This was supposed to be like the 9/11 Commission and it certainly isn't. Bound to a promise to produce all the truth and nothing but the truth about the economic crash by mid-December, the bi-partisan leadership of the panel is feuding. Congressional Republicans threaten to look into (and shut down?) the commission if they achieve a majority in November.
“We lost a fair amount of time on the front end,” said one commissioner, Keith Hennessey, a former economic adviser to President George W. Bush. “Part of it was negotiations between [Democratic chair, Phil] Angelides and [Republican co-chair Bill] Thomas on the senior staff, but I don’t know why it took so long to assemble a full staff.”
Commissioners also said that Mr. Angelides and Mr. Thomas recently clashed over whether to release preliminary staff reports or some of the 500,000 pages of materials that had been gathered so far. When Mr. Angelides floated the idea of releasing some of the materials to reporters, Republicans threatened to look into the panel’s work if they took control of the House, a person briefed on the dispute said. A spokesman for the panel denied that the exchange had occurred. ...NYT
Another commission member urged openness.
“A large part of our responsibility is to allow the American people to see this process as transparent and understandable,” she said. “Most people see finance as incredibly obscure. I think it would be helpful to put out a set of facts that we can all agree upon. Put them in the public domain.”
A powerful reason for anger out here on "Main Street" is the almost complete absence of promised transparency in the Obama administration. The anger reaches from the Tea Party to political moderates and the political left.
Certainly on the left there is frustration and sometimes fury that a long-awaited catharsis -- after years of Bush administration corruption and cover-up -- has been kept well out of reach. Over the past decade, the most basic requirement for an open democratic society has been phased out with the cooperation of the Obama administration.
