Federal Government

Amtrak Subsidies

This entry was posted in Business US Capitalism Economics Federal Government Government Libertarianism Transportation on by

The New York Times editorialized today about the need for the federal government to continue subsidizing Amtrak:

For some time, the Bush administration has pushed for Amtrak reforms, which almost everybody supports in principle. But the administration’s most recent proposal is more like a death sentence – a slow dismantling of Amtrak into regional services while costs currently paid by the federal government would be forced onto cash-starved states. The fatal flaw in the administration’s thinking is the idea that the railroad should be self-sufficient. That’s impractical and unnecessary, given the benefits it provides in taking cars off congested highways and offering an alternative to air service in the post-9/11 era.

Sorry, this is a bit hard to say but the bushies may be right on this one. There is no good reason for “cash-starved” states to pick up the tab for anything either. The various government entities do not need to be in the theme park business.
If Amtrak really does an effective job of getting cars off crowded highways and is a meaningful alternative to the airlines (which I doubt) then for those routes where this is true it should be able to be self sustaining.

Buying Access

This entry was posted in Business US Campaign Finance Democrats Economics Federal Government Republicans on by

Both dems and repubs participate in corporate shakedowns, you know, something that was once called extortion. But that doesn’t make it right.
I suspect that the bushies actions related to Inter-American Telecommunications Commission meeting are not unique:

At least four of the two dozen or so U.S. delegates selected for the meeting, sources tell TIME, have been bumped by the White House because they supported John Kerry’s 2004 campaign.
The State Department has traditionally put together a list of industry representatives for these meetings, and anyone in the U.S. telecom industry who had the requisite expertise and wanted to go was generally given a slot, say past participants. Only after the start of Bush’s second term did a political litmus test emerge, industry sources say.

The Left Coaster notes:

Remember, to the Bush White House, unquestioning loyalty to George W. Bush always trumps what’s good for American business.

And I wouldn’t conflate what’s good for American business with what’s good for the American people.
An excellent way to eliminate this kind of administration behavior would be to eliminate all corporate contributions from the election process. The US government is, after all, supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Update (4/26): Mark Kleiman puts a related post in his Corruption in Washington category.

Personal Data Protection

This entry was posted in Culture Federal Government Information on by

Kevin Drum echoes Charle’s Kuffner’s concern that congress will, if it enacts a security breach protection law similar to California’s, preemptively dilute California’s law in the process. Kuffner says:

For the rest of us, what we want here is the same protections that Californians currently enjoy. Anything less is unacceptable.

well, yes, but are after the fact disclosure laws really protections? Certainly miscreants like Choicepoint should be obligated to disclose to one and all when someone’s personal information has been breached. It seems to me, though, that protection should happen before the event not after and that, as I have noted before, the minimum acceptable starting point must be along the lines of:

No institution, government or private, can be allowed to collect or distribute, for free or for fee, to any private or government entity any information about an individual without that individual’s specific consent on a per incident basis and if the distribution is for a fee then that individual must be compensated at a rate agreeable to the individual.

Violations should be treated as felonies and violators must reimburse violated individual(s) for all related losses including legal costs related to the disclosure.

Keeping Our Business Secret

This entry was posted in Federal Government Information Law Libertarianism on by

How not to be accountable: don’t tell anyone what you are really doing (PDF).

In 2004 the federal set a new record for keeping secrets. Last year, the federal government employees chose to classify information a record 15.6 million times, according to new government figures released this week. The figure is 10 percent higher than the total in the previous year. And when given a choice, government employees last year chose to keep their new secrets longer than in years past: Two thirds (66 percent) of the time government employees chose to keep those new secrets for more than a decade. At the same time, the flow of old secrets to the public dropped to its lowest point in nearly a decade to 28 million pages.

In fairness to the bushies increases in classification started trending upward again around the beginning of clinton’s second administration. The clinton folks were, though, declassifying more documents than they were classifying while the bushies have brought declassification to a near standstill.
Makes me wonder just what they are hiding and why they don’t want us, their employers, to know.