceptions are certain military related issues which would be very useful to enemies, but even there, the span is limited.

The reason for this, because apparently it’s not obvious, is that if electors don’t know what the people they elected and the government those people run are doing, they can’t make good decisions, like choosing to, oh, fire them.

As an aside, this is also why we have a right to know what our government is doing and why they don’t have a right to spy on us: they work for us, we do not work for them. Even so, their personal lives, other than graft and blatant hypocrisy should be off the line. But what they do officially we need to know.

If government doesn’t serve the people, it becomes tyranny.

The current system of classifying virtually everything and then lying and lying and lying is clearly anti-democratic and tyrannical.

What we have right now in most countries (see France, Pensions for a non-American example) is not democracy. It is oligarchical tyranny: the rule of the few over the many.

Nor is this just about “ought”, the problem with endless propaganda is that our elites have been running our countries terribly. They have mishandled the economy repeatedly since 1968 or so, have completely bungled climate change and ecological collapse, have made the middle and working classes poor and the rich richer. They have been running government for the benefit of the few, not the many. The only major notable exception is China, and from what I hear from those on the ground, that’s changing for the worse and has been since after the 2008 financial crisis.

Governments which impoverish the many to benefit the few are tyrannies and need to be overthrown. But one of the ways they get there is by constant lying and saying “we’re lying and concealing for your own good. You’re children, it isn’t safe for you to know.”

Anyone who thinks you don’t deserve or need to know what they claim to be doing on your behalf isn’t your friend or your employee, they are your master and they see you as their slave.