Category: Accountability

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Accountability ideological culture national politics & policies Popular

The Obstruction

building a divide, wall, immigration, ideology, Trump, Pelosi

The federal government “shutdown” — now on reprieve — has been and continues to be a rather strange charade. Various political players make motions towards one another, and we, the people, are supposed to guess the real meaning. 

Which is usually conceived as

  1. All about President Trump’s “Wall”;
  2. All about the Pelosi-​Schumer commitment to never letting Trump get away with his Evil Agenda; or
  3. The great huge, honking divide in America that grows every day.

I suspect it is about all these things and more — which is easy to say, since these three issues are intimately related.

 And as if playing a subtle joke on us all, the standoff that appears as obstructionism is about a proposed obstruction at the southern border: literally a “Mexican standoff.”

Meanwhile, a different security measure has received attention.

Americans have, rather spontaneously, been taking canned and packaged foods, and even fresh produce, to unpaid but “forced-​to-​work” TSA agents. A heartwarming story. Sure. But the Transportation Security Agency, cobbled together in the wake of the 9/​11 attacks, is spectacularly ineffective, an example of “security theater.” TSA agents repeatedly fail internal tests.

Congress could, of course, take this opportunity to disband this airport security worker agency. If managed by the airlines or any entity but the federal government, TSA wouldn’t have suffered through the shutdown. 

Tragically, Congress long ago ceased being functional, responsible, or even the eensiest, teensiest bit respectable. And a divided public stands little chance of forcing a change. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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building a divide, wall, immigration, ideology, Trump, Pelosi

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Accountability video

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of … Abortion?

Andrew Klavan begins his show with satire, but then segues into a serious discussion of abortion. Oh, and Google, evil Google:

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Accountability term limits

None Dare Call It Careerism

Congress, Emergency, Presidential,

Let’s build a wall, I said last week, between the Office of the President and all these emergency powers our Congress has recklessly given away to the chief executive.

After admittedly “scrambling to figure out” the emergency powers possessed by POTUS, the Washington Post’s editorial board lamented its discovery “that Congress has delegated a surprising amount of emergency or quasi-​emergency power to the executive branch over the years, possibly too much.”

Possibly? Well … it is the Post.

Yet, the paper acknowledges, “The implications for constitutional government are potentially serious.”

The federal government currently operates under “31 presidentially declared national emergencies,” informs Post columnist Charles Lane. “[I]f Trump evades Congress’s refusal to fund a border wall by declaring a national emergency at the border … it would not be the first time a president took advantage of the inherent elasticity of the term.”

Congress last legislated on emergency presidential powers in 1976, a mere two years after Richard Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign in disgrace. Yet, even then, the law left presidential authority largely unchecked, and the term “emergency” completely undefined.

Why has Congress simply handed away so much power, writing laws with so little accountability? Has Congress been saddled with inexperienced rookies? No. There are no term limits. This is the product of very experienced career politicians.

Read between the lines. 

“Only Congress can reclaim the emergency powers it has granted the president,” Lane writes, adding … “assuming, of course, that lawmakers want the responsibility back, too.”

They don’t. They prefer their cushy careers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Congress, Emergency, Presidential,

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Accountability government transparency

Put the Public in Public Policy

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, secrecy, transparency, negotiations

“Negotiations are impossible without trust,” wrote Leon Panetta in a Washington Post op-​ed.

What with all his experience, Mr. Panetta has some reason to be trusted on his chosen subject, government shutdowns. The California Democrat spent 16 years in the Congress before joining the Clinton Administration as Director of the Office of Management and Budget and later serving as White House Chief of Staff. He was Obama’s first CIA Director and then Secretary of Defense.

But not every one of the sage’s pronouncements passes muster. 

“Never,” he advised, “negotiate in public.” 

He is of course referring to the hilarious chat President Trump had with two Democratic leaders . .  . and a bland, bored, and blank Vice President Pence.

“The talks to avert a shutdown got off to a terrible start,” Panetta argues, “when the president, during an Oval Office meeting with likely incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D‑N.Y.), began arguing his position in front of White House reporters.… In all the negotiations on the budget that I took part in as both House Budget Committee chairman and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, not one took place in front of the media. Public shouting matches usually guarantee failure.”

The implication? That these previous negotiations were “successful.”

To those with careers ensconced in Washington power, they worked out just splendidly, I’m sure. But the aftermath of these private, secretive agreements on the rest of us? It can be quantified: $21 trillion.

In federal debt. 

We do not need more of that “success.”

Let’s put the public back in public policy decisions.  “It’s called transparency,” President Trump said. 

Yes. 

More of that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, secrecy, transparency, negotiations

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Accountability general freedom meme moral hazard national politics & policies

Madison on Perpetual War

James Madison, quote, freedom, war, warfare

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

—James Madison, Political Observations, Apr. 20, 1795 in: Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. 4, p. 491 (1865)

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Accountability national politics & policies term limits

Mrs. Term Limits?

Nancy Pelosi, term limits

Do politicians oppose term limits on principle?

For the answer to be yes, we would first have to explain to them what principles are.

Sure, politicians adamantly oppose term limits that cut against their self-​interest, i.e. apply to them. But they are often for term limits … when the limitation applies to others.

The exception to this rule? When limiting one’s own terms — or pledging to do so in the future — is absolutely essential in order to win an election.

Take the case of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who wishes to be elected Speaker in January by the new Democratic House majority.

Mrs. Pelosi is an unlikely candidate … for Mrs. Term Limits. And yet, she has agreed to support a new rule imposing term limits on leadership positions — even her own speakership.

What gives?

A number of newly elected congresspeople won their seats on a promise to change Washington. And to gain votes, they had pledged not to support the exceedingly unpopular, long-​serving Swamp Creature for speaker.

Or should that be Mrs. Swamp Creature?

Now with Democrats comprising a narrow 17-​seat majority in the new Congress, these young upstarts wield enough votes to deny Pelosi the position she covets.

So, against the objections of her longtime lieutenants, Pelosi has promised these “rebels” that she will not merely bring before her caucus a new rule imposing limits of three terms for leadership positions, including her own, but she also insists that even if that rule fails to win the support of the Democratic caucus, she will personally, voluntarily, abide by those limits.

Meet the Missus. Don’t ask about her previous status.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Nancy Pelosi, term limits

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

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