California Conservative

C-SPAN’s CEO Brian Lamb sent a letter to President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid requesting that they permit C-SPAN to cover the conference committee’s deliberations with their cameras:

The head of C-SPAN has implored Congress to open up the last leg of health care reform negotiations to the public, as top Democrats lay plans to hash out the final product among themselves.

C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb wrote to leaders in the House and Senate Dec. 30 urging them to open “all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings,” to televised coverage on his network.

“The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of the sessions LIVE and in their entirety,” he wrote.

What’s happened since Mr. Lamb’s letter went public is so surreal that I’m waiting for the Twilight Zone music to start playing. Here’s Speaker Pelosi’s response:

“There has never been a more open process for any legislation in anyone who’s served here’s experience,” she said.

I can’t stop laughing. I thought I’d never hear anything as boneheaded as Janet Napolitano saying “the system worked.” Obviously, I underestimated the Democrats’ ability to make themselves look like idiots because Speaker Pelosi’s statement is nothing short of bizarre.

That’s before we get to Robert Gibbs’s reply to a question about whether President Obama had lived up to his campaign promises to televise negotiations on C-SPAN:

“I do not believe the American people have lacked for information on what’s in these bills, the political and policy arguments around different people’s positions, I think that’s been well documented,” Gibbs said.

First, the question wasn’t about whether the American people have been kept in the dark. It’s beyond dispute that they have. The question isn’t about whether there’s been a complete airing of the Democrats’ and Republicans’ policy positions. They haven’t. In fact, that’s beyond dispute, too. The question was whether the Obama administration would hold the negotiations behind closed doors.

I don’t normally say something this provocative but I can’t stand this anymore: President Obama and Speaker Pelosi are really awful liars. President Obama repeatedly, emphatically said during the campaign that health care negotiations would be “televised on S-SPAN” so that people could see which people were carrying the drug companies’ water.

Speaker Pelosi isn’t stupid enough to think that this has been an open process, much less the most open process in legislative history. The only way she can say something like that with a straight face is by being a total bald-faced liar. If Ms. Pelosi doesn’t stop telling these types of whoppers, the American people will tire of her lies and strip her of the Speaker’s gavel.

It’s one thing for the American people to disagree with an administration’s policies. It’s another when they don’t trust an administration and the Speaker of the House from the same party. Once a politician loses the people’s trust, it’s usually all downhill from there.

Let’s hope that that’s what’s happening here.

Technorati Tags: C-SPAN, Brian Lamb, Transparency, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Negotiations, Secrecy, Corruption, Liars, Elections

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Democrats, Elections, Health Care, Media, Obama, Pelosi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.