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Why did the face in the Oval Office change but the policies remain the same? Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, a leader who perhaps has shifted with politics to take a harder line. But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried.

Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy……….

IDEAS: Why would policy makers hand over the national-security keys to unelected officials?

GLENNON: It hasn’t been a conscious decision....Members of Congress are generalists and need to defer to experts within the national security realm, as elsewhere. They are particularly concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national security policy.

The presidency itself is not a top-down institution, as many people in the public believe, headed by a president who gives orders and causes the bureaucracy to click its heels and salute. National security policy actually bubbles up from within the bureaucracy. Many of the more controversial policies, from the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors to the NSA surveillance program, originated within the bureaucracy. John Kerry was not exaggerating when he said that some of those programs are “on autopilot.”……………...

IDEAS: This isn’t how we’re taught to think of the American political system.

GLENNON: I think the American people are deluded, as Bagehot explained about the British population, that the institutions that provide the public face actually set American national security policy. They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change. Now, there are many counter-examples in which these branches do affect policy, as Bagehot predicted there would be. But the larger picture is still true—policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.

IDEAS: Do we have any hope of fixing the problem?

GLENNON: The ultimate problem is the pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people. And indifference to the threat that is emerging from these concealed institutions. That is where the energy for reform has to come from: the American people. Not from government. Government is very much the problem here. The people have to take the bull by the horns. And that’s a very difficult thing to do, because the ignorance is in many ways rational. There is very little profit to be had in learning about, and being active about, problems that you can’t affect, policies that you can’t change.

kalm wrote:Move over Spanos…it's time for big boy conspiracies now.

Obviously a similar case has been made regarding the economy.

But it's still cute that we're worried about who votes.

Why did the face in the Oval Office change but the policies remain the same? Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, a leader who perhaps has shifted with politics to take a harder line. But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried.

Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy……….

IDEAS: Why would policy makers hand over the national-security keys to unelected officials?

GLENNON: It hasn’t been a conscious decision....Members of Congress are generalists and need to defer to experts within the national security realm, as elsewhere. They are particularly concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national security policy.

The presidency itself is not a top-down institution, as many people in the public believe, headed by a president who gives orders and causes the bureaucracy to click its heels and salute. National security policy actually bubbles up from within the bureaucracy. Many of the more controversial policies, from the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors to the NSA surveillance program, originated within the bureaucracy. John Kerry was not exaggerating when he said that some of those programs are “on autopilot.”……………...

IDEAS: This isn’t how we’re taught to think of the American political system.

GLENNON: I think the American people are deluded, as Bagehot explained about the British population, that the institutions that provide the public face actually set American national security policy. They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change. Now, there are many counter-examples in which these branches do affect policy, as Bagehot predicted there would be. But the larger picture is still true—policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.

IDEAS: Do we have any hope of fixing the problem?

GLENNON: The ultimate problem is the pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people. And indifference to the threat that is emerging from these concealed institutions. That is where the energy for reform has to come from: the American people. Not from government. Government is very much the problem here. The people have to take the bull by the horns. And that’s a very difficult thing to do, because the ignorance is in many ways rational. There is very little profit to be had in learning about, and being active about, problems that you can’t affect, policies that you can’t change.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/1 ... nt=event25" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What say you? Who do you think is really in control?

kalm wrote:Move over Spanos…it's time for big boy conspiracies now.

Obviously a similar case has been made regarding the economy.

But it's still cute that we're worried about who votes.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/1 ... nt=event25" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What say you? Who do you think is really in control?

houndawg wrote:
Banks.

kalm wrote:Move over Spanos…it's time for big boy conspiracies now.

Obviously a similar case has been made regarding the economy.

But it's still cute that we're worried about who votes.

Why did the face in the Oval Office change but the policies remain the same? Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, a leader who perhaps has shifted with politics to take a harder line. But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried.

Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy……….

IDEAS: Why would policy makers hand over the national-security keys to unelected officials?

GLENNON: It hasn’t been a conscious decision....Members of Congress are generalists and need to defer to experts within the national security realm, as elsewhere. They are particularly concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national security policy.

The presidency itself is not a top-down institution, as many people in the public believe, headed by a president who gives orders and causes the bureaucracy to click its heels and salute. National security policy actually bubbles up from within the bureaucracy. Many of the more controversial policies, from the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors to the NSA surveillance program, originated within the bureaucracy. John Kerry was not exaggerating when he said that some of those programs are “on autopilot.”……………...

IDEAS: This isn’t how we’re taught to think of the American political system.

GLENNON: I think the American people are deluded, as Bagehot explained about the British population, that the institutions that provide the public face actually set American national security policy. They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change. Now, there are many counter-examples in which these branches do affect policy, as Bagehot predicted there would be. But the larger picture is still true—policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.

IDEAS: Do we have any hope of fixing the problem?

GLENNON: The ultimate problem is the pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people. And indifference to the threat that is emerging from these concealed institutions. That is where the energy for reform has to come from: the American people. Not from government. Government is very much the problem here. The people have to take the bull by the horns. And that’s a very difficult thing to do, because the ignorance is in many ways rational. There is very little profit to be had in learning about, and being active about, problems that you can’t affect, policies that you can’t change.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/1 ... nt=event25" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What say you? Who do you think is really in control?

93henfan wrote:

kalm wrote:Move over Spanos…it's time for big boy conspiracies now.

Obviously a similar case has been made regarding the economy.

But it's still cute that we're worried about who votes.



http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/1 ... nt=event25" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What say you? Who do you think is really in control?

Re. Glennon's last paragraph, I've said many times that nothing is going to change in this country until their is real pain among the masses. People in this country don't know what pain and poverty are.

Pwns wrote:

kalm wrote:Move over Spanos…it's time for big boy conspiracies now.

Obviously a similar case has been made regarding the economy.

But it's still cute that we're worried about who votes.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/1 ... nt=event25" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What say you? Who do you think is really in control?

The people have the power. Why does no one want to consider that we have an electorate problem and not a government problem?

Like I said before, people bitch and moan about money in politics but don't ask themselves why money is so important in a time when most people today can get more information in 30 seconds than most people 200 years ago could get in a month.

We are deluding ourselves by saying the more people we have voting the better and that voting doesn't come with responsibilities.

Ivytalk wrote:The idea of a "shadow government" has been around for a long time, in various iterations. To the extent this guy is focusing on the NSA and security-related policy questions, he may not be casting his net broadly enough. The idea of government by bureaucracies and administrative fiat, unelected and accountable to no one, regulating every aspect of our society in violation of positive law, has captured the attention of legal scholars on both the left and the right. We see it also in the areas of environment, education, energy, and health care, to name just a few. It's a big problem. Congress lays the foundation by passing legislation and leaving it to the bureaucracies to interpret it and enforce it.

Ivytalk wrote:The idea of a "shadow government" has been around for a long time, in various iterations. To the extent this guy is focusing on the NSA and security-related policy questions, he may not be casting his net broadly enough. The idea of government by bureaucracies and administrative fiat, unelected and accountable to no one, regulating every aspect of our society in violation of positive law, has captured the attention of legal scholars on both the left and the right. We see it also in the areas of environment, education, energy, and health care, to name just a few. It's a big problem. Congress lays the foundation by passing legislation and leaving it to the bureaucracies to interpret it and enforce it.

Ivytalk wrote:How can we stop this problem of double Guvmint at all levels?
1. Stop passing legislation that results in the proliferation of administrative rules.
2. Stop creating federal, state and local government agencies as a panacea for every perceived social problem.
3. Elect legislators with the cojones to defund the administrative agencies that we have.
4. Don't fill the administrative positions that open up due to retirement, death, etc. Attrition with a vengeance.
5. Make it easier to fire Guvmint employees without cause.
6. Bring back the concept of "sunsetting" for every administrative agency that exists now.

Chizzang wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:How can we stop this problem of double Guvmint at all levels?
1. Stop passing legislation that results in the proliferation of administrative rules.
2. Stop creating federal, state and local government agencies as a panacea for every perceived social problem.
3. Elect legislators with the cojones to defund the administrative agencies that we have.
4. Don't fill the administrative positions that open up due to retirement, death, etc. Attrition with a vengeance.
5. Make it easier to fire Guvmint employees without cause.
6. Bring back the concept of "sunsetting" for every administrative agency that exists now.

Its like you're singing my song....
except there's one thing

Governments (See: Giant Bureaucracy) do not do such things as noted above ^

1) Governments don't willingly "get smaller"
2) Intricate bureaucratic systems do not seek efficiency as a means to proceed
3) Agencies do not give back or reduce their own funding
4) Bureaucratic systems do not seek to lessen their influence or diminish their sphere of control

Ivytalk wrote:

Chizzang wrote:

Its like you're singing my song....
except there's one thing

Governments (See: Giant Bureaucracy) do not do such things as noted above ^

1) Governments don't willingly "get smaller"
2) Intricate bureaucratic systems do not seek efficiency as a means to proceed
3) Agencies do not give back or reduce their own funding
4) Bureaucratic systems do not seek to lessen their influence or diminish their sphere of control

But in the rock-paper-scissors game of government
Legislative-executive-judicial
If you consider administrative bureaucracies as quasi-executive
Legislature should trump them
Congress controls purse strings
Money is mother's milk of bureaucracy
Starve the beast.
Get it? How else will you beat the bureaucrats?

kalm wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:
But in the rock-paper-scissors game of government
Legislative-executive-judicial
If you consider administrative bureaucracies as quasi-executive
Legislature should trump them
Congress controls purse strings.
Money is mother's milk of bureaucracy
Starve the beast.
Get it? How else will you beat the bureaucrats?

Thanks for your input, Grover, but people actually like their big government...whether they care to admit it or not...including you and Cleets.

Ivytalk wrote:

kalm wrote:
Thanks for your input, Grover, but people actually like their big government...whether they care to admit it or not...including you and Cleets.

You're digressing, as usual. I can't speak for Chizzang -- he certainly has a cleaner libertarian streak than you do. But Glennon speaks of the type of government that is the most antithetical to freedom: the unfettered administrative state. And he's correct that people either don't know about it or pretend it doesn't exist. It's not garden variety entitlements we're discussing here. Aunt Minnie and Uncle Gus may treasure their Social Security and Medicare, but they don't run into the minions of the IRS, the EPA, NSA, the NLRB, and the FDA (to name a few) very often. When they do, their experiences are almost uniformly negative. I recommend that you study the work of Philip Hamburger, Ronald Pestritto and Michael Greve for more insights.

Chizzang wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:

You're digressing, as usual. I can't speak for Chizzang -- he certainly has a cleaner libertarian streak than you do. But Glennon speaks of the type of government that is the most antithetical to freedom: the unfettered administrative state. And he's correct that people either don't know about it or pretend it doesn't exist. It's not garden variety entitlements we're discussing here. Aunt Minnie and Uncle Gus may treasure their Social Security and Medicare, but they don't run into the minions of the IRS, the EPA, NSA, the NLRB, and the FDA (to name a few) very often. When they do, their experiences are almost uniformly negative. I recommend that you study the work of Philip Hamburger, Ronald Pestritto and Michael Greve for more insights.

Pestritto is as boring as mowing the lawn - but - he does make a powerful historical argument
Taking special care to note that "Progressive-ism" is the prevailing direction of both major parties
Not just pointing the finger at the Democrats

Ivytalk wrote:

kalm wrote:
Thanks for your input, Grover, but people actually like their big government...whether they care to admit it or not...including you and Cleets.

You're digressing, as usual. I can't speak for Chizzang -- he certainly has a cleaner libertarian streak than you do. But Glennon speaks of the type of government that is the most antithetical to freedom: the unfettered administrative state. And he's correct that people either don't know about it or pretend it doesn't exist. It's not garden variety entitlements we're discussing here. Aunt Minnie and Uncle Gus may treasure their Social Security and Medicare, but they don't run into the minions of the IRS, the EPA, NSA, the NLRB, and the FDA (to name a few) very often. When they do, their experiences are almost uniformly negative. I recommend that you study the work of Philip Hamburger, Ronald Pestritto and Michael Greve for more insights.

kalm wrote:

Chizzang wrote:

Pestritto is as boring as mowing the lawn - but - he does make a powerful historical argument
Taking special care to note that "Progressive-ism" is the prevailing direction of both major parties
Not just pointing the finger at the Democrats

"wise progressivism and wise conservatism go hand in hand"

- Teddy Roosevelt

kalm wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:
You're digressing, as usual. I can't speak for Chizzang -- he certainly has a cleaner libertarian streak than you do. But Glennon speaks of the type of government that is the most antithetical to freedom: the unfettered administrative state. And he's correct that people either don't know about it or pretend it doesn't exist. It's not garden variety entitlements we're discussing here. Aunt Minnie and Uncle Gus may treasure their Social Security and Medicare, but they don't run into the minions of the IRS, the EPA, NSA, the NLRB, and the FDA (to name a few) very often. When they do, their experiences are almost uniformly negative. I recommend that you study the work of Philip Hamburger, Ronald Pestritto and Michael Greve for more insights.

Listen Professor, everyone bitches about taxes and regulations (I do on a daily basis), and everyone likes clean air, water, safe food, and safe drugs.

Glennon of course, wasn't speaking to cattle getting their proper shots, he was focusing on bigger more important issues of national security and defense rather than oppressive bureaucratic red tape…

But I digress….

kalm wrote: people actually like their big government...

kalm wrote:

Chizzang wrote:

Pestritto is as boring as mowing the lawn - but - he does make a powerful historical argument
Taking special care to note that "Progressive-ism" is the prevailing direction of both major parties
Not just pointing the finger at the Democrats

"wise progressivism and wise conservatism go hand in hand"

- Teddy Roosevelt

Ivytalk wrote:

kalm wrote:
Listen Professor, everyone bitches about taxes and regulations (I do on a daily basis), and everyone likes clean air, water, safe food, and safe drugs.

Glennon of course, wasn't speaking to cattle getting their proper shots, he was focusing on bigger more important issues of national security and defense rather than oppressive bureaucratic red tape…

But I digress….

If you'd read up, you'd find out that they are two pieces of the same problem. I know you light a candle to Edward Snowden every night, but try to see the big picture here.