Government, like weather, beyond our control

Two forces affect the lives of many people and are beyond their control.

The weather and the government.

Businesses accept the inevitability of their influence and try to work around the effects of government action as much as they adjust to changes in the weather.

Last month’s unemployment figures show the effect of weather on business.  New job creation and construction jobs were well below expectations and many people stopped looking for work, influenced by storms and bitter winter chills.

Those weather-induced impacts may cause the Federal Reserve to maintain its easy lending policies and could encourage the continuation of unemployment payments.

They could also prompt business to step up their online sales, making shopping easier in almost any weather but not creating many new jobs.

Business must adjust to the weather, because it cannot change or influence it.

“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it” goes the old saying. 

The more worrisome problem is the “us and them” attitude of government, which leaves both business and other people feeling as helpless and leaving them frustrated and unhappy.

Big business is often able to influence government, but most businesses must simply find a way to live with rules, paperwork and policies that seem to them burdensome, costly and pointless.

Government often treats citizens with the same indifference as the weather instead of recognizing that its purpose is to serve the people.

Items in the news recently illustrate the point.

Political staffers of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie engineered a four-day traffic jam in that state’s Fort Lee on approaches to the George Washington Bridge as a way of punishing the city’s Democratic mayor for not supporting Republican Christie’s re-election.

The tie-ups were incredible, slowing ambulances, making school children miss their classes and causing many to be late to work.

The staff showed no concern for the people affected.  Perhaps they expected those caught in the jam would figure out the reason why and beg the mayor to support Christie. It didn’t happen.

In this case, politics took precedence over public service. And the instrument used by the governor’s staff was government, supposedly “of the people, for the people and by the people.”

The press, which can be a powerful force it is own right, smelled something wrong and finally got out the story that the blockage was caused by politics and not a phony “traffic study.”

Christie’s staff was forced to release the emails showing that they had conjured up the traffic crisis.   But their action only partially solved the problem.

If you look at the emails, you would see that large parts are blacked out, “redacted” as the lawyers call it.  Why? No reason is given, but it seems clear the reason is to protect some of those involved.

Not only is the public mistreated, but it cannot gain access to documents written and sent on the government email system for which it paid.

Before people write off New Jersey as a special case, it’s worth remembering that the arms-length treatment of citizens by government happens elsewhere.

In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage refused to release a report on Medicaid expansion, which had been requested under state law by the press and was part of a study costing taxpayers $925,000.

Though loophole-ridden, Maine’s Freedom of Access Law requires such a document to be made public on request.  LePage told Attorney General Janet Mills to “sue me” if she wanted to get the document to the public.

It looked like the politics of the situation in which the GOP governor opposes efforts to expand Medicaid coverage and the Legislature, controlled by Democrats, favors it had become more important than the interests of the people.

LePage then changed his mind and released the document, possibly as a result of getting his own legal advice. The political cost of keeping the document secret may have been higher than the repercussions from releasing it.

Washington is even worse. It has taken massive leaks of government documents for Americans to learn their phone records are being collected and kept, and the National Security Agency, which does the collecting, has lied to Congress and the courts.

Millions of documents are routinely classified as secret, often more as a way of keeping government actions shielded from public view than because of the legitimate need not to tip off America’s adversaries.

Frustrated and angry citizens form ineffective, misguided and impractical reform movements or they just don’t participate in the political system.  Like the weather, government is unaffected.

Everybody talks about the government, but nobody does anything about it.

Without sacrifices, no budget deal or tax reform

Somebody has to give up something. Or else.

Or else there is no hope that the federal government can either cut spending or reform the unfair tax system.

Today, the law is full of spending for countless interests, while the tax code provides breaks to promote countless activities.

Anytime Congress considers a serious proposal to eliminate some of the federal spending or close some of tax loopholes, the potential losers protest loudly.  Politicians listen to the outcry and almost always back off the proposal.

The case in point these days are military pensions. 

Generally, if a person serves for 20 years or more, he or she is eligible to begin receiving pension payments upon leaving the service.

Most people who serve in the armed forces do not stay for 20 years.  Less than one-fifth become eligible for a military pension.

The new budget bill reduces the cost of living adjustment, known as the COLA, by one percent for the period from the beginning of military retirement until the person reaches 62 years of age.

When a person hits 62, the pension takes a big jump up, because the retiree then receives payments as if the full COLA had been in effect in past years. From then on, he or she gets the regular unreduced COLA.

In other words, after having served for at least 20 years, a person gets a reduced pension until reaching 62.  And the vast majority of those who serve are unaffected, because they get no pension.

Of course, that temporary COLA reduction means a veteran receives a lower lifetime amount and the federal budget spends less.  The logic is that most of these people will get another job after retiring from the military and before finally retiring from all work, so they can manage.

No sooner was the bill passed than the protests arose.  The message seemed to be that the federal budget crisis was being settled on the backs of those who had voluntarily risked their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect their country.

Claims like that are political dynamite.  It takes a strong politician to explain that the cuts affect a relative few, apply only temporarily and are part of a package of sacrifices needed to meet demands to cut the size of government and spending.

Both of Maine’s U.S. senators and Rep. Mike Michaud voted for the budget bill, but say they are opposed to the military pension change.  Rep. Chellie Pingree voted against the bill.

The three supporters of the budget bill now want the military pension provision repealed. But that means there must be other cuts, undoubtedly with a new group of protesters, to keep the budget under the control that Congress says it wants.

Pingree thinks the budget savings should come from cutting benefits for the rich and large corporations benefiting from tax loopholes.  But those interests have big lobbying budgets and make campaign contributions that shield them from such changes.

And so the wheel continues to turn.

There are only two ways to control the federal budget.  One is to cut spending and be ready to withstand the political wrath of those losing some financial benefit. The other is to raise taxes.

Both involve difficult political choices.  The budget package adopted in December made some of those choices.  When faced with a widely unpopular government shutdown or the package, Congress took the easier way out – adopting the package at least temporarily.

The easiest budget cutting measure has been to take money away from the poor and those least able to bring political and financial pressure on the politicians.

That means cutting off unemployment payments for the long-term jobless and reducing or eliminating food stamps for low-income people.  In politics, that’s called throwing people under the bus.

Pingree’s position is perhaps the most honest, but probably unrealistic, because there are not enough people in Congress willing to resist the power of big money.

The point is not that the military pension cut was the right thing to do.  It’s impossible to know that unless it is placed in the context of a broad review of all government spending and tax breaks.

That means setting priorities.  How do military pensions fit with tax breaks for oil companies?  What commitments must the government keep and what can it change?

Instead of enacting last-minute legislation to prevent shutdowns and picking on the less fortunate as targets of opportunity, the president, if he has an agenda, and the Congress, if it really wants to control spending, ought to propose comprehensive budget plans.

Policy failure seen in electric power losses

Hundreds of thousands from Maine to Michigan were plunged into darkness as the result of the late December ice storm.

People shivered in the dark.  Running generators in enclosed spaces, some died or became seriously ill from breathing carbon monoxide.

With all the focus on modernizing the electric system in recent years, you might have thought that storm-caused outages, especially during the winter, would have been drastically reduced.

But, while the country has been concerned about creating competition among generators, promoting renewable sources and upgrading the transmission grid, government and regulators have paid little attention to the lines bringing power to homes and businesses.

In short, the big picture has been about improving economics and the environment and has overlooked the more basic public health and safety issues of local poles and wires.

The emphasis has been on creating competition in the electric business. Government no longer regulates who gets into the business of generating electricity. 

The only generation receiving government backing is renewable power, which is supposed to produce a better environment and less reliance on fossil fuels, especially imports from politically sensitive places like the Middle East or Venezuela.

The electric grid has to remain reliable when generators are added, so new federally mandated agencies have sweeping authority to require new transmission lines.  Nobody seems overly concerned about the billions in added costs rolled into customers’ rates.

All of this may help meet long-term goals that will make the U.S. more energy independent and, as the world’s largest power consumer, more efficient and less destructive of the environment.

But what help is there for the customer who loses electricity when lines come down under the weight of ice or tree branches?

The prevailing attitude seems to be if you choose to live where there are exposed power lines, you must accept the risk of power outages.

Not only do ice storms cause massive cuts in service, but many other storms each year leave electric customers without service for hours or days.

Very little has changed in the distribution system, the poles and wires that bring power from the grid to the customer, from the time of Thomas Edison.

Today, just as more than a century ago, most power outside of cities is delivered on uninsulated, bare wires at the top of utility poles.  If a tree falls onto a line, that frail and sometimes old wire is broken, interrupting power until a crew can reach the break and repair it.

Almost no utility now budgets enough for repairing all breaks in its lines quickly.  People, especially those near the end of the line, must wait, sometimes for several days.  The more remote you are, the later your line is repaired.

Regulatory supervision over distribution lines is a state matter.  Usually state regulators try to get utilities to keep up with their tree trimming so branches will not contact the bare lines, but they do little more.

The most frequently suggested remedy is to put the lines underground, eliminating storm-caused outages.

The most obvious problem with this solution is its cost, as much as ten times more than stringing lines from poles.

In fact, if we decided we truly want to drastically reduce storm-caused losses of power, it will inevitably cost more.   

But it is worth at least asking the question if taxpayers or ratepayers are willing to pay more or shift utility spending from transmission to local distribution systems rather than simply assuming they don’t.

In the midst of all the spending on the latest ideas to improve the industry, utilities, the states or even the federal government might allocates some money spent on high voltage wires to investigating how to improve the delivery of electricity.

While the results of such a study cannot be predicted, some ideas might be worth considering.

How about “distributed generation,” where small generators could be placed closer to relatively isolated groups of customers?  Perhaps such generators could be reserved only for emergency use.

Today some people buy their own generators, but many people cannot afford that investment. Should there be utility-owned small generators, capable of serving groups of customers on outlying roads?

What about increased use of insulated lines, perhaps supported by cable?   This so-called “tree wire” would be much less vulnerable than today’s lines.

And, in some locations, underground lines should be required to be part of a comprehensive reliability upgrade to the distribution system.

Maybe none of these is the right idea.  The right idea would certainly be to begin looking for something better than today’s storm-tossed distribution system.

NSA defies constitutional limits

Since the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the country has been struggling with protecting individual liberties while combating terrorism.

Most people have supported tougher anti-terrorism moves, even if that meant some invasion of their privacy.

But one purpose of protecting against terrorists is to allow the American system of personal freedom to survive, so new measures should not go so far as to endanger the very rights they are supposed to protect.

That principle is proving difficult to follow.

Edward Snowden, the American intelligence consultant now in Russia who has leaked secret data, revealed the National Security Agency was collecting huge amounts of information about Americans.

Last week, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C. ruled on a massive NSA data collection scheme, raising the issues of national security and personal liberty to a new level.

Judge Richard Leon ruled that NSA mass collection of data on all telephone calls made in the United States violates the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibition of “unreasonable searches.”

He is a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush.  In his decision, like many of his conservative colleagues, he went back to the origins of the Constitution itself.

The Constitution was the result of a compromise between those who wanted a strong national government and others who worried that such a government would endanger individual rights.

The deal was that the Constitution would be adopted but immediately amended by the Bill of Rights, intended to limit the ability of the government to override personal liberties.

The question for Leon was to determine if the collection of data on just about everybody, almost none of whom is a terrorist, violated the constitutional deal by tilting too much in favor of the government.

There are supposed to be limits on how far the NSA can go. But one federal judge had already found “systematic non-compliance” with those limits. 

Another judge found the government had three times made “a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program.”  In other words, it lied.

On a recent “60 Minutes” broadcast, top NSA officials acted as though they were pure and never mentioned the previous court rebukes.

The NSA stresses that it does not collect names or the content of calls.  But, once it has a number, it would have little trouble, without needing a court order, finding out the person listed for the line.

The specific issue before the judge was whether collecting data about virtually everybody all the time is an “unreasonable” search.

Courts have found that it is not unreasonable to tap a single person’s phone or track their travels for a limit period.  A recent Supreme Court decision said the government tracking somebody for 30 days was not reasonable.

In defending the NSA, the government relied on a 30 year-old case that allowed the police to tap the phone of a single person for less than two weeks to see if he was making threatening calls. The court had said then that the man had no right to expect that his phone records were private.

Leon rejected the government position, saying that collecting one person’s records for a few days, based on real suspicion, was not the same as collecting everybody’s records for five years with no suspicion.

The way Congress has authorized surveillance allows the NSA to act after getting approval from a secret court in which neither the phone companies nor their customers have a say.

Of course, the NSA should not tip off people under suspicion.  But it also should avoid fishing expeditions.  That means there has to be better control of NSA and fewer one-sided court hearings.

Last week, a presidential panel recommended reining in the NSA.  Like the judge, it highlighted the protection the Fourth Amendment is supposed to give Americans.

It proposed that phone companies and internet providers could continue to collect usage data, but that the NSA could only get access it under a specific court order.

It also said that the secret intelligence court system should include a “Public Interest Advocate,” responsible for representing Americans whose data the NSA wanted.  Security could be maintained, because the individuals themselves would still be excluded.

After both the court decision and the panel’s recommendations, President Obama, once opposed to mass surveillance, tried to block further judicial review of the NSA.

James Madison, the principal drafter of the Constitution, worried about a powerful government abridging “freedom of the people.” Judge Leon wrote Madison “would be aghast” at what’s going on now.

Has Congress finally come to its senses?

Only 10 percent of voters approve of the job it is doing, according to
one new national poll.  And another survey reports only 26 percent have
a positive view of Republicans, who control the U.S. House of
Representatives and can block votes in the Senate.

More than half of American voters think this is one of the worst
Congresses ever, the polls say.

Congress seems paralyzed. Unable to agree on a budget, it has allowed
automatic, across-the-board spending cuts to click into effect.

The leading groups favoring those cuts are some conservative
organizations that want so badly to cut government spending they hardly
care how it will be done.  They even agree to slash military spending,
which they usually support.

With more automatic budget cuts looming, Congress gave itself one more
chance.  It appointed a huge, unwieldy committee to come up with a
solution. Fortunately, the two committee heads, GOP Rep. Paul Ryan and
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, decided to do all the work, and they came
up with a compromise.

It was pretty simple.  The House Republican budget proposal was $967
billion. Senate Democrats came in with $1.058 trillion.  The average of
the two is about $1.012 trillion.

The Ryan-Murray bipartisan deal is for $1.012 trillion.  Brilliant.

Amazingly, the House and Senate had earlier agreed on the military
portion of the budget, larger than all the rest combined. But the
compromise result was less for the military. Nonmilitary spending was
closer to the Democratic level.

The good news is that there is a two-year deal, and Congress can get on
with other major issues such as farm policy and immigration, both of
which need immediate attention.

Not everybody liked the outcome. Liberal Democrats, including Maine’s
Chellie Pingree, had wanted additional unemployment insurance to be
included in the deal, but it wasn’t. 

Even before the deal was complete, conservative groups blasted it. 
Following their lead, faithful tea partiers opposed the budget, voting
with the liberals.

In the end, a moderate majority, including Maine’s Mike Michaud,
dominated the House.  It was composed of an almost equal number of
members of both parties.

Certainly, some Republicans decided a compromise was worth the risk of
facing tea party challengers next year.

Conservative groups attacked those favoring compromise over drastic
automatic cuts.  They preferred deadlock.

It matters that the people believe their government is capable of
functioning, whether it cuts taxes and spending, raises them or
compromises.  Prolonged deadlock is dangerous to the political system.

Coming after years of stalemate, the federal budget compromise was more
important for the simple fact of its existence than the details of the
deal.

But what happened after the deal was announced was perhaps even more
surprising than the compromise.

House Speaker John Boehner, a conservative Republican, blasted the
conservative organizations that had opposed the deal.  He said they were
using his members for their own fund-raising purposes.

The Republican Party has come to rely heavily on these groups, which
have produced massive support for the tea party candidates that gave the
GOP its House majority.

But they have also used the GOP to block any action they did not like. 
Boehner, clinging to his speakership, has been reluctant to move unless
his party could pass a bill without Democratic support. 

This time, he stood up to the tea party and its conservative backers by
allowing a bipartisan vote to pass the budget.  It looked like he was
taking back the Republican Party, still conservative, but willing to
compromise.

The Republican House majority has the right to influence the policies
adopted by Congress and the president.  But it may be backing off from
causing stalemate by preventing anything it dislikes from passing.  

The renewal of a healthy political system seems to depend heavily on the
GOP shifting from a “my way or the highway” approach to hammering out
compromises with the Democrats.

That’s why Boehner’s move, almost a declaration of independence from
outside conservative groups, may be the most important thing that
happened last week.

The U.S. Senate went along with the House.  The key vote was to end
debate on the budget, and 67 senators, including 12 Republicans, voted
in favoring of blocking a filibuster.

Among the Republicans, in addition to GOP moderates like Maine’s Susan
Collins, were several true conservatives, though not tea partiers. 
Angus King voted with the Democrats who all voted to end debate.

This congressional course correction offers some hope that the American
political system can get back on the track.