November – 2014 – All Points of View

Month: November, 2014

US voter turnout is an international embarrassment

worker | November 11, 2014 | 8:33 pm | Analysis, National | Comments closed

Bernie Sanders â€¢ November 11, 2014 from PROGRESO WEEKLY

Americans should be embarrassed. The low voter turnout on Election Day last week in the United States was an international disgrace.

What has become of a democratic form of government that Abraham Lincoln said was â€œof the people, by the people, for the peopleâ€? Can we be satisfied with a â€œdemocracyâ€ when more than 60% of people donâ€™t vote and some 80% of young people and low-income Americans donâ€™t either? Can we be content when poll after poll shows that most Americans canâ€™t even name the political parties that control the US Senate and House â€“ or who their member of Congress is?

Nationwide, preliminary indications show that the total turnout in the US midterms was only 36.6%. If these estimates hold true, 2014 will be the least representative election in modern American history. When billionaires and corporations tilt elections, conservatives suppress voting and crucial voters feel unengaged, what kind of example for the world is that?

Americans do better when the presidency is at stake, but a post-World Word II turnout ranging from 52% to 64% is nothing to brag about. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance ranks the United States 120th in the world for average national turnout. In Scotland, for example, 84.6% voted on the independence referendum. In Denmark, 80% of the population at the polls is the norm. In Australia, where voting is compulsory, turnout is even higher.

When Congress returns here this week, I will introduce legislation to make Election Day a national holiday â€“ call it Democracy Day â€“ so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote. This would by no means be a cure-all for increasing turnout, but it would mark one important step to increase participation and create the kind of political system that the world can look upon as an example, not a failure.

To keep the super-rich from turning our democracy into an oligarchy, we must also focus on campaign finance. With dark money and TV ads playing such an important role in contemporary politics, how many candidates can run successful campaigns representing the interests of the struggling working families of our country? If people do not see candidates fighting for their interests, why will they vote at all?

We need a constitutional amendment to overturn the disastrous 2010 US supreme court ruling in Citizens United that let a corporate class spend unlimited sums. We also need public funding of elections so that candidates who are not rich or dependent upon the rich can actually win.

Meanwhile, instead of encouraging more people to take part in our democracy, Republican state legislatures and governors have aggressively passed laws to keep people away from the polls, especially low-income and young people. They have made it harder to register to vote. They have reduced opportunities for early voting. And they have made it more difficult to vote on Election Day by requiring picture IDs â€“ supposedly to address all-but-non-existent voter fraud.

But voter-ID laws arenâ€™t intended to discourage fraud â€“ they are intended to discourage voting, and they have worked. A study I requested from the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan congressional watchdog, found that states with strict voter-ID laws saw turnouts drop 2-3% compared to states without them. These disenfranchising laws are designed by people afraid of what would happen to them if more people were involved in the political process. What cowards!

For those of us who believe in a vibrant democracy with an engaged and well-informed electorate, we have a lot of work ahead. Sadly, in the year 2014, we must still convince the American people about the relevance of government to their lives.

We must convince young people that if they vote in large numbers, we can lower the 20% real unemployment they are experiencing with a major jobs program. We must convince students that if they participate in the political process, we can lower the outrageously high student debt they face. We must convince low-income workers that voting can raise the national minimum wage to a real living wage.

Â We must convince seniors that not only can we prevent cuts to Social Security â€“ we can expand the paltry benefits that so many are forced to live on. We must convince the millions of Americans who are deeply worried about climate change that political participation can transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy â€“ and create millions of jobs.

Throughout American history, people have fought and died to protect our democracy and set an example for other nations. In these very difficult times, we cannot turn our backs on them. We should celebrate it.

Colombian Prisons and Prisoners Mirror Class Struggle

worker | November 11, 2014 | 8:29 pm | Analysis, International | Comments closed

by W. T. Whitney Jr.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/whitney111114.html

Prisoners in Colombia have recently gained new visibility. Â Prisoner protest actions are one factor. Â Another is discussion at the Havana peace talks of prisoners as victims of armed conflict.Â November 2014 marks the two-year anniversary of talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government.

Beginning on October 20, hunger strikes and rejection of prison rules spread throughout 14 Colombian prisons. Â Spokespersons for the National Prison Movement (Movimiento Nacional Carcelario — MNC), organizer of the demonstrations, denounced overcrowding, miserable healthcare, impediments to family visiting, poor food, filthy sanitary conditions, and contaminated and scarce water. Â They accused prison authorities of torture, reprisals, and corruption.Â Guards at CÃ³mbita prison bent on intimidation placed political prisoners in isolation.Â TramacÃºa prison in Valledupar was cited as the “the number one center for torture and systematic violation of human rights.”Â TramacÃºa, some say, is the “Guantanamo of Colombia.”

Earlier the MNC called for a declaration of humanitarian emergency; passage of Law 082 which reduces sentences by 20 percent; eight-hour family visits; “real, definitive, and immediate” solutions for the prison healthcare crisis; and no more extraditions (a Colombia-U.S. agreement provides for extradition every month of 15-20 Colombians — most facing drug trafficking charges — in return for a U.S. subsidy).

The MNC had also organized hunger strikes in multiple prisons in April 2013, too. Â The MNC’s demands at that time included prevention and education instead of incarceration, reduced or alternative sentencing, and recognition of special status for political prisoners.

Humanitarian Crisis

Recently Bogota’s El Tiempo newspaper published a report, with photos, documenting Colombia’s prison scandal. Â One learns that, as of June 2014, Colombia’s 138 prisons originally built to accommodate 76,553 prisoners were housing 117,018 prisoners — or 40,465 over the limit. Â The medium security prison in Riohacha, in Colombia’s northeast, has 538 prisoners occupying space for 100 prisoners.

According to the report, 34.5 percent of prisoners, some imprisoned for six years, have yet to be convicted or sentenced. Â Mentally ill prisoners are part of the general prison population, 108 children live with their imprisoned mothers, and employment is available for only 1,441 prisoners. Â Re-socialization and educational activities are impossible because 117,018 prisoners must share 544 prison common areas.

Expressions of FARC solidarity with the protests added to public awareness. Â In an October 28 statement, the FARC peace delegation “raise[d] its voice in solidarity with the prisoners and political prisoners involved with a hunger strike and peaceful disobedience.”Â The FARC backed MNC demands and named five prisoners who died without adequate medical care.Â The statement condemned “death and destruction” following a recent fire in the Barranquilla prison and denounced violent repression of peaceful demonstrators at the CÃ³mbita prison.Â The FARC urged “solutions for the structural problems and the deep crisis of the decadent and crumbling national prison system converted [now] into a scene of torture, crimes, and flagrant violations of human rights.”

Victims of Class Conflict

The FARC negotiating team provides reports on its “Minimum Proposals” on various agenda items, the most recent being on the question of victims.Â Political prisoners — both captured insurgents and imprisoned non-combatant dissenters, the FARC claims — are “victims of the conflict.” Â FARC negotiators seek establishment of a “special study commission regarding the situation of political prisoners.” Â The commission “would identify victims of the state’s justice system subjected to judicial sham for political reasons.”

Successive Colombian governments have lumped armed resistance groups and peaceful dissenters, jailed insurgents and non-violent prisoners of conscience, all together as enemies of the state. Â By doing so they made the main schism within Colombian society readily apparent.

Colombian governments have long primarily served big landowners, as well as business and financial elites. Â Governments have sought to protect their use and control of land. Â Those attempting to speak and act on behalf of Colombia’s majority population are on the other side. Â Thus the context within which the fate of prisoners is shaped is one of conflict between social classes.

The list of victims of that conflict is long: hundreds of striking banana workers murdered in CiÃ©naga in 1928; thousands of land-hungry small farmers killed prior to Jorge EliÃ©cer GaitÃ¡n’s assassination in 1948; 200,000 rebellious peasants killed over the following ten years; and tens of thousands of political dissidents, real and imagined, killed after 1964 when the FARC came into existence. Â FARC insurgents originally were small farmers defending their right to land. Â Millions of Colombians displaced from land are victims too.

In one set of their “Minimum Proposals,” FARC peace negotiators name the parties responsible for creating victims. Â That the U.S. government is one of them further confirms the class-based nature of victimization of prisoners. Â That government’s hostility to working or poor people’s mobilizations is well known.

The FARC negotiating team recognizes “the central responsibility of the United States in the origin, persistence, and dynamics of expansion, escalation, and intensification of the conflict, in different phases and facets. Â The result has been to generate processes of systemic victimization.”

A Prisoner’s Video Testimony

In recent weeks, delegations of Colombian victims traveled to Havana to testify before the peace negotiators. Â The fourth such delegation consisting of 11 former prisoners did so on November 3-5. Â An empty chair at their hearing would have been occupied by jailed FARC guerrilla Tulio Murilla had Colombian authorities not refused permission for him to travel and testify.

A video rendition of Murillo’s testimony became a dramatic highlight. Â As reported on Pacocol.org, the Web site of the Colombian Communist Party, Murillo gave “voice to prisoners demanding that the humanitarian crisis in Colombian prisons be overcome.” Â They are in prison, he charged, because of vague allegations of “rebellion” or “terrorism” and because criminal proceedings yield “judicial false positives.”

The Colombian army captured Tulio Murillo during combat operations. Â Torture in prison caused wounds that led to his leg being amputated. Â The video rendition of his testimony, recorded in the CÃºcutaprison amidst a crowd of prisoners, shows images of prison life.

Academician Francisco Javier Tolosa, himself a former political prisoner, points out that: “In the midst of the acute prison and judicial crisis the country is going though . . . we, eleven thousand political prisoners, do exist in Colombia.” Â Furthermore, “we require recognition as such, and also as victims of this social, armed conflict. Â We must have an actual voice in the building of a stable, long-lasting, and democratic peace.”¹

Prisoner victims of class struggle got an internationalist boost recently from a letter sent by poet Marcos Ana from Spain. Â A steadfast anti-fascist, Ana spent 23 years in prisons of the Franco dictatorship and was twice condemned to death.

Ana wrote: “Solidarity has no borders or distances and all of us know of your existence and we are proud of your struggle and your sacrifices. . . .Â We shall pull you out of the shadows and return the light of day to you and the freedom they snatched from you. Â Let peoples by the hundreds come calling and looking for you with their red lamps advancing from the five parts of the world!”

David Ravelo, a leader of Colombia’s Communist Party, is serving an 18-year jail term. Â Ana sent him a book of his poems. Â Inside, Ravelo found a message inscribed: “They wounded us, struck us down, even killed us, but they never turned us.”

Note:

1 Â The quote is from Tolosa’s new book titled Colombia on the Road to Liberty and Peace, Chapter Two.

W. T. Whitney Jr., a retired pediatrician, is a Cuba solidarity activist and member of Veterans for Peace. Â He writes on Latin American issues.

The New York Times Admits US Interference in Cuba

worker | November 10, 2014 | 9:38 pm | Analysis, Cuban Five, International, Latin America, National | Comments closed



Washington, Nov 10 (Prensa Latina) For the fifth time in less than a month, The New York Times published a long editorial on Cuba, in which it listed the countless destabilizing efforts by the United States to overthrow the Cuban government. In an article entitled “In Cuba, Misadventures in Regime Change”, the Editorial Committee of the influential New York-based newspaper on Sunday reviewed Washington’s countless plans against national stability in Cuba since the approval of the Helms-Burton Act in 1996 to date. The New York Times notes that these subversive plans only served as the foundation for the US government to spend 264 million dollars over the past 18 years, in an effort to instigate alleged democratic reforms on the island. The newspaper admits that far from having achieved their goals, the initiatives were counterproductive, as those funds “have been a magnet for charlatans, swindlers and good intentions gone awry”. “The stealthy programs have increased hostility between the two nations, provided Cuba with a trove of propaganda fodder and stymied opportunities to cooperate in areas of mutual interest,” adds the newspaper. It accuses the US Agency for International Development (USAID) of carrying out cloak-and-dagger missions to implement illegal projects in Cuba. The editorial notes how “spending on initiatives to oust the government surged from a few million a year to more than $20 million in 2004”, during the first years of the George W. Bush administration (2001-2009), when “most contracts were awarded, without much oversight, to newly formed Cuban-American groups”. The New York Times explains how one of those groups invested the money “on a legally questionable global lobbying effort to persuade foreign governments to support AmericaÃ¢ï¿½Ã–s unpopular embargo” (blockade), which the United State has imposed on Cuba since 1962. Another group sent loads of comic books to the American diplomatic mission in Havana, bewildering officials there, says the newspaper, adding that “the money was also used to buy food and clothes, but there was no way to track how much reached relatives of political prisoners, the intended recipients”. According to a report published in November 2006 by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), “one contractor used the pro-democracy money to buy ‘a gas chain saw, computer gaming equipment and software (including Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations), a mountain bike, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crab meat and Godiva chocolates,’ purchases he was unable to justify to auditors.” The New York Times adds that despite the results of the GAO probe in 2006, Congress appropriated $45 million for the programs, a record amount, in 2008. “In December 2009, Cuban authorities arrested an American subcontractor who traveled to the island five times on USAID business, posing as a tourist to smuggle communication equipment,” notes the newspaper. After that, “senior officials at USAID and the State Department were startled by the risks being taken, and some argued that the covert programs were counterproductive and should be stopped. But Cuban-American lawmakers fought vigorously to keep them alive”, says the editorial. “After Mr. Gross’s arrest, the aid agency stopped sending American contractors into Cuba, but it allowed its contractors to recruit Latin Americans for secret missions that were sometimes detected by the Cuban intelligence services.” The newspaper recalls that “an investigation by The Associated Press published in April revealed a controversial program carried out during the Obama administration. Between 2009 and 2012, Creative Associates International, a Washington firm, built a rudimentary text messaging system similar to Twitter, known as ZunZuneo, Cuban slang for a hummingbird’s tweet.” “A second AP report revealed in August that USAID had been sending young Latin Americans to Cuba to identify ‘potential social change actors,’ under the pretext of organizing gatherings like an HIV prevention workshop,” points out The New York Times. The editorial notes that instead of stealth efforts to overthrow the government, American policy makers should find ways through coordination with the Cuban government. “Washington should recognize that the most it can hope to accomplish is to positively influence Cuba’s evolution toward a more open society. That is more likely to come about through stronger diplomatic relations than subterfuge,” concludes The New York Times. sc/jg/tgj/mfm
Modificado el ( lunes, 10 de noviembre de 2014 )

The election results and U.S. policy toward Cuba

worker | November 10, 2014 | 9:33 pm | Analysis, International, National | Comments closed

PROGRESO WEEKLY

JesÃºs Arboleya â€¢
ProgresoWeekly

HAVANA â€” In the days prior to the midterm elections, a media campaign was launched, urging President Obama to change U.S. policy toward Cuba.

It is obvious that the promoters of that campaign could foresee that the results of the election would translate into a Republican victory, as indeed they did. So, the question arises:

How could the Republican victory influence this dynamics?

As I see it, very little. Before the Democrats lost control of the Senate, everybody knew that the President could not count on Congress to modify U.S. policy toward Cuba, so they were asking Obama to make use of his executive powers, something that they will continue to do in the immediate future.

In fact, as Ãlvaro FernÃ¡ndez and others have commented, the issue could become simpler for Obama, because of the weakening of pressures within his own party, given the replacement of Democrat Bob MenÃ©ndez as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Now, Obamaâ€™s main enemies will be the Republicans, but that will be a constant in all of his governmentâ€™s actions. Therefore, the topic of Cuba is inserted into the political polarization that has characterized Obamaâ€™s administration and everything will depend on his willingness to act in this scenario.

For a long time now, Obama seems to have forgotten his intention to become â€œthe president of all Americansâ€ and seek some accommodation with the Republicans. Now, his options are more drastic: either he decides to act against his adversaries â€” with the political implications that this carries â€” or subordinates himself to their designs and becomes a â€œdead weightâ€ in the nationâ€™s politics, as some analysts predict.

The Presidentâ€™s level of unpopularity is seen as responsible for the electoral disaster suffered by the Democrats. It is true that this happens quite regularly in second presidential terms, but Obamaâ€™s case has other connotations because of the social impact his election originally made.

It remains to be seen if, aware of his historical responsibility, Obama is willing to revert the situation and wage battle, at least on the issues that define his â€œlegacyâ€ â€” not many of them, for sure.

Within this logic, the Cuban issue acquires some relevance. I say â€œsomeâ€ because, compared with the enormous domestic and foreign problems facing U.S. policy, the topic of Cuba is of lesser importance.

However, it has a symbolic value that exceeds its real connotations and could help the President improve an image that has been seriously impaired by the lack of determination he has shown in many instances.

In fact, a policy change wouldnâ€™t be a difficult decision, because

even Republican sectors would support it;
a new policy would be welcomed by the international community, especially by Latin America, where the Summit of the Americas will be held next April with Cuba in attendance; and
a new policy would have a special impact on the state of Florida, with a view to the 2016 elections, something that constitutes a priority for the Democratic Party.

According to exit polls on Nov. 4, a majority of Cuban-Americans supported the Democratic candidate for governor, Charlie Crist (50-46 percent), which confirms a trend that was expressed in the 2010 presidential election.

Most analysts attribute that support to the differences between the contenders regarding the Cuban issue. In a comparison with the 2010 results, Republican Gov. Rick Scott lost 20 percentage points among Cuban-Americans and lost in all counties with a high concentration of Cuban-Americans. This could also be an indicator favoring the Democrats in the 2016 elections.

Although a Crist victory could have helped propel a change in policy toward Cuba, his defeat does not substantially alter the equation prior to the elections. The same happens in the case of Rep. Joe GarcÃa (D-Fla.)

In the end, the opponents are the same as before, and it is doubtful that their influence will increase substantially thanks to the Republican victory.

Even more importantly, the Republican triumph does not alter the objective factors that justify the criticism aimed at the current U.S. policy toward Cuba.

It is a tired policy, incapable of achieving the objectives for which it was designed, counter to the United Statesâ€™ own interests, and rejected by a majority of U.S. public opinion, including Cuban-Americans.

Nor does it alter the fact that Obama is the president who has been in the best position to change it, and probably the president who will benefit most by so doing.

To quote the title of an old Cuban radio series: â€œFate is in his hands.â€

Obama’s Last Chance

worker | November 10, 2014 | 9:25 pm | Analysis, National | Comments closed

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

07 November 14

The Democrats clearly deserved to lose on Tuesday, though the Republicans may not have deserved to win. Indeed, there was almost a yin-yang quality to the Democratic rout/Republican victory in which the Democrats played into almost all the Republican themes, making the outcome feel inevitable.

Most notably, President Barack Obama and the Democrats shelved all the â€œcontentiousâ€ issues that might have rallied their â€œbaseâ€ to turn out and vote. Immigration reform was put on hold; release of the Senate report on â€œtortureâ€ was postponed; what to do about â€œglobal warmingâ€ was ignored; the argument about the value of activist government was silenced; etc., etc., etc.

On a personal level, supposedly polarizing â€œliberalâ€ candidates, such as actor Ashley Judd in Kentucky, were pushed aside in favor of supposedly more â€œelectableâ€ candidates, like Alison Lundergan Grimes. Unwilling to say whether she had voted for President Obama in 2012, Grimes managed to win only 41 percent of the vote against the perennially unpopular Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell.

Obama himself was virtually sidelined from many races in what was an implicit Democratic admission of the Republican theme that Obama was a failure and that he deserved an electoral repudiation. The smell of fear pervaded the Democratic ranks â€“ and panic is not the most inspiring of emotions.

In some states, the Democrats seemed enamored with what might be called the â€œnepotism strategy,â€ counting on the â€œmagicâ€ of political names and family connections to somehow overcome their lack of message and their image of timidity: Pryor in Arkansas, Grimes in Kentucky, Nunn in Georgia â€“ all went down to decisive defeat.

In the bigger picture, the Democratic failure seems part and parcel with the broader weakness of progressivism in the United States. The Right continues to dominate in areas of media and messaging, investing billions upon billions of dollars in a vertically integrated media apparatus, from the older technologies of print, radio and TV to the newer ones around the Internet. The Right also has layers upon layers of think tanks and other propaganda outlets.

By comparison, the Left has never made anything close to a comparable investment. And, even the ostensibly â€œliberalâ€ network MSNBC and the purportedly â€œliberalâ€ New York Times fall into line behind neoconservative foreign policy initiatives at nearly every turn, such as the â€œregime changeâ€ campaigns in Syria, Iran and Ukraine. So, too, do many of the supposedly â€œliberalâ€ think tanks, such as the Brookings Institution and the New America Foundation.

Indeed, a remarkable reality about U.S. policy circles is that six years after the end of George W. Bushâ€™s disastrous neocon-dominated presidency, the neocons continue to dominate Americaâ€™s foreign policy thinking, albeit sometimes rebranded as â€œliberal interventionism.â€

A â€˜Closet Realistâ€™

Though President Obama may be something of a â€œcloset realistâ€ â€“ hoping to work quietly with foreign adversaries to resolve international crises â€“ he has never taken firm control over his own foreign policy.

Obama apparently thought that neocon holdovers from the Bush years, like Gen. David Petraeus or Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, and Democratic neocons, such as his first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, would somehow drop their ideological certitudes and cooperate with his approach.

Instead, the neocons and their â€œliberal interventionistâ€ allies burrowed deep into the foreign policy bureaucracy and pop up periodically to press for their war-mongering agendas. A distracted President Obama always seems outmaneuvered â€“ from the 2009 Afghan â€œsurge,â€ to the 2010 stand-off over Iranâ€™s nuclear program, to the 2011 civil wars in Libya and Syria, to the 2014 Ukrainian coup dâ€™etat.

Arriving late at each new crisis, Obama usually signs off on what the neocons want, although he intermittently pushes for his â€œrealistâ€ approach, such as collaborating with Russiaâ€™s President Vladimir Putin in avoiding a U.S. war on Syria in 2013 and negotiating a peaceful settlement to Iranâ€™s nuclear program, which could be completed in 2014 if Obama doesnâ€™t lose his nerve.

The big question now is whether the Democratsâ€™ humiliating defeat on Nov. 4 will teach Obama and the party any meaningful lessons â€“ or will the Democrats just kid themselves into thinking that â€œdemographicsâ€ will save them or that they will prevail in 2016 by avoiding controversial stands and putting up another famous â€œname,â€ in Hillary Clinton.

Will Obama finally realize that he has to revert back to his inspiring messages of 2008 on issues such as his promise of government transparency? For the past six years, transparency has worked only one way: the government gets to look into the secrets of citizens while the citizens have no right to know about the governmentâ€™s secrets.

There is a fundamental disconnect between this image of an intrusive federal government spying on everyone and the progressive concept that an active federal government is necessary to address fundamental problems facing the American people and the world, such as what to do about global warming, income inequality, corporate power, racial injustice, etc.

What Iâ€™m hearing from many young progressives is that they are so resentful of government intrusions into their lives that they are veering more toward libertarianism, even though it offers no solutions to most environmental, economic and social problems. If Obama hopes to stanch this flow of progressive youth to the right, he needs to finally recognize that the people need transparency on the government and the government must learn to trust the people.

An obvious first step would be to override CIA objections and release the report on torture during the Bush years. And while Obama is at it, he should make public the secret pages from the 9/11 report relating to Saudi funding for al-Qaeda terrorists.

Iâ€™m also told that Obama has information that contradicts his administrationâ€™s early claims blaming the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack on the Syrian government and faulting Russia for the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine. Those two incidents fueled dangerous international confrontations â€“ with the United States nearly going to war against the Syrian government in 2013 and starting a new Cold War with Russia in 2014.

If Obama has U.S. intelligence information that points the finger of blame in different directions, he should correct the impressions left by Secretary of State John Kerry and other U.S. officials. The neocons wonâ€™t like that â€“ and some â€œliberal interventionistsâ€ may have egg on their faces, too â€“ but misleading propaganda has no place in a democracy. False information must be removed as quickly as possible.

Similarly, Obama should commit his administration to expediting release of historical secrets. Currently, it takes many years, even decades, to pry loose embarrassing â€œsecretsâ€ from the U.S. government, often allowing false historical narratives to take hold or creating a hot house for conspiracy theories. Itâ€™s way past time for the U.S. government to give the American people their history back.

By releasing as much information as possible about important topics, Obama could finally begin to win back the peopleâ€™s trust, not just in him but in the government. Nothing is as corrosive to democratic governance as a belief by the people that the government doesnâ€™t trust them â€“ and that they, in turn, have no reason to trust the government.