Freedom of Information, Ha Ha

One of the bedrock conceits of the Free Market crowd is that information about the products on offer must be available and accurate: no knowledge, no freedom to choose.  Of course everywhere, everyone (almost), in a modern market system tries to hide, falsify or fabricate the information needed to make decisions to purchase  or not to purchase, to run towards or run from.  Case in point is North Dakota where regulators “aren’t required to make information about oil spills public. Companies must notify the state of all spills, but the state is under no obligation to then notify the public of the spills.”

A few Dems are trying to change that:

Democrats in North Dakota are seeking legislation that would make it mandatory for the state to report all oil and other hazardous spills and leaks to the public, regardless of their size.

The announcement of the legislation comes less than a week after an AP investigation discovered nearly 300 oil spills and 750 “oil field incidents” had gone unreported to the public since January 2012. It also comes just a few weeks after a 20,000-barrel pipeline spill in a North Dakota field — a spill that was discovered by a farmer, not the pipeline company or government regulators. It took North Dakota officials nearly two weeks to announce the spill’s existence to the public.