Category: Issue 1

Welcome to the first edition of Clemson University’s TIGERs GPS – Government and Public Service Blog. We are excited to begin this blogging journey with you as we continue to learn from each other and share stories, best practices and other ponderings in this forum. This blog also presents an opportunity to build on skill sets that are in high demand in today’s workforce. Consistently, international and national level firm surveys reveal that of the ten skills employers want the most, written and verbal communication and analyzing and synthesizing information are at the top. Moreover, many firms see the ability to be creative and innovative as critical in the 21^st century. We hope this blog will serve as an opportunity to learn from each other about a diverse range of policy, public administration and non-profit issues, along with helping us all to be more effective ad creative communicators. It is with this in mind that I break the Champagne Bottle over the hull and christen the Blog – Cheers to TIGERs GPS. ~ Lori A. Dickes, Phd

The Soviet Union sent the first man into space, as well as the first woman and the first dog. An American was the first human to step on the lunar surface. China has built the world’s largest radio telescope. Arguably, the three countries, with Russia as an unchallenged successor of the Soviet Union, have the courtside seats to space exploration and utilization.

Before OSIRIS-REx completes its mission to Bennu or an Earthian sets foot on real Mars, not in Mars-simulated dome in Hawaii, there is something much closer to home and seemingly within an easy reach: the Earth’s devoted Moon. And specifically, it is the Moon’s Helium-3-rich top layer that Russia, the U.S., and China would love to mine and process cheaply as the new-generation energy source. Some believe that the recent SPACE Act of 2015 serving to “facilitate commercial exploration for and commercial recovery of space resources by United States citizens” (Sec. 51302, para. (a)(1) had precisely the Moon’s helium on the agenda. Roscosmos may be postponing its Moon missions, but it has never taken its eyes off the Moon’s helium and the faster the country can get to utilize it, the faster it can claim a major stake in all of the Moon’s resources. True, according to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, Russia would not be able to claim sovereignty, but it could successfully skirt the issue through something like the U.S.’ SPACE Act with private and state corporations engaging in “commercial recovery of space resources.”

And when American, Russian, and Chinese entities are collecting the Moon’s abundant Helium-3, do Haiti or Moldova get a piece of the Moon’s pie? Barring the often-cited parallels with regulations of international waters here on Earth, does the Moon belong to everyone or only to those who can get there? What if we divided the Moon’s surface among all countries in proportion to their population size and encouraged space leasing by foreign companies on a given country’s territory. The U.S. would still get a sizable chunk of the Moon, much smaller than China’s but more than double that of Russia’s. And if American companies wished to collect the Moon’s helium on say Haiti’s portion of the Moon, they’d pay a usage fee to the Haiti’s people, hopefully represented by the country’s government.

With territorial claims in Antarctica yet to be settled and Russia’s relentless quest to legally claim the North Pole as its own, we may need to start the conversation about dividing the Moon fairly before the much coveted Helium-3 is appropriated by the savviest explorers. And contrary to the Cadillac’s famed commercial, Americans may not be the only ones going back up there (even if they left the keys in the car https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=xNzXze5Yza8 ).

Public sector administrative organizations are responsible and responsive to disparately motivated client factions, all of which have differing agendas, power bases, and constituencies, that want to at least influence—if not control—policy choices. The factious nature of public sector clients is consequential to whether public sector administrative organizations choose to innovate or incrementally change. The simple, yet foremost, question, “Who are your clients?”, becomes an interminable investigation of the irresolvable with implications for the public administrator—most of which are bad. While resolution of this question is elusive, strategies for policy choices dependent on a resolution, as well as avoidance of bad outcomes, are not: rather than risk provoking the wrong faction, public administrators typically choose less disruptive incremental change even if innovation promises true transformative policy outcomes.

A case in point: the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA had the potential to transform insurance; instead, its champions chose to modify rather than transform our system of health insurance, doing nothing to control the excessive administrative costs of insurance companies. Rather, the ACA was designed to transfer risk from private individuals to the government without transforming (instead, only modifying) the Darwinian basis of our healthcare delivery system. Government innovation is generally unattainable, as the ACA highlights, because “the clients” are diverse and competitive. A bureaucracy has to harness the political power of diverse power centers in order to push through true innovation—that is a tall order. Factions that face disruption from innovation will undermine and weaken innovation, doing so is in their interests. Those who benefit will argue for innovation. We end up with a compromise better known as change not innovation.

Perhaps one agency still can innovate with little to no inhibition: the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA). Most of our government sponsored innovation comes from defense. The key to which is the technical nature of most government innovation. When faced with existential threats, such as the Cold War, our government does have the capacity to allow the few nimble agencies in the government to engage in transformational projects such as the U-2 spy plane or the SR-71 spy plane. The recent exception to the technical versus policy imbalance in innovation is the implementation of a counterinsurgency program in Iraq during 2007 that was known as “The Surge.” Here, policy planners did transform combat operations. Policy planners implemented a strategy designed to achieve social stability rather than kill terrorists.

Most government innovation is nothing more than policies that promote status quo with minor to modest modifications—what we call change.  The political landscape is still recognizable. Change, in the end, is political compromise.

While it may be years until the legacy of the Trump presidency is clearly defined, the administration’s immigration policies will certainly play a significant role in determining how history will ultimately view the 45^th President of the United States.  As a candidate, Donald Trump traded nuance for hardline stances on the construction of a border wall, increased deportations, and extreme vetting of refugees.  Once inaugurated, he placed immigration at the forefront of his policy agenda with several high profile executive order signing events in the opening days of his presidency.  Regardless of the eventual success or failure of the implementation of the Trump immigration policy plan, his often boisterous rhetoric on immigration will leave an indelible mark on his page of history.

While much of the attention will be paid to the most controversial and highest profile provisions of the Trump immigration platform, the creation of a powerful political weapon has gone largely unnoticed in the deluge of Executive Orders that characterized the Trump Administration’s opening days.  Although primarily a policy statement regarding immigration enforcement and sanctions against sanctuary jurisdictions, a small section in Executive Order 13768 created a new federal program that focuses solely on crimes committed by aliens who are also subject to removal from the United States.  Named in the E.O. as the Office for Victims of Crimes Committed by Removable Aliens, and later rebranded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as Victim of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE), the program operates with two mandates.  VOICE provides victim services in those instances in which a crime is committed by a removable alien and creates quarterly reports on the effects of crimes committed by removable aliens.

The political usefulness of the VOICE program begins with the suggestion that such an office is even necessary.  VOICE is a redundancy of not only the Office of Victims of Crime, which has existed under the Department of Justice since 1988, but also established crime victim programs in all 50 states, all of which provide the same types of victim services regardless of the immigration status of the offender.  Creating a new program specific to removable alien offenders serves to draw increased attention to criminal aliens in a political environment in which even anecdotal evidence is sufficient imagery to support calls for increased immigration enforcement in furtherance of the overall Trump immigration policy agenda.

The VOICE victim advocacy mission includes providing the immigration status of specific individuals, information which was previously protected from disclosure as personally identifiable information under federal privacy laws.  E.O. 13768 dispenses with those protections by commanding agencies to exclude all non-citizens from privacy policies.  The directive does not limit the removal of those protections to the provision of victim services, but is rather a blanket statement of policy.  Wholesale removal of Privacy Act protections provides pathways to publically disclosing personal identity information of all aliens, whether or not they are subject to removal.  Until legally challenged, this provision of E.O. 13768 grants the administration complete discretion to utilize personally identifiable information to meet both operational and political goals.

Perhaps the most politically important aspect of the VOICE program, however, has little to do with providing services to crime victims.  Quarterly reporting of immigrant crime statistics will create a body of data critical to garnering support for increased immigration enforcement.  Over time, data trends can be utilized to highlight successes in reducing crimes committed by removable aliens.  Conversely, the data can be used to bolster arguments for increased immigration enforcement, much in the same way law enforcement agencies utilize crime data for operational planning, budgeting, and lobbying for resources.  These reporting requirements represent a second redundancy within the VOICE program, as the Federal Bureau of Investigation has compiled and published national crime statistics since the 1930s.  Utilizing a government agency to gather and disseminate data lends an inherent sense of legitimacy to the reporting, adding political potency to the information when it is inevitably used to further a policy agenda or campaign for public office.

The pursuit of efficiency in government would suggest that the goals of the VOICE program could be easily accomplished through the established infrastructure of existing government programs.  That logic, however, requires suspending the reality that public administration and public policy are inseparably intertwined with politics.  VOICE is an excellent example of leveraging public resources for political gains, with any public service impact a secondary consequence.  The creation of the VOICE program was not simply politics over efficiency in government, however, as the Trump administration has also identified reducing government overreach and inefficiency as priorities.  Here we see competing political goals within the administration and the ensuing public policy a product of that conflict.  The politics of public policy often requires the interruption of one initiative in favor of another, even within the same policy platform.

On August 1st, 1981 Music Television (MTV) launched; the first song, The Buggles, “Video Killed the Radio Star”.  The first song was suiting, as the iconic image of the astronaut placing the MTV flag on the moon quickly became synonymous with the changing age of the music medium.  Quickly people flocked to MTV to see new music and find the current trends.  The way in which the news media has changed follows directly in this same path.  Much in the same way the Obama administration made government more accessible to the public, the internet has made media more accessible and interactive.  It has also led to the legacy media having to struggle to stay relevant and in play.  Impacts on public policy remain; the way they touch public policy has changed.  The media’s role in public policy is both central and pivotal; the media acts as the information outlet to the public, while acting as a check for the government.

The legacy media is under fire.  The advent of the internet has created a more interactive medium that has brought forward many different views from around the world.  Walter Lippman wrote of an island where in which Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans lived together in 1914.  The island was secluded from the world, only receiving news every six weeks.  At this time World War I was beginning, the inhabitants of the island were unaware of this.  “For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends, when in fact they were enemies”. This comment shows that how concealed communities were at that time.  The paradigm has changed drastically since then, of which, McLuhan has named the “Global Village”. With this, McLuhan is referencing the change from the seclusion of the past to the international inclusiveness of the current culture. The access to television allowed for people to see far expanses of the world, while the internet has enhanced this with the ability to interact with other cultures.

The vastness of the internet and the expansion of television channels has led to negative externalities, known as “The Expansion of Choice” (EOC).  The EOC refers to the copious amounts of media that the public has access to.  In years past media outlets were limited; however, today consumers have multiple outlets to receive media.  This gives them more entertainment choices, rather than being exposed to the news.  This has led to nightly sitcom’s, comedy talk shows, and even sporting events becoming platforms for political rhetoric.  As this paradigm shift evolved, the concern of political socialization comes into play.

Prior to the 1970’s, it was thought that most youth received their political information via school and from parents.  As research was conducted, it was found that most young people started to receive their political information through some form of mass media. Throughout all forms of media, consumers are exposed to different cultural ideologies.  Forms of mass media have not only formed people’s cultural orientations, they have also restructured them.  This can be described as “resocialization”.  This can be seen in the evolution of sitcoms and other such shows.  This can be shown by the downfall of the Klu Klux Klan (KKK). Prior to television being readily available, families gathered around the radio. A popular show was Superman, the platform which Stetson Kennedy saw to bring down the KKK. Rather than approach the problem head on, he infiltrated a local chapter. He then leaked the names of leaders to the radio show. The show then used the names as despicable villains for Superman to thwart. This quickly changed the view of the KKK, preventing them from functioning.

With the ability to access different media outlets, consumers have the choice of which opinions they want to be exposed to.  This has developed partisan selective exposure (PSE); where in which an individual’s political beliefs dictate their media choices.  A consumer can now avoid opinions that they disagree with and seek self-satisfaction by following only the media of which they agree with.  This has shaped public policy by creating a polarization of the political parties.  Those that choose to allow PSE to be placed on them, limit themselves from opposing views.  This has created the “gridlock” affect in government and social realms.  This limits understanding and bipartisanship.  In years past the legacy media was the only route in which news could be seen or heard.  Consumers are now exposed to fragmented news or news that is tailored to their views.  This creates a further divide amongst the citizens and the political parties.

The media has shaped public policy by using the act of gatekeeping.  This is the determination of which stories will be published or aired.  In doing this the media can control what stories are heard, putting more impacting stories on the frontline.  This harnesses public opinion, moving the public to back certain policies and oppose others. The media also uses the “watchdog” concept to shape public policy.  Investigative journalism has been a cornerstone of the media.  Not only does it draw in consumers, it acts as a watch for political elites. Journalist are the first to expose a problem and make it widely known.  McChesney notions that this paradigm has begun to shift from being a strictly media controlled field to the use of citizen journalism.  This approach uses citizens to collect information and compile it for the professional journalists to publish or broadcast the story.  Through this the media can shape the formation and implementation of policies.

The media shapes public policy in many ways.  While the approach has changed, the affect it has on the government has not.  The reach of the media has increased, the way news is delivered has been altered, and citizen socialization has become dynamic.  Even through all this, the media still has a powerful impact on politicians and public policy.  The media has created an approach that has allowed citizens to be more involved, whether using social media or the use of citizen journalists.  With all this considered, public policy will continue to be affected by the media, regardless of the medium.