Life is an adventure for all who are lucky enough to realize it, yes?

During this hiatus the bureaucratic stuff has kept right on swinging along, one bit after another after another.  Here are a few of the stories I’ve bookmarked, listed in no particular order.

Savanna Redding was 13 years old when she was strip-searched by officials at her school in Arizona under suspicion of hiding prescription strength ibuprofen, of all things, in her underwear. The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a 8-1 decision saying that the strip search was illegal, which is good.  However, they also held, by a smaller margin, that the school officials involved are immune from being sued for their actions. (If you’re familiar with the archives of this blog, you know how I feel about that.)  Read the story here.

Huffpost blogger Glenn Sacks presents an important perspective on the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2009 which is making its way through Congress.  It’s a good analysis of how legislation that ostensibly is to help particular segments of the population sometimes does little more than insure jobs for bureaucrats.  (Disclaimer: I’m all for state child support collection.  My best friend’s ex is one of the truly deadbeat dads.)

Maybe you’re already onto this since, it’s kind of old news at this point.  Amy Poehler of SNL fame has a new show on NBC called Parks and Recreation.  She plays a bureaucrat who can make you love bureaucrats.  We’re much in need of role model bureaucrats who see themselves as being there to help the people who pay them.  They are out there–we just need more of them!  Read about the show here.

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman‘s case continues to drag on.  For an excellent rendering of the details of his case, see The Cheating of Don Siegelman, Part I, and The Cheating of Don Siegelman, Part II, by Roger Shuler and freshly posted on OpEdNews.

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 truth of it is, however, that I’m taking advantage of having my own soapbox and going off topic for this post. It’s not to comment directly on the Democratic presidential primaries of last night, though they do provide the circumstances. My comment is rather about the comments of others on the primaries. The overwhelming tone of the comments of people responding to posts on sites such as Huffington Post, DailyKos, Washington Post, etc., is vitriolic and puerile. I don’t believe that either of the candidates would give their approval to the sorry discourse that’s being flung about in their names.

I am hoping these folks are not representative of the electorate at large. If they are, we are in more trouble than we’ve ever imagined. And we’ve imagined a lot in these years of the Bush regime.

Daily Kos, at least, is featuring a post specifically about the bilious, even abusive commentary by people who favor one candidate or the other. And that post is the one that takes us to matters bureaucratic, as the author urges the owner of the site to institute some rules to keep such language in check–a request which takes us into considerations of organizational bureaucracy. It’s worth noting, however, that some of the other sites do have people reviewing all comments before letting them go live, so the question becomes one not just of rules, but of effective rules.

And in this case, and I believe on all such progressive-leaning (or even progressive-tolerant) websites, effective rules that don’t impinge on freedom of speech would be of great concern to the powers-that-be on those sites. I don’t think it’s such a hard issue to address, however. Not that I’ve had to enforce it yet, but my own rules for this site are to allow the expression of any ideas, just don’t use base or threatening language when you do.

The most heartbreaking and headache-inducing aspect of what’s happening out there in blog-comment-land is that there are so many people who think of themselves as politically progressive who are behaving this way. If that kind of knee-jerk, insulting, obliterate-the-other-side non-thinking is characteristic of progressive politics in general, then what’s the point of getting rid of the Bushites?

Here’s to cooler heads, respectful discourse, careful thinking, and sharing of ideas. I pray that’s not too much to ask.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

(Notice: the following may not be interesting to a lot of people other than psychologists.)

The complete text of the appeal decision first addresses the issue of my having been convicted of refusing to release a client’s records when I felt doing so could be harmful to the client. A note especially to psychologists: you read that right. There is no typo in that sentence. I was convicted of unprofessional conduct for refusing to release a client’s records when I felt doing so could be harmful to the client.

Granted the Board was in a tight place. I had been charged both with not releasing records and also with releasing records. The green assistant AG charged me with opposite things to boost his chances of getting a case in his “Won” column. The Board had to convict me of one or the other, yes? Remember, they were at risk of being embarrassed. Heaven forbid they find fault with the charges instead. So they convicted me of failure to release records, but they hedged insofar as they did not specify any consequence or remediation related specifically to that charge. Wonders never cease.

My one disappointment with the appeal judge’s (aka reviewing officer’s) decision was his failure to understand the difference between what a clinician should do when deciding to release records that may be harmful, against deciding not to release records that may be harmful. In the former case, one should consult with others before taking an action that may be harmful. In the latter case, if one has decided not to take an action that may be harmful, there’s no amount of consultation with colleagues that would make a difference to that decision. First, the odds against a consulting colleague saying, “Go ahead and release them” is astronomical. Second, if a consulting colleague said “release them,” and I did and it resulted in harm to the client, the colleague’s recommendation against my own opinion opposing release would not have lessened my liability. Ergo, there was no point in consulting with a colleague about a decision to not take an action that might be harmful.

Imagine what any sort of professional practice would be like if we had to always consult with colleagues on every decision we made against doing harm.

So I was left with being convicted on that one charge of “unprofessional conduct,” of failing to release records when I thought doing so may be harmful. That one I really don’t mind so much. It’s more a badge of honor for me than anything else. And an embarrassment, ironically enough, for the Board. It’s right there in the public record that they did this, contrary to APA and HIPAA, not to mention reason and sanity.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

Laila Al-Arian: My Family’s Nightmare Caught on Film – Politics on The Huffington Post
Prosecutors in Northern Virginia may soon charge my father with criminal contempt, according to a recent report in The New York Sun. This maneuver would be a shameless abuse of the criminal justice system and an abominable waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars. If prosecutors charge my father with criminal contempt, it will be obvious to everyone watching that it’s nothing more than a case of sour grapes.

Earlier in her post Laila refers to boilerplate language having been eliminated–apparently strategically so–from an agreement her father had signed, which opened him up to a raft of more trouble. As I read on and saw such things as the case against her father being centered on his “political profile,” a juror saying “the State hadn’t met its own standards” for conviction, and that “Kromberg and his DOJ cronies are abusing their power to lock him up indefinitely,” I said to myself, “This is boilerplate bureaucratic abuse.”

In my case I was prosecuted for my politcal profile, as it were, and certainly not for any professional malfeasance. (The original complaint against me had once been investigated and completely dismissed, before it was somehow mysteriously reopened with no new evidence.) Also in my case the state didn’t meet its own standards for conviction. The appeal judge cited three requirements necessary for a finding of malpractice, and the state didn’t come close to meeting even one of those requirements. Lastly, in my case as well, the bureaucrat who drove the process appeared to be intent on tying me up in red tape as long as possible, to do as much damage to me as possible.

There are certainly more parallels between my case and Al-Arian’s, as well as untold numbers of others, which need not be belabored here and now. My purpose of the moment is twofold: to point out that the pattern is the same, regardless of what level of government bureaucratic abuse we’re talking about; and to say that a clear pattern can also lead to developing clear remedies.

And that will take lots of research and lots of making noise.

In the meantime, please go read all of Leila Al-Arian’s post; and if you have a chance to see the film about her family’s experience, do that, too.
Peace.

Deborah Alicen