Category: government transparency

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government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

We’re All Bond Fans Now

The latest James Bond film, Skyfall, is so well liked that there’s even Oscar buzz about it. But it’s not just moviegoers who feel like they’ve entered a new era.

In the new flick, M, played by Judi Dench, argues before a parliamentary board that, because “the enemy” can be just about anybody these days, now’s really the time for some good old-​fashioned espionage, James Bond-​style. You know, with casual murders committed by men given a “license to kill.”

But things have changed. The old Bond skirmished with Russkies while fighting rich criminals who dreamed of destroying or ruling the world. Today’s Bond fights an ex-​agent who wants to hurt the higher-​ups in the spy biz who had hurt him.

In reality, it’s the U.S. President — Felix Leiter’s boss — who has the license to kill, exercising it by overseeing multiple drone programs, the practice of rendition, and a developing program called a “disposition matrix,” which aims to target people who are up-​and-​comers in the America-​hating (and thus) terrorist game.

Many critics have noted that the recent Bond films starring the brilliant Daniel Craig have become more personal and less gadgety. Maybe that’s the way real-​life spying plays in Britain (I doubt it) but from the American perspective, the current reality of drone strikes overseas, unregulated-​by-​law rendition tribunals, and database management geared to determining terrorist psychology is positively science-fictional.

And I don’t mean that in a good way.

This is not a Brave New World or a 1984, I realize. But it still frightens.

Indeed, for people in the targeted regions it must be pure horror. America’s ruling classes have upped the game. And we can expect to reap a … skyfall.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency national politics & policies

The Latest Legislative Land Mine

The most prescient thing ever said about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, was articulated by then-​Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

The medical reform package is quite the hodgepodge. Actually reading the whole thing makes taking on Middlemarch, War and Peace, and In Search of Lost Time a course of light entertainment.

The latest revelation from its thousands of pages? A passage prohibiting doctors from asking their patients questions about guns in the home.

The Washington Post reports that many gun control groups are incensed at the power of the NRA to limit their ability to “collect information”:

Physician groups and public health advocates say the cumulative effect of these restrictions undercuts the ability of the White House and lawmakers to make the case for new laws, such as an assault-​weapons ban, in the face of opponents who argue that there’s no evidence such measures are effective. Advocates for regulating guns lament that reliable statistics are limited in part because physicians and health researchers who could track these patterns are being inhibited.

Considering the quality of previous doctor-​led sociological studies into gun usage — and really, this is not a medical problem but a complex, society-​wide issue far beyond the competence of medical training to comprehend — the prohibition might really best be described as a defense of scientific method.

But the big issue here is not the politics of “research.” It’s that a health care reform package passed nearly three years ago contains hot potatoes such as this, and we are only discovering them now.

Nancy, you were all too disastrously correct.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency

Lights, Cameras, Action

“It’s the president who is threatening to raise taxes on the middle class if he doesn’t stamp his feet and get his way,” Grover Norquist charged on NBC’s Meet the Press. “He should get into a room with C‑SPAN cameras there and negotiate. So instead of hearing rhetoric like this — because that was all show and no economics — let’s have it in front of C‑SPAN cameras. And if the Republicans are being reasonable, we’ll see that. If they’re not, we’ll see that. Got to have cameras in that room.”

Norquist has a great idea. Why allow our so-​called leaders do their stuff — their thing, their deliberation and negotiation or what-​have-​you — behind closed doors? Let’s have it in living color, out in the open, with the audio turned way up, for the American people to witness first-hand.

But, of course, the C‑SPAN idea isn’t really Grover Norquist’s — any more than it is his pledge not to raise taxes. The power of the mass of voters, who truly want to hold down taxes, entices candidates to sign the tax pledge and enforces their compliance.

After all, it was candidate Barack Obama who promised repeatedly during the 2008 campaign that if he were elected president “we’re going to do all these [healthcare] negotiations on C‑SPAN so that the American people will be able to watch.”

Then, President Obama tossed out that transparency pledge and turned off the public. Just like some want Republican congressman to toss aside their commitment not to raise taxes.

Keep your word. And let us see our government in action. How damning could it be?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency ideological culture insider corruption

The Big Turkey

On Wednesday, President Obama issued a pardon. To a turkey.

Every president since Harry Truman has been given a live bird for Thanksgiving by the National Turkey Federation. No, it apparently doesn’t violate any sort of gift ban, nor should it — sure seems harmless enough to me on that score.

Over the years, several presidents declined to feast on the birds they were given. Then, in more recent times, presidents have made a big media production out of officially pardoning the turkeys (who then reportedly live out their days on George Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon).

So, what’s the problem?

For a photo-​op, Mr. Obama — just like Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton before him — saves the gift bird’s life, only to have another unpublicized turkey killed and then devoured behind closed doors.

Neither a vegan or a vegetarian, I certainly don’t begrudge him for eating the meat. I did likewise. What offends is the spectacle of someone seeking to pardon his turkey and eat it, too.

You can’t dismiss this as “mere symbolism,” for the fake pardon symbolizes more than Washington insiders can comprehend. In our nation’s capital, politicians

  • argue for fiscal responsibility one minute and then plunge us further into debt the next,
  • demand sacrifices from the people while living high on the hog, and
  • decry the influence of special interests at press conferences and then deposit their checks at the bank.

One famous turkey lives, thanks to the powerful public kindness of our potentate; another, unknown (no doubt “middle-​class”) bird dies for the benefit of that same boss.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency

Dum, Dum Datum

President Obama immediately ballyhooed the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ September unemployment rate of 7.8 percent as the logical outcome of the good work he has done.

But the BLS was promoting B.S. … according to many conservatives. 

NPR’s talking heads immediately pooh-​poohed the idea that there was a conspiracy going on at the BLS. “That’s not how Washington works,” they informed us. And as if of one voice, Washington insiders rallied to the BLS.

Former GE CEO Jack Welch, one of the doubters, defended his skepticism in the Wall St. Journal. BLS data are decidedly not “handled like the gold in Fort Knox, with gun-​carrying guards watching their every move, and highly trained, white-​gloved super-​agents counting and recounting hourly.” His basic take on the allegedly sacrosanct numbers? “Get real.” Welch provided more than a little reason to suspect “the possibility of subjectivity creeping into the process.” And he noted that skepticism is not just a right-​wing trait:

I’m not the first person to question government numbers, and hopefully I won’t be the last. Take, for example, one of my chief critics in this go-​round, Austan Goolsbee, former chairman of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers. Back in 2003, Mr. Goolsbee himself, commenting on a Bush-​era unemployment figure, wrote in a New York Times op-​ed: “the government has cooked the books.”

Truth is, unemployment figures are not tallies of surefire data, but statistical extrapolations based on surveys. They are more like Gallup Poll results — but perhaps less reliable.

And Welch is right to conclude that “the coming election is too important to be decided on a number,” especially that kind of number.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies

Great & Powerful Teleprompter

There’s a man behind a curtain somewhere doing whatever one does to a teleprompter.

Load? Arm? Detonate?

Last week, in Tampa, a Republican teleprompter put words into the mouth of Speaker of the House John Boehner, then chairing the convention, specifically these words: “In the opinion of the chair, the ‘ayes’ have it and the resolution is adopted.”

The resolution concerned whether a number of Ron Paul delegates would be seated. The vote was awfully close. How the actual voice vote turned out was supposed to be for Boehner to judge, not an anonymous guy (or gal) behind the curtain, ghost-​writing democracy.

Yesterday, while the Democrats gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina, were busy tucking God and Jerusalem back into their platform, Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa held the gavel. But not control of his own teleprompter.

The resolution restoring those elements to the party’s platform, coming after the platform committee had already completed its work, required a two-​thirds vote. When the votes were heard …  well, Mayor Villaraigosa wasn’t sure. He had the convention vote again. And then again.

Finally, perhaps after seeing the teleprompter, which read, “In the opinion of the chair, two-​thirds having voted in the affirmative …” he decided, to loud booing, that the resolution had received two-thirds.

As the country prepares (cringes) for the fall campaign, we’ll hear plenty from President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney and about both men. But who cares? The real power in our system of governance, as these conventions make clear, are the guys running the teleprompters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.