We've been spending a lot of time talking about just how secretive the USTR (led by its boss Ron Kirk) has been concerning the TPP negotiations. However, what may be even worse isn't just Ron Kirk's stonewalling, it's the fact that he either does not know what transparency means, or is playing dumb when confronted on the issue. Last week, we noted that his response to a letter from legal scholars requesting more transparency insulted the intelligence of those scholars, when he said he was "insulted" himself by the claim that the USTR was not transparent in the TPP negotiations. As evidence of his supposed transparency, he noted: "USTR has conducted in excess of 400 consultations with Congressional and private stakeholders on the TPP, including inviting stakeholders to all of the twelve negotiating rounds."

We already noted that he was playing word games here and being disingenuous, but it's even worse than that. As Sherwyn Siy properly points out, what Kirk is pointing out isn't transparency. All he's talking about is hearing various opinions - not sharing what the USTR is actually doing. As Siy points out transparency is about information flow in the other direction:

This is a key point that needs to be made about transparency - it's not about whether or not the government has the relevant opinions of the public. Transparency is about the flow of information the other way - information about the workings of government being visible to the people it is supposed to represent. That is precisely what is lacking in this process. This should be an obvious point, but it's one that Kirk's response either fundamentally misunderstands or deliberately sidesteps. So long as no actual proposed text comes to light (you know, the way draft laws and international treaties are published), the process remains opaque, and no amount of input from whatever stakeholders into the TPP process makes up for a lack of real information flowing the other way.

Until Ron Kirk is willing to address that point, his disingenuous and insulting claims about how many meetings he's holding are meaningless fluff from someone who is avoiding his official duty as a representative of the American public.