Category: insider corruption

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First Amendment rights government transparency insider corruption national politics & policies

What a Whistle-​blower Learned

It can happen to any organization. The original intent — or, at any rate, declared purpose — of the concern gets lost amidst the chaos of hard-​to-​manage projects and personnel, as individuals re-​define their goals at variance with the official end; as corruption sets in; as functions decay into forms persisting out of mere inertia; as institutional memory and learning get short-​circuited by broken feedback loops and a culture of silence, secrecy, and hush-​hush prudence.We Meant Well by Peter Van Buren

No organization is exempt, but it happens most often, and easiest, in government.

Take the experience of Peter Van Buren, late of two State Department Provincial Reconstruction Teams, related in The American Conservative:

In some 24 years of government service, I experienced my share of dissonance when it came to what was said in public and what the government did behind the public’s back.…

What I saw while serving the State Department at a forward operating base in Iraq was, however, different. There, the space between what we were doing (the eye-​watering waste and mismanagement), and what we were saying (the endless claims of success and progress), was filled with numb soldiers and devastated Iraqis.…

Van Buren wrote a book on that huge divide between secret truth and public lie, and, of course, got in trouble for it. Folks higher up in government are not renowned for their love of whistle-​blowers. Van Buren not unexpectedly finds himself being shown the door on his own career, or, as he puts it, his superiors are preparing to put his “head on a pike inside the lobby of State’s Foggy Bottom headquarters as a warning to its other employees.”

Government may not honor whistle-​blowers, but citizens should. After all, it is allegedly for our sake that government does what it does. To discover, as Mr. Van Buren discovered, that “we failed in the [Iraq] reconstruction and, through that failure, lost the war,” is news we must incorporate into our storehouse of foreign policy wisdom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Professional Politicians & Crony Capitalists

Yesterday, I explained how the official title for California’s Proposition 28 tricks voters who favor tougher term limits into supporting a measure that will dramatically weaken those limits.

The title’s slipperiness is anything but accidental. It was designed to fool, hiding the fact that the measure doubles the time legislators can park themselves in the state assembly and ups senate tenure by 50 percent. Instead, voters read that Prop 28 “reduces” (ever so slightly) the time a politician can serve in both chambers, from 14 years to 12 years – something affecting less than one in ten office-holders.

“The proponents of the measure are longtime opponents of term limits who have long wanted to roll back California’s voter-​approved legislative term limits,” says Jon Fleishman of the Flash Report, who serves as volunteer co-​chairman of “No on 28.”

Still, the sham ballot title is only one part of the Prop 28 scam.

The biggest financial backer behind Prop 28 has been billionaire developer Edward Roski. While at the very same time legislators were awarding Roski’s company the special environmental exemptions he needed to build a sports stadium, Roski just happened to plunk down over a million bucks to the politician-​prized petition drive, helping the measure get on the June 5th ballot.

“That’s crony capitalism and that stinks,” argues Fleishman.

“In a state with a 12-​percent-​plus unemployment rate,” Philip Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, points out about legislators, “the jobs they’re fighting the hardest to keep are their own.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture insider corruption

Billions and Billionaires

Where do billionaires come from?

Douglas French, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, reminds us where the term “millionaire” came from. It was

coined in 1720 during John Law’s “Mississippi Bubble” to describe those making vast fortunes in Law’s Mississippi Company stock that rose from 150 livres to 10,000 in the matter of months. But just as quickly, the stock and the currency wildly inflated by Law’s Banque Royale, crashed and Law was forced into exile.

Today’s plethora of billionaires — which in 15 years has increased fivefold — is (argues French) at least in part the result of Ben Bernanke’s monetary manipulations. He’s the John Law of our time. “What were once Law’s millionaires are now Bernanke’s billionaires.… Bernanke has been on the job for six years, and the Gates, Buffetts, and Slims of the world are reaping the benefit. But for how long?”

Keeping track of today’s billionaires has become both a form of popular entertainment (Forbes’s list) as well as a topic for careful study. The political “philanthropy” of George Soros and Charles Koch inspires both enthusiasm and dread in activists, left and right; Warren Buffett has become something of a hero to the 99 percenters, what with his repeated pitches for higher taxes on the rich.

But Buffett is a sly one. He makes his money in a variety of ways — one of which Peter Schiff recently explained: “Buffett actually stated in September 2008 that he would not have invested in Goldman Sachs if not for the implicit guarantee of federal assistance. As a result, he profited at the expense of taxpayers at the very time when they were losing their savings in the markets.”

Not all billionaires are created equal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption political challengers

As Goes Maine

On Monday I reported on the Ron Paul campaign’s “open secret” strategy: Gaining delegates in the caucus states, while letting the caucus-​night straw poll numbers basically take care of themselves. The “popular” vote on caucus nights in states like Iowa and Minnesota and Maine may show Santorum or Romney as a winner, but the Ron Paul folks are picking up the actual, nomination-​effective delegates.

Meanwhile, GOP insiders continue to work openly and sub rosa against the Paul candidacy, as is now pretty clear in Maine. Business Insider reports that

  • “Mitt Romney’s 194-​vote victory over Ron Paul was prematurely announced, if not totally wrong”;
  • “Washington County canceled their caucus on Saturday on account of three inches of snow (hardly a blizzard by Maine standards), and other towns that scheduled their caucuses for this week have been left out of the vote count”;
  • “nearly all the towns in Waldo County — a Ron Paul stronghold — held their caucuses on Feb. 4, but the state GOP reported no results for those towns. In Waterville, a college town in Central Maine, results were reported but not included in the party vote count”;

… and on and on and on.

The open conspiracy of deliberately under-​reporting Ron Paul votes may be more than matched, however, by the open secret of the Ron Paul delegate strategy, with the Paul campaign now believing “it has won the majority of Maine’s delegates.”

Real change is, apparently, a messy thing. And preventing it … even messier.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

The Forgotten Scandal

Newt Gingrich is taking a pounding over his personal life — ABC’s Nightline broadcast a lengthy interview with one of his ex-​wives yesterday. Before that, Newt was pilloried for his work for Freddie Mac, the government-​created mortgage malefactor, and pummeled with ethics charges from his days as Speaker.Newt Gingrich

Yet, nary a word has been uttered about what I consider his biggest scandal — and one that involves Democrats coming to Newt’s aid to ensure his triumph over their own party’s challenger to retain his Washington perch.

Back in 1989, as the new House GOP Whip, Gingrich helped push through a massive pay raise, hiking congressional salaries by 40 percent. Gingrich and GOP leaders assured Democrats that Republicans would not attack them for voting to grab the extra dough. Democratic leaders returned the favor.

In a bipartisan love-​fest, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown and Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater went so far as to sign a written agreement foreswearing criticism of the hike “in the coming campaigns.”

“The gag rule,” as Utah’s Deseret News dubbed it, “was accompanied by notice from the party officials that any breach could result in censure from a candidate’s own party and a cutoff of party campaign aid for non-incumbents.”

When Democrat challenger David Worley began to hit Gingrich “morning, noon and night” over the pay raise, the Democratic Party committees — in what the Orlando Sentinel called “a breathtaking move that would make you wonder if this is a free country” — cut Worley’s campaign off.

Gingrich prevailed by a mere 974 votes … and went on to collect his pay increase.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

Illinois: Ill and Annoyed

Yesterday, I talked about pension rip-​offs in Illinois and the particularly outrageous case of a lobbyist who spiked his pension benefits by perhaps a million dollars over the course of his lifetime by working as a substitute teacher for … one … single … day.

Steven Preckwinkle, the political director of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, earned only $93 in actual pay for that day’s work, but was able to snag a more lucrative lifetime teacher’s pension, yet based on his pay as a lobbyist, which would make it twice as generous as the average teacher’s take.

All this through a luxurious loophole in legislation Preckwinkle lobbied the legislature to enact.

Come to find out that Preckwinkle’s pension play isn’t the only way he’s cashed in on state taxpayers. Illinois has a controversial program whereby legislators get to personally hand out a couple of college scholarships to constituents each year.

You guessed it. Two of Preckwinkle’s children — and a nephew — were awarded money to cover their college cost.

Perhaps it’s all a coincidence, eh?

Surely State Rep. Mike Curran (D‑Springfield) didn’t allow the contributions he received from Preckwinkle and his union, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, to influence his decision. When Curran left the legislature, he went to work for the Preckwinkle’s union as a consultant.

Can’t friends help friends? On the taxpayers’ tab?

They can in the Land of Larceny.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.