Are you aware of the amount of information that the government keeps hidden from you, and how much it spends to keep it secret?

The truth is the government spends more than $50 billion in order to hold petabytes of information from us. This secrecy is an insult to the American citizens, and we must put a stop to it.

According to a recent story in the Johnson City Press under the headline, “Too many secrets are kept for too long,” the government holds all kinds of things from its citizens and “half or even most of the country’s classified documents need not be.”

This means that the government hides things that are frivolous and have no need to be kept a secret.

To cite an example from the same article, a telegram was publicized in 1997 that entailed a largess by China and the United States — some musk oxen in exchange for two Chinese pandas — that had been classified since 1972. This and many other highly mundane “secrets” have no reason to be wasting away in government archives. These secrets being kept from us are wasting large amounts of government funds that could be much better spent in other departments.

In our times of economic downfall, there are numerous ways that this money could be better spent in order to help our economy. Are you tired of the government wasting money and keeping secrets? I know I am.

We need to work together to petition our government and tell it to stop using our money to hide things from us. It is a disgrace and we shouldn’t stand for it.

TIMMY CHAFFIN

Jonesborough