So the news is still full of bad stuff, but I detect a change in people’s reactions to the bad stuff, in that calls for transparency and accountability keep mounting.

Here are a few of the current stories that prop up hope that there is a substantive shift going on, and not just in this country.

Amrit Singh writes today on Huffington Post how the U.S. may soon face some measure of accountability for the secret “extraordinary rendition” program and torture undertaken post-9/11.  She tells a bit of the story of Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen whom the CIA and Macedonian government detained and tortured. El Masri tried to obtain justice through the U.S. courts, but the government got his case dismissed by invoking “state secrets privilege.” El-Masri  has now taken his case to the European Court of Human Rights. While the U.S. is outside the jurisdiction of the ECHR, the court will need to determine Macedonia’s liability, and to do that, it will need to determine the role of the U.S. and form a judgment of the actions of the U.S.

On the same issue, the UK is launching a government inquiry into its role in rendition and torture. Many are hoping it will be done in such a way as to provide a model for how other governments should investigate their roles, as well.  All of that is good for transparency; I’ll hope the inquiries result in recommendations for, and actions to effect, accountability as well.  Otherwise in the UK, there’s been a coming clean about Bloody Sunday, that day in 1972 when British troops slaughtered 13 Northern Ireland demonstrators. A 12 year investigation determined that British soldiers were wholly to blame, and that determination has helped a lot of families heal some very old wounds.

The Roman Catholic Church, which has verbally made some progress in moving toward transparency and accountability in its multinational pedophile priest scandal, is also being challenged about financial transparency and accountability in Germany.  SpiegelOnline carries this report about enormous assets controlled by bishops, though just how much can’t be determined.  The bishops have no requirement to make full financial disclosure to the German government, nor do they even let the faithful in their own diocese know how much and what kinds of wealth they control.  And while there are clear indications that the amounts are, in most dioceses, quite large, and some of the bishops enjoy a lavish lifestyle, the rank and file of the church are going through major cutbacks.  So again, more of people calling for transparency and accountability.

The BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill cataclysm: good heavens, where to start?  Fortunately, the news is full of stories demanding transparency and especially accountability within and from BP.  Even the numbers of right wing politicians who’ve sought to protect BP is dwindling, as the catastrophe grows ever larger.  With all the different articles out there I’ll restrain myself and link only to this one.

May turning of the tide toward transparency and accountability become a great sea change, even to becoming its own Age.  Coming soon: a report on efforts to achieve more transparency and accountability in Vermont.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

Justice was something approximating timely in the aftermath of the flawed case against former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. There have been many people of no small journalistic, political, and judicial weight who have documented and assessed prosecutorial misconduct in Gov. Siegelman’s case, and called for Justice to do something about it.

But not a peep from Justice.

I’ve been on the list to get email updates on the Siegelman case for a long time, and the latest one has that one little piece of information that starts dispersing the fog around the matter of Justice’s inaction: the involvement of someone very close to Attorney General Eric Holder.

Summarizing the content of the Siegelman email, and the other articles to which it links, would’ve been pretty much like re-inventing the wheel, so I asked Gov. Siegelman if I could reproduce it in its entirety.  The answer was yes, so here it is.

Tamarah Grimes…had come forward about misconduct in the Siegelman prosecution and wound up losing her job. A second, unnamed whistleblower fears a similar fate, or worse, if he comes forward. Dear Deborah, Scott Horton, Legal Affairs writer for Harper’s Magazine, exposes further misconduct in the Siegelman case quoting one member of the prosecution as saying that he would not come forward to expose government misconduct because: –”you don’t understand, these people would kill me if they have to to keep the lid on this.” And Main Justice? “They’d be happy to learn that I was dead.” Horton says the person responsible for subverting justice is David Margolas, Deputy Attorney General and the right hand man to Eric Holder. (Who is David Margolas? See Scott Horton’s speech below, 4th page, 3rd full paragraph.) Please read this article and Horton’s speech linked in The Legal Schnauzer. It is chilling! ……………………………………………………………………………………………… INSIDER ON SIEGELMAN PROSECUTION TEAM FEARS FOR HIS LIFE A member of the team that prosecuted former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman says he witnessed rampant misconduct in the case but is afraid to come forward out of fear for his life. Scott Horton, legal-affairs contributor for Harper’s Magazine, made the revelation in a speech last week to the Rotary Club of New York and the American Constitution Society. Horton says that one Justice Department whistleblower–Tamarah Grimes, of Montgomery–had come forward about misconduct in the Siegelman prosecution and wound up losing her job. A second, unnamed whistleblower fears a similar fate, or worse, if he comes forward. Horton says he has interviewed both prosecution insiders, and they corroborate statements by key witness Nick Bailey that he was heavily coached and threatened with being outed as a homosexual. Says Horton: As I note, two members of the prosecution team were appalled by the misconduct that drove the case against Siegelman. One of them filed internal complaints inside the Justice Department. The result? Her name is Tamara Grimes. She was persecuted, hounded, and finally dismissed from her position–in direct violation of the federal whistleblower protection statute. And what about the second member of the team? (He) tells me he will not step forward because he knows he would face the same fate. He even indicated the fear of a mob type–”you don’t understand, these people would kill me if they have to to keep the lid on this.” And Main Justice? “They’d be happy to learn that I was dead.” Horton goes on to summarize the Justice Department’s disgraceful handling of the Siegelman case: So today, even though the Siegelman case has been torn to shreds in the public and 104 state attorneys general, led by Grant Woods, the national co-chair of the McCain for President campaign, have formally complained about the Justice Department’s gross and abusive handling the case, the Justice Department admits no wrong. It’s even issued a series of brazenly false public statements in an attempt to cover its tracks. The Siegelman prosecution hardly is an isolated instance of abuse. Horton discusses other justice-related matters, and the full speech can be viewed here.

Twitter and blogs and cable pundits have been afire with commenting on Rep. Joe Wilson‘s lying publicly, brazenly and loudly when he shouted “You lie!” at President Obama during Wednesday night’s speech. Mainstream Republicans are understandably embarrassed by his actions.  Except for far right wingnuts, the criticism has been consistent and deserved.

So why, oh, why, has the Gang of Six–the six Senators working on the Senate Finance Committee’s version of a health insurance reform bill–why on earth, why in heaven’s name, would they do anything (as they have) to accommodate him and his wingnuts?!?

Battered Woman Syndrome.

It’s misnamed, since it doesn’t apply only to women, and in clinical circles more precise terminology predominates these days. But that’s beside the point. What is to the point is the phenomenon of people who have been repeatedly beaten, in some way or another, developing a habit of trying to stop the abusive party from being abusive by doing something to appease that person (or persons).

It’s important, for the sake of understanding the reaction of the Gang of Six in this case, and Congressional Democrats more broadly, to leave aside any considerations of how this situation is different from the domestic violence suffered by so many women and children, and yes, some men also.  What is cogent here is that the Gang of Six has adopted the same erroneous stance of trying to appease someone who was totally out of line, when they had nothing to apologize for and had not done anything wrong to begin with.

They all need therapy. Maybe Dems and progressives can provide it in a group, virtually via endless phone calls and emails, and IRT on the Senate floor.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

The quote used as the headline for this piece was spoken by Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio), as reported here by Ryan Grimm on HuffPo today.

The context in which Rep. Kilroy is talking about transparency—and the need for more transparency—is what the U.S. Treasury has been doing lately, but I believe her statement applies across the board.  I certainly hope it is the case that people in this age will demand far more transparency in government than we have (perhaps ever) seen before.

The situation that Rep. Kilroy is on about is that Tim Geithner has apparently been cutting deals with some of the banks that received bail-out funds and which are now posting significant profits.  That level of recovery is great news–their profits are up, which means taxpayers’ investment should be receiving a nice return, yes?  Um, not so much. Treasury has been allowing some banks to buy back their debt at 66% of current market value.

This hasn’t happened much, yet.  That’s why Kilroy has offered legislation, cleverly named the PROFIT Act, that would require public, totally transparent auctions of the financial institutions’ warrants (essentially, the shares owned by taxpayers).  There may well be other investors–gosh, maybe even the banks themselves?!?–who would be willing to pay a lot more than 66% of what the warrants are worth if they were offered in open auctions. “Open auctions” can be read also as “open market.”  Isn’t that what the banks and big corporations  usually say they want–free, open markets?  So why not give it a go in this case, and let the market determine how much the warrants will go for.  And for once, taxpayers would benefit instead of being screwed.

The question that comes to mind for me is, why doesn’t Treasury want to get every penny’s worth back for the taxpayers’ investment?  The only answer that makes any sense whatsoever is that Geithner is cutting deals with his buddies.  And by “his buddies” I don’t mean necessarily people he hangs with or has even done business with before.  I mean the club of people who work in the financial products industry who have developed a gargantuan sense of entitlement, of what they believe they deserve, and hang the consequences to anyone else.  That’s what bureaucrats can get away with when there’s no transparency or accountability.

If only Obama would require the same standard of empathy for every-day Americans from his Treasury Secretary as he did from his Supreme Court nominee.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

None of that is much of a surprise, people being people.  And as much of a progressive/liberal as I am, and however much I would personally prefer a more progressive/liberal solution to a particular problem, I know that’s not an effective way to go about change.  That’s the way to go only if one wants to generate backlash.  So, even though I wish, on the one hand, to see more progressive and liberal moves coming out of the White House, I accept, on the other, the necessity for proceeding a little less bombastically.

Having been clear, I hope, in presenting my progressive/liberal credentials, I’ll say that for some things there simply is no middle road.  Transparency and accountability are among those things. 

President Obama has so far signaled, if not outright opposition, at least considerable foot-dragging when it comes to undoing some of what can be undone of Bush’s legacy, and pursuing accountability for Bushies who may have committed crimes.

We’ve been here before, and the failure to pursue accountability in the past was very much a part of opening us up to the abuses of Bush et al.  I’ll refer again to another old column of Dad’s (aka Kays Gary), written after President Ford pardoned President Nixon.  Read the whole column to see just how prophetic Dad was.  Indeed, I dare say Papa came in a little short on just how bad the next round would be.   He worried that there would be “a resurrection of the politics of pious infidels,”  and sure enough, that’s just what we got.  But I don’t think he would ever have imagined the scope and sheer volume of high crimes and misdemeanors that the Bush years would bury us under.

Some articles currently on Huffington Post are germane to this issue. It will be important to hold Obama’s feet to the fire, and Congressional Democrats’ as well.

First is the matter of Karl Rove having been subpoenaed to testify before Congress.  There is talk of offering him immunity if he testifies.

In the first place, this puts me at odds with my good senator from Vermont, Patrick Leahy.  Senator Leahy has proposed a Congressional truth commission that would grant immunity from prosecution to anyone from the Bush administration who testifies freely to Congress.  I agree with most of the points the Senator makes; and while I see the benefits of setting up a structure that will elicit truth rather than blanket non-cooperation, there are some higher-level people whom I think should not have an opportunity to slip-slide their way out of accountability. Karl Rove is one of them.

In the second place, people who have been substantively injured by Rove’s actions deserve to see him held to account.  Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman is one of those people (HuffPo article here).  I feel some kinship with Gov. Siegelman, given my experience with Vermont bureaucracy (road map here), but he had the far worse of it, going to prison.  If, as Gov. Siegelman maintains (and I believe), he went to prison for things he never did, why then should the man who put him there get immunity from prosecution?  And how can Obama claim to be reinstituting the rule of law if that happens?

If we do not solidly ground ourselves in the rule of law now, after Bush, the next time the “pious infidels” take over, in another couple of generations or so, I doubt we could hold a long reign of fascism at bay.

Peace.  And accountability.

Deborah Alicen

The thought of the Little Rock incident touched on another memory, one closer to home, in Charlotte, NC.  It’s one that my dad, Kays Gary, wrote about in 1957, the first time a black child attended a previously all-white school in Charlotte.  Here’s what Dad wrote about Dorothy Counts, offered here as food for thought on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day:

Dorothy Counts

A head needs no face for expression.

The way it is carried upon the neck tells all.

If it is too high it shows defiance.

If it is too low and twists from side to side with a forward thrust of the neck it is full of shame.

Between these extremes is the posture of dignity and confidence, and a certain blend of humility and pride.

And that is the way she held her head.

They spat and she was covered with it.

Spittle dripped from the hem of her dress.

It clung to her neck and her arms and she wore it.

They spat and they jeered and screamed.

A boy tumbled out of the crowd and hit her in the back with his fist.

Debris fell on her shoulders and around her feet.

And the posture of the head was unchanged.

That was the remarkable thing.

And if her skin was brown you had to admit that her courage was royal purple.

For how many of us could have taken that walk to and from a school?

Originally published September 5, 1957, in The Charlotte Observer, and copied here with permission.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

Less common than stories to choose from, however, are accounts of those stories that are at once as moving and incisive as today’s Huffington Post piece by Erin Brockovich and Robin Greenwald about the TVA disaster.  Here’s the cost of bureaucratic incompetence, or bureaucratic indifference, and certainly lack of bureaucratic oversight, shown in sharp relief.  It’s today’s Katrina, or the Minnesota bridge collapse, or Crandall Canyon mining disaster.  The destruction is as thorough and avoidable as in all those other cases, however much the scale differs from one headline to the next.

Here’s to the people affected in Tennessee receiving the attention and help Brockovich and Greenwald advocate for.  And here’s to the leaders who can make the changes in bureaucracies to prevent such things taking the initiative to make those changes.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

I’m looking forward to reading the book, after reading the review, as it appears to present a compelling picture of how bureaucracy blocks important, cutting edge innovation.  Check it out.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

Officials from the Mississippi Development Authority paint a picture of vital Hurricane Katrina-relief projects still snared in federal bureaucracy almost three years after the storm.

But members of the MDA Disaster Recovery Division met with the Sun Herald on Thursday and they said much progress has been made in recent months.

The story goes on to report that each project must meet with the approval of up to fifteen (15) different agencies–and many of those agencies require several appointments each.

I wonder if anyone has crunched the numbers on what the cost is of all the time that goes into those multiple approval processes? And what about looking at how much duplication there is in all those processes and consolidating them across bureaucracies? How many more housing units could be built with the money saved by eliminating duplications?

Oh, I know–that’s hoping for a lot of reasoning power to be brought to bear on the situation, but I have faith in the human capacity for change. And also the wisdom to not hold my breath waiting.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

When someone else figured out those vets really should be told about what they were taking, however, it took three months to get the information out to them. The VA’s Miles McFall called that an “incredibly quick response for a governmental institution.”

Everyone who thinks three months is a quick response when you’re sick and have been giving something that can make you sicker, raise your hand.

I thought so.

The reason McFall gave for not informing the study participants immediately was,

“We don’t have the authority to just send directly to patients material that has not been approved by the IRB (Institutional Review Board) sites…”

The last time I checked, IRBs existed to protect the welfare of study participants. That their regulations would prevent full disclosure to research subjects for three months—three months during which the drug could do serious damage to the vets—is ludicrous and reprehensible.

A little more than a month ago I posted about another medical SNAFU. In that post I suggested the inclusion, in all such regulations, of something I gave the working title of Humanitarian Reasonable Override. There needs to be a mechanism for moving not just quickly, but immediately. It’s simply a travesty that the lack of authority to protect people’s live and health in such a situation could have ever become codified.

It’s high time to change that.

Peace. And good health.

Deborah Alicen