Posts Tagged → wolf
PA Office of Open Records – the battle for control
Erik Arneson is never going to win awards for public relations savvy, but he does deserve to hold on to the job of director of the Office of Open Records he was appointed to by outgoing governor Tom Corbett back in December, 2014.
Incoming governor Tom Wolf immediately “fired” Arneson and sought to put someone else in his role.
Arneson and the PA senate Republicans sued Wolf, claiming that the job holds a six-year term and that’s it. It is not a political appointment to serve at the whim of whichever governor is in office at the time. To do so would place the office squarely in the middle of politics it is supposed to be above.
Showing up to his January lawsuit press event in a Green Bay Packers-marked ski cap and satin jacket, Arneson alienated every Steelers and Eagles fan around, not to mention us PSU Nittany Lions fanatics. Plus, he did not look real professional, either, dressed up like he was going to a November football game, and not into a high stakes legal battle.
Maybe his rumpled look and out-of-synch team clothing choice represent a kind of idiot-savant mentality, which I would find refreshing. You know, a guy who is so focused on doing his job so utterly professionally that he walks around with his zipper open, his hair touseled, his head involved in important things, not mundanities.
More likely is that Arneson has spent so long in the ultra-insulated world of the professional party functionary system (Republicans and Democrats alike have this alternate dimension), that he is unaware that his appearance in public matters to the public. He may not even care. Accountability in that party functionary world is non-existent, and professionalism is not always what taxpayers would or should expect from the people they pay.
But the fact is that Arneson was duly appointed to a six-year term, which itself strongly indicates an independent position above the whims of politics, such as incoming new governors wishing to make government in their image.
Nearly all of Pennsylvania’s commissions and boards involve six or even eight year terms; some are four years, but they tend to be the ones where the governor alone makes the selection. At least that is my sense of things, having been involved in the selection process for the PA Game Commission and the PA Fish & Boat Commission. Both of those commissions had eight-year terms until last year, when they were changed to six years, which is still sufficient time for a board member to ride out political changes that might corrupt their otherwise professional and detached judgment.
For those people complaining about Arneson’s politically partisan credentials, ahem, we did not hear your voice when the first occupant of the office was selected, Terri Mutchler.
Terri Mutchler is a very nice person whom I knew a bit when we were students at Penn State, way back in the 1980s. She was professional and diligent, way back then, and again during her tenure as the first director of the Office of Open Records. And in that new role she feuded just enough with then-Governor Rendell to lend credibility to her claim of being above partisanship.
But recently Mutchler has come forward and admitted that she was a tool, literally, for partisan politics in past jobs, even in one of her most sensitive jobs as a senior reporter and news editor. [those of us already long ago jaded by the mainstream media are unsurprised by her admission; we just wish current political activists posing as news reporters at NBC CBS ABC NPR NYT etc. would be as honest]
In other words, Mutchler was a nakedly partisan Democrat, perhaps like Arneson would be a partisan Republican.
But if you don’t like Arneson for this reason now, where were you for the same reason back then, when Mutchler was appointed? Critics of Arneson cannot have it both ways – happy to have Mutchler’s partisan role back then, but opposed to Arneson’s presumed partisan role now. That is inconsistent, and therefore undeserving of respect.
Inconsistency is the hobgoblin of good government,and if there are two words that define what Americans expect from their government, it is good government: Professional, a-political, non-partisan.
So, Arneson must stay on, despite his frumpy appearance, his poor taste in football teams, his deafness to Lion Country’s football preferences, and despite the nakedly partisan calls for him to step aside for a Wolf Administration selection.
But I will say this: His beard, that damned scraggly beard, it looks incredibly unprofessional and unkempt; if he keeps that for one more day, then he does deserve to be fired immediately. And tie your shoes, Erik, dammit.
Despite digital technology advances, actual humans are necessary
Digital technology is amazing, no doubt about it.
Yes, it enables all kinds of speed in research and communications.
But the internet has also inspired a “digital wall” response to basic inquiries that used to be handled by people answering phones. You cannot just pick up a phone and ask someone a question, any longer. Instead, you must navigate a maze of circular questions and answers and phone tree options, long before you get to hit the star key or number one and talk to a person.
eBay is the prime example of the digital wall. You cannot get real customer service at eBay. eBay’s digital artificial intelligence is supposed to satisfactorily respond to all customer issues, but it doesn’t. It is a failure.
One online commenter says “It is easier to talk with the Pope than to actually speak with a person at eBay,” a sad but true fact that I myself have learned the hard way.
Here in Pennsylvania, the Tom Ridge Revolution for responsive government is looong over.
Remember how back in the 1990s, Governor Tom Ridge opened up Pennsylvania state government with a crowbar and a box of dynamite, and got the scurrying inhabitants of the many faceless concrete government buildings in downtown Harrisburg to actually view taxpayers as “customers”?
Maybe you don’t recall that time, but it was refreshing. Suddenly, state workers at most agencies were required to actually answer the calls of the taxpayers they serve, and to act professionally, and to help resolve problems.
PennDOT was at that time a notoriously labyrinthine experience, kind of like the Vatican, one might guess, in that if a taxpayer was fortunate enough to find an IN door, they might spend a day shambling down shuttered halls with closed doors with jargon printed on them, searching yet more for the answer to their government-inspired problem.
The workers there at that time could not have cared less for serving the public, and no one took any initiative to make them serve the public, until the Ridge Administration arrived.
Then, PennDOT was required to post phone numbers, email addresses, have customer service representatives on call, so that no citizen had to waste their time trying to make sense of the bureaucratic maze while to trying to meet some official mandate.
After all, if the government is going to require something, then the government absolutely must provide the means to achieve that.
Well, now PennDOT is back to its bad old ways. The foolish young punks running the disastrous Corbett Administration into the ground at Mach 4 wouldn’t know a damned thing about customer service or taxpayers, for that matter. PennDOT has been allowed to crawl back under a heavy cloak of secrecy and impenetrable darkness. Go ahead, call PennDOT. Try to reach a human being through their main portal:
“Call 1-800-932-4600 (from within PA) or 717-412-5300 (from out of state). You can also send an email through our Driver and Vehicle Services Customer Call Center, or write to the following address:
Riverfront Office Center (Driver and Vehicle Services)
1101 South Front Street
Harrisburg, PA 17104-2516
1-800-932-4600”
Oh, you will hear a human voice, which right off the bat asks you that if you want to continue in English, “Press One.” Imagine my surprise when I just held the line, did not press one, and was shuttled off into yet another maze of foreign languages, as if just wanting to encounter my own government in our native language was something we should have to ask for.
Anyhow, the phone options in English are another maze of options and circular loops. One answer gives the locations of service centers, but saves providing you with the hours for each one until the very end, as if you might actually recall which service center was “one,” “two,” or “three.”
This is the very essence of Bad Government.
Government absolutely must be responsive, open, transparent, or it is illegitimate. If it cannot serve its citizens and taxpayers, then government has failed. Once government has failed, it cannot hold citizens to a higher standard.
Governor-elect Tom Wolf faces a Republican legislature, which is not likely to go along with his tax-and-spend approach to government.
Well, here is an opportunity that is guaranteed to make Wolf a hero among all citizens: Force government to open up again; get our taxpayer-funded bureaucrats to be responsive, or get out. No more digital walls for the people who pay the bills.
And maybe Wolf can talk to the owners of eBay, and persuade them to provide real customer service, too.
Tom Wolf….you’ve got to tell us your plans
Tom Wolf may be a heckuva nice guy, and an ethical boss. By all accounts these are true.
But he has cruised to a lead for Pennsylvania governor on these two assets alone, and they’re insufficient.
On nearly every other political issue he is evasive, or committed to regressive actions that will harm Pennsylvania. Taxes is one of his evasive issues, and I’m not alone saying we are all taxed enough.
I’d like to hear Wolf make concrete commitments to lower business taxes equally if he seeks to raise a five percent gas drilling tax. Otherwise, he’s trying to kill the golden goose instead of patiently waiting for her to lay one golden egg at a time. Gas drilling has saved our economy, hands down.
My suspicion is that Wolf will remain evasive until the very end, and voters will move toward Corbett as a result. The election is likely to be a three point spread: Corbett by 1% or Wolf by 2%. The “Dewey beats Truman” mindset has already taken hold among Wolf’s supporters, and a huge upset is likely in the making if that continues.
My take on tonight’s Corbett – Wolf Debate, and Tom Brokaw’s Plea for Control of Our Lives
Like a few thousand other attendees at the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce dinner tonight, I sat in the audience and watched Governor Tom Corbett and Democrat nominee Tom Wolf debate each other, with reporter Dennis Owens moderating. Dennis was outstanding. I also stayed for the Tom Brokaw speech afterwards.
Here are the highlights as I see them:
1) Corbett beat Wolf hands-down, in substance, poise, accuracy, and humility. And damned if I am not still surprised. Given how insipid the Corbett campaign has been to date, I expected the worst performance from him tonight. That did not materialize.
2) While overall the debate was Dull vs Duller, and neither man was exciting or inspiring, the amazing fact is that Tom Corbett found his voice tonight. Tom Wolf talked in circles, kept stating that he is a businessman (six, seven times), mis-spoke (“the vast majority of married Pennsylvanians file separate tax reports”), spoke in vague generalities bordering on fluffy clouds and flying unicorns, and addressed none of the substantive issues pegged by moderator Dennis Owens or by Corbett.
3) Wolf seemed to play it safe, venturing nothing new, nothing specific. He did not even respond the to the Delaware Loophole questions posed to him. He simply ignored them. If he persists in this evasiveness, Corbett can catch up and beat him. Voters can now see it, and it ain’t pretty. Corbett may be The Most Boring Man in the World, but Wolf looked completely unprepared to be governor.
4) Wolf’s “I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it” response to policy and finance questions is not acceptable for a candidate to run a state government.
5) Corbett actually ate some humble pie, admitting that he is not a good communicator. Understatement, yes, but he is not a guy who likes to admit he’s wrong. So that was big. Again, expectations for Corbett were super low, and he started out looking and sounding defeated. But even he recognized that he was beating Wolf, and his performance picked up as the debate went on.
Brokaw:
1) Ancient establishment reporter Tom Brokaw has a great voice, and lots of stage presence. He’s good looking for a guy that old. He wrote a book about The Greatest Generation, so he must be a pretty great guy. That is the marketing, anyhow. His ideas run the gamut from standard liberal to downright contradictory and mutually-exclusive confused, to pathetic control freak.
2) Although Brokaw started talking about the Tea Party, and he complimented its members for getting involved in the political process (which he said is necessary), he never said or recognized the American Constitution as core to tea party’s goals, values, principles, or guiding role. So although he talked about it, it didn’t seem evident that he understands or has thought about the Tea Party much.
3) Brokaw said “I leave it to you determine if the Tea Party is good for America. I’m just a reporter, I just report the facts. You have to come to your own conclusions.” As if he was not passing judgment on the Tea Party. Yet, he asked the question and obviously thinks the Tea Party is bad for America; that is his hint. Given that Brokaw is a liberal at war with America, this is a big cue to conservative activists: Keep it up, the liberal media establishment is scared of you.
4) He called for “filtration” and a “filter” of the internet, and talked about the “simple people” who manage his Montana ranch and get news from the Internet, which he disavowed and sees as unworthy. This is the kind of intellectual region where Brokaw makes no sense. On the one hand, the big establishment media is all over the Internet, so if people get their news from the Internet, and not TV chatterheads or fishwrap newspapers, then there’s no real problem with the Internet as a news source. What Brokaw seemed to be challenged by is the fact that Breitbart and citizen reporters (think Watchdogwire, or my own blog) are circumventing the establishment media. He does not understand or care that the ‘simple’ masses are hungry for unfiltered news, for real news, for facts and not liberal agenda. How his imagined filters jibe, square, or conflict with the First Amendment was not mentioned; I am unsure it even occurred to Brokaw that purposefully filtering information is censorship. But he is a guy who believes in sixty years of past liberal censorship, so I guess he has to stay consistent today.
5) Brokaw implied that the establishment media are the source of accurate information and “big ideas,” and that alternative news and opinion sources are not. He said he doesn’t believe what he reads on the internet. He is clearly bothered there’s now no difference between establishment media and bloggers and citizen reporters in terms of equal accessibility. He’s having a tough time letting go of controlling the message Americans receive, which is really his objection: Liberal media elites are losing the propaganda war because they no longer have a choke hold on the information flow; ergo, the Internet is full of bad information.
An indication of just how undeveloped his thinking is: Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon…for Liberals, Nixon was the High Priest of Done Bad in Government. It does not seem to occur to Brokaw that Nixon’s crimes pale in comparison to the lawless tyranny Obama has inflicted upon American citizens. E.g. NSA spying and IRS crushing of political dissent.
6) On the other hand, he’s into high tech and the future of technology. Very impressed by Google staff and all of the “big minds” gathered at tech conventions. Brokaw doesn’t reconcile his adulation with his view of information flow on the net. I am guessing here that he’d be OK if Google ran all the news on the Internet, because Google is made of liberals who share his political agenda. “Good” liberals and “bad” conservatives is what he is after.
7) Annoyingly, Brokaw dropped names all over the place, as if to impress us with how important he is: Jon Stewart, the NFL commissioner, et al. “I was emailing with ____ _____, and he says ‘Tom..’.” “My books.” “I’m on the board of…..” This seemed self-conscious and actually undermined his standing, because truly great people never look at themselves this way. They simply Are Great.
8) Finally, he called for a new form of foreign service corps, some hybrid of the Peace Corps, Americorps, and the military. It was terribly confused, but it was also the kind of Big Idea he admires others for having, so evidently he must have one, too, even of it makes no practical sense.
Corbett’s Ten Percent challenge
Looking at the statewide vote results (votes Corbett received compared to votes Jim Cawley received) and at counties where Bob Guzzardi appeared on the ballot opposite governor Tom Corbett, it appears there’s about ten percent of Republican voters who are seriously disaffected with Corbett.
These are the voters who could not bring themselves to vote for Corbett, even while voting for other Republicans, or who actively wrote in alternative names. York County has a surprisingly high number of about 25%.
Are these the angry Penn Staters, whose murky ghost has been hovering in Corbett’s background since the fictional Louis Freeh report sank the beloved institution known as Joe Paterno, and took down his creation (PSU), too? Corbett seemed to join in the blaming of Paterno for the predations of Jerry Sandusky, or at least his actions and statements left many Penn Staters wondering if he did.
Or are these voters associated with some of Corbett’s better known “Oopsy” moments, like personally standing at a lectern, reading glasses and pencil in hand, roll-call strong arming the Republican State Committee into reluctantly endorsing Steve Welch for US Senate. Republican voters later overwhelmingly rejected the very urban, effete Welch, and embraced muddy boots, down to earth coal miner Tom Smith.
Maybe these are voters affiliated with people who were once close to Corbett, but who did not see ‘promises kept’ at the personal level.
It’s impossible now to know exactly who these voters are, and whether or not they can be brought back into the Republican fold in time for November’s general election. Plenty of polls, voter surveys, and canvassing are going to occur in the coming weeks, in search of the necessary mix of voters to get Corbett into his second term.
One thing is for sure: In Democrat-heavy Pennsylvania, Corbett wins only with a fully unified Republican party behind him. Right now, he’s got real work to do to achieve that.