Topic: Transparent Government

Donald Trump held a televised cabinet meeting that drew comparisons to his former reality show, The Apprentice. Participants described the event as staged and phony, noting a precedent where future presidents may feel compelled to use live social media platforms like Instagram Live for government transparency.

A host describes calling Senator Jeff Sessions' office to identify a specific subcommittee meeting mentioned in testimony. The investigation reveals that most Senate committees maintain their own websites with raw video archives of meetings that are never broadcast on C-SPAN. This discovery is framed as a "gold mine" for future media deconstruction and show material.

Kim Lemke, the elected city clerk of Pleasant Hill, California, is criticized for failing to produce meeting minutes for a year while actively tweeting during council sessions. The hosts compare her to "Noodle Boy," mocking her use of corporate buzzwords like "work product" and "engagement" to justify her lack of performance.

Twitter released its first transparency report, detailing government requests for user data and content removal. The report shows that the U.S. government makes the most requests, while many "Arab Spring" countries are notably absent from the list. The hosts question the narrative of social media's role in those revolutions given the lack of documented government interference in this report.

Hillary Clinton promoted a new "Foreign Assistance Dashboard" website intended to provide transparency for government spending. However, the hosts discover during the broadcast that the URL foreignassistance.gov is non-functional and leads to a "server not found" error. They question Clinton's claims regarding the percentage of the US budget allocated to foreign development.

The hosts revisit the $18 million contract awarded to Smartronix for the development of Recovery.gov. They mock the General Services Administration's excuse that the contract cannot be released yet because it is not "508 compliant" for the disabled. Curry and Dvorak argue that the high cost of the project is unjustifiable for a standard website.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw used a veto to block the release of cabinet minutes regarding the decision to invade Iraq. Straw argued that disclosure would harm the "integrity of the system of government." This move has sparked outrage among transparency advocates who believe the minutes would reveal illegal or incompetent reasoning for joining the coalition.