Category: insider corruption

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Accountability general freedom government transparency ideological culture insider corruption moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Invulnerable Government

cfpb, Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, director, Richard Cordray, Mick Mulvaney, deep state, administrative state, bureaucracy

As of this week, there are two heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Two claimants to the throne, so to speak.

The bureau’s previous director, Richard Cordray, resigned last week, and as he left he appointed a deputy director, Leandra English. Ms. English sent out a nice Thanksgiving email, billing herself as “Acting Director.”

Meanwhile, in advance of Cordray’s exit, President Trump appointed Mick Mulvaney to fill the role. Mulvaney showed up at work yesterday and took possession of the director’s office. He ordered a hiring freeze . . . and brought donuts.

It gets juicier. English has filed suit against the president and his appointee, claiming to be, herself, the directorship’s rightful heir. She cites the enabling legislation, which allowed for deputization by the director. And she cites her commitment to the agency’s mission, of which Mulvaney and Trump have none.

Republicans generally regard the agency as having gone rogue.

And the squabble over the directorship sure seems to validate that charge.

The legality? Presumably, the legislation that established the agency — which deliberately insulated the CFPB from oversight by funding it from the Federal Reserve — does not void an established law, the Vacancies Act, which does allows the president to fill vacated posts.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has taken up English’s side in the dispute, because she believes in the agency’s mission.

Now, I get it: to make government as impregnable as a high mountain fortress is an idea that many folks flirt with, from time to time. But the results are always the same: government secure from democratic checks and constitutional balance.

Come on, Democrats! Give democracy a chance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment insider corruption media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Congress Bites Taxpayers

sexual harassment, Congress, House Page, Washington, DC, hypocrisy, corruption, taxes,

Is it even humanly possible to be sleazier and more disgusting than the Harvey Weinsteins of Hollywood?

Sadly, and clearly . . . yes. There is the U.S. Congress.

In 2011, after 175 years in operation, the House page program — whereby young people came to work and learn in the capitol — was shut down. Why? For Weinsteinian reasons, because pages were being sexually propositioned and harassed.*

Now, once again, Congress leads the way . . . downward . . . not only into a culture rife with sexual coercion, but also into one with few options for victims and plenty of protections for victimizers. Members of Congress have given more effort to keep complaints quiet and protect misbehavior than to stop misbehaving.

And there’s more . . .

“Between 1997 and 2014,” the Washington Post reports, “the U.S. Treasury has paid $15.2 million in 235 awards and settlements for Capitol Hill workplace violations, according to the congressional Office of Compliance.” That’s shelling out nearly $1 million a year, though the information doesn’t detail how many complaints were for sexual misconduct.

It is despicable when individuals or companies pay hush money to silence accusers, hiding the criminal sexual behavior of powerful men. But, for goodness sake, at least we don’t have to pay for it!

Conversely, Congress’s sexual abuse slush fund comes from you and me, taxpayers.  

Regarding the swirling allegations against Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) argued that Moore “does not meet the ethical and moral requirements of the United States Senate.”

Well, then, he will fit right in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The program ended several years after the Mark Foley scandal — and there were others. The official rationale? A tight budget (stop laughing) and technology, which purportedly made the work pages were doing unnecessary. But note that the Senate continues its use of pages.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

More-Equal-Ness

George Orwell, Kaya Henderson, Washington D.C., equal, Animal Farm, favors, corruption, crony, cronyism, politicians,

“All animals are equal,” wrote George Orwell, “but some animals are more equal than others.”

That was the regime’s final slogan in Orwell’s allegorical novella, Animal Farm . . . and it currently serves as the operating principle for local government.

Well, at least in Washington, D.C., our country’s pig trough.

Washington Post reported that the District of Columbia’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability spelled out the details of its official reprimand of Kaya Henderson, the former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools.

Henderson, the article explained, “violated the city’s Code of Conduct by granting permission for some people — including a White House official, an employee of the mayor’s office, a district principal and a former classmate — to choose the school they wanted their children to attend even though other D.C. families had to go through a competitive lottery system.”

Using one’s position of trust to hijack a public benefit and gift it to one’s cronies at the expense of everyone else is clearly corrupt. Henderson deserves more serious repercussions than a belated reprimand, especially since she has already moved on professionally. She now works as “a distinguished scholar in residence at Georgetown University,” researching “racial justice.”

Ms. Henderson offered weighty reasons for her cronyism. Regarding her special treatment for City Administrator Rashad Young, she offered that D.C. officials “do not necessarily get paid as much as we should.”

Young’s annual salary? $295,000 a year.

Did you also notice she said “we”? As chancellor, Henderson was paid a mere $284,000 a year.

Being “more equal” is nice. It’s especially nice to be friendly with those “more equal” folks, who can bestow a little more-equal-ness on you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency insider corruption media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Stranger Counsels

special prosecutor, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Russia, corruption, Trump, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates

The office of special counsel, like that of the special prosecutor in days (and administrations) of yore, is a strange one. Not mentioned in the Constitution, it is institutionally slippery. An executive branch position designed to investigate the executive branch — there is no way it cannot be . . . “problematic.”

Just in time for Halloween, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, tasked with looking into the Russian connections of the Trump administration — particularly electoral mischief* — landed his first fish this week, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. The two have been charged with, and pled innocent to, twelve criminal counts related to their activities in Ukraine before their association with Trump. There are tax dodging charges, too, including something called “conspiracy to commit money laundering.”

And while the whole bizarre Russia story has now launched into a feeding frenzy, it appears that it just became . . . mundane. “Legal experts said the court filings indicate Mueller is running a serious, deliberative, and far-sighted inquiry,” says The Atlantic.

Meanwhile, the weird relations between the Clintons and Russia loom on the horizon, rather like that smoky monster from the Upside Down on Stranger Things 2.

But hey, none of this is shocking. Troll through the modern state and you will find corruption. You can land all sorts of fish.

Including suckers.

Could we be those suckers?

Since this sort of thing can always be found — and the Manafort skullduggery seems somewhat tangential to Russian electoral influence, despite the man having served a stint as Trump’s campaign manager — is this just a way to get us to look the other direction from anything really meaningful?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*And let’s not pretend this is new. Foreign influence was an issue in the campaign of 1800.

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Accountability incumbents insider corruption local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility term limits

Our Experience with Experience

exit, term limits, experience, Congress, oversight, Senators Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Bob Corker

It seems exceedingly plausible that the longer one serves as a legislator, the better legislator one would become.

Yet voters back home have noticed something: the longer in office, the less representative their so-called representative tends to become.

No wonder that in those states where Americans have been permitted to vote on congressional terms limits, that vote has been a resounding, “Let’s limit ’em!”

In a Washington Post op-ed, Greg Weiner, associate professor of political science at Assumption College, praised Senators Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) as “voices for congressional power” and “defenders of congressional prerogative.” He worries their departure weakens Congress as an institution, further eroding a critical check on the president and the executive branch.

“The problem pertains far less to opposition to this president,” Weiner points out, “than to the long-range erosion of congressional resistance to the presidency as an institution.”

This caught my attention because we desperately need Congress to function as a co-equal branch of government and because opponents of state legislative limits* often assert a similar argument: term-limited legislatures are less able to check the power of the governor and executive branch agencies.

“Congress has been in decline for generations,” Weiner acknowledges. What else has been happening over this time? Politicians have been loitering in Congress longer and longer, term after term after term. 

Hmmm. The correlation is between a weakened Congress and more experience, not less.

Let’s further note that Flake is only in his first Senate term and Corker his second.

After nearly four decades in office, is, say, doddering Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), providing better oversight?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The 15 states that have them — Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota — contain 37 percent of us.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Omission of Character

Democratic Party, gubernatorial nominee, governor, Frank Northam, Lt. Governor, Justin Fairfax, racism, politicians

One downside to jumping to the wrong conclusion is that the failure to even look for the correct, accurate conclusion inevitably follows. 

This sleepy odd-year campaign for governor of Virginia has recently been riled by charges of racism. Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee Frank Northam made the “mistake” of “omitting” the party’s candidate for Lt. Governor, Justin Fairfax, from a small printing of literature for union members about the Democrats’ statewide slate. 

Northam is white and Fairfax is black. 

“[A] slap in the face to Justin and to black voters,” is what Quentin James, who runs a PAC working to elect black candidates, called the removal of Fairfax from the literature. He added that it “reeks of subtle racism” and “sends a signal across the state, that we, as black voters, are expendable.”

Noting that black voters make up 20 percent of the state’s electorate, Think Progress dubbed Fairfax’s deletion: “mindboggling.”  

Was this a “dis” and did it really have anything to do with Fairfax being black?

Well, Fairfax labeled it a “mistake,” but his exclusion from the flyer was certainly not inadvertent. It was by clear-eyed design.

The Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), a $600,000 donor to the coordinated state Democratic campaign, requested that Fairfax be removed from literature their members will distribute. The union is at odds with Fairfax over his opposition to two state pipeline projects the union favors.

So, Northam didn’t throw Fairfax under the bus because Fairfax is black. No sirree. Northam threw Fairfax under the bus to placate a powerful, well-heeled special interest group.

Northam isn’t a racist. He’s just a self-interested, disloyal politician.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly ideological culture insider corruption media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Choice Corruption

Harvey Weinstein, donor, democrats, corruption, sex scandal, boycott,

What is corruption? said no jesting Pilate ever.

But please, stay for an answer.

A week ago, Jimmie Moore pleaded guilty to filing a false campaign finance report in order to conceal a $90,000 payment to drop out of a congressional race. Moore is a former Philadelphia judge (heavens). The nearly one-hundred-grand came from the incumbent he was challenging: Congressman Bob Brady (D-Pa.).

Moore, who implicated Rep. Brady in the scheme, now faces as many as five years in prison. Brady, for his part, has yet to be charged.

A pro-life politician’s 15-year tenure in Congress has ended. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) has resigned following revelations that he had urged the woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair to have an abortion. Additional bad behavior — “a culture of abuse and a culture of corruption” in his congressional office — was detailed in an in-depth Politico exposé.

But for the biggest scandal story, go Hollywood. Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been ousted from The Weinstein Company upon allegations that he had committed criminal sexual assaults for decades. As a huge donor to the Democratic Party, questions abound. Which Democrats had knowledge of Weinstein’s behavior and yet remained silent?

That ‘look the other way’ rot has already spread to a media/entertainment institution: Saturday Night Live. Last Saturday night, observers were surprised that SNL did not feature even one joke at liberal Weinstein’s expense.

“It’s a New York thing,” quipped Producer Lorne Michaels when questioned about the omission.*

I’m not big on launching boycotts at every turn. But how could anyone who values evenhandedness turn on SNL next Saturday — or the following — as if nothing had happened?

Who needs these jesters covering for corruption?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* Audience members at a rehearsal said there had been a Weinstein joke, which garnered a big laugh, but it was apparently pulled from the live broadcast.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard porkbarrel politics

Interfering With a Sweet Racket?

Seattle, City Light, corruption, security, police, scandal, cronyism

One way for governments and enterprises to save money is to contract out some or all of their services. Towns, cities, counties, states — even the federal government — engage in such practices all the time.

It is really just outsourcing, as business lingo dubs it.* But, like any system for shifting responsibility away from direct management, it can be corrupted.

As Seattle citizens now learn, courtesy of Seattle Times reporters Mike Carter and Steve Miletich.

It appears that Seattle City Light, the public utility providing electricity to the city, has been contracting exclusively with Seattle’s Finest Security & Traffic Control. For a half a decade. Despite there being direct competition from another firm.

The utility paid “more than $7.8 million over the past five years to provide off-duty police officers for traffic control or security work,” the Times tells us.

The whole story came to light (no pun intended) when a new outfit offering similar services, but based on “gig economy” principles, sought to enter the market. Seattle’s Finest challenged the firm’s licensing, and, allegedly, directed abuse at the firm’s chief executive officer.

A Seattle detective off-handedly described the dominance of Seattle’s Finest “in organized-crime terms — using the word ‘mafia’ — and said nobody would be allowed to interfere with it.”

The FBI has now been called in.

Usually, local government may seem rather humdrum. But a lot of money can go through powerful, privileged hands. Things can get exciting. Terms like “murky” and “intimidation” abound.

Is this a surprise?

Remember: power corrupts; local power corrupts locally.

Right there where we live.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* An economist, R. H. Coase, got a Nobel Prize in no small part for explaining why this sort of contract can work better than establishing a complete firm-employee wage system.

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Accountability ballot access general freedom government transparency ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption local leaders national politics & policies property rights Regulating Protest responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Great Faction

great fiction, government, citizen, initiative, term limits, Paul Jacob

Politics isn’t a pretty business.

Frédéric Bastiat called the beast it serves “that great fiction” not because it doesn’t exist — intrusive state power sure persists — but rather because what it promises cannot really happen: “everyone living at the expense of everyone else.”

What can we do? How do we counteract a game that is rigged to increase the insanity, not reduce it?

Last week I indicated one thing a minor party with that goal in mind could do: use its power of spoiling elections to change major party behavior, and thus give citizens a fighting chance to restrain governmental metastasis.

Cancer.

I also suggested “blackmailing” the major parties into setting up a system of voting that . . . ends the power to blackmail! I believe that system — ranked choice voting — holds many positives, not the least of which is ending strategic voting, wherein voters are tempted to “falsify” their own preferences and support candidates they might dislike. This is as corrupting to the citizenry as the Great Fiction itself.

Let’s hope a savvy minor party leverages the major parties, gaining reforms to improve the system. Regardless, we can all — independently — push two other limits on political power:

  1. term limits at all levels, and
  2. initiative and referendum rights in all the states, not just the 26 that have it now.

Initiative and referendum rights would give ordinary citizens the leverage to possibly restrain the mad rush to live at each others’ expense. With the initiative, citizens can gain term limits, which produce more competitive legislative elections and lead to fewer legislators captured by the interests loitering in the capitol.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability incumbents insider corruption moral hazard national politics & policies term limits too much government

Most Hated

John Tyler, Trump, hated, leverage, elites, Ted Cruz, Paul Jacob, despised, term limits, unpopular

I was once “the most hated man in Washington.”* Why? For my work on term limits.

I wore the appellation as a badge of honor.

Last year I noted that Ted Cruz had taken up the mantle, but now, certainly, it’s President Donald Trump’s.

Has ever a president been as hated?

Thomas Jefferson was characterized as the Antichrist. Andrew Jackson made many enemies in overthrowing the Second National Bank. But John Tyler is the most interesting case.

President Tyler was a Jeffersonian democrat who took up the office from William Henry Harrison, who died several weeks after being sworn in. Tyler was never accepted as legitimate by — get this — the Whig Party that nominated him. He was dubbed “His Accidency.” After opposing a revival of the national bank notion, there were riots, and his party expelled him. He received hundreds of death threats in the mail. Later he was almost impeached.

Admittedly, Republicans haven’t abandoned Trump — yet. But the Democrats have opposed him from the beginning. And the Entertainment Industrial Complex never ceases to wage a culture war against him. What should the most hated man do?

Make the most of it.

One of his promises was to put congressional term limits into the Constitution. Congress is reluctant. But Trump can do what I couldn’t: use all the powers of the presidency — from the bully pulpit to the veto pen — to leverage those in Congress into proposing a constitutional amendment.

It won’t make President Trump any less hated in Washington, but will win support everywhere else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* That was in days of yore, the 1990s, and it was Bob Novak who gave me the appellation. Politicians, lobbyists and other government insiders hate term limits.

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