Gadfly is Marty Aussenberg, a columnist for the weekly Memphis Flyer. Marty is a former SEC enforcement official, currently in private law practice in Memphis, Tennessee. (A full bio is below the fold.) Cross-posted at The Memphis Flyer.
GOVERNMENT BEHIND CLOSED DOORS—NOT ALWAYS A BAD THING
Sometimes (as in the Senate’s three-hour “executive session” on Tuesday), a little secrecy can go a long way.
The hermetic sealing of the Senate chamber on Tuesday, following the invocation by Majority Leader Harry Reid of a little-used provision of the Senate’s rules, may have demonstrated something far greater than the rival parties’ capacity for playing “gotcha last;” it also proved that the Senate can accomplish more, in a shorter time, behind closed doors, that it ever seems to be able to in the full glare of the public eye.
Once C-Span, spectators, staffers and other hangers-on were ejected from the Senate chamber, the Senate accomplished in less than three hours what it hasn’t been able to accomplish in 18 months—getting one of its recalcitrant committees to honor a promise to finish an investigation into the misuse by the Bush administration of intelligence about WMD’s, one which it’s been dragging its feet on for all that time.
If there’s a lesson here, it may be that sunshine is not the universal disinfectant proponents of open government, freedom of information, and the like actually believe. It may actually be an occasional repellant. Of course, that’s not to sanction the many abuses of the public’s right to know perpetrated by the administration of Boris Bush and Natasha Cheney (the latter being the one that brought us the famous “secret energy task force”). But just as we marvel at the mystery of what actually happens to the light in our refrigerators when we close the door, but are never tempted to get in and close the door behind us to find out, it was far better that we saw the light that emerged after the Senate’s doors were re-opened. Which is not to say that I would have minded being the proverbial fly on the wall during those roughly three hours.
For anyone like me, who’s fascinated by C-Span’s coverage of Congressional goings-on (I first got hooked during the Bert Lance hearings—yes, that makes me a dinosaur, but how many people who still have all their teeth remember the cartoon characters Boris and Natasha, for that matter?), the machinations of the gang of aging white men who comprise the U.S. Senate are ten times better than any episode of “Bored Housewives” (or whatever the name of that insipid show is).
The only problem is, the cameras, I’m afraid, sometimes get in the way of our deliberative bodies’ real work—getting something meaningful done.
So, even though it will rank up there in the pantheon of all-time television moments, the announcement by Senator Frist that he could diagnose a person’s neurological condition just by looking at a video of them, that moment, and all the histrionics accompanying the shameful meddling by the Senate in the Terry Schiavo tragedy, graphically demonstrated how jockeying for public eyeball position distracted senators from doing the country’s business. I’m beginning to think C-Span should title its coverage of what goes on on the floor of the Senate as “The Posturing and Bickering Shows.”
Continued below:
In a way, I’m sorry the country didn’t get to see, in real time, the miraculous moment when the Democrats emerged from their three-year-long persistent vegetative state caused by the trauma they inflicted on themselves in voting to give the President the authority to wage war in Iraq
Benefiting from an apparent reverse orchiectomy (with apologies to my hero, Lance Armstrong), the Democrats finally stood up to the evasion and phony lip service they’ve been subjected to for lo these many months. Enough of the bogus “my good friend, Senator So-and-so,” and “the Honorable Gentleman/Gentlelady” crap, a charade we’d already seen viciously outed in the three-word epithet uttered by Dick Cheney (the Senate’s “president”) to Patrick Leahy in the cloakroom of that august body.
Any further doubt we had about the collegiality of the band of Senate brothers was firmly resolved when, in a speech responding to the apparently outlandish suggestion by Senator Tom Coburn that New Orleans could use use $250 million dollars to rebuild a portion of its destroyed interstate highway more than the 50 residents of a remote Alaskan island could use it to build a bridge to their outpost they obviously never needed or wanted, Senator Ted Stevens, in what the Washington Post characterized as a “hissy fit” engaged in the ultimate act of gentility by threatening to resign from the Senate and be taken out on a stretcher (how did they resist that temptation?). Then, with veins popping and head trembling, he bellowed his response to Coburn’s suggestion: “NO”. And, of course, he was overwhelmingly supported by the majority of his fellow porkmeisters. So much for the dignity of the Senate.
At a time when virtually everything from gory surgical procedures to tearful testimony in murder trials can be viewed on one TV channel or another, and when broadcasting such other spellbinding events as Supreme Court arguments (yawn!) to the administration of lethal injections to condemned murderers (yikes!) is being debated, it may be time to take a step back, and even to see whether we can put back some of the milk that’s been spilled from the TV bottle. It’s likely to remain easier to consume there.
Cross-posted at The Memphis Flyer.
BIOGRAPHY:Mr. Aussenberg is an attorney practicing in his own firm in Memphis, Tennessee. He began his career in the private practice of law in Memphis after relocating from Washington, D.C., where he spent five years at the Securities and Exchange Commission as a Special Counsel and Trial Attorney in its Enforcement Division, during which time he handled or supervised the investigation and litigation of several significant cases involving insider trading, market manipulation, and management fraud. Prior to his stint at the S.E.C., he was an Assistant Attorney General with the Pennsylvania Department of Banking in Philadelphia and was the Attorney-In-Charge of Litigation for the Pennsylvania Securities Commission, where, in addition to representing that agency in numerous state trial and appellate courts, he successfully prosecuted the first case of criminal securities fraud in the state’s history.
Mr. Aussenberg’s private practice has focused primarily on investment, financial, corporate and business counseling, litigation and arbitration and regulatory proceedings. He has represented individual, institutional and governmental investors, as well as brokerage firms and individual brokers, in securities and commodities-related matters, S.E.C., NASD and state securities regulatory proceedings, and has represented parties in shareholder derivative, class action and multi-district litigation, as well as defending parties in securities, commodities, and other “white-collar” criminal cases.
Mr. Aussenberg received his J.D. degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and his B.A. degree in Honors Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Immediately following law school, he served as a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellow with the Delaware County Legal Assistance Association in Chester, Pennsylvania.
He is admitted to practice in Tennessee, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, before the United States Supreme Court, the Third and Sixth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the United States Tax Court, as well as federal district courts in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. He is an arbitrator for the NASD, New York Stock Exchange and American Arbitration Association, has published articles (“Stockbroker Fraud: This Kind of Churning Doesn’t Make Butter”, Journal of the Tennessee Society of C.P.A.’s,; Newsletter of the Arkansas Society of C.P.A.’s; Hoosier Banker (Indiana Bankers Association), and been a featured speaker on a variety of topics at seminars in the United States and Canada, including: Municipal Treasurers Association of the United States and Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Government Finance Officers Association; National Institute of Municipal Law Officers, Washington, D.C. ; Tennessee Society of Certified Public Accountants, Memphis, TN; Tennessee Association of Public Accountants, Memphis, TN (1993)
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Mr. Aussenberg has two children, a daughter who is a graduate of Columbia University and holds a Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University and is currently a student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and a son who is a graduate of Brown University and is working with a conservation organization in Marin County, California while he decides what to do with the rest of his life.
Mr. Aussenberg is an avid golfer whose only handicap is his game, an occasional trap shooter whose best competitive score was a 92, and an even less frequent jazz drummer.
