In a recent Occasional Planet post, Susan Cunningham writes:

“We can blame the NRA all we want, but the enemy, as Pogo said, is ourselves. We are a violent society and always have been. From the European invasion and occupation of the Americas 500 years ago to the “war on terror” around the world today, we must love violence or we would stop it.”

Just as so many people in the United States are fixated on violence, many of us are also addicted to corruption and deceit. We often try to deny it, but our lifestyle patterns clearly indicate that this is what we do. Self-dealing and cover-up by the federal government is the basic theme of Sharyl Attkisson’s new book, Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.

It is important to note that quite a few Americans, perhaps a majority, are not prone to violence. They prefer to live their lives peacefully and to solve conflicts in a non-violent way. Similarly, most Americans are basically honest and prefer to play by the rules. However, there are enough Americans who prefer to twist the rules and bend the truth to make it an endemic problem rather than an occasional act of malfeasance. That is the essential problem with Attkisson’s book. She is a former national correspondent for CBS News who, in recent years, was doing a considerable amount of investigative journalism. Regrettably for her, CBS became less and less interested in her stories to the point where in early 2014 she decided to leave “Black Rock” and avoid the harassment of editors and supervisors.

Her investigations cover a wide span of issues, from gun-running to drug dealers in Mexico, to Benghazi, to the initial fiasco of electric cars in the United States. Though her reporting is far more sophisticated and refined than local news, much of what she presents seems to be of the “you won’t believe what I found” variety. She tries to be fair in her bashing; including the George W. Bush Administration; the Obama Administration; corporate moguls; labor unions. However, because most of her frustration emanated from what she saw as the resistance of corporate CBS to run stories critical of agencies within and actions by the Obama administration, most of what she reports is criticism of the current administration.

My problem with her bashing of the Obama Administration is that she seems to be totally blind to the concept of “shit happens.” Yes, the Obama Administration did not do a good job of rolling out the web site for the Affordable Care Act, and the Justice Department seems to have engaged in unwarranted surveillance of the Associated Press. Bluntly, it’s true that “mistakes were made,” putting the actions in the passive voice, as is commonly done. But this is what happens when we have a body politic in which it comes so naturally for so many people to engage in and accept corruption.

There are two particular problems and one opportunity that occurs when the focus is put on a semi-progressive administration like the Obama one. The problems are (a) In many regards, the Obama Administration is trying to serve the needs of the people, something that sets them apart from Republicans, and (b) Republican outlets such as Rush Limbaugh or Fox News will jump all over any malfeasance on the part of a Democratic Administration without any understanding of how malfeasance is just part of who we are. The opportunity that arises from Attkisson’s reporting on the Obama Administration is that in many cases (such as with the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act) there is an intense desire of individuals and agencies within the Administration to correct the errors. Indeed, this is what has happened in the past fifteen months since the initial roll-out of the ACA. We must keep in mind that the administration is dealing with a highly imperfect law, which, in many ways was shredded by (a) Republican opposition to addressing the health care needs of the more than forty million Americans who did not have health insurance, and (b) the timidity of the Obama Administration to pursue a Medicare-for-All program that would have eliminated many of the structural problems with the law, including minimal ability to contain costs.

Attkisson operates from the perspective of a journalist who feels that the primary principle that should exist in our society is freedom of the press. Yes, the concept is a virtue and is deeply embedded in our First Amendment. But when it comes to the well-being of the American people, freedom of the press is somewhat of a neutral principle. In itself, it does not improve or damage the quality of life that we all enjoy, particularly those who are most in need of an emphasis on justice and fairness. With all its flaws, the Obama Administration has a greater commitment to the well-being of all Americans than Republicans do. Attkisson’s reporting and writing does an excellent job of pointing out missteps by the Administration. As much as I appreciate her investigatory work, I think that it does not necessarily make us a better country. We need to combine her research and presentation with a further commitment to the principles of a progressive agenda.

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In a recent article in the The Huffington Post, economist Jeffrey Sachs confirms what many of us fear—that we could be facing a double-dip recession. But he has some positive ideas about how to turn our economy around.  He recommends a new approach to recovery, one that transcends the current polarized debate about austerity to bring down the deficit vs. stimulus to boost consumer spending. According to Sachs, we need to move our attention to “long-term investment in physical and human capital as the proper way to sustained growth.”

Sachs points out that the Obama administration’s short term approach, driven by the two-year election cycle, has been to aggressively promote car and home sales, through rebates and tax incentives to increase consumer spending. But exhausted and anxious consumers are choosing to save and pay down debts—that is, if they are not unemployed and burning through their savings. The stimulus, although successful in stemming job loss and improving infrastructure, was half of what it needed to be. Overall, Sachs feels the administration’s interest in boosting long-term investment has been haphazard at best.

“At a time when China is building hundreds of miles of subway lines, tens of thousands of miles of highways, a couple of dozen nuclear power plants, and a network of tens of thousands of miles of high-speed intercity rail lines, the US struggles to launch a single substantial project. China saves and invests; the US talks, consumes, borrows, and talks some more. . . .Businesses, for their part, are distressed by the lack of direction “

According to Sachs, both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of “irresponsible short-termism” and lack of forward thinking. He offers a proper US investment recovery plan that has five parts:

1. A significant boost in investments in clean energy and an upgraded national power grid. These should be promoted through guaranteed price subsidies to clean energy to be financed by gradually rising carbon taxes, as the clean energy capacity comes on line during the coming decade. The alternative cap and trade system is cumbersome, unnecessary and politically dead.
2. A decade-long program of infrastructure renovation, with projects such as high-speed inter-city rail, water and waste treatment facilities and highway upgrading, co-financed by the federal government, local governments and private capital. Such projects are complex, requiring government leadership in land management, project design, public-private co-operation and partial subsidy or credit guarantees. New tools can help, such as a national infrastructure bank — championed last year before plans were strangely downplayed.
3. The third component is more education spending at secondary, vocation and bachelor-degree levels, to recognize the reality that tens of millions of American workers lack the advanced skills needed to achieve full employment at the salaries that the workers expect. The unemployment crisis is largely a structural crisis of job skills. It is hitting young workers— many of whom should still be learning —and older workers who lack a degree.
4. The penultimate part of the plan is boosting infrastructure exports to Africa and other low-income countries. China is running circles around the US and Europe in promoting such exports of infrastructure. The costs are modest—essentially just credit guarantees—but the benefits are huge, in increased exports, support for African development and a boost in geopolitical goodwill and stability.
5. The fifth and final element should be a medium-term fiscal framework that will credibly reduce the federal budget deficit to sustainable levels within five years. This can be achieved partly by cutting defense spending by two percentage points of gross domestic product, meaning ending the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations and cutting wasteful weapons systems. Other measures should include gradually phasing out the tax subsidy on high-end health insurance, taxing Wall Street bank profits and bonuses, raising high-end marginal tax rates and, if necessary, introducing a small value added tax. Public investment costs could be financed mainly by public tolls, gradually rising carbon taxes and by repayments of international loans to finance the export of infrastructure.

Jeffrey Sachs, is an economist and a professor at Columbia University, Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and the founder and co-President of the Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger. He has authored numerous books, including The End of Poverty and Common Wealth, both New York Times bestsellers. He has been named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” twice, in 2004 and 2005.

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