Proposition 16

Posted on June 23, 2021 by George Putnam

This post is about California’s Proposition 16 of 2020.

(Background information about California’s ballot proposition process may be found here.)

Proposition 16 of 2020 (which failed) sought to undo Proposition 209 of 1996 (which passed), so let’s first examine that earlier proposition.

Proposition 209 of 1996 added Section 31 to Article I of the California state constitution, which reads in relevant part:

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

Proposition 209 passed by a margin of 55% in favor to 45% opposed. Votes were cast by 10 million citizens out of 16 million registered voters (66% turnout). (source)

Proposition 16 of 2020 proposed to repeal Section 31 of Article I. Proposition 16 failed by a margin of 57% opposed to 43% in favor. Votes were cast by 18 million citizens out of 22 million registered voters (81% turnout). (source)

There are two ways that propositions can be placed on the ballot in California: by the voters (initiative) or by the legislature (referendum). Proposition 209 of 1996 was a voter initiative. Proposition 16 of 2020 was a referendum put before the voters by the legislature.

Proposition 16 was the result of Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 5 (ACA-5) of 2020:

A resolution to propose to the people of the State of California an amendment to the Constitution of the State, by repealing Section 31 of Article I thereof, relating to government preferences.

ACA-5 was passed by the California legislature one year ago this month by large majorities: 60 to 14 in the 80-member Assembly and 30 to 10 in the 40-member Senate. (source)

In other words, in 2020 the California legislature sought to undo what California voters had initiated and passed in 1996; and the voters soundly rejected this attempt.

ACA-5 included a statement of legislative findings consisting of 19 “WHEREAS” paragraphs explaining why the legislature felt that Section 31 of Article I should be repealed. See ACA-5 here. In brief, the legislature felt that past discrimination and disparate outcomes justified government preferences for women and minorities. The voters did not agree that government preferences are good for society.

Three additional factors warrant noting.

First, Proposition 16 was supported by almost the entire California establishment – not just the legislature, but also:

Senators Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein; former Senator Barbara Boxer; at least 30 Democratic members of the U.S. House, including Nancy Pelosi; and Governor Gavin Newsom, Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, Secretary of State Alex Padilla, State Controller Betty Yee, State Treasurer Fiona Ma, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, Speaker of the Assembly Anthony Rendon, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and hundreds of other local officials. It was also supported by many of the state’s newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, The Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, The San Diego Union-Tribune, La Opinión, the East Bay Times, The Sacramento Bee, The Fresno Bee, and The Modesto Bee. (source)

California’s political and media establishments are significantly out of step with the people on this issue.

Second, supporters of Proposition 16 outspent opponents by $27 million to $1.7 million. (source) The monied establishment is also out of step with the people on this issue.

Third, California voters are notably not right-wing. In the same election in which Proposition 16 was defeated, California voters supported Joe Biden for president by 63% vs. 34% for Donald Trump. (source) That was similar to Vermont: 66% for Biden vs. 31% for Trump. (source) Furthermore, California voters today are more left-leaning and more diverse than in 1996. (source)

For additional perspective, see Conor Friedersdorf’s essay in The Atlantic dated November 10, 2020: Why California Rejected Racial Preferences, Again. Mr. Friedersdorf is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He grew up in and lives in California. He writes insightfully about Proposition 16, and he explains why he voted against it.

Proposition 16 was defeated by a greater margin than Proposition 209 was passed a generation earlier, and with a larger voter turnout. With Proposition 209, California voters rejected racial and gender preferences. With Proposition 16, they said: And we meant it.

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Great Awakenings

Posted on April 19, 2021 by George Putnam

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld wrote the following in the Wall Street Journal on April 15, 2021:

American religious history produced four Great Awakenings—and now American business is sparking a fifth spiritual awakening.

Source: CEOs Lead America’s New Great Awakening

Professor Sonnenfeld is Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies and the Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management. He is considered an authority on corporate governance.

What is he talking about?

A Great Awakening is a period of widespread religious revival. The Wikipedia article on Great Awakening lists the following:

  • First (c. 1730–1755)
  • Second (c. 1790–1840)
  • Third (c. 1855–1930)
  • Fourth (c. 1960–1980)

The First Great Awakening occurred before the American Revolution and affected both Britain and the Thirteen Colonies. It stressed individual piety and salvation. Preachers sought to convert people to various sects of Protestant Christianity without regard to class, race, or gender.

The Second Great Awakening occurred between the American Revolution and the Civil War. It continued the themes of the First Great Awakening and expanded westward from the original Thirteen Colonies. It was often characterized by camp meetings of thousands of people lasting several days. From the Wikipedia link above:

Closely related to the Second Great Awakening were other reform movements such as temperance, abolition, and women’s rights.

Historians mostly agree on the First and Second Great Awakenings, but not so much on the Third and Fourth so I am going to ignore them.

Vermonters played significant roles in the Second Great Awakening as historian Mark Bushnell has noted: In the 1800s, Vermont produced a profusion of prophets (VTDigger, 8/30/2020). John Humphrey Noyes was one of those prophets. He founded the Perfectionists, a sect that was active in several Vermont towns including my town of Cambridge.

Our town offices are located in the Cambridge Town Hall which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Cambridge Meetinghouse. (Photos at the link.) From the nomination form for the listing:

The Cambridge Meetinghouse was erected in 1826 as a Union Church, to be shared by Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, and Universalists. This unusually early example of denominational interaction evolved in just a few years into a radical brand of anti-sectarianism which kept the church, and at times the whole town, in a state of “wild excitement,” in which “the regular labors and duties of life were broken up, and in some cases dispensed with altogether. Business was suspended.” Known in the early years as Truarism, this religious ferment came to a head in the 1840’s when members of the church calling themselves Perfectionists established a free love commune in Cambridge. By 1852, they had moved away, mostly to the famous silver-making commune at Oneida, New York, and the church’s revolutionary period ended.

The Second Great Awakening brought “wild excitement” even to my town!

The First and Second Great Awakenings occurred in the context of the Romantic movement which was a reaction to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was about reason. The Romantic movement was about emotion. (More discussion of this theme is in the Wikipedia article on Romanticism.)

We need both reason and emotion in our world and in our lives, but we should think carefully about where each belongs. In an earlier post, I wrote about classifying public life into three sectors:

  • Government
  • For-profit
  • Not-for-profit

Government based on the rule of law depends on reason. Religion is part of the not-for-profit sector and can involve emotion as noted above. We have a strong tradition in our country of separation of church and state.

What about the for-profit sector? Let’s return to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his business CEOs.

I agree with Professor Sonnenfeld that the social justice movement in our world today can be characterized as a Great Awakening. Matthew Yglesias called it The Great Awokening (Vox, 4/1/2019). In my town there is a prominent sign saying “Believe” (see photo above). That is consistent with a religious movement.

I do not agree that CEOs are leaders in this movement. The movement for social justice began years ago in the not-for-profit sector, and gained momentum during the pandemic lockdown following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day in 2020. The CEOs that Professor Sonnenfeld writes about are now joining this movement. They are followers.

Whether CEOs are leaders or followers, is it a good thing for them to be promoters of the current movement for social justice? Professor Sonnenfeld thinks so. I am not so sure because it seems to me that the Enlightenment is working. Further discussion on that topic is for another day. My point in this post is to agree with Professor Sonnenfeld that we are in the midst of a Great Awakening.

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Is Town Meeting Obsolete?

Posted on March 22, 2021 by George Putnam

Is Town Meeting Obsolete? That was the question of an online debate sponsored by the Moore Free Library of Newfane, Vermont, on March 16, 2021, two weeks after Town Meeting Day.

Arguing for the question were:

Arguing against the question were:

The debate was moderated by Meg Mott, Ph.D. (pictured): Constitution Wrangler, Professor Emerita of Politics at Emerson College, and Putney town moderator.

Richard Watts discussed the seminal research about town meeting conducted by Frank Bryan of UVM, whose students attended and documented 1,500 town meetings over 30 years. Dr. Bryan summarized that research in his 2003 book Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works. After a hiatus, Dr. Bryan’s research is being continued by Dr. Watts. Dr. Watts cited the declining attendance at town meeting documented by this research.

Susan Clark referred to All Those In Favor, co-authored with Frank Bryan, as the “Reader’s Digest version” of Real Democracy. Susan’s other book is also relevant to this discussion: Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home, co-authored with Woden Teachout. In her debate comments, Susan mentioned the research about town meeting by Jane Mansbridge of Harvard University, and the research about human behavior by Jonathan Haidt of New York University.

Annamarie Pluhar discussed the research about social capital by Robert Putnam of Harvard University. Her view: “As long as we have towns, we need town meeting.”

Howard Burrows talked about how libraries are changing. He believes that libraries can assume much of the role of town meeting.

There was good audience participation in the debate, including by Jerry Cole, the Cambridge town moderator. At the end of the debate, Meg Mott asked the audience to vote on the question. It was unanimous:

The negative has it, and the affirmative was heard.

Click here for the announcement about the debate.

Click here to watch the debate: Is Town Meeting Obsolete?

The Brattleboro Reformer wrote about the debate here. This event followed the debate guidelines of Braver Angels and was made possible by funding from the Vermont Humanities Council. Librarian Erica Walch of the Moore Free Library coordinated the technology for this event.

Questions about town meeting are not new. I first encountered these issues soon after I started this blog in 2017. See Town Meeting Thoughts. The discussion continues!

Town meeting this year in my town of Cambridge, Vermont, is discussed in the preceding post: Town Meeting 2021. Like most towns in Vermont this year, we abandoned our traditional in-person meeting because of the pandemic lockdown. All issues this year were decided by Australian ballot. I hope that our 2022 town meeting returns to the traditional in-person meeting. I do believe that town meeting helps build social capital and citizenship skills, both of which are needed in our society today more than ever.

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Town Meeting 2021

Posted on March 21, 2021 by George Putnam

There was no traditional town meeting in my town of Cambridge, Vermont, this year. Like the majority of Vermont towns, we voted all items by Australian ballot because of the pandemic lockdown.

In-person voting took place on Town Meeting Day, the first Tuesday in March, in the gymnasium of the Cambridge Elementary School. The photo is from the foyer, looking out through the window toward Mount Mansfield. It was a cold day, 0°F in the morning.

We held a public informational hearing on February 25 as required by law (must be within the 10 days prior to Town Meeting Day). Click here for a summary of that hearing.

A total of 425 people voted, with 209 voting early/absentee. All articles passed. There were three contested elections:

  • Selectboard for 2 years: Larry Wyckoff 252, Teelah Hall 154. Larry was the incumbent.
  • Auditor for 1 year: Jill Bryce 205, Cindy Vaughn 151. This was an open seat.
  • Library Trustee for 5 years: Carol Plante 207, Justin Marsh 196. Carol was the incumbent.

Full results on the town website here.

An unexpected event occurred in Cambridge on the day after town meeting, when Dana Sweet retired from the selectboard after 32 years of distinguished service. Dana was mentioned in this post last month: Rumble Strip: Town Meeting.

The selectboard has called a special town meeting for May 11 to elect a successor. In the meantime, the selectboard appointed Jane Porter as interim selectboard member. Jane served the town for 41 years as town clerk/treasurer, retiring in 2016.

Although the population is rapidly being vaccinated against COVID-19, the pandemic lockdown is not yet over, and the election on May 11 will be by Australian ballot, same as the annual town meeting that was held on March 2.

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Vermont’s superpower

Posted on February 15, 2021 by George Putnam

The following commentary in VTDigger by Susan Clark on 2/05/2021 is excellent:

Vermont’s superpower, revealed: The ability to practice local democracy

Susan’s thesis is that: a) civic skills acquired by actively practicing local democracy, especially in Vermont’s town meetings, are a kind of superpower:

[C]enturies of Town Meeting Day deliberations may have imbued our democratic DNA with powers worthy of Marvel action heroes.

And: b) our country desperately needs this superpower today.

But this year, as Susan notes, many in-person town meetings are being replaced by voting at the ballot box due to the pandemic lockdown. (See this article in VTDigger on 2/09/2021: Most 2021 Vermont town meetings will give way to ballot votes.) Voting by Australian ballot, as we call it here in Vermont, is poisonous to our superpower.

Voting by ballot is easier and quicker than attending a meeting. Susan goes on:

Some towns will even ask, why not make the switch permanent? Watching the rest of the nation struggle in 2020 demonstrates the answer: Because forgoing regular, empowered community deliberation is Kryptonite to a healthy democracy.

This is the same theme as Erica Heilman’s podcast in my previous post: Rumble Strip: Town Meeting. I encourage you to read Susan Clark’s commentary and listen to Erica Heilman’s podcast.

(I have known Susan Clark for years. I’ve mentioned her several times on this blog.)

Few places in the world hold town meetings like Vermont. They are held elsewhere in New England and in Switzerland. But it is a Vermont town meeting that is depicted in Norman Rockwell’s famous Freedom of Speech painting, shown above. The story of that iconic painting and the town meeting that inspired it is told here.

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Rumble Strip: Town Meeting

Posted on February 7, 2021 by George Putnam



The Rumble Strip podcast by Erica Heilman on 2/05/2021 titled “Town Meeting” is excellent! It is well worth 30 minutes of your time.

[Town meeting] is the most civilized and surprising social gathering of the year, every year. [Erica at 1:50]

Town Meeting Day in Vermont is the first Tuesday in March. It will be different this year because of the pandemic lockdown. Many towns, including Cambridge, will not be gathering in person. In this podcast Erica interviews several town meeting moderators about why town meeting is important, and what we will be missing this year. Following are selected comments, to entice you to listen to the whole thing.

Starting at about 24:00, Susan Clark of Middlesex talks about “town meeting culture”:

We have expectations in Vermont of civility. We have expectations of inclusion. We expect to be asked about things before decisions come down. We have democratic expectations in Vermont that other places might not have, that I think many other places do not have, because of a town meeting culture that we have created over centuries.

At 8:50 Paul Doton of Barnard talks about how town meeting works:

One of the things I point out is that everybody addresses their comments to the moderator, and the moderator will ask the questions, so there aren’t two people that are arguing across the room – which can be, and has been sometimes a problem because emotions get in the way, and I try to make sure that emotions are set aside.

(I have known Susan Clark and Paul Doton for years. I’ve mentioned Susan several times on this blog.)

Susan and Paul and the other moderators interviewed by Erica are talking about deciding issues in a meeting after discussion. They are not talking about deciding issues by merely casting a ballot, or Australian ballot as we call it in Vermont. Voting by pre-printed ballot does not build the “town meeting culture” mentioned above. It destroys it.

Australian balloting ought to be outlawed, as far as I’m concerned. [State Senator Bobby Starr of Troy at 18:35]

In addition to interviewing town meeting moderators, Erica also plays clips from several town meetings from various towns and years. The following speaker at 19:35 is not identified, but residents of Cambridge who regularly attend town meeting will immediately recognize the voice and know exactly what he is talking about:

You know right now, the house, the old Meigs house right there by Tobin’s old garage, every time it floods, that fills the basement with water. I talked to Pat Mayo, where Pat Mayo grew up [nearby]. He said, that was nothing, he says our house was always full of water. I said, you know, we turn around and build that road up now, you think about it, somebody else is going to pay for it.

That is Dana Sweet speaking at the 2018 Cambridge town meeting. Video here. Commentary here. He is speaking at 4:41:40 under Article 11 – Discussion of other nonbinding business.

Dana is talking about a problem that bedeviled Cambridge for years: how to deal with periodic flooding of the Lamoille River across Route 15 and Pumpkin Harbor Road that cut off access to Bartlett Hill Road.  There was no perfect solution, and various residents had strong and incompatible opinions about the matter. After years of discussions, the town finally implemented a solution in 2019. It did involve building up “that road” (Pumpkin Harbor Road) which Dana spoke about in his comments, but that seemed to be the best solution for the most people.

No sooner was the project completed than it was tested by the “Halloween Flood” of 2019. The project was a success. The town wrote about that flood, including access to Bartlett Hill Road during the flood, in the 2019 town report. See the cover, the inside front cover, the message from Emergency Management Director Dan St. Cyr on page 1, and the Selectboard Report on page 12.

Further to Dana’s comments above, in the summer of 2020, with federal funds and at the request of the owner, the town purchased and demolished “the old Meigs house” at 57 Pumpkin Harbor Road. As a condition of the federal grant, that flood-prone lot will never be developed again.

That is a good example of the kinds of issues that citizens grapple with at town meeting in Vermont, solving real problems that affect our communities.

And that is a good example of a local official who knows the town and its people. See Dana Sweet Wins Marvin Award. Dana has been on the Cambridge selectboard since 1989, and I have been proud to serve with him since 2017. (I’m just a newbie.)

Again, here is the link for this excellent Rumble Strip podcast by Erica Heilman:

https://rumblestripvermont.com/2021/02/town-meeting/

For more about town meeting, see posts on this blog with the “Town Meeting” tag.

UPDATE 2/15/2021: See also the next post Vermont’s superpower. It is about Susan Clark’s commentary in VTDigger on 2/05/2021: “Vermont’s superpower, revealed: The ability to practice local democracy.” The theme is similar.

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Movie Recommendation

Posted on December 24, 2020 by George Putnam

This is a good time of year for watching movies. My movie recommendation for 2020 is Hamilton: An American Musical.

What a year this has been! Impeachment, covid, lockdowns, George Floyd riots, the 2020 election. Hamilton is an important story about the past, a source of perspective on the present, and a wellspring of wisdom for the future.

How about that 1800 election? That was a wild one! Is America racist? How should we govern ourselves? Hamilton speaks to all of these questions and much, much more.

Hamilton was wildly popular on stage from its debut in 2015 until the pandemic struck earlier this year. Disney Plus released the movie on its streaming platform in July so that people could enjoy this masterpiece in their homes during the lockdowns. I watched it at the time and blogged about it: Hamilton: An American Musical. I recently re-watched it, and tweaked my July post. Even more now than last summer, I believe that Hamilton has lessons for our time.

Plus it’s great entertainment!

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Town Agents in Cambridge

Posted on December 6, 2020 by George Putnam

This post is part of a series of posts on “Learning about town government” in my town of Cambridge, Vermont. Please see the link for context, a disclaimer, and a list of posts in this series.

The 2019 annual report for the Town of Cambridge lists two elected agents of the town (page 19): Agent to Convey Real Estate and Agent to Prosecute & Defend.

What are these positions in town government?

Well, the reason for writing this post is that the Legislature has eliminated both positions. Act 84 of 2020 removed all references to these positions in state law effective July 1, 2020.

OK, what were these positions in town government?

The Vermont Secretary of State provides a handy list of Local Office Descriptions, and it has not yet been updated for Act 84. Here is what it says:

Agent to Convey Real Estate. Executes deeds on behalf of the town. 24 V.S.A. § 1061

Town Agent. The town agent used to prosecute and defend suits. The selectboard now has that authority. Thus, the town agent’s duty consists merely of assisting when litigation is in progress, at the request of the selectboard. (Generally not a very active position.) 17 V.S.A. § 2646(11)

Regarding the conveyance of real estate, Act 84 provides that the selectboard shall designate an agent for that purpose when needed, and record such designation in the land records. Typically such an agent will be a member of the selectboard. As a practical matter, it is not often that the town needs such an agent, because it is not often that the town conveys real estate.

Regarding the town agent to prosecute and defend suits, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns wrote the following in their 2011 Handbook for Vermont Selectboards, page 43:

The town agent plays a limited role in town government. Although statute provides that an agent to prosecute and defend suits must be elected, no statute provides the agent with any independent authority to act. In fact, case law makes it clear that the town agent has no authority to originate suits in favor of the town or to settle or compromise suits in which the town has an interest, but that the agent’s duty consists merely of assisting when litigation is in progress. Cabot v. Britt, 36 Vt. 349 (1863); Clay v. Wright, 44 Vt. 538 (1872). In addition, the fact that a town agent is elected does not remove the authority of the selectboard to hire an attorney to represent the town, to conduct litigation and to settle suits on behalf of the town. Accordingly, many towns do not have active town agents, and those that do often limit the agent’s activities to picking an attorney for the town or acting as a liaison between the selectboard and the town attorney in particular matters.

It is amusing to note that it took the Legislature more more than 150 years to clean up an issue in state law that the courts first identified in 1863 and again in 1872.

Act 84 of 2020 is a welcome improvement. It simplifies town government in a good way. Kudos to the Legislature.

Click here to go to the initial post in this series: “Learning about town government.”

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The Day After the Election

Posted on November 4, 2020 by George Putnam

It’s the day after the election. Ballots are still being counted in some states. Where are we?

There are 538 electoral votes in the election for president. It takes 270 votes to win. As of about 4 PM ET today, the Washington Post (WaPo) reports:

With 237 electoral votes for Biden and 214 for Trump, that leaves 87 votes that are too close to call. WaPo lists five undecided “battleground states” with 78 electoral votes, and shows Biden leading in two states with 27 electoral votes and Trump leading in three states with 51 electoral votes:

The remaining 9 electoral votes are:

Alaska 3 – Trump leading
Nevada 6 – Biden leading

If each candidate wins every state in which they are currently leading, Biden will win the election 270 to 268. That’s a close election.

Link to WaPo’s election page: https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/

Biden won my state of Vermont with 65.5% of the vote. My town of Cambridge voted 68.6% for Biden. (source) Vermont does not allow mailed ballots received after election day to be counted. All ballots have been counted in Vermont, except some cities and towns may still be counting write-in votes.

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Media: Crossfire Hurricane

Posted on October 11, 2020 by George Putnam

An occasional theme of this blog is: can we trust the media to tell us about the world in an accurate and balanced way? The example in this post involves presidential elections.

All news sources have biases. The takeaway from this example is that perhaps we should get our news from a variety of sources.

Crossfire Hurricane was the name of the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into possible improper links between the 2016 Trump campaign, and later the Trump administration, and Russia. The investigation was opened on July 31, 2016 and continued until May 17, 2017 when it was taken over by the Mueller investigation.

On Tuesday, October 6, 2020 the Trump administration declassified two documents related to Crossfire Hurricane, both involving the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):

  • Handwritten notes by then-CIA Director John Brennan in late July 2016 about a briefing that he gave to President Obama and other senior officials about “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 26 July of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to villify (sic) Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.” (link)
  • A memo from the CIA to the director of the FBI dated September 7, 2016 about “US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” (link)

Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University. On October 7 he wrote on his blog about this news and he made the following points:

  • Whether true or not, this is big news. If true, it would indicate that the highest levels of the Obama administration knew well before the 2016 election about efforts to invent Russian scandals implicating the Trump campaign. If false, “it would show a breathtaking effort [by the Trump administration] to lie to the voters before the [2020] election.”
  • Yet according to Professor Turley there is an “utter blackout on the story” by major news outlets.

Let’s do a survey. I subscribe to four national newspapers. Did they cover this story?

Three of the national newspapers to which I subscribe are well known: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. The fourth newspaper is not well known: the Epoch Times. I wrote about the Epoch Times in April (here) where I noted that they dislike Communist China and are “more supportive of President Trump than my other newspapers, so I will read their reporting skeptically.”

With that background in mind, following are comments about the reporting in these four newspapers of the declassification of the two documents discussed above. I searched for “Brennan” on and after October 6. Below I note the first article that I found in each newspaper. My comments are ranked (in my view) from worst coverage (#4) to best (#1):

#4. New York Times, October 9: John Ratcliffe Pledged to Stay Apolitical. Then He Began Serving Trump’s Political Agenda. Professor Turley was right – the NYT completely ignored the declassified documents. This is several days after the declassification. There is no mention of  the declassified documents. This article is an attempt to generally discredit Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe, who declassified the documents.

#3. Washington Post, October 8: DNI Ratcliffe has broken his promise to keep politics out of intelligence, intelligence veterans say. This article is one day earlier than the NYT article, so it is more timely. This article has the same major theme as the NYT article, an attempt to generally discredit Mr. Ratcliffe, but the two declassified documents identified above are briefly mentioned beginning in the 7th paragraph.

#2. Wall Street Journal, October 7: Trump’s Intelligence Chief Releases More Than 1,000 Pages of Documents. This article is one day earlier than the WaPo article, so it is even more timely. But this article covers two different news stories. On October 6, DNI Ratcliffe released to the public the two documents identified above. On October 7, he announced that he had released to the Department of Justice nearly 1,000 pages of other documents; he did not release those documents to the public. This WSJ article is primarily about the second release. The first release is briefly mentioned beginning in the 10th paragraph.

While the Wall Street Journal news pages did not do a great job covering this story, there was better discussion in the editorial pages. See James Comey Can’t Recall on October 7.

#1. Epoch Times, October 7: Former CIA Director Says Trump Admin Declassified Agency Records for Political Gain. This is by far the best coverage of these four newspapers. It is timely. It is specifically about the two declassified documents identified above, especially Mr. Brennan’s handwritten notes. The article gives Mr. Brennan’s side of the story. And it links to the actual documents that were released. The two documents are linked above, so you can see them for yourself. I got the documents from this Epoch Times article.

The Epoch Times covered the release of 1,000 pages of documents to the Department of Justice (not the public) in a separate article: DNI Releases 1,000 Pages of Material to Durham Investigators. Both articles in the Epoch Times were by the same reporter (Ivan Pentchoukov) on the same day (October 7). But unlike the WSJ, the Epoch Times didn’t bury the disclosure of the two documents identified above in an article primarily about a different disclosure.

Further, the Epoch Times had a good editorial on October 8 that put the disclosure of the two documents identified above in perspective: The American Public Deserves to Know. This editorial makes the point that the documents that were declassified were heavily redacted, so we are unable to truly assess their significance – and that this is a matter of considerable importance to our country:

The American people deserve to have full transparency and accountability for the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation of a presidential campaign, which in turn will be a key remedy to restore the broken trust tens of millions have in the system.

By “the system” the Epoch Times means institutions of government such as the FBI and CIA. There is also a need “to restore the broken trust” in the media. That was part of the message of Professor Turley’s column. In the present example, I was disappointed in the subpar reporting by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the news pages of the Wall Street Journal. The Epoch Times is not a perfect news source either, as noted above, but in this instance they had the best reporting. Perhaps we should all get our news from a variety of sources.

Here is the link again to Professor Turley’s column: “A Means Of Distracting The Public”: Brennan Briefed Obama On Clinton “Plan” To Tie Trump To Russia.

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