The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government at Amazon, 5 Jan 2016.
The following is excerpted from a fairly long article from February 21, 2014, but a very worthwhile read and as an introduction to the book. Here Lofgren defines what he means by the Deep State:
The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street. All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts, such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are conducted. The final government component (and possibly last in precedence among the formal branches of government established by the Constitution) is a kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and some (but not all) of the members of the defense and intelligence committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State’s emissaries.…
…the Deep State does not consist only of government agencies. What is euphemistically called “private enterprise” is an integral part of its operations. In a special series in The Washington Post called “Top Secret America,” Dana Priest and William K. Arkin described the scope of the privatized Deep State and the degree to which it has metastasized after the September 11 attacks. There are now 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances — a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government. While they work throughout the country and the world, their heavy concentration in and around the Washington suburbs is unmistakable: Since 9/11, 33 facilities for top-secret intelligence have been built or are under construction. Combined, they occupy the floor space of almost three Pentagons — about 17 million square feet. Seventy percent of the intelligence community’s budget goes to paying contracts.
And the membrane between government and industry is highly permeable: The Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, is a former executive of Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the government’s largest intelligence contractors. His predecessor as director, Admiral Mike McConnell, is the current vice chairman of the same company; Booz Allen is 99 percent dependent on government business. These contractors now set the political and social tone of Washington, just as they are increasingly setting the direction of the country, but they are doing it quietly, their doings unrecorded in the Congressional Record or the Federal Register, and are rarely subject to congressional hearings.
Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one. Invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater.… It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice — certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee.…
After Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent and depth of surveillance by the National Security Agency, it has become publicly evident that Silicon Valley is a vital node of the Deep State as well. Unlike military and intelligence contractors, Silicon Valley overwhelmingly sells to the private market, but its business is so important to the government that a strange relationship has emerged. While the government could simply dragoon the high technology companies to do the NSA’s bidding, it would prefer cooperation with so important an engine of the nation’s economy, perhaps with an implied quid pro quo. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary indulgence the government shows the Valley in intellectual property matters.…
Still, despite the essential roles of lower Manhattan and Silicon Valley, the center of gravity of the Deep State is firmly situated in and around the Beltway. The Deep State’s physical expansion and consolidation around the Beltway would seem to make a mockery of the frequent pronouncement that governance in Washington is dysfunctional and broken. That the secret and unaccountable Deep State floats freely above the gridlock between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is the paradox of American government in the 21st century: drone strikes, data mining, secret prisons and Panopticon-like control on the one hand; and on the other, the ordinary, visible parliamentary institutions of self-government declining to the status of a banana republic amid the gradual collapse of public infrastructure.…
[1] The term “Deep State” was coined in Turkey and is said to be a system composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary and organized crime. In British author John le Carré’s latest novel, A Delicate Truth, a character describes the Deep State as “… the ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster.” I use the term to mean a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.Embedded in the essay are links to reflections by other commentators and public intellectuals.
Moyers & Co.
Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State
Mike Lofgren
see also
see also
This post is an excerpt from The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow GovernmentThe Deep State: How Camouflage Became Chic in Beltwayland
36 comments:
I'm a few chapters into this book. Its fantastic, and funny as hell. Even though I've only been in the DC area for 5 years and change, I find myself recognizing many of the patterns/systems/behaviors that Lofgren lampoons in the book.
"Moyers & Co."
Obama apologists...BIG LEAGUE..
Why don't you Obama voters just admit it didn't work out like you thought it was going to with him instead of now having to go through all of these conspiracy theory mental gymnastics.... .
What about Obama? He is an enabler and part of the deep state. The revolving door is waiting him after a few more months of golfing. And when Hillary is coronated it will get even worse.
No one in his right mind who is objective will ignore that any more, the critiques are coming both from ex-republicans and real leftists. Trying to make this a partisan issue is a load of garbage and both are subservient of the same host-eating corrupt machine.
Oh come on Ignacio these are partisan Democrats here creating this whole fantasy alternative reality of some sort of figure of speech "DEEP STATE!" ooooooooh sounds scary!
What a pile of garbage... they're DELUDED... this is Alex Jones nut-job type stuff only from the left... the problem is bad policy plain and simple... this time its Obama's just admit it already...
These people were ALL IN Obama zombies... now they cant take it when his policies are failing so they have to create this whole alternative reality to deal with it....
Meh, oligarchies have been long documented in human history and a common (probably one of the most common) forms of governments. Self-serving bureaucracies with self-serving bureaucrats (like Obama) are not exactly a conspiracy or anything new.
Any short resemblance to democracy in the West has been gone for a few decades and now that labor bargaining power has been eroded and destroyed thought economic doctrine not much hope to come back.
I fail to see the conspiracy, political parties are part of the same machinery and part of the "problem" in perpetuating that feedback loop, I don't think is one big man calling the shoots, the "bots" are subservient of the political machine and true believers themselves (leechs).
Just in this page at this same blog are linked interviews to: Larry Wilkerson and Mike Lofgren both are ex-GOP both talk about Deep State and both talk about Obama role in the machinery. So neither is this "exclusively democrats" or "ignoring Obama".
US presidents have been a disaster since Reagan (including), when the situation got out of hand (instead Nixon which was one of the last real progressive presidents is being criminalized for far less, laughable).
Oh come on Ignacio these are partisan Democrats here creating this whole fantasy alternative reality of some sort of figure of speech "DEEP STATE!" ooooooooh sounds scary!
Mike Lofgren was a GOP congressional staffer (House and then Senate) for 28 years. Now is blowing the whistle on TPTB. He is not also. PCR also has impeccable GOP credential, and Larry Wilkerson still self-identifies as a Republican. Wilkerson says it was torture under Bush-Cheney that drove him over the edge.
This is a Democratic-inspired conspiracy theory? Come on.
Just curious. If the country is run by a vicious "deep state" (and it probably is), how does that qualify as "capitalism" or "the free market" or "liberal"
Further, why is it a good thing if the "deep state" is not "revenue constrained"?
Just curious.
.
1. In practice, "capitalism" is anti-democratic, anti-free market, and anti-liberal in so far is is about control rather than competition on a level playing field and uses state capture to this end. As Peter Thiel explains in Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Entrepreneurs and by extension established companies prefer monopoly and monopsony to competition since competition in symmetrical markets on a level playing field drive the profit rate toward the real rate of interest in neoclassical economic theory. This implies rent-extaction and government capture or at least influence is the sure way to be able to extract rent.
2. "The free market" like "free enterprise" means minimal government intrusion with any intrusion being in class interest.
3. Economic liberalism. See 3s 1 and 2.
Capitalism is private ownership of means of production, it says nothing about how markets operate (open-closed, with more or less barriers, etc.).
I agree with you Bob that under current circumstances the state not being revenue constraints can b more dangerous than good (wealthy welfare, military expansionism, etc.), but substituting that for a blind faith in teleological supposed market mechanisms that do not work (as capitalism are anti-free markets by design) does not seem like the end and be of all solutions.
And as bad as state violence is (and it exist), in absence of nation states warlordism and feuds raise, which is more often than not worse (plenty of examples to go around).
Tradeoffs. There are advantages and disadvantages to everything depending on criteria and there are no absolute criteria.
"Capitalism" and "socialism, etc. are high order abstract concepts that encompass a lot of lower order concepts. They themselves fall under the even higher order abstract concept of socio-economic theories that involve related political theories.
Moreover their classification boundaries are flexible based on criteria for setting them. In addition, in ordinary language, at least, they operate by "family resemblance" (Wittgenstein) rather than always in terms of technical or operational definition. Finally, their connotation is also highly normative and often more rhetorical (appeal to the irrational) than logical or descriptive.
From the logical POV of criteria, capitalism is about prioritizing financial and non-financial ownership of property.; socialism is about prioritizing people, and environmentalism is about prioritizing ecology.
The debate is about tradeoffs involved in various schemes of prioritization based on different views of criteria. The debate involves both normative and positive aspects, as well as theoretical and practical.
In economics things are straight forward and easy to measure. Check how much a loaf of bread costs and chart it. See how many loaves were sold and how many were available, population etc. In politics, groups and organisations are ephemeral and of conveniences. Deep state is as valid and real group as a tea party or congressional black caucus, or ISIS. Keeping up with how people associate, is at best done by watching the shape of things, and there IS a deep state shape in the two party government that holds Washington DC.
I doubt most two-party members realize or identify themselves as deep-staters how ever. Most two-party members and two party government employees see themselves as simply doing their assigned function oblivious to their own role in maintaining the security that keeps themselves in power.
You guys are talking about a figure of speech as if it is a real thing...
How does this help? Answer: It doesn't... It's living in a fantasy land... Stick to analysis of the moron policies and expose the incompetence
How does this help?
It explains why policy remains pretty constant across administrations even with the party in power changes. US policy has been pretty consistent since the Truman administration, when the deep state took root. Ike knew what was up and warned about it as "the military-industrial complex." While most people involved in the deep state are probably not even conscious of it, Allen Dulles certainly was and its configuration was in no small measure his doing.
"While most people involved in the deep state are probably not even conscious of it, "
You're making my point....
"US presidents have been a disaster since Reagan..."
How was Reagan a disaster?
"While most people involved in the deep state are probably not even conscious of it, "
You're making my point....
This is what Lofgren himself says. It's now institutionalized.
But this didn't come from nowhere either; it got institutionalized and to some degree that was the result of a conspiracy. Some people, like the Dulles brothers, set it up bank then, and others keep it going by doing all their considerable power to ensure that this power not only is not shrunk back but continues to grow.
How was Reagan a disaster?
Reaganomics (aka voodoo economics) for one thing.
"Reaganomics (aka voodoo economics) for one thing."
16 million jobs created, oil/gas prices tumble, inflation fell, interest rates fell, USSR raises the white flag without the US having to fire a shot.
Tom, Bush I's counter to "voodoo economics" was "govt taxes FIRST, THEN spends the money!"
voodoo (the Laffer stuff) at least gets it right as far as the timing... they propose tax cuts FIRST which helps but then they self-sabotage and claim that the tax cut somehow will eventually reduce the deficit... then that never happens and eventually they raise taxes like Bush I did in his first term after Reagan and it cost him my primary vote (went for Buchanon) and his second term...
voodoo economics is still better than what we are having imposed on us now... we could use it today via an expanded EITC and some more FICA holidays... maybe Trump could get this done but NO ONE else today is talking about any tax cuts...
"...they propose tax cuts FIRST which helps but then they self-sabotage and claim that the tax cut somehow will eventually reduce the deficit..."
As a point of logic, if lower taxes incentivizes people to work harder, save, and invest, and it results down stream in faster economic growth and a growing tax base, it will shrink the budget deficit. Hence the need to cut taxes even more when the deficit gets too small. This is where dynamic scoring makes sense. Laffer and other Supply Siders were right about incentives, and I think it is a policy area where MMT and Supply Side could make common purpose.
the politics doesnt line up there though Ed... youre right the economics does but the politics doesnt most of the MMT top-enders are lefty...
The oil cartels trigger inflation and the conservatives blame western workers ofc. Their policies DIDN'T solve the oil shock/inflation or any REAL supply side problems, prices stabilized as they were bound to and supply was resumed, the oil dependency wasn't solved back then, only now is STARTING to be solved (and may be too late even).
The oil shock was used as an excuse to start up the era of decreased productivity growth share, NAIRU, two incomes to earn what one was earning before, de-industrialization, increasing the share of the economy that goes towards speculative asset-appreciation activities (bubblenomics), decreasing 90% of the population net equity, increasing real inflation (housing, healthcare & basic consumption basket; decreasing quality of products), blowing up all regulation on FIRE, destroy labour bargaining power, etc. etc. etc.
A disaster, and during voodoo trickle-down economics were the ideological forefathers of the current situation.
Much of what gets blamed on Reagan and Thatcher era, the problems that emerged and became defining features in the decades that followed, such as inequality, privatization, deregulation is actually due to the industrialization in Korea/China/Mexico/India and other nations that developed as much as US or UK domestic policy. Suddenly increasing the size of the global labor force by a factor of 10, and bringing a majority of humans into modern living standards was bound to impact developed economy workers. Coming after European and Japanese reconstruction, where the US was central as an industrial center, it was probably more acute for US workers. I'm not defending Reagan policies but in the historical context, no political policy could avoided the radical adjustments workers faced with cut-throat competition for jobs around the globe.
In the same context, since most people globally are now already in the workforce, the worst is probably behind us in terms of bargaining power, inequality and other contemporary problems that resulted from the merging of disparate labor and regulatory markets. The ME and Africa are convulsing as their old cultures are being ripped apart and forced into the modern economy in the last major additions to the labor pool. That's where all the action is at, and they are the most interesting things happening now, imo. The culture and values they will impose on the global order are far different than what Asia and Europe offered during their emergence.
"...the politics doesnt line up there though Ed... you're right the economics does but the politics doesn't most of the MMT top-enders are lefty..."
Matt - Not sure what you mean by "top-enders"? Does that refer to a bias toward top-down central planning? Aside from that, there's no reason why opposite ends of the political spectrum can't cooperate when it serves their mutual self interest. That's what coalitions are all about. Ron Paul would often team up with liberal progressives like Dennis Kucinich and socialists like Bernie Sanders when it came to opposing the Iraq war and auditing the Fed.
"Reaganomics (aka voodoo economics) for one thing."
16 million jobs created, oil/gas prices tumble, inflation fell, interest rates fell, USSR raises the white flag without the US having to fire a shot.
Correlation is not causation. There is a lot of argument over the causes.
But the real destructive power of Reaganomics was post-Reagan and in Britain Post-Thatcher owing to the destruction of labor bargaining power, which led to a decrease in aggregate demand that is now crippling the economy and is the fundamental cause of inequality and economic stagnation. In addition, ignoring infrastructure needs began under Reagan as well as the ongoing arms race. This is effect is particularly evident in the Red States of the US that have adopted Reaganomics. Sam Brownback's Kansas is a poster case.
BTW, the fall of the USSR is pretty well established as the fall in oil prices couple with the Afghan disaster, both of which it appears were engineered at the time by the US. Zib was behind the arming and funding the Afghan "freedom fighters" under Osama bin Laden that later morphed into Al Qaeda.
The blowback from the Reagan era has been disastrous both domestically for the US and internationally for the ROW, and this won't change until those policies are flushed. Britain is struggling with the same things under its Thatcher legacy.
Supply side economics has been thoroughly discredited.
voodoo economics is still better than what we are having imposed on us now.
The debate today in the GOP is over supply side aka "voodoo economics" vs "sound finance" of a gold standard in the conservative v. the Libertarian wings of the party.
The Dems have bought into this.
So most Americans screwed whatever the outcome, since both policies funnel munnie to the top.
"...they propose tax cuts FIRST which helps but then they self-sabotage and claim that the tax cut somehow will eventually reduce the deficit..."
As a point of logic, if lower taxes incentivizes people to work harder, save, and invest, and it results down stream in faster economic growth and a growing tax base, it will shrink the budget deficit. Hence the need to cut taxes even more when the deficit gets too small. This is where dynamic scoring makes sense. Laffer and other Supply Siders were right about incentives, and I think it is a policy area where MMT and Supply Side could make common purpose.
First, remember that Art Laffer drew the Laffer curve on a napkin. And it's a curve. Getting the tax policy adjusted in the trick because actual revenue is a function of economic performance. Congress can set the tax rate but not the amount of revenue. That is to say, the fiscal balance is non-discrtionary.
Secondly, cutting tax rates has been shown to produce fiscal deficits (as expected). Supply siders are deficit adverse, however, and when deficits don't turn around as expected due to increased tax receipts, since the economy doesn't operate theoretically, then there is a backlash from the sound finance people.
MMT recognizes the above and is not concerned with deficits, since the amount of the deficit is increased saving and saving acts as a tax. Deficits are simply a response by the government sector to increased saving desire on the part of consolidated nongovernment (domestic private and external sectors).
The problem with supply side is that they have the causation backward. MMT realizes that "it's the demand, stupid."
"The problem with supply side is that they have the causation backward. MMT realizes that "it's the demand, stupid." "
I would submit to you that it is both the supply and the demand. If taxes are cut, then consumers have more money in their pockets to help satisfy their desires to consume more, i.e. demand. On the hand, depending on the nature of the tax cut and the size of it, consumers and producers may have greater incentive to work, save, invest and take risk, which ultimately is what drives innovation, technological advance, labor productivity and progress in general, thus bringing forward supply. Depending on the circumstances, demand garnered from a tax cut may outstrip supply or vice versa, but it seems to me that both factors are at work.
And by the way, Supply Siders may give lip service to being "deficit adverse", but in practice they don't seem to lose much sleep over deficits as long as economic growth is robust as it was in the 1980s. Despite large deficits from the collapse in tax revenue from 1982 recession, big increase in defense spending, and Supply Side tax cuts, the US Dollar was sharply higher even as nominal interest rates fell. Real interest rates net of inflation rose reflecting the demand for capital in the favorable environment for investing and capital formation.
From 1983 on, the federal budget deficit fell first as a percent of GDP and later in absolute dollar terms. Note also that despite the big cut in marginal tax rates, high income earners ended up pay a larger portion of total taxes collected due to the closing of many tax exemptions, deductions and loopholes. In other words, the lower tax rates and simplification of the tax code simply made it easier to comply than pursue tax evasion strategies.
Investment is a response to demand. Consumption is a function of purchasing power, not supply. Desires always exceed the ability to pay for them. That is notional demand is greater than effective demand. Entrepreneurs and corporate new product developers are not going to introduce products where people cannot afford them, and credit is limited by ability to service debt through income.
This is the basis of the three sector model and functional finance addressing demand leakage to saving in nongovernment.
Supply siders are inconsistent and contradictory because they don't understand either the sectoral balance macro model or functional finance, and although they are OK with increasing the deficit temporarily, unlike the sound finance people, they think that the fiscal balance should be neutral over the cycle and they also think that government social expenditure should be cut to accommodate lower tax rates and higher military spending.
There is no what to reconcile MMT and supply side because the former is trickle up and the latter is trickle down. Totally different economic paradigms and as a result different policies.
Reagan wasn't concerned about how much was produced like the dominant keynesians at the time, but about "what" was produced and by whom. Government was the problem. The dark era of Democrat control and vast corruption, heavy handed unions, paying workers not to work, all the hangover from the 70s was being purged. It wasn't about deficits, it was
Private control was viewed as a good way to reduce inflation and increase real productivity by reducing waste. Quasi-public entities like the bells and AT&T were stifling innovation while their unions and pensions were packing it in. Voodoo econ was about allowing people freedom from the shackles of the Democrat dogmas. When you read the stuff that all the lefty economists post now, they are itching to get back to their centralized control of everything but seem oblivious we are back to two phone companies, deficits are reasonably large given our external balance, employment is at decent levels, we've socialized healthcare, kept our medicare and social security, lots of people are out of the labor force pursuing education and retirement which should be viewed as "real" luxuries. Instead, we get whining about how terrible things are. The system has mostly delivered on its promises. The inconvenient truth that Dems refused to admit: Nearly all of the people that "fell out of the middle class," they fell UP. Not down. The Upper middle became rich. The lower middle and lower class remains and is where the attention is needed. Ripping down the rich won't solve that problem.
Ryan, dont forget Reagan told the Japanese "1 million cars and thats it no more" so they produced Toyota/Nissan here and imported the Lexus/Acura.... helped at least the middle class brands were produced here...
Ed by top-enders I mean the most influential MMT people out there... academe people, etc...
supply siders are deficit adverse
They aren't. Dick Cheney famously stated that "President Reagan has proven that deficits don't matter".
They aren't. Dick Cheney famously stated that "President Reagan has proven that deficits don't matter".
I believe that it's more nuanced. Conservative supply siders agree with Keynes that the fiscal balance should balance over the cycle/ whereas the sound money folks believe in running a balanced budget or a surplus as long as public debt is outstanding.
The MMT economists are virtually alone in saying that fiscal deficits are normal as long as non-government saving desire is greater than zero. Accommodating nongovernment saving desire results in a "full employment budget." Who else is saying this?
that the fiscal balance should balance over the cycle
The fact that the outstanding public debt of the U.S. stands at some $ 18 trillion proves that belief is simply wrong. The fiscal balance does not (and should not) balance over the cycle.
Just like the belief that banks are intermediaries between savers and lenders (or, alternatively, that they can create money only collectively via the money multiplier, but not individually by granting loans) has been blown to pieces by a simple empirical test conducted by Richard Werner in 2015. Banks do indeed create deposits when lending.
If politicians and economists were more empirically oriented, the world would be a better place.
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