Leon Panetta Speaks at SCU

Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA, spoke at Santa Clara University last week (October 8, 2010). He was entertaining and clearly proud of his Italian heritage. In one of his best moments of the night, he told a story about the necessity of fighting for your beliefs:

A priest and a rabbi want to learn more about each other's beliefs, so they attend a boxing match. One of the boxers goes to the corner and makes the sign of the cross. The rabbi sees this and asks the priest, “What does that mean?” The priest responds, “Not a damn thing, if he can’t fight.” (It’s much funnier when spoken.)

Overall, Panetta said all the right things. He is against “enhanced interrogation techniques” aka torture (he said the CIA uses the Army Field Manual on interrogations). He thinks the media is doing Americans a disservice through its soundbite-style reporting (and even took a jab at Fox news, saying that the media panders to the lowest common denominator because they don’t want to be “outfoxed.”) In any case, here are the highlights of Panetta's speech as I saw them:

In D.C., “gridlock is the order of the day.”

Panetta singled out Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as hotbeds of terrorism. He said that Pakistan had nuclear weapons and Al-Qaeda leaders.

He said India was an emerging power but will have to deal with its poverty problem [which may limit its ascendancy].

He said, “My job is to tell the truth,” whether they [the White House and Congress] like to hear it or not.

The CIA has four basic missions: counter-terrorism (CT); counter-proliferation; cyber-security; and minimizing the risk of surprise.

One interesting quote: “We are conducting a war within Pakistan.”

“Security and stability are our top priorities.”

On nuclear proliferation, “all we need is a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” he said with an exasperated tone.

He singled out North Korea as an active proliferator that shares nuclear technology with other countries. He also mentioned Iran's nuclear program, but didn't provide much detail other than mentioning it as a potential catalyst for a nuclear arms race.

On cyber-security, Panetta singled out China and Russia as potential threats. He said the “next Pearl Harbor could be a cyberattack” that shuts down our power grid or financial system. He said we experience hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks each year.

Panetta also went on several tangents, mentioning the Mexican drug cartels, which have killed 15,000 people, and the rising power of Brazil and India.

He told us that “we do not have to choose between law and security,” but “at the same time, we cannot be free unless we are secure.”

Panetta said the CIA’s budget has “tripled” since 9/11, which was cause for concern. He said such growth and unchecked expenditures “frankly scared the hell out of” him. (Prior to becoming Director, Panetta spent years on the House Budget Committee trying to balance the federal budget.)

Panetta has reduced the CIA’s reliance on outside contractors (I believe he said the CIA has reduced its reliance on contractors by around "20%," but I couldn't quite make out the specific context, and I'm sure there are many different kinds of contractors, so the 20% number may not be very helpful to anyone).

Panetta has made knowledge of a foreign language a requirement to advance within the CIA. His goal is to “be diverse,” and he wants to increase the CIA’s overall diversity from 23% overall to 30%.

Panetta said the CIA’s basic goal is “convincing people to risk their lives to give us information–that is what it is all about.” If we can’t protect them [the assets], he said, no one will want to work with us (later, he criticized WikiLeaks because some of the documents released contained names).

Panetta also said the President of the United States signs off on all covert operations, and the CIA's decisions are also reviewed by the Attorney General as well as overseen by Congress [see Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]. He went out of his way to say that the CIA keeps the President and Congress apprised of all operations.

He said that over half of the CIA’s workforce was hired post-9/11.

During the short Q&A session, Panetta criticized the media, saying its quality has declined because of soundbites and increased competition (this is where he made the comment about the general media not wanting to be “outfoxed”).

Panetta said the CIA had no excuse for not having oversight over [outside] contractors. He also said that certain security details were outsourced because certain agencies don't have designated security personnel. (I think he mentioned protection for certain Afghan politicians and State Department personnel, but don't quote me on this.)

Panetta lamented the state of modern politics, indicating that the goal ought to be consensus, but now politicians care more about surviving in office. Panetta said we can “govern by leadership or [by] crisis,” and right now, we are governing by crisis.

As I left the speech, I realized I had listened to a series of bromides. For example, Panetta left out the CIA’s role in extraordinary renditions. While Panetta said we should not look backwards to the Bush administration’s mistakes, he also didn’t say anything about how the CIA sought to avoid similar debacles. My own personal experience regarding FOIA requests was markedly different with the CIA than it was with the FBI–even though both were providing me information pursuant to the exact same federal law.

At the end of the day, Mr. Panetta is just one individual, just like President Obama is just one individual. My feeling is that Americans keep looking for one person to change things, but our form of government is anti-royalty and therefore one person’s power–though vast–is still limited. We need to move away from a "single individual" mentality and try to elect people who are comfortable delegating power and who will create changes from the bottom up. If this decade is any indication, it appears that one person can make a difference on the negative side, but not so much on the positive side.

Bonus: Audio of Speech.

Bonus: from Robert Scheer's They Know Everything about You (2015):

The DMV: How to Improve It?

I recently had a terrible experience with the DMV. I brought my cousin for his driving test, and the driving testers were rude and unsympathetic to my cousin's ESL situation. One tester had an accent so thick, I had no idea what he was saying. This unattractive, short, and fat male tester clearly reveled in the little power his job provided him. Meanwhile, the top manager told me she had only 2 driving testers for 40+ people that day. When I asked, "Why do you only have two people? Did a bunch of people call in sick?" the manager remarked, "That's not your business. I don't need to explain our procedures to you."

To be fair, the highest-ranking DMV local executive, the Administrative Director, treated us well, but even he managed to foul up--he cited a non-existent Vehicle Code section (VC 4008) when explaining why I had to follow a certain procedure.

Anyway, I was so frustrated with my experience at the DMV, I spent all day and night thinking about how we could improve the DMV's service. Regarding the driving testers, you can't measure performance based on pass rates or complaints for obvious reasons (e.g., all of the rejected applicants will complain, etc.), so you have to have some competition to establish objective benchmarks.

Here's what I came up with: if an applicant fails, he should be given an opportunity to go to a private, non-DMV tester. If he passes the non-DMV, private driving test and has no traffic infractions for one year, the DMV should assign its tester a point. After 25 points, the DMV should re-assign its employee with 10% lower pay. (I chose 25 points, but the appropriate number should reflect our intent to achieve a balance between fairness and competence--you don't want DMV testers being afraid to fail bad drivers.)

At the same time, if the private (non-DMV) tester passes someone, and the driver gets a moving violation (not a parking ticket or other minor infraction), then the private DMV provider should pay a fine into California's general fund. The amount of the fine should be adjusted for inflation and should be significant enough for the private testing agency to evaluate its own testers and testing process after 25 fines. (There must be a built-in incentive to discourage the private competitor from passing everyone or having lax standards.)

[Update: a friend says it's unfair to penalize the private corporation for at-fault accidents or moving violations because too many unpredictable, untestable factors are involved. I explained the private corporation must have some check against passing everyone. Moreover, if the private corporation gets fined enough times, it will fine-tune its testing process (I assume the corporation will have access to the general nature of the violations). Also, the goal is to provide incentives for improving the testing process and checks against exclusive government power--not to create a perfect system, which is impossible.]

Now that we've imposed checks on the DMV and its competitor, we also need a check on the driving applicants themselves. This issue is simple to resolve: if a driving applicant wants a non-DMV test after failing the DMV test, then s/he should pay a small, nonrefundable fee to the DMV. A small fee would discourage bad drivers from wasting people's time and would not prevent good drivers from opting for a second opinion.

The issue of improving government services is complex. It took me the entire day to come up with the idea of an objective secondary evaluation. (Once I thought about FMLA and the employer's option of sending the employee to another doctor for a second opinion, the solution became clear.) I've concluded you must have competition and/or the threat of wage/job loss to promote customer service and performance. Once you realize competition and incentives are linked to superior customer service and performance, ideas flow more easily (and one begins to see why government unions are terrible for everyone but themselves).

In any case, creating a fair system that encourages responsive government employees is certainly possible. It irks me when people say, "The government is different from private industry; therefore, you cannot apply similar standards to both." Really? What's the alternative? Terrible customer service and higher taxes for life?

Note: the major problem with the above scenario is the cost of setting up a competitor. Who is going to pay for the private competitor? If the drivers themselves pay, we have a conflict of interest. Perhaps the public would be willing to divert some of its existing taxes in the form of a grant to private competitors, which would be set up as non-profits.

Frederick Douglass on Freedom

‎"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass

Funny Stuff My Family Sez

I come from a family of immigrants. Learning a new language is hard, but it creates some hilarious moments. On Facebook, I posted the following status update:

David Walker: "Even if they [interest rates] don’t go up, the single largest line item in the federal budget within 12 years will be interest on the federal debt -- larger than defense, larger than Medicare, larger than Social Security. And what do we get for that? Nothing."

Below it, I said, "This Halloween, I'm thinking about going as the federal debt."

A friend of mine, Ziem, responded, "Don't. You'll be gang-raped by people dressed as special interests."

I read his comment while my family and I were dining in a semi-formal restaurant with my 21 year-old cousin, my aunt, and my uncle, who were visiting from Iran. The following transcript doesn't do the scene justice, but it's the best I can do. I hope you'll be entertained as much as we were:

Me: [cracking up]

Everyone: "What's so funny?"

Me: "Um, how do I explain this? Well, let's see if he [pointing to my cousin] can understand this, because it's complicated, but at least we can test his English."

"Do you know what a budget is?

Cousin: "No."

[Parents explain what it is, he gets it]

Me: "What about a deficit?"

Cousin: "No."

[Parents explain what it is, he gets it]

Me: "Do you know what "special interests" are?"

Cousin: "No."

Dad: "We don't have those in the Iranian political process, so he won't know what that is." [Tries to explain "special interests" to my cousin]

Cousin: [smiles] "Ah, you mean like the mullahs?" [religious leaders]

Me: "Yes! Good job!" [I tell him about my status update and Halloween costume proposal]

"Do you get it?"

Cousin: "Yes."

Me: [I repeat Ziem's comment, but use "hit" instead of "g*ng r*pe."]

[Everyone laughs]

Me: "I told you 'hit,' but it's even funnier with the actual word my friend used."

Everyone: "What word did your friend use?"

Me: "Think of a word that's worse than 'hit.'"

Mom: Does it start with the letter, "f"?

Me: [caught off-guard, but manage to shake my head]

Dad: "Kill"?

Uncle: "I think I know what it is." [Turns out later that he didn't.]

Cousin: "What letter does it start with?"

Me: "Hmm, well it's two words. I don't think you'll get it, but I'll try anyway. It starts with an 'r.'"

Cousin: "R*pe?"

Me: "Yeah, but it's worse than that. Think multiple people."

Cousin: [confused] "What's the other letter?"

Me: "It starts with a 'g.'"

Cousin: "G*ngb*ng"?

Me and Dad: [start laughing hysterically]

Mom: [looks confused, turns to my cousin and asks] "What's a 'g*ngb*ng'?"

Cousin: [looks at me, starts cracking up]

Me: [I can't stop laughing and leave the table for the next 10 minutes. When I come back, no one mentions the conversation, but people are smiling.]

Random Thoughts: On Elitists and Inflation

"Liberals" and Democrats like to argue that poorer Americans vote Republican because they are misled by rich people and corporations. (See Frank Thomas's What's the Matter With Kansas, which argues that conservatives have manipulated poor people into voting for the GOP and against their own self-interests.) This smug, self-serving thesis puts liberals in a position to "help" the poor, usually through more government programs.

In reality, poorer people vote based on their economic circumstances and tend to focus on economic issues because they know the value of a dollar. In contrast, rich people's life experiences tell them that money is abundant and can be spent and created again. For example, blue state residents tend not to be offended when the federal government prints money and puts their grandchildren in debt. Unsurprisingly, West/East coast liberals (blue states) have higher salaries and earnings than Midwestern and Southern conservatives (red states).

The problem is that the perception of money as an easily renewable resource leads to inflationary policies that create higher costs of money for those on the lower end of the income scale who tend to be net borrowers of money, not lenders or large savers. (Printing more money also causes the devaluation of the dollar, decreasing the purchasing power of the poor, but that's a separate and more complicated issue).

Also, poorer people intuitively understand that injecting more money into something causes inflation. For example, if you pay LeBron James more, the cost of NBA tickets increases, because the owners have to make more money, and most businesses make more money by raising prices. For poorer people, inflation tends to show up in higher prices, making it more difficult for them to buy things (like a good seat in an NBA game).

Another example: it's much easier for poorer people to buy a decent house in a decent neighborhood if a house costs 100K and the median price is 150K, than if a house costs 400K in a neighborhood where the median price is 600K. Think about why house prices tend to be so much higher on the coasts compared to the Midwest and South, and why someone in the Midwest or South wouldn't want his/her children to pay 400K to live in a decent neighborhood. (Why increase the cost of living in a decent neighborhood if you don't have to?)

Rich people, unlike poorer people, tend to be the beneficiaries of inflation--when it happens, their salaries go up along with prices, so they notice no changes or believe they are doing even better. (Think about it: 80% of Americans would never pay $650,000 for a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house in a so-so school district, but rich people in the Bay Area do this all the time and rely on continued inflation to increase their home's value.)

Bottom line: if you don't have much of something, it becomes more precious to you, and you can't stand to see too much of it being used or spent. Generally speaking, abundance mitigates caution and tends to cause inflation. Inflation tends to be bad for poorer people and good for some people, especially educated and affluent people. Therefore, poorer people tend to vote for fiscally conservative candidates because they want to keep their costs low, and they intuitively understand that more money tends to lead to higher prices.

Bonus: historically, the Democrats have favored bigger government. Well, big government costs money, and paying government workers higher salaries and expensive benefits costs money, and they both cause inflation. Inflation hurts poor people. Ergo, in most blue states where Democrats have controlled the legislature for long periods of time, it is harder for poor people to buy homes, afford to live in decent neighborhoods, etc. It's really interesting that anyone would actually think that the Democrats help the poor when it's harder in most blue states for a family making 30K to buy a home and be debt-free than it is for the same family in most red states.

Idiocracy

California-based voters who focus on social issues are like students who study hardest for the class in which they already have an A- (sociology) while ignoring the class in which they are failing (economics).

Thank You, Gov. Schwarzenegger

From SF Gate, October 4, 2010, by Bob Egelko: "The state Supreme Court upheld Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's furloughs of 200,000 state employees today, saying the Legislature had ratified his decision to order workers to take three days off each month without pay." See Professional Engineers in Cal. Government v. Schwarzenegger.

From the Gov: "Today's ruling [authorizing government employee furloughs] upholds the state's actions to protect taxpayers and ensure we live within our means."

Governor, you deserve so much more credit than you have been given. When you realized the Democratic state legislature wouldn't work with you, you went to the people via the initiative process--but we failed you. Now, you are doing the best you can to prevent the unions from destroying California. You have saved us $1 billion. Thank you.

Despite this victory, I am not entirely optimistic. I know your power has limits--as it should. The Court ruled that only the Legislature can authorize the governor to cut employee pay and workweeks. I predict the Democrats will pass a law limiting your power to furlough employees in the future. More details from the decision below, courtesy of the DFEH and Director Phyllis Cheng:

On December 1, 2008 — faced with (1) a large current state budget deficit that was projected to grow to more than $40 billion by the end of the 2009-2010 fiscal year, and (2) the very serious prospect that by as early as February 2009 the state would run out of cash to pay its ordinary expenses — the Governor of California declared a fiscal emergency, called the Legislature into special session, and submitted to the Legislature a comprehensive plan to address the budget problem. The Governor’s budget plan included, among many other cost-saving features, two proposed statutory provisions that would direct the Department of Finance and the Department of Personnel Administration to implement, for the remainder of the 2008-2009 fiscal year and for the entire 2009-2010 fiscal year, a mandatory one-day-a-month unpaid furlough of most state employees employed by the executive branch, a proposal that would save the state approximately $37.5 million per month by reducing by approximately 5 percent the wages paid to each of the affected employees.

Two and one-half weeks later, on December 18, 2008, the Legislature passed its own proposed comprehensive budget legislation, comprising 15 separate budget-related bills. Among many other differences from the Governor’s proposal, the Legislature’s alternative plan did not include the Governor’s recommended furlough provision.

On December 19, 2008, the Governor issued the executive order that lies at the heart of the present litigation, instructing the Department of Personnel Administration to implement, beginning on February 1, 2009, and continuing through June 30, 2010, a mandatory two-day-a-month unpaid furlough of most state workers employed in the executive branch.

Shortly after the Governor’s issuance of this executive order, a number of employee organizations — the recognized, exclusive bargaining representatives of a majority of the workers employed by the State of California — filed three separate, but similar, lawsuits, contending that the Governor lacked authority to implement unilaterally an involuntary furlough of represented state employees that reduced such employees’ hours and earnings by approximately 10 percent. The trial court, acting on an expedited basis, treated the three cases as related, heard argument in the cases together, and thereafter issued a single ruling rejecting the broad attacks made by the employee organizations on the executive order and concluding that the Governor possessed the authority to impose the furlough in response to the fiscal emergency facing the state.

The employee organizations (hereafter sometimes referred to as plaintiffs) appealed from the trial court’s ruling. After briefing in the Court of Appeal was completed and the three cases were consolidated for purposes of oral argument and decision, but before the Court of Appeal set the matter for oral argument or issued a decision, we exercised our authority pursuant to article VI, section 12, subdivision (a) of the California Constitution to transfer the consolidated matter to this court for oral argument and decision.

For the reasons explained below, we conclude that, under existing constitutional provisions and statutes, the Governor on December 19, 2008, possessed authority to institute a mandatory furlough of represented state employees, reducing the earnings of such employees, only if specifically granted such unilateral authority in an applicable memorandum of understanding entered into between the state and the employee organization representing the affected employees. Although there is considerable doubt whether the applicable memoranda of understanding granted the Governor such authority, we further conclude that even if the Governor lacked authority to institute the challenged furlough plan unilaterally, plaintiffs’ challenge to the furlough plan now before us must be rejected. In mid-February 2009 — shortly after the furlough program went into effect — the Legislature enacted, and the Governor signed, legislation that revised the Budget Act of 2008 (2008 Budget Act) by, among other means, reducing the appropriations for employee compensation contained in the original 2008 Budget Act by an amount that reflected the savings the Governor sought to obtain through the two-day-a-month furlough program. The February 2009 legislation further provided that the specified reduction in the appropriations for employee compensation could be achieved either through the collective bargaining process or through “existing administration authority.” That phrase, in the context in which the revised budget act was adopted and in light of the provision’s legislative history, reasonably included the furlough program that was then in existence and that had been authorized by the current gubernatorial administration. In particular, the bill analyses considered by the Legislature made specific reference to furlough-related reductions of employee compensation costs. Under these circumstances, we conclude that the Legislature’s 2009 enactment of the revisions to the 2008 Budget Act operated to ratify the use of the two-day-a-month furlough program as a permissible means of achieving the reduction of state employee compensation mandated by the act.

Accordingly, we conclude that the 2009 budget legislation validated the Governor’s furlough program here at issue, and reject plaintiffs’ challenge to that program.

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S183411.PDF