Category: Accountability

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Accountability ideological culture Tenth Amendment federalism

Return to Federalism

As we make sense of this week’s sea change — of the Great Shellacking Democrats took on Tuesday — some caution is in order.

In 2006, voters did not choose the Democrats because of what they were or what they promised, but because of what they weren’t: corrupt, clueless Republicans. Now, Republicans should remember that they were mainly chosen because they aren’t Democrats: that is, hopelessly narrow-minded, self-righteous, and corrupt.

So, what should Republicans do?

Maybe it’s not to start out of the gate by repealing Obamacare, which its namesake would simply veto.

In Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, DC, voters approved the legalization of recreational marijuana use. In California, with Proposition 47, Golden State voters ushered in a new regime, downgrading many, many drug violations and former felony crimes to misdemeanor status.

This is the people of the states leading.

They are rejecting the “get tough” approach both parties have supported for decades, an approach that has had the dubious result of being most popular with public prison workers’ unions and the private prison lobby

Opposing drug use may be socially “conservative.” Politically speaking, however, granting government nearly unlimited police powers, and without regard to objective results, is not.

If the Republicans want to lead in Washington, they should follow the people in these bellwether elections. Back them up. End the Drug War and, with it, the Prison-Industrial Complex. Return criminal justice back to the states, where the Constitution originally put it. And where modifications can be more easily made.

Return to federalism. Return to reason.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies

A Congressman’s Job

A few weeks ago, The Washingtonian published a best of/worst of list about Congress. It stands out amongst other “tops” lists because the voting is done by White House staffers. This is what the employees think about their prima donnas. I mean bosses.

The most interesting winner appeared near the end, “Lobbyists’ Worst Enemy.”

The “Lobbyists’ Best Friend” category was topped by John Boehner and Eric Cantor. The “Worst Enemy”— which has to be the highest badge of honor on this list — is Justin Amash.

And if you are wondering why lobbyists might not take a shine to this Republican Representative from Michigan’s Third Congressional District, consider the calumnies his detractors directed against him.

Mike Rogers, also a Michigan House Republican, accused Amash of being “Al Qaeda’s best friend in the Congress” because of Amash’s well-known anti-NSA stance. Devin Nunes, from California’s Republican delegation, insisted that Amash “votes more with the Democrats than with the Republicans,” was not serious, and just liked siding with the GOP’s opponents.

A debunking in Rare (“America’s News Feed”), published in June, beat down all these charges. Not only has Amash voted with his party over 80 percent of the time, he’s voted against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi more than any other Representative.

But there’s something more impressive about Amash, as Rare points out. He has voted every chance he got. He has the longest tardy-free voting record in Congress. And, furthermore, Amash explains, via social media, every vote he makes.

That is, he does his job.

No wonder lobbyists don’t like him.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability

Downtime on Our Dime

What happens if you misbehave at work? Are you given a paid vacation?

No? Oh, you poor thing. You don’t work for the federal government.

The General Accounting Office — the extremely busy outfit tasked to investigate all the myriad rip-offs perpetrated against taxpayers  — has issued a new report. Seems federal workers accused of and often punished for bad behavior at work — from charging personal items on government credit cards to downloading porn — are regularly kept on paid leave for months and even years, while charges against them are investigated.

We’re talking somewhere upwards of 57,000 employees, costing $775 million over a three-year period for not showing up, for not working.

That’s only counting straight salary. These non-working workers also accrue sick leave and vacation time, as well as pad their pensions and move up the pay ladder.

Government rules already say that paid leave is only for “rare circumstances.”

The new meaning of “rare” appears to be “common.”

As The Washington Post explains, “Federal employees are generally entitled to more due process than their counterparts at private companies, which explains why the leave is paid.”

But it doesn’t explain why federal workers should be so “entitled.” We’re all equal, but some are more equal than others?

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is working with Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) on a bill to narrowly define the rules on paid leave, limiting it to no more than a few days.

Don’t hold your breath, though. In our nation’s capital, reform has been on unpaid leave for quite some time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

“Deceptive” Charge “Misleading”

Many politicians serve as powerful arguments for term limits. Arkansas State Senator Jon Woods rivals the best.

Sen. Woods (R-Springdale) and State Rep. Warwick Sabin (D-Little Rock) authored a 22-page, 7,000-word constitutional amendment on this November’s ballot. They say Issue 3 is about ethics and transparency.

You decide.

Woods and Sabin threw together various ethics provisions and then stuck in a gutting of term limits. Their ballot title reads it is “establishing term limits” — without bothering to inform voters that it doubles how long legislators can stay in the Senate and more than doubles the House limit — to a whopping 16 years!

This week, Arkansas Term Limits debuted TV ads alerting the public to the scam, charging that legislators have “pursued a campaign of silence . . . letting the deceptive ballot title do their work,” so that “when Arkansas voters go to the polls there will be no mention of the doubling of term[s].”

The unrepentant Sen. Woods says that it is “misleading” to call his Issue 3 deceptive. Meanwhile, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports that, after asking if Woods’s ballot language wasn’t indeed deceptive: “Woods said he doesn’t know.”

The senator’s response to the Arkansas GOP Convention’s nearly unanimous resolution against Issue 3? “You just have a couple of nuts that got together on a Saturday that were out of touch with Arkansans and passed a silly resolution that in no way reflects the point of view of all Republicans in Arkansas.”

Perhaps Democratic politicians are smarter. Democratic co-author Sabin is nowhere to be found in news coverage of Issue 3, likely hiding under his bed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies

Baghdad Boots

Are we being misinformed about the war now being waged against ISIS in Iraq and Syria?

Or should I call it a “counter-terrorism operation”?

Oh, I know there is an election in a few weeks, so we don’t want to bother the pretty little heads of our national representatives in Congress. They’re far too busy running for re-election.

And, though the president isn’t on the ballot, as he points out, his unpopular policies certainly are. Mr. Obama’s concern for his own political legacy must of course come before the ordinary lives of our sons and daughters that he has placed in harm’s way.

Get realpolitik.

Don’t expect a congressional debate over the U.S. commitment now. And give the Prez a break; he’s ordering enough airstrikes to supposedly keep a lid on things until after the election.

Chill out. Our commander-in-chief has repeatedly assured us there are no boots on the ground. Certainly, the city-within-a-city U.S. Embassy in Baghdad isn’t going to be overrun or anything like that.

Except, well, we do have boots on the ground. Or just above it, flying attack helicopters on combat missions . . . because ISIS soldiers have gotten within 15 miles of the Baghdad airport.

“The tool that was immediately available was the Apache,” explains Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “You’re not going to wait until they’re climbing over the wall. Had [ISIS forces] overrun the Iraqi unit, it was a straight shot to the Baghdad airport.”

Boots guard that airport. But who’s guarding truth, justice and the American way?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets government transparency

The Dark Guardian of Opacity

Sen. Harry Reid has his reasons that reason does not know.

Well, Nick Gillespie of ReasonTV (and .com) doesn’t know them. But he has his suspicions.

While the House has passed the Federal Reserve Financial Transparency Act, aiming to audit the Fed, Senate Majority Leader Reid balks at bringing the proposal up to a vote in Congress’s upper chamber. (Gillespie says it won’t happen, not while Reid has his say.)

In the House, both parties supported the audit — a majority of Democrats, and all Republicans save one lone holdout giving a Nay vote. But Reid, whose commitment to corporatism and opacity is well known, presumably fears the upwelling of good old republican values in the Old Man’s Club that is the U.S. Senate — Reid’s romper room for so many decades.

Egads, he must be thinking, even Senators Elizabeth Warren and Rand Paul agree on the need for some sunlight into the dark corridors of America’s bank cartel.

And they don’t agree about much of anything!

Gillespie spells out the whys of transparency. He also explains the basic context: “The central bank is explicitly tasked with the fundamentally incompatible duties of conducting stable monetary policy, promoting full employment, acting as a lender of last resort, and regulating the banks it works with. Good luck with all that.”

Who needs luck when you have power? Some do benefit from the current Old Boys’ system. They’re just not the general citizenry. Or republican governance.

A free society would have a very different banking and monetary system. Adding transparency might begin the process toward such a system.

Next step? Boot Harry Reid out of his cushy position of power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.