Inside the Beltway (Politics)

With this afternoon’s concessions of defeat by Senator George Allen and Conrad Burns, the GOP’s loss of the Senate is official. Tech policy played little role in this political earthquake, despite much early rhetoric by neutrality regulation supporters that it would be a big part of the debate. Yet, ironically, the final two dominoes to fall were both members of the Senate Commerce Committee, and key players in tech policy debates. Allen in particular will be missed by free-market supporters, as well as the tech industry (he ranked number one in the Senate on tech policy in a recent CNET survey.) Burns, a longtime communications subcommittee chair, had a more mixed record. He was an early supporter of telecom reform, but in recent years seemed to focus more on protecting rural state perks.

The headline news, however, is the change at the top of the committee. Senator Ted Stevens–who was made famous by Jon Stewart and YouTube for describing the Internet as a “series of tubes”–is out.

Supporters of markets will shed few tears over Steven’s ejection from the chairman’s seat. The champion of Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere,” proponent of a $3 billion scheme to subsidize television, and author of a telecom bill with $5.2 billion more in subsidies, he hardly represented Adam Smith’s values. We are tempted, in fact, to crack a smile.

But not too big a smile. While Stevens may be out, he is replaced by Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. Although of different parties, Stevens and Inouye always had a close working relationship–Stevens, in fact, always referred to Inouye as his “co-chairman.” While Stevens would be hard to beat in the pork department, Inouye is no shirker (its a fair bet he can take credit for the special rules for “states comprised entirely of islands” in this year’s telecom legislation).

This isn’t to say there aren’t differences. Stevens, for instance, was somewhat opposed to neutrality regulation, while Inouye somewhat supportive. But in many other areas, it’ll be hard to spot a difference. In fact, on many issues–such as telecom subsidies–Inouye could be more successful at getting Stevens’ agenda adopted than Stevens was.

As I suggested earlier, settle in for a few interesting years.

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The Economist recently had an article about the Cato study “The Libertarian Vote.”

In a new study from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, David Boaz and David Kirby argue that libertarians form perhaps the largest block of swing voters. Counting them is hard, since few Americans are familiar with the term “libertarian”. Mr Boaz and Mr Kirby count those who agree that “government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses”, that government, rather than promoting traditional values, “should not favour any particular set of values”, and that “the federal government has too much power”. Using data from Gallup polls, they found that, in 2005, 13% of the voting-age population shared all three views, up from 9% in 2002.

And a book review of Steve Slivinski’s book on the demise of fiscal conservatism…

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Derek notes that Congress has adjourned for the year without passing an NSA spying bill. This is good news. It occurs to me that libertarians have reason to cheer this session of Congress, not because anything particularly good happened, but because many bad ideas were floated, and to my knowledge none of them got to the president’s desk:

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It’s no Watergate, but the FCC is still roiling over charges made that it deep-sixed a staff study on media ownership because it didn’t like the results. The allegations–and the study–surfaced last week at a hearing on Chairman Kevin Martin’s reappointment. Sent anonymously to Sen. Barbara Boxer, the paper was reportedly written in 2004 by two commission staffers and found that locally-owned television stations aired more local news that those owned by national chains. According to former Media Bureau attorney Adam Candeub, unspecified higher-ups at the agency were appalled at the results because they undercut ongoing efforts to reform media ownership laws. As a result, Candeub said, every copy of the report was ordered destroyed. “The whole project was dropped, “end of discussion, he said.

Kevin Martin–who was a commissioner, but not chair, of the FCC at the time–was apparently blindsided by the claims. He stated that he had never heard of the study, but pledged to look into the matter. He also had the study–or at least a PDF of the copy provided by Boxer–put on the commission’s website. (Bizarrely, this copy–even as posted by the FCC–has the authors names blacked out).

The mini-scandal–perhaps it should be called Papergate–was widely reported in the press, and has led to a barrage of criticism in the blogosphere and a stream of press releases from pro-media regulation advocacy groups (Typical was a headline used by the advocacy group Free Press: “FCC Buried Evidence to Protect Friends in Big Media“.)

The reaction was understandable–the image of FCC officials ordering all traces of a study destroyed, Carthage-like, just because they don’t like the results is a disturbing one. But is the real story that simple? I’m skeptical, for several reasons. Anyone who has worked at the FCC knows that the place leaks like an Italian warship. Its simply is hard to believe that such a step would remain a secret for two years, especially given the intense outside interest in the broadcast ownership debate. That’s not to say that studies are not quietly set aside–that happens all the time. But–as described–the end of this study was anything but quiet, and it’s hard to see the noise not reaching outside the FCC’s building.

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Via TechDirt comes news that a California DJ confirms that he, too, has been “hacking” the gov’s site. As Joe says, the real scandal is why the governor’s office hired such incompetent administrators. What other confidential government documents are they making available to the world?

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Assuming that Declan’s explanation for how the Angelides campaign got the Schwarzenegger audio is right (and it’s consistent with everything I’ve seen on the subject), the media coverage of the story is incredibly lazy. Whether the Angelides campaign’s actions constitute “hacking” or not is not a complicated question. The way to answer it would be to get a precise description of what they did from the two campaigns (the Schwarzenegger campaign says they have logs of the access, so they should be able to answer specific questions about it), and then to ask a computer expert whether that specific sequence of actions constitutes hacking.

Yet not one of those stories features a quote from a computer science professor, a webmaster, or anyone else with technical expertise in administering web sites. Each and every reporter takes an agnostic stance, as if it’s a complex and difficult question that will take days of painstaking research to answer. It seems to me that this does their readers a disservice.

Presumably, the idea here is that a “balanced” story is one that faithfully reports the opinions of each side, without passing judgment on either side’s position. This is appropriate in cases where the statements in question are matters of opinion. But a good journalist should do some independent research to verify assertions that are matters of fact. If candidate Smith says the sky is blue, and candidate Jones says it’s green, the good reporter looks up at the sky and reports on what color it looks like to him, he doesn’t pretend that the color of the sky is a matter of opinion.

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The Property Rights Alliance, an arm of Grover Norquist’s American’s for Tax Reform with a history of producing error-ridden propaganda in support of stronger IP law, is urging Senator Specter to push two “property rights” bills through his committee. One is the Senate version of H.R. 4128, which denies federal funds to projects that rely on eminent domain abuse. The other is the Perform Act, the music industry’s top legislative priority for the year.

As I explained last fall, the tactic of linking the RIAA’s pet issues with the fight over eminent domain is cynical and deceptive. The owners of real property across the country are genuinely under seige in the wake of Kelo, as the legal system abandoned them, and legislatures have failed to protect their rights. In contrast, the holders of intellectual property have had an unbroken streak of legislative and judicial victories over the last decade, giving them far more sweeping powers under the law than they’ve ever had in the past.

The Perform Act has nothing to do with shoring up property rights. It’s an ill-advised technology mandate that would limit the functionality of digital music devices.

But that isn’t to say that there’s no similarities between the RIAA’s lobbying effort and the legislative fight sparked by the Kelo decision. What the two issues have in common is this: in each case, well-financed and well-connected corporate interests are lobbying for special favors from the legislature. Fortunately, in each case, a coalition of public interest groups and ordinary citizens is fighting back.

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There’s technology policy, and there’s how technology affects policy.

That’s why I found my Cato Institute colleague Chris Edwards’ recent Tax & Budget Bulletin so interesting.  He discusses a number of federal databases that bring some transparency to federal spending, including the Federal Assistance Award Data System and the Federal Audit Clearinghouse.  Between them, they reveal quite a bit of information about federal spending and the staggering number and amount of subsidies and grants handed out by the federal government each year.

Edwards also hails a proposal by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) to create a comprehensive Internet database of federal contracts, grants, and other payments.  It would be a great leap forward in terms of transparency about spending, like the Thomas system was for the legislative process.

Advocates from across the political spectrum want a government that “works.” Most believe that their perspective would “win” if the politics and government worked.  Whatever the case, transparency is widely agreed to be good–the more the better.

Thomas was an improvement.  Yet it hasn’t transformed the legislative process the way some might have hoped.  Lawmaking remains murky and confusing to the vast majority of the public.  Even if it was done well, a federal spending database probably wouldn’t transform the politics of government spending either.

Information technology will surely help, but transparency isn’t enough.  The twin problems that must be overcome are rational ignorance and rational inaction.  It’s hard to learn about government, and hard to affect it, so people make better uses of their time.  Operating a lemonade stand would be far more lucrative and enjoyable for most people than campaigning for a tax reduction.  (The piece linked here is a good discussion of rational ignorance.)

There are some efforts to defeat the twin plagues of ignorance and inaction.  GovTrack.us, for example, attacks ignorance with more information presented more accessibly than Thomas.  Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales recently took after inaction with a wiki devoted to campaigns. 

My favorite–because I run it–is WashingtonWatch.com.  It displays pending legislation with its price-tag per person, per family, etc. and it gives visitors a chance to air their views.  A little run at ignorance, a little run at inaction.  Given time, it could blossom into transformed government.  In the meantime, the more transparency the better.

(Cross posted from Cato@Liberty)

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