The Nation's Pulse: Big Government's Big Lobby
Bovard, James
THE NATION'S PULSE by James Bovard Big Government's Big Lobby D id you know that young people have "a secret thirst for public service"? Did you know that the IRS is actually very innovative and...
...By demanding that the report be completely rewritten and publicly attacking the credibility of the agency's supposedly independent inspector general, Susan Gaffney...
...The Partnership hired pollsters Peter Hart and Robert Teeter to survey young people's attitude toward government...
...Did you know that the IRS is actually very innovative and effective...
...In each case, government had a "leading role...
...That would be bad for business...
...He later declined an invitation from Jiang to extend his visit by saying: "I only have enough food with me for two days...
...The feds, however, have little to do with the vast majority of medical breakthroughs...
...The IRS was tapped for its Telefile system, which allows people with very simple tax returns (almost all of whom have already had more taxes than they owed withheld from their paychecks) to call the IRS, punch in a few numbers, and get an expedited refund...
...The federal government spends less than one-tenth of one percent of its budget on food inspections...
...Their conclusion: Young people today "find teaching (69%) to be a much more appealing career than they do software engineering (52%), and would rather be a social worker (55%) than a corporate manager (39...
...If so, then you're probably a supporter of the Council for Excellence in Government...
...the vice president dazzled listeners when he revealed against all evidence that "the era of big government is over, and the reinvention revolution has begun...
...is the result of improvements The American Spectator • February 1998 67 in private quality control...
...The vast increase in the quality and safety of food in the U.S...
...College tuition has increased three times as fast as inflation since 1980...
...Trustees include Richard Darman and Elliot Richardson, and former presidents Carter, Ford, and Bush serve as honorary co-chairmen...
...The Food and Drug Administration was hailed for expediting the approval of new drug applications, thanks in large part to the user fees it now imposes on drug companies...
...A favorite government success story the pollsters cited — "food safety inspections"— is another dubious basis for faith in government...
...The General Accounting Office (GAO) concluded that the USDA's food inspection operation "suffers from overlapping and duplicative inspections, poor coordination, inefficient allocation of resources, and outdated inspection procedures...
...Such bogus logic would make even a civil servant blush...
...a religious exercise...
...Lawyers for the president are expected to argue that, since Yeltsin's presidency started in 1991, when Russia was still the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, his first term didn't count...
...only one was patented by a public university...
...Lawrence Gladieux, an analyst for the College Board, told columnist Robert Samuelson: "[Students] end up with a debt [from student loans], a bad credit rating and no degree...
...Like much of the media, the Councilbelieves that popular distrust of government arises because people are misinformed, not misgoverned...
...a recent draft HUD Inspector General report concluded that virtually all of the agency's contracts were botched and that HUD managers "have for all practical purposes abdicated their procurement and contract responsibilities with costly consequences...
...Membership is by invitation only...
...No wonder they're so eager to proclaim that government is good...
...It is unlikely that the Constitutional Court will object...
...Luckily for friends of Big Government, political illiteracy is pervasive...
...The pollsters also informed young people about the government's role in creating the Internet...
...current members nominate new members...
...And who belongs to the Partnership...
...If Yeltsin is able to maintain even a vague semblance of health, sobriety, and sanity, it is almost certain that Russia's new power-brokers will do what they did in 1996—put wads of cash and their media to the task of keeping him in the Kremlin...
...It is true that federal aid for college loans and grants has skyrocketed —but much of the increase has been fizzled away by the higher tuition that resulted from the flood of federal subsidies...
...Last May, the Council ran a daylong retreat at the State Department for 170 Clinton political appointees...
...What, you're taking pictures of me...
...Almost two-thirds (65 percent) say that government's contribution to medical research increases their confidence in the public sector, including 33 percent who say it gives them "a great deal" more confidence...
...The initial poll found that young people had scant confidence in government as an institution...
...Federal research institutes have done invaluable work in several areas (such as cancer and heart research) — but it is the private sector that provides the bulk of medical breakthroughs...
...The unconstitutionality of a third term presents little trouble...
...Previous award winners have been equally dubious...
...A long with the Ford Foundation, the Council last November launched a spinoff—the Partnership for Trust in Government (www.trustingov.com) — designed to "celWho else would give a reward to the IRS...
...You'd better take pictures of the moon...
...The Council— a Washington nonprofit founded in 1983—is treated reverentially by much of the national media, its proclamations hailed as oracles from Delphi...
...As Boris Nemtsov, a first Deputy Prime Minister, told NTV television in November, "Without a tsar in Russia there is discord...
...68 February 1998 • The American Spectator...
...It's not responsible public policy...
...The Council must be very wise indeed: by the organization's own count, io8 percent of its 75o "principals" are former "senior public officials...
...This is the kind of organization that would give an award to the Postal Service for not losing all first-class mail...
...Late in 1996, HUD received a $1oo,000 windfall for its "Consolidated Planning/Community Connections" program, which combined a dozen separate handout programs into one large program purporting to be more responsive to local governments...
...What has made the net a vehicle for mass communication is not the Pentagon's original master system, but the invention of the personal computer and powerful new software—both of which were private sector triumphs...
...The award's timing was provident for Charles Rossotti, whom Clinton had nominated shortly before the announcement of the award to be the new IRS commissioner—and who just happened to be a member of the Council...
...As Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute puts it, "The so-called speedup is a relatively minor improvement, and it's basically come in diseases whose constituencies have developed political clout...
...This past October, the IRS and the FDA won $loo,000 prizes, funded by the Ford Foundation...
...It's like asking people if they would prefer to be flogged with a cat-o'-nine-tails or whacked on the backside with a 2 x 4—and then announcing that most people are masochists...
...Organizations dependent on federal laws and handouts (the AFL-CIO, National Council of La Raza), major government contractors or regulated utilities (IBM, Alcoa, Tenneco, Edison International), and companies that need government permission to access their customers (the cable TV firms that produce MTV and the Discovery Channel...
...Because the Partnership's agenda includes spreading the word about "government's accomplishments in an array of areas," the pollsters "read young Americans a list of seven important achievements over the past 3o years and asked them which institution deserves the most credit for each—government, business, or nonprofit groups and universities...
...A press release said the new organization would "counter 'government bashing' and restore the balance between public cynicism and trust...
...Without private sector creativity, the Internet would be as inaccessible to average Americans as the White House is to Senate subpoenas...
...When supreme power weakens, civil war develops...
...Vast numbers of unprepared students have gone to college —and dropped out...
...The number exceeds loo because some of these "principals" served in more than one branch of government, or at more than one different level, or sat in offices with different-sized desks...
...Roughly half of the Council's $2.4 million annual budget comes from government contracts or from federal agencies that pay for its Excellence in Government fellows program, which allows government employees to spend time at the Council developing leadership skills...
...And how did they discover this thirst...
...David Gergen, chairman of the selection committee and editor at large at U.S...
...In fact, a world-wide mass communications system was the last thing the Pentagon intended to createwhen it in the 1960's it began work on a communication system that could survive a nuclear holocaust...
...In tandem with Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, it annually bestows awards on various government agencies, in an effort to convince us we should feel grateful for our benevolent bureaucracies...
...Even though Senate Finance Committee hearings had just exposed the IRS's abusive, extortionate tactics, Gergen insisted that such revelations should not "distort" the agency's overall record...
...RUSSIA WATCH by Jonas Bernstein Moscow Central S trolling with Jiang Zemin during a visit to China last November, Russian president Boris Yeltsin suddenly turned to the trailing press entourage...
...Did you follow Bill Clinton's request to pray for politicians and journalists, so that Americans can "rid ourselves of this toxic atmosphere of cynicism...
...Power, as his ex-press secretary Vyacheslav Kostikov once said, is Yeltsin's Burkina Faso has nothing to be ashamed of...
...And should Yeltsin announce his intention to run again (he has made contradictory statements on the subject), the three main presidential aspirants from the "party of power," as Russians call the new establishment—Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and Nemtsov—will not challenge him...
...Consider the most important area for increasing confidence in government: its alleged role in developing medical cures and vaccines, which young Americans now think is fairly minor...
...There is in fact far too much public trust in, and far too much naïveté about, government (see Clinton's latest approval ratings...
...This is more than an idle joke...
...The Council is devoted to boosting people's faith in government—almost as JAMES BOVARD is the author of Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St...
...the FBI is fighting tooth and nail to prohibit the private encryption of e-mail that would keep G-men from perusing whatever citizens write...
...The populist element is less noticeable these days: it was last seen during the 1996 campaign, when Yeltsin repeatedly criss-crossed the country, and even danced The Twist while in need of quintuple-bypass surgery...
...They either asked people if they would rather be a teacher or a software engineer, or be a social worker or corporate manager...
...Then in December, while meeting reporters during an official visit to Sweden, Yeltsin appeared to think he was in either Finland or Norway...
...Yet the spirit of excellence at HUD may have been all too transient...
...Gergen proclaimed that former FDA Commissioner David Kessler was the mastermind of the drug speedup —never mind that FDA delays in drug approvals have been a scandal for more than a decade, and that the agency is nowhere close to resolving the problem...
...Not surprisingly, the Council has worked hand in hand with the present administration to shore up public belief in the benefits of government...
...He improvised an offer to scrap a third of Russia's nuclear warheads, misidentified Japan and Germany as nuclear powers, and generously promised that Russia would not "provoke war" as long as he was in office...
...and then pointed at the setting sun...
...77 ernment could be restored among young people...
...Some here have begun comparing him with the ailing Brezhnev, and a few newspapers have even called for his early retirement...
...The federal government has probably spent less than $2 billion on the Internet's development, according to National Science Foundation spokesman Lee Herring...
...But it's entirely possible that Yeltsin will stay on for a third term—explicitly forbidden by Russia's constitution—and he has begun referring to himself with the tsar-like moniker, Boris the First...
...Indeed, it's hard to imagine Yeltsin willingly retiring to a life of gardening at his dacha...
...The pollsters also examined how faith in gov44 The Council has worked hand in hand with the administration to shore up faith in government...
...According to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, 99 of the ma most prescribed drugs in 1995 were patented by private industry...
...The only problem is that it's wildly inaccurate to credit government with a "leading role in each achievement...
...According to Council president Patricia McGinnis, "This diverse Partnership brings together an unusual group of allies, all of them outside government, who can speak to their particular audiences with great credibility about the benefits of effective government...
...Championing mass delusion can make the Council for Excellence in Government feel good about itself, but it won't lead to excellence in government...
...Last April, the Council helped provide a forum for Al Gore with its co-sponsorship of a three-day conference on the Reinvention of Government...
...Several major outbreaks of food poisoning occurred last year, in part because the FDA slashed inspections while food imports doubled...
...From 1981 to 1990, according to a Tufts University study, private industry was the first to synthesize 92 percent of all new drug products...
...Meanwhile one of the most promising food-safety treatments for beef, irradiation, was banned by the FDA until this past November because of bogus concerns about its safety...
...Martin's Press...
...Even in his decline, Yeltsin has maintained his legendary skill in balancing the competing forces within the new elite—the bankers, the government ministers, the regional leaders, the parliament—and without a grand arbiter their ongoing power struggle could well veer out of control...
...Besides, in recent years the government has been more interested in stifling the Internet...
...Yeltsin has secured his tsar-like position by combining a fine-tuned populist instinct with a virtuoso grasp of Machiavellian politics—a blend of"Byzantine treachery and elemental democratism," as one of his opponents described him with grudging admiration...
...But after pollsters told the young people about government's great accomplishments, faith in government skyrocketed...
...If beef irradiation had been approved sooner, hundreds of American lives could have been saved...
...66 February 1998 • The American Spectator ebrate government's success...
...ian male...
...How did HUD's award-winning politicos respond...
...government, a mere one percent...
...In the Council's view, any government benefit, however limited, legitimizes any regulation or any tax burden, however unlimited...
...News and World Report, declared that Telefile "demonstrate [s] that government can and does work...
...he exclaimed...
...Yeltsin's behavior has of late gotten stranger and stranger, which is perhaps not surprising given his epic partying and the fact that, at 66, he has already lived eight years longer than the average RussJONAS BERNSTEIN is a writer living in Moscow...
...Another government success story, the pollsters claimed, was college financing...
...Young Americans have a personal thirst for public service that they do not collectively recognize in themselves," the pollsters concluded...
Vol. 31 • February 1998 • No. 2
