Eideard

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Local government employees who once passed around 500 credit cards will now get by on just eight, under a crackdown that exceeded Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s expectations.

Two months ago, Emanuel reduced the number of credit cards to 30 after alleged abuses that ousted the chiefs of the CHA and Chicago Park District. The plan called for five credit cards to be issued to top executives of each of six agencies: the CTA, CHA, Park District, Chicago Public Schools, City Colleges and Public Building Commission. Monthly expenditures are posted on the Internet.

Now, the number of credit cards has been further reduced to “no more than eight” with three of the six agencies joining City Hall in going cold turkey.

In a news release touting the additional cuts, Emanuel noted that lax policies he inherited had “allowed city employees to treat a city credit card as their personal expense accounts.”

He added, “Our residents work hard every day and we work for them. Abuse or misuse of taxpayer dollars absolutely will not be tolerated…”

Earlier this year, the inspector general of the Chicago Public Schools questioned more than $800,000 in spending under former school board presidents Michael Scott and Rufus Williams. The spending — not all of which was charged to CPS credit cards — ranged from $3,000 to check the board’s offices for “eavesdropping devices” to $12,624 for holiday parties at a president’s home…

The credit card crackdown followed a joint investigation by the Better Government Association and WFLD-Channel 32 news that uncovered alleged credit card abuses at the CHA and the Park District…

The investigation…found CHA credit cards were used to buy thousands of dollars worth of flowers, cakes and holiday gifts for employees, a suite at the United Center and to pay fines stemming from red-light camera tickets.

Emanuel condemned the alleged abuses, called a halt to credit card spending and ordered a sweeping audit of agency policies. Jordan subsequently resigned.

Any number of pundits are always predicting the political demise of Rahm Emanuel. They’re always predicting Chicago-style cronyism that existed for decades under traditional machine governance. In truth, no party holds a patent for cronyism – as the recent Bush administration proved. Though the results are always the same. Taxpayers, ordinary citizens are left holding the bag.

Cynic that I am, I’m pleased to see Emanuel cleaning house – at least a little bit – in Chicago. I hope he keeps it up. Maybe, someday – he’ll bring his talents back to the White House and TCB.

Gay rights activists are celebrating another step forward after the Obama administration announced it would no longer defend legislation that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

The decision opens the way for the federal government to recognise same-sex marriages. It comes only three months after the White House said it would end legislation discriminating against gay men and lesbians in the military.

Eight US states permit same-sex marriages but these are not recognised by the federal government, which does afford these couples the same treatment as heterosexual couples in terms of taxation, health benefits and in other areas.

The Obama administration said on Wednesday it would no longer ask the justice department to defend the 1996 Defence of Marriage Act in court.

The decision will spark another row with social conservatives, who are almost certain to challenge it in court.

The White House press spokesman, Jay Carney…said the president did not believe the law was constitutional, though his personal view on gay marriage was still evolving. “He’s grappling with the issue,” Carney. “But I want to make a distinction between his personal views” and the legal decision not to defend the law…

A federal judge in Massachusetts last year ruled the act unconstitutional.

Only a fool would expect the entire course of United States history to be reversed for long on issues of civil rights. What will be achieved by Republicans and their assorted flunkies is further polarization of those who vote – and more important – revitalization of those who don’t often vote.

Questions of principle, especially principles of democracy and equal opportunity serve best to activate fence-sitters and those suffering political ennui for whatever reason. Certainly better than rote recitation of 14th Century ideology by squads of disaffected bumpkins – already recognized as backwards enough to be the butt of TV comedy.

The phone for listening in on anyone is in the lower lefthand drawer

Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally…

There is not yet agreement on important elements, like how to word statutory language defining who counts as a communications service provider, according to several officials familiar with the deliberations…But they want it to apply broadly, including to companies that operate from servers abroad, like Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry devices…

Several of the proposal’s likely requirements:

¶ Communications services that encrypt messages must have a way to unscramble them.

¶ Foreign-based providers that do business inside the United States must install a domestic office capable of performing intercepts.

¶ Developers of software that enables peer-to-peer communication must redesign their service to allow interception.

RTFA. Please. Lots of anecdotal information. Nothing that reassures me – or suddenly provides a leap of faith and trust in our government to do the right thing.

May as well start cranking up, now, to finance constitutional challenges, folks. Unless you believe that Congress – our elected heroes, the White House – more elected heroes, will change political horses in mid-stream and decide that protecting any right to privacy should be superior to government snooping.

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A Pentagon review released Friday portrayed a systemic breakdown within the military that permitted an Army psychiatrist, now charged with killing 13 people, to advance through the ranks despite concerns from his superiors about his behavior.

The review, the first into the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., concluded that the Department of Defense was poorly prepared to defend itself from internal threats well beyond the single case of the military doctor accused of the killings, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan…

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in comments about the review at a Pentagon news conference on Friday, said the Defense Department was still focused on fighting external threats and previous conflicts and had not paid enough attention to workplace violence and any “self-radicalization” within its ranks.

“It is clear that, as a department, we have not done enough to adapt to the evolving domestic internal security threat to American troops and military facilities that has emerged over the past decade,” Mr. Gates said. “In this area, as in so many others, this department is burdened by 20th-century processes and attitudes mostly rooted in the cold war.”

The review recommended that “several officers” be referred to the Army for possible punishment for not properly supervising Major Hasan, but it did not provide names or a specific number…

Mr. Gates said he was particularly concerned that the military does not seem to be alert to signs of radicalization in its own ranks, to be able to detect its symptoms or to understand its causes. Major Hasan’s commanders and supervisors, he suggested, may have lacked the clear authority or explicit channels for reporting any doubts they had about him. Indeed, troubling information about individuals is often withheld or filed discreetly away instead of being shared, he said.

Then, you promote the truly incompetent and worrisome – effectively kicking them upstairs – to get them out of your hair.

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As President Obama tries to turn around a summer of setbacks, he finds himself still without most of his own team. Seven months into his presidency, fewer than half of his top appointees are in place advancing his agenda.

Of more than 500 senior policymaking positions requiring Senate confirmation, just 43 percent have been filled — a reflection of a White House that grew more cautious after several nominations blew up last spring, a Senate that is intensively investigating nominees and a legislative agenda that has consumed both.

While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary…

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Advocates for the separation of church and state say they’re closely watching Florida’s expansion of non-denominational faith-based prisons.

While 21 other states have faith-based dormitories, Florida is the only one with entire prisons focused on faith and character.

Glade Correctional in Palm Beach County this week becomes the fifth faith-based prison in Florida under a program begun in 2003, said Kathy Connor, a state corrections spokeswoman.

Constitutional issues arise, however, when prisons start linking where inmates live to religious programs, said Alex Luchenitser, a lawyer with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“The question is, ‘Are inmates being given incentives to enroll in a prison with a religious environment,’” Luchenitser asked.

I can be pragmatic about a lot – but, not witless programs like this. It smacks too much of opportunism – on the part of Florida politicians grabbing votes from their bible-struck constituents – on the part of cons who often use the God-hustle to cop an easier road.

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Tim Geithner may be the latest political piñata in Washington these days, but — policy aside — there may be another reason he is the one fellow everyone is picking on at Treasury: He’s there alone.

President Obama’s ethics code requires that no lobbyist can work for an agency he may have lobbied.

Believe it or not, Geithner is the only confirmed official at his department. Some top nominees, even those who have served in government before, have decided to withdraw. Others are still pending as they go through arduous background checks that one pro-Obama Democrat calls “maddening vetting hell.”

The staffing problem is not just at Treasury, and it goes way beyond the time-consuming nature of extensive background checks. It’s also about overreaching anti-lobbyist rules.

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Want to buy an M-16? In Pakistan on the Afghanistan border.
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The U.S. military failed to “maintain complete inventory records for an estimated 87,000 weapons — or about 36 percent — of the 242,000 weapons that the United States procured and shipped to Afghanistan from December 2004 through June 2008,” a U.S. Government Accountability Office report states.

“Accountability lapses occurred throughout the supply chain,” it says.

The Defense Department spent roughly $120 million during that period to acquire a range of small arms and light weapons for the Afghan National Security Forces, including rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The military also failed to properly account for an additional 135,000 weapons it obtained for the Afghan forces from 21 other countries.

“What if we had to tell families [of U.S. soldiers] not only why we are in Afghanistan but why their son or daughter died at the hands of an insurgent using a weapon purchased by the United States taxpayers? But that’s what we risk if we were to have tens of thousands of weapons we provided washing around Afghanistan, off the books,” Rep. John Tierney, D-Massachusetts, chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs.

The military is unable to provide serial numbers for 46,000 of the missing 87,000 weapons, the report concludes. No records have been maintained for the location or disposition for the other 41,000 weapons.

So, the “fiscal conservatives” who left us with trillions of dollars of debt, the “faith-based” moralists who think it’s unethical for the Federal Government to include money for school buildings in the Stimulus Bill, the nit-picking nutballs who whine about closing Gitmo and ending torture – turn out not to be competent or capable of keeping a record of hardware freely distributed in a part of the world half of them can’t spell or find on a map – when they were in charge of the ship of state.

And no one is really surprised. Are you?

To heal our ailing health care system, we need to stop thinking like Americans. That’s the message of two articles by UCLA’s Dr. Marc Nuwer, a leading expert on national health care reform.

“Americans prize individual choice and resist limiting care,” says Nuwer, a professor of clinical neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “We believe that if doctors can treat very ill patients aggressively and keep every moment of people in the last stages of life under medical care, then they should. We choose to hold these values. Consequently, we choose to have a more expensive system than Europe or Canada.”

The United States boasts the world’s most expensive health care system, yet only one-sixth of Americans are insured. Medical expenditures exceed $2 trillion annually, making health care the economy’s largest sector, four times bigger than national defense.

31 percent of U.S. health care funds go toward administration. “We push a lot of paper,” Nuwer says. “We spend twice as much as Canada, which has a more streamlined health care system that demands doctors complete less paperwork.”

10 percent of U.S. expenses are spent on “defensive medicine” — pricey tests ordered by doctors afraid of missing anything, however unlikely. “Doctors don’t want to be accused in court of a delayed diagnosis, so they bend over backwards to find something — even if it’s a rare possibility — in order to cover themselves,” Nuwer says.

Part of the current problem, he says, is that doctors are oblivious to the price tags of options they’re prescribing for patients. He recommends educating physicians about the costs of care, including imaging, blood tests and specific drugs.

A good start to a tough problem. The tough bit being dealing with politicians, physician politics – and insurance company politics and lobbyists.