The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

5 Steps to Curing Election Dysfunction

Recently, while I waited at a stop light, a motorist pulled up next to me and yelled into my open window, "YOUR CANDIDATE SUCKS!" He was responding to a bumper sticker my daughter had put on our car for the presidential candidate she supports. Did he think he was persuasive? Did he think I’d change my mind because he was yelling at me?

There seems to be a lot of yelling at each other lately.

People on both ends of the political spectrum are loudly making their opinions known on their Facebook pages, in their Twitter feeds, and even stopped in traffic. And they’re doing so without always checking the so-called facts that they’re espousing, or listening to what the other “side” has to say.

They are spurred on by partisans on both sides and by many in the media who demonize the other side in order to attract more followers, more contributions, higher ratings—entities whose goal is not to fix problems or to set facts straight, but to simply further their own interests.

All this anger and unwillingness to listen currently typical of the American public is also now typical in Congress. Gridlock and paralysis are the new norm as the members of Congress stick blindly to their party lines, rather than acting in the best interest of our nation.

Although this jarring political discourse isn’t civil, constructive, or even particularly informed, there is a potential upside to the mayhem we are living through.

It shows that the American people care again.

Not too long ago, the biggest problem with engaging the citizenry was apathy. Our challenge is no longer to try to wake the sleeping giant. Now our challenge is to convert the energy currently expended hurling epithets at the other side into an enthusiasm for fixing the problems being roared about.

The Parties Versus the People: An Interview with Mickey Edwards

 

Former U.S. Rep. Mickey Edwards.

The Parties Versus the People by Mickey Edwards. Available now from Yale Press.

By ANNA MEIER

With a dismal record of passing legislation, perpetuated by hyper-partisan gridlock, the 112^th Congress has been called the “worst Congress ever.” Some prefer to stop at “dysfunctional,” but whichever nickname you choose, there’s something seriously off about Congress these days.  Bills are proposed with the goal of advancing partisan interests, and not necessarily the public’s. Debates have deginerated into bitter partisan bickering, not thoughtful consideration of public policy.

In such an environment, it’s natural to search for someone to blame. But according to former Congressman Mickey Edwards, who spent many years as a member of the Republican leadership, the problem in Congress isn’t its members—it’s the system itself.

Fortunately, it’s not beyond repair. In his new book, The Parties Versus the People: How to Turn Democrats and Republicans into Americans, Edwards, who served 16 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Oklahoma's 5th Congressional District, lays out the features of the American political order that make it easy for parties to seek power over the public interest.

In order to combat cronyism and get Congress back on track, he proposes sweeping changes to our political system, from ending party-controlled primaries to eliminating corporate donations to candidates. We caught up with Edwards to talk about provoking accountability, moving beyond labels, and encouraging a more effective Congress.

POGO: You've said that partisanship, not polarization, is to blame for dysfunction in and frustration with government today. Can you explain the difference?

Mickey Edwards: Polarization is a natural part of the democratic process; there are more than 300 million of us and a lot of different viewpoints, some of them very strongly held.  A democracy depends on a vigorous exchange between those alternative visions.  Some of the greatest advances in our history have come not from the political center but from the “poles,” including the civil rights movement and the women’s movement, both of which were radical reversals of long-held practices and beliefs.

Partisanship, on the other hand, is the taking of political positions that seem advantageous to one’s political club. Today, neither Democrats nor Republicans are open to proposals—no matter what their merits—that emanate from a member of the other party. The democratic process requires a willingness to engage honestly in an exchange of views, with an openness to considering an opponent’s perspective; partisanship cuts off that exchange and proceeds solely from a cold political calculus that depends on hurting the other side in order to gain an advantage in the next election. The two terms—polarization and partisanship—are often confused, but they are very different.

Citizens United Hearing: A Conversation about Democracy and Transparency

By MARY PENG

The Project On Government Oversight has had a longtime interest in more transparency about federal contractors, including their influence through campaign spending and lobbying. Since the 2010 Citizens’ United vs. FEC ruling, that problem has only worsened.

The reason is that the ruling now allows federal contractors, along with other corporations and unions, to influence elections with unlimited campaign spending and not nearly enough disclosure.    

On July 24, more than 400 people attended a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on responses to Citizens United and the rise of Super PACs.  Subcommittee members and guest panelists called for greater inclusion of average American citizens in the campaign financing system and more disclosure of campaign spending.

The participating senators, all of whom were Democrats, lamented that the system is increasingly becoming the lone stage of wealthy individuals and corporations.

“Half of all super PAC money being spent in presidential elections [come] from 22 people, millionaires and billionaires buying their way in,” said subcommittee chairman Dick Durbin (D- Ill.) in his opening remarks. “Can we still proclaim to be the world’s model for free elections with open debates when we allow 22 wealthy individuals to control the terms of that debate and silence the voices of others?”

Egyptian Students Who Participated in Twitter Revolution Visit POGO

By DANA LIEBELSON

Earlier this week, when POGO asked a group of visiting college students if any of them ran their own political blogs, half put their hands up. When the students were asked if they used Facebook and Twitter for political activism, they all raised their hands.  

As you might have guessed, these were not your average twenty-somethings—they were young Egyptians who participated in and witnessed the so-called ‘Twitter Revolution’ in Egypt. They visited POGO as part of a week-long study tour through the U.S. organized by Internews Network.

With the help of a real-time translator, POGO staff spoke to the students—most of whom are aspiring journalists—about blogging, accountability, and the role of independent watchdogs in the democratic process.

On Corruption: 5 Questions with Lawrence Lessig

POGO Senior Writer Beth Schulman recently caught up with Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig to talk about the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements, campaign finance, and the nature of corruption. Lessig is the author of Republic, Lost, one of the books on our list of 10 books that matter for 2011. 

POGO: It seems like Occupy and Tea Party demonstrators confirm your sense that there is trans-partisan outrage the influence of money in politics. Can these movements find common ground in this issue?

Lessig: I do think they will get it, if it is pressed in the right way. Not sure yet what way is that right way, but I am struggling with working it out. 

POGO: Between the influx of campaign cash to Super Committee members and renewed focus on the revolving door issue, a lot of people may have become cynical about the role of money in politics. Can we suspend this cynicism enough to actually solve the problem?

Lessig: Only if it mixes MORE with LESS. We need limits on independent expenditures to be sure. But we also need public funding. If we got both (in the right form), the revolving door would not be as big of an issue. 

POGO: Do you believe that campaign finance reform could address the problem of contractors being “too big too fail”? It often seems like contractors—particularly those under the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security—can count on a steady stream of government deals no matter how much misconduct surrounds their work.

FOIA Friday: Justice Dept. Denies FOIA Request for Awlaki Assassination Memo

FOIA FRIDAY

This week's document: Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel's response to POGO's FOIA request for Awlaki assassination memo.  Document dates: October 31, 2011 Every Friday, POGO will strive to make one document available that we or others have obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), especially documents that have not previously been posted online. Some of these documents will be more important than others, some may only be of historical interest— although relevance is in the eye of the beholder. POGO is doing this to highlight the importance of open government and FOIA throughout the year.

By NICK SCHWELLENBACH

In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by POGO, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) "neither confirms nor denies the existence of the" OLC memo that describes the legal justification for its killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen.

The U.S. government alleges that Awlaki was a "regional commander" with al Qaeda.

As I wrote earlier, whether or not you support the targeted killing of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen, you should at least support the redacted release of the OLC memo. Americans deserve to know under what circumstances the executive branch believes it is justified in killing citizens without the normal constitutional protection of due process.

As John B. Bellinger III, former legal adviser to the State Department in the Bush administration, told The Washington Post, “I do think it would be important for domestic audiences and international audiences for the administration to explain how the targeting and killing of an American complies with applicable constitutional standards.”

New York Times reporter Charlie Savage received the same response to his FOIA request. The Government Accountability Project (GAP) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) requested the OLC memo through FOIA as well and will presumably, if they haven’t already, get the same response as well.

POGO received a nearly identical response to its request for a mandatory declassification review (MDR) of the OLC memo as well. I plan to appeal the OLC’s denial of both the FOIA and MDR requests.

Nick Schwellenbach is POGO's Director of Investigations.

Follow @schwellenbach

Awlaki Memo: The Law Should Not Be Secret

By NICK SCHWELLENBACH

Whether or not you support the targeted killing of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, a U.S. citizen, you should support at least the redacted release of the Justice Department memo that laid out the legal justification for killing Awlaki. Americans deserve to know under what circumstances the Executive Branch believes it is justified in killing citizens without the normal Constitutional protection of due process.

This is why POGO filed both Freedom of Information Act and Mandatory Declassification Review requests for the memo this morning (I have no doubt many others have as well).

The OLC usually makes its memos interpreting law publicly available, but has classified this and several other memos related to national security.

Elizabeth Goitein, a co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, laid out two key reasons why the memo should be released:

The withholding of the legal basis for targeting al-Awlaki is inappropriate for two reasons. First, the world already knows that the U.S. killed al-Awlaki; how could it possibly harm national security to disclose why the Justice Department believes the killing was legal? Second, unless rejected by the President or superseded by a court ruling, OLC’s [Office of Legal Counsel] legal interpretations are binding on the executive branch. Undisclosed OLC opinions are therefore a kind of “secret law,” something that has no place in a democracy.

Goitein was a staffer for former Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and co-wrote the Brennan Center’s new report, Reducing Overclassification Through Accountability.

Over the weekend, The New York Times’s Charlie Savage revealed many details about the Awlaki memo. According to Savage’s reporting, the roughly 50-page memo, completed last year, provided the justification for killing Awlaki “despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis.” Savage added that “the memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki’s case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat.”

The Washington Post’s editorial page, while disagreeing that killing Awlaki was illegal, recently argued that the memo should be made public. According to the Post, “Releasing the OLC opinion would shed light on the issues that touch on such a strike, including how the administration balanced the due-process rights of U.S. citizens with Mr. Awlaki’s decision to become a belligerent.”

This isn’t the first time the Justice Department’s OLC has come under fire for keeping secret its interpretation of laws. For several years, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and other Senators have been calling for an end to secret interpretations of surveillance laws.

(h/t Fabius Maximus for quoting Goitein)

Nick Schwellenbach is POGO’s Director of Investigations.

Follow @schwellenbach

Forget Bipartisan, Think Transpartisan

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

When most people think of government compromise, they think of a bill with bipartisan support or bipartisan talks. Michael Ostrolenk thinks a better ideal is transpartisanism. From Firedoglake:

Transpartisan, as Michael says, means coming together to fight for shared principles in discrete alliances with people you might otherwise disagree with on other issues.

Transpartisanism is the opposite of tribalism.  Tribalism involves appealing to people’s cultural biases to keep them walled off in armed camps, fighting each other so they don’t notice that elites are robbing them blind.

There are lots of opposing ideas and fights in politics, but there are plenty of causes that we can all support. The transpartisan folks hope that a broad coalition of both politicians and activists can set aside their differences to support these causes and get a lot done in Congress. 

Check out the above video to watch Michael discuss the idea of transpartisanism, and the role it played in the passage of the Audit the Fed bill.

Andre Francisco is a POGO communications associate.

Follow @andrefrancisco

Senate Committee Shuts Public Out of the Debate Over Massive Defense Bill

By ROHAIL PREMJEE

The Senate Armed Services Committee's (SASC's) markup of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) came to a close earlier this month. But although the American public can now see the end result of the deliberations, we'll never quite be sure how exactly the Committee arrived at the final bill.

That's because SASC Members voted by a count of 17 to 9 to keep meetings for the full committee markup of the bill closed to the public--but this was after all subcommittees except for one had already conducted their markups in secret. The Committee has traditionally closed its negotiations on the defense budget, holding that an open meeting might run the risk of disclosing classified information. As Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), a Member on the Committee, has argued, the arguments against having open sessions are bogus.

For starters, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), which considers its own version of the bill, holds its meetings on the NDAA in a session fully open to the public and press. In fact, the new leadership of HASC should be commended for furthering openness by making the defense budget bill immediately available for the first time. But moreover, if the House has seen fit to hold its meetings in public since the '80s, why can’t the Senate? As McCaskill points out, the Committee can easily move into private meetings for any discussion regarding classified material.

DOD IG Responds to Sen. Grassley's Report Card

By NICK SCHWELLENBACH

There has been a series of volleys back and forth between the Department of Defense Inspector General Gordon Heddell and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) over how well the DOD IG has been conducting audits, if it has been choosing the right things to audit, and whether those audits have been timely. Heddell has acknowledged problems in his office, but has also pushed back against some of Grassley's criticisms. In a letter from last week, he again pushed back against Grassley's report card issued two weeks ago, which rates most of the IG's fiscal year 2010 audit reports.

Heddell wrote in a letter dated June 16, 2011:

In that spirit of candor, I want to note my concern that the Report Card prepared by your staff does not give credit to many of the outstanding efforts and achievements that have been accomplished not only by the auditors in my office, but also by the investigators dedicated to combating waste, fraud, and abuse.

Ridenhour Prizes Honor Courageous Truth Tellers

By Joe Newman

Thomas Drake, a life-long military man and federal employee, stands accused of betraying his country. His crime? He blew the whistle through proper government channels on massive fraud, waste and abuse within the National Security Agency.

Wendell Potter had a high-paying job as a spokesman in the insurance industry when he had an epiphany—our health care system, the one he was a part of, was allowing corporate America to get away with murder. He has since become an outspoken critic of the insurance industry.

For their courage to speak truth to power, Drake and Potter, along with former Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold and the team that produced the documentary Budrus, were honored Wednesday afternoon at the 8th annual Ridenhour Prizes in Washington, D.C.

New Report Highlights Need For U.S. Anti-Corruption Improvements

Global Integrity, a non-profit that tracks governance and corruption trends in countries throughout the world, has released its latest annual Global Integrity Report. (Full disclosure: I worked for Global Integrity before joining POGO, which provided advice and assistance during the research phase of this year’s report.)

The 2009 Global Integrity Report analyzed 35 countries including the United States. The big finding regarding the U.S. is that, despite a change in Presidential administration, there has been very little change in steps being taken to curb corruption at the national level in regard to the influence of special-interest money in politics.

“Despite having many world-class anti-corruption safeguards in place, such as a robust and independent media and civil society organizations,” reports Global Integrity, “the United States continues to struggle with controlling the corrupting influence of money in politics.” The White House commented on Global Integrity’s findings today in The Hill.

While the report notes the positive steps President Obama has taken to improve transparency and accountability, such as a commitment to better implementation of the Freedom of Information Act and improved public access to government data via the Open Government Directive, the continued failure to strengthen campaign finance controls will act as a “glass ceiling” preventing the U.S. from leaving the B-grade “Strong” performance tier in which it has been stuck since Global Integrity started conducting these assessments and entering the rarified air of the A-grade “Very Strong” tier. (Then again, none of the 100-plus countries Global Integrity has analyzed since 2004 has ever reached the “Very Strong” tier, so consistently finishing among the silver medalists is not exactly a dishonor.)

Last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision loosening restrictions on corporate and union spending in elections will make this task even more challenging. In addition, the report also found improvements are needed in such areas as whistleblower protections and funding inspectors general offices — two areas of particular interest to POGO. But the U.S.’s relatively high score for the strength of its civil society organizations means that watchdog groups like POGO will continue to play a role in making sure these improvements happen.

-- Neil Gordon

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/katphotos/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0