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.

Tom Clancy Wanted

Professor J,

Good clarification on the meaning of the holiday. Apparently much needed if the number of people I saw thanking veterans in general, and posting photos of family members who had served in conflict but then returned home to lead long and productive lives is any indication. However, I'm at least glad to see it indicate more to folks than the unofficial beginning of summer.

And Spankmomma? Alrighty then. LOL

Scandalmania: You indicate that you believe Benghazi to be a bungled CIA operation, the objective of which is unclear. Care to hazard a guess or two as to what it might have been (if such speculation doesn't make you nervous)? You might as well since this may be one of those situations where full disclosure never comes about. There's little chance you'll be proven wrong anytime soon. ;)

The real scandal, and the one you outline quite well, is that much of the secrecy and posturing that we see done isn't in any way related to how things play out on the world stage or to save face with our enemies. The fact that what seems of primary importance in Washington is shielding one's self against political foes who are fellow citizens. How exponentially that must weaken us I think we can scarcely imagine.

We have met the enemy and he is us. 

Few of our politicians are hard on the heels of truth. Truth is a tricky thing, isn't it? We often say we want it, but we (or in this case our politicians) only want part of it. The part of it that gives them the upper hand in some way. The part that makes themselves look the best while making their opponents look as bad as possible. Politics is so rarely very much about the truth.

In this case the Republicans look even worse than just run of the mill spin crazed politicians. Deliberately misquoting e-mails that would surely be released afterwards shows a kind of hubris that is unnerving. As if the folks back home who voted them in, and detest the Obama administration won't care all that much about them playing fast and loose with the facts. Which sadly for many is probably the case.

As you've pointed out there is plenty to warrant "legitimate criticism" but here's where the Republican's have made perhaps the biggest mistake of all. In criticizing everything, all the time, they've lost any credibility they might have had about something that genuinely concerns them. Something important like a diplomatic facility being used as a disguise for a CIA operation and a cover up when it all went bad. But anymore for the general population it is just the We Hate Obama Show run amok. Except for the true believers (those in the birther, socialist, and anti-Christ camps) who think he is the "worst president ever" no one much is paying attention.

My question about the whole Benghazi affair is this: Does any one person know the answers to all the questions being asked? Or was this an operation with several different agencies and multiple personnel involved that may appear to have been better thought out after the thing fell apart than it actually was before or during the operation? As you point out there was no back up plan or military coordination. The inability to get the story straight in the days after makes me wonder what kind of planning was involved. Who doesn't make a contingency plan for such a thing?

It doesn't instill confidence that the people in charge aren't using any more forethought than that. Is Tom Clancy busy? I'd have more faith in him at this point.

The Long And The Not So Short Of It

Madame M:

First, a word from our holiday: Although veterans deserve honor, let’s not confuse this holiday with Veterans Day.  This is MEMORIAL day, where we honor the dead who have fallen in service to their country.  While it’s also more than permissible to incidentally pay respects to our other deceased loved ones as well, since we don’t have a holiday to do that, we shouldn’t make it a second Veterans Day, as many are doing.  Veterans Day honors all veterans, living and deceased, with primary honors to the living.

The historian in me realizes that this may be spittle in the wind, for holidays have been morphing from their original purpose since, well, time IMMEMORIAL. :)

On to your “rant.”  If I’m the Spankdaddy, you’re the Spankmomma now! LOL.  Harsh but accurate words you have conveyed, and if people are uncomfortable with them, perhaps that should be a sign to them!

It is unclear how coordinated sinister the intent is, but certainly the effects are sinister.  I watch us slowly transform in ways all too similar to Rome.  And what would once have been cause for alarm barely gets notice, while the barely consequential gets trumpeted.  How very many grumpy observers there must have been in Rome’s day, from the fall of Carthage to the rise of Caesar!

I agree with you that we are complicit in our own downfall.  We say we are too busy with our lives to pay attention to politics—and then politics affects our lives in multifaceted and interlocked ways, often to our detriment.  Disgust with politics is understandable, but that reaction plays into the hands of those who seek to cement control of those politics.  We have an electorate that largely doesn’t pay attention most of the time, and is often as a consequence easily manipulated when it does, particularly in states with predispositions. 

My, my, the “pre” part of my post has taken up considerable space.  That means there’s time to address only one “scandal” this week.  The others will have to wait! :)

Benghazi: It is fairly apparent even looking from the outside that this was a CIA operation, a BUNGLED CIA operation (with no backup plan or decent military coordination—shades of Blackhawk Down) from start to tragic end to post-tragedy decisions.  Ambassador Chris Stevens almost certainly knew about it because he was probably part of it.  Whatever that operation was is unclear, and speculation that they were lured to Benghazi on false pretenses by terrorist double agents is similarly indeterminate.  That the CIA drove the narrative, the changing talking points, the info that was released, the timing, the confusion (probably deliberate), the diversion, the misinformation, and the silence, is indicative of a lot.  That the CIA has not been called heavily to task—effectively given a pass, really—is telling.  While much of what they do is intensely valuable and very necessary, the secret operations world and the classified world have attained incredible, barely accountable, and nearly untouchable power since the Cold War and now the endless “war” on “terrorism.”  What they say—or don’t want to say—usually goes, especially in a Democratic administration, whose influence on them is usually weaker.

 

There was confusion and damage control after the attack.  And officials in the State Dept certainly, and even the White House, felt like they were left holding the bag from the very House and Senate members condemning them, because it was those same members who had refused to fund the requests for increased security at diplomatic stations all over, and made necessary the State Dept decision not to increase security for Benghazi.  Hindsight always looks 20/20 in the specific, but beforehand, when resources are scarce, which they are at State, hard decisions have to be made.  And our embassies and consulates are threatened the world over.

 

But sure, the State Dept and the White House and even DoD (which rejected a request by the second highest US diplomat in Libya to send in a Special Forces team the morning after the attack) have tried to spin and shade to spare themselves embarrassment from their political enemies.  We might wish they hadn’t done that, but the environment is poisoned in Washington, and people and organizations are going to react to that environment.

The Republicans driving scandalmania largely know all of the above.  That they don’t want to focus on legitimate criticism of the administration is telling enough, let alone the fact they largely care not a whit about focusing on the critical, compelling issues.  As I have said from the beginning, this administration deserves CONSIDERABLE legitimate criticism, but nearly all of that is lost or unaddressed because it is irrelevant to the Republicans driving scandalmania, for their objective has nothing to do with crafting correctives or making better policy.

   

In place of those we get false insinuation, hypocrisy, hysteria, and hyperbole—the search for scandal.  It isn’t about political differences, it’s about that a large core of Republicans have never accepted EITHER of this president’s elections.  That he has been remarkably effective for a no-executive-experience outsider facing obstruction has only made them hate him all the more.  And the Democrats only look better in comparison, that is, in relative terms.  Because, yes, for the first 6 years they cooperated with the Bush administration, albeit sometimes reluctantly.  In Republican eyes, they are weak like that. 

Safe inside their gerrymandered districts and accepting red states, the Republicans driving obstruction, paralyzation, and diversion want to take hope for even watered-down, technocratic “change” of the non-plutocratic sort out of the equation.

Infrastructure anyone? No?  Foolish me!  Not enough things have fallen down yet for it to be a scandal.  I probably need scandal lessons.  Maybe I should watch that television series more often! :)