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 19th
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 19th
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 5th.
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 5th 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 21st 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
the "Shadow" always welcome comments. Please contact me at:
EmailMe
