Category: government transparency

Categories
government transparency

Change So Far

President Barack Obama promised change . . . including in the way Congress did things. As a senator, he sponsored a transparency bill that — if Congress could only have stuck with after passing — would have publicized all proposed pork.

And there’s the rub. Congress is constitutionally in charge of change, really. You might say “change” is Congress’s job: New things for government are supposed to come from Congress in the form of legislation. Not from the president.

So how has Congress helped? Well, as I’ve reported before, the new Congress has indicated pretty clearly what kind of change it wants: A stronger stranglehold on power and a narrow purview of options to be considered.

None of this represent the kind of change Americans want . . . or Obama promised.

The most interesting procedural proposals come, these days, from the minority Republicans.

Opposing the developing Democrat bailout package (that spends more trillions we don’t have), House Minority Leader John Boehner asked that no so such bill be “brought to the floor of the House unless there have been public hearings in the appropriate committees, the entire text has been available online for the American people to review for at least one week, and it includes no special-interest earmarks.”

Veteran Washington reporter Cokie Roberts called Boehner’s proposal “delightful.”

Delightful it is, and in Obama’s spirit, too, but it’s up to Congress to deliver.

So far, no good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency term limits

Committee Chair Limits, RIP?

Advocates of limited government have lamented the decline and fall of the 1994 Republican “revolution” since, well, not long after the so-called revolution began. But before it melted into a puddle of politics-as-usual, there were some serious efforts at reform.

One procedural reform that survived was term limits on committee chairmen. The Democratic leadership, after gaining a majority in 2006, decided to keep these limits.

But now, with their majority increased, a Democrat headed to the White House, and economic collapse as a distraction, they apparently feel the time has become as ripe as a freckled banana to peel away such impediments to their rule. The scuttling of committee chair limits is now part of their new rules package.

The package also limits the ability of Republicans to force votes on bills that would be politically difficult for Democrats to vote on. Sheesh, I thought voting on stuff was the whole idea.

The minority Republicans have sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi, complaining, “This is not the kind of openness and transparency that President-elect Obama promised.”

But they shouldn’t stop there, even if the new rules are implemented over their protest. In politics, it often pays to keep fighting.

Term limits remain very popular with the many of the same voters who also like the openness and accountability the new president keeps talking about.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency

The Wizard of Fraudz

Every time the economy takes a nose-dive, we roust up a few frauds and a bevy of humbugs.

This outing’s big villain is financier Bernard Madoff. For decades, Madoff made off with billions of other people’s money by pretending to invest it honestly.

Instead, he paid off early “investors” with the “investments” of later “investors.” To keep the Ponzi scheme going, Madoff had to keep widening the circle of the victims — which meant that he and his boosters had to keep whispering sweet cryptic nothings to awestruck big-pocketed individuals eager to join an exclusive club.

Some prospects declined. They now say they could get no real information about how he was investing. What? Oracular pronouncements weren’t enough for these skeptics?

Another Delphic entity that pretends to “invest” our money is the federal government. Its masterminds, too, claim to know everything about doing financial magic — but explain nothing. The Federal Reserve, for example, is refusing to comply with media requests for info on the “emergency loans” now being handed to ailing companies.

America’s government officials “know,” somehow, that they can “invest” in decrepit, floundering, washed-up firms and industries, using money siphoned from actually productive enterprise, while always paying off old government debt with new government debt, adding up to trillions . . . and somehow everything will turn out all right.

Pay no attention to those men behind the curtain!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency porkbarrel politics

Worst Waste of 2008

Do you miss the late Senator William Proxmire and his yearly “Golden Fleece Awards”?

Well, if wasteful spending is something you just can’t get enough of, then it’s high time to turn to Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. His report on the “Worst Waste of 2008” came out in early December, and it’s quite a read.
Just skimming the report can keep you fuming for weeks. Here it is, a new year, and I’m still fuming. Over what? Well . . .

  • $3.2 million on a blimp the Pentagon does not want.
  • $300,000 on specialty potatoes for frou-frou restaurants.
  • $2.4 million for a retractable shade canopy at a park in West Virginia.

But it’s not as if you cannot mount a defense for some of this. It’s not as if Congress isn’t thinking ahead. Congress has already allocated $24.6 million to the National Park Service for the institution’s centennial, and the centennial is eight years away!

Well, I didn’t say you could mount a good defense.

Americans already know that Congress lacks common sense. But what we need to learn, Coburn says, is that “[u]ntil Congress abandons the short-term parochialism that gives us LobsterCams and inflatable alligators, we will never get a handle on the major economic challenges facing this country.”

Coburn’s report is gold. It proves that, yes, we’ve been fleeced.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency

We’re Number Two

Congratulations to Champaign County, Illinois, for having the second-best website vis-à-vis being open about government doings. The recognition comes from Sunshine Review, a project of the Chicago-based Sam Adams Alliance.

But, before we break out the champagne, how come Champaign County is only number two in the rankings? Simple. The number-one site is published by DuPage County, a much larger county with presumably a lot more resources.

Champaign County no longer prints dead-tree copies of its budget. It posts the entire 500-page document online, along with labor contracts, meeting agendas, and even audio recordings of some meetings.

They’re doing a great job. And with 102 counties in the state, they must have had a lot of competition, right? Well . . . not exactly. According to Sunshine Review, 42 Illinois counties don’t even have a website. Of those that do, 27 don’t post meeting schedules or minutes. More than 40 don’t disclose budget and audit info.

Sunshine’s Isabel Santa says there’s “no excuse for a county not to have a website. One of the key things Champaign is doing is providing budgets and audits, and that’s what people want to know, where their tax dollars go.”

Once Sunshine assesses the transparency of Illinois government entities, it plans to tackle the rest of the states. Don’t wait, officials. Get those sites functional right now. Let the people know what you’re up to openly and
honestly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets government transparency

Keep Bailing?

Not too happy about the $700 billion financial bailout or billions more for the Big Three automakers? Don’t worry, that’s just peanuts!

The overall government “bailout” is quite a bit larger — as in ten times larger. The federal government — in other words, you and me (and our rulers) — is ready to provide more than $7.7 trillion to bailout whoever might need to be bailed out.

This includes $3.2 trillion already taken from the Federal Reserve by financial institutions. And it also includes money from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Federal Housing Administration mortgage guarantees.

The total amount of $7.7 trillion is equivalent to half our yearly gross national product. So, should families, when they get in financial trouble, borrow and spend half their yearly income? No, I think this is one of those “don’t try this at home” type deals.

When Congress approved the legislation for $700 billion to establish the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), there was talk of the need for transparency. But there has been precious little transparency for all this other money spewing forth from the Federal Reserve and various government entities.

Paul Kasriel, chief economist at Chicago-based Northern Trust Corp. says, “given that the Fed is taking on a huge amount of credit risk now, it would seem to me as a taxpayer there should be more transparency.”

Yes, how about a smidgen of transparency? Or better yet, an end to all these bailouts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency local leaders

Transparency versus Stupidity

The Sunshine Review newsletter from the Sam Adams Alliance reports an amazing instance of bureaucratic dimwittery.

It seems that the county clerk in the county I grew up in — Pulaski County, Arkansas — also likes the idea of sunshine or “transparency,” or some distorted notion of it. Apparently, he is the kind of person who thinks that if people have “nothing to hide,” it’s okay to go traipsing door to door ripping curtains off living-room windows.

According to the Sunshine Review, this troublemaker “posted [to the Web] tens of thousands of circuit court records containing Social Security numbers and other personal data including bank account numbers, birth dates and check images.”

An outraged resident of the county, Bill Phillips, used the Freedom of Information act to obtain email records from the county clerk’s office. Bill has posted them at his own website, PulaskiWatch.com. In one of the posted emails, county clerk employees are advised to make sure to synchronize their “docuclocks.” Okay. In another email, we learn that someone named Ben is late because of a doctor’s appointment.

PulaskiWatch.com announces that it will remove these silly emails from public view just as soon as the county clerk’s office removes all the personal information from the Internet that is placing so many persons at risk of identity theft.

Good luck, people of Pulaski County. When your public servants don’t see why the personal should be kept private and the public realm open, you’ve got an uphill battle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

The Day After

Not thrilled with the election results? Don’t worry. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not even the end of the battle.

Traipsing off to the polls every few years does not exhuast our duty as Americans. In addition to voting, we have to keep learning, stay informed about what’s happening in our government. We must also provide constant feedback, writing to newspapers and websites, or speaking out on your favorite talk radio program.

Citizenship means going further, too, joining with groups already fighting for accountability, or tackling problems ourselves by organizing friends, neighbors and co-workers. We can overcome abusive government policies and protect the right of citizens to speak out, to petition their government.

The national media may obsess with whatever is going on — or not going on — in Washington, but we don’t have to. We can look to the state and local arenas, where citizens are better able to reassert control over out-of-control government.

As early as next year this time voters can be deciding new statewide ballot measures in Ohio and Washington. Such measures crop up even sooner at the local level . . . but only if concerned citizens get together to do the hard work of petitioning reforms onto the ballot.

Politics can be more than a spectator sport. In fact, it must be much more than that if we aim to leave freedom and prosperity to our children and grandchildren, rather than bondage and debt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency

Too Darn Much Trouble?

I’m always a little concerned when a politician says it’s just too darn much trouble to play fair with voters and taxpayers.

New York State Governor David Paterson doesn’t want the public to have prior access to documents discussed in open public meetings. He just vetoed a bill sponsored by state Senator John A. DeFrancisco that would have required this common-sense level of transparency.

The governor says requiring agencies to make such documents available in a timely way would “impose a serious burden on agency staff.” It could, he explains, “seriously disrupt the work of boards and commissions” in the days before a scheduled meeting.

Oh, I’m sure effort would be involved. There’s always effort when you have to do things. But these would be documents to be discussed in open public meetings. The officials attending the meetings obviously have access to the documents they’re discussing. Why shouldn’t others troubling to participate also see them? How much time does it take to scan or make an extra photocopy?

Senator DeFrancisco points out that, too often, an open meeting will be held about a document to which the public has had little or no access before the meeting. This obviously makes it harder for the public “to ask informed questions and to fully understand the document being discussed.”

But I’m sure Governor Paterson is smart enough to understand this simple fact. Maybe he understands it all too well.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets government transparency national politics & policies too much government

A Question Worth Asking?

The presidential candidates talk about leadership and change. What’s the one question that combines both, but is not asked? Simple: What happens if it all comes crashing down?

After the worst stock market drop since 9/11, the question doesn’t seem so out of place. Our federal government’s debt is rising fast. Even if we balanced the budget tomorrow, the government would have a deep, multi-trillion dollar debt. Trillions and trillions, you might say.

So, Mr. Obama; so, Mr. McCain — what do you do when the Treasury can’t find anyone to invest in all the debt we have created, and must maintain? What do we do when the compounding of interest and increased deficits make monthly maintenance impossible?

Neither of you have even suggested a balanced budget early in your first term. So what do you do when our credit goes crunch?

Add to this the federal government’s obligations to the citizenry, in the form of Social Security retirements and Medicare and pensions and such, and what can you do?

How do you stave off — or, if not, survive — a worldwide depression?

The scenario is not fantastic. Just look at current figures and crunch the numbers.

So, what would Senators Obama and McCain say? I’d be curious what Bob Barr and Ralph Nader would say, too. Have they thought of the possibility?

This is one question that sure would make the upcoming debates interesting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.