Tag Archives: government

A Little Bit of Cynicism

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The Supreme Court has agreed to take up, in its next term, the question of recess appointments and of what is a “recess.”  The DC Circuit had ruled, in the case being appealed, that certain NLRB appointments were unconstitutional and so invalid because they had occurred while the Senate was in session and not in recess.  That court also held both that an actual recess could only occur between the year-long sessions of a Congress and that a recess appointment could be made only for a vacancy that originated during that recess.

President Barack Obama’s Solicitor General, Donald Verilli, in his filing before the Supremes argued with a straight face that were the Court to uphold the DC ruling, it would restrict the president’s power.

To which I ask, “Yeah, and…?”

Verilli also argued with similar seriousness that upholding the DC ruling

…would deem invalid hundreds of recess appointments made by presidents since early in the nation’s history[.]

Umm, no.  It would deem invalid the appointments on appeal and possibly the appointments made under similar circumstances since the NLRB appoints at the start of 2012.  Verilli knows better.

Rakoff Was Both Right and Victorious

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Recall Federal District Judge Jed Rakoff’s decision a while ago rejecting an SEC-Citibank settlement, in which Citibank agreed to pay an enormous vigfine to the SEC in return for the latter’s desisting from harassinghectoring the former any further.  Rakoff’s heartburn concerned the lack of statement by either party of guilt or innocence by Citibank—Citi would simply pay the protectionfine and the SEC would stop its threats.

Now there’s an update to the SEC side of this.

The Securities and Exchange Commission intends to make companies and individuals admit wrongdoing as a condition of settling civil charges in certain cases, or be forced to fight the charges in court, the agency’s Chairman Mary Jo White said Tuesday.

Is this a direct result of Rakoff’s rudeness in holding out for actual culpability before a fine gets assessed?  Maybe, but not directly.  This change didn’t occur until after a review of the overall situation initiated by SEC Chairman Mary Jo White when she took over last spring.

It does, though, come after Rakoff’s argument that the ability to avoid admitting liability allows companies to treat settlements as just a “cost of doing business.”  He didn’t argue this explicitly, but I do: it also allows government agencies to extort money and other…concessions…from businesses and individuals with whom those agencies have a disagreement of any sort.  Sort of like the IRS and the DoJ do.

“Victorious” may be too strong, but this clearly is a step in the right direction.

YouCut, Citizen Cosponser

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Recall the YouCut program that the House of Representatives Republican caucus instituted in the wake of the 2010 mid-term elections.

Now, building on the heels of that program’s success, the Republican caucus under the leadership of Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R, VA), whose leadership also led to the YouCut program, is instituting a new program that moves the House—and by extension the Federal government—closer to us citizens.  This program is CoSPonsor.gov, and it presents all legislation openly and clearly and allows each citizen to become a cosponsor of any piece of legislation—or not.

Here’s Cantor’s email that announces the plan [emphasis in the original]:

When we launched YouCut three years ago, we never imagined how engaged people would become and how successful the program would be in achieving its mission of changing the culture of spending into a culture of savings.
Millions cast votes across the country to encourage the House to cut spending, and that is exactly what we continue to do. Throughout the program, we’ve seen YouCut proposals drive public discussions, pass the House and even become signed into law. Now, as our new Majority continues to work to cut spending and grow our economy, it’s time to leverage the latest technology to expand YouCut into its next phase.
I am excited to announce the launch of CoSponsor.gov – a new platform that allows you to become a Citizen CoSponsor of any bill in the House.
Now, any engaged citizen can become a Citizen CoSponsor and track the status of the legislation they care about in the House.
Whether you want to cosponsor new legislation like the Kids First Research Act or become a Citizen CoSponsor of legislation that has already passed the House, like No Budget, No Pay, you can now do so here.
House Republicans believe that transparency, open government and engagement are vital to a modern Congress, and CoSponsor.gov is an important step in that direction.
Visit CoSponsor.gov today and become a Citizen CoSponsor of the bills you care about:
http://www.cosponsor.gov/
Regards,
Eric Cantor
Majority Leader
—————-
What issues do you care about? Visit CoSponsor.gov today to become a Citizen CoSponsor of any bill.

The link to CoSponsor.gov has been added to the right sidebar, near the top.

Too Big to Handle

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I’ve written before about the morality of government welfare as a first resort.  Here’s a practical reason for cutting back: it’s too big to manage effectively.  Here are some failures from that too big to handle:

A postal worker who ran marathons found her race times improved after she began drawing federal disability checks for an alleged back injury.

Another disabled federal employee went scuba diving, skied in Switzerland and did flips on a trapeze.  She spent part of her $193,000 in disability payments on a boat named “Free Ride” before she was caught.

A Justice Department lawyer collected $90,000 in annual disability checks after claiming the stress of his job kept him off the job.  Apparently the cable TV show he began hosting while drawing disability pay wasn’t so stressful.

And

15,000 recipients are 66 or older.  Six of them are over the age of 100—well past retirement age.

The Federal government compounds this by being disinterested in controlling the failures and the resulting waste of taxpayer wealth being redistributed.

funding for all agencies—about $3 billion per year—is automatically appropriated and run through the Department of Labor.

And

the federal [disability] program does not require employing agencies to order a second opinion. The claimant can pick his own doctor.

If his claim is rejected, he can file for a different disability, as often as he likes.

And

The Department of Labor, which administers FECA for 70 federal entities, doesn’t track fraud referrals and convictions[.]

The program is too large to be properly controlled, and it needs drastic paring back for economic and legal reasons as well as moral.

A Whistleblower

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I offered this first as a comment to a Spiegel Online article.  Here it is with slight modifications to support its stand-alone status here.

Edward Snowden, of Verizon metadata and PRISM outing fame, thinks of himself as a whistleblower, and so do many who agree with him that the US’ PRISM program and its program for collecting metadata from cellphone providers are terribly wrong programs.

I agree that the programs are anathema to individual liberty.  However, the programs are legal under US law.  The only question here is whether the programs’ limits and checks are being honored–and that’s a matter of trust, since the programs and its procedures are secret.  That secrecy and the need for that blind trust in Government (not just the Obama administration, but any Government) form a large part of my dismay over the programs.

However, the programs’ legality mean Snowden cannot be a whistleblower; he’s simply a man who has illegally revealed classified data to the public.

What about civil disobedience, then?  Is he practicing this honorable means of protest of a government behavior to which he objects?

There are many legal avenues of calling legitimate attention to these flawed programs, including, for instance, any of the several formal whistleblower and Inspector General facilities to which he could have taken his case.  Given the damage already done by these programs (stipulating arguendo that damage to individual liberty has been done) any additional damage done through the delays of going through these legitimate programs would have been quite trivial.  Yet Snowden eschewed these programs and went directly public.  From within a foreign country.

Were this an act of civil disobedience, it would have had to satisfy two criteria: he would have had first to exhaust his legal remedies.  As I noted, he chose not to do so.

Secondly, he would have to have been willing to face the consequences of his actions.  It is, after all, those consequences and their absurdity in the face of the disobedience and the thing over which the disobedience is occurring that give force and credibility to the disobedience.  Snowden’s reason for being in Hong Kong, as stated by him, is to avoid facing those consequences.

If Snowden truly believes that what he has done is just, he must return to the US and face the outcomes of his actions in open court.  Let him make his case in front of the American people (where he’ll find no small measure of support) and convince our representatives in that court case–the jury of his peers–that his act was justified.

Of course he risks not being supported by our representatives, that jury, as there also are a large number of Americans who disagree with what he has done.

Snowden’s flight and so far refusal to return indicates he’s unwilling to take that risk, that he does not have the courage of his convictions.  In that case, Snowden did not commit an act of civil disobedience; he is simply a small man who is placing his ego above justice.