When we sat down with Gov. Bill Richardson almost a year ago, he shared his ideas on NAFTA, Immigration and National Service. Now that CNN is reporting he may become the Secretary of Commerce, we thought it would be important to re-visit his interview:
1Interfacing online with the current and future White House adminstrations has never been smoother. Bureaucratic agency-speak meets citizen-powered idea-making at Obama’s change.gov. Here the public can submit ideas to the transition team to consider as they prepare Obama’s first moves in office. Bush’s web presence includes a Ask The White House feature at whitehouse.gov where web users can participate in discussions with key administration players including Grounds Superintendent Dale Haney (October 16). Haney plans strategy and execution of seasonal garden tours and will coordinate the presentation of the Thanksgiving turkey for the annual pardon. The interactive feature is found on the left sidebar just below a link to a page of angry rebuttals to the press called Setting the Record Straight. Add your input at either site and then see Obama’s transition team explain how America will acknowledge the existence of climate change in a few short weeks.
The 19,621 acres that the United States holds in perpetuity on the southeast coast of Cuba will be closed by Barack Obama as one of his first executive orders. The US will regain its moral standing in the world by shuttering a facility that has become an emblem of torture and injustice. Deatinees will receive free and fair treatment under the law. Game, set, match on Cuba’s southern shores? Perhaps not. Columbia Law School professor Matthew Waxman unpacked all the contingencies surrounding closing the Guantanamo Bay in this month’s Foreign Policy web exclusive. Waxman is a DoD refugee, where he tried unsuccesfully to secure Geneva Conventions protection for all Gitmo detainees as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Detainee Affairs, before leaving for a State Department position with a shorter name. He says closing Gitmo may be more problematic that we think despite executive efforts. Our in-house expert on detainee affairs is Mahvish Khan, author of My Guantanamo Diary. She’s no fan of the legal imbroglio surrounding detainees either and underscores high-level ignorance about Iraq and Afghanistan as one of the leading causes for the Guantanamo debacle.
Small Wars Journal defines their namesake operations as wars…undertaken under executive authority, wherein military force is combined with diplomatic pressure in the internal or external affairs of another state whose government is unstable, inadequate, or unsatisfactory for the preservation of life and of such interests as are determined by the foreign policy of our Nation. This would describe the black ops engaged in by the American military and made public this week for the first time. With the dash of pen, Rumsfeld, Gates and Bush have been directing small wars in unsurprising places like Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan but also some wild cards like the knocking off of one of Osama bin Laden’s brothers-in-law in Madagascar. No matter how tactically planned they might be, one wonders if small wars make a dent in the war on terror. Today the Somali port of Merka fell to Islamists and the town came out cheering. In a country that hasn’t known the rule of law since the war lord class took over in 1991, any show of organized power even from religious radicals is welcome. The radicals in Somalia’s case are Al-Shabab who in addition to law and order law and order bring a website with over 4 million hits. Here’s their scary training camp.
This week Open Democracy’s Paul Rogers broke down a five-point plan for Al Qaeda’s success in spearheading international terror. Released by Rogers’ (utterly spurious) Institute of Strategic Hermeneutics to the al-Qaeda Strategic Planning Cell, based in South Warzistan, the report advises Al Qaeda on the new policy landscape likely to emerge with the election of Barack Obama. Principles are directed to closely monitor the upcoming elections in Israel and Iran, both of which could alter the balance of mid-East power and affect new developments in US policy. Cell leadership is also counseled to watch troop levels in Iraq, the internationalization of the war on terror in Afghanistan and the development of a green energy economy in the US–all of which could undermine Al Qaeda’s targeting of US interests in the region. If there are further consultancies keen on presenting their own strategic prescriptions for Al Qaeda’s long-term success or failure, we direct you to Big Think’s call for for action plans.
Lesson No. 1 when planning a mega-city of 14 million people: don’t forget the infrastructure. With 6,000 new inhabitants arriving every day–many internally displaced by fighting in the interior and neighboring countries–the Nigerian capital Lagos has growing pains so acute that water, electricity and waste collection are hardly extant. Most of the city still functions on diesel generators. Bridge collapses and pipeline fires from pilfered gas lines are common. The UN predicts the city should hit a sweaty 25 million by 2015. Yet upmarket Lagosians enjoy a seaside idyll on “the Island” which is separated from Lagos proper by a tidal creek. Unlike feudal divisions in most mega-cities where the wealthy peer down on seething masses of the urban core, the Islands’ rich live at sea-level where they have to contend with rising sea levels and skyrocketing rents. The Island’s real estate prices now exceed those of Los Angeles, and two to three years rent payment up front is not uncommon just to move in. One of Lagos’ most lethal activities is everyday driving on potholed and over-crowded roadways lacking lanes and traffic indicators. Watch as CNN takes a spin around town. And let this be a lesson to those in America who don’t want to invest in infrastructure!
Dr. Paul C. Light is NYU Wagner’s Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service and founding principal investigator of the Organizational Performance Initiative. Light has written extensively on government reform and methods of increasing public service. His most recent publication is Government Ill Executed: The Decline of the Federal Service and How to Reverse It. Big Think sits down to talk to Light about his plan for the next administration in a few days. For now, here’s a concise version of Light’s plan, originally published as an Open Letter in The Washington Post.
1. Reduce the layering of government. This will make the office of the executive more accountable.
2. Reduce the number of political appointees. These political appointees occupy more than a quarter of the management layers between the top and bottom of most departments and agencies. The appointments process itself has become a dangerous source of delay.
3. Increase the government’s capacity to faithfully execute all laws. We need more border patrol officers, food and drug inspectors, revenue agents, immigration officers, veteran nurses, and contract specialists. Devote funding to the hiring of 100,000 new front-line employees in 2009.
4. Restore interest in federal careers. Do this by creating a competitive Spirit of Service corps that will give 5,000 of the best American students four years of tuition in exchange for eight years of service.
5. Improve oversight of the huge workforce of contractors that now delivers goods and services on behalf of the federal bureaucracy. Require competitive bidding on at least 80 percent of all federal contracts. Impose a five year ban on lobbying by former presidential appointees and senior civil servants.
Here’s Paul Light talking about social entrepreneurship.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to discuss his vision for a “truly global society” in Monday evening’s Lord Mayor’s Banquet. Here’s a first look at his five-part plan for revitalizing the world economy:
1. Must establish a consensus on a new Bretton Woods-style framework for the international financial system, featuring a reformed IMF, which will act as a global early-warning system for financial problems.
2. Recapitalization of banks to permit the resumption of normal lending to households and businesses.
3. Better international co-ordination of fiscal and monetary policy.
4. A new IMF fund to help struggling economies and stop financial problems from spreading between nations.
5. Agreement on a world trade deal and reform of the international financial system based on principles of “transparency, integrity, responsibility, sound banking practice and global governance with co-ordination of across borders.”
Here’s the prime minister talking about his recent plan for global health.
Big Think recently caught up with Columbia University professor and Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz to discuss transparency and goverment. Take a look.
http://www.bigthink.com/policy-politics/12726
Although media consumers are arguably fatigued by six years of war coverage, there are embedded reports trickling out of the eastern front of the what is soon to be Mr Obama’s war on terror. At outposts in the narrow valleys leading to Pakistan, C.J. Chivers has been following American military at their placements aimed to divert Taliban movements as well as directly engage them. With only 30,000 troops in Afghanistan and the (military) dead only hitting the single digits from week to week, headlines mentioning Afghanistan seem notably absent. Yet with many experts saying American efforts are woefully undermanned Mr. Obama will likely make some significant decisions his first weeks in office to raise troop levels. Here’s Staff Sargeant turned star of HBO’s General Kill, Eric Kocher, reflecting on his tour in Afghanistan back in the relatively quieter days of 2003.
This election, voters in Washington state had this choice for governor: “Christine Gregoire (Prefers Democratic Party)” or “Dino Rossi (Prefers G.O.P. Party)” Noticeably absent was the dirty-word, Republican, and this was no mistake. After a survey suggested that up to 12 percent of the state’s voters didn’t know that G.O.P. is synonymous with the Republican Party, Rossi didn’t dare call himself a Republican. McCain and Palin are taking the hit for widespread Republican losses, but some local and state level Republicans say the party is more deeply fragmented. Stewart Iverson, who resigned as chairman of the Iowa Republican Party said “Sometimes I think we’ve forgotten what we stand for. We’re going to have to look at rebuilding the Republican Party.” Republicans can agree that their party is in dire straits, but exactly how to rebuild is a more divisive issue. They are basically divided into two camps: those who say Republicans need to embrace core conservative values to restore their identity and those who say that this is the very reason Republicans lost touch with voters. The latter group says they need to re-vamp their image as the “old white guy party” and that the party’s lack of focus has made it almost impossible to appeal to young Americans. Grover Norquist talked to Big Think about the recent ideological history of what he calls the “Leave us alone coalition.”
