“That big sucking sound” is not so much jobs headed to Mexico, but rather information to the Whitehouse. Yesterday, NPR had two interesting stories back to back. The first outlined the penchant for secrecy by the Bush administration and the second was a profile of John Poindexter. The two together provide a chilling look at what I consider not a careful administration, but a truly paranoid one.

The Bushies work extremely hard to keep information from the media (which is generally a soft conduit of administration policies and spin anyway) and from Congress. The silence is maintained via an apparent cult of personality among the elites who fear W’s wrath should they be “disloyal” to him rather than the American people. It is, after all, W, his daddy, and the rest of the insiders who can pass out the goodies in terms of power, prestige, money—those elements that make life worth living.

Bush manages to get support from academia in the words of Texas A&M professor, George Edwards who complains that the administration can’t function if “the public knows every consideration or every option that’s being considered as its being considered.” Poor syntax seems to be a common affliction among Texas’ elites, as well as overstatement.

Of course, the interested public doesn’t want or need to know EVERY consideration of the Whitehouse, but it certainly needs to know its general plans, particularly when they are planning to put hundreds of thousands of American soldiers in harm’s way; or when they plan to open our pension funds to Wall Street; or Medicare to the private companies; or tax cuts to the already wealthy while cutting school lunches from poor or almost poor kids (remember to be “poor”, by definition, in this country is essentially to be destitute—to be “almost poor” is very unpleasant!)

Some in Congress are concerned. Henry Waxman (D-CA) feels this administration is “obsessed with wanting to operate in secret without being accountable either to the Congress or the American people.” He’s absolutely right. Bush himself simply says, “…when the GAO demands documents from us, I just don’t give ‘em to ‘em.” What happened to checks and balances? What about government of the people, by the people and for the people”?

Whereas Bush doesn’t want any information to leak out of the Whitehouse, John Poindexter wants all information to flow into the same. A true spook, Poindexter’s vision for Total Information Awareness and “data mining” are unprecedented. Certainly a man without ethical limits, a man convicted of lying to Congress (and overturned on a technicality) shouldn’t be in the position he’s in. Regular folks who commit even minor felonies would never see the inside of the Whitehouse let alone work there, but he is. Well trained by Reagan in the art of lying, he is charged with feeding the gargantuan appetite for information that marks this administration.

Listen to these reports, but don’t expect to sleep well as a result.