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White House will choose questions for town hall meeting

                The Obama administration has touted itself as the most honest, transparent, and open administration in history. But if you if have a question to ask the president at the town hall meeting to take place Wednesday, July 01, 2009, you had not only better get in line, you had better get it approved, by the White House. 

Earlier in the year, the President had an online town hall meeting and those online were allowed to vote on questions they wanted to ask the president about the economy. The question to be asked was whether or not President Obama would consider legalizing and regulating marijuana in an attempt to stabilize the economy and bring in tax revenues. It was a legitimate question. This country is not at a loss for willing pot-smokers and the legalization of the drug would undercut the costs several fold of the taxes that the consumer would have to pay for the drug. We spend far more on the War on Drugs than we should and a large percentage of our prison’s inmates have been sentenced these because of a drug related case. Legalizing marijuana would save money and bring in revenue to the nation and make a lot of people happy (not to mention more relaxed about the whole economy/terrorist thing). The President declined to see it this way and chuckled as if the question was a joke and made a flippant “not a good idea”-type of comment. 

It seems the White House does not want a repeat of the perceived embarrassment they felt on that day, therefore the White House has released a statement that all questions asked of the President will have to be approved before the meeting (as if they were somehow not hand-picked before). This means that instead of transparency and hard questions, we will be treated to a barrage of long-time McEmployees shouting how great the President is and how lucky we are to have him. Nary a viewer will be forced to deal with opposition, dissent, or heaven’s forbid, an intelligent question that would make them think while they were having their TV time. 

Transparency means transparency. It means that all questions should be allowed. Being liberal and open-minded means to allow discussion from all sides of the table, even, and sometimes especially, the most unpopular of discussions. If the powers that be are in fact correct about what they want to do, about their own opinion, then they will not need to silence those that disagree with them, because the facts will speak for themselves. This administration has run on an idea of honesty and transparency, but our daily diet is made up of watered-down rhetoric that doesn’t mean anything. In order to truly be transparent, we need the substance behind it, the right to ask the hard questions. The right to know what all sides of the plan. These are the only ways that we can make an educated decision, instead of the artificial emotion driving our every move that we are currently being treated to.