Peakah's Provocations...

So much for Transparency in Government.

From Zeal for Truth:

Take a look at these two videos to see Washington DC hypocrisy at its best.

This first one is of Senator Jim DeMint (R) attempting to get a vote on S 604, the Senate companion to Ron Paul’s HR 1207 bill auditing the Federal Reserve. DeMint outlines why the bill is important, highlights its bipartisan support and explains why the American people are interested in an audit of the Federal Reserve:

At this point, Senator Ben Nelson (who suddenly has an interest in helping out Ben Bernanke and Co.) recites with an almost practised clarity that the amendment violates “Rule 16″ - a rule that attempts to prevent legislation being attached to an appropriations bill. The Senate president hastily agreed and shot the bill down in one sentence.

I would like to consider the surgical nature of this exchange. It is not my intent to suggest that politicians aren’t smart people - but I am shocked that all of this happened so quickly. It seemed more like a play, with actors taking cues from one another in order to read their lines than it did honest and open debate Senate of the supposedly most “free” nation on the planet.

Then, and this is the comical part, DeMint went through and read several other portions of the bill - audits identical to the one which S 604 requests that did not get the ire of Senator Nelson or the Senate president. DeMint goes one step further and asks the Senate president to confirm that these audits also violate Rule 16 - which she grudgingly does.

He then, and this next move is pure genius, highlights a $200,000 earmark that that Senator Nelson has put into the bill for a Museum in Durham Nebraska. The Senate president admits this also violates Rule 16 and is legislative - granted this strike by DeMint seems to hit a little close to home and the president attempts to defend the earmark by arguing it is “germane” to the language of the bill.

See the rest of the exchange here:

I’m not one to give any credit to conspiracy theories, but this all strikes me as one giant game played the Democrats (and others, I’m sure) in order to block a Federal Reserve Audit. Kudos to DeMint for exposing the myth of fairness and integrity in Washington.

With only a few honest and good Senators left, blocking any righteous legislation that would actually benefit the American people is a piece of cake... Sad.