Trump’s privacy problem
Accountability should be regarded as more than a buzz word. Our democracy is built on checks and balances so that those who are given extraordinary power are held accountable. But to do that requires more than an occasional press conference, it depends on public disclosure of useful information — or, to use another buzz word, “transparency” — whenever practicable. How else can a president or member of Congress be judged unless Americans have some independent knowledge of what they are up to in Washington?
That makes the latest decision by the White House to cloak President Donald Trump in greater secrecy all the more alarming. First, it was the tax returns that Trump has so obstinately refused to disclose, now it is the White House visitor logs — the equivalent of sign-in sheets that the Secret Service maintains. Last Friday, it was revealed that the current White House occupant will not follow the practice of his predecessor and make public those logs. Press secretary Sean Spicer defended that decision Monday saying what President Barack Obama allowed, the disclosure of most visitors but the removal of some names, was not helpful to the president or the public.
Such an argument is, of course, rather silly. The Obama White House disclosed 6 million names through its visitors logs over the course of eight years. The Trump White House is planning to release zero. How is that not a step back for government transparency? During Obama’s two terms, the “scrubbed” names often involved personal visitors or those who came for sensitive meetings involving national security. Is it really better to not know the names of anybody, not a single soul who shows up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? This is a bit like saying the Atkins Diet has too many loopholes involving fruit and vegetables so we’re going to stick with cake and ice cream instead.
And it’s not as if Obama wasn’t sometimes held accountable for visitors. During the Solyndra fiasco, it was widely reported that a major Solyndra stakeholder and Obama campaign donor had made repeated visits to the White House. How did reporters know about George B. Kaiser? Because his name appeared on the White House logs. Reporters ran to that same source when Rep. Devin Nunes revealed he had visited the White House to look at evidence regarding inadvertent surveillance of Trump associates, but they were denied access to the March logs. Now, it appears unless a pending federal open records lawsuit reverses this practice, access won’t be granted for years, perhaps five to 12 years after Trump leaves office.
There’s clearly a pattern here, and it’s not just about the hypocrisy of Trump’s campaign pledge to “drain the swamp” of Washington conflicting with his current swamp restoration efforts. The president isn’t accustomed to the demands of public office, or even the level of transparency required of the CEOs of publicly traded corporations, as his company was privately held. He has a fondness for controlling the flow of information (as every president has), but he’s less tethered than most in Washington to ethical conventions. Want to prevent another Solyndra kerfuffle? Well, it can’t happen if nobody knows the names of investors or the well-heeled lobbyists who march into the Oval Office to cut their various deals.
Transparency shouldn’t be a partisan issue, and, thankfully, there are signs some Republicans in Congress are concerned about all this secrecy as well, at least as it regards Trump’s tax forms. Here’s a leading reason why they should: How can tax reform possibly make its way through the House or Senate if nobody knows what impact it might have on President Trump personally? It’s pretty tough to lead with much moral authority when you don’t even have enough conviction to reveal your own personal finances as every president since Richard Nixon has.
Obama’s approach was hardly perfect, but it was better than no disclosure whatsoever. If Trump is as famously sensitive to ratings as people say, perhaps he ought to note this one: The latest Gallup Poll finds for the first time that most Americans don’t think the president keeps his promises (45 percent say he will) and even fewer think him honest and trustworthy (36 percent). You don’t restore such a loss of public faith by pulling up the drawbridge.
s state and federal governments off-load costs for vital services and investment in the commonwealth onto cities and counties, Floyd citizens have two choices: continuing economic deterioration or innovative local government funded by progressive local taxes.
We must boot-strap ourselves to success amid a transformation of the world as wrenching as the disappearance of Jefferson’s yeoman farmer, the rise of dependent wage labor, industrialization, the despotism of oligarchy in the Gilded Age, and the destitution of the Depression.
Republicans have won; there will only be token support for local economies and ordinary citizens for the foreseeable future. Local communities will be targets for Wall Street’s privatization schemes to loot the public coffers of waters systems, civic facilities, parking services and schools. They are selling dependence and poverty.
The private sector by itself cannot meet the challenges of social and economic transformation we are undergoing. There is not the near term payoff private investment demands, the risk is too great, and absentee capital doesn’t care about our children or community, beyond what can be extracted for their profit.
This new “own our own” era requires a strong local government, marching to its own drummer, by looking outside the state at how innovative cities and counties, facing the same challenges, are successfully addressing community and economic health.
Puzzle: How could our county and town be home to so much brainpower and financial wealth, yet the majority of its citizens struggle mightily to make ends meet?
Surely we have the leadership and intellectual horsepower to position Floyd to benefit over the next two decades from the new economy. What keeps us from moving from the bottom fifth to the top fifth of Georgia county rankings?
Perhaps, it is the absence of upward mobility that feeds hopelessness and anger. There are multiple academic and commercial studies that include scientific indicators of Floyd’s community vitality; I share one with you.
A study by Professor Raj Chetty of Harvard followed 90,000 children over 25 years. It shows that of the 3,000 counties in the United States, only 173 have a lower rate of upward mobility than Floyd County. Children born in the bottom 20 percent of Floyd’s income distribution have virtually no chance of a better life. You can see with clarity the dead end children born in Floyd County face in this New York Times article and geographic interactive. In my opinion, these children, black and white, see that dead end by the third grade.
The Chetty “Moving to Opportunity Study” correlates increased rates of upward mobility with mixed income housing. South, East and North Rome are ghettos of concentrated poverty, which are always nurseries of crime and hopelessness. Local city government, the federal government and private resources are already building mixed income areas in South Rome. We need to be willing to fill the financial gap when federal and state dollars for that purpose are soon eliminated by the Republican president’s proposed budget.
Both neighborhood vitality and challenges recruiting public safety personnel could be addressed by remodeling abandoned properties, offering home ownership in the compensation package of police officers, EMTs, teachers, and firepersons willing to live in these neighborhoods.
Email letters to the editor to MColombo@RN-T.com or submit them to the Rome News-Tribune, 305 E. Sixth Ave., Rome, GA 30162. MIKE REYNOLDS