You thought Facebook and Twitter were ways to tell the world what you had for breakfast? Or that cellphone texting means you can ask your spouse what’s for dinner?

Well, what about school board and City Council members who use those social media and communication tools to subvert the concept of open government?

The council member who text-messages another member during a meeting and asks, “How am I supposed to vote?”

The school board members who use Facebook’s private chat to decide which contractor should get hired for a multimillion-dollar job.

According to state law, officials are not supposed to deliberate or discuss public matters at any unannounced meeting held in private. And the public has a right to inspect or copy many government records, which can include e-mail and other electronic postings.

The Texas attorney general’s office is strict about that.

But the new communication tools have become “second nature” to everyone, including public officials in Texas, said William McKamie, a San Antonio lawyer who serves as city attorney for several municipalities. People feel more uninhibited about communicating when using them, he said.

That can lead to trouble.

It did lead to two debates Friday in Fort Worth at the annual meeting of the State Bar of Texas.

McKamie suggested that state lawmakers clarify rules about social media for public officials, and he bristled at the idea that elected officials should be so limited in discussing public business.

Sitting beside him on an open-government panel, Wanda Garner Cash, a University of Texas journalism professor, had a different view. The Texas Public Information Act, she said, should apply to all forms of communication. That includes, as an example, smartphones regardless of who owns or is paying for them, she said.

“I disagree with that,” McKamie said.

Cash cut him off: “Public communication is public communication.” Even if an official uses a personal cellphone to discuss public business, it’s still subject to the state law, she said.

But McKamie said public officials “don’t give up their First Amendment rights when they get elected to an office.”

“It has nothing to do with First Amendment rights,” Cash countered. “It has to do with conducting business — whether it’s done on your home phone or your office phone.”

The debate is no longer just theoretical.

Several Texas cities and public officials (including Arlington City Councilman Mel LeBlanc) have sued to remove the criminal penalties in the state’s Public Information Act. A trial is scheduled for fall in a Pecos federal courtroom.

As Rod Ponton, Alpine city attorney and a lead lawyer on the case with Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin, explained it at a second panel discussion Friday: “The First Amendment was written more than 200 years ago and, of course, we didn’t have Twitter. We didn’t have e-mail. We didn’t have electricity. But the idea was that political speech should be protected.”

Ponton said the state law has had a chilling effect on elected and appointed officials’ communication because they are afraid that they could go to jail for up to six months if caught breaking the law.

State Rep. Carol Kent, D-Dallas, also on the panel, said that during her five years as a Richardson school board member, the threat of a criminal conviction “certainly yanks your chain a little bit, and it gets your attention.”

“When you come into office and you take the oath, you know you’re going to face a higher level of scrutiny for the conversations that you have.

“You have to behave differently. You’re going to have to be more careful about the things you do, the things you say.”

Ponton called that unfair. “Public officials shouldn’t lose their rights to speak,” he said.

Hardly, according to panelist Keith Elkins, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. He said his group could find only one example in 40 years where a Texas elected official was convicted and served jail time in such a case.

“I don’t think there is a real rush to the courthouse where overzealous prosecutors are trying to put elected officials in jail. … We hear pretty much hear the opposite.”

People contact a district attorney for help when they believe that their elected officials violated the open-meetings law with private deliberations, but prosecutors don’t want to take the case, he said.

What’s more, “if you only had one violation, something must be working.”

But Ponton said the use of social media may lead to more prosecutions. “Because if tweets go around, or e-mail or Facebook, the discussion of public matters is not posted,” he said. “Now you have an electronic trail which proves there has been political discussion among a quorum, and they could be indicted.”

Kent agreed that it was “chilling in a sense” but said that it was also “being ethically responsive to the notion that the public has a right to know what a school board is thinking about or discussing.”

While McKamie called for state lawmakers to rewrite rules, Cash said little needs to change. Whether you’re conducting public business “in an official meeting or on the hood of a pickup truck,” she said, it’s still the people’s business.

What do you think?

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Want to learn more and see the documents involved? Click on this WatchdogNation.com link to read an earlier post.

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

Have you ever heard of Ravi Batra? He’s a Southern Methodist University Professor of Economics.

Ravi Batra

I’ve never met the man, but I’m familiar with his work.

He was one of few U.S. economists who predicted the Great Recession. He also predicted the rise of Islam and the rise of a charismatic leader (Barack Obama).

Now when he gazes into his crystal ball, he sees more doom and gloom.

And his predictions make sense.

With all the billions of government dollars poured into the U.S. economy, the recovery is still as weak as a patient stuck in intensive care.

According to Gayle Reaves, the top editor at Fort Worth Weekly, Batra now worries about the lack of government regulation.

Reaves writes that, in the professor’s opinion, “the financial reforms being pushed through Congress aren’t enough, that the economic team brought on board by Obama represents just more of the same old stuff, and that too many of the big bankers and other architects of the last crisis are still in power.”

She continues, “Almost no one likes his ideas — except thousands of regular folks, business leaders, and admirers across a spectrum of professional disciplines, who may not agree with Batra on every point but who believe that his theories out to be included in the global debate now going on over how to fix the economy.”

I found Reaves’ profile of Batra very thought provoking and highly recommend that you spend a few minutes reading it. Find  “The U.S. Economy: Still a House of Cards” right here.

The scariest part of the profile? Reaves writes, “Continuation of old policies and old ways of looking at the economy, he says, are going to lead America — and thus the world — to another crisis soon, probably later this year. If and when that happens, Batra says, there will be little capacity left for any more taxpayer bailouts — and with unemployment still at near-record levels, the pain for the country could be much worse even than last time.”

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

I nominate Spencer C. Barasch for an asterisk when the whole story of the Great Recession is told by historians in years to come.

Spencer "Mr. Asterisk" Barasch

He is the Steven Bartman of the financial regulatory world.

In a baseball playoff game at Wrigley Field in 2003, Bartman touched a foul ball and disrupted a potential catch by the Cubs’ outfielder. The Cubs lost the lead — and the game. They never made it to the World Series. So Bartman is the Mr. Asterisk of Cubs’ baseball.

Steve Bartman, the Spencer Barasch of the baseball world

The same can be said for Spencer Barasch, too. I’m sure you don’t know who he is. But it’s important that you know these Dirty Dozen Facts about Mr. Asterisk:

1. Barasch was the former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement office in my hometown of Fort Worth, Texas.

2. In 1997, auditors in that office thought that accused swindler R. Allen Stanford may have been conducting a Ponzi scheme.

3. SEC enforcement, led by Mr. Asterisk, closed that inquiry because, he said, the plan lacked U.S. investors. That decision was described by some insiders as unprecedented. But Mr. Asterisk later explained, according to the SEC Inspector General, that he called Stanford’s attorney to sound out the case against him, and Stanford’s attorney explained why there was no case.

4. In 2002, SEC examiners again referred Stanford to enforcement. Again, Mr. Asterisk’s department took no action.

5. In 2003, the SEC received more complaints about Stanford’s investment scheme but did not act.

6. In 2004, SEC examiners prepared another case against Stanford.

7. In 2005, Mr. Asterisk decided once again that examiners will take no action.

8. That same year, Mr. Asterisk leaves the government for the Dallas law firm, Andrews Kurth, where he works today as a defense attorney. SEC staffers finally refer the case to enforcement, where the next year, the SEC opens an official investigation.

9. After leaving the government, Mr. Asterisk asked the SEC’s ethics branch for permission to represent Stanford. In his e-mail seeking permission, Mr. Asterisk wrote: “Every lawyer in Texas and beyond is going to get rich over this case. Okay? And I hated being on the sidelines.” His request was denied.

10. Even though he was denied, Mr. Asterisk did a small amount of work for Stanford in October, 2006, in apparent violation of SEC rules. The SEC has referred this to the State Bar of Texas.

11. In 2009, the SEC sued Stanford and criminal charges, still pending, were also filed. Victims claim losses around $7 billion. Stanford, who remains in jail, maintains his innocence.

12. On March 31, 2010, the SEC Inspector General released a report that targets Mr. Asterisk for the blame in lack of earlier prosecution. Read the full Inspector General report here.

Do you see why this lawyer should be included in any telling of the Great Recession?

A regulator who thwarts justice because he has other goals in mind — including earning tons of money — is a dream come true for Wall Street and a nightmare for the rest of us.

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

In prison, Bernard Madoff is best buds with reputed Mafia Crime Boss Carmine Persico.

Does this bother you?

It bothers WatchdogNation.com. We can’t stop imagining the ramifications. Somebody says something terrible about Bernie, and Carmine makes a phone call.

Remember this scene from Goodfellas?

So how’s that working for you when the Greatest Thief in History has the Mafia tentacles at his beck and call? How’s that for “putting somebody away and throwing away the key?” Can’t these two dudes be separated?

Carmine Persico

This nugget of information was buried on the bottom of a well-reported story in the March 18, 2010 Wall Street Journal, “Madoff beaten in prison” by Dionne Searcey and Amir Efrati.

Duh.

When Bernie disappeared to the prison infirmary at the North Carolina medium security prison where he is serving a life sentence, everyone said he slipped and fell. Well, it ain’t so.

But buried near the bottom of the lengthy piece is the best part: Bernie is still giving financial advice in prison.

“He gave me ideas on my index funds,” a former inmate told the WSJ.

Quoting the WSJ:

“Mr. Madoff advised him to diversify, saying he should invest in funds that track the S&P 500 index of stocks ‘where my money would be in all the stocks instead of putting my eggs into one basket,’ the former inmate said.

“He said Mr. Madoff also warned him off of day trading. ‘I was trying to get into day trading and he’s like, ‘That’s not for you. That’s for individuals like me with millions to spare,’ ‘ he said.”

Then in the second to the last graph, buried, was this:

“Both inmates said Mr. Madoff also socialized with reputed Columbo crime-family boss Carmine Pesico, whose attorney couldn’t be reached.”

We called the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to discuss this, but as of this posting, no one has returned our call.

And so it brings to mind that legendary food preparation scene in Goodfellas. See it above from youtube.com.

Just change the names to Bernie and Carmine. And don’t put too many onions in the sauce.

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

President Barack Obama’s proposal to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency came in with a bang. But it appears to be going out with a whimper.

Before the proposal was introduced in Congress last year, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said of the economic meltdown. “This crisis was caused, in part, by a lack of consumer protections.”

And?

Watchdog Nation checked in with several Washington, D.C., sources last week to learn what’s happening to the proposal in Congress.

The answer? Not much.

The bill passed the House but is stuck in the Senate.

“Opposition to financial reform is intense, coming in particular from big banks and other monied interests that seek to protect the status quo,” the Consumer Federation of America said in a recent statement.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says a new agency would hurt small-business owners that rely on credit cards, home-equity loans, auto-title loans and other sources of consumer lending to finance their businesses.

“The idea sounds great on its face, but we need to have a serious discussion about what the CFPA would actually do and what authority it would have,” Ryan McKee of the chamber told me. “The potential for unintended consequences is great.”

The CFPA would give federal regulators power to oversee mortgage companies, mortgage brokers, finance companies, payday lenders and other nonbank providers. Businesses would be blocked from offering financial products that charge prepayment penalties, unjustified fees and excessive interest rates.

Supporters say the agency would provide the public with better information about how to avoid so-called abusive lending and credit problems, and would improve disclosure to borrowers.

It would merge the enforcement divisions of several government agencies into the new agency.

The chamber says it worries that small businesses would lose access to credit, something they already struggle with because they are either too small or too new. The predicted result? Business closures, fewer startups, slower growth and the loss of jobs.

The chamber is also concerned that the proposal would ban products that are abusive but doesn’t clearly define abusive, said McKee, senior director for the chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.

Another sticking point for the chamber: The bill requires “too much disclosure” to consumers.

“Having too much disclosure is like having no disclosure at all,” McKee said, adding: “We need to simplify the disclosures so people get straightforward information.”

The chamber’s solution: Close gaps in existing laws that kept regulators from finding major problems; increase authority for regulators to enforce existing rules; and make sure regulators from various agencies communicate better.

The proposal for a CFPA was first floated in 2007, a year before the meltdown, by Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren. She noted that federal regulators won’t allow a toaster that could burst into flames to hit the market. But mortgages and other “dangerous financial products,” she wrote, are not similarly regulated.

Elizabeth Warren

With questionable loans, she wrote, families can suffer from “wiped-out savings, lost homes, higher costs for car insurance, denial of jobs, troubled marriages, bleak retirements and broken lives.”

Warren is considered a strong candidate to head the agency — if it ever comes into existence.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is carrying the ball for the CFPA. But he’s running into a strong defense put up by Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on that panel. Shelby has called the proposal “a folly and dangerous.”

It all comes down to whether Dodd and Shelby can agree on a compromise.

“We have reached an impasse,” Dodd said this month. “While I still hope that we will ultimately have a consensus package, it is time to move the process forward.” Dodd says he hopes to release a new proposal this month.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., explained last year why he believes it’s tough to get a proposal through: “The banks — hard to believe, in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis, that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

Susan K. Weinstock, director of financial reform for the Consumer Federation, said she views that as the major hurdle.

“How much are senators hearing from individual consumers about this? How much do consumers know about this?”

What do you think? I’m most interested in your comments on this.

Better yet, contact your congressional representatives and let them know what you think. If you don’t know who they are, visit www.votesmart.org and type in your zip code — and you’ll quickly find out.

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Do you want to learn more?

House Resolution 4173, known as the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, is now in the Senate.

It merges regulatory powers of the Federal Reserve, Office of Thrift Supervision, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Trade Commission and the National Credit Union Administration.

Here is where you can read more about the actual bill.

Here is where  you can watch videos and read more to learn about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s opposition.

Here is where you can learn about the Consumer Federation of America’s support.

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber