Category: Accountability

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Accountability crime and punishment

But for a Video

I’ve argued that police be required to wear cameras on the job — for the sake of both the wrongly used and the wrongly accused.

But ensuring that video is recorded and then, if necessary, used in tandem with other relevant evidence to secure justice doesn’t happen automatically. It requires a culture dedicated to upholding ethical standards of professional conduct.

This culture seems in short supply in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

There, explains the Washington Post, “it is now clear that the police, without provocation, can beat an unarmed young student senseless — with impunity. They can blatantly lie about it — with impunity. They can stonewall and cover it up for months — with impunity. They can express no remorse and offer no apology — with impunity.”

Beverly Woodward, the circuit court judge in the case the Post outlines, should have recused herself because of a conflict of interest. She did not. Then, without explanation, she tossed the case’s one modest conviction — which had been obtained only with great difficulty. The matter would not have stretched even that far had a video of the incident not eventually surfaced, exposing the lies of the officers who pummeled the innocent student.

Suspicious circumstances in the case abound. Radley Balko gives the laundry list.

When corruption is this pervasive in a locale, state or federal government must intervene to reform and prosecute. It should be a lot easier at all levels to prosecute and punish those public officials who commit clear wrongdoing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency

Candid Cameras for Cops

Should policemen be required to wear cameras?

Some already do. The rationale for the proposal is this: when police wear cameras that — with a few carefully defined exceptions — must be on whenever officers are on the job, they do their jobs better.

With respect to the furor in Ferguson, Missouri, a big question is what exactly happened there the day a cop shot and killed Michael Brown.

Officer Darren Wilson claims self-​defense; he and eyewitnesses disagree about details.

It would have been helpful to have video of what happened. (We do have video of an immediately preceding incident: of Brown, a large man, robbing cigars from a local store and shoving the protesting store owner, a much smaller man.)

Or consider another case I’ve discussed, that of Eric Garner, the New York City cigarette seller killed by an officer’s chokehold despite Garner’s repeated insistence that he couldn’t breathe. That death was recorded on a bystander’s cell phone. What if it hadn’t been? The shock has spurred renewed calls to begin outfitting NYPD with cameras.

But there’s no reason to limit pilot programs to the Big Apple.

Some police work, like meetings with confidential informants, cannot be recorded without making the work impossible. But cops who are on the beat, entering a home, stopping motorists and the like should be recorded while doing these things. With appropriate safeguards against “malfunction,” the cameras could both prevent unnecessary violence and support officers who are in fact justified in using deadly force.

Until the advent of universal peace and harmony, let’s give the cameras a try.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly insider corruption national politics & policies

Legal, Shmegal

Lots of unanswered questions about the prisoner swap of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

Will negotiating this swap cause more Americans to be taken prisoner?

Did Sgt. Bergdahl desert his unit five years ago? Was he responsible for the deaths of other soldiers who had to search for him in dangerous terrain?

“[Bergdahl] served with honor and distinction,” National Security Advisor Susan Rice told the media.

How dangerous are the five released prisoners? Can we be confident they won’t return to the battlefield?

Only one question has been clearly answered: the Administration broke the law.

By law, the president must notify Congress 30 days before the release of anyone held at Gitmo. Obama didn’t do so.

“Oh I think he clearly broke the law,” said CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin. “The law says 30 days notice. He didn’t give 30 days notice.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley concurred, telling CNN, “I don’t think there’s much debate that they’re in violation of the law.”

Gov. Bill Richardson (D‑NM), a former Ambassador to the United Nations, admitted as much, but called the law “impractical,” asking, “What is [Obama] supposed to do, give them 30 days?”

Well, yes.

The law, after all, was passed by a Republican House and Democratic Senate, and signed by Obama himself.

The president added a signing statement, at the time, expressing his view that Congress didn’t have the power to so limit him. Obama, like his predecessor, ignores the law, pretending that a president’s signing statement is an all-​powerful pocket veto.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies

Politic Precision

While running for the Senate, Elizabeth Warren informed Lawrence O’Donnell and his MSNBC audience that she didn’t understand how Congressfolk could keep playing the stock market while in office. She trotted out the notion of stock management via blind trusts.

She and O’Donnell understand that members of Congress have apparently irresistible opportunity to leverage for their private benefit insider information and their power to change policy. It’s no secret: many a pol enters Congress as moderately upper middle class only to leave lining his coffin in gold.

“I realize there are some wealthy individuals — I’m not one of them — but some wealthy individuals who have a lot of stock portfolios,” she insisted.

Her clumsy, folksy “lot of stock portfolios” statement let her pretend not to be rich, when, in truth, she’s a multimillionaire living in a $5 million house … but with stock only in one company.

Politic precision.

In the Washington Examiner recently, Byron York explained her nuanced answer to the question of whether she was “going to run for president”:

Warren’s response was, “I’m not running for president.”


That’s the oldest lawyerly evasion in the book. Warren, a former law professor, did not say, “I am not going to run for president.” Instead, she said she is “not running,” which could, in some sense, be true when she spoke the words but no longer true by, say, later this year.

How Clintonian. She pretends not to be wealthy while running on “inequality,” and then — while pitching a campaign book — pretends not to be running for the presidency at all.

And misses the obvious anti-​corruption planks: complete, minute-​by-​minute Web-​based congressional investment transparency. And term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability insider corruption national politics & policies too much government

Administrative Error

It was merely an “administrative error.”

Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System Director Sharon Helman was awarded an $8,500 bonus, even while her operation was under investigation for falsifying patient wait times and possibly causing the deaths of 40 veterans.

The bonus has now, after much publicity, been rescinded.Rep. Andy Harris

Sadly, the veterans who died in a fraudulently inefficient system cannot be brought back to life.

The hefty bonus money adds cruel insult on top of a much more serious injury — one we now know extends far beyond Phoenix. The investigation has spread to 26 facilities.

Major veterans organizations demand that Veterans Affairs Secretary Shinseki resign, or that the president (who once again discovered the crisis from media reports) replace him. That’d be a logical first step, signaling in deeds, not just words, that folks will be held accountable.

The personnel changes shouldn’t stop there. And those guilty of fraud should also face criminal charges.

Still, some gloss over this scandal. Montana Senator Jon Tester says Shinseki should stay and that the VA has done a “remarkable” and “a pretty darn good job.”

A Washington Post editorial played down the scandal, noting that “Delayed treatment has been an issue for decades.”

The Post is half-​right. The problem of this federal healthcare bureaucracy shortchanging vets is certainly not new.

But Rep. Andy Harris (R‑Md.) is 100 percent right. The Navy vet and doctor, with years of VA experience, wants to offer vets a choice between the VA or a voucher to pay for their private care.

It’s a solution aimed at protecting the vets who need care, rather than the VA bureaucracy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment insider corruption

The Colluders

Inadvertent? Un-​partisan? No direction from above?

Such were many of the early claims in response to the scandal over IRS’s targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups applying for tax-​exempt status.

The characterization was not vindicated when Lois Lerner — who ran the agency’s division dealing with exempt organizations until she resigned in semi-​disgrace —a sserted her Fifth Amendment rights rather than tell us what she knows. Sundry revelations since the scandal broke have further exploded the claim that lowly functionaries acted independently of high officials.

Now Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer for True the Vote, which combats voter fraud, is being vindicated in charges of collusion between Lerner and congressional Democrats.From THE KELLY FILE

“[T]he only difference between what happened in Watergate when Richard Nixon asked the IRS to go after his political enemies was when Richard Nixon asked, they refused,” according to Mitchell. “When these Democratic politicians said, ‘Go do something about these conservative groups because they’re challenging us.…’ the IRS [did] their bidding to try and silence these groups.”

Mitchell appeared on The Kelly File to discuss recently released IRS email implying coordination between Democrat Elijah Cummings of the House Oversight Committee (of “nothing to see here” fame) and the IRS. After applying for tax-​exempt status, True the Vote received sets of nearly identical questions — on widely separate occasions — from both the IRS and Cummings. That’s not only collusion, it’s guileful sharing of taxpayer information that is supposed to remain confidential.

Disturbing, but not surprising.

This is Common Sense. This is Paul Jacob.