Clinton and Sanders Infrastructure Plans

Dear Friends,

Hillary Clinton has finally come out with an infrastructure plan, and as you might imagine it is very middle of the road and certainly would not accomplish what even she says we need.

Everybody agrees that the United States infrastructure is in grave need of repair, costs Americans a ton of unnecessary money each year and is way behind that of other developed countries.  If you don't believe me read the article in Fortune (here) entitled "An investment in America's infrastructure could cost taxpayers nothing".  It is a full throated argument for investing huge sums of money in our infrastructure.

There seems to be general agreement that the US needs to invest well over $1 trillion in our infrastructure to repair it and bring it to a competitive level with other developed countries.  As the Fortune article points out, an up to date infrastructure would save everybody money that is currently spent on lost time and damage done by a crumbling and overcrowded infrastructure.  In addition, infrastructure spending creates lots of good paying jobs.  The Fortune article estimates that even a $18 billion annual investment in infrastructure would create 216,000 jobs in the first year.  As the Fortune article concludes, "It is hard to think of a timelier win-win proposal."

Bernie Sanders has proposed increasing our infrastructure spending by $1 trillion over the next five years (here).  Hillary Clinton, while acknowledging that estimates of "the size of our 'infrastructure gap' register in the trillions of dollars", proposes that we increase our infrastructure spending by just $275 million over the next five years (here).

You can see a comparison of the two plans at Dave Johnson's blog on The Huffington Post (here).

Secretary Clinton's proposal can hardly be called an incremental improvement much less any kind of a solution to our infrastructure deficit.  It is, of course, better than nothing.  Senator Sanders' proposal truly addresses both the infrastructure deficit we face as well as the need for many more good paying jobs.  Once again the extremely modest proposal from the establishment candidate will not generate any enthusiasm among those in our country who are looking for real change and bold ideas.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

President Obama eviscerates our rights and protects wrongdoers

Dear Friends,

I have pointed out before that President Obama is often not the President that he could or should be.  He has referred to his administration as "the most transparent administration in history".  Since prior administrations set such a low bar, his statement may be technically true, but it is very misleading.  President Obama has been aggressively pursuing any "leaks" with prosecutions.  A 2013 article in The Guardian (here) leads off with these paragraphs:

Barack Obama has pursued the most aggressive "war on leaks" since the Nixon administration, according to a report published on Thursday that says the administration's attempts to control the flow of information is hampering the ability of journalists to do their jobs.
The author of the study, the former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, says the administration's actions have severely hindered the release of information that could be used to hold it to account.

President Obama continues to aggressively pursue prosecution of whistleblowers while doing nothing to those whose crimes are disclosed by the whistleblowers.

He is now seeking to limit the authority of the inspector generals of various agency who act as watchdogs over those agency.  Here is a summary of the inspector general concept, and President Obama's attempt to destroy it from a recent article in The New York Times (here)

The inspector-general system was created in 1978 in the wake of Watergate as an independent check on government abuse, and it has grown to include watchdogs at 72 federal agencies. Their investigations have produced thousands of often searing public reports on everything from secret terrorism programs and disaster responses to boondoggles like a lavish government conference in Las Vegas in 2010 that featured a clown and a mind reader.
Not surprisingly, tensions are common between the watchdogs and the officials they investigate. President Ronald Reagan, in fact, fired 15 inspectors general in 1981. But a number of scholars and investigators said the restrictions imposed by the Obama administration reflect a new level of acrimony.
“This is by far the most aggressive assault on the inspector general concept since the beginning,” said Paul Light, a New York University professor who has studied the system. “It’s the complete evisceration of the concept. You might as well fold them down. They’ve become defanged.”

Last summer, President Obama's Justice Department issued a new ruling related to the inspector general concept.  Here are the opening paragraphs from an article at the Huffington Post (here)

The Department of Justice watchdog says a new opinion issued by the DOJ's legal office "undermines" the watchdog's independence and will "significantly" impair its ability to "detect and deter waste, fraud, and abuse, and to protect taxpayer dollars."
The Office of the Inspector General at the Justice Department conducts oversight of the department's activities and law enforcement agencies within it. But under a new opinion from DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, the inspector general has to seek permission from the organization it is meant to oversee in order to obtain certain types of information.
"As a result of the OLC’s opinion, the OIG will now need to obtain Justice Department permission in order to get access to important information in the Department’s files – putting the agency over which the OIG conducts oversight in the position of deciding whether to give the OIG access to the information necessary to conduct that oversight," the Inspector General's office said in a statement. "The conflict with the principles enshrined in the Inspector General Act could not be clearer and, as a result, the OIG’s work will be adversely impacted."

The New York Times article referenced above (here) cited an incredible list of recent examples of investigations that have been hindered or completely thwarted by the agency refusing to provide documents to its inspector general, including, the killing of unarmed Honduran civilians by DEA agents, sexual assaults in the Peace Corps, FBI abuses in counterterrorism cases and the conduct of negotiations of international trade agreements by the Commerce Department.  We have a right to know about the bad and illegal things our government does and to have those responsible held accountable.

As far as we know, President Obama has continued and defended programs which violate our right to privacy and now he is trying his best to ensure that we have no way of finding out about wrongdoings by government officials.  That is not the way a democracy works.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal