Full Report: From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday.

Today, House Natural Resources Committee released a new 55-page report following months of investigative work by Committee Democrats exposing how Donald Trump hijacked what was supposed to be a unifying, non-political celebration of our country’s 250th birthday and made it all about him – his vanity projects, his political and religious agenda, his business ventures, and his cronies who gorged on public funds under cover of a shadow corporation shielded from public scrutiny.

  • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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    20 hours ago

    Yes, we know, the system is flawed. If “transparency” is as worthless as you claim, then so is “faulting the entire system,” which is what you say you’re doing. Not sure how you can apply your logic consistently and come to different conclusions for those two things.

    Transparency alone doesn’t fix the issue, no. And no one is claiming it does. But the issue will be much harder to fix without transparency. No transparency makes accountability nearly impossible. And right now, while anyone with an interest in fixing the issue is powerless to do so, transparency is a bare minimum that they can at least try to meet. And that’s what they’re doing.

    So no, I don’t think transparency is worthless. It’s necessary. Not sufficient, but necessary no less.

    If Ted Bundy controlled all the police in the nation either directly or through influence and loyalty, then congress tracking his crimes and making the reports available to the public would be better than doing nothing about it.

    • FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca
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      19 hours ago

      Isn’t the point of alerting the public so something can be done about it? I’m demanding g something actually be done! That’s what started this conversation, me asking what the public will DO about it! They’re alerting the public so they can do what? So the public can demand action? That’s what I’m doing!

      • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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        19 hours ago

        Would you be able to demand action if you weren’t aware of it? If they didn’t do the report or if they didn’t release it to the public?

        They accomplished a few things at least. 1., there’s an official record of it now, presumably with precise numbers and cited sources. That will be useful when someone gets in power who cares about accountability. 2., It creates a record for history that can be studied later to get an accurate count as well as corroborate other sources. 3., it let’s the public know what’s going on, so on the off chance there are still any fence-sitters they now have more facts to base their voting decisions on. Voting decisions which can help determine whether someone gets in power who is willing to prosecute based on the evidence in the report.