New App Turns Your Phone into a Whistle

I have a lot of silly and pointless applications (or "apps") on my smart phone. Some are remarkably useful. Most are just distracting drains on the battery. But imagine the transformative possibilities of a phone app that allows you, as an alert citizen and taxpayer, to instantly blow the whistle on the government waste, fraud and mismanagement that you see first-hand as you go about your daily lives.

No more need to complain to a hard-to-reach council member or commissioner. No more getting bounced from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, in search of someone in charge. No more calling into a"hotline" that no one ever answers. Just punch a button and report what you see, as a citizen-watchdog, knowing that the report -- and the accompanying video -- will reach someone who might actually do something about it.

The city of Philadelphia is experimenting with just such a concept, reports the Philadelphia Daily News, a smart phone application, dubbed the PhillyWatchdog, that "that allows citizens to report fraud or government misconduct directly to the controller's fraud unit."


"City Controller Alan Butkovitz yesterday unveiled an iPhone app that allows citizens to report fraud or government misconduct directly to the controller's fraud unit.

"Our Philly WatchDog app allows citizens to play a crucial role in protecting their tax dollars by reporting fraud, waste and abuse," Butkovitz said during a news conference.

Using the application, available for free through iTunes or the App Store on the iPhone, residents can report sightings of fraud or city workers goofing off and send in pictures or videos. Messages can be sent anonymously.

Butkovitz said that the app, which the office developed for $5,400, is the first of its kind in the nation. Butkovitz and his staff said that residents might capture examples of bribery by city workers, or city workers napping on taxpayers' time.

The office gets between 75 and 100 such reports from citizens each year, but the app certainly could boost that number."

The story doesn't say what happens to reports or tips that don't rise to the level of fraud. But how useful would this potentially be for a city manager or mayor who us seriously interested in weeding-out waste, improving city services or just keeping city employees on their toes? It potentially turns every citizen into a deputy watchdog, providing city officials with hundreds of extra eyes and ears out on the streets. It's affordable, empowering and gives average people a stake in the improvement of their government. And it's something we could easily and affordably do in Colorado Springs.

The city auditor's office already has a waste and fraud hotline. But that's so 1950s and too few people even know it exists. Adding a higher-tech twist would be a good opportunity to re-launch and republicize the effort, while highlighting the important work this often-overlooked city office does.

The first mayoral candidate to add the creation of a "Springs Watchdog" phone app to his campaign platform can claim all the credit. That he read it here first will be our little secret.

Debt Wish

Major media outlets reportedly are refusing to run this ad by Citizens Against Government Waste (where I once worked and where my sister, Leslie, still does), because it's been deemed too controversial for public consumption. I think it's a devastatingly-effective wake-up call that every American needs to see and think about.

Isn't it a blessing that the Internet has freed us from our former reliance on the Idea Police in the so-called mainstream media, who take it upon themselves to decide what messages we should, and shouldn't, get? If the networks aren't courageous enough to run this ad, we have alternative means of seeing it, and of sharing it with others.

So defy the MSM censors and pass it along.

Paige on Porkulus

Sister Leslie was on Fox Business News today, highlighting some of the most stupid and wasteful spending items in Obama's porkulus package. No need to analyze or editorialize: She can speak for herself: link

Blood on My Hands?

I've said and written some unflattering things about federal workers over the years. Back when I was a spokesman for Citizens Against Government Waste, a fiscal watchdog group, and later, when I wrote the weekly "Waste and Abuse" column for Insight Magazine, I regularly penned pieces that cast federal workers in an unflattering light. I didn't always have to ferret these stories out; they mostly just fall in your lap, so pervasive is waste and mismanagement at the federal level.

Did all that work make me complicit in murder? That's the message coming out of Washington this morning.

Did all my "government-bashing" -- all my disrespecting of the dedicated men and women, "public servants" all, who labor tirelessly on my behalf in thankless government jobs -- help lay the predicate for the murder of census worker William Sparkman, who was found dead on Sept. 12 in the Daniel Boone National Forest? It just might have, says Bill Schauman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2782, in today's Washington Post.

"Perhaps, if more of our leaders had talked over the years about the dedication of the federal workforce, and shown us more of the appreciation and trust we deserve, this terrible event might not have happened," Schauman told the Post. Other union leaders quoted in the story were more cautious about making such connections. But John Berry, who runs the Office of Personnel Management, ratchets up the rhetoric again by suggesting that Sparkman may have been the victim of "domestic terrorism." "We cannot tolerate essentially domestic terrorism, if that is what this is," he said. "But until we understand the law enforcement investigation, we don’t know."

The Post further inflames the situation by trotting out some context-free statistics about crimes against federal workers (or in which federal worker are involved), leaving the inference that there's some political component to the crimes, though this is not supported in any way.

The Post:

"It is a federal crime to attack or kill a federal worker during or because of their job and government employees regularly face threats due to the nature of their work. Officials insist they have no information suggesting Sparkman was targeted because of his federal employment, but the slaying has raised concerns about the safety of federal employees.

The Justice Department had filed 277 such cases against 299 defendants as of August, according to spokesman Ian McCaleb. It prosecuted 303 cases against 330 defendants in FY '08, 326 cases against 348 defendants in FY '07 and 313 cases filed against 329 defendants in FY '06. McCaleb could not provide details about specific employees or agencies targeted or the number of successful prosecutions.

Union leaders have suggested that statements by lawmakers and commentators about the federal workforce may also be to blame."

So watch what you say about federal workers, everyone. Your critiques just might be egging on "domestic terrorism" and instigating cold-blooded murder.

Science Finally Proves "John Denver Hypothesis"

Sunshine on his shoulders made singer John Denver happy. But CU researchers needed a $500,000 federal grant from the National Science Foundation to finally prove the "John Denver Hypothesis," according to this report in today's Boulder Daily Camera. One major scientific question has been answered. Who said all the big breakthroughs in science have been made?

"CU scientist Christopher Lowry, an assistant professor of integrative physiology, received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to continue studying the link between temperature and mood. The grant is paid for with a Faculty Early Career Development Award.

"Whether lying on the beach in the midday sun on a Caribbean island, grabbing a few minutes in the sauna or spa after working or sitting in a hot bath or Jacuzzi in the evening, we often associate feeling warm with a sense of relaxation and well-being," Lowry wrote in a recent edition of the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Lowry said that people intuitively understand that temperature affects mood, but he is looking to clearly define that link. Understanding these mechanisms might help scientists develop better treatments for depression and other mood disorders, according to Lowry."

Many of us knew, anecdotally, that we tend to feel better on sunny days than on cloudy days. We know from observations that Minnesotans and Michiganders tend to spend their winter breaks in Florida, rather than the other way around. But so what? Science cannot stand on anecdotes and casual observations alone.

Testing the "John Denver Hypothesis" has been a National Science Foundation priority for years. Now, finally, thanks to perseverance and an unconscionable misuse of resources, the case has been cracked: Sunshine on our shoulders does, in fact, make us happy. This wasn't just some pop song-inspired myth.

Now federal dollars can be spent solving the next great scientific question: Do albino alligators really live in the sewers under New York City? The National Science Foundation is standing by now, to take your grant proposals.

Obama's Cash-Guzzler Running on Fumes

While certainly not the biggest boondoggle in federal history, "cash for clunkers" must have broken the record as the fastest taxpayer ripoff on wheels, going from 0 to $3 billion in just a few weeks -- with two thirds of that spent after it was obvious that a massive scam was going on. It used to take years for a federal program to squander that kind of money. But that was life in America B.B. -- Before Barack. Now it can happen in a matter of days.

First $1 billion went flying out the window, even before controls were in place to ensure the program was operating properly. But rather than hit the brakes and ask for directions, and get a handle on what was going on, the president and Congress poured $2 billion more into this high-octane cash-guzzler, effectively putting the pedal to the metal. Now that money's been blown, and the plug has been pulled -- which I read as a belated acknowledgment that the program was a disaster, made worse my reckless spending my the president and Congress.

President Obama is still valiantly trying to put a positive spin on things. During a radio address yesterday, he said C for C had "been successful beyond anybody's imagination. And we're now slightly victims of success because the thing happened so quick, there was so much more demand than anybody expected, that dealers were overwhelmed with applications." Obama called the paperwork backlog "a good-news story" because dealers -- some of whom are pulling out of the program in frustration -- "are seeing sales that they have not seen in years." It just takes time for those conscientious federal workers to process the paperwork "properly," explained the president (though perennial reports of Social Security checks going to dead people aren't a confidence booster).

But I'm not sure the public will buy what the president is selling. He's coming off a little too slick, a little too much the used-car salesman.

If Obama truly believes the program was a smashing success, why pull the plug now, after "only" $3 billion has been spent? Just imagine all the auto showroom traffic Obama could generate, all the additional economic stimulus that would occur, how many auto dealers would be high-fiving, how much cleaner the air around us would be, if Congress appropriated $20 or $30 billion more for the program. If we maintained that level of funding annually, all our problems would be solved -- if clunkernomics really works.

But I think the White House and Congress belatedly came to understand what most level-headed Americans knew intuitively from the start -- that clunkernomics doesn't work. This was nothing but a boondoggle, that accomplished nothing meaningful for the economy or the environment, and will turn out to be an embarrassment to the president when the full story is told. $3 billion was blown in a matter of weeks. Dealers have been dropping out of the program in frustration. A mess has been created that will take months to clean up. Lawsuits could result, as dealers demand the rebates that were promised them but haven't been coming, snared as they are in federal red tape.

Enterprising reporters will uncover all sorts of abuses, by both car-buyers and car-dealers. Any objective cost-benefit analysis would undoubtedly show that the former far outweighed the latter, especially when one adds-in the federal man-hours being expended to process paperwork and issue the checks.

Try as the president may to turn this lemon into lemonade, it's still going to leave a bitter taste in the mouths of most Americans when the complete story of cash for clunkers is written.

Paige Plugs Paige

This news segment from the Today Show, dealing with the Freddie and Fannie scandal, would be worth watching even if Leslie Paige -- yep, that's my big sister -- wasn't dishing up the sound bites. But she definitely adds a certain something (though you could ratchet-up the indignation just a bit, Les). And she actually has street cred on this issue, since she and CAGW were blowing the whistle on Fannie and Freddie long before the house of cards came tumbling down.

Way to go, Leslie. Keep on nipping at their heels!

The segment also does a good job of highlighting the Clinton connection -- how soon the public seems to have forgotten how scummy and morally-compromised this gang was. And now they're back, infiltrating the Obama administration like an insidious and incurable virus.

Why most congressional earmarking reforms just won't work

Years ago, when I was handling media relations for Citizens Against Government Waste, it was believed that if you shined a bright enough light on the practice of congressional earmarking, and you shamed members of Congress who conducted these personal raids on the U.S. Treasury, you could help clean-up the budget mess. That belief was rather naïve, I now realize.

The theory falls apart because you can’t shame the shameless. And that’s why the vaunted earmark reforms we’ve been hearing and reading about, at least since the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal increased public awareness of the issue, will fail to deliver significant results. Though beneficial, the new disclosure rules being debated by the House and Senate won’t do much good because members, masterful spinners that they are, have succeeded in turning fiscal vice into political virtue. Nothing will change until the American people begin to see the issue clearly and consistently – and until they stop serving as accomplices.

I keep seeing media references to the “public outrage” earmarks supposedly evoke. Where is it? The most notorious pork-barrel practitioners in Congress are routinely and reflexively re-elected (it’s that longevity, in fact, that’s given them a front row seat at the trough). Most are lionized by their constituents for their ability to “bring home the bacon.” I used to read the newspaper clips that came in after our annual release of the Pig Book, a report designed to shame politicians and educate the public. Far from outrage, most of the home state reaction could be summed up as follows: “If this is pork, we want another heaping helping!”

I began to recognize that many Americans were indignant about the obviously-parochial, arguably-idiotic pet projects landed by other members of Congress, but saw similar projects scored by their own Congressperson as legitimate federal expenditures, not to mention just desserts. The report provoked rationalizing en masse. I never saw a member of Congress pay any political price for pigging out.

Back then, a few members of Congress bristled at being called out as porkers. But as years went by, I sensed that some members actually relished the Pig Book’s release, understanding that they and their constituents could take a certain pride in their pork barrel tally, since it served as one tangible measure of political clout. The sanguine editorial reactions, along with the willingness of constituents to justify their own representative’s raid on the Treasury, removed whatever stigma once attached to pork-barrel plundering. And it became a perverse point of pride. Until this changes, little else will.

Here’s my thumbnail reaction to the “reforms” being debated by Congress.

One provision in the House bill “requires any bill containing earmarks be accompanied by a list identifying each one and the member or members who requested it,” according to the AP. I just explained why that’s ineffectual. Creating such a list merely reduces the work load for Congressional press secretaries, who are spared the need to crank out the customary press releases bragging about how their bosses “brought home” this or that federal spending project.

Another provision requires the member who requests an earmark “to provide a letter identifying the earmark and the entity to receive the funds, along with a certification that neither the requesting member nor their spouse would benefit financially,” report the AP. Disclosure of financial conflicts could be useful, only if serious, perhaps even criminal sanctions result from failing to disclose. Referring such matters to the ethics committee will not serve as a deterrent. The most corrupt members of Congress may seek some direct financial gain from earmarks, but most are content to reap the real but far less visible rewards, including the gratitude of voters and patronage ties such projects generate. That's critical to the incumbency protection racket. Lining their pockets is less important to most members than remaining a lifetime member of this prestigious club. There's plenty of opportunity for cashing-in after retirement.

Another rule change would prohibit earmarks “from being used to influence other members,” according to the AP. But policing this would be nearly impossible. The congressional pecking order is obvious enough to most insiders, and so much of the institution’s business transpires behind closed doors, that overt acts of intimidation (or pork-barrel bribery) are rarely evident. Junior members don’t have to be told what might happen if they cross senior members -- who also happen to control appropriations committees. Catching one member in the act of influencing another, using earmarks as leverage, isn’t as easy as it sounds in an institution where influencing colleagues is a legitimate part of the game. And without adequate enforcement mechanisms, this won’t have much impact.

The only reform worthy of the name -- a proposed moratorium on earmarks until a bipartisan committee proposes new rules changes -- fell along the wayside late last week, regrettably. This isn’t the solution, of course, since the study committee, if it simply mirrors Congress at large, is likely to produce recommendations just as anemic as those critiqued here. But a moratorium, if it stuck, would at least grant taxpayers a temporary reprieve. And if the committee’s work, staying true to congressional form, took one, two or three years to complete, that would save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in unnecessary, frivolous and wasteful government spending.

Given how endemic earmarking has become, and how hard it will be to change that as long as average Americans remain complicit in the corruption, even a temporary timeout is probably the best we can hope for.