Those who want big government know that big government will often function poorly, so don't want to make it easy to gather evidence that it is functioning poorly, as it will reflect badly on themselves as proponents of big government.
Those who want small government want to abuse the freedoms of small government to do sleazy things, so don't want to make it easy to gather evidence of that, as it will reflect badly on themselves as proponents of small government.
This is especially sad because transparency is kind of a panacea. If people know what is going on, they can respond optimally. More optimistically, if people know what is going wrong, they can work to fix it.
Inspired by several consecutive recent Presidential administrations of seemingly diametrically opposed political views, but transparency hasn't increased in any of them.
EmoticonEmoticon