Returneth

I see you have well and faithfully filled your stint at the post, blog soldier!  Well done.

I will leave it to others to comment on the DOMA decision this week by the SCOTUS. As my faculties settle into some coherence, I would like to briefly speak on two issues this week.  Although I hope to get it in, as I am off traveling again within a fortnight, I may beg to presume on your good graces again for next Sunday.  As the little genie said to Sinbad: “I will try, I will try” (to get in a blog post next week).

The first issue is the one that was overshadowed by the DOMA decision: the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.  I am vastly oversimplifying, but John Roberts, writing for the majority, essentially said that it was being struck down as unconstitutional because it wasn’t needed anymore. 

I can understand and in some respects sympathize with discomfort over some of the actions resulting from the Voting Rights Act—ballots in different languages, interpreters, etc.  If one is a US citizen, language proficiency enough to vote should be presumed in most cases.

However, that sort of thing is minor next to what still happens, incredibly in the 21^st century and nearly 50 years after the Act was passed: voter discrimination.  After an election cycle in which voter discrimination was attempted in droves, one could have made a case that the Act should have been strengthened, not gutted.  And as a voting rights federal observer for several years, I can tell you from experience that some serious discrimination—some of it ethnic and racial, some of it partisan—takes place with regularity in far too many places still. 

It is hard not to feel the plutocratic directors are constantly moving to tamp down pockets of potential resistance to effectively complete control.

The second matter, related to the same group of folks, concerns, what else, money.  It wasn’t greatly noticed, but this past week, the two rating agencies of and about Wall Street—Moody’s and Standard and Poor—were revealed to have shaded their ratings to make firms look better than they were.  Like corporate auditing, where the auditors are paid by those they are auditing, it is (to be kind) an inherently conflict of interest system.  Because, like auditing, the Wall Street raters are paid by the companies and banks. Not into a central fund, but directly.  As I was told long ago by an auditing firm manager: “Why would we tell the public about that?  Who do you think pays our fee?”

It doesn’t have to be that way.  You don’t have to scout around far to find countries that do things differently.  And that don’t have endless financial crises brought on by greed, irresponsibility, and lack of regulatory oversight.  Our favorite Scandinavians of course.  And Canada.

What they must think of us…

Sticks (of Butter) and Stones

Dear Reader (and Professor J, wherever you are),

What is it about summer that causes these whirlwinds about mega-entreprenuers and what comes out of their mouths? Is it the heat? They seem to revolve around food moguls. I'm tempted to make an "if you can't stand the heat" joke. The layers of things going on here are enough to give me a stomach ache.

We don't know how to have a really honest discussion about race issues in this country. It makes all of us uncomfortable. And, bless her heart, Ms. Deen isn't helping. If only she'd kept shoveling grits into her mouth she might not have had room for her foot. Anyone in the South will tell you that the vast majority of that kind of language is generational. It's increasingly offensive to everyone, not just African Americans. It hasn't played well in the New South. Younger white people (can I say that? Okay, Caucasian, just to be safe.) have no tolerance of it even within families. Give it 20 or 30 years and it will disappear, except that the rappers now keep it alive.

I'm perplexed about what kind of attorney would advise her not to just settle out of court on the original matter. Surely she must have been grilled (or perhaps deep fried) over what she may have said in the past as well as the circumstances, people present, whether she was drunk or traumatized in some way. And according to her, she used the racial slur after being robbed and having a gun held to her head. It's hard to speculate about what any of us might say under those conditions.

And should even the worst thing you've ever said be reason enough to warrant the kind of reaction we're seeing? Martha Stewart lied to federal agents, under oath, about her insider trading. She was able to be punished with a brief stint in prison. She's recovered nicely. Paula can't be imprisoned (yet) for her hateful words, but apparently she is deserving of having everything she's built over a lifetime destroyed as the next best option. Her employees are entitled to a safe and fair work environment without harassment or discrimination of any kind. But from what I can tell so far the main thing Deen is guilty of is bad manners and outdated thinking (and making her fellow southerners look bad). When the labor laws start to cover ill mannered demanding bosses, nothing will ever get done. 

The political correctness police and the power they seem to wield, make me a little nervous. My daughter who is getting her Masters in education has been enlightening me to all the ways to offend people of other cultures and races. It's kind of like the tax code. You are likely to be committing some offense you are unaware of.

Black history around Martin Luther King's birthday? Offensive.
Irish history in March? Offensive.
Anything about Columbus, Native Americans, and Pilgrims in October and November? Offensive.

I'm not sure when the Italians and Germans are supposed to be offended but I'm sure it's there somewhere. 

Are we all just being trained now to look for ways to be offended? How is that helping?

But back to Paula. The real offense she's committed is foisting her fat and calorie laden recipes on a public already dealing with a myriad of health issues created by the kind of diet she promotes. Or did promote until she was diagnosed with diabetes. Or did promote until she was caught keeping her health issues a secret so she could keep making money off her image and recipes.

Okay, I'm offended. Sign me up for the Food Police.

Life is Short, Do What You Love

Dear Reader, While the Professor is off traveling I, of course, did what any responsible blog partner who's been left in charge would do. Ran off to New Orleans for the weekend to play. So, Darlings, you are getting a recycled posting from my blog. But one at least that our wandering Prof agreed with.  I'll bet you might as well.

 Renaissance Men Wanted: Liberal Arts Degree Required

"What is he going to do with THAT?"

This is the question I get 99% of the time when I tell people that my son is getting a degree in Art History. What people really mean, of course, is "How is he going to afford a house in the suburbs and make the SUV payment?"  These are, after all, our American priorities. We value less and less the "jack of all trades" with a bit of knowledge about everything. Conversations with people often reflect the new myopic specialized view of education. What happened to the philosopher/craftsman/scientist? We see more and more students emerge from college with the ability to do one thing well. But not necessarily to think about it or anything else in any original or creative manner.

Which is why liberal arts studies are in decline.

In an economy gripped by fear, students and parents staring down increasing tuition and the prospect of debt due to student loans are prone to go for the "safe" options. My son's theory (and yes, he's given it a lot of thought) is that since economic stress has funneled so many students into practical degrees or mere "certificates" in twenty years or so there is going to be a dearth of people qualified to be curators of museums or teach things like art history and related subjects. But even if that doesn't come to pass I still want him to do what he's passionate about. I have confidence that he'll find a way to make a living.

We spend a lot of time thinking about the future. Our viewpoint is a little different than most parents and college students. Instead of my asking him where he wants to be in ten or twenty years I ask this: "Your life is nearly over, you are in the nursing home or maybe a hospital. Looking back over your life, what do you want it to have looked like?"

The answer to THAT question reveals where your priorities lay and what your goals should be. Then you look down the road and make your 5, 10, 20 year plan to get there.

Never lose sight of the entire thing.

My daughter arrived at the Do What You Love Party a bit late.  That is so like her. She loved studying the law and worked very hard for four years to get a degree in paralegal studies. She toyed with the idea of law school. She was giddy the day we went to the mall to purchase her first "business" wardrobe when she was hired at a law office. Within one year she worked at 3 firms. We thought she just couldn't find a practice that was a good fit. We had no idea that she was crying every day on her way to work. You see, it turned out that it was indeed the studying the law that she loved. Applying the law, dealing with stressed out attorneys, and meeting clients on the very worst day of their lives, was grinding on her soul. She cried for 3 days before she told us that she wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. She thought we would be upset that we had paid for a degree that she wasn't going to use.

Yes, of course, your father and I want you to cry on your way to work for the next 30 years.

Some of my daughter's students captivated by a storm.

She has been working at a Montessori school for the past year and is working on her Master's in education. She is happier than I've ever seen her and talks about her job with joy and passion. The business wardrobe was sold at a consignment store and she traded a stuffy office and stacks of files for a playground and crayons. Her favorite  comment about the change is that her current "clients" are so much more mature than her old ones..."and they cry less." So does she.

So if your kids are in high school and looking at making some really big and expensive decisions, take a moment to have them look BACK from some end point many years from now and think about what kind of people they want to be. They will leave a legacy of one kind or another, it can just be kind of hard to see that when you're starting down the road.

Beautiful lives don't just happen. Random luck may not shine on you. If you want your life to be something specific instead of nothing in particular, you are going to have to live it with intent. Think about it, focus on it, work hard at it.

The fast lane often leads to nothing but debt and depression. Your college student may be far happier (and maybe even eventually more successful) on The Road Less Traveled.

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Hope Keeps Doing that Thing it Does

Dear Reader,

Professor J has left the blogging to me while he's away and as you can see I'm already falling down on the job. Why is it that everything lately wants to pile up and attack on Wednesdays?

The timing of our professor's last post was interesting to me just having watched Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown the night before. In the most recent episode he was on a quest to fulfill a life long dream of traveling to the Congo. A journey that took him through Rwanda. Like most Westerners my knowledge of Africa is courtesy of Isaak Dineson, Dr. Livingston, and the movie, Hotel Rwanda. Seeing the current situation in central Africa (though a small glimpse to be sure) conjured up a twisted mix of hope and despair.

As Professor J pointed out Rwanda is making strides beyond what anyone could have imagined a mere two decades ago. The average person often writes entire areas of the world off in the geopolitical sense. News reports filled with horrific statistics and gruesome images come into our homes we are momentarily shocked and dismayed. Problems closer to home encroach and those ideas are stored away under a file with the name of the country in our minds. In much the same way that we are not amazed that our own children grow up but are astonished when we see the children of friends who have grown, we are often struck years later to find out that a nation has changed immensely while we were otherwise occupied.

The ability of nations to recover can be surprising. The recovery of nations post WWII, with much help from us, must have been shocking to soldiers who saw, what must have seemed at the time,  almost complete destruction. In a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer I read last year, he was sure that a thousand years of history, accomplishment, and contribution were being destroyed. In his mind the only thing about his native land anyone would ever remember would be the terror and death inflicted under the rule of the Nazis.

As Bourdain  crossed from Rwanda, where there was internet access, traffic that flowed properly, and a police presence, and crossed into The Democratic Republic of the Congo the contrast was stark. At first glance it was a country holding on to the last shred of civilization. As he progressed on his travels and met the people living there other things came to light. He came across people trying to hold on until the current circumstances change. A man tending to a research facility abandoned by the Belgians in the 1960s trying to fight back the jungle and mold to protect and keep organized a precious library. Two hundred railway workers who arrive at work each day to work (without pay) with what scant materials they have so that just in case the country recovers, they'll be able to get a train system up and running again. Everywhere a tremendous sense of pride and hope.

Indeed, when Bourdain questioned his guide about what these impoverished people purchase first when they get a little money, he was surprised to hear the answer: soap. Being clean and taking pride in their appearance was a top priority.

Perhaps some of those things that are working in Rwanda can seep across the border. There are warlords and armed militia groups to deal with, but as the Prof reminds us we cannot expect to jump from A to Z...

Where Are We On The Social Responsibility Meter?

Madame:

Our use of contractors has indeed gotten nearly entirely out of hand.  This privatization push has enriched those associated with the security complex, often at obscene and deficit punishment to the Treasury and our credit and standing. The Snowden case is only an example, and not (incredibly) a glaring one.

My Grump Meter has been nearly pinging the poles recently, so I thought I would insert some encouraging news from what many consider the “basket case” continent—Africa.  A new generation is trying to make some inroads, while not be overbound by history (a BIG task).  Twenty years ago, Rwanda looked absolutely hopeless, a tragic place of Balkan-like blood feuds among tribes and ethnic groups that reached the savagery of genocide.  While it still has its deep troubles, a new group of (largely Western educated) leaders is trying to forge a new way.  Similarly, Uganda, also a place of deep troubles and savage history, is trying to stay in step.  There has been much backlash against selfish corruption, poverty, and squalor, to be sure, but more importantly, there has been a quest to return to African principles  of community and responsibility to the larger society.  It may not be perfect by our haughty American standards, especially as it is in a transition period as a police state and would doubtlessly enrage our hyper-individualistic culture, but take a look.  From the article “The Cleanest Place in Africa,” by David Dagan, Foreign Policy, October 19, 2011 (full article here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/19/rwanda_the_cleanest_place_in_africa):

“The centerpiece of the clean campaign is doubtless umuganda, a monthly day of

mandatory community service. The tasks are varied, but often involve litter removal and other beautification projects. Politicians are not exempt: Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, recently labored with residents of a Kigali neighborhood to prepare construction of a school building.  Rwandans must have their umuganda participation certified on a card by local officials (Professor’s Note: LOCAL officials, not centralized national ones).

Without that document, they can be denied services at government offices.

“Everybody in Kigali seems to be on a mission, whether it’s the workers carting goods about in wheelbarrows or the uniformed schoolchildren heading to and from classes. Begging is extremely rare, and there are few signs of homelessness. This absence of explicit human misery may be a function of Rwanda’s emphasis on social services. But not only.

“As (Kigali Mayor) Ndayisaba put it: ‘There are some who just are street people because they are irresponsible or because they are drug consumers. We take them; we bring them [into] re-education centers.’

“Kigali residents who are considered vagrants are subject to arrest and confinement in these centers. Residents are sent to the centers without trial; a spokesman for Ndayisaba said the decision to commit a detainee is made by a team of social workers as a last resort.

“The mayor himself was unapologetic about the policy, which he said applies to those considered irresponsible, but not to the sick.  ‘When you can’t take decisions for your  [own] good,’ he said, ‘we take it for you.’

We Americans often criticize those who see the world differently and conduct themselves differently in it.  While many here could rail against the measures taken in Rwanda about vagrants, etc., our policy of unbenign neglect isn’t working either.

Things to think about.  America’s rabid frothing about anything that remotely hints of social responsibility is holding us back from finding sensible mosaic policies of taking the best ideas from anywhere and giving them a try (even on a small scale) here.

And by the way, for those with short memories who want to criticize Rwanda severely, Taiwan and South Korea, among others, were once police states.  And while they had their problems, they didn’t have nearly completely nonsensical colonial arbitrary divisions on maps (and similar legacies).  And didn’t have ethnic divisions.  And weren’t recovering from genocide. 

Getting from A to Z rarely works.  One at a time, maybe!

Snow(den) Job?

Professor J,

My very first reaction to the kind of information being collected is "Who didn't know that was going on?" I think in this age of digital information we all (including our enemies) assume, even if it's unconsciously, that anyone who really wants to know anything about us can find it out. Of course the CIA could just send us a Facebook friend request and find out more than they'd ever want to know. I can hear the public service announcement now:

Homeland security and the CIA requests that citizens please refrain from Instagramming photos of your dinners and pictures of your grandkids at baseball practice. You are making the agents hungry and bored and they have important work to do. Thank you for your cooperation.

But seriously, it's hard to imagine anyone being genuinely shocked by the phone record revelation. My son in law, a police officer, had training last year about a particular group (notice the omission of the name) the government is concerned about. The instructor opened with this remark: "Do not go home and Google this group unless you want a little visit from the FBI."  While things like that are somewhat disconcerting I doubt anyone is shocked at the use of trigger words that prompt interest and other similar tactics used to keep tabs on various groups and individuals.

I say all this to say that the idea that Edward Snowden revealed some deep secret that our enemies were unaware of is ludicrous. Lots of things about him are disturbing, but the actual thing he's revealed isn't one of them except perhaps in its confirming things we all suspected. What's more disturbing to me is his rapid rise from security guard to CIA analyst making (apparently 122K though he reported 200K) a year and that someone was clearly remiss in vetting him properly before giving him access to the kind of information he's making public. As a result of this we are learning to what extent the CIA uses contractors and at least in the case of this guy, the people being hired may not have a complete understanding of what secret means.

What will be shocking to most Americans isn't the kind of data being collected, but how often the government is using these independent contractors. While being a government employee doesn't keep anyone from leaking classified material, ala Bradley Manning, it does make it easier to keep track of who knows what, and more importantly what kind of people know what. I'd be interested in knowing what kind of background check and psychological testing is done for employees doing this contracted work. I suspect it isn't anything close to what is done for official government workers.

Now there's a lot that is seemingly off about his story and I suspect that when the whole truth is out he'll prove to be far less credible than he is being taken for at the moment. Time will tell on that. The run down on Anderson Cooper 360 a couple of nights ago reported that he went from being a security guard to a rather high paid analyst. No in between just a straight jump. Did he know someone? Was he recruited? What were the qualifications for the job he held? Others are asking the same things:

 Snowden's claim to have been placed under diplomatic cover for a position in Switzerland after an apparently brief stint at the CIA as a systems administrator also raised suspicion. "I just have never heard of anyone being hired with so little academic credentials," the former CIA official said. The agency does employ technical specialists in overseas stations, the former official said, "but their breadth of experience is huge, and they tend not to start out as systems administrators." [Washington Post]

The damage done here, it seems, the real long term damage, is that now our enemies know just how easy it is to gain access to information we'd rather they didn't have.  It gives the impression that no one is minding the store at the CIA when a 29 year old who didn't finish high school can cause this kind of trouble. But hey, now he's hanging out with the Chinese so that's comforting.

On a totally unrelated note (my favorite kind): Your current blog post makes a good point. It is wedding season and while we want to be happy for couples starting out, it's hard knowing what an awakening they are in for. The stresses and strains that are going to face them will be formidable and perhaps one of the best things they could do early on, is avoid debt. The fact that so many of them are going into debt to pay for one day out of their married lives is unsettling. I'm quite often the cynic in the crowd wondering if they have any idea what a huge part of their lives together will revolve around finances. A money management course (Dave Ramsey works for me) should be a part of premarital counseling. It's one of the big things couples fail to nail down early on.

Putting Stock in Penny "Scandal"

Madame:

The reactions (and non-reactions) to the latest are interesting to observe.  My thoughts:

While the government would have preferred that “our enemies” didn’t know that we were data mining for patterns and indications across a broad spectrum, they didn’t need to have a conniption fit when it came out.  After all, the law renewal it was based on was not exactly precisely secret, and any enemy worth their salt should at least have suspected it.

Now that it is well known, I agree (for about, well, once) with Feinstein, Graham, and the rest who say it is a necessary and powerful tool to keep us safe.  I don’t know anywhere near the extent what the FISA court (judicial oversight) or the congressional intelligence committees (legislative oversight) know, but it’s evident the data mining provides very valuable intelligence against our enemies—enemies who are reliant on modern communication.  The question in my mind instead becomes: how protective of our civil liberties and privacy concerns is the government being while it protects us from our enemies?  From the government’s arrogant remarks, not very, it would seem. Not exactly comforting considering Big Brother’s justification—in Orwell’s novel and real life—comes from a perpetual state of “war.”

Perhaps finishing up (for the moment) Scandalmania, let us turn to the IRS brouhaha.  Peggy Noonan, the conservative columnist for the now Murdochized Wall Street Journal, supposedly lent her analytical credentials to a review of what the IRS did.

Unfortunately, not so.  Her piece in the weekend May 18-19 edition of the Journal is like so much of what passes for analysis these days—carefully crafted slantings to steer the unwary or time pressed.  Some of it is even incorrect on the facts, let alone the interpretation.

In the wake of the floodgates following Citizens United, there was a rush of conservative groups to presumably give anonymous money to run “issue” ads.   In irony of ironies, many of these were lower taxes/eliminate taxes/abolish the IRS groups, yet they were applying to the IRS for 501(c) (4) tax exempt status.  A status which is supposed to be granted only for planned charitable or ostensible social welfare work.

That the IRS field division might have been assumed to want to delay and obstruct (something a number of politicians in Washington know a thing or two about) the nonprofit status of anti-tax/abolish the IRS groups is understandable.  Given what groups were applying—and the stated goals of those groups—one might have  expected behavior consistent with the IRS’s presumed preferences.  And the Obama administration was presumably no friend of these organizations, and could have been interpreted by its statements to have appeared to give signals. 

Administrations target their foes for discrimination where they can—“Voter Fraud” DoJ investigations, and the various investigations under the Patriot Act, are just two examples that happened in a different administration.

And that’s how the corporate media got to painting it, that the IRS was “targeting.”  There’s not much fact checking in the corporate media herd anymore.  Given the ownership of most corporate media these days, THAT’S predictable.   The corporate media even obtained bipartisan condemnation, and a knee-jerk reaction “outrage and fire” from a hapless administration that tries to coopt or pre-empt things without information.

And even though no one was individually targeted, or subjected to fraudulent assessments, or restricted in rights, the outrage squeal was everywhere.

To borrow John Adams’ famous phrase, here’s some inconvenient facts:

According to all credible released information, the IRS division in question—a low prestige division at that—acted independently.  Bureaucracies move slowly.  And remember, the division is supposed to develop methodologies or strategies to flag groups that appear outright political.

Of the 60,000 to 70,000 nonprofit (to ostensibly work for “the social welfare”) 501(c) (4)s in existence, and the vastly increased numbers of newly applied, the IRS decided to audit the statements of 300.  Of those 300, 22% were Republican-allied, and given that 85% of 501(c) (4) money went to help Republicans, a case can be made that preferential treatment was given to someone, but not, as the USA Today headline said, “to liberals.”   To show how weak and miserably stupid the Democrats are, they went along with the Republican “outrage” about the above.   

No conservative groups were denied or lost nonprofit status during the period in question, although three liberal ones did.  And operations were often not impacted, for groups are allowed to operate as if they have that status while they wait for a decision.   What was the effect on the individuals of these supposedly “oppressed” groups?  Next to nothing, other than the inconvenience of submitting materials to ostensibly show they were what they represented themselves to be.

The IRS commissioner during the period in question was a Bush appointee.

The inspector general report which supposedly touched off the outrage said that even many groups which were granted or retained status showed indications they were political.  Remember, it’s the IRS division in question’s JOB to determine whether the groups are political, and to deny or strip status if they are.  One can presume from the above that they largely failed in their ostensible endeavor.  And this was AFTER handlers at IRS headquarters tried to stop the supposed “profiling.”

Scandal? This isn’t Nixon calling up the IRS to investigate individual political enemies and the IRS following orders from the top.  Peggy Noonan’s laughable attempts to show “targeted auditing” of “political activists” finds fishy the audit of a wealthy Idaho businessman who is audited for the first time in 30 years.   He’s wealthy and he hasn’t been audited in 30 years?  Something’s been fishy all right.

We are supposed to believe that the feeble “threat” of denial of tax-advantaged status for anonymous money political groups operating under fictional cover of promoting “social welfare” is so serious that the republic’s heart is at stake.

The republic’s heart is at stake all right.  But a big sharp plutocratic stake, not the hyperbolic fiction of this so-called “scandal.”  The real scandal is that corporations and wealthy have a tax code and preferences that give them almost all of the advantages and serve them obscenely and yet often effectively punish the ordinary individual.    

Can You Hear Me Now, Uncle Sam?

Professor J,

While I was formulating a response to the second post in your Scanalmania series, another one erupted. And if my recent acquisition of an smart phone wasn't proof enough that the Zombie Apocalypse is surely upon us, I now agree with Al Gore.

God help us all.

But when AG tweeted,  "In the digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?" I have to say, no, Al. It's not you.

On the heels of the scandals you've been dissecting, comes the uncovering of the government forcing Verizon to hand over phone records. Phone records secretly compiled on millions of calls between April 25th when it was signed and July 19th when it will expire. The Orewellian crevices of my brain are vibrating furiously while many downplay the act with euphemisms like "over reaching." As you pointed out in your most recent post we have two opposing tasks to accomplish simultaneously, protecting the public (which often means there is a need for covert action) and keeping the public informed, safe, and assured that civil rights are being protected. Wherever this falls on the scale between defensible (for some necessarily unknown reason) and indefensible (due to the violation of privacy of millions of citizens) it is at best...creepy.

And what laid the groundwork for this kind of intrusion? The Patriot Act. The gift that keeps on giving.

So while it's creepy and has people feeling uncomfortable about it, I think on a deeper level we all know that any real privacy we use to have is gone. And increasingly people seem to be less concerned about it at all. I'm thinking of a Chris Hedges comment from Empire of Illusion about us being conditioned to living in a surveillance state. You run the red light and the ticket appears in the mail days later, thanks to the camera at the intersection. You "check in" on Facebook to your favorite restaurant or concert. You walk down the street and feel safer in a city because of the cameras capturing what is happening. Something deep inside is uncomfortable but we allow ourselves to slip closer to a comfort zone where little is unknown.

Apparently NSA collects this kind of information all the time and nothing is done with it unless there is reason to analyze it. The vast majority of this kind of it is mundane and useless but the idea that the government would move from looking for evidence of specific illegal activity to patterns that may indicate something illegal may be going on is tantamount to a launching preemptive war. And we all know what a good idea that turned out to be.

Over the years we've heard lots of people testify before Congress and  make these "We aren't spying on our own citizens" declarations or say it in  press conferences and interviews. Which now, makes this revelation seem much worse. And yes, the Bush administration did the same thing but (supposedly) only overseas and not here at home. It will be interesting to hear in future days whether or not Verizon is the only company that has received such a request. If so--why? It seems much more likely that there are many more revelations along these lines (pun intended) to come.

And in delicious irony, the camp that is going to scream the intrusion factors of this scandal the loudest are the flag waving, fear mongering Republicans who acted as flower girls tossing out civil rights for the Patriot Act to trample upon as it was made into law.

Good job, guys.

Associated Effects

Madame M:

No guesses here this morning.  I might change my mind in a future post.  We’ll see. :)

My posting will be in the morning this week, and probably next week as well.  Such scheduling difficulties!

Those difficulties permit me only a brief foray into an additional “scandal.  Yes, it was deliberate of me to use only one quotation, for it is half a scandal.  I refer to the Associated Press matter.

The Associated Press is the last great national “feeder” or “collection” organization, a sort of grand central station for news.  It gets its info from its many members, and usually has a built in multi-check on accuracy because of it. 

This particular matter in the limelight has the CIA involved as well.  Their (and the administration’s) control-fetish was a bit sloppy, poorly coordinated, internally inconsistent, and excessive.  Al Qaeda has been plotting for some time to blow up cargo planes to shake world commerce, but airliners have also never left their sights.  In this instance, a major plot was foiled, and then the press and non-governmental expert or experts reported that it was because we had an agent on the inside.  Agents on the inside of close-knit terrorist organizations are very hard to obtain (and for long), so this leak, coming on top of other leaks, was momentous.   While the government scrambled to help their now cover-blown insider to safety (there are contradictory reports that it failed and succeeded), the call for an investigation into the leaks was strong from Republicans and even was bipartisan in some instances.

To expose the government doing repressive or unaccountable or utterly self-serving things, or harmful things in our name that would enrage us if we knew about them: those are what we need the press to do, and their privilege to do so should be sacrosanct.  Revealing something that legitimately needed to remain a secret, just to give the reporter or organization a leg up, however, is an abuse of this privilege—and maybe a crime.  Especially problematic are those outside the media who do the leaks not out of patriotism but out of spite or personal advantage.

The administration says it tried to strike a balance in looking into this serious matter, one where a valuable inside informant was compromised, and made useless for any help in foiling similar plots in the future—and one where that informant’s life was endangered.  It wanted phone records, to see where the leaks might have come from.  It did not want transcripts (if they existed), and it did not want phone or other taps. 

Now we have a collision between two justifiable needs: the government’s need to protect information of vital interest to our nation’s security (as well as keep someone from being murdered), and the press’s need to be able to rely on unnamed (and untraceable) sources to help preserve our freedoms and keep the citizenry informed.

In this case, the burden is on the DOJ and the administration to demonstrate that theirs was the more vital need, and that this was extraordinary and not going to be routine.  A tough sell.  Why is the burden on them?  Because of the chilling effect the DOJ’s actions will likely have on future informants and leakers when we really need them.  A danger to this already fragile democratic republic.  The needs of immediacy must be weighed against the needs of the future, and second and third (and further) order effects weigh the heaviest. 

I have said for a long time that the press/media need to appoint, and the government needs to accept, one or more of their representatives to serve 4 year terms as “secrecy arbitrators.”  That is, the press/media need to have one or more of their own to say “I agree” or “I disagree” when the government wants to keep something secret.   That would go far in restoring trust (and reducing angst) on all sides, as well as serve the country and its citizens better.

Absent that, we are going to have this markedly clunky and uneasy arrangement we have had for some time.  And perhaps more half scandals.