WASHINGTON: A GREAT DISMAL SWAMP – UNWORTHY OF PRESERVATION

Note:  I delivered to the Renaissance Forum of Charlotte last evening; May 29, 2014.  The Forum is a group of business and civic leaders in the Charlotte area.

WASHINGTON: A GREAT DISMAL SWAMP – UNWORTHY OF PRESERVATION

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

When I cast my first vote for President as a registered Democrat in Indiana in 1960 I thought this is a waste of time, Jack Kennedy will never carry Indiana. When I cast my vote for President as a registered Republican in Maryland in 2000 I thought this is a waste of time George W. Bush will never carry Maryland.

Today the voters in only eight states determine who wins the White House. We can thank the Electoral College for that undemocratic situation. This is not simply a theoretical problem. It's real. Four times in our nation's history a man has assumed the Presidency while losing the popular vote, including, of course, Al Gore in 2000. Gore beat Bush by 500,000 votes. Absent the Electoral College, there was no need for the election to be decided by the Supreme Court.

The Electoral College was born as a compromise at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. While James Madison and others favored popular election of the President, the sticking point was slavery in the South.

The most recent and most serious attempt to pass a Constitutional amendment to abolish the College occurred after the 1968 election. In 1969 the House adopted a Resolution making the change with a bipartisan vote of 339-70. However, the proposal died in the Senate in 1970 as a result of a filibuster led by conservative southern senators and senators from small states.

The Electoral College in an undemocratic anachronism. It should be abolished.

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Here we want to talk about gerrymandering and the House Rules Committee. But I want to begin in what will sound like a strange place—Obamacare. It's obvious that the American people are deeply divided about the worth of Obamacare. And we won't have the final verdict for years to come. But this we know. The way in which President Obama and the Democrats on Capitol Hill handled Health Care Reform brought the Tea Party to power in the House of Representatives. In the tidal wave election in 2010 the GOP gained 63 seats and took power. Ever since the House has opposed the President at every turn. Their opposition has contributed mightily, though not singularly, to the gridlock in Washington.

But what is not widely understood is how the 2010 election took gerrymandering to a new level. In 2010 the GOP picked up over 720 seats in state legislatures. They took control of 20 state legislative chambers, and they control the entire legislature in 25 states. The 2010 election gave them more state legislators than at any time since 1928.

They have used their majorities to gerrymander a large number of congressional districts. North Carolina is a classic example. Prior to the 2010 election our Congressional delegation had 7 Democrats and 6 Republicans. After the 2012 election the GOP had 9 seats and the Democrats only 4. With the retirement of popular Democrat Mike McIntyre at the end of this year, it is likely the delegation will consist of 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats. And 2 of those Democrats will be African-Americans who will have won in Majority-Minority districts, districts which frequently give the GOP an additional advantage by packing so many minorities into a relatively few number of districts.

For the GOP Obamacare is the gift that never stops giving! The benefit that it bestowed on the GOP in the House in 2010 may be repeated in the Senate this November.

And then there is the House Rules Committee. It has existed since 1789, but it did not become a significant source of power until the end of the 19^th century. Today the Committee has 13 members, 9 Republicans hand picked by Speaker Boehner and 4 Democrats hand picked by Minority Leader Pelosi. The Rules Committee members are their Leader's puppets. The Rules Committee's power is vested in its authority to give every bill coming to the House floor a Rule that governs consideration of the bill by the full House. On key pieces of legislation the Rules Committee, under orders from the Speaker, gives the bill a Closed Rule. Such a rule prohibits the Minority Party from offering any amendments to the bill. Their only options are to try to send the bill back to the committee which drafted it or to defeat the bill on final passage. But those efforts ALWAYS lose—ALWAYS.

Want to reform the House? First, mobilize citizens in the 43 states where state legislatures draw congressional lines to insist that redistricting be done by Boards or Commissions as it is now done in seven states. Second, abolish the House Rules Committee. Third, replace the entire House Democratic and Republican leadership teams with fresh blood, using open, not secret votes.

THE SENATE

In the Senate, unlike the House, it's the Minority Party that abuses its authority to stifle the legislative process and produce deadlock. Well, not quite. Let's talk filibuster.

At the heart of this nation's democratic form of government is the notion that a majority is sufficient for action. The problem, of course, is that majorities are not necessarily wise, workable, or legitimate. All of us can think of majority votes that in retrospect we regret or would change. My favorite is the 61% to 38% trouncing that Richard Nixon gave George McGovern in 1972. A more recent example might be the 53% majority that Patrick Cannon received in Charlotte's Mayoral election last November.

The Senate filibuster is a mechanism designed to slow or thwart majority action. Used as intended and judiciously, it is a very good thing. Used otherwise, it becomes an impediment to good governance.

The Senate adopted rules in 1789 that created the filibuster. And the first filibuster did not occur until 1837. A filibuster could not be stopped until 1917 when, at the request of President Wilson, the Senate adopted the procedure known as cloture which could end a filibuster. Initially it took a two thirds vote of all elected senators to invoke cloture. Now it takes 60 votes.

In 1975 Senate Majority Whip, Robert Byrd (D-WVA), successfully put in place a new procedure to deal with the threat of filibusters. It was called dual-tracking. At first blush it seemed entirely reasonable. It enabled the Majority to set aside a bill being filibustered so that other legislative items could be considered and passed. But what Byrd and the Democrats did not foresee was how this system would increase enormously the number of bills threatened by filibusters. Instead of a few senators having to mount and sustain a real filibuster it became possible for a single senator to simply threaten a filibuster. When this happened the bill was shelved and dual-tracking allowed the Senate to move on to other items. Dual-tracking has created virtual filibusters—hundreds of them.

But it gets worse—a lot worse. Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV), has successfully changed the character and the behavior of the Senate—for the worse. It is not uncommon for Leader Reid to write major legislation in his own office. This circumvents the normal functioning of the Senate's legislative committees. It makes a mockery of legislative hearings and mark-up sessions. It denies senators who are expert in the substance of a particular bill from amending and perfecting it in committee. It precludes the bipartisan give and take that normally occurs between Democrats and Republicans as the legislative committees draft bills.

And then Majority Leader Reid employs a tactic known as “filling the tree”. Using his prerogative as Leader he offers a sufficient number of irrelevant amendments to the bill he's drafted for the sole purpose of blocking the Minority from offering their amendments.

And guess what that produces – Minority party filibusters against virtually all major legislation. And guess what that produces-- Gridlock

And Reid is not the only bad actor here. If the GOP takes control of the Senate next year, you can bet the ranch that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will use the same tactics to take revenge on the Democrats.

If you want to start the reform process in the Senate, end dual-tracking, and purge both Reid and McConnell using open, not secret votes.

THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH

For most of the 19^th century Federal employment was based on the Spoils System. But when a disillusioned federal office seeker, Charles Guiteau, shot and mortally wounded President Garfield in 1881 the tide turned in favor of Civil Service Reform. Two years later, President Arthur signed the Pendleton Act into law. How well is that system of reform working 130 years later? The evidence suggests that it no longer serves the nation well.

Prior to 9/11 the FBI and the CIA had information concerning the attack, but they didn't connect the dots. In April of 2002 Newsweek magazine reported on the al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia in January 2000 to plot terrorist activities. The CIA tracked two suspected terrorists to that meeting and then stood idly by as they returned to the United States to complete the planning for the 9/11 attack. The artificial division of labor between the FBI and the CIA respecting domestic and foreign operations and their hostility toward each contributed to the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Twelve years later the Boston Marathon bombing made clear that, while United States' intelligence operations against international terrorists had improved, it still left much to be desired. The report of the House Committee on Homeland Security highlights ways in which the FBI and the CIA had an opportunity to detain Tamerlan Tsarnaev upon his return from Dagestan Russia in 2012.

Although the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, warned both the CIA and the FBI about Tsarnaev in 2011, Tsarnaev was not detained upon his return from Russia in part because his name had been misspelled when it was entered into the computer system that would have triggered an alert when he returned. Nine months later the Tsarnaev brothers struck in Boston.

A 2010 report by the Department of Interior's Inspector General documented that federal regulators responsible for oversight of oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil. Then federal regulators traced over the pencil marks in pen prior to submitting the reports to the agency. The IG report also documented agency officials using illegal drugs and accepting gifts from companies they regulated between 2005-2007. Although the report does not provide any direct linkage between those practices and the explosion and resultant massive oil spill of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico in April of 2010, it does document a culture of inadequate industry oversight and grossly inappropriate behavior on the part of federal regulators.

On September 11, 2012 terrorists attacked the American diplomatic mission and nearby CIA facility in Benghazi. Four Americans were murdered. Pursuant to the attack the State Department established an Accountability Review Board to assess what had happened. The Panel's report delivered a sharp rebuke to State Department officials in Washington for ignoring repeated requests from Americans in Benghazi for safety upgrades and enhanced security for Benghazi. The unclassified version of the report stated, “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels resulted in a special mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place”.

Army Major Nidal Hassan was convicted in August of 2013 of the murder of thirteen and attempted murder of an additional 32 persons at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas. Hasan is an American citizen and a Muslim. He joined the Army in college, received his medical degree from the Federal Government's Uniformed University of the Health Sciences, and did his residency training at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Hasan was known to express extremist views that were brought to the attention of his superiors in the military. But instead of being discharged, Hasan was promoted from Captain to Major in 2009. In July of that year the military transferred him to Fort Hood. Four months later Hasan shouted, “Allahu Akbar”, and opened fire.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee found that the military failed to prevent the tragedy that occurred at Fort Hood. Their report states, “One of the officers opined that Hasan was permitted to remain in the service because of political correctness.” The Report found that Hasan received evaluations that flatly misstated his actual performance. They described him as a star officer and stated his “work on violent Islamic extremism would assist U.S. Counterterrorism efforts.” The officer who assigned Hasan to Fort Hood admitted to an officer there, “you're getting our worst.”

The Defense Department and federal law enforcement agencies deemed the massacre at Fort Hood to be an act of workplace violence, not terrorism. As such, the victims of the attack are not eligible for the Purple Heart.

On April 2, 2012, the General Services Administration's (GSA) Inspector General released its report concerning GSA's 2010 Western Regions Conference in Las Vegas. The IG report found that the cost of the conference was $822,751. It determined that GSA spending was wasteful, excessive, and in some cases impermissible.

At a hearing before the House Oversight Committee in April of 2012 Jeff Neely, the GSA official who planned the conference, refused to answer the Committee's questions. Instead he took the 5^th.

Dover Air Force Base is where the remains of most of our fallen service members come home. Their remains are processed through the Dover Mortuary. Between 2003-2008 whistle blowers at the Mortuary reported that body parts were lost, that body parts had been dumped in a landfill in Virginia and that a fused arm of a marine was sawed off in order to fit his remains in a casket.

The response of the Air Force was swift. It attempted to fire the whistle blowers. Fortunately the Office of the Special Counsel began an independent investigation that exposed the scandal.

The Dover mess is reminiscent of similar scandals at the now shuttered Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington and at Arlington National Cemetery. Although the problems at Walter Reed date back to 1999, it took an investigative report in 2007 by the Washington Post to expose neglect at the infamous Building 18 at Reed. It was a rat and cockroach infested facility that had extensive Black Mold, no heat, no water, and at which wounded soldiers had to “pull guard duty” at the entrance to ward off drug dealers.

At Arlington revelations surfaced in 2010 showing that 6600 graves were mislabeled, bodies were lost, cremated remains were unidentified, and over $5 million dollars was wasted in an unsuccessful attempt to computerized the cemetery's burial records.

In 2013 the Internal Revenue Service revealed that it had targeted conservative political groups that had applied for tax exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. From 2010 to 2012 the IRS effectively placed a hold on applications for 501(c)(4) status from groups with words like “tea party” in their name. As early as mid 2011 higher ranking IRS officials knew that groups were being targeted. In May of 2013 the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration released an audit confirming inappropriate IRS targeting conservative groups. Lois Lerner, who directed IRS unit on tax exempt organizations, was called before the House Oversight Committee in 2013 and 2014. Lerner refused to answer the Committee's question and instead invoked her 5^th amendment protection. From 2009-2011 Lerner received $521,000 in salary and $42,531 in bonuses. She retired in September of 2013.

In April of 2012 multiple Secret Service agents, military personnel, and as many as 20 Colombian prostitutes were exposed in a scandal at the Caribe Hotel in Cartagena, Colombia. The Agents were in Colombia preparing for the arrival of President Obama at the Summit of the Americas. The Secret Service has a strict no-fraternization policy. Clearly that policy was violated by the Secret Service in Cartagena.

In March of this year three Secret Service agents responsible for protecting the President in Amsterdam were sent home and placed on administrative leave after a night of drinking. They were in Amsterdam as part of a week long presidential trip to Europe and Saudi Arabia. One of the agents was found passed out in a hotel hallway. All three were members of the Secret Service's Counter Assault Team. The team is an elite unit that is the last line of defense in protecting the President. That's hard to do when you're unconscious.

The Veterans Administration is the second largest government agency. It's earned and deserves its reputation as the poster child of inefficiency and incompetence. Now it appears it has sunk to a new low—being complicit in the deaths of those it's obligated to serve.

The VA has been unable to process its enormous backlog of disability, pension and education claims. At its peak there were more than 600,000 backlogged claims. The VA does not have an electronic claims processing system. Over a half a billion dollars has been wasted in a failed attempt to computerize the claims process over the last four to five years.

And now the VA and Secretary Shinseki are in the cross hairs of another scandal. Allegations have been made by former VA employees that the Department has kept secret waiting lists in order to cover up the long delays in scheduling medical appointments for veterans. These allegations also raise the possibility that some veterans have died while waiting to be treated. The House Veterans Affairs Committee has recently voted to subpoena high ranking VA officials and documents related to the growing controversy. Secretary Shinseki has testified that he's, “mad as Hell.” The President's Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, has said, “the President is madder than Hell”.

And finally there is failed roll out of Healthcare.gov, the portal of entry for the President's signature legislative accomplishment, Obamacare. The roll out crashed and burned last October. The failure caught the President, HHS Secretary Sebelius, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services by surprise. If so, that puts governmental incompetence and arrogance on display for all to see.

In recent testimony before the Senate HHS Secretary designate, Sylvia Burwell, stated that HHS has already obligated $834 billion dollars for the website and that the President has requested an additional $200 billion for fiscal year 2015. That's substantially more than President Obama received for his Stimulus Program to deal with the recession.

The point of all of this is to suggest to you that the Executive Branch and the military are out of control. In fact they answer to no one, not the President, not the Cabinet Secretaries, not the Congress, and most importantly not to the American people. Even worse, all of those folks, including you and me, turn a blind eye to the gathering storm.

In a recent editorial the Washington Post said, “We have a President Obama problem. We have a Congress problem. We have a civil service in crisis”.

The mechanisms that policy makers and elected officials have used to manage effectively the Executive Branch and the military have failed. The Pendleton Act of 1883 doesn't work in the 21^st century. If you think otherwise, you're whistling Dixie.

And so we end where we began. Washington is a Great Dismal Swamp – unworthy of preservation.

Thank you, and I'll be glad to take your questions.

LeRoy Goldman

Renaissance Forum of Charlotte

May 29, 2014

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