Michael Goodwin: Dems Finally Go Bonkers

By MICHAEL GOODWIN

NY POST Last Updated:4:19 AM, October 14, 2012

Posted:12:21 AM, October 14, 2012

LINK

After enduring three days of outlandish claims and grievances about American life at the Charlotte convention, I wrote that “something shocking is happening to the Democratic Party.”

Five weeks later, I must amend the observation. The soul-sapping transformation is no longer “happening.” It is complete.

The Democratic Party has lost its mind and its way. Its political philosophy of inclusion and progress has been consumed by virulent strains of anger, dishonesty and intolerance. Its leaders don’t just want to win an election; they want to silence any American who disagrees with them.

Consider the latest evidence.

The White House, on defense over the assassination of our Libyan ambassador after Washington reduced security, launched a frantic search for a scapegoat. It first blamed protests over an anti-Muslim video and, when forced to admit the protests never existed, pointed fingers at intelligence officials and managers in the State Department. Watch your back, Hillary.

A campaign aide, with a straight face, also insisted that the terrorist attack is an issue only because Republicans politicized it. The buck doesn’t stop at this president’s desk.

A desperate Obama resorts to calling his opponent a “liar,” and his latest promise is to preserve taxpayer subsidies for public television’s cash cow, Big Bird. The tactic is denounced even by supporters as more cartoonish than the giant yellow canary. No matter — it’s a victory because another day passes without discussion of jobs, the debt, deficit or Iran.

Then there is Joe Biden. As I predicted, his manic behavior at the veep debate won the approval of Dems despondent over Obama’s flop at his debate. Biden’s rude laughs, snorts and sneers, combined with hectoring accusations of Paul Ryan, were catnip for those who see Republicans as unworthy and illegitimate.

They actually applaud that Biden’s interruptions — more than 100 of them — prevented any sustained, serious discussion. To hell with America, party comes first.

Despite Biden’s assertion that “facts matter,” they didn’t to him. Catholic bishops insist he misstated the terms of ObamaCare’s contraception mandate on their institutions. And although he was patently dishonest about his own votes on Iraq and Afghanistan, no Dem complained because they loved his venomous attacks on Ryan. As reader David Zukerman put it, “To see or hear Biden is to understand that, for the hard left, reality is a function of expression, and to understand, further, why there is an absence of any bipartisan spirit in Washington.”

To that point, there is zero evidence that those not already committed to Obama were impressed by Biden’s buffoonery, but MSNBC and The New York Times are back on the bus. Mission accomplished.

Romney and Ryan, of course, are big boys who can take care of themselves. But what of ordinary citizens who come up against Democratic malice and its media cheerleaders? Who will protect them?

That’s what Bill Skuby wants to know. The owner of a men’s shop in Spring Lake, NJ, Skuby is a Republican who decorated his store window with a racy Halloween display mocking Obama. He put an Obama mask over a skeleton, and had a tombstone with a reference to ObamaCare and an Internet composite of the president as an African-style witch doctor.

In response, Skuby won support from hundreds of people in what he calls his “1 percent town” but also “about 15 to 20 death threats.” He has been called a racist, a coffee shop got a bomb threat while he was there and The Star-Ledger urged a boycott of his store.

“I’m no racist, but I am anti-Obama,” Skuby tells me by phone. “Don’t I have a right to be? Isn’t this still America?”

The witch-doctor image was in bad taste and offensive, and Skuby agreed to remove it after complaints. But he says the rest of the display is staying because he believes defeating Obama is essential for the future of the country. He is also furious at the double standard coming from the left.

“It was OK for them to burn effigies of George Bush,” he says. “And they call Romney a liar, a thief and a murderer. But I can’t criticize Obama?”

That’s no longer a simple question. In theory, free speech still exists. But to the new Democrats, speech is free only to those who spout the party line. Everybody else must pay a price.

Keep on blabbing, Bloomy!

Prematurely tired of questions about potential successors and their promises, Mayor Bloomberg said he won’t take more questions on the topic.

“I’m not going to spend the next year answering ‘what do you think’ of every potential candidate’s ideas,” he told reporters. “I’m going to spend my time being mayor.”

It’s a bold promise and also a bad idea, for him and the city.

Like it or not, the campaign will revolve around the city Bloomberg shaped over 12 years. He’ll get plaudits and brickbats, especially during what is likely to be a hotly contested Democratic primary.

Understandably, the mayor doesn’t want to be drawn into the weeds of candidate talking points. Nor does he want to share the spotlight as he races to finish his tenure.

But his vow of silence would deprive voters of his experience and judgment on important matters. Look at how his back-of-the-hand slap to a call for tax hikes by Public Advocate Bill de Blasio settled the issue, at least for now. Similarly, legislation pending before the City Council, such as mandated sick leave for businesses and pushes to micromanage the Police Department, are certain to be re-aired. Scores of other policies, ranging from schools to bicycle lanes to his ban on big sugar drinks, will be fair game.

While my bet is that Bloomy will find it impossible to stay silent, he shouldn’t even try. He owes his supporters help as they navigate a campaign where unions already demand that the next mayor throw open the vault and leave it open.

Taking a turn for the worse

Thanks to Ronald Reagan’s success against Jimmy Carter, every challenger uses his campaign question: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

The answer New Yorkers are giving should worry Albany. A Siena College poll found 47 percent of state residents say they’re worse off now, while 35 percent believe they’re better off.

Gov. Cuomo isn’t facing voters this year, but the finding gives him every reason to push harder against the status quo.

As for legislators, they’re mostly hopeless, which is why Cuomo must separate himself from them.

Ain’t that the tooth!

After watching the two debates, reader Leonard Toboroff spots a pattern. He writes, “It’s simple: Romney and Ryan are up against two dental patients. One is on Novocain and the other is on laughing gas.”

Restructuring An Unsustainable Federal Spending Machine by Larry Fisher

Restructuring An Unsustainable Federal Spending Machine by Larry Fisher
Parentadvocates.org
LINK

The U.S. government's precipitous fall from solvent democracy to abusive, secretive, and bankrupt oligarchy began with the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) and a legislative mandate to promote government efficiency and accountability. This legislation violated one of our forefather's checks and balances by replacing its apolitical civil service professionals with corporate managers and more politically-astute civil service bureaucrats.

Larry Fisher

Restructuring An Unsustainable Federal Spending Machine
October 9, 2012 at 11:13:58
By Larry Fisher

The U.S. government's precipitous fall from solvent democracy to abusive, secretive, and bankrupt oligarchy began with the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) and a legislative mandate to promote government efficiency and accountability. This legislation violated one of our forefather's checks and balances by replacing its apolitical civil service professionals with corporate managers and more politically-astute civil service bureaucrats. These private and public sector managers would now fill newly created senior executive service (SES) political appointee positions within the executive and judicial branches. This meant that, post 1978, each incoming administration's President, Vice President, and their executive schedule (EX) political appointees could now use (or be used by) those inherited SES executive and judicial branch political appointee managers. The 1978 CSRA law also encouraged the movement of EX / SES political appointees between their parent corporations and temporary government positions thereby allowing these revolving door bureaucrats (RDBs) to dominate every facet of the government's operation. Thirty-four years later, those corporate-driven, deregulation, outsourcing, and war-related RDBs have structured (undermined) an entire bureaucracy to ensure the compliant and unquestioning civil service bureaucrats needed to rubberstamp the corporate takeover of the U.S. government.

President Obama is a prime example of just how successful this corporate takeover was, largely because of his decision not to follow thru on the "open, transparent, and accountable" government reforms that got him elected. Instead, he and his EX political appointees used, without question, the very same RDBs that precipitated the 1980's collapse of the savings and loan companies, 2008 economic crisis, and 16 trillion dollars in national debt. Today, all three government branches still work as one, transferring trillions of dollars in wealth from the taxpayer to corrupt politicians, RDBs, and corporations. The executive branches' RDBs use taxpayer dollars to provide meaningless public sector services (while covering-up all levels of collusion/corruption) and then pay (again) for equally deficient corporate goods and services. The judicial branches' RDBs give free "get out of jail passes" to public and private-sector criminals. The legislative branch (Congress) gets paid twice, once by the taxpayer, and yet again by lobbyists, while undermining the executive and judicial branches, and enriching themselves. With no checks and balances between all three government branches, the taxpayers are subsidizing a federal spending machine that will ultimately collapse, no matter the severity of cuts to the bureaucracy or American people's services. Bankrupt corporations are required to restructure. The government must now restructure, starting with the elimination of all RDBs, and term limits for Congress.

The remainder of this article provides background information to understand why the government must be restructured in order to implement some very necessary checks and balances to eliminate the trillion dollar annual deficits and cut the 16 trillion in national debt. This documentation is examined in two sections: (1) An Unsustainable Federal Spending Machine and (2) Restructure the Government and Cut Annual Operating Costs by a Minimal 50%. The first section contains internet links to magazine / newspaper articles, and whistleblower documentation detailing how all three government branches work as one to enrich themselves and their corporate benefactors, to the detriment of the American people. The second section emphasizes the need for an "open, transparent, and accountable" government that includes permanent roles for government unions and whistleblowers to address over 30 years of internal threats to this government's financial and national security. Why? Because, together, these entities have a vested interest, the knowledge, and the experience to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse of the taxpayer's money as one of those hidden and politically-induced costs that dwarf all other government operating costs. The best possible, and positive, way for unions to protect their employees is by having the highest qualified and credentialed government managers to mentor, rather than abuse and fire, their employees. Oversight and enforcement of upgraded Office of Personnel Management (OPM) position standards ensures the highest qualified managers, promotes efficiency, and cuts waste, a win/win for the next administration and the American people. The whistleblower community has a varying array of professionals including scientists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, procurement specialists, accountants, auditors, and other professionals that can work with the next administration to cut the government's operating costs by a minimal 50% in two ways: (1) eliminate bogus, politically-inspired contracts and contractors that waste the taxpayer's money and produce nothing of value, and (2) identify the specific legislative and government reforms needed restore the checks and balances between all 3 government branches. The last page of this article contains an initial and open list of some of those proposed reforms that will be forwarded to government unions and the whistleblower community for their additions, and edits. The final list will be publicized and forwarded to the next administration and to Congress, for their review and discussion with both government unions and the whistleblower community.

(1) An Unsustainable Federal Spending Machine

Look at the facts and realize that, in just over 30 years, the federal debt has skyrocketed by over 15 trillion dollars, from 930 billion in 1980 to 16.3 trillion in 2012. Realize that both Republicans and Democrats undermined the Constitution and broke the government's laws by either weakening the government's infrastructure to implement its deregulation, outsourcing, and war-related political agendas, and/or in covering up that fact. Either way, over 2.5 million security (FBI, CIA, and NSA) and non-security civil-service professionals have faced over three decades' worth of political pressures to hide all levels of collusion, corruption, and blatant government waste; those whistleblowers who spoke out and told the truth were then illegally undermined in the following ways: (1) harassed, retaliated against, ostracized, and fired, (2) forced to sign settlement agreements barring them from future federal jobs, and (3) covertly eliminated the minimal 4-year college degree OPM requirement from professional-position standards, beginning in the 1980s for accountant , auditor, and Department of Energy (DOE) engineer positions, and probably others. These political maneuvers not only replaced the 1980s professionals but further ensured that all new hires were equally unqualified to obtain the compliant and unquestioning bureaucracy needed to rubberstamp the government's inane deregulation, outsourcing, and war-related agendas., (4) Congress' ongoing failure to pass real whistleblower-protection legislation, and (5) politicians and/or political appointee RDB cover-ups of blatant government waste and wrongdoing by abusing the State Secrets Privilege (SSP) and confidential business information (CBI) policies.

Corporate profits (and reduced expenses) require the highest qualified staff and managers and the unconditional support of everyone up the corporate chain-of-command. The same conditions also apply for eliminating the waste, fraud, and abuse of the taxpayer's money. The following three government branch sections, (1A) executive, (1B) judicial, and (1C) legislative branch, illustrate how politicians and public officials within all three branches undermine the U.S. government, its technical professionals, and the very citizens they were paid to protect.

(1A) Executive Branch - Three executive-branch examples involving the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Drug Administration (FDA), and a government-wide (intentional) failure to produce accurate financial statements illustrate the need to restructure this branch, starting at the top with the elimination of all RDBs.

SEC -- The American people have paid EX / SES political appointee RDBs from Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, etc., to manage the SEC. Instead, these RDBs eliminated SEC civil-service professionals for questioning their parent corporation's illegal activities and then shredded documentation involving over 18,000 cases against many of these same firms. Please read Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article, "Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?"

FDA scientists are also constantly under attack for questioning the EX / SES political-appointee RDB medical-review process that places their parent corporation profits above the safety of the American people. The following FDA scientist quote in a 2009 Truthout article raises legitimate questions over the government's continued use of EX / SES political appointee RDBs to fill managerial positions at federal department, bureau, and agency levels:

"Currently, there is an atmosphere at FDA in which the honest employee fears the dishonest employee (political-appointee RDB/unqualified civil-service managers)."

A recent July 2012 New York Times story, "Vast FDA Effort Tracked Emails of Its Scientists," expands on the above 2009 story and details how FDA political-appointee RDB managers tracked internal scientist emails to Congress and the media, like criminals. Why? Because they voiced their professional concerns and exercised their 1st amendment rights, and, for this, four professional scientists were fired.

Government-Wide (Intentional) Failure to Produce Accurate Financial Statements

The Department of Defense (DOD) and all other executive-branch non-DOD entities, known as the 24 Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Act department, bureau, and agency offices, have no ability to provide an accurate accounting of the taxpayer's money, by design. The problem is not technical but political and involves the ongoing and ever-changing, politically-induced deficiencies that create an unnecessary and unending dependence on financial-management contractors (FMCs); those FMCs include the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), financial-software companies, and management-consulting firms. Politicians violated their most basic fiduciary responsibility to the American people when they allowed the AICPA to oversee two deficient accounting standards, one for the federal government and yet another for state and local governments. The AICPA's public-sector accounting standards are not based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and are thus incapable of generating accurate public-sector financial statements for federal (DOD and the 24 CFO Act entities), state, and local governments. This is because politicians control, and intentionally thwart, the generation of accurate public-sector financial statements, via their political appointees, for two reasons, to: (1) prevent any level of accountability and responsibility to its citizens, (2) create a lucrative and ongoing revenue source (redistribution of wealth) from taxpayer, to contractor (for unnecessary contracts), and then back to the politician (in the form of campaign contributions). See the below DOD and 24 CFO Act entities' articles and other documentation to see how this collusion, corruption, coercion, and exorbitant taxpayer waste works within the federal government.

Two DOD articles highlight the sheer hypocrisy of both parties' feigned interest in accounting for the taxpayer's money, how all three government branches intentionally undermine its civil service accountants and auditors, and how those deficient accounting systems provide a lucrative and ongoing revenue source for politicians and their campaign contributing benefactors, the FMCs. On February, 11, 2009, a CBS News article, "The War On Waste" described DOD's inability to account for $2.3 trillion in transactions and how Jim Minnery, a DOD auditor, was dumbfounded at his supervisor's total lack of concern over serious accounting-related problems. On January 30, 2012, The Intel Hub article, "DOD Can't Account for Billions in Iraq," raised the issue that DOD's inability to account for billions of dollars of Iraq's, and the taxpayer's, money was not so much an issue of incompetence but that "individuals in government were conspiring to cash in."

DOD's cover-ups also mirror what has occurred within all 24 CFO Act entities. In October 1987, Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Treasury Department political appointee RDBs knowingly outsourced the FMC's deficient (non GAAP-based) financial software to all 24 CFO Act entities. This government-wide outsourcing initiative also included a concurrent effort to eliminate the minimal 4-year college accounting degree OPM requirement for professional accountants and auditors and to replace those professionals with former accounting clerks. Today, 25 years later, with multibillions already spent on deficient non GAAP-based financial software (with no end in sight), all 24 CFO Act entities still rely on manually manipulated (fudged) Excel spreadsheet totals to prepare all 24 CFO Act entities' financial statements. But, how is this possible? The answer is that the only professional accountants involved in the process are the FMCs. The FMCs design, implement, train these clerks (now accountant managers) to use this deficient accounting software, and then audit their own deficient processes. Then, these (new) accountant managers are forced into eliminating the few remaining whistleblower accountants (and auditors) since they lack the technical credentials to refute their assertions of deficient systems and the resultant waste, fraud, and abuse of the taxpayer's money, a lose/lose for everyone involved.

The all-encompassing nature of these 24 CFO Act entity cover-ups and the extremes that these (new) accountant managers are willing to take is best illustrated by the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA), Office of the Chief Financial Office (OCFO). Over the course of a 20-year period, these cover-ups included EPA's and a government-wide inability to generate accurate financial statements. EPA's desperation to hide these deficiencies included ongoing threats, retaliation, lying under oath, conspiracy to cover-up those lies, abuse of the freedom of information act (FOIA), abuse of the government's confidential business information (CBI) policies, and a myriad of violations of Congress' laws, and EPA's rules and regulations. The entities involved in these all encompassing cover-ups included the EPA Administrator, OCFO, Office of Inspector General (OIG), Office of General Counsel (OGC), and other outside offices such as the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) that was (on paper) supposed to protect whistleblowers. Documentation describing the above events appears in the National Accountant Whistleblower Coalition (NAWBC) website, Documentation Section. This documentation includes internal emails, letters to : Chairman, Government Affairs Committee (Senator Fred Thompson) , OPED article , certified letters to GAO's current and former Comptroller General's of the U.S . questioning the accuracy of 14 years of their written Congressional testimony, Congress (Pelosi & Reid) , OSC 2010 cover-up , FOIA & CBI abuse , EPA Administrator, CFO, OIG, and OGC cover-up , and much more

(1B) Judicial Branch - Like the prior executive branch examples, Eric Holder (RDB political appointee) first worked in the Justice Department and then obtained a position in the Covington & Burlington law firm defending clients like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Chase, and others. So, why are we surprised that these same firms were never held accountable? Like the executive branch, the judicial branch must also include the elimination of all political appointee RDBs and be restructured, top to bottom. For details supporting these statements, see the Newsweek May 14, 2012 issue , "Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?"

(1C) Congress (legislative branch) - Congress gets paid twice, once by taxpayers, and then again by lobbyists for undermining that legislation. A single example illustrates how these Congressional rewrites of their own legislation makes a mockery of Congress' legislation and all government laws. Consider that in the 1860's Congress passed the False Claims Act, or Lincoln Law, to hold unscrupulous contractors accountable for repaying the government for their sale of decrepit horses, faulty ammunition, etc. Today, Congress has rewritten the False Claims Act and rendered that legislation meaningless by exempting the executive, judicial, and legislative branches from prosecution for their joint roles in (now) allowing both public and private sector contractors to deliver (knowingly) deficient goods and services." Payment for those deficient goods and services are, of course, complements of the U.S. taxpayer, as illustrated in sections (1A) and (1B), above. For more information on how Congress, the White House, and lobbyists work together to undermine the American people's interests, please read Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article , "The Slow Painful Death of Dodd Frank."

Look at the above executive, judicial, and legislative branch examples and realize that the 15 trillion dollar spike in the national debt involved the redistribution of trillions of dollars in wealth from the taxpayer to greedy and corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, and corporations, all for producing nothing of value. Today, the American people have the choice of allowing both Republicans and Democrats to make their arbitrary and superficial 10% cuts to a 100% dysfunctional bureaucracy. Or, work with unions, whistleblowers, and the next administration to demand the necessary executive, judicial, and legislative branch reforms and checks and balances to dramatically cut the government's operating costs, as summarized in the next section.

(2) Restructure the Government and Cut Annual Operating Costs By a Minimal 50%

There is no credible reason why the federal government cannot reduce its annual operating costs by a minimal 50% simply by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse of the taxpayer's money as one of its (now) acceptable government operating costs. But, how do you achieve that goal with three dysfunctional government branches that are no longer independent, no checks and balances, and over 30 years of successful efforts to politicize and weaken government infrastructures involving over 2.5 million career civil servants? These 50% cost reductions will occur with the able assistance of both government unions and whistleblowers involving the following government-wide restructuring efforts: (1) review, upgrade, and enforcement of OPM position standards that are on a par with the private sector, (2) eliminate all executive and judicial branch EX / SES political appointee RDBs, and (3) replace those executive and judicial RDB positions, and any civil service managers who do not meet the OPM's upgraded position standards, with those civil service managers who do meet those newly upgraded OPM position standards, and (4) eliminate bogus, politically-sponsored contracts and contractors that wastes the taxpayer's money and produces nothing of value.

Note: (a) There should be a minimal 6 month retention period for SES executive and judicial branch political appointee RDBs and civil service managers who will be replaced so that they can explain the operation to those civil service managers who will replace them, and (b) each incoming administration deals directly with apolitical, technically qualified career civil service professionals who are insulated from each administration's political agendas and pressures, as before the 1978 CSRA.

The initial (and open) list of executive, judicial, and legislative branch items below contains a mission statement for each branch, i.e. executive branch (improve efficiency / cut government waste), along with a list of actions for that specific branch. As noted previously, this initial list will be forwarded to the whistleblower community and government unions for their additions and edits. The final list will then be publicized and then forwarded to the next administration and Congress for discussions with both government unions and the whistleblower community.

INITIAL (OPEN) LIST OF PROPOSED GOVERNMENT & LEGISLATIVE REFORMS

Executive Branch (improve efficiency / cut government waste)

- Open, transparent, and accountable government mandate (for all administrations)

- Select most qualified civil service manager to oversee previous RDB positions

- Eliminate bogus, politically-inspired contracts / contractors

- Redesign organization structure(s) based upon clean lines of authority and responsibility

- Write mission statement for that department and each of the branches within that department

- Fill those branches with the most qualified civil service managers and they can, in turn, seek the most qualified individuals for their staff (in accordance with those upgraded OPM position standards)

Judicial branch (prosecute public / private sector criminals)

- Felony charges for public officials who ignore documented whistleblower warnings

- Felony charges for lobbyists and Congressman who weaken existing legislation

Legislative Branch (write legislation that supports executive / judicial branch missions)

- Term limits (automatic elections for exceeding those time frames i.e. 12 years)

- Automatic recall vote for members who refuse to release their tax returns

- Same retirement / medical benefits as civil service employees

- Government version of the Sarbanes Oxley Act

- Rescind 1978 CSRA (Constitutional amendment -- CA)

- Rescind Citizens United Act (CA)

- Whistleblower protection legislation for security / non security whistleblowers (CA)

Larry Fisher
I graduated from Michigan Technological University (MTU) in June 1968 with a BSBA in Accounting. I have been a federal accountant for 40 years, 25 of which were as an accountant whistleblower. A few of the more notable events that led me down the whistleblower path and my mindset that this government is corrupt, corporate-driven, and owned by special interest groups include a few of the following incidents.

In the early 1980's, I accepted a position as an Accounting Branch Chief at the Veterans Administration (1980 -- 1986). My section was responsible for consolidating the VA hospital's accounting data to prepare the Agency's Treasury Department and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) financial statements. The documentation provided by these agencies was so bad that the VA's accounting staff used crib notes, rote formulas, and large manual adjustments to hide all out of balance conditions. When I contacted these agencies to request an explanation of their procedures, I could find no one. My request for the VA to formally contact the Central Agencies (GAO, OMB, Treasury, and GSA) to address these problems was turned down. Here I was the Branch Chief of one of the largest federal agencies and no one within the VA or the Central Agencies could explain how or why federal agencies prepared their financial statements.

In search of a solution, I spent three years (on my own time) modifying the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant (AICPA) private sector accounting standard to fit the government's unique accounting and budgeting needs. The government accounting prototype (GAP) that I developed was based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and thus capable of generating all government accounting and budgeting financial statements from a single trial balance. During that time, I visited my MTU accounting professor, Sam Tidwell, in Copper Harbor, Michigan a couple of times to get his input on my idea and to find out why MTU lacked any meaningful government accounting classes. His position was that my idea would never fly simply because there were too many politicians, too many different and self-serving agendas, and no one was interested in providing an accurate accounting of our tax dollars. When I mentioned that I planned on pursuing this idea, his parting words, in his inimitable Mississippi drawl, were "Fisha, if you go down that road, you will find that you have a Tiga by the tail." We laughed. I didn't believe him at the time. But, as usual, Sam was right.

Upon completion of the GAP model, I wrote a companion book, "Principles of Accounting, Budgeting, and Cash Management for Government." About the time that I finished the book, my staff found a $ 40 million dollar antideficiency violation (VA exceeded their budget). I was asked to sign a letter authorizing the necessary adjustments to hide the problem. I refused. Another manager, two levels up from me, signed the letter for me while I was on leave. I resigned from the VA in October 1986, citing, "falsification of the agency's financial statements" as my reason for leaving. My personnel records were illegally altered to attribute my resignation to "conflicting views over systems improvement." During my subsequent one year unpaid sabbatical, I lobbied members of Congress and the Central Agencies to adopt a public sector GAAP-based standard in late 1986. On October 13, 1987, I was hired as a Treasury systems accountant along with five other professional accountants to review software that had already been placed on the GSA schedule so that all federal agencies could bypass any procurement red tape. The rest of my government accountant career has been spent raising red flags over the Central Agencies' release of untested financial software to all federal agencies. I retired on January 1, 2011 as a GS-14 accounting clerk with a real fear of this government and its unwarranted claims of a democracy.
www.nawbc.com ; www.tgar.org

Erica Loberg: Bullying In The Workplace - You're The Boss of You!

Bullying in the Work Place – You’re the boss of YOU!

By ERICA LOBERG

LINK

With our current economy, none of us are in a position to lose our job.  So – what – does this mean we have to put up with endless psychological nightmares at work?  When does bullying in the workplace become worse than waking up with no job?

The current economy puts us in a situation of being victims at our job, and in our lives.  This is a terrible situation that demands attention and guidance.

I once had a toaster oven thrown at my head.  It was my first job out of college and I didn’t know the rules and boundaries of the workplace, and what’s acceptable and not acceptable.  I was working for a producer (about 90% of industry jobs are fueled with inappropriate behavior: verbal, mental abuse runs ramped) who mentally tore me down every day. I lost weight, I lost my hair, I lost myself.

But a toaster?  I’d take a toaster over a passive aggressive or verbally abusive boss any day of the week.

Bullying in the work force gets little coverage or attention because we don’t want to lose our jobs, especially when we love what we do but hate the people above us.  And it’s not only superiors that are a problem, sometimes our peers in the workplace are bully’s.  I’ve found a majority of jobs to be an extension of high school.  Cool people are bullies and others aren’t, so they become isolated from the pack, left to feel alone and rejected, lowering ones self esteem and pride.

We have two types of bullying: bosses and co-workers.  Both are terrible in their own right.  As a former, and sometimes present, victim of bullies in the work force, I’d like to share a few stories:

When I started out in the work world I worked in the movie industry; it was bullying on crack.  In fact, I was so shocked and disturbed by the treatment of assistants that I made a documentary.  I’ll never forget a story told to me by a guy that worked for some major producer that demanded he had a specific energy bar on his desk everyday at 4:30 pm.  The assistant was so paranoid that he put the bar on his boss’s desk at 4:25 pm just to make sure it wasn’t late.  The boss called everyone into his office for a meeting and half way through the meeting, he saw the energy bar on the corner of his desk and stopped:

“Why is this energy bar on my desk?”  And the terrified assistant, living in fear every day, replied, “You said you wanted it on your desk at 4:30 pm so I put it there to make sure it wasn’t late.”  

And the bully’s response was, “The kitchen is two degrees cooler than my office, so if you put it there before 4:30 pm it gets melty.”  (“Melty” isn’t even a word, probably my most favorite line of this ridiculous story). “You’re fired.” And that was the end of him.  But, having said that, I’d rather have some ridiculous circumstance over an energy bar then a mentally abusive situation.

Being yelled at or put down is worse.  Mental abuse in the work place resides in your brain when you go home.  You wake up dreading going to work, and sit at your desk all day feeling as though it may come under attack at any given moment.  It’s also very difficult to prove mental abuse, and sometimes impossible.  Since society barely acknowledges mental abuse in the work place to begin with, it leaves us alone, and more or less at a dead end.   It is the worse kind of abuse, not because you can’t document it, but because it affects your psychosis.

My next job was a government job.  My new boss came from the corporate world.  (I have some experience in corporate America, but bullies in this environment have more to fear since the threat of a lawsuit is always looming).  What I learned at this job is that, if it’s not sexual harassment or verbal harassment that can be documented or proved through emails, you’re dealt a terrible card.  An abuse that you can’t prove with concrete data, but feel exposed to on a regular basis, is the worse kind of abuse.  You get an anxiety attack when an email comes from your bully, or when you see their number pop up on your phone and know you have to answer it.  It is truly a terrible situation.  Government jobs have unions to address this type of behavior, but in my experience, don’t do much to remedy the situation.

Since bullying is psychological, you have to turn the tables and play the game right back in your bully’s face.  Set some boundaries, slowly.  Stand up for yourself in a savvy fashion, which will gain respect from your bully.  They can’t get away with everything so pick your battles and stand strong with confidence.  Make the bully look ridiculous in a soft psychological fashion; it’s a tight rope to walk, but a starting point to redirect the relationship to a place of balance that involves less threatening bullying throughout your day.

Then we have the co-workers.  Co-workers bully all the time without even realizing it.  They’re not your “boss,” so they really don’t have the right to inflict pain (bosses don’t have the “right” either but have clout to get away with it).  This type of bullying isolates you from the pack and makes you dread work.  Sometimes our workplace is a terrible high school cafeteria.  Are you in the “in” crowd?  No.  So what do you do?  Keep a low profile.  Not being the loud mouth, the funny one, the lame co-worker that thinks they have all the answers, is just fuel for your coolness.

Sometimes when I shop for wine and have zero knowledge of wine, I ask the cashier, “Do people like this?  I’m a follower so…”  It’s an inside joke I play with myself cause I’m most definitely not a follower and you must keep that in mind when dealing with the crowd of bullies, or even one bully, in your work force.  We’re not in high school anymore.  Unfortunately some never left high school, so laugh at it.  Be nonchalant.  That attitude will beat your bully and give you the mental freedom you deserve.

Try to take on bullies in the work force with hard pride and confidence.  You’re better than that, and as far as your nightmare boss is concerned: he or she is a sad, unhealthy, pathetic person, dealing with demons that unfortunately you have to live with in the hours you work.  Switch your perspective.  Pity them and know that YOU are a rock star and will do your best to mentally rise above it all, everyday.  And you will end up stronger at the end of your day, everyday.

Rebecca Schleifer: Disabled and Disenfranchised

LINK

Published in: 

 The Huffington Post

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

State efforts to restrict voting access have dominated election news this year. Since the beginning of 2011, legislators in 41 state governments have introduced at least 180 bills that wouldmake it harder to register or to vote. At least 25 laws and two executive actions have been enacted, affecting 19 states. These include laws requiring proof of citizenship or photo identification to register or to vote; limiting voting registration opportunities; and reducing early and absentee voting.

The U.S. Department of Justice and voting rights advocates have challenged these laws for violating the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act, and raised concerns about their discriminatory impact on low-income people, and racial and ethnic minorities. But what hasn't been mentioned in the media coverage, and what seems of little concern to supporters or opponents of these laws, is their discriminatory impact on one of the country's largest minorities: people with disabilities.

At least 36 million people with disabilities -- more than 11 percent of the population - live in the United States. Adults with disabilities face high rates of unemployment and poverty relative to their non-disabled counterparts. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one-third of working age (21-64 years old) adults with disabilities are unemployed; and 27 percent of working age adults with disabilities live below the poverty line -- twice the rate of people without disabilities.

Many people with disabilities already face physical and other barriers when they seek to exercise their right to vote. Federal laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Help America Vote Act require accessible voting systems, to ensure equal access and participation for people with physical and visual disabilities. But according to a 2009 US Government Accountability Office study, more than two-thirds of polling places are not fully accessible; nearly 25 percent did not have equal access to a secret and independent ballot, and voting in a polling place, considered the "hallmarks of an effective and informed right to vote," as voting rights expert Michael Waterstone has noted.

People with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities may be barred from voting by state laws disqualifying voters judged "mentally incompetent" by a court (as permitted by 39 U.S. states,according to a study published before the 2008 election) or because election officials or service providers improperly screen out those they determine incompetent to vote.

In Virginia, for example, election officials refused to provide absentee ballots for people in state psychiatric facilities because they read the state law to authorize such ballots only for people with physical disabilities. A 2008 study of Philadelphia nursing homes found that staff were denying residents the right to vote based on their own assessment of capacity to vote, notwithstanding that Pennsylvania law does not require that voters be deemed competent to cast a ballot.

People with disabilities are significantly less likely to vote than their non-disabled peers. A 2012 studyfound voter turnout for people with disabilities to be11 percentage points lower than for people without disabilities, leaving more than 3 million Americans with disabilities "sidelined" on Election Day.

In this context, laws imposing additional burdens threaten to further suppress political participation and voter turnout by people with disabilities.

Consider, for example, laws requiring proof of citizenship or photo ID to register or to vote. The Supreme Court has made clear that states that require government-issued IDs for voting must make them available free of charge to indigent voters. But people with disabilities still face considerable challenges. Because they are more likely to live in poverty, securing the necessary documentation to get a photo ID may be out of reach ($15-$25 for a birth certificate). Also many people with disabilities don't drive and must rely on family members, caretakers, or public transit for transportation. These problems with transportation are compounded for people in rural areas or group homes.

Rather than legislating ways to take away people's voting rights, state governments should instead be coming up with initiatives to ensure that all qualified U.S. citizens -- including people with disabilities -- can register to vote, get to the polls, and cast their ballots. States should make information about the voting process and candidates accessible to all people with disabilities, using simple language, visual aids, or oral instructions, and training local election supervisors to provide such information during the voting process.

These measures would ensure that people with disabilities can make informed decisions at the ballot box, and send a clear message that they are welcome in the political sphere, and have a say in who gets to represent their interests, like all other American citizens.

Rebecca Schleifer is the health and human rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

Joe Nocera: How To Fix The Schools

Joe Nocera

LINK

No matter how quickly the Chicago teachers’ strike ends, whether it is this afternoon or two months from now, it’s not going to end well for the city’s public school students. Yes, I know; that’s the hoariest of clichés. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

It’s not just the school days that are being lost. Far more important, the animosity between the Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration will undoubtedly linger long after the strike ends. The battle will end, but the war between education reformers and urban public schoolteachers will go on.

Teachers — many of them — will continue to resent efforts to use standardized tests to measure their ability to teach. Their leaders — some of them — will denounce the “billionaire hedge fund managers” who are financing many of the reform efforts. Reformers will continue to view teachers’ unions as the greatest roadblock to higher student achievement. How can such a poisonous atmosphere not affect what goes on in the classroom? Alienated labor is never a good thing. “It is not possible to make progress with your students if you are at war with your teachers,” says Marc Tucker.

Tucker, 72, a former senior education official in Washington, is the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which he founded in 1988. Since then he has focused much of his research on comparing public education in the United States with that of places that have far better results than we do — places like Finland, Japan, Shanghai and Ontario, Canada. His essential conclusion is that the best education systems share common traits — almost none of which are embodied in either the current American system or in the reform ideas that have gained sway over the last decade or so. He can sound frustrated when he talks about it.

“We have to find a way to work with teachers and unions while at the same time working to greatly raise the quality of teachers,” he told me recently. He has some clear ideas about how to go about that. His starting point is not the public schools themselves but the universities that educate teachers. Teacher education in America is vastly inferior to many other countries; we neither emphasize pedagogy — i.e., how to teach — nor demand mastery of the subject matter. Both are a given in the top-performing countries. (Indeed, it is striking how many nonprofit education programs in the U.S. are aimed at helping working teachers do a better job — because they’ve never learned the right techniques.)

What is also a given in other countries is that teaching has a status equal to other white-collar professionals. That was once true in America, but Tucker believes that a quarter-century of income inequality saw teachers lose out at the expense of lawyers and other well-paid professionals. That is a large part of the reason that teachers’ unions have become so obstreperous: It is not just that they feel underpaid, but they feel undervalued. Tucker believes that teachers should be paid more — though not exorbitantly. But making teacher education more rigorous — and imbuing the profession with more status — is just as important. “Other countries have raised their standards for getting into teachers’ colleges,” he told me. “We need to do the same.”

Second, he believes that it makes no sense to demonize unions. “If you look at the countries with the highest performance, many of them have very strong unions. There is no correlation between the strength of the unions and student achievement,” he says.

Instead, he points to the example of Ontario, where a decade ago, a new government decided to embrace the teachers’ unions — to treat them as partners instead of as adversaries. The result? Ontario now has some of the best student achievement in the world. (Alas, relations between teachers and the government have recently deteriorated after a two-year wage freeze was imposed.)

High-performing countries don’t abandon teacher standards. On the contrary. Teachers who feel part of a collaborative effort are far more willing to be evaluated for their job performance — just like any other professional. It should also be noted that none of the best-performing countries rely as heavily as the U.S. does on the blunt instrument of standardized tests. That is yet another lesson we have failed to learn.

The Chicago teachers’ strike exemplifies, in stark terms, how misguided the battle over education has become. The teachers are fighting for the things industrial unions have always fought for: seniority, favorable work rules and fierce resistance to performance measures. City Hall is fighting to institute reforms no top-performing country has ever seen fit to use, and which probably won’t make much difference if they are instituted.

The answer lies elsewhere — in a different approach to teaching education and to dealing with the unions. It won’t be easy, but it is not impossible. It’s the way forward.

Gail Collins: The Lows of Higher Ed

By GAIL COLLINS, NY Times

LINK

Welcome back, college students! Always nice to see you.

Although we are sort of worried by those bleak stories about student debt, which suggest a lot of you may graduate owing a ton of money and unqualified to do anything more remunerative than selling socks.

This year, Newsweek cheerfully welcomed the Class of 2016 by asking, “Is College a Lousy Investment?” And in The Times, Andrew Martin reported that the Department of Education is paying more than $1.4 billion per annum to folks whose job it is to collect on $76 billion in defaulted student loans. “If you wait long enough, you catch people when their guard’s down,” one debt collector told Martin after garnishing the savings of a disabled carpenter.

Look on the bright side, students. Perhaps when you graduate, some of you will be able to qualify for a good job in the booming accounts receivable management industry.

Higher education is still the key to most good jobs, but the nation is starting to ask some questions about the way we finance it. Shouldn’t there be more of a match between the cost of school and the potential earning power of the graduates? Who speaks for the art history majors? And why is tuition so high, anyway? (Parents, if your kid is planning to take out student loans, you might want to avoid any college where the dorm rooms are nicer than your house.)

“People don’t believe much any more about the altruistic motives of colleges and universities,” sadly noted Pat Callan of the Higher Education Policy Institute.

Not without some reason. In his reporting, Martin uncovered a newsletter aimed at college admissions officers that advised them to avoid using “bad words” such as “cost” or “pay” in their admissions materials. Instead, it suggested: “And you get all this for ...”

In Washington, Congress is holding hearings! The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is considering a bill — co-sponsored by Democrat Al Franken and Republican Charles Grassley — that would require all schools to fill out the same form telling the student loan applicants useful facts like exactly how much per month they’ll be forking over when they start paying.

That would be the superminimum, right? How amazed are you that this isn’t happening already?

“Some of the packages don’t delineate what’s a grant, what’s a scholarship, what’s a loan,” said Franken. “And the information all comes in an award letter, so you’re thinking: Award!”

The Obama administration, which can’t do much about this without Congress, has been working to get the schools to voluntarily adopt a “shopping sheet” that would provide clear basic information so students could compare different schools’ financing before making a choice. “We’ve been encouraged by the feedback from the higher-ed sector,” one of the experts working on the program said. “I think we have 100 individual colleges and universities.”

The good news is that controlling college costs really does seem to be an administration priority. The bad news is that there are more than 4,000 colleges and universities.

People, don’t you think young adults should get the clearest, most easy-to-compare information conceivable before they sign a huge, life-changing loan deal? Don’t you think there should be somebody in charge of calling them up once a week and yelling: “Eight hundred dollars a month until you’re 51 years old!”

Maybe I’m underestimating the ability of teenagers to make serious, well-thought-out decisions about their higher education. All I can tell you is that when I was 21 years old, I signed up to go to graduate school at the University of Massachusetts because I had always wanted to live in Boston. I had no idea the main campus was on the other side of the state until I got there.

Franken is hoping the Senate might take up his proposal next year. I presume you weren’t expecting anything sooner. Congress can’t even get it together to keep the Postal Service from defaulting. And the Senate leaders admitted the other day that they’re not going to be able to pass a bipartisan bill to legalize Internet gambling on poker, which seems to be a really high priority for some important people. If they can’t do poker, they are not going to get to student loan transparency.

The House is planning hearings on student loans, too. The chairwoman of the subcommittee assigned to this task is Representative Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican who once said that she worked her own way through college and had “little tolerance” for people who complain about their huge student loan debts.

“New ideas to advocate for financial aid transparency are always welcome in this discussion,” Foxx said in an e-mail on Friday. “But we have to question whether the federal government’s dictating the terms of every college and university’s financial aid communications will actually achieve the desired results.”

So maybe a little less sense of urgency there.

G. Alan Tarr: Judicial Accountability and Independence - Can We Have Both?

Rutgers-Camden Constitutional Scholar Pens Book on Judicial Independence and Accountability

September 13, 2012

G. Alan Tarr is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Camden.

CAMDEN — For more than two centuries, Americans have struggled with how to strike the proper balance between judicial independence and judicial accountability, and this debate continues to the present day.

In his new book, Without Fear or Favor: Judicial Independence and Judicial Accountability in the States(Stanford University Press, 2012), internationally noted constitutional scholar G. Alan Tarr, a professor of political science at Rutgers–Camden, asks how we can hold judges accountable while maintaining their independence.

“On one hand, we want judges to be free to decide impartially based on the law,” Tarr says. “On the other hand, because their rulings have important policy consequences —think abortion, same-sex marriage, and racial desegregation —we want to have some control over how they decide. The book focuses on the ways in which the states have attempted to deal with this over time.”

Judicial independence refers to removing external influences that could interfere with a judge’s ability to impartially decide cases.

In his book, Tarr classifies champions of judicial independence as “defenders.” These defenders say external pressures come from those who seek to influence judges to make politically acceptable decisions.

But people Tarr describes as “bashers” say if judges are too independent, they are free to pursue their own ideological or political agendas at the expense of fidelity to the law. The judges are making important policy decisions or affecting public policy in their decision making.

If that kind of power is being exercised, bashers say the people should have some control over how it’s being exercised and judges should be held accountable for their decisions.

Tarr notes in the introduction of his book, “Legislative steps to curtail judicial power are portrayed as attempts to intimidate judges and threaten their independence. Efforts to hold state judges electorally accountable for their rulings are condemned for the same reasons.”

Tarr traces the debate over judicial independence and accountability in the states from America’s early years to the present day. At the outset, most state judges were appointed by the governor, a method New Jersey still uses today (the method is the same at the federal level, with the President of the United States appointing Supreme Court justices). 

“That model is very much a minority model among states across the nation,” Tarr says. “Over time, there was concern about party bosses dictating who sat on the bench. Judicial elections developed in the mid-19th Century to depoliticize the process. That didn’t work and the many states moved to so-called merit selection, but that reform movement died in the 1980s.”

Today, 39 states hold elections for their Supreme Court justices and races for those seats have become politically charged. Most of the current debate about judicial independence and judicial accountability in the states revolves around judicial elections, Tarr says.

“Part of the argument is that it’s going to be political no matter what system you use,” Tarr says. “So the question becomes, how do you get judicial accountability while maintaining independence?”

One suggestion Tarr makes is that every judge — no matter the process of selection — serve a set number of years without reappointment at the end of the term.

“It seems to me that the real problem with judicial independence is that judges may make decision with an eye to the forthcoming election or reappointment,” Tarr says. “But if there is no second term, you can take away that sort of pressure on sitting judges.”

Tarr notes in his book that a single, nonrenewable term would seem inadequate for many “bashers” because judges who are perceived as making rather than interpreting the law are not threatened with the loss of their positions.

Recent proposals to safeguard judicial independence or promote accountability also include the greater use of recusal and disqualification for judges who receive campaign contributions and the public financing of judicial elections.

Tarr writes that because judges who are elected depend on campaign contributions, their decisions could be influenced by gratitude for past contributions or the hope of future donations.

A Camden resident, Tarr directs the Rutgers–Camden Center for State Constitutional Studies. He has consulted with numerous state legislatures and Supreme Courts on the complexities of state constitutions.

The Rutgers–Camden scholar is the co-author of numerous books, including State Supreme Courts in State and Nation (Yale University Press, 1990) and American Constitutional Law (Westview Press, 2009), now in its eighth edition.

Media Contact: Ed Moorhouse
(856) 225-6759
E-mail: ejmoor@camden.rutgers.edu