Obama's Dubious Legacy: Intimidation of Whistle-Blowers using the Espionage Act?

by Nomad

It's a sad fact of political reality. Candidates' views change once they enter into office and many of their noble aspirations seem to be left at the door once they take charge. It is related, no doubt, to practicalities of modern politics. Until one is actually in the hot seat, it is easy to be idealistic and pedantic. 

The Promise of Open-Sourced Government

Unfortunately, looking over Obama's record, it is hard not to be more than a little disappointed, with the president's own turnaround, especially in regards to his approach to whistle-blowers. One might have expected people like Cheney and all his cronies to go after "enemies of the state" with a sinister vindictiveness. (He was after all the closest Darth Vader ever got to being president.)
But Obama? This was the candidate that promised a change.

Back in November 2007, at a speech on the Google campus, Obama said what geeky Google-ites wanted to hear, that he would use technology to make government more accessible to the public. He would, he told the crowds as president he would insure that government information became more freely available.

And as a senator, Obama also pushed for and co-sponsored legislation in late 2007 that strenghten the Freedom of Information Act, initiated under Carter, and practically destroyed under Bush.

As outline in his campaign speeches, Obama planned to embrace cutting edge tech so that Americans could have access to administration records.

Among Obama’s proposals are the creation of internet databases for lobbying reports, ethics records and campaign finance filings as well as a “contracts and influence” database to track federal contractors’ spending and lobby efforts.

 What we got was Citizens United.

There will also be a readily available online database of corporate tax breaks, the posting of non-emergency legislation on the White House web site for public view and comment and cabinet-level town hall meetings on broadband.

I suppose, it is fair to ask, is open-sourced government even possible? It's never been tried but that's not to say, some aspects can't be applied.
In any case, such revolutionary solutions were certainly vote-catching after long and painful years in which, under the Bush/Cheney regime, politically-damaging information could easily be classified and never see the light of day.
As Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, said at that time:

“The openness community will expect a complete repudiation of the Ashcroft doctrine.” 

The Ashcroft Doctrine allowed the Bush administration to withhold information requested through FOIA whenever legally possible. (Ironic, isn't it? that the link to Department of Justice web site explaining the Ashcroft doctrine leads nowhere? We can't see what it was so we can't compare it to what has replaced it.)

It didn't take long for Obama to go into secrecy mode soon after becoming president. It might have been dismissed as the usual campaign promises or of a politician biting off quite a bit more than he could chew regarding what he could actually do if elected.
However, things were worse than that. Change might have happened but it was not quite the change the voters had been promised.

HuffPo: House Republicans Attempt to De-Fund Defunct ACORN.. Again

by Nomad

Trying to decide the "dumbest" thing that the House of Representatives has done lately is a real challenge, But that mission appears to have certainly gotten a whole lot easier. Recently House Republicans decided to include a provision in spending bills which would forbid all requested government aid from being used for an organization that ceased to exist over three years ago.

Zach Carter, writing for Huffington Post, supplies the details of this legislative lunacy brought to you by the ever- impressive Texas Republicans. Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) and Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) both sponsored bills which included a provision that not one cent of these government funds would go to the activist group known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) "or its subsidiaries or successors."

Rep. John Culberson	Rep. John Carter

The bills, which have nothing to do with ACORN were introduced on May 28/29 and will be voted on this week.

 

The Culberson bill makes budget appropriations of $73.3 billion for military construction and for veteran affairs "to support the military and their families and to provide for the benefits and medical care for our nation’s veterans."

 

Similarly, the Carter bill which makes $38.9 billion in discretionary spending for the Department of Homeland Security, carries the same prohibitions against ACORN.

If you happen to be a Tea Party person and are mathematically challenged you might want to know that between those bills, (whatever their merits), the requests total over $113 billion from the budget.

Call it a budget sequestration backtracking.

 

In any case, as Huffington Post noted, similar provisions in both bill declare that:

None of the funds made available in this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries or successors.

Has nobody informed either of them that Congress had already banned federal funding for ACORN back in the fall of 2009?

 

Why The Proposed Ryan-Murray Budget Deal Renders the Tea Party Powerless

by Nomad

Here's a little Interesting news. Reuters is reporting today that:

Budget negotiators in the U.S. Congress have reached a two-year agreement aimed at avoiding a government shutdown on January 15 and setting federal government spending levels through October 1, 2015.

While it might seem like a step in the right direction, it is hard not to be a little cynical about the deal. Even as a first symbolic step toward a real bipartisan compromise, the fine print reveals some horrors for the unemployed. (I'll talk about that at a later date.) What's more interesting is the underlying motive for the Republican party to offer any deal at all.  

This budget deal,  hammered out by Washington Democrat Senator Patty Murray, and Republican Paul Ryan from Wisconsin, may be bipartisan but it is hard to see why anybody would claim it was progress. (One site actually hailed it as "a new era of cooperation." Where have these people been the last five years, I wonder!)

Congressional negotiators reached a modest budget agreement Tuesday to restore about $65 billion in automatic spending cuts from programs ranging from parks to the Pentagon, with votes expected in both houses by week's end.

Now, sixty-five billion might seem like a large figure to you and me but when it comes to government spending it is practically nothing. A superpower can spend that money much faster than you can blow your nose.

In fact, these were spending cuts to the budget which have now been restored. So count that as a step back from the reducing government spending. Shrinking big government, (except when it came to the military) has been the rallying cry of the Republicans since Reagan's day. 

Reducing government spending was supposed to be what the last budget bust-up in Washington was all about. Remember that shutdown thingy?

And that turned out to be a political disaster for Congress, but especially for the Republicans. So it is no surprise that somebody in the party would be happy to avoid a repeat of that disgrace next January. 

Apparently the leader of the House John Boehner-who, in the end, just wants to be loved, sent Pretty-boy Ryan into the thick of the negotiations. It was probably a wise but cynical move on his part.

Clearly the Tea Party will take one look at this and begin frothing at the mouth.

Delusions over Tea Time

Despite the damage done to the Republican party in October, threats of shutting down government -basically holding the government hostage-was the only weapon that the Tea Party minority had. This deal effectively takes that loaded pistol out of the hands of the petulant baby.

And this baby has a nasty disposition and has some old Republicans scared for their political lives.

Henry Wallace and The Last Progressive Party

by Nomad

(image courtesy of MoveOn.org)

In the Midst of all These Riches

The quote on the right comes from Henry A. Wallace's book, “Democracy Reborn.”
Today the book is not so easy to find and Wallace's name means very little to most Americans.

Nevertheless, I think the man deserves a little attention because, when you look over his words and ideals, Wallace seems- in some ways- ahead of his time.

For example, he also wrote:

“Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion."

That sounds achingly familiar to the speeches made during the Occupy movement.

Henry Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was the closest he ever got to the White House. Before that, Wallace had served as Secretary of Agriculture during the dust bowl days which saw Americans desperately fighting for survival.

Mandela and Reagan: The History and Truth that Right-Wing Republicans Would Rather Forget

by Nomad

The perception that the Republican Party is the a party of racists goes back many years. Along with other Republicans, President Reagan worked hard to defeat any anti-Apartheid legislation. 

Reagan's Veto

With the long-predicted death of Nelson Mandela, we can expect to hear a lot of swell things being said in memorial about this man's courage and humanism as he led his nation toward greater equality.
Both sides of the political spectrum are bound to say a lot of things in praise of Mandela and his work and life. In the next few days, you will hear about the evils of apartheid and how much better the world is without it.

However, there's another point that none of us should forget. When it came to apartheid, the Reagan Republicans were definitely on the wrong side of history.