<story><title>Strengthening Congressional Independence from Corporate Lobbyists</title><url>https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/congressional-independence</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>As someone who grew up in D.C. I disagree with this. Federal government employees try not to be overtly political, but they have a world view that is not necessarily representative of the country as a whole. You&amp;#x27;re going to find a lot more anarchists in Texas or Oregon than D.C. You&amp;#x27;re going to find a lot more religious people in Iowa than D.C. Folks in D.C.--on both sides of the aisle--tend to be predisposed to believing in the superiority of the educated upper middle class, seeing government as the solution to various problems, etc.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d say the same thing about journalists. 90%+ of journalists are democrats. (Overwhelmingly, white and male democrats.) They try to chart a course of &amp;quot;objectivity&amp;quot; within an overall left-leaning Overton window. For example, 32% of Democrats are &amp;quot;extremely proud to be an American&amp;quot; versus 74% of Republicans: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.gallup.com&amp;#x2F;poll&amp;#x2F;236420&amp;#x2F;record-low-extremely-proud-americans.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.gallup.com&amp;#x2F;poll&amp;#x2F;236420&amp;#x2F;record-low-extremely-pro...&lt;/a&gt;. It is impossible for such differences in world view not to affect your article selection and tone when it comes to areas like foreign policy, terrorism, national security, etc.&lt;p&gt;I should point out that I&amp;#x27;m not talking about blatant partisanship. Judges, for example, seek to be objective. That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that their world views don&amp;#x27;t affect their decisions. Justice Kagan has said that American judges--across the spectrum--are textualists most of the time. How would they approach deciding a Constitutional case in the U.K., which doesn&amp;#x27;t have a written constitution? Policymaking and reporting are no different. Everything you write that has any substance at all must have an internal logic. It will makes assumptions, and inferences about cause and effect. It is impossible to be &amp;quot;objective&amp;quot; with respect to that reasoning process or those assumptions.&lt;p&gt;For example, what is an &amp;quot;objective&amp;quot; article on AOC&amp;#x27;s new proposal for nationwide rent control? Do you think someone who believes deeply in markets would write the same article on that proposal as someone who believes that governments can legislate outcomes? I think a market-oriented person struggling to write an objective article about that proposal would either come across as partisan, or would have to write something utterly vacuous. It&amp;#x27;s one thing not to expressly take sides. It&amp;#x27;s entirely another to divorce yourself from your own modes of reasoning and assumptions about how the world works.</text></item><item><author>atonse</author><text>As a DC Area resident for 25+ years, I have met many federal government employees, some in professional settings, and many in casual settings.&lt;p&gt;They remind me of Journalists. Most journalists I&amp;#x27;ve met are not centrists in their personal lives. But in their professional lives, they try (they&amp;#x27;re not perfect, they are human) to stay impartial, but some of your bias will definitely leak into things.&lt;p&gt;But most federal agencies are simply too large and bureaucratic for individuals to push their own political agendas. (Not talking about the leadership that&amp;#x27;s appointed by each administration, but career employees). And it&amp;#x27;s been my informal experience that their hands are too often (rightly) tied by the laws and regulations of the day, in exactly what they can do. So this idea of non-partisan people truly being partisan is often true at an individual level, but generally false at an agency level.&lt;p&gt;And they do take the non-partisan side of their jobs very seriously.</text></item><item><author>s3r3nity</author><text>Not sure what the reasoning was at the time, but I can provide some personal thoughts on the idea - so don&amp;#x27;t take it as representative of everyone who is center-right like myself.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t trust a government entity to be &amp;quot;independent&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;non-partisan.&amp;quot; The rule of thumb I use is &amp;quot;would I trust this government entity if my respective political party is only in control ~50% of the time?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Some other folks in the threads already mentioned this, but as one example: the Obama campaign was pretty close to the Facebooks &amp;#x2F; Googles of the world - meaning that there could be a scenario that this OTA office was staffed fully with ex-Googlers or the like, almost like a lobbying firm would do. On one hand, they&amp;#x27;re fully qualified and (probably) very knowledgeable; on the other hand, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t trust that the office would provide a fair assessment into regulating those tech companies.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: grammar &amp;#x2F; more precise vocabulary</text></item><item><author>atonse</author><text>Excellent, excellent idea.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s interesting about all this isn&amp;#x27;t that this is a new idea by Warren – it&amp;#x27;s that the Government had an office like this but it was closed down by Republican leadership in the mid 90s.&lt;p&gt;I have a (truly genuine) question for Republican techies here (really, really not trying to point fingers or start a political argument) – when you see that Newt Gingrich closed the OTA office, what do you feel? Maybe he did the right thing, you&amp;#x27;d like to learn more why? Or Newt Gingrich was wrong? Or what?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>birken</author><text>&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;d say the same thing about journalists. 90%+ of journalists are democrats.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t believe in all the responses nobody has challenged this statement.  What is your source for this?  Based on exit polls, in aggregate white men are heavily republican, and college educated white men are still republican by over 20 points.  This seems like an &lt;i&gt;extraordinary&lt;/i&gt; claim.&lt;p&gt;And for one tangible data point, in 2012, wikipedia shows 158 newspaper endorsing the democratic candidate, and 112 newspaper endorsing the republican candidate [1].  Obviously not a perfect metric, but that is ~58% of newspaper endorsing the democratic candidate.&lt;p&gt;Even in 2016, when the Republican candidate was specifically anti-journalists, only 69% of newspapers endorsed the democratic candidate [2].&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_2012_United_States_presidential_election#Daily_newspapers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election#Daily_newspapers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Strengthening Congressional Independence from Corporate Lobbyists</title><url>https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/congressional-independence</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>As someone who grew up in D.C. I disagree with this. Federal government employees try not to be overtly political, but they have a world view that is not necessarily representative of the country as a whole. You&amp;#x27;re going to find a lot more anarchists in Texas or Oregon than D.C. You&amp;#x27;re going to find a lot more religious people in Iowa than D.C. Folks in D.C.--on both sides of the aisle--tend to be predisposed to believing in the superiority of the educated upper middle class, seeing government as the solution to various problems, etc.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d say the same thing about journalists. 90%+ of journalists are democrats. (Overwhelmingly, white and male democrats.) They try to chart a course of &amp;quot;objectivity&amp;quot; within an overall left-leaning Overton window. For example, 32% of Democrats are &amp;quot;extremely proud to be an American&amp;quot; versus 74% of Republicans: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.gallup.com&amp;#x2F;poll&amp;#x2F;236420&amp;#x2F;record-low-extremely-proud-americans.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.gallup.com&amp;#x2F;poll&amp;#x2F;236420&amp;#x2F;record-low-extremely-pro...&lt;/a&gt;. It is impossible for such differences in world view not to affect your article selection and tone when it comes to areas like foreign policy, terrorism, national security, etc.&lt;p&gt;I should point out that I&amp;#x27;m not talking about blatant partisanship. Judges, for example, seek to be objective. That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that their world views don&amp;#x27;t affect their decisions. Justice Kagan has said that American judges--across the spectrum--are textualists most of the time. How would they approach deciding a Constitutional case in the U.K., which doesn&amp;#x27;t have a written constitution? Policymaking and reporting are no different. Everything you write that has any substance at all must have an internal logic. It will makes assumptions, and inferences about cause and effect. It is impossible to be &amp;quot;objective&amp;quot; with respect to that reasoning process or those assumptions.&lt;p&gt;For example, what is an &amp;quot;objective&amp;quot; article on AOC&amp;#x27;s new proposal for nationwide rent control? Do you think someone who believes deeply in markets would write the same article on that proposal as someone who believes that governments can legislate outcomes? I think a market-oriented person struggling to write an objective article about that proposal would either come across as partisan, or would have to write something utterly vacuous. It&amp;#x27;s one thing not to expressly take sides. It&amp;#x27;s entirely another to divorce yourself from your own modes of reasoning and assumptions about how the world works.</text></item><item><author>atonse</author><text>As a DC Area resident for 25+ years, I have met many federal government employees, some in professional settings, and many in casual settings.&lt;p&gt;They remind me of Journalists. Most journalists I&amp;#x27;ve met are not centrists in their personal lives. But in their professional lives, they try (they&amp;#x27;re not perfect, they are human) to stay impartial, but some of your bias will definitely leak into things.&lt;p&gt;But most federal agencies are simply too large and bureaucratic for individuals to push their own political agendas. (Not talking about the leadership that&amp;#x27;s appointed by each administration, but career employees). And it&amp;#x27;s been my informal experience that their hands are too often (rightly) tied by the laws and regulations of the day, in exactly what they can do. So this idea of non-partisan people truly being partisan is often true at an individual level, but generally false at an agency level.&lt;p&gt;And they do take the non-partisan side of their jobs very seriously.</text></item><item><author>s3r3nity</author><text>Not sure what the reasoning was at the time, but I can provide some personal thoughts on the idea - so don&amp;#x27;t take it as representative of everyone who is center-right like myself.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t trust a government entity to be &amp;quot;independent&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;non-partisan.&amp;quot; The rule of thumb I use is &amp;quot;would I trust this government entity if my respective political party is only in control ~50% of the time?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Some other folks in the threads already mentioned this, but as one example: the Obama campaign was pretty close to the Facebooks &amp;#x2F; Googles of the world - meaning that there could be a scenario that this OTA office was staffed fully with ex-Googlers or the like, almost like a lobbying firm would do. On one hand, they&amp;#x27;re fully qualified and (probably) very knowledgeable; on the other hand, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t trust that the office would provide a fair assessment into regulating those tech companies.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: grammar &amp;#x2F; more precise vocabulary</text></item><item><author>atonse</author><text>Excellent, excellent idea.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s interesting about all this isn&amp;#x27;t that this is a new idea by Warren – it&amp;#x27;s that the Government had an office like this but it was closed down by Republican leadership in the mid 90s.&lt;p&gt;I have a (truly genuine) question for Republican techies here (really, really not trying to point fingers or start a political argument) – when you see that Newt Gingrich closed the OTA office, what do you feel? Maybe he did the right thing, you&amp;#x27;d like to learn more why? Or Newt Gingrich was wrong? Or what?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>atonse</author><text>Good point on the AOC proposal. I don&amp;#x27;t know, since I haven&amp;#x27;t heard of it, nor have I read too many articles about that specific proposal.&lt;p&gt;Everything I&amp;#x27;ve read about rising home prices has to do with supply&amp;#x2F;demand and the disruptive nature of AirBNB etc.&lt;p&gt;But if you as a journalist are talking about AOC&amp;#x27;s proposal, your main job is to communicate her proposal to the masses, your secondary job is to talk about why it may or may not work.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s similar to any Republican counter proposal, if there were one that wasn&amp;#x27;t just based on dogmas like supply-side economics or &amp;quot;market will fix everything&amp;quot;. You communicate the proposal and then talk about potentially how parts of it wouldn&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;Tribalism is shit and really ruins a lot of these interesting debates. But I don&amp;#x27;t see true tribalism in places like the NYT. My bigger complaint with institutions like the NYT is that they&amp;#x27;re made of the same elites they&amp;#x27;re reporting on, so they aren&amp;#x27;t able to be truly objective.&lt;p&gt;Organizations like the Intercept do a much better job of &amp;quot;fuck you everyone, I&amp;#x27;m going to expose you&amp;quot; than someone like the NYT. But that&amp;#x27;s not a republican&amp;#x2F;democrat thing. That&amp;#x27;s a lack of diversity (diversity of background, not skin color) problem in their staff.</text></comment>