11 Comments

If you want to learn just what a disaster Obama’s response to the mortgage crisis was, read Neil Barofsky’s book on it. He was the inspector general. And the whole program, HAMP, was a disgrace. The entire Obama administration was a joke, an abject failure even on its own terms.

Expand full comment

A long time ago I said that to become a manager you have to have your spine surgically removed. The whole life of a politician is based on having no spine. They have to be perfect in brown-nosing.

How do you get pollies to be accountable for what they do?

I never understood why Obama didn't kill GM. At least from 2004 or so they didn't make their money from cars but from their bank. After they filed chapter 11 there was a lot of prattling about building a "New GM". I asked my Murican coworkers what that was supposed to be. Nobody knew.

Expand full comment
founding

Look at this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKsItbj49K0 - Michael J. Glennon, "National Security and Double Government" - and this - https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1941&context=faculty_scholarship - "The Rise and Rise of the Administrative State" by Gary Lawson

"I. Bagehot’s Theory of Dual Institutions

A disquieting answer is provided by the theory that Walter Bagehot

suggested in 1867 to explain the evolution of the English Constitution.40

While not without critics, his theory has been widely acclaimed and has

generated significant commentary.41 Indeed, it is something of a classic on

the subject of institutional change generally, and it foreshadowed modern

organizational theory.42 In brief, Bagehot’s notion was as follows.

Power in Britain reposed initially in the monarch alone. Over the

decades, however, a dual set of institutions emerged.43 One set comprises

the monarchy and the House of Lords. 44 These Bagehot called the

“dignified” institutions—dignified in the sense that they provide a link to

the past and excite the public imagination.45 Through theatrical show, pomp, and historical symbolism, they exercise an emotional hold on the public

mind by evoking the grandeur of ages past. 46 They embody memories of

greatness. Yet it is a second, newer set of institutions— Britain’s “efficient”

institutions—that do the real work of governing. 47 These are the House of

Commons, the Cabinet, and the Prime Minister. 48 As Bagehot put it: “[I]ts

dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and

rather venerable; while its efficient part . . . is decidedly simple and rather

modern . . . . Its essence is strong with the strength of modern simplicity; its

exterior is august with the Gothic grandeur of a more imposing age.”49

Together these institutions comprise a “disguised republic”50 that

obscures the massive shift in power that has occurred, which if widely

understood would create a crisis of public confidence. 51 This crisis has been

averted because the efficient institutions have been careful to hide where

they begin and where the dignified institutions end. 52 They do this by

ensuring that the dignified institutions continue to partake in at least some

real governance and also by ensuring that the efficient institutions partake in

at least some inspiring public ceremony and ritual. 53 This promotes

continued public deference to the efficient institutions’ decisions and

continued belief that the dignified institutions retain real power.54 These

dual institutions, one for show and the other for real, afford Britain expertise

and experience in the actual art of governing while at the same time

providing a façade that generates public acceptance of the experts’

decisions. Bagehot called this Britain’s “double government.”55 The

structural duality, some have suggested, is a modern reification of the

“Noble Lie” that, two millennia before, Plato had thought necessary to

insulate a state from the fatal excesses of democracy and to ensure

deference to the golden class of efficient guardians. 56 onetheless,

Bagehot’s enduring insight—that dual institutions of governance, one public

and the other concealed, evolve side-by-side to maximize both legitimacy

and efficiency—is worth pondering as one possible explanation of why the

Obama and Bush national security policies have been essentially the same.

There is no reason in principle why the institutions of Britain’s juridical

offspring, the United States, ought to be immune from the broader

bifurcating forces that have driven British institutional evolution.

As it did in the early days of Britain’s monarchy, power in the

United States lay initially in one set of institutions—the President,

Congress, and the courts. These are America’s “dignified” institutions.

Later, however, a second institution emerged to safeguard the nation’s

security. This, America’s “efficient” institution (actually, as will be seen,

more a network than an institution) consists of the several hundred

executive officials who sit atop the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and

law enforcement departments and agencies that have as their mission the

protection of America’s international and internal security. Large segments

of the public continue to believe that America’s constitutionally established,

dignified institutions are the locus of governmental power; by promoting

that impression, both sets of institutions maintain public support. But when

it comes to defining and protecting national security, the public’s impression

is mistaken. America’s efficient institution makes most of the key decisions

concerning national security, removed from public view and from the

constitutional restrictions that check America’s dignified institutions. The

United States has, in short, moved beyond a mere imperial presidency to a

bifurcated system—a structure of double government—in which even the

President now exercises little substantive control over the overall direction

of U.S. national security policy. Whereas Britain’s dual institutions evolved

towards a concealed republic, America’s have evolved in the opposite

direction, toward greater centralization, less accountability, and emergent

autocracy." https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=550083013021094027093126093096125109019053019081050000104122076004026104095115107007032035042036057108108083068113113000114004107011054000040115126098119112109006009021057026073074104015121092025071072026006098076007031031071023066120065098105073121&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE

This is why "throwing the bums out" doesn't work - it's the wrong set of bums...

Expand full comment

The revolving door of corruption ensures the the dems won’t be out of power for long if they lose to the GOP. A bigger concern is what will happen to Khan, Chopra, Kanter. If the GOP wants to succeed they will support antitrust to strengthen the economy and stay in power.

Imagine what might happen if the GOP and democrats would compete with each other to improve the country so as to win additional opportunities to govern. The idea that competition like that could lead to better results overall is a crazy and radical concept but if it can work in politics maybe it can spread to other fields like economics.

Expand full comment
Jul 23, 2022·edited Jul 23, 2022

Throw the bums out to make room for new bums. The GOP won’t be much better and possibly worse but a change of bums is good because they become dirtier the longer they remain in circulation like used motor oil, keeping in mind that the oil was already dirty when you added it to the engine. Also, it’s more costly for donors to maintain a spare bum for when the old one gets thrown out before completing his crooked objectives. If there was a third party then donors would need to maintain two spare bums in the wings and that would be better because the goal of democracy is to make life more difficult for monopolist donors.

Remember - you can vote for any politician you want as long as he’s a crooked bum. Much like Henry Ford and his cars assuming every car in addition to being black also included a crooked crankshaft, crooked steering wheel, crooked axles, crooked antenna, crooked cylinders, crooked pistons, four square wheels (with nice straight sides) and a hole in each tire and holes in the engine black, gas tank, radiator and windows. All as standard equipment except the optional spare tire (also square with straight sides and a hole).

Naturally the car could not drive in a straight line but that’s ok because the lines on the road are crooked like the traffic laws. In fact if there was ever a car made that could drive in a straight line it wouldn’t be compatible with the existing laws and would need to be impounded.

Expand full comment

On bad government - Congressional Dish's last episode was on how the gun legislation apparently snuck in a postponement to PBMs having to pass drug discounts onto Medicare recipients.

https://congressionaldish.com/cd255-pharmacy-benefit-managers-pbms/

Expand full comment

Great post. Nice captions.

So Bookshop.org does support small, independent bookstores-- via a book distribution monopoly that leverages its power to extract large middleman fees and squash small print shops. Better than Amazon, but a lesser of two evils situation.

Bookshop's About page explains that their inventory is "limited to the books in Ingram's catalog" and "[a]ll books are sent from our wholesaler Ingram, not the bookstore's actual inventory." (Their cheerful advice to bookstores who want to offer books that are not in Ingram's catalog is to "see if you can get the title distributed by Ingram."). I'm not finding stats about Ingram's market share, but one industry blog says: "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that every publisher, book retailer (online or physical), and library in the world transacts with Ingram." https://www.idealog.com/blog/every-publishing-strategy-should-start-with-amazon-and-ingram/ (Background on Ingram's history, including a 2016 acquisition of another distributor: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/86111-how-ingram-content-group-became-a-2-billion-company.html)

Ingram takes a large middleman cut-- according to this post, Ingram requests a 30-55% discount from retail, while offering the bookstores only 5% off retail, and pocketing the difference. https://mooneyandlambert.com/blog/2020/10/13/the-distribution-problem-monopoly-control-and-hidden-profits/

Ingram also leverages their market power in distribution to get small presses to use IngramSpark, which is Ingram's printing press. If a small press wanted to choose a small, local (and maybe unionized) print shop, then they wouldn't be able to use Ingram's distribution. And it's very difficult to get bookshops-- even indie bookshops-- to pick up a title that isn't distributed by Ingram.

Expand full comment
founding

I got off Twitter at some point around 2017. Maybe 2018. It was one of the better things I've done for my mental health and, I suspect, my intellectual development. It was like leaving gave me room to rediscover nuance and get back to reading and writing things that were longer than a couple sentences. It's a little different for you, I'm sure, as Twitter is probably one of the best/main ways for you to disseminate your ideas and argue with people (and obviously you do long-form writing), but I hope you take lots of breaks.

I've seen some, "actually, we can't prove social media is doing bad things to our mental health" type articles, and it always annoys the hell out of me. As Dr. Lentz points out in his article, we know intuitively that spending time on these sites is bad for us. Sometimes it's okay to act without waiting for confirmation from studies that will never be definitive anyway.

Last thing I'll say—what really pissed me off after I deleted Twitter was how little I missed it. Life went on, shockingly, and I went from feeling addicted to just doing other stuff with those random bits of time when I'd check Twitter. So yeah, not only does it screw with your head, it's also a pretty huge waste of time for most people. James Williams lays it out really well in Stand Out of Our Light, if anyone is interested in this stuff.

Expand full comment

There is no new guard. The old guard is just making the same old noise.

Expand full comment

It is hard to go back in time and even identify elected national officials who were leaders and when leaders do come up, like Bernie, they are accused of all sorts of harshnesses and blindnesses especially by the all knowing and sanctimonious press and especially by “experts” like the Nobel Prize winners who write for the all knowing press. Frustrating

Expand full comment