- Dear Friends and Colleagues,
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- My periodic emails have become scarce due to more time
researching than reporting. But the current U.S. situation weighs heavily
on my mind. With our nation's economic difficulties (including the Herculean
challenge of avoiding a national bankruptcy), political deadlocks at many
levels, and questions about the integrity of major institutions, I believe
everyone, regardless of profession or job, should should apply some intellect
and social skills to the solutions.
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- Most of you know me for my interdisciplinary, historical/scientific/spiritual
books and articles over the past 15 years. But some know about my first
book (Dismantling the Pyramid: Government by the People) written
30 years ago, and now out of print, and have asked if it's still relevant.
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- Here's an abbreviated story of how that book came about
and why many of its conclusions are still relevant today. I want to
describe the personal part of the story not because I'm proud of it (in
fact, I failed to use for the common good many of the opportunities I had),
but because I believe all of us gain insights along the way that can be
useful later on. (A PDF version of the book is now available at http://www.vonward.com/websitebookorders.html.)
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- More than 50 years ago I became a part of our government
and political system. As young Congressional interns in Washington, Bob
Graham (later Governor and U.S. Senator) and I represented Florida in a
new, 1959 training program. We met President Eisenhower and Senator John
Kennedy among others. We interns learned how our Congressmen responded
to their constituents needs, at least enough to insure their re-election.
We also witnessed the early stages of a growing, pernicious cadre of corporate
and special-interest-group lobbyists arriving in Washington (and had dinner
with some).
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- (Today that cadre is literally the 4th branch of the
American government. This "institution" is crucial to the success
or failure of a bipartisan deficit reduction strategy to keep the United
States from going bankrupt. The leaders of the President's commission confronting
the challenge released their draft ideas last weeks. The resulting furor
stimulated in all parts of society motivated me to write about my view
that the problem cannot be solved by those who created it.)
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- Back to the story, returning to Florida State University,
I continued my youthful interest in student and local politics, but then
felt drawn to some sort of national service. The following year I voted
for the John Kennedy who inspired me attending his Senate committee hearings.
As so many thousands of others like me, I was inspired by his challenge
to "do for the nation." With Vietnam a dim image on the horizon,
I aborted my doctoral plans in psychology, took a masters degree, and enrolled
in the U.S. Navy's officer candidate school. After three-and-a-half years
of active duty, with a pending assignment to command a "Swift Boat"
on the Mekong, President Johnson appointed me along with a couple of dozen
20-somethings as new Foreign Service Officers.
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- As the intern from rural Northwest Florida I was a very
naive idealist. But much of what I learned in the next 30 years can be
found in Dismantling the Pyramid. It was written in 1980, the year
I resigned from my FSO position in the U.S. State Department, frustrated
in my efforts to do the job I had both chosen and had been assigned to.
Our federal institutions were out-of-step with our nation's desired destiny
then, and have only gotten worse since. I saw this decline in governmental
integrity and its increase in self-protection and self-perpetuation continue
from my private non-profit work for 15 years in D.C.
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- I was dismayed by experiences in what we called the "iron
triangles" that benefit all the players: government employees, Congressmen/women
and their staffs, and the corporate/non-profit private sector. Working
in synch, we established mutually reinforcing flows of power and funding
regardless of their benefit or irrelevance to society's most pressing needs.
This doesn't mean all is wasted, but large hunks of it only benefit a few.
But, back to the narrative.
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- For the State Department I served in four overseas assignments,
but the part of my work relevant to this email was in Washington. A few
senior officials in State and the Civil Service Commission wanted to stimulate
a movement to reform the way "inside Washington" worked. They
(more women than men) believed a few public servants with research on human
psychology and organizational theory, with strong political leadership,
could make "Washington" leaner and more effective. They hoped
some rising young officers in different departments, with outside professional
advice, could be catalysts for reform.
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- As part of that initiative, I was sent to Harvard University's
MPA program to study research on government reform and work with scholars
who might serve in advisory roles as our reform initiatives got under way.
The efforts we undertook and their results (basically, lack thereof) would
take up too much space in this friendly email. Suffice it to say, our reform
strategies did not succeed.
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- (I need to make it clear that many individual government
employees are dedicated public servants who also recognize the problems
described here, and do their best to be responsible. Most elected and appointed
officials start with high ideals, but the system conditions people to perform
to keep their perks.)
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- While I think change can "start" from inside,
I still believe, as I did in 1980, that the needed reform of our overblown,
deadlocked, national government cannot succeed unless the President and
the Congress are shown the direction by a "deeply-rooted consensus"
of fired-up citizens from all levels of society.
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- In Dismantling the Pyramid, I proposed a nationwide movement
known as the Committees of Correspondence (based on Samuel Adams' idea
of cooperation among the 13 colonies to create a confederation that led
to our independence as a nation). One like the initial Tea Party movement
had such potential. But the citizens movement that our nation needs cannot
have the financial backing of corporate and financial interests who benefit
from controlling the outcome.
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- It is the "civil society" that must insure
government officials at all levels see themselves as more responsible to
the overall public interest than to their bureaucratic and political bosses
or special-interest groups. This kind of a civic-minded government, with
the public's best interest at heart, had been the objective of our Civil
Service System created in 1872 (and subsequent legislation) to replace
the "spoils system." In the old system government employees supported
the politicians who arranged for their jobs. The Civil Service goal was
that all except a few appointed officials would fulfill their responsibilities
based on professional merit and would remain apolitical. Human nature,
inside and outside government, has made that goal unattainable.
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- Since the 1900s we have only added new layers of bureaucracy
on increasing fragmentation of government functions. As new programs are
added, old ones are left to their own devices with regular tax-payer transfusions
to keep them alive. No one ever applies public tests of continuing relevance
or effectiveness. Officials are afraid to prioritize to make sure pressing
new programs replace out-dated offices and staffs. They simply ask Congress
for more money for all. Keeping these outmoded or low priority functions
continues because each has special interest groups lobbying along side
federal staff going up Capitol Hill.
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- After WW-II several initiatives were taken to reduce
its size and revitalize the federal bureaucracy by eliminating unnecessary
jobs and wasteful programs. The 1947-48 Hoover Commission made an unsuccessful
effort. Subsequently, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon initiated abortive
government reforms. Jimmy Carter was the last President who attempted (tepidly
and failed) to address the kinds of fundamental problems that produce bureaucratic
bloat and overly expensive programs. Since then Presidents have little
influence over an over-weaning bureaucracy, a deep-pockets lobby, and partisanship
that mobilizes the Congress. This special-interest system produces national
laws and administrative regulations that directly benefit their financial
backers.
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- My view on this problem goes back to a cost-saving project
I was given as a young officer in the U.S. Navy and similar research in
my Washington jobs during the 1970's. It was reinforced by 15 years work
and lobbying in the Washington private sector that largely depends on the
government. I came to the conclusion that about 30% of the personnel and
administrative resources of every department was simply wasted. And this
does not include the findings of recent inspectors-general reports on egregious
waste in defense and other agency contracts in wars, overseas programs,
and domestic programs. Keep in mind that what auditors call waste is really
money in the pockets of corporations and contractors who in turn donate
part of it to Congressional campaigns.
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- The results are departments and agencies focused on self-preservation.
Overlapping responsibilities and strong fiefdoms are literally unmanageable.
Nobody is really in charge. To avoid rocking the boat, everyone takes the
easy way out. This overly-expensive government, particularly given its
tawdry benefits to the general public, pays a behind-the-moat bureaucracy,
largely directed by surrogates who stand the financial backers who elected
them.
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- Thus, we have created a self-perpetuating institution
that we call Washington Government. Its implicit purpose is to maintain
its octopus-like arms as mechanisms to convert and re-allocate large percentages
of the nation's common resources (its human labor, nature's riches, and
citizens' creativity) to a small percentage of U.S. citizens and international
corporations. This process includes not only the transfer of general tax
revenue. Even more important is the use (or non-use) of regulatory power
to economically favor certain groups, particularly the largely amoral financial
and corporate sectors.
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- These modern-day elites are much like the self-centered,
parasitic lords and ladies who surrounded the kings and queens of old Europe.
They will betray others and their own integrity to keep their "royal"
and financial status. To avoid something like the French Revolution, a
few goodies are annually given to poor parts of the electorate that make
them feel they get something for their passive support for the status quo
through automatic voting or not voting at all.
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- However, no one can now stay behind personally comfortable
walls with people like ourselves and ask someone else - politicians and
other "leaders" - to solve the problems that we all let fester,
thinking we were immune to catastrophes that only affected others. The
cooperation and compromises we need to change Washington will not happen
until "we the people" demonstrate that it can be done in our
local communities. Wherever we live, we must model it.
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- Only private citizens can develop a new consensus about
the future role of America in the world and its collective responsibility
for the use of our common heritage to benefit all Americans and the world
at large. All of us must learn again that when a singular government attempts
to become the central orchestrator of a complex society, and also distorts
its laws to benefit the few, it will kill "the goose that lays the
golden eggs."
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- Best wishes for your initiatives in your community. When
they flourish, they will connect with other ideas and create the consensus
for a new America, Paul
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- Paul Von Ward
- paul@vonward.com
- Websites: www.vonward.com and
- www.reincarnationexperiment.org
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