EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 57

OVERSIGHT?

Our Constitution, most state constitutions, judicial procedures and corporation bylaws, all contain checks and balances. All aspects of our republic purposely contain a system of checks and balances. The premise behind the need for such restraints is that people can be corrupt and power breeds corruption. Corruption in government and unchecked power can and will destroy individual liberty. It doesn’t matter which political party is in power, the motivation to use the full and unchecked power of government for ideological supremacy is always there. Our system of checks and balances relies on another principle for its effectiveness. The protector of viability of checks and balances is Congressional and Judicial oversight and an aggressive questioning press, which is the third, very important leg of oversight.

079 Capitol Hill United States Congress 1993 (Photo credit: David Holt London)

In our federal government structure, the Congress and the Courts provide the arms of oversight of the Executive. It is the Executive branch of our government whose management of the nation’s business contains the power to encroach on individual freedom in the name of security or in misguided attempts to destroy opposition to changing or transforming the American nation. Up until the last ten years the check and balance process has worked well with effective oversight.

In the 1980s and ’90s, the Executive often struggled to maintain its position of prominence in running the affairs of government. At times it seemed to those of us working in the Executive branch that Congress believed oversight meant management. Congressional staff members and reporters made their bones by ferreting out real and imagined overreaches and inefficiencies of the Executive. There was a constant stream of officers from various agencies marching up to testify in front of various committees. One Director of the CIA often commented, “That while CIA is an executive agency under the command of the President, CIA works equally for the Congress.” (This is not an exact quote but it is very close and was accurate at the time.)

The power and effectiveness of the oversight process has been steadily degraded. Four things are primarily responsible for the weakening of the oversight process.

First: The Executive Branch of Government has grown much larger, starting with President George W. Bush and continued by President Obama. The Congressional and Judicial Branches have not kept up.

Secondly: The media has become politically one-sided and ignores covering events that might be critical of President Obama. In doing so they have abrogated their historical position as a key element of the oversight process.

Thirdly: Only the Executive Branch has keep up with the technology necessary to improve the management and control of their branch of government.

Lastly: No one in the Legislative or Judicial Branches anticipated that a political party would so openly and ruthlessly use the power of the executive to destroy political opposition groups. There is scarcely a piece of the executive that has not stepped over traditional lines to seize and expand political power. A few examples of the most egregious are the IRS, EPA, the State Department, the Justice Department, ranking military officers, DEA, Immigrations, HHS, Department of Labor and others that will emerge if oversight regains its footing. How can we expect Congress to oversee the collection and use of information on U.S. Citizens if it cannot even provide oversight of the the IRS, one of the most bureaucratic and pervasive of all agencies? This is not over. Watch the Congressional hearing.

By the author of the Jack Brandon novels. http://www.factsandfictions.com

Checks, balances, and the National Security Agency (tv.msnbc.com)
Constitutional Standoff: Obama Syndicate vs. the People… “It’s no secret to anyone who watches any newscast – even once a week – that the Obama syndicate (aka Executive Branch of the US government) has been flexing its muscles, in order to take over all gov (gunnygblog.wordpress.com)
James Clapper Hails Checks and Balances, Evades Oversight (crooksandliars.com)

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Filed under centralization, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, information technology, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Politics

Tagged as Barack Obama, CIA, Congress, Executive (government), George W. Bush, Obama, United States, United States Congress

by Barry Kelly | January 28, 2013 · 8:40 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 32

Management of Complexity (Photo credit: michael.heiss)

THE REAL BI-PARTISAN ISSUE

Nearly every day I hear someone saying, “I can’t believe what I just heard the administration is doing.” If there ever was a bi-partisan statement, this is it. Democrats or Republicans, it makes no difference when it comes to dumbness.

English: Seal of the United States Department of Homeland Security. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since the first days of centralized authority, government dumbness has been with us. In the last 150 years, the level of government centralization has steadily grown to levels that jeopardize the continued development of our civilization. The roots of centralization have been nurtured by an explosion of progress in the transmission and processing of information. Good thing? Maybe yes. But many good things have dangerous side effects.

It is usually true, the closer a leader or manager is to a situation or problem, the more they know about the facts and can fix the problem or recommend a wise course of action. A hallmark of an effective leader and manager is their ability to put a premium on the advice from ‘people on the ground.’ As governments have moved more toward centralization, managers have been moved further and further from people on the ground. There are myriad management levels between the point of contact with the situation or problem and the top-level decision maker. Government managers, in my favorite example, of the Department of Homeland Security, are several light years beyond their span of control. While I don’t think the recent and current heads of Homeland Security are exemplary managers or leaders, no human can do more than pretend they can manage something as large and diverse as Homeland Security or the Intelligence Community or a number of other government agencies and departments.

You see, the catalyst of expanding centralization is the speed of information transmission and processing. Managers believe because they can communicate they can understand and manage. This is a dangerous illusion. How well did Presidents Johnson and Nixon, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and later National Security Advisor Kissinger personally manage the Vietnam War? Not well. I was there and read many of their directives. Some verged on comic relief.

A few organs of government like the Defense Department and NASA have been able to somewhat mitigate the downside of centralization because at all levels, except the very top, managers come from men and women on their way up the management ladder. They and their staffs can receive and understand the flow of information. They understand the culture. In a sense they have all been there, done that. I believe the only remedy to the downsides of centralization is to ensure organizations are made up nearly entirely of men and women who have had a deep immersion in various mission levels of their organization and to decentralize those departments and agencies that have an impossible scope of attention and management for anyone. Letting the states manage their own affairs according to the Constitution will check rampant centralization. This is truly a bi-partisan issue.