Initial State: 4 Castes, Many Tribes, A Wonk's View

For anyone trying to positively influence U.S. foreign policy, knowing the "caste" of the person you're talking to can make all the difference.  It also explains the why the State Department section of your rolodex changes so insanely often.  (more after the jump)

Read on...

Good News: It was a great year for transparency (video)

I think it's important to remember how far we've come in the past year.  The Sunlight Foundation does a great job at pushing transparency reforms on the national level, and assisting with local groups' efforts.  Here's a neat, short video listing last year's accomplishments.

Grade Inflation Means the Terrorists Have Already Won. Performance Evaluations Matter.

Despite repeated unprofessional behavior documented by his bosses, those same bosses rated Hasan "outstanding" and "best qualified" just before graduating him and sending him to work at Walter Reed.  Just when you thought grade inflation was a victimless crime, there are 13 bodies at Fort Hood to prove you wrong... (more after the jump)

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See Jerry Run. See Jerry Win. See Jerry Govern. See Jerry Hide His Records. See Jerry Run Again.

California is electing a new governor, this year.  Jerry Brown used to be governor of California.  The records of California governors are sealed for 50 years.  Jerry Brown helped pass and uphold that law.  Jerry Brown is running for governor, again, 25 years later.

Now, we can't get access to records of what Jerry Brown did the last time he was governor, without his written permission.

To put this in perspective, U.S. Presidents can seal parts of their records for at most 12 years after they leave office.

If Brown wins the Democratic nomination, I will likely vote for him and campaign for him, unless by some miracle we adopt instant-runoff voting.



See my head explode.

Public records, you say? (delete) What public records?

San José officials have taken a definite step forward by opening up their personal phones and email accounts to scrutiny. But fear not, my lobbyist friends! They left themselves a tiny loophole just big enough to slip a delete button through.


San José's City Council has moved a step toward adopting regulations that require the mayor, the council members, and their staffs to "make messages about public matters that council members send or receive on such personal devices subject to disclosure, just like other official records." This is a real advance for local government, and local public officials elsewhere may be feeling a bit nervous. Personally, I would like to see regulations like this apply to all government officials.

But there's one big loophole that the City Council left for itself:

It does not require them to retain messages sent via a personal e-mail account or device for any length of time.

So, if you're in San José government, and you get an inconvenient text message from a lobbyist promising you a campaign donation in exchange for a particular vote, you can just hit •delete•, and your problems have disappeared. Legally.

The fact that this reform is novel just shows how dire the conditions are at the local level for the public's right to know.

[Edited for clarity.]

Are Tech Solutions the Best Solutions to Terrorism?

Harry Shearer gets partial credit here. We ought to rationally compare tech solutions like full-body scanners against lower-cost options like bomb-sniffing dogs, regardless of the power of the security-tech lobbies. Another example of tech failure against terrorism is the unencrypted Predator drones, which opposition forces have been able to hack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_drone#Iraq).



My only concern is that we don't dismiss full-body scanning for out-dated privacy reasons. The best response to surveillance is sousveillance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance).
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

[Edited for clarity.]

Real-Life Bruce Banners, Uncounted (Transparency Matters, #2)

The worst part about folks being crippled and dying from medical radiation accidents is that no one is keeping track of how many there are.  This isn't just gradual radiation poisoning; in one case, a linear accelerator accidentally burned a hole in a woman's chest.

“I just had a big hole in my chest,” she would say. “You could just see my ribs in there.”

Details of these cases, says the Times, "have until now been shielded from public view by government, doctors and [hospitals]."  It gets better:

The Times found that while this new technology allows doctors to more accurately attack tumors and reduce certain mistakes, its complexity has created new avenues for error — through software flaws, faulty programming, poor safety procedures or inadequate staffing and training. When those errors occur, they can be crippling...

Regulators and researchers can only guess how often radiotherapy accidents occur. With no single agency overseeing medical radiation, there is no central clearinghouse of cases. Accidents are chronically underreported, records show, and some states do not require that they be reported at all.

These are folks that are literally being killed by software glitches and operator error.  This kind of behavior is one of the reasons I rail against privacy, especially the corporate privacy that shields the medical industry from public scrutiny.  Without transparency, we can't find out who's being hurt, where the mistakes are made, who's making them, or why.

But you might think these errors are exceptions to the rule, and are quickly and transparently corrected.  Nope.

In June, The Times reported that a Philadelphia hospital gave the wrong radiation dose to more than 90 patients with prostate cancer — and then kept quiet about it. In 2005, a Florida hospital disclosed that 77 brain cancer patients had received 50 percent more radiation than prescribed because one of the most powerful — and supposedly precise — linear accelerators had been programmed incorrectly for nearly a year.

So, the courts should take care of this, because the victims will be suing like crazy ... right?

“My suspicion is that maybe half of the accidents we don’t know about,” said Dr. Fred A. Mettler Jr., who has investigated radiation accidents around the world and has written books on medical radiation.

Identifying radiation injuries can be difficult. Organ damage and radiation-induced cancer might not surface for years or decades, while underdosing is difficult to detect because there is no injury. For these reasons, radiation mishaps seldom result in lawsuits, a barometer of potential problems within an industry.

The Times article lays out the details of several botched cases, with the eerie precision of a horror movie.

The lesson, then, is that patients have to be careful to choose responsible providers.  Only, nobody knows the good guys from the bad guys:

Patients who wish to vet New York radiotherapy centers before selecting one cannot do so, because the state will not disclose where or how often medical mistakes occur.

To encourage hospitals to report medical mistakes, the State Legislature — with the support of the hospital industry — agreed in the 1980s to shield the identity of institutions making those mistakes. The law is so strict that even federal officials who regulate certain forms of radiotherapy cannot, under normal circumstances, have access to those names.

Even with this special protection, the strongest in the country, many radiation accidents go unreported in New York City and around the state. After The Times began asking about radiation accidents, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reminded hospitals in July of their reporting obligation under the law. Studies of radiotherapy accidents, the city pointed out, “appear to be several orders of magnitude higher than what is being reported in New York City, indicating serious underreporting of these events.”

The Times collected summaries of radiation accidents that were reported to government regulators, along with some that were not. Those records show that inadequate staffing and training, failing to follow a good quality-assurance plan and software glitches have contributed to mistakes that affected patients of varying ages and ailments.

It keeps getting better.  Apparently, the privacy of incompetent therapists is more important than preventing malpractice:

In 2008, at Stony Brook University Medical Center on Long Island, Barbara Valenza-Gorman, 63, received 10 times as much radiation as prescribed in one spot, and one-tenth of her prescribed dose in another. Ms. Valenza-Gorman was too sick to continue her chemotherapy and died of cancer several months later, a family member said. The therapist who made those mistakes was later reprimanded in another case for failing to document treatment properly.

The therapist not only continues to work at the hospital, but has also trained other workers, according to records and hospital employees. A spokeswoman for Stony Brook said privacy laws precluded her from discussing specifics about patient care or employees.

And, yeah, the regulators gathering this information are toothless:

Fines or license revocations are rarely used to enforce safety rules. Over the previous eight years, despite hundreds of mistakes, the state issued just three fines against radiotherapy centers, the largest of which was $8,000.

How do we tackle this?  On the state level, or the federal level?  What are the reporting laws in other states, like my home of California?  Are there any good examples of agencies responsibly collecting this malpractice data?

[Thanks to otisarchives3 and Sandi for the pics.]

Homeless Sex Offenders: Is there an app for that?

Would you rather have paroled sex offenders live closer to you and your local schools and know where they live, or would you rather they be homeless, and more likely to re-offend?  Is there a neighborhood-watch app that could help us out of this dilemma? (more after the jump)

Read on...

State and Energy: A Wonk's-Eye View

Ever since my Fellowships at the U.S. State Department and the Department of Energy, I've fielded calls from friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers, all looking for more information about my time there, how I got those gigs, and how those beasts actually function.

Harry S. Truman Building, headquarters of the U.S. State Department since 1947. Courtesy AgnosticPreachersKid.

It's no wonder.  The details available in places like Wikipedia on these bureaucracies are fairly sparse and abstract.  (Which is surprising, since there are a few books on the subject, which I haven't read.)  Where folks do talk openly about their time in such places, they might focus on juicy gossip about their co-workers, scandals, and major events, rather than on how the organizations actually operate—and how folks should use these systems to their advantage, from both within and without.

There are some pretty good reasons for much of this, as will hopefully become apparent.  There are many incentives to keep information hidden, not all nefarious.  Luckily, since I don't work at either place anymore, I can say (almost) whatever I please.

So, as an occasional series, I'll try to fill in some gaps.  I'll start off with the State Department, as it's better-known and more fresh in my mind.  If you have any questions to start off, please ask!

Transparency Now Banished.

I like to think I was into transparency before transparency was cool.  Even Secretary Clinton trotted "transparency" out for the Copenhagen climate talks.  Apparently, now it's passé:

Word "czars" at Lake Superior State University "unfriended" 15 words and phrases and declared them "shovel-ready" for inclusion on the university's 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

"The list this year is a 'teachable moment' conducted free of 'tweets,'" said a Word Banishment spokesman who was "chillaxin'" for the holidays. "'In these economic times', purging our language of 'toxic assets' is a 'stimulus' effort that's 'too big to fail.'"

Former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and friends created "word banishment" in 1975 at a New Year's Eve party and released the first list on New Year's Day. Since then, LSSU has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which includes words and phrases from marketing, media, education, technology and more.

TRANSPARENT/TRANSPARENCY

"I can see clearly that this is the new buzzword for the year." -- Joann Eschenburg, Clinton Twp., Mich.

"In the lexicon of the political arena, this word is supposed to mean obvious or easily understood. In reality, political transparency is more invisible than obvious!" -- Deb Larson, Bellaire, Mich.

"I just don't see it." – Joe Grimm, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

This just makes it official.  I've resigned myself to becoming part of the counterculture.