Category: government transparency

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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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government transparency national politics & policies

Full Frontal Negotiations

Pence, Vice President, sleeping, transparency, negotiations

Last week’s political circus reached a new level of Big Top.

Or three rings, as President Donald Trump hosted two Democratic leaders in the White House, debating border security and government shutdown — in public. House Minority Leader, soon-​to-​be Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D‑N.Y.) were somewhat uncomfortable with Donald Trump’s decision to hash out their differences in front of the cameras and the American people.

It was quite the comedy. Yet Vice President Mike Pence all but snored. While many pundits once again expressed their frustrations with a lack of solemn decorum from Trump, Pence provided not solemnity but somnolence.

The idea of government negotiations being done out in the open isn’t new. Transparency is good, if rarely practiced. But it did not take long for Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer to express alarm at this foray into Reality TV. 

“We’re here to have a conversation the careful way,” Pelosi informed the president, “so I don’t think we should have a debate in front of the press on this.”

Once upon a time, Dems promised transparency. Barack Obama campaigned on negotiating health care reform on C‑SPAN — only to renege on that pledge when the negotiations got going.

In olden days, Democrat President Grover Cleveland practiced political transparency when he was governor of New York (1883 – 1885), pointedly leaving the door to his office open whenever discussing any subject whatsoever with anyone.*

And let’s tip the hat to Mike Pence. Ridiculed when it came out that he would not meet in private with any woman not his wife, upon the arrival of #MeToo and the Kavanaugh hearings, Pence appeared genius.

If a sleepy one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Cleveland was not so transparent when, during a crisis in his second presidency, he secretly had his jaw operated upon in a boat in international waters.

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government transparency too much government

Fill Up the Swamp Some More

drain, swamp, Trump, Donald Trump, Washington DC

Donald Trump’s “drain the Swamp” promise was good rhetoric, great politics — because nearly everybody knows that the federal government just cannot restrain, constrain, or re-​train itself.

So it would have to take an outside force.

Along comes said Outside Force — the current president — yet the Swamp remains.

Unfortunately, too few of the president’s most ardent supporters see the deepest part of the Swamp.

That is, the Department of Defense.

“Less than a week after calling the Pentagon’s $716 billion budget ‘crazy’ and indicating that he wanted to trim it, President Donald Trump is reportedly proposing to push America’s military spending to greater heights,” writes Eric Boehm at Reason. “Trump told Mattis to submit a $750 billion budget request for next year — well in excess of the $733 billion level that had been previously planned.”

And he does this despite the fact that just recently this military establishment failed to give a competent accounting of its spending.

Sadly, poor accounting is rigged into the Department of Defense, as demonstrated in an important exposé last month.

“For decades, the DoD’s leaders and accountants have been perpetrating a gigantic, unconstitutional accounting fraud,” The Nation explains, “deliberately cooking the books to mislead the Congress and drive the DoD’s budgets ever higher, regardless of military necessity.”

Even the imperiled Social Security juggernaut is not run as badly as the Pentagon. We at least know where its funds go and have gone.*

It may be that a real leader — with substantive ideas, reliable information, and a sense of the enormity of governmental carelessness — will inspire Americans and challenge the Deep Swamp, er, State, before catastrophe.

Unfortunately, Trump is looking less and less like that drainer.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* One recipient of Social Security “contributions” has been, in fact, the Pentagon, since budget deficits have been at least partially covered by congressional borrowing from Social Security’s “surpluses.”

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Photo credit: Puck, 1909

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ballot access government transparency Popular

The Rank Reality of Math

Maine, Ranked Choice Voting, black box, elections, democracy

U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R‑Maine) doesn’t like Ranked Choice Voting.

Last week, I suggested that’s because he lost his re-​election to Congress in his state’s first use of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Perhaps I spoke too quickly? Congressman Poliquin argues that RCV is a “black-​box voting system.”

“We heard from countless Maine voters who were confused and even frightened their votes did not count due to computer-​engineered rank voting,” read a campaign statement.

Who wants frightened voters?

The “voting system utilized by the Secretary of State is secret,” Poliquin’s campaign spokesman further complained. “No one is able to review the software or computer algorithm used by a computer to determine elections. This artificial intelligence is not transparent.”

Computer-​engineered elections? Artificial intelligence? Oh, my!

“I think it’s time that we have real ballots, counted by real people,” the congressman told reporters. “… instead of this black box that computes who wins and who loses.”

By all means, yes.

Nathan Tefft is a professor at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and claims to be “a real person.” With a PhD in economics. He got all the election data and replicated the ranked ‑choice process used by the Maine Secretary of State in conducting the count, confirming the state’s results.

“The Maine secretary of state’s office has published all the election results on its website — every ballot, every ranking in every town,” the Bangor Daily News informed. “It’s all there in massive data files that can be inspected and downloaded.”

Wait a second … what about the black-​box, the secrecy, the dreaded use of AI?

All a fable.

“Yeah,” Dr. Tefft noted, “it’s just math.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies

Last Week’s Least Credible Answer

Diane Feinstein, Kavenaugh, Supreme Court

So, who was lying, last week, at America’s big show trial — er, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing?

Professor Christine Blasey Ford or Judge Brett Kavanaugh?

Many Americans took sides. I cannot. Both said believable as well as scarcely believable things, but I’m with that minority who admits not to know what to believe.

Except for one thing: I am pretty sure I know who told the biggest whopper.

Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Democratic senators, especially Kamala Harris (D‑Calif.), repeatedly pressured Kavanaugh to himself demand an FBI investigation to clear his name. It all seemed Orwellian: to make the accused insist on an investigation into allegations he had denied. It was also odd, considering, as Kavanaugh reminded his inquisitors, that he had repeatedly accepted any investigation the committee desired.

They just wanted him to demand it.

All of which is nuts, since the Committee possesses subpeona power, and can do an investigation itself.

But the weirdest aspect? The FBI had already checked Kavanaugh’s background, had performed an official investigation. But since Senator Feinstein had not tipped the agency off to Professor Ford’s confidential accusation — had effectively sat on the letter — the FBI hadn’t covered that precise avenue of inquiry.

And then, after the hearings were nearly over … the leak. And the bouhaha.

When asked whether she leaked Ford’s epistle, Feinstein said No. When asked if her staff did, she said she … hadn’t asked them.

Oh, come on.

Not as believable as either Ford or Kavanaugh.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
education and schooling government transparency national politics & policies Popular Second Amendment rights

A Faulty Gun Report

While statistics are generally unreliable, data about gun crimes often qualify as “anti-​data.”

“This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015 – 2016 school year, ‘nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-​related shooting,’” National Public Radio told us yesterday. Like previous stats we’ve seen cited on social media, that seems unbelievably high. 

And yes, it is — “far higher than most other estimates,” reporter Anya Kamenetz noted. “NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-​thirds of these reported incidents never happened.”

Were they fibbing? Well, never underestimate the power of incompetence. 

Even that’s harsh: remember that reporting requirements are a burden. And filing bureaucratically-​designed forms with the Education Department may be no easier than filing tax returns with the IRS. One of the biggest errors in one school district report resulted from a simple data entry error.

That is not a sophisticated statistical problem, but a simple typo.

Not that there aren’t some difficulties of a not-​so-​easy-​to-​understand nature in the story. For one, the degree to which the report was off is said to lie within “the margin of error.”

So, how big was the error, exactly? What’s the number? Well, of the 240 supposed “shootings,” NPR claimed to be “able to confirm just 11 reported incidents.”

Yet the Education Department bureaucrats will only affix an erratum note to their ridiculous report. 

Nor will it be withdrawn or replaced, as it should be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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