It’s a catastrophe. I have to admit, I was floored that there was a decision that there would be no charges brought against Officer Darren Wilson in connection with Michael Brown’s death.
Many citizens are like me and empathize with the fact that regardless of the “evidence” presented to the grand jury that surely there was enough factual inconsistency to reach a threshold of probable cause to indict the officer and have a proper trial to determine facts and reach a conclusion.
All the talk by attorney Robert McCulloch last night, 11/24/2014 explaining why there was no indictment does little to change the basic DISTRUST of government in Ferguson.
In fact, the painfully detailed explanation left me wondering what we weren’t told because of the DISTRUST that many citizens like me often feel about government today. After all we all know that the best liars include some facts and that a little bit of truth is still a lie. The same applies to transparency, a little bit is only another sign of LACK of TRANSPARENCY where distrust exists.
In an age when personal privacy has been sacrificed for citizens in everything from our mugshots to our traffic violations to our medical history to our phone calls, government’s failure to be transparent is a vestige of another time when privacy was a much valued and protected right for everyone. Today providing government secrecy when citizens’ privacy has eroded is merely another sign of giving superior rights to government employees over the citizens who pay their salaries.
The President makes the same mistake and it has cost him the trust and confidence of the American people. When he talked about Obamacare, people relied on what he said only later to find out it was only at best a little bit transparent, in other words not true.
Though the law was there for the reading, people had confidence that the President was being “transparent.” But as reality of experience did not match what we were being told, people began to second guess, and verify what the President was saying…He was no longer trusted.
Today Michael Brown’s parents want police officers to have body cameras, the surest sign of citizen distrust of police. It is a plea to support real transparency in government.
A commitment to transparency is often a response to allegations of misconduct, secrecy and the idea that something is going terribly wrong in a relationship. Think about nanny cams designed to let people watch the people to whom they entrust their children. They’re not installed because parents have confidence that they’ve hired Mrs. Doubtfire.
Ferguson government just sealed the deal for themselves, they are not trusted by the population. Arguing about the “secrecy” of the grand jury proceeding and how there would be some disclosed evidence and some hidden evidence based on some court official’s determination and the need to “analyze the need for maintaining secrecy of the records with the need for public disclosure of the records,” (THE WASHINGTON POST in, “How the Ferguson Grand Jury Process Works,” Kimberly Kindy, 11/24/2014) only makes the situation worse. There is no transparency if there is only partial transparency, you can’t be a little bit transparent.
Even our President hasn’t learned the lesson: You may get away with using your power as far as you can take it and picking and choosing how “transparent” you are, but ultimately it is a legacy of DISTRUST and DISRESPECT that you earn.
The Brown family has laid out a simple step towards re-establishing trust, body cameras on police officers that promise full disclosure, not the semi-transparent (in other words not transparent) version of events as told by the officer that killed Michael Brown where Michael Brown is not here to give his account.
I believe the President should learn from the Brown family as well. Because I cover Obamacare, I couldn’t help notice that the earned DISTRUST of government is a big issue beyond Ferguson.
When it comes to Obamacare, because I like to include paths to solution rather than just the bad news, my first suggestion is that public officials ACKNOWLEDGE that there is distrust. Arguing that you’ve been transparent or that the law is there for everyone to read does NOT defend against lies and omissions.
The second step must be a real commitment to truthfulness. Denying association with Jonathan Gruber, denying that he knew that many citizens would NOT be able to keep their plans, denying that the majority of Americans have seen increased costs and/or less coverage, parsing words and using “Group insurance,” for Obamacare or that he has not provided amnesty is not clever, but reinforces the DISTRUST of the President.
The third step is to pursue additional steps to right wrongs even when government has excused itself and our courts and other disciplining bodies find no “legal” wrongdoing.
Aside from the provisions of Obamacare that have been held illegal (Medicaid, mandatory coverage of abortion) there are other truly troublesome provisions such as the fact that unlike Medicaid Obamacare doesn’t look at total assets an individual possesses to determine eligibility for federal subsidies. Millionaires who meet income criteria are eligible for handouts. The President however, still finds audiences friendly to his reciting the same old partial truths about Obamacare rather than addressing its many and many more to come flaws.
Finally, supporting lawful conduct as legitimate for all people and entities, fairness. The President frankly sucks at understanding that his defense of his own actions against public opinion or contrary to other government branches as meeting a “legal” threshold sets the bar for action as lawful, not right or wrong, not representing the public that employs him, but merely legal.
Yet, the President having established such a low and values free standard for himself always argues that everyone else should be more value-driven and fair. It’s idiotic.
There is a strong sense that the President does what he can get away with, using laws and regulations against the very citizens who hired him. The attitude has contributed to the lack of trust people feel about him and is made worse when he argues that other people and entities don’t get to meet that same low bar for their actions.
This double-standard where the President does anything he thinks he can legally get away with but expects others to restrain from similar conduct was evident on 11/20/2014 during his amnesty speech where he argued his executive order was “lawful,” and then argued that others should not use their lawful authority, “Meanwhile, don't let a disagreement over a single issue be a dealbreaker on every issue. That's not how our democracy works, and Congress certainly shouldn't shut down our government again just because we disagree on this.”
What arrogance. The President was arguing that a government shutdown where Congress uses its power of the purse as a means of checks and balances is not how our democracy works but going around Congress to create amnesty for illegals via his executive order is how our democracy works? Ridiculous and part of the distrust we rightfully feel towards the President.
The divide between people and government employees is enormous, with a government class that seems to be exempt from the most difficult aspects of our changing American experience whether its standards of privacy, standards of justice or access to resources and benefits formerly part of the American dream.
Every parent’s heart goes out to Michael Brown’s family. The loss of his life is a symbol of a problem, the distance between government employees and the people they are paid to serve.
