Worth a Look: Legislation Of, By, and For the Public

Legislation, Worth A Look

As Europe contemplates the creation of a Mutlinational Information-Sharing and Sense-Making Network, and Singapore and South Africa among others think about expanding the over-the-horizon and continent-wide networks, only one major power remains deliberately deaf, dumb, and blind to the 80% or more of the information that cannot be stolen but can be acquired freely from open sources in 183 languages we do not speak: the United STATES of America.

As Members begin thinking about how they are going to deal with the virulently angry public between now and 2010, there are two legislative proposals that have been on the table for over a decade–some would say two decades, both eminently sensible, eminently patriotic, and perhaps–if executed inelligently–the only thing that might fireproof those Members who now fear they will not be re-elected.

Electoral Reform Act
Electoral Reform Act

The books and articles on the failure of Congress to honor Article 1 of the Constitution, and the failure of Members to honor their constituencies by eschewing “party line” voting, are now legion.  Congress has been tarred and feathered; Independents are now 43% of the eligible voters and rising; and the 70% that did not vote for this Administration in 2008 is likely to come back to the polls in 2010 with an “anything but” mind-set.

Time to think really big thoughts, strategic thoughts, thoughts that benefit the public which is the heart and soul of the Republic and has been living with a stake in its heart all these years, a dysfunctional dishonest electoral system.

This act, eight measures, four for 2010 and the other four for 2012, restores the Republic.

Smart Nation - Safe Nation Act
Smart Nation - Safe Nation Act

Restoring the primacy of the public and the legitimacy of the electoral system is not enough.  America is coming off fifty years of mortal failure across all its paradigms, and only the creation of a Smart Nation – Safe Nation that connects the public to all possible information and Congress to both the public and all possible information, will restore the survivability and prosperity of the Republic.  The second act, created in service to Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), now running for the Senate, does that.

Journal: Chuck Spinney on Moral and Mental Collapse of the Federal Government

Ethics, Government, Legislation, True Cost

Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

EMPHASIS: The larger result of this cynical behaviour is a widespread moral and mental collapse that is rapidly transforming our experiment in building a government of the people, by the people, and for the people into a sham that is more like a 21st Century corporatist mutation of 18th Century court of Louis XVI.

Viewed retrospectively, the political economy of Versailles on the Potomac admits to only two stages in the life cycle of any government program, be it defense, a bailout of the banks, healthcare reform, or anything else: (1) It is too early to tell, and (2) it is too late to do anything about it.

Nowhere is the decision-making conundrum implied by these stages more clearly evident than in the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex, MICC, particularly in the acquisition of high tech weapon systems, but also in the decision to go to war.

Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney on Moral and Mental Collapse of the Federal Government”

Journal: Rolling Stone on Sick and Wrong (Washington Corruption, Health Care Example)

Ethics, Legislation, Media Reports, Reform

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

SICK and WRONG: How Washington is Screwing Up Health Care Reform – and Why It May Take a Revolt to Fix It

Matt Taibbi

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment – a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.

The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses.

The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable – and that's the good news. The bad news is our failed health care system won't get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America.

Just as we have a medical system that is not really designed to care for the sick, we have a government that is not equipped to fix actual crises. What our government is good at is something else entirely: effecting the appearance of action, while leaving the actual reform behind in a diabolical labyrinth of ingenious legislative maneuvers.  [Emphasis added.]

STEP ONE: AIM LOW

STEP TWO: GUT THE PUBLIC OPTION

STEP THREE: PACK IT WITH LOOPHOLES

STEP FOUR: PROVIDE NO LEADERSHIP

STEP FIVE: BLOW THE MATH

As Rolling Stone’s chief political reporter, Matt Taibbi's predecessors include the likes of journalistic giants Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke. Taibbi's 2004 campaign journal Spanking the Donkey cemented his status as an incisive, irreverent, zero-bullshit reporter. His latest collection is Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire

Journal: Government Information Policy & Security Not Favoring the Public

Legislation, Reform
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

EDITORIAL: Invasion of medical privacy

Personal information is up for grabs with government health care

Privacy rights are under threat in the House's government health care plan. While plowing through the more than 1,000-page Democratic House bill, Declan McCullagh of CBS News uncovered provisions that would allow startling privacy intrusions. The innermost secrets of people's personal lives would be made available to thousands of government bureaucrats.

Section 431(a) requires the Internal Revenue Service to give detailed taxpayer information to the new health choices commissioner and state health programs. The helpful government just wants to be able to tell citizens when they might be eligible for benefits they somehow might have overlooked. Besides letting all those government bureaucrats know about an individual's income, number of dependents and filing status, the plan has an unlimited catchall that would require disclosure of “other information as is prescribed by” the health commissioner. The IRS would be commanded to provide whatever information about individual taxpayers the health choices commissioner deemed necessary.

Continue reading “Journal: Government Information Policy & Security Not Favoring the Public”

Worth a Look: Public Law 109-163 dated 6 January 2006

Government, Legislation, Military, Policy, Reform, Strategy

Congress tasked the Department of Defense with ten specific OSINT-related tasks that to the best of our knowledge have never been acknowledged nor completed by DoD.

HAC DoD OSINT Tasks
HAC DoD OSINT Tasks

Highlights of the missing ten tasks:

1)  A plan for providing funds

2)  A description of management now and as it could be improved

3)  A description of tools, systems, centers, organizational entities amd procedures

4)  A description of proven tradecraft including operational security

5) A description of OSINT fusion with other disciplines

6)  A description of a training plan and guidance for DoD intelligence personnel

7) A plan to incorporate oversight of OSINT

8] A plan to incorporate the OSINT specialty int oall existing DoD personnel systems;

9) Aplan to utilize reserve personnel; and

10) A plan for the use of the Open Source Information System (OSIS).

Journal: The List of Negatives Keeps Growing Report Card on Obama From a New Frontiersman

Government, Legislation, Reform
Report Card
Full Original Story Online

by William Polk

Probably like most of you, I am engaged in a daily attempt to make up my mind about President Obama. I was an early supporter.

And as a former Washington “player,” I am aware how difficult is his position. I began to worry when he failed to grasp what I have seen to be the early window of opportunity for a new administration — the first three months — when the government is relatively fluid. As the months have flown by, I have seen that there are many positive things, mainly in his eloquent addresses on world problems, notably his speech at the University of Cairo on world pluralism, but also quite a few negative things. With sadness and alarm I find that my list of the negatives keeps on growing.

Among them are the following:

(1) The commitment to the war in “Af-Pak” which (I believe) will cost America upwards of $6 trillion but perhaps only a few hundred casualties since we are relying increasingly on drone bombing. Just the money costs could derail almost everything Obama's supporters hoped and thought his administration would do.

(2) the choice of personnel is (to me) baffling:

[BULK OF THIS WORK NOT BROUGHT FORWARD–CLICK ON COUNTERPUNCH LOGO TO READ IT ALL.]

I am waiting for the Obama we elected to show up. I hope this drama does not follow Samuel Beckett's script.

William Polk served as the Middle East expert on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff during the Kennedy administration. He is the author of Violent Politics: a History of Insurgency and Terrorism from the American Revolution to Iraq.

+++++++Phi Beta Iota Editorial Comment+++++++

The essence of intelligence qua decision-support is “360 degree awareness” as well as historical and cultural depth, and a green-eye shade understanding of “true costs” not only in fiscal terms, but in moral, demogrpahic, environmental, and social terms.

It is our view that President Barack Obama isa good man trapped in a bad system, and that all he needs to do in order to restore America's integrity and fiscal as well as moral health is these two things:

1)  Demand of Congress the Electoral Reforn Act of 2009, a copy of which can be seen by clicking on the Frog to the left; and

2)  Demand of Congress the Smart Nation Act of 2009, a copy of which can be seen by clicking on the Frog in the middle.

There is nothing wrong with America, or the Earth, that cannot be fixed by restoring the Constitution and the Republic Of, By, and For We the People, the soverign people replete with common sense and public intelligence in the public interest.

There is nothing wrong with the Obama Administration professionally that cannot be fixed by the introduction of a Whole of Government strategic planning, programming, and budgeting process, as well as a transformation of national intelligence to provide all necessary decision support to the President AND everyone else.  Click on the Frog to the left for that White Paper, forthcoming in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (Winter 2009-2010).

Electoral Reform
Electoral Reform

Electoral Reform is straight-forward.  It restores free and open elections in place of the two-party tyranny, and it restores the right to vote across every district.  This version does not contain a number of rightwous ideas from the Independent voters who now outnumber BOTH the Democratic and Republican voters.

The Smart Nation Act was devised the Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), himself a professional intelligence officer and retired Army Colonel.  It enables “school-house to White House” decision support against all threats across all policies.

Smart Nation
Smart Nation

Finally, we have the urgent need to fix the inner workings of the White House and National Intelligence.  Many Commissions have reported on this since 1947, most notably and presciently Jim Schlesinger's in the 1970's, and more recently Aspin-Brown (completely ignored by successive Administraitons).  America is too complicated to be run by one cabal lacking in global knowledge.

Process Reform
Process Reform

2009 Smart Nation-Safe Nation Act

Legislation

This is an updated version of the Smart Nation Act that appears in the book by that title.  While it was originally developed in consultation with Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), whose Foreword to the book provides a brilliant context for understanding why this is so essential to the future of America and the world, this specific document has morphed so much that it is better to say that it is inspired by Congressman Simmons rather than endorsed by him–if and when he returns to the Hill as a Senator, he will surely have his own priorities consistent with the needs of his constituents in Connecticut who have suffered so much from the “rule by secrecy” of Wall Street and the two parties serving Wall Street.

Smart-Safe Nation Act
Smart-Safe Nation Act