OK, it’s a little less couth than bread and circuses, but you’ve heard the one about how to keep mushrooms?
Feed them manure and keep them in the dark.
And today, the White House by way of the Office of Personnel Management, said it would rather govern a nation of mushrooms rather than free, independent people.
Sure, it’s the latest swipe in a general litigious pummeling of the First Amendment. The strikes against media and journalism have long-worn callouses.
But Tuesday’s publishing of a draft plan to get federal employees to sign non-disclosure agreements is a knife hewn to slit Deep Throat’s, well, throat.
This NDA is chilling, would last longer than most marriages, and wants a piece of the “royalties” just in case.
It puts its arms around a swath of government employees, follows them after they leave federal service, and then requires former employees to get “written permission from an authorized agency official” for anything declared “confidential.”
On its face, many would agree — we don’t want confidential information out there, troop movements that could get them killed, the names and addresses of children sexually assaulted by their family members.
But our definition of confidential — super-secret stuff, with stamps across pages that require top clearances to read — has been shaped by our non-mushroom American view.
We have been raised in a democracy, which requires people to watch and participate in their government.
Corruption and bad acts know neither party affiliation nor time period. They’ve been around as long as manure. The non-mushroom way of doing business in the open, at the people’s pleasure, so far in society, has been the way to curb them.
The proposed NDA’s “confidential” is “internal agency operations, personnel matters, procurement processes, or any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material that is not currently publicly available and should not be disclosed under applicable law.”
If it’s covered under applicable law, why would we need an NDA?
Because the truth is mired in the same tactics aimed at shooting holes in the First Amendment and drawing the darkening curtains around government operations — especially those viewed as embarrassing.
It is only the latest volley aimed at the media, but this one reduces the 3 million person-federal workforce — and their First Amendment rights — to collateral damage.
Open government does not “disrupt agency operations and erode public trust.”
It is the only way democracy works.
The freedom to speak about government policies and actions is fundamental to checks and balances.
This NDA, a draft with a 30-day comment period, wants to tip the balance into the darkness.
For we the mushrooms.