Pacific Progressive

The FOIA Wars: Just How Open Is Our "Open Government"?

by: Alissa Bohling, Truthout | Special Feature

Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the "Homeland" is a collaborative project with Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts.

"American democracy has a disease, and it's called secrecy."

So begins a July 2011 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report on secrecy laws and the security establishment's heavy-handed use of the classified stamp.

Of course, even unclassified documents don't just magically make their way into the public domain.

Much of the shocking (and sometimes, not so shocking) news we read wouldn't have come to light without the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, the open records law passed as an antidote to the secrecy disease in 1966. FOIA was amended for the first time in the wake of the Watergate scandal, and, most recently, by the Open Government Act at the close of George W. Bush's second term. 

FOIA was especially important in unearthing the secrets of the Bush presidency, when early rumors of extraordinary rendition, "enhanced interrogation techniques" and "black site" prisons challenged everything Americans thought they knew about their country.

Fixing the U.S.-Pakistan Alliance Counterterrorism Must Be Balanced by Economic Development Aid

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Mehar Najeeb

Mutual exasperation defines U.S.-Pakistan relations these days. U.S. impatience with Pakistani counterterrorism efforts is matched by commentary in Pakistan reflecting a similar weariness with American counterterrorism priorities. Security concerns and militant attacks are commonplace in Pakistan, but average Pakistanis struggle under bleak socioeconomic prospects that have little to do directly with terrorism within their country. These socioeconomic needs must be urgently addressed primarily by the Pakistani government but also through a shift in American policy in Pakistan to better tackle Pakistan’s numerous sources of instability beyond militancy.

Today the U.S.-Pakistan partnership revolves largely around security issues while U.S. aid to Pakistan and high-level talks have long been focused on military and counterterrorism operations. The battle against extremist outfits is essential for internal and global security but it should not come at the exclusion of other efforts. A narrow counterterrorism focus neglects other factors that are integral to the stability of the Pakistani state, and distorts the Pakistani public’s perception of and cooperation with the United States.

ANOTHER Hostage-Taking Threat To Shut Down Government!

By Dave Johnson

This material was published by the Institute for America's Future.

Just weeks after the "debt-ceiling" hostage-taking, forcing trillions to be cut out of the economy, the hostage-takers are at it again. Now they are threatening a government shutdown, demanding even more cuts in the "continuing resolution" that keeps the government operating. This time they even want to cut the disaster-relief spending that helps people hit by wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters.

The current government funding runs out September 30. 48 House Republicans voted Wednesday against a bill to fund the government at levels agreed to in the last hostage deal, demanding even further cuts. So the bill failed to pass. Then Thursday night (Friday morning in DC) the House passed a new version of the bill bill that is insulting and unacceptable to Senate Democrats. In particular it cuts disaster spending and green-energy efforts. Furthermore, this budget resolution only funds the government through November 18, setting up for another hostage-taking in November.

Leading up to the Thursday night follow-up vote, TPM reported, GOP Ups Ante Big Time In Government Shutdown Fight,

Instead of cutting a deal with Democrats to keep the government funded, and re-up FEMA's disaster aid fund, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is trying to build support by dangling carrots before reluctant Republicans and whacking Democrats with sticks.

In Aftermath of "Jesus Loves Nukes" Scandal, Top Air Force Official Issues Religious Neutrality Policy

by: Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report

A top US Air Force official took significant steps  to ensure the Air Force is not seen as being pious by issuing policy guidelines to Air Force personnel that calls on "leaders at all levels" to take immediate steps to maintain "government neutrality regarding religion."

The memorandum was written by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz. It was issued a month after Truthout published an exclusive report revealing how, for two decades, the Air Force used numerous Bible passages and religious imagery to teach nuclear missile launch officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons, a decision that one senior Air Force officer told Truthout last month should have "instantly" resulted in the firing of the commanders who allowed it to take place.

The Air Force immediately suspended the mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare training following the publication of Truthout's report.

Shortly thereafter, David Smith, a spokesman for Air Education and Training Command said all of the Air Force's training materials "that address morals, ethics, core values and related character development issues" would undergo a "comprehensive review," Air Force Times reported.

That decision was made after a Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) instructor, who read Truthout's report, sent the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a civil rights organization, copies of the leadership training materials, which also contained Christian-themed citations. The PowerPoint slides the unnamed instructor sent MRFF are used in all colleges and universities that have an ROTC program.

Postal Service: Death by Bathtub Drowning

by: Allison Kilkenny, Truthout | News Analysis

President Obama announced in his deficit reduction proposal Monday that he supports allowing the US Postal Service (USPS) to stop delivering mail on Saturdays, among other revenue-generating proposals, such as allowing post offices to sell items other than stamps.

Strangely, while the president did make reference to refunding the $6.9 billion the Postal Service made to the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), he failed to address the $50 billion to 75 billion in overpayments to the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS).

Audits performed by the Postal Service's Office of Inspector General and the autonomous Postal Regulatory Commission both confirmed that the Postal Service has been bleeding money by overpaying into worker pension funds, placing the figure at between $50 billion and $75 billion.

It seems odd that the president would recognize the one area of hemorrhaging (FERS) without mentioning this second, far greater source of revenue loss, especially considering the White House's own proposals stand to save the USPS "only" $20 billion over the next few years.

The New York Metro Area Postal Union, APWU, and AFL-CIO view this failure to focus on an obvious way to save the USPS as a sign of ineptitude, a nefarious desire to see one of America's oldest public services destroyed, or an unhealthy mixture of both. As a result, the organizations put out a statement demanding that Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe resign immediately. If Donahoe fails to resign, the groups state, they call upon the Postal Board of Governors to fire him.

Guess What? It Is Cheaper to Use Federal Government Employees Than Contractor Employees

by: Dina Rasor, Truthout | Solutions

Having looked at federal government contracting for 30 years, I have heard over and over again that government employees make too much money and that the service contractor employees are cheaper. The mantra has been repeated that the government workers are bad, ineffective and expensive and that the federal government would do better to hire service contractor workers to do more and more of the government's work. This belief that the "free market" will always do better than the government at any task has increased over the years until each president since Reagan has taken it as a given.

Even Bill Clinton pushed to shrink the federal employee workforce by "outsourcing" the work to supposedly cheaper contract workers to save money during his "reinventing government" effort. This craze to outsource as much of the federal government as possible hit its height during the second Bush administration. Saving money was always the reason given, but there was very little actual proof that this was true. The Obama administration had started to reverse this trend and began an effort to "insource" many of these jobs back into the government, especially in areas that were tasks that should be done by government because of the sensitivity of the tasks and possibility of corruption or conflict of interest. But the push to lower government spending has stymied this trend and threatens to push jobs back into service contractor employees as money for government workers dries up. The irony is that this practice is costing the government even more money.

Private Contractors Cost More Than Federal Workers in 33 of 35 Cases, Study Finds

Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor

A new study by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) finds that those overpaid federal government workers we hear so much about actually save the government money compared with private contractors doing the same work:

POGO’s study analyzed the total compensation paid to federal and private sector employees, and annual billing rates for contractor employees across 35 occupational classifications covering over 550 service activities. Our findings were shocking—POGO estimates the government pays billions more annually in taxpayer dollars to hire contractors than it would to hire federal employees to perform comparable services. Specifically, POGO’s study shows that the federal government approves service contract billing rates—deemed fair and reasonable—that pay contractors 1.83 times more than the government pays federal employees in total compensation, and more than 2 times the total compensation paid in the private sector for comparable services.

Additional key findings include:

• Federal government employees were less expensive than contractors in 33 of the 35occupational classifications POGO reviewed.
• In one instance, contractor billing rates were nearly 5 times more than the full compensation paid to federal employees performing comparable services.
• Private sector compensation was lower than contractor billing rates in all 35occupational classifications we reviewed.
• The federal government has failed to determine how much money it saves or wastes by outsourcing, insourcing, or retaining services, and has no system for doing so.

In fact, in many of the occupational classifications, federal compensation rates are not just lower than contractor rates but are lower than private sector ones. Naturally, the Heritage Foundation isn't letting this get in the way of some cherished beliefs:

James Sherk, a policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation and the author of [Heritage's] federal salary study, said he was skeptical of the POGO findings. “It’s not a real apples to apples comparison,” he said. “When the federal government hires contractors, it’s for the short-term. When they hire for the public sector, they are on the hook for the salaries and compensation for years.”

[POGO General Counsel] Mr. Amey counters that the government usually pays contractors for multiple-year jobs, not just short term.

Doubtless there are cases where using an expensive contractor is necessary—for instance, if the government needs highly specialized legal expertise it may make more sense to pay a high rate to an outside lawyer for a time rather than keeping such a lawyer permanently on staff. But cemetery administration services? Security guards? Government jobs should offer decent middle-class wages, but the rates private contractors draw for the same work, often double or more that of federal workers, deserve another look in the right's rush to privatize government functions.

 

Tax Expenditure of the Week: Accelerated Depreciation: Counting Down the Country’s Biggest Tax Breaks, Week by Week

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Seth Hanlon 

This is part of a new CAP series called the “Tax Expenditure of the Week.” The series aims to explain the often-confusing constellation of tax breaks in a way the average taxpayer can understand. Every Wednesday we will focus on one tax expenditure, explaining what it is, what purpose it is intended to serve, and whether it is effective toward that purpose. We will also review relevant reform proposals.

Subjecting these dozens of tax breaks to greater scrutiny is part of our broader focus on making government work better and achieving better results for the American people, which is the goal of CAP’s “Doing What Works” project.

This week we’re looking at “accelerated depreciation,” the IRS rule allowing businesses to write off the costs of investments faster than they actually wear out.

What is accelerated depreciation?

Accelerated depreciation is the set of IRS rules that allow businesses to deduct from their taxable income the declining value of business-related investments, such as equipment and machinery, faster than the value of those assets actually declines.

FOIA Eyes Only: How Buried Statutes Are Keeping Information Secret

by Jennifer LaFleur ProPublica

Anyone can request information from U.S. officials under the Freedom of Information Act, a law designed to allow people to know what their government is up to.

When a government agency withholds information from a requester, it typically must invoke one of nine FOIA exemptions that cover everything from national security to personal privacy [1]. But among that list is an exemption—known as b(3) for its section in the FOI Act—that allows an agency to apply other statutes when denying information requests.

Some of those statutes allow exemptions that seem quite reasonable, for example to protect medical or financial information. Many others are more puzzling.

Citing the Watermelon Research and Promotion Act [2], for example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has withheld lists of watermelon growers.

Under another law, information about the location of “significant” caves has been withheld [3] by USDA and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Until now, no one has known just how extensively these other laws were used across the federal government. New data compiled by the Sunshine in Government Initiative [14], a coalition of journalism and transparency groups, shows that agencies have applied more than 240 other laws in withholding information over the last decade.

And you can see them for yourself: We’ve created an interactive database [7] of all the exemptions used in 2008-2009 and how they were used.

“FOIA is supposed to be a disclosure act, and these b(3)s make it more of a withholding act,” said Patrice McDermott, director of another transparency group, openthegovernment.org [15]. “They can have a detrimental effect to know what government’s doing and hold it accountable.”

For years such provisions could be easily slipped into legislation without notice. But changes to FOIA that went into effect in 2009 require that proposed legislation must specifically say that it will create a new b(3) exemption. As part of their annual FOIA reports, agencies are now required to disclose not only which exemptions they used but also how many times each was invoked.

Financial reforms passed last year by Congress included an exemption [16] to withhold from the public information concerning “surveillance, risk assessments or other regulator and oversight activities.”

The exemption became law, but it was later rescinded after it came under fire by transparency groups.

Our analysis also found that the most-often-invoked exemption is a law protecting information on tax returns filed with the IRS. From 2008 to 2009, federal agencies applied this statute nearly 3,000 times in FOIA denials.

The agency that invoked the most b(3) exemptions was the Department of Veteran Affairs [17], which from 2008 to 2009 received nearly 170,000 FOIA requests and invoked b(3)s more than 8,000 times—almost always for information relating to Veteran medical benefits or records.

The b(3) exemption used most widely—20 agencies applied it—was a law protecting losing contract bids [2].

Federal agencies are required to file annual reports about their FOIA [18] activities, such as the number of requests they received, how many they denied and why they denied them. Agencies also must list which b(3) exemptions it used over the past year. Since 2008, reports must include the number of times each exemption was invoked.

“These should be debated and subject to scrutiny,” said McDermott, whose organization, openthegovernment.org, pushed for the disclosure requirement.

There may be legitimate reasons to withhold certain information, she said. “But blowing holes in the Freedom of Information Act is not the way to deal with it.”

View our interactive database [7] of all the exemptions used in 2008-2009 and how they were used.

Tax Expenditure of the Week: Capital Gains - Counting Down the Country's Biggest Tax Breaks, Week by Week

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Seth Hanlon 

This is part of a new CAP series called the “Tax Expenditure of the Week.” The series aims to explain the often-confusing constellation of tax breaks in a way the average citizen can understand. Every Wednesday we will focus on one tax expenditure, explaining what it is, what purpose it is intended to serve, and whether it is effective toward that purpose. We will also review relevant reform proposals.

Subjecting these dozens of tax breaks to greater scrutiny is part of our broader focus on making government work better and achieving better results for the American people, which is the goal of CAP’s “Doing What Works” project.

This week we’re looking at the preferential treatment of capital gains, a type of investment income that gets taxed at lower rates than ordinary income.

Why is it a tax expenditure?

Most forms of income—salaries and wages, rents, royalties, interest—are considered “ordinary income” by the Internal Revenue Service and are taxed according to marginal rates ranging from 10 percent to 35 percent. But long-term capital gains, or income from the sale of “capital assets” held for more than a year, are taxed at lower rates. The definition of capital assets includes all property held by taxpayers that isn’t specifically excluded—but the major forms of capital assets that produce gains are interests in businesses, securities, and real estate.

Public Opinion Snapshot: So You Want to Cut the Budget

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Ruy Teixeira

Conservatives are on the rampage about cutting government spending. But their proposed cuts leave the military largely untouched while taking a meat axe to nonmilitary discretionary spending—that is, spending on areas such as education, energy, the environment, and poverty. As usual, conservative priorities are backward when compared to public opinion.

In a fascinating new survey the Program for Public Consultation conducted, respondents were asked to make their own cuts (or increases) to a projected discretionary budget for the year 2015 with a $625 billion deficit. The top three areas for cuts were defense ($109 billion average cut), intelligence agencies ($13 billion), and Iraq/Afghanistan ($13 billion)—the very areas conservatives are going light on.

Heading for a Deficit Dustup: Are House Republicans Putting Together a Reasonable Approach for Cutting Government Spending?

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Scott Lilly 

The politics of budgeting often require making choices look hard rather than making hard choices. House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) may have held the committee gavel for only a month but his announcement today on spending cuts for the current fiscal year indicates he has already mastered the art of budget optics. There is clearly less than meets the eye in his claim of $74 billion in discretionary spending cuts for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

After weeks of public and private arguments between the Republican Study Committee, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) over whether cuts in the current year should be $55 billion or $100 billion, Ryan’s number seems to have come fairly close to splitting the difference. But one of many issues that have never been clarified is what the House Republicans are cutting from.

It turns out they are not cutting from the Congressional Budget Office baseline assumptions for spending in the current fiscal year, which ends September 30, 2011, as had been widely expected, but instead from the amounts requested by President Barack Obama a year ago—a figure that is $45 billion above the baseline and accounts for 60 percent of Ryan’s savings.

With Corporate Tax Reform Under Consideration, a Look at Businesses’ Treasured Loopholes

by Marian Wang ProPublica

When President Obama said in his State of the Union speech that the U.S. has “one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world” and called for reform of the corporate tax code, he had GOP lawmakers and business leaders nodding in agreement [1]. Politifact rated Obama’s statement to be true [2]—topping out at 35 percent, the official tax rate on corporations does sound high.

But as the New York Times reports, the actual tax rate is often far lower [3], thanks to deductions and loopholes that companies spent time and money to find. These loopholes were also a target [4] in Obama's speech.

Nearly a quarter of the 500 big companies in the Standard and Poor’s stock index paid less than 20 percent in taxes over the last five years, according to analysis commissioned by the Times. In his latest column, David Leonhard cited the example of cruise company Carnival Corporation, which pays 1.1 percent of its profits in taxes. Additional examples include [5]:

Boeing paid a total tax rate of just 4.5 percent, according to Capital IQ. Southwest Airlines paid 6.3 percent. And the list goes on: Yahoo paid 7 percent; Prudential Financial, 7.6 percent; General Electric, 14.3 percent.

National Security Regressives: A New Vocal Constituency Among Conservatives

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Brian Katulis

The ratification of the New START nuclear arms treaty with Russia marked a defeat for an influential faction among America’s right that can best be described as national security regressives. These are “conservative” voices who oppose strengthening and utilizing the full range of traditional tools of American statecraft, including assertive diplomacy, smart and balanced national security spending, and precise and targeted measures to combat terrorist groups. They may have lost on New START, but they are not likely to go away anytime soon.

The fact that a modest arms control measure such as New START took so much time to ratify is a harbinger of tensions to come in 2011—a year in which conservatives face significant challenges reconciling competing national security agendas in their ranks. The starting bell on the Republican presidential primary fight is about to ring, and more foreign policy regressives have joined the ranks of the new Congress—so look for some sharp battles to emerge among conservatives on national security. This internal conservative debate could have a major impact on how America conducts its foreign policy in 2011 and beyond.

Conservatives today are more divided on foreign policy than they have been in decades. The 2010 Republican Party “Pledge” manifesto for the midterm elections, however, papered over these divisions, briefly mentioning national security as an afterthought. It contained few ideas on how to keep America secure and strong.

Tax Expenditure of the Week: Tax-Free Retirement Savings - Counting Down the Country's Biggest Tax Breaks, Week by Week

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Seth Hanlon 

This is part of a new CAP series called the “Tax Expenditure of the Week.” The series aims to explain the often-confusing constellation of tax breaks in a way the average taxpayer can understand. Every Wednesday we will focus on one tax expenditure, explaining what it is, what purpose it is intended to serve, and whether it is effective toward that purpose. We will also review relevant reform proposals.

Subjecting these dozens of tax breaks to greater scrutiny is part of our broader focus on making government work better and achieving better results for the American people, which is the goal of CAP’s “Doing What Works” project.

Tax-free retirement savings are the second-largest tax expenditure in the United States. They are expected to cost the federal government about $142 billion in foregone tax revenue this year and about $788.3 billion over the next five years. We’ll examine how well they promote retirement security and whether any reforms could make them more effective.

What are the tax breaks for retirement savings and why are they tax expenditures?

The tax code encourages people to save for retirement by allowing them to shelter from taxes personal income invested in 401(k) plans, individual retirement accounts, employer pension plans, and other similar savings vehicles.