“She’s banned from lobbying the FCC for two years. But she should also be
banned from employment with any telecommunications firm for 5 years.” 
By munky, May 12 at 8:06 am

For the remainder of her employment life sounds better to me.

OH GAWD WHEN ARE WE GONNA GET OFF THESE DAMN SITES & GET OUT IN THE STREETS??!? We are so busy pointing fingers at each other that we have yet to get off our duffs & do something about anything.  Until the gov’t sees we mean business they’ll keep bending us over.

gerard: The way to avoid it is to make constant friendly contact with government at all levels

There are many ways to apply metrics to government services. Why should they not be measured based upon Customer Service Performance?

In Italy, where the contact between “consumer” and “civil servant” has been a constant problem, when people go to a government office, they will find a computer screen at the exit where they can give their opinion of the “service rendered”.

The “score” that that agency receives on an annual basis determines a small percentage Performance Bonus that the agency as whole obtains - or no pay-adjustment at all if the score is not equal to or above a certain threshold level.

If we want to talk about WHY ordinary people “hate” Washington, or the government, consider this:

Every day tens of thousands of ordinary people with ordinary common sense try to contact their government at local, State and national levels. Very few of them get more than a brush-off, which only makes them angry.

The gap between our governments and our people is not that much different from the gap between, let’s say, Assad and the Syrian people today.  The only difference—and it is significant—is that Assad
has lowered himself to murdering his people protesting in the street.  We are not immune to the same tragedy.

The way to avoid it is to make constant friendly contact with government at all levels, to refuse to respond violently, but instead to encourage officials to relax and pay attention to the needs and wishes of the people.  How to get our uptight government to do this is THE problem.

The negative response to WikiLeaks and the attempt to imprison Manning and Assange is a signal of how uptight the government is.  Wise government would
recognize the Leaks as a huge opportunity to improve
international relations.  To take it otherwise is to
show fear, pettiness and lack of imagination.  A fearful government that reacts to honesty with resentment and cannot see opportunity in truth is a reactive government entangled in its own processes.

So far, Manning’s prison situation has apparently improved due to widespread citizen objection to injustice. (If you don’t know this is true, you have missed evidence that citizens do still matter, but it takes work, inter-contacting and articulating and taking responsibility.)

Citizen activity could be much broader and more consistent and intelligent—not rabble rousing and fear-mongering, but intelligent civic-mindedness for the good of all of us. Losing that means to lose everything else of value.

Cronyism, corruption all part of the good old boy network, even at the local level of governments just pushed up to the Feds.  Look at Wisconson Walker, he hires cronys not qualified even to be be a greeter at Wal Mart for a chushy job in the state capital…. This seems business as usual.

The revolving doors should or could be an ethics problem,  ethics, just like integrity and accountability does not exist for these people…. I will not mention morals!

Does that mean they are all atheists?

She’s banned from lobbying the FCC for two years. But she should also be banned from employment with any telecommunications firm for 5 years.

Forty years ago, I had been a psychologist for one year
after the PhD.  I had already learned that offspring do
not “always” follow the proverbial guidance of their
mother.

Or, their father.
 
If they had received any.

AN OBSESSIONAL FIXATION

drb: ”you cant get rich being honest.”

Which is probably the essence of cultural values in America - its obsessional fixation on wealth. Boosted by the media, underscored time and time again in a Pavlovian fashion to the masses.

As if to say: “Your way out of poverty and a miserable existence is ... MONEY!”

Did LBJ’s mother never tell him that “money can’t buy you happiness”? She should have apparently.

The singular, proverbial saying of Lyndon B. Johnson,
was to the effect that, ” you cant get rich being honest.”

Which he had learned via personal experience.

THERE OTTA BE A LAW DEPARTMENT

It is perfectly obvious that she is taking advantage of Washington’s well-known and commonly used revolving door policy.

She and others who work for the government should not be allowed to have any contact with government authorities, particularly if they work as registered lobbyists, for a period of 3 years after having left office.

They should be required to sign such agreement as a condition for working in any government agency.

But, let’s face it, this is not the only element that is needed to bring about Honest Government. Here are a some others:
* Overturn the Roberts Supreme Court decision (which constitutes “legislating from the bench”) to recognize the civil status of corporations having the same rights (aka Freedom of Speech). Corporations are NOT civilians, they are registered as contractual entities and not civilians - they therefore have no such civil rights. (They can address Congress by means of Investigatory Committees, which they are often requested to do in public hearings.)
* Stop the gerrymandering of state districts that favors the incumbency of elected officials. Bring back the electoral districting along geographical lines and drop the gerrymandering that favors the existing two-party system. The Federal government can impose the demise of gerrymandering in Federal elections, to begin with, which is its prerogative. Getting it passed is the hurdle.
* The real kronyism-killer legislation, already tried many a time, is to once-and-for-all limit ALL political donations to only a certain amount per person and it should be only for “getting out the vote”. Which means the politicians will have to seek financing from either state or governments subsidies to make it onto the ballot and finance their campaigns. And, yes, the state and Federal governments should subsidize such democratic rights to free-from-cronyism electoral funding mechanisms.
* All registered lobbyists should be forbidden to promise electoral donations or payment of any service rendered as quid-pro-quo for legislative favoritism. A Congressional Watch-dog office should be established to watch over such “payments-in-kind” and report them to the Congressional Record.
* Politicians already must make electoral donation reports (Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971). The plethora of PACs (more than 4000) is the device used to get around the law. They should be limited to no more than one per politician during an election campaign.
* No city/state/federal worker should be able to arrange a loan from a city, state or Federal agencies for personal purposes. All state/federal workers should depose declarations substantiating the source of their funds for all acquisitions above a certain threshold ($50K to $100K).

All the above measures should be part of Progressive Agenda for America, embodied in the charter of a Social Democrat Party.

MY POINT

This present two-party system that has carved up the Pork Pie in LaLaLand on the Potomac for more than two-centuries needs serious structural revisions. A representational democracy should be based upon the desire to serve one’s country and not oneself.

Yes, and people should not only hate it but despise it. Both political parties are full of crooks, and cheaters. There has never been a more corupt government in the history of our country, than the one we have now.