Money Making Secrets

Fulfilling their constitutional power to “determine the Rules of its Proceedings,” this Wednesday, January 5, 2010, the newly assembled House of Representatives will adopt the Rules of the House for the 112th Congress. Speaker-designate John Boehner has proposed a series of changes to the House rules designed to make the House more transparent and help eliminate unnecessary Federal spending. The Top Five New Rules include:

1. The new rules require a member of the House who wishes to introduce a bill to submit for publication in the Congressional Record a statement of what powers the Constitution grants to Congress to enact that bill. For bills that come over to the House from the Senate, the chairman of the House committee of jurisdiction will submit such a statement. The provision will assist Members of the House in making sure that they carry out the oath every one of them takes to support and defend the Constitution.


2. The new rules contain a “Cut-As-You-Go” provision that prohibits House consideration of a bill that has the net effect of increasing mandatory spending within the one-year, five-year, and ten-year budget windows. If a bill increases mandatory spending by an amount, the bill must elsewhere cut other spending by at least the same amount. The new rules also eliminate special protection for transportation spending.


3. The new rules expand requirements that legislation be available in advance before the House or its committees act on it. The chair of a committee must make the text of a measure being marked up publicly available at least one day before a committee markup meeting and a bill must be publicly available at least three days before the House votes on it. The requirement for advance availability prior to votes ensures that Members of the House and the public have an opportunity to read the legislation before the House or its committees vote on the legislation.


4. The new rules make more information about House proceedings available to the public, and in readily accessible electronic form. For example, the chair of a committee must make the texts of any amendment to a bill adopted at a committee markup available within 24 hours. Each committee must provide audio and video coverage or recordings of committee hearings, to the maximum extent practicable (excluding, for example, hearings involving national security secrets).


5. The new rules eliminate the vote-avoidance mechanism by which the House was automatically deemed to have approved a bill to increase the Federal debt, whenever the Congress adopted a budget resolution for spending that would have exceeded the existing debt limit, without House Members actually having to vote on whether to raise the debt limit. Now, if House Members want to consider whether to allow the Government to borrow more money, they will have to vote for or against it and not avoid the issue.

On November 3, 2010, immediately following the national elections, The Heritage Foundation issued “The Checklist” of actions of overriding importance, representing the bare minimum required for Washington to fulfill its electoral mandate, meet its constitutional responsibilities, and get America started on the right track. Among other things, the Checklist called on Congress to get control of Government by reestablishing legislative accountability. In particular, the Foundation called for Congress to change its rules to make the text of legislation public at least three days before Congress considers the legislation. The above rules meet, for the House, that bare minimum requirement … and more.

Adoption, by the House, of these new rules proposed by the new conservative leadership is a good first step, but the test of success for the rules will be whether the House follows and enforces them. If the House avoids the temptation to waive the new restrictions from time to time for political convenience, the new rules will reflect a House more committed to conservative principles.

Aaron Brazell notes, as many have, that it’s amusing to watch the apoplexy aimed at Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for posting stolen classified documents while his co-conspirators in the mainstream press publish them with next to no criticism.    But Aaron moves from this to make a more novel argument, namely that Assange is threatening to topple what’s left of the traditional media business model.

[T]he media is on the sideline, their power usurped from this rogue operative with a rogue website. Instead of the New York Times or Washington Post benefitting from the receipt of leaked information as has been the case in their traditional past (see Watergate), an upstart “news organization” is stealing their thunder. Sure the Times and a variety of other media outlets were given the data eventually, but the arbiter of information was no longer them.

While the media wrings their hands over a contrived battle between the morality of publishing leaked, national security documents and preservation of national secrets, the bigger capitalistic battle is happening and that overshadows journalistic sense of responsibility.

The ability to be first is being tainted here. While Wikileaks promises to distribute new information, acting as a benevolent dictator, to news organizations, these news organizations are capitulating their responsibilities simply to make sure they have some crumbs off of Assange’s table.

No one, certainly, is suggesting that news outlets should become a lap-dog, as I have heard toss around, of the government, bowing to their every will and whim. Certainly not, lest we live in a Communist system. However, the media is expected to operate in a suitably responsible way.

In this case, the media knows that they are on the outs. In a last gasp of industry-pride, they have sacrificed themselves in a last-ditch effort to remain relevant. Put in another way, they have come to serve themselves instead of the people they exist to serve.

I’m not sure I agree with either part of this.

WikiLeaks and Newspaper Profits

First, it’s true that the Internet has been killing the old business model based on advertisements in printed copies.  And WikiLeaks is to some extent furthering this.  But, as it is, WikiLeaks is only important because hundreds of reporters from well established newspapers are sifting through the piles of mostly worthless documents to ferret out what’s interesting and distill it for their readership.

The upshot is that Assange is handing these papers mini-scoops and exciting stories to cover, thus boosting their bottom line.   By contrast, I haven’t the foggiest notion of how Assange is making any money off of this.

Now, it’s conceivable that Assange could bypass the Guardian, Times, and others and simply dump them out there for crowdsourcing.  Maybe Josh Marshall and the TPM gang or Arianna Huffington’s minions over at HuffPo would do the sorting, instead.   But right now, the threat to the mainstream media is minuscule at best.

WikiLeaks and Journalistic Ethics

Is the press here ignoring the real risks of going public with classified documents that could ostensibly cause real harm to their publics?  Maybe.  Then again, this is hardly the first time.   Leaks are the bread and butter of scoop journalism and they have been for some time.

Further, it appears — granted, we have nothing to go on but the publishers’ own accounts of the process — that the newspapers in question actually took the risks seriously, carefully vetting the information before going to press.   The NYT, especially, seemed to bend over backwards to get commentary from the US Government and to pass along any objections and their own redactions to other papers who’d received the dumps.

Beyond that, once Assange made the documents publicly available on the Internet, the only thing the editors would have achieved by refusing to report on what was in them was to lose money.  Someone was going to report anything of interest.

Turning full circle, I’d also note that there’s an important distinction between the conduct of the newspapers in question and of the WikiLeaks gang:  The former didn’t encourage the commission of crimes by those entrusted to protect America’s secrets and set up an elaborate conspiracy to make doing so easier.  Yes, they routinely cultivate sources with access to such information and happily abet legitimate whistleblowers.  But they’re not out to create anarchy just for the hell of it.

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