Year: 2016

I Need to Stop Calling Him Governor Rat F%$#*

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He just jammed up the useless Baltimore Executive to force him to install air-conditioning before the start of the next school year instead of waiting for at least 3 years, and now he going to sign into a law a bill that provides free birth control to Marylanders:

Advocates say a new Maryland law will place the state at the forefront of efforts to require insurance plans to offer birth control at no out-of-pocket cost, expanding access to women and men who want to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

 The law goes further than President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which already reduced costs for women seeking birth control in many cases.

 Under the Contraceptive Equity Act, Maryland will be the first state to require insurance companies to cover over-the-counter emergency contraceptives, such so called morning-after pills, at no cost. Maryland also will be the first state prohibiting out-of-pocket costs for men who have vasectomies.

 Advocates who pushed the bill through the General Assembly say Maryland is the first state to pass such a comprehensive approach.

 “Maryland is on the forefront across the board with this act,” said Karen Nelson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Maryland.

 Other provisions prohibit co-payments for any type of contraceptive and also ban preauthorization requirements for long-acting contraceptives such as IUDs. The law allows women to receive six months’ worth of birth control pills at one time.

Did I mention that he’s a Republican?

While I am not a fan of of the governor or many of his policies, he is not the kind of batsh%$ insane Australopithecine of many other (Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Paul LePage, Bruce Rauner, Sam Brownback, Matt Bevin, Rick Snyder, Pat McCrory,Greg Abbott, etc.) Republican governors.

Credit where credit is due.  He did the right thing. 

*Full disclosure, when we had problems with health insurance exchange, we called our state senator, and we ended getting a call from Hogan’s office, where a staffer fixed the problem.

It Appears that the Stagflation of the 1970s Never Happened

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Oil Shock, Not Stagglation

We all know the story, how the “Stagflation” of the 1970s, a prolonged period of high inflation and low growth, broke our economy, and how Keynsian economics failed us, so we turned to Snake Oil Monetarist and Supply Side Economics.

It turns out that it never happened:

In a conversation with Dean Baker recently, I learned something interesting. This won’t be new to anyone deeply familiar with inflation statistics, but it was new to me. Maybe it will be new to you too.

The general subject is the stagflation of the 70s, which ushered in supply-side economics and the Reagan era. More specifically, the issue is the measurement of inflation during part of this era. Housing costs are incorporated into the CPI by measuring rents, but prior to 1982 it was done by directly measuring the price of buying a house. In an era when interest rates were steady, this didn’t matter much, but when interest rates went crazy in the mid-70s it made a big difference, overstating inflation by about two percentage points. If you correct for this, and also take a look at exactly when the worst periods of stagflation occurred, you get this:

(See picture)

If you correct the inflation figures and account for the two oil shocks of the 70s, the period from 1970-85 looks remarkably steady. Inflation and GDP growth are both running at about 4 percent for nearly the entire time.

So the sequence is:

  • Oil shock depresses economy and drives up prices.
  • Fed panics, and tightening pre-1982 erroneously drives up inflation statistics.
  • Fed continues to freak.
  • Rinse, lather, repeat.

Keynes was, and remains, right.

Primary Results

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Bernie Sanders won in both the West Virginia primary and the Nebraska Democratic caucus (Oops, over a month ago), while Trump crushed it in the West Virginia primary and the Nebraska Republican primary.

Sanders won by about 15% in both races.

And this just in, Francisco Franco the Ted Cruz campaign is still dead.

Straight from Bag Full of Cats* to Stuffing Rabid Ferrets down One’s Trousers

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The speaker of Brazil’s lower house has reversed himself and the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff for excessively rosy budget predictions is back on:

The drive to oust President Dilma Rousseff is back on track after the head of the lower house reversed a decision that had earlier threatened to throw the entire impeachment process into chaos.

Lawmaker Waldir Maranhao released a statement in the dead of night revoking his own call to annul impeachment sessions in the lower house. That puts the Senate back in the spotlight, with a vote on whether to put the unpopular president on trial still slated for Wednesday. If successful, it would temporarily remove her from office. Rousseff is charged with illegally using state banks to plug a hole in the budget.

This is seriously f%$#ed up.

*Yes, I know, I’m overusing this metaphor.

Al-Gebra Terrorist Operative Uncovered on American Airlines Flight

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My bad, not Al-Gebra, Algebra.

It turns that an award winning economist of Italian descent was ethnically profiled for doing mathematics for a talk that he was going to give:

On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive skin and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse.

Or so dozens of unsuspecting passengers thought.

The curly-haired man tried to keep to himself, intently if inscrutably scribbling on a notepad he’d brought aboard. His seatmate, a blond-haired, 30-something woman sporting flip-flops and a red tote bag, looked him over. He was wearing navy Diesel jeans and a red Lacoste sweater – a look he would later describe as “simple elegance” – but something about him didn’t seem right to her.

………

Then, for unknown reasons, the plane turned around and headed back to the gate. The woman was soon escorted off the plane. On the intercom a crew member announced that there was paperwork to fill out, or fuel to refill, or some other flimsy excuse; the curly-haired passenger could not later recall exactly what it was.

The wait continued.

Finally the pilot came by, and approached the real culprit behind the delay: that darkly-complected foreign man. He was now escorted off the plane, too, and taken to meet some sort of agent, though he wasn’t entirely sure of the agent’s affiliation, he would later say.

And then the big reveal: The woman wasn’t really sick at all! Instead this quick-thinking traveler had Seen Something, and so she had Said Something.

That Something she’d seen had been her seatmate’s cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.

The curly-haired man laughed.

He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or another foreign language, or even some special secret terrorist code. They were math.

Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

Had the crew or security members perhaps quickly googled this good-natured, bespectacled passenger before waylaying everyone for several hours, they might have learned that he — Guido Menzio — is a young but decorated Ivy League economist. And that he’s best known for his relatively technical work on search theory, which helped earn him a tenured associate professorship at the University of Pennsylvania as well as stints at Princeton and Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

We are a nation of panicked cowards, soiling ourselves at the smallest provocation.

God Bless the 2nd Amendment

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This year toddlers have shot at least 23 people:

This past week, a Milwaukee toddler fatally shot his mother after finding a handgun in the back seat of the car they were riding in. The case drew a lot of national attention given the unusual circumstances: Little kids rarely kill people, intentionally or not.

………

 Last year, a Washington Post analysis found that toddlers were finding guns and shooting people at a rate of about one a week. This year, that pace has accelerated. There have been at least 23 toddler-involved shootings since Jan. 1, compared with 18 over the same period last year.

 In the vast majority of cases, the children accidentally shoot themselves. That’s happened 18 times this year, and in nine of those cases the children died of their wounds.

America, F%$# Yeah!!

I Gotta Find Another Metaphor, This Is the 3Rd Time in as Many Days That I Am Referring To, “A Bagfull of Cats”

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This time, I am referring to Ted Cruz, who is making noises about reentering the primary race:

Ever since Ted Cruz dropped out of the Republican presidential race last week, Glenn Beck and his co-hosts have been holding on to a sliver of hope that if Cruz could still somehow manage to win today’s Republican primary in Nebraska, that would convince the Texas senator to unsuspend his campaign and re-enter the race.

Today, Cruz called into Beck’s radio program and Beck’s co-host Pat Gray directly asked Cruz about this possibility.

“If Nebraska were to somehow miraculously choose you tonight,” Gray asked, “if that happened, would you consider getting back in the race?”

Cruz responded that he would certainly be open to that admittedly slight possibility.

Please.

Make.

Ir,

Stop.

H/t Charlie Pierce.

Not a Surprise

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The Military Times conducted a survey which showed that members of the military support Trump by a large margin:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Spokane, Wash., on May 7, 2016.(Photo: Ted S. Warren/AP)

In a new survey of American military personnel, Donald Trump emerged as active-duty service members’ preference to become the next U.S. president, topping Hillary Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin. However, in the latest Military Times election survey, more than one in five troops said they’d rather not vote in November if they have to choose between just those two candidates.

But given only those choices, 21 percent of the service members surveyed said they would abstain from voting.More than 54 percent of the 951 troops Military Times surveyed said they would vote for Trump, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, over Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. Only about 25 percent said they would vote for Clinton in that matchup.

This is not surprising:

  • The military trends conservative.
  • Clinton is more likely to squander blood and treasure in an unnecessary war than anyone this side of Richard Bruce Cheney.

It’s unlikely that the military vote will be decisive, but I gotta figure that they are sick and tired of useless and meaningless losing wars.

    Irony is Officially Dead

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    Ashton Carter, the Secretary of State, just issued the highest civilian award that the Pentagon can issue to a civilian to Henry Kissinger:

    Secretary of Defense Ash Carter hosts an award ceremony honoring Dr. Henry A. Kissinger for his years of distinguished public service at 4 p.m. EDT, in the Pentagon.  Media interested in covering the ceremony should plan on meeting in Room 2D961 by 3:45 p.m. to be escorted to the ceremony.  Foreign journalists without a Pentagon building pass must plan on being escorted from the River Entrance Pedestrian Bridge only, or, if arriving at the Pentagon Metro Entrance Facility, must contact 703-697-5131 a minimum of one hour prior to arrival.  Please arrive no later than 45 minutes before the event if coming by Metro.  U.S. journalists without a Pentagon building pass will be picked up at the River Entrance Pedestrian Bridge or the Pentagon Metro Visitors Entrance only.  If arriving by Metro, please contact 703-697-5131 a minimum of one hour prior to arrival, and plan to arrive no later than 30 minutes before the event; have proof of affiliation and photo identification.  Please call 703-697-5131 for escort into the building.

    If you are unaware of his record, here is a quick primer:

    On Monday afternoon, at 4 pm Eastern, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter will host an awards ceremony at the Pentagon honoring one of the world’s most notorious war criminals.

    The criminal in question, Dr. Henry Kissinger, has never been charged. But the evidence that he aided and abetted war crimes during his time in the White House advising Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford is well-established and overwhelming.

    While Kissinger deserves real credit for some of America’s most important Cold War victories, including Nixon’s diplomatic opening to China, he is also responsible for some of its worst atrocities. Carpet-bombing Cambodia, supporting Pakistan’s genocide in Bangladesh, greenlighting the Argentinian dictatorship’s murderous crackdown on dissidents — all of those were Kissinger initiatives, all pushed in the name of pursuing American national interests and fighting communism.
    While the Obama administration might want to pretend that only the first half of his résumé exists, that doesn’t change reality. The secretary of defense is handing an award to a man whose actions belie the values Obama administration claims to stand for. It’s hardly alone in this: Kissinger has been treated as an elder statesman in polite Washington society for decades. But this is the most recent example, and one of the most high-profile, of polite Washington society rewriting Kissinger’s legacy. Let’s not forget what it really is.
     

    ………
     
    Most infamously, Kissinger masterminded a Nixon-era plan to carpet-bomb Cambodia. Nominally, the bombing — which indiscriminately hit targets in civilian-populated areas — was supposed to destroy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong bases. In reality, it was designed to improve America’s strategic position before a negotiated withdrawal.
     
    ………

    American bombs killed between 150,000 and 500,000 people in Cambodia. That created a swell of public support for Pol Pot and his communist Khmer Rouge rebels, who exploited popular anger at the bombings to seize control of the government in 1975. The Khmer Rouge then slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and starved even more, ultimately killing at least a million people, about one-seventh of the country’s population.
     
    ………
     
    He pulled the US consul general in Dhaka, Archer Blood, from his post for questioning the policy, and blocked efforts to pressure Pakistan (a US ally) to end its slaughter. The killing only stopped after India intervened to stop it; estimates of the death toll range from 300,000 to 3 million.
     
    ………
     

    In 2014, newly declassified documents suggested that in the 1970s, Kissinger signaled to Argentina’s right-wing military leaders that the US would not object to its plans to launch a 1976 crackdown on dissent that became known as the Dirty War — which killed about 30,000 people.

    He’s kind of like Stalin, without the charm.

    This is some unbelievably f%$#ed up sh%$.

    Yeah, This Really Inspires Support for the TTIP

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    The US ambassador to Italy, a political appointee by Obama, is saying that the US and Europe need to approve the trade deal in order to prevent prosecution of the banksters at the mega-banks:

    On May 7th, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or German Economic News, headlined, “USA planen mit TTIP Frontal-Angriff auf Gerichte in Europa” or “U.S. Plans Frontal Attack on Europe’s Courts via TTIP,” and reported that, “America’s urgency to sign TTIP with Europe has solid reason: Megabanks must protect themselves from claims by European investors who allege that they were cheated during the debt crisis. … The U.S. Ambassador to Italy has now let the cat out of the bag on this — probably unintentionally.”

    In this particular case, the megabank that’s being sued isn’t American but German, Deutsche Bank, which the U.S. Ambassador to Italy has cited as his example to defend, perhaps so as to appeal to Germans to protect their megabanks against lawsuits from foreign investors (such as Italians) who complain. In that case it was investors in the Italian city of Trani, population 53,000. The smallness of the city was an issue the Ambassador raised against the suit’s having been brought there.

    Reuters headlined on May 6th, “Italian prosecutor investigates Deutsche Bank over 2011 bond sale”, and reported that, “An Italian prosecutor is investigating Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) over its sale of 7 billion euros ($8 billion) of Italian government bonds five years ago, an investigative source told Reuters. A prosecutor in Trani, a town in southern Italy, is investigating because Deutsche Bank allegedly told clients in a research note in early 2011 that Italy’s public debt was no cause for concern, and then sold almost 90 percent of its own holding of the country’s bonds.” The U.S. bond-rating agencies are also subjects in this suit, because Trani had relied upon their ratings of those bonds.

    The Obama Administration (through its Italian Ambassador) seems thus to be saying, in effect, that unless TTIP is passed into law, Europe’s megabanks (and the U.S. bond-rating agencies, S&P, Moody’s and Fitch) will be able successfully to be sued by cheated investors, just as has been happening with such American banks as JPMorgan/Chase and Goldman Sachs in the United States, which — since TTIP hasn’t yet been in force anywhere, including in the U.S. — were forced to pay billions to cheated investors. Apparently, Obama would be happier if those suits had been impossible in the U.S. The argument here, though only implicitly, seems to be that TTIP is the way to protect megabanks and the bond-rating firms. It concerns specifically the selling of sophisticated derivative investments.

    I didn’t think that there was any bit of news that would make me more opposed to the TTIP or TPP.

    I was misinformed.

    Meet the Old Boss, Same as the Old Boss

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    Hillary is now actively courting Bush donors:

    Hillary Clinton’s supporters in recent days have been making a furious round of calls to top Bush family donors to try to convince them that she represents their values better than Donald Trump, multiple sources in both parties told POLITICO.

    The moves come as Clinton and the Democratic Party try to take advantage of deep unease among establishment Republicans on Wall Street and elsewhere with Trump’s emergence as the presumptive Republican nominee.

    Top targets for the Clinton team include people like Woody Johnson, Jeb Bush’s former finance chair and the owner of the New York Jets. In recent days, Bush’s brother and father, former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, have said they plan to skip Trump’s nominating convention.

    One person close to Clinton said supporters of the former secretary of state drew up a list of Wall Street donors who supported Jeb Bush and other unsuccessful Republican candidates months ago but wanted to wait until Trump locked down the nomination before beginning to make the calls.

    Yeah, now THERE’S a staunch defender of the Democratic Party’s liberal traditions, campaigning as the best Republican in the race.

    At the rate that this is going, Jill Stein is going to qualify for federal matching funds.

    What a Bunch of Hypocritical Pearl Clutching

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    Over at the former Kaplan Test Prep company, now a division of Amazon, Dana Milbank is having the vapors over Donald Trump’s sometimes salty language.

    This from the guy who joked about Hillary Clinton drinking Mad Bitch Beer.

    Seriously? If there is anyone in the Washington commentariat who is less well qualified to talk about misogyny and profanity, I haven’t read them yet:

    Here’s a serious question for Republican officeholders: WTF?

    Now that Trump has a lock on the presidential nomination, many top Republicans — too many — are moving to embrace this vulgar man for the sake of party unity. It is a real [expletive] show.

    The man who would be the Grand Old Party’s standard-bearer has said the following things (among many others) in front of thousands of men, women and children (and millions more via the media):

    On U.S. companies relocating overseas: “You can tell them to go f— themselves.”

    On China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea: “They’re ripping the sh– out of the sea.”

    On the Islamic State? “I would bomb the sh– out of ISIS.”

    Earlier, on dealing with China: “Listen, you motherf—ers, we’re going to tax you 25 percent.”

    And on climate change: “This very expensive global warming bullsh– has got to stop.”

    Republicans: This vulgarian speaks for you?

    Seriously Dana, go Cheney yourself.

    And Jeff (Bezos) make Dana do some useful work for his paycheck.

    Another Bag Full of Cats on the World Stage

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    This time, it’s Brazil:

    The Brazilian Senate has vowed to vote on the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff despite a ruling that a vote in the lower house was flawed.

    Senate Speaker Renan Calheiros rejected the attempt by Waldir Maranhao, the lower house’s acting speaker, to halt the process.

    Mr Maranhao had called for a new vote in the lower house.

    But to boos and cheers in the Senate, Speaker Renan Calheiros called that decision illegal.

    The Senate is scheduled to vote on Wednesday on whether to start an impeachment trial.

    The president of the Senate impeachment commission also said the vote would take place as scheduled.

    If Ms Rousseff loses, she will be suspended from office, pending a trial that could last six months. She faces allegations that her government violated fiscal rules.

    In his decision, Mr Maranhao said there had been irregularities during the lower house session in which its members overwhelmingly voted in favour of the impeachment process going ahead.

    He said members of the lower house should not have publicly announced what their position was prior to the vote, and that it had been wrong of party leaders to instruct their members how to vote.

    Mr Maranhao called for a new vote in the lower house.

    ………


    Mr Maranhao, who opposed the impeachment process in the 17 April vote, only took over as the speaker of the lower house last week, after the previous speaker, Eduardo Cunha, was suspended.

    Mr Cunha, an outspoken critic of President Rousseff, led the impeachment drive against her.

    The level of dysfunction here makes makes the Lewinski affair look like a Schoolhouse Rock episode.

    Linkage

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    Cracker Jack’s Prize In The Box Will Now Be Digitized : The Two-Way : NPR (NPR) This sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.
    US Prosecutors Consider More Charges Against Ex-CEO Shkreli (Reader Supported News) I’d rather see them spending this resources going after Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon.
    Nine years of censorship (Nature) Trudeau is reversing Harper’s muzzling of Canadian scientists.
    Andrew Sullivan Is to Blame for Donald Trump (Gawker) Great hed. The thesis is that people like Andrew Sullivan, who have aggressively supported impoverishing of the masses,(He wrote glowingly of Margaret Thatcher) have created the toxic politics that gave us the Donald.
    Study Shows How Abstinence Pledges Increase Risk of Pregnancy and STDs (The Atlantic) Not a surprise. Studies have shown this for years. For an anecdote, see Palin, Bristol.
    Atlanta Mayor’s Column Ripping Bernie Sanders Drafted by Lobbyist, Emails Show (The Intercept) It really is remarkable how brazen the Democratic Party establishment is about its corruption.
    In 1983 Clinton teamed with Walmart to attack public education (Liberation News) The past is prelude.
    Who Shot First, According To The Guy Who Played Greedo (Cinema Blend) Han shot first.
    Psychiatric hospitals filling up with time travellers sent back to kill Donald Trump (News Thump) This is not a surprise.

    This is just too awesome for words:

    H/t Atomic Samba.

    They Finally Lost One

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    The City Council of Austin passed regulations on ride sharing services, and Uber and Lyft spent millions in an attempt to override the vote through a plebiscite, and lost:

    Uber and Lyft spent nearly $9 million on a May 7 special election in Austin, Texas. They offered free rides to the polls, and texted users asking for their support. They pulled out all the stops in a political playbook that has worked in almost every other city in the US.

    For once, it wasn’t enough.

    Voters in the Texan capital came out against Proposition 1, upholding ride-hailing regulations that the city council passed in December. The rules are stricter than ones that Uber and Lyft face in other jurisdictions: They require drivers for the services to pass fingerprint-based background checks, to identify their cars with company emblems, and to avoid picking up and dropping off passengers in certain lanes.

    That is to say, exactly the same requirements as exist for the taxis.

    ………

    Uber, I think decided, they were going to make Austin an example to the nation,” said David Butts, a local political consultant who helped coordinate the campaign against Proposition 1, according to a report in the Austin American-Statesman. “And Austin made Uber an example to the nation.”

    Ahead of the vote, both Uber and Lyft had threatened to leave Austin should the proposition fail. Austin mayor Steve Adler invited them to stay despite the election results.

    ………

    The nay vote on Proposition 1 is all the more crushing for Uber and Lyft considering the lopsided amount of money they spent in favor of it. The companies invested a combined $8.7 million to support the proposition via their lobbying committee, Ridesharing Works for Austin, an unprecedented sum in Austin local politics. That dwarfed the $132,000 that Proposition 1’s opponents strung together from about 500 individual contributions, according to campaign finance filings.

    ………

    Uber and Lyft have cultivated the impression that their services are indispensable to cities. But Uber in particular has also spun itself as politically unbeatable. It has the money; it has the policy talent; it has the app that makes reaching potential voters as simple as sending a text or push notification to their phones.

    ………

    That’s a potent narrative. With the loss in Austin, it’s starting to come undone.

    The myth of inevitability and invincibility is central to Uber’s and Lyft’ssuccess.

    It is what allows them to move into new markets, break the law, cheat their employees, place their customers at risk, and create a multi-billion dollar stock valuation.

    It may not be the beginning of the end for the lawless players in the “sharing economy”, but it might be the end of the beginning.

    I’m Calling Bullsh%$

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    Al-Masdar news is reporting that the Panama Papers reveal that King Salman of the House of Saud laundered money which was donated to the Netanyahu campaign:

    Isaac Herzog, member of the Knesset and Chairman of the Israeli Labor party, revealed that Saudi king Salman bin Abdulaziz financed the election campaign of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

    There are no other sources for this.

    The only other reports on the internet all link back to this source, and I have no information at all about tits reliability.

    I am not citing this to suggest that it is true. I am citing this because my initial reaction was credulous, for about 45 seconds.

    This post is not about the report, but about my initial reaction.

    I wondered why my initial response was to believe.

    I believe that this is because what the Middle East is, a bag full of cats that you can smell crazy on, to paraphrase a popular movie from a few years back.

    Donald Trump at Least Recognizes That Our Nomenklatura Is Incompetent

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    Say what you will about Donald Trump, but he recognizes that our foreign policy establishment is incompetent and corrupt: (And Yes, the source is suspect, but it’s a “Stopped Clock Being Right Twice a Day” thing.)

    The National Interest, which is a (Possibly THE) seriously Neocon organization, is trying to explain why it hosted a Trump foreign policy speech, and is not endorsing Trump’s analysis:

    ………

    As the hosts, we are ill suited to evaluate Mr. Trump’s speech; some may find criticism ungracious or, conversely, see praise as unpersuasive. That said, we heard enough from Mr. Trump to feel that while his approach to foreign and security policy is not yet fully developed and remains a work in progress, it is quite different from the existing semi-consensus among America’s foreign-policy elites. His remarks outlined a fundamental break with post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy and offered an alternative vision with considerable appeal to a frustrated public, if less to the elites who have defined, articulated and implemented policy through three administrations run by both major political parties.

    I, however, do agree with Trump’s assessment regarding the general uselessness of our foreign establishment, even while eschewing his nonsensical solutions

    ………

    For much of the post–Cold War era, experts both inside and outside the government have faced informal but powerful pressure to share in existing interventionist orthodoxies if they seek top positions requiring Senate confirmation or even regular appearances in mainstream media. From this perspective, it is predictable that an avowedly antiestablishment candidate should provoke ferocious rhetoric from not only the political establishment, but also the foreign-policy establishment (perhaps even more bitterly).

    Pledging that he would not surround himself “with those who have perfect resumes but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war” has surely fueled establishment fear of Mr. Trump. This statement—the functional equivalent of his signature line “you’re fired” directed at a number of former senior and mid-level officials—ensured that not only many Democrats, but also a number of Republicans in Washington’s foreign-policy community would race to the barricades. Some self-serving Trump-haters may well see this as the greatest danger he poses; ending the dominance of today’s foreign policy nomenklatura could directly threaten their careers. He provokes similar reactions among the transnational Davos elites by insisting “the nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.”

    In America, this Soviet-style foreign-policy nomenklatura system has helped the post–Cold War foreign-policy elites in the Republican and Democratic parties to develop a sense of entitlement wholly disproportionate to their accomplishments. How difficult was it to run America’s foreign policy during an era of virtually unquestioned dominance? Why—with so many advantages—have our elites produced so many failed policies? And why do they feel no shame? No matter how many individual positions he changes, Mr. Trump will never satisfy the architects of these massive mistakes or, for that matter, their ardent supporters on editorial boards and television screens. To be clear, it is entirely appropriate to criticize Mr. Trump’s views or, for that matter, his temper. Both have long been important components in our electoral politics. What is not appropriate is to attempt to shut down public discussion of critical national issues.

    Our current foreign policy establishment, what I refer to as the Council on Foreign Relations crowd, has squandered blood and treasure, all while making us less secure and insuring that our influence will be diminished in the future.

    Heck of a job, Brownie.

    It Would Be My Concern Too

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    The anonymous source behind the huge leak of documents known as the Panama Papers has offered to aid law enforcement officials in prosecutions related to offshore money laundering and tax evasion, but only if assured of protection from punishment.

    “Legitimate whistle-blowers who expose unquestionable wrongdoing, whether insiders or outsiders, deserve immunity from government retribution,” the source, who has still not revealed a name or nationality, said in a statement issued Thursday night.

    The documents, which list the true owners of thousands of companies created to hide the people behind them, expose the holdings of current and former world leaders and other prominent figures. The source, who uses the pseudonym John Doe but whose gender is not known, said that the papers could spur thousands of prosecutions, “if only law enforcement could access and evaluate the actual documents.”

    John Doe noted that journalists who have viewed the papers have said they will not turn over the full archive of 11.5 million documents. “I, however, would be willing to cooperate with law enforcement to the extent that I am able,” the source wrote.

    The statement, which was issued Thursday night under the condition that it not be reported until Friday morning, gave some hints about John Doe’s political views and concerns. They include income inequality, the American campaign finance system and the “revolving door” of United States officials who take jobs at banks or other companies they once regulated.

    ………

    In the statement, the source denied being a government official or contractor, now or in the past. The confidential source was also extremely critical of the news media, suggesting that certain unnamed news organizations had declined initial offers to take and report on the documents.

    I can understand “John Doe’s” concern.  There have been numerous cases where whistle blowers have been typically been sentenced to more jail time than the folks actually breaking the laws.
    What’s more, when one looks at those prosecutions, and the the sentences, it becomes pretty clear that this is a feature of the American criminal justice system, and not a bug.
    Prosecutors seem intent on punishing people who whistle blow on members of our plutocracy.