The Multiracial Activist - www.multiracial.com

Welcome to Washington 
The Abolitionist Examiner - January 14, 2009
Alvaro Vargas Llosa

WASHINGTON—The capital of the United States is flooded with visitors for the presidential inauguration. Mention of this city sometimes evokes the wildest prejudices (including the ridiculous notion that America’s Founding Fathers were cannibals, courtesy of the “Masters of Horror” TV series!). So, what is life really like here?

Before I came to live in Washington, I was convinced that since more than one in four residents work for the government, the District of Columbia was a socialist republic. I am not entirely sure it is not, but my personal impression is that nothing makes people more cynical about government than working for it. I have never heard a libertarian speak about the futility of most government departments the way American and foreign officials often do in restaurants or bars on Capitol Hill, on K Street—the center of the lobbying industry—in Georgetown or even at the Fish Wharf.

This is the one silver lining in the gathering storm of increased government power caused by the current recession. In the wake of the collapse of collateralized debt obligations and credit-default swaps, the government basically nationalized part of the financial services industry. A running joke in Washington used to be that the separation of powers was not the balance between the three branches of government but between Wall Street, where securities were traded, and Washington, where laws were traded. Now both are traded in Washington. As the money supply and fiscal expenditure expand astronomically in response to the recession, the one mitigating circumstance is that Washingtonians, who will implement many of the policies, seem to me to be deep down mistrustful of their main industry—the government.

I also believed, before coming to D.C., that Washington was a cultural bubble. Actually, it is a cultural flux. Even fierce nationalists are open-minded in Washington: They trade with the rest of the world, interact with immigrants, dine in ethnic restaurants, watch foreign films and occasionally say words in European languages. If Joe the Plumber—the ambassador of conservative, small-town America—came to Washington, he would probably volunteer for the French Foreign Legion!

Another misconception about Washington is that it is secretive. We all know, of course, how much official information is leaked in this city. But until my first encounter with a CIA spook in a hotel across the Potomac, I had no idea that the real business of Washington’s intelligence community is boasting, not hiding. As for the presence of spies on every street corner, for most of us the CIA is a highway directional sign we pass on the way to shop at a suburban mall (when we could afford to shop, that is).

Washington’s layout—a reflection of Pierre L’Enfant’s Baroque style—also helps to dilute the effect of the bureaucracy on the local population. The open spaces, the long avenues and the grid-like order might be the result of central planning, but everything is spread out in such a way that one can breathe comfortably. George Washington’s choice of farmland and hills filled with trees bordering the Potomac proved prescient: D.C.’s rural-like aura helps mitigate its political gravitas.

Foreigners think of America as a country without history. The charge is absurd since the colonizers were themselves children of the ages. And Washington, of course, is infused with history. Here the past is not only an architectural presence in the form of monuments, or an industry that thrives on tourism and the memory of political and judicial decisions that shaped the nation. It is also a spirit. One is forever expecting to meet Thomas Jefferson around the corner, perhaps coming out of Bartleby’s used-book store on 29th Street NW.

Washington was the brainchild of the Founding Fathers, the greatest generation of political minds the world has known. The result of an intense negotiation between Northerners and Southerners, D.C. was always at the heart of the racial question. Slavery was abolished here earlier than in the Southern states, it welcomed freed slaves from the South, and desegregation happened here before it did in neighboring Virginia—although white flight was an unfortunate response.

Washington was also a theater of the civil rights conflict. At Ben’s Chili Bowl in the U Street corridor, where Barack Obama visited last weekend, one can hear people reminisce about the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

Let’s hope that the visitors who are flocking to D.C. for Obama’s inauguration take some of this culture and history away with them when they leave town.

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Alvaro Vargas Llosa
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Alvaro Vargas Llosa is Senior Fellow of The Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute. He is a native of Peru and received his B.S.C. in international history from the London School of Economics. His weekly column is syndicated worldwide by the Washington Post Writers Group, and his Independent Institute books include Lessons From the Poor: Triumph of the Entrepreneurial Spirit, The Che Guevara Myth: And the Future of Liberty, and Liberty for Latin America. 

Full Biography and Recent Publications

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(c) 2009, The Washington Post Writers Group

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New from Alvaro Vargas Llosa! The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty Nearly four decades after his death, the legend of Che Guevara has grown worldwide. In this new book, Alvaro Vargas Llosa separates myth from reality and shows that Che’s ideals re-hashed centralized power—long the major source of suffering and misery for the poor.Learn More »»

 

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• Strengthen the Authority of the Federal Trade Commission. “Obama will increase the Federal Trade Commission’s enforcement budget and will step up international cooperation to track down cyber-criminals so that U.S. law enforcement can better prevent and punish spam, spyware, telemarketing and phishing intrusions into the privacy of American homes and computers.”2
• Protect Sensitive Information. “Obama will also work to provide robust protection against misuses of particularly sensitive kinds of information, such as e-health records and location data that do not fit comfortably within sectorspecific privacy laws.”3
• Protect the Privacy of Personal Information Obtained by the Government.  “One of the things that the American people count on in their interactions with President-Elect Obama 2 Privacy and the New Administration any level of government is that if they have to disclose personal information, that it will stay personal and stay private.”4
• Respect the Confidentiality of Medical Information. As you said during the debates, only a patient “in consultation with their doctor, family, and clergy” should make difficult medical decisions.5
• Ensure that Businesses Protect Consumer Privacy. “Invasions of privacy should not be tolerated.” The Protect Taxpayers Privacy Act that you sponsored would prohibit the disclosure of tax return information by tax return preparers to third parties.6
• Ensure that Homeland Security Databases are Used Only for Limited Purposes. “To ensure that powerful databases containing information on Americans that are necessary tools in the fight against terrorism are not misused for other purposes, Barack Obama supports restrictions on how information may be used and technology safeguards to verify how the information has actually been used.”7
• Allow States to Innovate and Develop Legislative Solutions. As you recently explained to the state governors, “A single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory."8 It is vital that states have the freedom to respond to emerging privacy challenges and that weak national laws not preempt stronger state safeguards.

We are also inspired by your commitment to change the politics of Washington and to select people for public office who are not captive to private interest, to close “the revolving door between government and industry” and to reverse the “privileged access to inside information-all of which have led to policies that favor the few against the public interest.”9

There is an enormous opportunity to realize the benefits of new technology and to safeguard the values that make us free and sustain our democracy. We look forward to working with your administration and the leaders you select for the government agencies on these important challenges.

Sincerely,

Lillie Coney
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)

Gil Mileikowsky, MD
Alliance for Patient Safety

Laila Al-Qatami
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

Mary Alice Baish
American Association of Law Libraries

Lynne Bradley
American Library Association

Tom DeWeese
American Policy Center

Prudence S. Adler
Association of Research Libraries

Mark D. Agrast
Center for American Progress Action Fund

Chip Pitts
Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Jeff Chester
Center for Digital Democracy

J . Bradley Jansen
Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights

Doug Bandow
Citizen Outreach Project.

Linda Sherry
Consumer Action

Susan Grant
Consumer Federation of America

Pamela Banks
Consumers Union

Marcia Hofmann
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Sue Udry
Defending Dissent Foundation

Mike Stollenwerk
Fairfax County Privacy Council

Mark Cohen
Government Accountability Project

Jaimee Napp
Identity Theft Action Council of Nebraska

David Blau
Libertarian Party of Massachusetts

Michael D. Ostrolenk
Liberty Coalition

James Landrith
The Multiracial Activist

Dr. Deborah Peel
Patient Privacy Rights

Melissa Ngo
Privacy Lives

Remar Sutton
Privacy Rights Now Coalition

Footnotes:

1 Barack Obama, “Change We Can Believe In: Technology,”
http://web.archive.org/web/20080222011931/http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

2 Id.

3 Id.

4 Obama urges inquiry into passport snooping, CNN (March 21, 2008),
http://us.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/21/obama.passport/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

5 Obama on Constitutional Right to Privacy, http://epic.org/redirect/110708_Obama_CNN_DebatePrivacy.html

6 Senator Obama, sponsor, 109th Congress, S. 2494, the Protect Taxpayer Privacy Act, available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.02494:

7 Id., note 1 supra

8 President-elect Obama, statement, President-elect Obama and governors tackle the economy, available at http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/president_elect_obama_and_governors_tackle_the_economy/

9 Id., note 1 supra.

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December 08, 2008

An Open Letter to the United States Congress:

 Demand Real Bailout Transparency!

Dear Member of Congress:

We, the undersigned advocates for open and accountable government, are writing to express our deep concern that the executive branch has provided no transparency into how taxpayer money is being spent and the decision-making process behind the financial bailout initiatives. We are also concerned that Congress has to date provided little oversight of these initiatives.

We applaud your decision to turn down the Treasury Department's request for a blank check, but nearly half of the $700 billion fund for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, has already been distributed with very little transparency and almost no oversight. Recently, the public learned that an additional $800 billion is being spent by the Federal Reserve, which as an independent entity does not need congressional approval to lend money to banks or, in "unusual and exigent circumstances," to other financial institutions. To date, the cumulative commitment of taxpayer dollars to financial rescue initiatives is estimated to be $8.5 trillion.

We urge you to use your oversight authority to make the financial bailout more accountable to the American public, and your legislative authority to make it more transparent. We ask that you work with Congressional leadership to ensure that there is effective legislative oversight over the entire program.

Any credible solution to the economic crisis must be grounded in transparency and to ensure full accountability must include best practice whistleblower protection for public and private employees connected to the bailout. As suggested in a recent opinion piece in Legal Times, "the best way to protect the interests of taxpayers is by ensuring that what is done is fully disclosed to the public." Currently, however, the Department of the Treasury has been slow to notify the public of bailout money dispersals and has neglected to require recipients of bailout money to disclose how the money is used. We request that you direct that all reports mandated by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 be made publicly available in a usable format, whether the law currently specifies public disclosure or not.

Under public disclosure laws, citizens can only gain access to information actually collected by the government. Therefore, public accountability necessitates that you enact changes in law to require the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and any other government entities involved in the bailout, to begin collecting information on certain aspects of how bailout aid is spent by recipients, including:

• all lobbying/business contracts for firms benefitting from bailout aid;
• all lobbying/business contract details for firms servicing bailout transactions; and
• any securities or other instruments used as collateral for loans through the Federal Reserve.

We urge that Treasury and the Federal Reserve, and any other government entities involved in the bailout, be required to make such information available to the public in a usable format.

Bipartisan language to improve transparency and strengthen oversight of the bailout already exists. We urge that, as Treasury has modified its strategy away from primarily purchasing troubled assets, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIG-TARP) be directed to conduct oversight on areas of the Treasury's program not related to the purchase of troubled assets and that you grant the SIG-TARP the authority to set up an office and hire staff. Legislation by Senators McCaskill and Grassley would expand the SIG-TARP's authority to conduct oversight of the Treasury Department’s actions and expedite its staffing process.

Additionally, the Accountability for Economic Rescue Assistance Act, introduced by Senators Feinstein and Snowe, would bring some welcome improvements to transparency and accountability in the bailout by banning the use of bailout money for lobbying and political contributions and requiring firms receiving bailout money provide publicly-available detailed reports outlining how federal funds have been used. The bill would also require the establishment of corporate governance standards to ensure that firms do not waste taxpayer money on lavish expenditures and penalties for firms that violate those standards.

We ask that you build on these existing proposals to strengthen oversight and require greater transparency to enact legislation in the taxpayer's interest, including best practice whistleblower protection for public and private employees connected with the bailout.

The public deserves vigorous, timely, and easily-accessible disclosure of all details surrounding any government decisions regarding financial market problems. We ask that you honor this by making sure that robust and effective oversight occurs and that all relevant records are collected and publicly available.

Sincerely*,

Patrice McDermott
OpenTheGovernment.org

Duane Parde
National Taxpayers Union

Mary Alice Baish
American Association of Law Libraries

David A Keene
American Conservative Union

Lynne Bradley
American Library Association

Tom DeWeese
American Policy Center

Tim Phillips
Americans for Prosperity

Grover Norquist
Americans for Tax Reform

Timothy Wise
Arlington County (VA) Taxpayers Association

Prudence S. Adler
Association of Research Libraries

Roy H. Stewart
Bedford Taxpayers Association
Granite State Taxpayers

Chip Pitts
Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Terry Francke
Californians Aware

Terrence Scanlon
Capital Research Center

J. Bradley Jansen
Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights

Sandra Fabry
Center for Fiscal Accountability

Timothy H. Lee
Center for Individual Freedom

Mark R. Spengler
Center for Law and Social Strategy

Barbara Anderson
Citizens for Limited Taxation

Anne Weismann
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Doug Bandow
Citizen Outreach Project

Bob Edgar
Common Cause

Matthew J. Brouillette
Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives

Thomas Schatz
Council for Citizens Against Government Waste

Sue Udry
Defending Dissent Foundation

John Richard
Essential Information

Amber Gunn
Evergreen Freedom Foundation

John Hallman
Florida Taxpayers Union

Conrad Martin
Fund for Constitutional Government

Mark Cohen
Government Accountability Project

Malia Zimmerman
Hawaii Reporter

Gary Wolfram
Hillsdale College

Jon Coupal
Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (CA)

John Tillman
Illinois Policy Institute

Jim Murtagh, MD
International Association of Whistleblowers

Karl Peterjohn
Kansas Taxpayers Network

Andrew Davis
Libertarian National Committee

David A. Brady
Libertarian Party of Illinois

T. Lee Horne III
Libertarian Party of Louisiana

Patrick Dixon
Libertarian Party of Texas

Michael D. Ostrolenk
Liberty Coalition

Mark R. Caramanica
Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project

Richard Falknor
Maryland Center-Right Coalition

Ellen Smith
Mine Safety and Health News

Howie Morgan
Mississippi Forward

James Landrith
The Multiracial Activist

Stephen M. Kohn
National Whistleblower Center

Charles N. Davis. Ph.D.
National Freedom of Information Coalition

Tom Blanton
National Security Archive

Doug Kagan
Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom

Jerry Cantrell
New Jersey Taxpayers Association

Brandon Dutcher
Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs

Sean Moulton
OMB Watch

Larry Siems
PEN American Center

Susan Maret
Progressive Librarians Guild

Danielle Brian
Project on Government Oversight

David Arkush
Public Citizen

Don Racheter
Public Interest Institute

John Judge
Real Democracy Project

Lucy A. Dalglish
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

William Westmiller
Republican Liberty Caucus

Paul Gessing
Rio Grande Foundation

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute

John Tsarpalas
Sam Adams Alliance

Samuel M. Slom
Small Business Hawaii

Dave Aeikens
Society of Professional Journalists

Douglas Newcomb, CAE
Special Libraries Association

Frances Brigham Johnson
Strategic Planning Initiatives

Ellen Miller
Sunlight Foundation

John K. Roberts
Taxpayers Union of Louisiana

Ben Cunningham
Tennessee Tax Revolt

Dane von Breichenruchardt
U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation

M. Royce Van Tassell
Utah Taxpayers Association

Toby Nixon
Washington Coalition for Open Government

Bill Will
Washington Newspaper Publishers Association

Rose Bogaert
Wayne County (MI) Taxpayers Association

Rafael DeGennaro
WhyCongressCantRead.com

*Organizations listed for identification purposes only

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Obama’s Challenges Are Unprecedented in U.S. History
December 2008/January 2009 - The Multiracial Activist
Ivan Eland

Few incoming presidents have been left by their predecessors with as many challenges as Barack Obama. In fact, with the daunting terrain facing the incoming president, one wonders why Obama and John McCain even wanted the office.

Other presidents facing an uphill task when taking office were:

—George Washington, who had to hold the 13 new states together long enough to get the republic firmly established.

—Martin Van Buren, who had to deal with the economic panic of 1837, which originated from the inflationary and excessive monetary and credit expansion by his predecessor Andrew Jackson.

—Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant, who faced a massive civil war and its aftermath caused, in part, by the policies of their predecessors, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan.

—Grover Cleveland, who faced the second worst depression in U.S. history caused by the high tariffs, profligate federal spending, and excessive monetary expansion of his predecessor, Benjamin Harrison.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt, who inherited the nation’s worst depression from Herbert Hoover.

—Gerald Ford, who inherited a nation disillusioned by the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal under the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations.

Of course, one might predict that the American people and media, as well as historians, might give Obama a break because he inherited such a mess from Bush. Such a benevolent public reaction occurred after FDR inherited a severe economic downturn from Herbert Hoover and proceeded to prolong it into an extended depression. Similarly, history has treated Lincoln excessively well for provoking a massive civil conflict—which killed more than 600,000 Americans and is still the worst U.S. war, but which provided only nominal freedom for African-Americans and might have been avoided by earlier offering the South compensated emancipation of slaves. On the other hand, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant haven’t fared as well, despite their efforts to clean up the Herculean mess left by Pierce, Buchanan, and Lincoln.

The episode in U.S. history most similar to the present circumstances may be Gerald Ford’s inheritance of stagflation (high unemployment plus inflation) and the aftermath of the Vietnam debacle from LBJ and Nixon. In one sense, Obama has it worse because he is inheriting two ongoing military quagmires, not just the national malaise caused by a lost brushfire war, and faces a financial meltdown that is worse than mere stagflation. On the other hand, Obama isn’t inheriting the after effects of a scandal that undermined the Constitution.

Economically, the episodes most similar to the present appear to be the severe downturns that Van Buren and Cleveland inherited from their predecessors. Astutely, both of these men—two of the best presidents in U.S. history—relied on tight money policies and free market principles to let wages and prices go down in order to reestablish equilibrium in the market. George W. Bush has aggravated the current economic crisis by bailing out and partially nationalizing financial institutions, artificially pumping up credit, and thus aggravating the inevitable and necessary market correction. Herbert Hoover and FDR enacted similar policies to artificially pump up the economy, only to convert a run-of-the-mill recession into the Great Depression. Unfortunately, it seems that Obama will also join Bush’s big government response to the crisis.

Historically, however, if the government doesn’t commit massive blunders in interventionist economic policy (on the scale of Hoover and FDR), the U.S. economy is usually resilient and will eventually right itself; more challenging for Obama may be ending the two overseas military bogs. Obama seems to have better inclinations toward the Iraq war than Bush. At least, he has pledged to withdraw more troops faster from Iraq than his predecessor. He may, however, transfer them to Afghanistan—the other nation-building and Islamist-rallying quagmire. Obama would do better to also end this conflict and concentrate on neutralizing the al Qaeda leadership, which is likely to be in Pakistan.

When entering office, no president has ever faced two losing wars and a severe economic meltdown, which also undermines the ability to successfully turn the wars around. Thus, the only solution to save badly needed funds and take the fire out of the anti-U.S. Islamist blowback is a rapid U.S. withdrawal from both countries. The nation is in peril; only time will tell if Obama can rise to the challenge.

New from Ivan Eland! THE EMPIRE HAS NO CLOTHES: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed (Updated Edition) Most Americans don’t think of their government as an empire, but in fact the United States has been steadily expanding its control of overseas territories since the turn of the twentieth century. In The Empire Has No Clothes, Ivan Eland, a leading expert on U.S. defense policy and national security, examines American military interventions around the world from the Spanish-American War to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Learn More »»

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