- Jun 6, 2007
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Unfortunately, what the American people hear from Washington these days is that it is mired in scandal. It is very disillusioning to them because what they care about is things like jobs, income growth, etc. which sees no improvement with this Washington path. The editorial writer E.J. Dionne recently spotlighted this public frustration when he asked the question is something flawed about our democracy. E.J. identified causes for this dysfunctionality by largely listing a lot of the Republican party character flaws, his assessment isn't wrong but the Democrat Party shares in the blame.
What the hell are the Democrats doing putting Grandpa Harry Reid and Grandma Patty Murray in key jobs necessary to get Congress to pass legislation, don't get me wrong both people are fine human beings and well intentioned but they are very poorly suited to do their jobs. Senator Reid is a narrow minded inflexible leader that is why the Democrats needed Vice-President Biden to negotiate two of their biggest accomplishments in the last two years the 2011 debt ceiling and the 2012 fiscal cliff legislation. Senator Reid was an off-the-charts failure on the gun control legislation failure this year. With the tragedy of Newtown Connecticut in the American people mind the Democrats should have at least been able to pass a bill through the Senate. Majority leader Reid should have told the Democrat negotiating team you cut a deal with those Republican Senators willing to deal as long as the legislation moves the country forward on the issue. Republican Senator Tom Coburn was representing a block of Republican Senators willing to deal and Senator Coburn is like the poster person for a reasonable Senator and the Democrat leadership couldn't bring about a deal. The culprit here was an ornery, inflexible Reid, the Democrats should have scrapped the requirement that gun sellers keep a paper record of sales which Republicans fear will be used to create a national gun registry. Senator Reid should have facilitated a bill which required background checks on all gun show sales, all internet sales and dramatically improved the reporting of people with mental health problems that can't be trusted with ownership of a gun and of course allows a fair system for such people to have their names removed from such classification when their mental health doesn't pose such danger; such a bill would have been progress for America. Senator Reid's performance here was utterly disgraceful, so many Americans made a great effort to see the Federal Government do some good here, the reasonable gun control movement spent so much of their limited money trying to bring this legislation to passage and even the President put up a lot of political capital to see progress and the effort amounted to a big failure that can be laid at the feet of Senator Harry Reid!
What the hell are the Democrats doing putting Senator Patty Murray as head of the Budget Committee when the American people have humongous problems with the Federal Budget. Senator Murray sees her role as a public relations agent for the Democrat party on this subject when the American people need somebody who sees their role as getting something accomplished. Senator Murray failed as leader of the 2011 super committee charged with reaching a grand bargain and she will fail in her role in reaching a compromise budget for next fiscal year. Whining about the hurts of Sequester budget cuts and being a broken record that the government has to increases the taxes on the wealthy isn't going to bring any progress at all progress will come when the Democrat Chairperson begins from the premise that the Federal Government is only going to have the amount of money to spend that the present tax structure provides and begins focusing on how do we spend that money more prudently and how do we stop wasteful spending! This whole subject matter is important because the Federal Government cannot do what its been doing over the last year by just passing continuing resolutions which continue federal spending in the respective departments at the levels they have been prior this will lead to some calamities. If this course is taken the sequester budget cuts of fifty-two billion in the Defense Department will be maintained. These cuts have negatively affected training in the U.S. Armed Services if these training cuts continue this will almost certainly lead to loss of life of Americans in uniform in the future. In all probability over the next three years American Special Forces will have to deploy in Syria when the Assad regime falls which it will to secure their chemical and other danger weapon supplies and American pilots will have to bomb the hell out of Iran to derail Iran's nuclear weapon program these will be outstandingly dangerous missions where shortages in training will almost certainly result in American deaths!
As for the scandals in Washington what I think is so frustrating for the American people is that politicians turn these scandals into tar pits where Washington gets stuck on these issues and so doesn't accomplish things of value. What seems to be missing in Congress's behavior in the current times that used to exist in the past is that when you had a scandal Congress conducts an investigation and writes a report or drafts a bill to fix the problems that were involved in the scandal and "moves on". Today, Congress just investigates and investigates and investigates with no end in sight the result is Congress doesn't fulfill many of its other duties. Leaders of the Congressional chambers need to set time deadlines for committee chairs to investigate and issue final reports or a resolving bill and if they don't comply remove these chairpersons from their jobs. The naiveness of some leaders in Congress is infuriating when they say things like Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time meaning that they can investigate and pursue passing meaningful legislation at the same time. They don't seem to appreciate how important is media coverage in the functioning of America's democracy, the way the system works is that the media focuses public attention on specific issues which often drives public opinion and public opinion can and often does rise to the level which either pushes the Federal Government to act and/or has an effect in future elections. This reality is very important because when Congress focuses all this attention on investigating and debating scandals it is in effect sucking a huge amount of air out of the nation's media coverage which leaves less media coverage for matters that really affect Americans lives. These scandal are a disaster not only for the transgressions involved but for how it paralysis our democracy!
Another thing that Washington and the media don't seem to get about these scandals is that the majority of American see through the spin, they can assess the true value of these scandals. The American people live in a competitive culture we face aggressive solicitation, we face in the work place other people trying to get out of work and others trying to take credit where it is not deserved we know the score on things! Washington and the media need to stop with the overblowing of these scandals!
On the Benghazi scandal, Hillary Clinton made a policy mistake just like Donald Rumsfield made policy mistakes in going into Iraq with too few troops which allowed Iraqi militant to get a foothold in that country and grow and taking his eye off of Afghanistan and the need to stay on the military offensive which allowed the Taliban to rebuild and wage a military campaign which has broken the spirit of many of the Afghan people for the Afghan Central government. These criticisms by Republicans on a cover-up on Benghazi that there was criminal wrongdoing is a disgrace the congressional committees have revealed the truth of what happened to American people it is nothing more than policy mistakes serious ones that will hurt a future presidential bid by Hillary Clinton but are by no means fatal to such a bid. Benghazi at the time of 9/11/12 was a great success for the Obama Administration, a terrible dictator was ousted democracy was taking root and America did not have to put any troops on the ground. The Obama Whitehouse didn't want to ruin this narrative by sending in Marines to the Benghazi consulate or vacating the consulate over security concerns. The Obama Administration wrongfully trusted Libyan government officials that they had the security matter in Libya under control when it was clear militia were in control in the area not government security forces. Hillary Clinton wrongfully completely delegated security matters for consulate and embassies to the security officials in the state department which either made her unaware or not involved in hearing the pleas of help for state department staff in Libya. Ms. Clinton did not have a good system for being made abreast of the subject matter of communication from U.S. ambassadors throughout the world which resulted in Ms. Clinton not receiving the cable from the Ambassador Stevens alerting of security worries about the consulate. It is clear good policy decisions on Benghazi would have called for adding more marine personnel to the consulate or evacuating it. As for the talking point this is all a red herring issue talking point by their very definition are a public relations tool the White House can shape them however they want that activities doesn't obstruct congressional committees from getting to the truth about the matter which it did. The lead committee should just issue a report calling for not only the State Department to assess the Security danger of consulates and embassies but also the CIA and the U.S. military and if any of those organizations deems the security conditions of such are inadequate they should report such to the majority and minority leader on the respective senate and house congressional committee overseeing the state department.
The IRS scandal is not some big public corruption matter involving the White House. Just think of how stupid such an allegation is that members of the White House would be so stupid to try to use the IRS to impede conservative political outside group. This is a scandal involving low level IRS staff trying to enforce an inherently problematic IRS provision which requires a political assessment on organizations and mid-level management bungling the handling of this inappropriate behavior of this low level staff. Unfortunately, the low level staff responsible for the unfair targeting and the mid-level management that didn't fulfill their duty to immediately stop the wrong all need to lose their job so as to restore the reputation of the IRS, their is no need for criminal prosecution if you want to send people to jail over this send the entire body of Congress to jail over the countries terrible campaign finance laws which result in elections in this country being about advertisement wars!
The AP telephone line warrant scandal is simply bad judgment by the people in the Attorney General's Office that requested the warrants. There was nothing wrong with the telephone warrant for individual reporters that wrote on the bomb on airplane story but the fishing expedition for a warrant on general AP telephone line was completely wrong. Why didn't the prosecutors identify all the government personnel that had the bomb in U.S. government hands information the list couldn't be that long assemble a list of their telephone numbers and get a warrant for the AP Lines just to check on these specific telephone numbers. This is another case where people aren't acting really bright do you think a bad guy who is disclosing classified information is going to use his own phone don't you folks ever watch movies the bad guys use pay phones. Congress should just pass a law here requiring judges for telephone warrants involving the press assess to make sure that there is a compelling need for the warrant and if there is such a need limit the scope of the warrant as narrowly as possible!
What the hell are the Democrats doing putting Grandpa Harry Reid and Grandma Patty Murray in key jobs necessary to get Congress to pass legislation, don't get me wrong both people are fine human beings and well intentioned but they are very poorly suited to do their jobs. Senator Reid is a narrow minded inflexible leader that is why the Democrats needed Vice-President Biden to negotiate two of their biggest accomplishments in the last two years the 2011 debt ceiling and the 2012 fiscal cliff legislation. Senator Reid was an off-the-charts failure on the gun control legislation failure this year. With the tragedy of Newtown Connecticut in the American people mind the Democrats should have at least been able to pass a bill through the Senate. Majority leader Reid should have told the Democrat negotiating team you cut a deal with those Republican Senators willing to deal as long as the legislation moves the country forward on the issue. Republican Senator Tom Coburn was representing a block of Republican Senators willing to deal and Senator Coburn is like the poster person for a reasonable Senator and the Democrat leadership couldn't bring about a deal. The culprit here was an ornery, inflexible Reid, the Democrats should have scrapped the requirement that gun sellers keep a paper record of sales which Republicans fear will be used to create a national gun registry. Senator Reid should have facilitated a bill which required background checks on all gun show sales, all internet sales and dramatically improved the reporting of people with mental health problems that can't be trusted with ownership of a gun and of course allows a fair system for such people to have their names removed from such classification when their mental health doesn't pose such danger; such a bill would have been progress for America. Senator Reid's performance here was utterly disgraceful, so many Americans made a great effort to see the Federal Government do some good here, the reasonable gun control movement spent so much of their limited money trying to bring this legislation to passage and even the President put up a lot of political capital to see progress and the effort amounted to a big failure that can be laid at the feet of Senator Harry Reid!
What the hell are the Democrats doing putting Senator Patty Murray as head of the Budget Committee when the American people have humongous problems with the Federal Budget. Senator Murray sees her role as a public relations agent for the Democrat party on this subject when the American people need somebody who sees their role as getting something accomplished. Senator Murray failed as leader of the 2011 super committee charged with reaching a grand bargain and she will fail in her role in reaching a compromise budget for next fiscal year. Whining about the hurts of Sequester budget cuts and being a broken record that the government has to increases the taxes on the wealthy isn't going to bring any progress at all progress will come when the Democrat Chairperson begins from the premise that the Federal Government is only going to have the amount of money to spend that the present tax structure provides and begins focusing on how do we spend that money more prudently and how do we stop wasteful spending! This whole subject matter is important because the Federal Government cannot do what its been doing over the last year by just passing continuing resolutions which continue federal spending in the respective departments at the levels they have been prior this will lead to some calamities. If this course is taken the sequester budget cuts of fifty-two billion in the Defense Department will be maintained. These cuts have negatively affected training in the U.S. Armed Services if these training cuts continue this will almost certainly lead to loss of life of Americans in uniform in the future. In all probability over the next three years American Special Forces will have to deploy in Syria when the Assad regime falls which it will to secure their chemical and other danger weapon supplies and American pilots will have to bomb the hell out of Iran to derail Iran's nuclear weapon program these will be outstandingly dangerous missions where shortages in training will almost certainly result in American deaths!
As for the scandals in Washington what I think is so frustrating for the American people is that politicians turn these scandals into tar pits where Washington gets stuck on these issues and so doesn't accomplish things of value. What seems to be missing in Congress's behavior in the current times that used to exist in the past is that when you had a scandal Congress conducts an investigation and writes a report or drafts a bill to fix the problems that were involved in the scandal and "moves on". Today, Congress just investigates and investigates and investigates with no end in sight the result is Congress doesn't fulfill many of its other duties. Leaders of the Congressional chambers need to set time deadlines for committee chairs to investigate and issue final reports or a resolving bill and if they don't comply remove these chairpersons from their jobs. The naiveness of some leaders in Congress is infuriating when they say things like Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time meaning that they can investigate and pursue passing meaningful legislation at the same time. They don't seem to appreciate how important is media coverage in the functioning of America's democracy, the way the system works is that the media focuses public attention on specific issues which often drives public opinion and public opinion can and often does rise to the level which either pushes the Federal Government to act and/or has an effect in future elections. This reality is very important because when Congress focuses all this attention on investigating and debating scandals it is in effect sucking a huge amount of air out of the nation's media coverage which leaves less media coverage for matters that really affect Americans lives. These scandal are a disaster not only for the transgressions involved but for how it paralysis our democracy!
Another thing that Washington and the media don't seem to get about these scandals is that the majority of American see through the spin, they can assess the true value of these scandals. The American people live in a competitive culture we face aggressive solicitation, we face in the work place other people trying to get out of work and others trying to take credit where it is not deserved we know the score on things! Washington and the media need to stop with the overblowing of these scandals!
On the Benghazi scandal, Hillary Clinton made a policy mistake just like Donald Rumsfield made policy mistakes in going into Iraq with too few troops which allowed Iraqi militant to get a foothold in that country and grow and taking his eye off of Afghanistan and the need to stay on the military offensive which allowed the Taliban to rebuild and wage a military campaign which has broken the spirit of many of the Afghan people for the Afghan Central government. These criticisms by Republicans on a cover-up on Benghazi that there was criminal wrongdoing is a disgrace the congressional committees have revealed the truth of what happened to American people it is nothing more than policy mistakes serious ones that will hurt a future presidential bid by Hillary Clinton but are by no means fatal to such a bid. Benghazi at the time of 9/11/12 was a great success for the Obama Administration, a terrible dictator was ousted democracy was taking root and America did not have to put any troops on the ground. The Obama Whitehouse didn't want to ruin this narrative by sending in Marines to the Benghazi consulate or vacating the consulate over security concerns. The Obama Administration wrongfully trusted Libyan government officials that they had the security matter in Libya under control when it was clear militia were in control in the area not government security forces. Hillary Clinton wrongfully completely delegated security matters for consulate and embassies to the security officials in the state department which either made her unaware or not involved in hearing the pleas of help for state department staff in Libya. Ms. Clinton did not have a good system for being made abreast of the subject matter of communication from U.S. ambassadors throughout the world which resulted in Ms. Clinton not receiving the cable from the Ambassador Stevens alerting of security worries about the consulate. It is clear good policy decisions on Benghazi would have called for adding more marine personnel to the consulate or evacuating it. As for the talking point this is all a red herring issue talking point by their very definition are a public relations tool the White House can shape them however they want that activities doesn't obstruct congressional committees from getting to the truth about the matter which it did. The lead committee should just issue a report calling for not only the State Department to assess the Security danger of consulates and embassies but also the CIA and the U.S. military and if any of those organizations deems the security conditions of such are inadequate they should report such to the majority and minority leader on the respective senate and house congressional committee overseeing the state department.
The IRS scandal is not some big public corruption matter involving the White House. Just think of how stupid such an allegation is that members of the White House would be so stupid to try to use the IRS to impede conservative political outside group. This is a scandal involving low level IRS staff trying to enforce an inherently problematic IRS provision which requires a political assessment on organizations and mid-level management bungling the handling of this inappropriate behavior of this low level staff. Unfortunately, the low level staff responsible for the unfair targeting and the mid-level management that didn't fulfill their duty to immediately stop the wrong all need to lose their job so as to restore the reputation of the IRS, their is no need for criminal prosecution if you want to send people to jail over this send the entire body of Congress to jail over the countries terrible campaign finance laws which result in elections in this country being about advertisement wars!
The AP telephone line warrant scandal is simply bad judgment by the people in the Attorney General's Office that requested the warrants. There was nothing wrong with the telephone warrant for individual reporters that wrote on the bomb on airplane story but the fishing expedition for a warrant on general AP telephone line was completely wrong. Why didn't the prosecutors identify all the government personnel that had the bomb in U.S. government hands information the list couldn't be that long assemble a list of their telephone numbers and get a warrant for the AP Lines just to check on these specific telephone numbers. This is another case where people aren't acting really bright do you think a bad guy who is disclosing classified information is going to use his own phone don't you folks ever watch movies the bad guys use pay phones. Congress should just pass a law here requiring judges for telephone warrants involving the press assess to make sure that there is a compelling need for the warrant and if there is such a need limit the scope of the warrant as narrowly as possible!
