If you happen to have the same name as a suspected terrorist (or even anything close) you can still forget about trouble-free travel in and out of the United States, according to a story by Neil MacFarquhar in the New York Times. This problem, which emerged after 9/11, remains a major issue for thousands of Americans who have submitted requests for redress, but “their names cannot be removed because they are not the person on the list.” More here.

Only $40 million of $854 million in aid pledged to the U.S. by foreign countries following Hurricane Katrina has been used to date, John Solomon and Spencer Hsu report in the Washington Post. $400 million in oil pledged by foreign governments has gone uncollected. Documents obtained by a Washington public interest organization show that government officials were unprepared to handle aid from abroad. More here.

Change in Washington (and Iraq) seems inevitable, but so does it principle enemy: inertia.

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Advances in high-precision bombing and unmanned aircraft may change the way America fights wars forever.

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With more people accepting the inevitability of climate change, there’s a change in climate can among the nation’s top national security experts.  They have begun outlining the dangers to world stability and U.S. security.  Juliet Eilperin reports in the Washington Post that 11 retired senior generals have issued a report citing the potent security threats from climate change.  The generals are calling climate problems “a threat multiplier” that can unleash refugee flows and destabilize entire regions.  Sea level rise may cause U.S. military bases to close and rapid changes in the natural environment may hamper governments’ ability to meet basic human needs, particularly in developing nations.  This in turn could lead to increased support for nationalist or terrorist organizations and to cross-border incursions, not to mention mass migration.  Problems like Darfur and Somalia, which are at root conflicts over land and natural resource access, could intensify. 

The scope of this potential problem is just emerging.   This week, for the first time ever, the UN Security Council will hold a briefing on the dangers of climate change to world stability. 

All week we have been bombarded by sickening and heart-breaking reports about the unimaginable and barbaric event on the campus of Virginia Tech University.

Many people are terribly touched by this tragedy.  Millions around the world with no connection to the dead and wounded or the University feel deep sadness and pain.  Such an event leaves few folks unscathed emotionally.

We are now dealing with a mixture of emptiness, disbelief, anger, and loss.  We are trying to deal with a horrendous event that defies description and understanding. 

Evil has visited our country, citizens, and consciousness.  We ask how such a thing could happen.  We ask how it could have been prevented.   We ask, and ask.

Others were unable to ask.  They had to act.  They were the police, medical, and university officials – government employees – who were charged with controlling and responding to the horrible events on Monday, April 16, 2007.

These are the people who protect and educate us.  These are the ones to whom we run for assistance in times of need.  Of course, who could have anticipated the magnitude of our needs that tragic day?  Yet, those in law enforcement put their lives on the line to contain and eliminate the threat of a madman on the loose.  As shots were reported at Norris Hall, they ran to the site to halt the horror.

Unfortunately, their best efforts could not stop the gunman until he turned his weapon on himself and ended the ordeal.  Nevertheless, we must not ignore what these brave and caring workers did.  Often we fail to appreciate the full range of service and duties that members of the executive branch provide. 

We understand about officers writing speeding tickets, but this latest catastrophe reminds us that their jobs entail confronting events that the rest of us would prefer not to confront. 

Police, soldiers, and those in emergency services resemble a baseball team, although they play for far higher stakes.  Players frequently stand around appearing to be doing very little.  Yet, when the ball is struck and play begins, the team must work together and react instantly. 

Government workers in public safety positions do the same thing.   If we are lucky, and we usually are, they sit and observe.  When we are not so blessed, they must risk their lives to save ours.  They act instantly and instinctively.  They do it unflinchingly and repeatedly.

As we process the enormity of this loss to our country and its sense of well-being, we will continue to ask many questions.  Many will turn to their religion.  Some will turn away from it.  One question will not have to be asked.  Where were those employees commissioned to protect us?  They were there.  They were doing their jobs, serving us to the best of their abilities.

As for larger theological questions, they will swirl around us as they always do.  At the convocation at the university the day after the shootings, President Bush quoted from the New Testament book of Romans:  “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” 
(Chapter 12, verse 21)

This hideous event did not prove the absence of God.  It proved the presence of Evil.

Fred Apelquist

When you can’t pay, you can’t pay.  It doesn’t matter who lent you the money.  The Federal Housing Administration, part of HUD, could soon be facing the same problems that the subprime commercial lenders are dealing with, according to a story by Neil Roland of Bloomberg News.  The FHA is looking to reduce barriers for lower- and middle-income borrowers to buy homes, and would make it easier for borrowers to receive FHA mortgage insurance.  This might induce commercial lenders to arrange mortgages, but the new rules would not assure sufficient “oversight of lenders, appraisers, and lawyers” involved in clearing these loans.   Thus insured, lenders might take on loans without checking carefully whether the borrowers would be able to meet their monthly payments.  Roland notes that from 1999 to 2006, the FHA lost nearly 10% of the total home financing market.  Is this the FHA’s effort to regain lost market share?  We thought the key issue was setting up loans that were safe for the lender and the borrower – where the borrower could handle the monthly payment.  And this time, defaulted mortgages would be the responsibility not of the banks that took them on, but of the U.S. taxpayer. 

Ned Hodgman

At a certain point, ignoring evidence of a truth you don’t want to believe becomes morally reprehensible. Ignoring the best information available on a given question becomes a matter of personal responsibility. (more…)

Ned Hodgman

At a certain point, ignoring evidence of a truth you don’t want to believe becomes morally reprehensible.  Ignoring the best information available on a given question becomes a matter of personal responsibility.  Now, individual citizens who have led our country astray must face the facts on their own time and in their own hearts and minds. The question for Understanding Government is how the opinion of agency experts – people doing their jobs with the best tools available — can beat back opinions derived through ideologically-driven wishful thinking at the top of the executive branch.

An April 6, 2007 article by R. Jeffrey Smith in The Washington Post makes clear how the paragons of Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department – Rumsfeld himself, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, Wolfowitz’s deputy Douglas Feith (and obviously a host of staffers who worked for these men), made their decisions about Iraq’s ties to Al Qaeda in the face of the facts.  They were joined in this imaginative exercise by the people running the show at the White House – namely Vice President Cheney and his top staffer I. Lewis Libby.   

By mid-2002, both the CIA and the Defense Department’s own intelligence arm, the DIA, had stated in plain English that Iraq was not cooperating in any notable way with Al Qaeda.  “Overall, the reporting provides no conclusive signs of cooperation on specific terrorist operations,” the CIA reported in June 2002.  The DIA reached a similar conclusion. 

But Wolfowitz had written Feith in January that “we don’t seem to be making much progress pulling together intelligence on links between Iraq and Al Qaida,” and giving him three days to start pulling.  By July 2002, Feith had built up enough steam to note that the CIA’s views “’ought to be ignored’”, a convenient enough way to dismiss the work of hundreds of analysts and people in the field.  Feith’s willingness to ignore the work of trained government specialists went right up the line.  After all, Feith was often cited as “smart,” “bright,” and Rumsfeld stated in an AP interview with Barry Schweid, “without question, one of the most brilliant individuals in government” and “one of the intellectual leaders in the administration.” Maybe his impressive mind made it easy for him to ignore specific recommendations from the nation’s top intelligence organizations.  Why bother with government intelligence when you have so much of your own?

I know what many of you will be doing this weekend, and it is not watching the Masters Golf Tournament.  Of course, that annual event was last weekend, but regardless of what is in store on the Tube or around town, you will be involved in another annual activity:  preparing your income tax return.  Or, as is the case for a few of my friends, many returns. 

Two of my compatriots will prepare eight (8) and nine (9) returns, respectively.  You can imagine their glee.  How is this possible, you may ask?  Each has children and parents.  Both take it upon themselves to prepare family members’ federal and state income tax returns as well as their own.

You are probably noting that this is an extreme case of the sitting-at-the-kitchen-table-late-at-night preparing your tax return and rushing it down to the electronic or brick-and-mortar Post Office before midnight April 15^th (the 17^th this year).  And you would be correct.  I have no data on how many taxpayers “enjoy” the bind that my friends have put themselves in, but I would hope that the figure is not too high.  Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.

Yet, why is preparing one (or 9) tax returns so cruel and punishing?  It is because of the plethora of published rules and regulations.

A reader sent me a recent USA Today article proclaiming that the U.S. Tax Code is comprised of 67,204 pages!  When I began working at IRS in 1971, I believe the Code was a mere 2,000 pages or so, which is not an insignificant number.  Not all pages apply to any one taxpayer, of course, but when you read such accounts, you come to only one conclusion.

Complexity.

Saying that the tax laws have become (hopelessly) complex is not news.  Such has been self-evident to millions of taxpayers who have struggled with this civic Rite of Spring.  Yet, there are always two sides of any story.  Aspiring accountants and tax preparers view these tax laws as lifetime employment guarantees.

A majority of taxpayers (nearly 60%) choose to pay others to prepare their returns.  Whether it is to avoid ulcers or not have IRS breathe down their necks, taxpayers are opting out of an exercise that only occurs once a year.

Imagine those self-employed people – like me — who must constantly monitor their incomes, figure likely taxes due, and make quarterly tax deposits during the year.  It is not fun, although the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS; www.eftps.gov) is easy to use after a somewhat time-consuming and torturous enrollment process.

This article cannot begin to address all the reasons for the length of the Tax Code and its subsequent complexity.  The point of this week’s offering is not merely to be topical with our national April 15^th ritual; it is to elevate the challenges of those at the IRS, as Executive Branch officials, in administering the tax laws. 

When you are preparing your taxes and pulling out your hair, think about the thousands of Executive Branch workers who must take these laws and make them reasonably understandable, especially for tax practitioners whose livelihoods depend upon filing clients’ returns accurately.

So, if you figure your taxes are difficult to figure, consider how much harder they would be if we did not have hard-working employees making the experience as easy as legally possible. 

Remember the adage.  It could be worse.

Fred Apelquist, contributing editor