"There are supposed to be people already watching this money slosh. If they can hide it from them..."
Wrong, imo. The auditors are admittedly underfunded, per the previous links, and their budgets were slashed again this year at the Bush administration's recommendation.
The extreme value of simply publishing full disclosure is that a million people can casually go through it, a few fanatics will fanatically pick out their favorite areas they know something about, and you'll get a collective review thousands of times better.
Even more than that is the *chance* that'll happen, with any line item, which will force people planning funnybusiness to think again.
NSA shows up as a blanket item, and as parts of other budgets. That's a good example of an overall budget that has no good reason not to be honestly accounted for in overall terms, and some attempt at a guideline for results. Instead, the prinicple is established of sneaky accounting through the governement, "because it's intel", and guess what? Pretty soon, everybody's intel! As expected. So privacy of budget, actions, and designations snowballs for budget reasons, oversight reasons, etc. to the point where 1/4 our government is under wraps, to the detriment of our national and economic security.
Re: Enron, it'll play out. I think Cheney w. have to come clean, Bush may be able to protect himself a little better.
Their procedure is like the Taliban prisoners and the Geneva convention, to deny, deny, deny, then concede a little at a time. |
