I am succumbing to temptation to repeat a post from 4 years ago. The reason is that the problem is now far worse. We do not have just a Principle agent problem, the country is run by corporate renegades and those on foreign payrolls.
The principalagent problem, in political science and economics, (also known as agency dilemma or the agency problem) occurs when one person or entity (the “agent”) is able to make decisions on behalf of, or that impact, another person or entity: the “principal”.[1] This dilemma exists in circumstances where agents are motivated to act in their own best interests, which are contrary to those of their principals, and is an example of moral hazard.
The Founders were well aware of this problem and tried to protect the citizens with certain provisions of the Constitution.
“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”
This provision was violated by Barack Obama who spent billions to subsidize insurance companies to support his “Affordable Care Act” which was not successful.
Of course, the Amendments were intended to protect the rights of the people but the one that has been ignored for 100 years is the Tenth.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Civil War largely ended Federalism.
In recent years, political parties have mislead their voters, the worst offender being the Republican Party. The Democrats posture as the party of the working man but it has become a party with two wings, the rich who want social liberties, and the poor who want to be taken care of. Jay Cost has written a good book about the Democrats Party called, “Spoiled Rotten, which explains the current policies of the party that has adopted “Identity politics” in which race and victim status has become a principal focus. My own review of the book is here.
The Republicans have gradually become the party of small business but the interests of small business are not being considered as paramount as the party seems to be evolving into another party of professional politicians whose personal interest trumps (so to speak) the interests of the voters. The result has been the rebellion of the Tea Party and more recently the election of Dave Brat, an economics professor, to Congress defeating Eric Cantor, a member of the GOP leadership, in 2014.
The election of Donald Trump has presented the GOP Congress with a crisis to which many have responded by retiring. One wonders what the next step of their career will be. Few, I suspect, will return home to the district that elected them. Most will remain in DC as Cantor has done.
Immediately thereafter, Cantor accepted a position as vice chairman of investment bank Moelis & Company. and,
In February 2015, the firm opened its Washington DC office, following the hire of Eric Cantor, former House Majority Leader, in September 2014.
That was bad enough in 2017 but we now have President Ron Klain, elected by no one, with Joe Biden as a prop when he can read his cue cards.
I think Angelo Codevilla’s piece about “The Ruling Class” has the best explanation.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.
Now, we have a ruling class whose loyalty seems to be to other governments, China, Russia, The EU ? Who are they working for? Biden attacks BREXIT, Supporting the EU over the UK, infuriating the British ruling party. Labour has already ridiculed Biden for his dementia. Who is writing Biden’s speeches ?
Biden keeps saying “I’m going to get in trouble if…” he calls on the wrong reporters, says the wrong thing, etc. He’s a sad decrepit dementia addled man. It’d be respectable if people said that they hated Trump so much it was worth voting for this pathetic shell of a man, but it’s just plain insulting to see them try to deny it and cover it up. His handlers are presumably some combination of Democrat power brokers–a bit of his wannabe Edith Wilson wife, a bit of the Dem establishment old-timers like Pelosi, Clyburn, etc., a bit of the radical activist base, etc. The behind the scenes maneuvers must be something to see, and I can’t imagine what foreign leaders say behind closed doors. They can’t really think this pitiful act is going to end well?
Bureaucrats run the world now. Trump wasn’t prepared for what he faced. Our saving grace is of course going to be the fact that they’re a bunch of incompetent idiots, but the coming years are going to get ugly.
Here is the Swamp attempt to outlaw disagreement.
The coordination of narrative engineering across all agencies of the U.S. government is quite remarkable. Today Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that Deputy AG Lisa Monaco (Obama crew) will lead a “whole of government” effort to label any political opposition to the Biden regime as “domestic terrorists”.
To facilitate that objective, Garland announced that DAG Monaco is reconstituting “the domestic terrorism executive committee“, an investigative agency process used in the aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing in 1995. Additionally, Garland is noting the January 6th Capitol Hill protest was the current equivalent of the 1995 bombing that killed 168 people and injured 680. The Domestic Terrorism committee, led by Monaco, will focus their efforts at ensuring the center of U.S. government is never again put at risk.
Except the only death was a Trump supporter shot and killed.
Isn’t the Principle Agent problem also a reflection of the narcissistic (perhaps) nature of many people’s definition of their roles: no duty to the institution they represent, the principles of that institution or the larger community. The open market place forces us to examine: are we really fulfilling our duties to our customer – is this a fair price, is the work good, will it fulfill the promises we implicitly offer in offering our services or products?
But in a, well, bullshit world, the response is not so clarifying, especially when we look to our peers (so obvious in terms of teachers, msm, etc.) for approval rather than those receiving the services – those who are often held in contempt if they don’t match the views of the peers, the woke climate. And we are rewarded by those peers – Anthony Fauci dishonestly avoided making his own compromised position clear to others, he used the voice he had to silence those around him (including Trump) about the source of the virus, his connections to that source nor did he treat with open and scientific queries sources other than vaccinations for lessening the results. Then, he said, as he had said throughout, that questioning him was questioning science – indeed “the science.” Well, we’ve seen enough of that kind of thinking – that transference of a reverence for the scientific method with a reverence for the man in the white lab coat. Ask Steven Koonin (Unsettled) about the difference between “settled science” and the scientific method, skepticism, and nuances.
Under Trump we saw two men who seem to me to be honorable and not acting in a selfish or self-gratifying way, but who believed (as so many have before) that the institution was great rather than making choices that might bring criticism on them for their choices but might have not only have served their president but the principles of their positions better. Jeff Sessions respected the Attorney General’s office so much that he neutered himself and therefore let that very office become an embodiment of what he apparently wanted so much to avoid – favoritism, a subjective and corrupt approach to the law. Roberts did not want the supreme court to appear politicized, so he apparently altered his own opinion (the opinion for which he was respected and for which he was given the honor of place) to force the arguments back to the public arena and the vote, where he seemed to think they belonged. These men were not the worst of what you are talking about – indeed, they seem to me to have shown an attractive humility and attempt to reach an ideal that meant that it became even farther out of reach by their actions.
I think that I’ve just thrown in a red herring but also believe it shows how easily we can be drawn from the objective, honest, deeply thought out path of producing an excellent product/advice/art/skill and defining ourselves by that work.
As for your more direct point, as the G7 went on and Biden stumbled around, I thought, whoever – and there must be a gaggle of whoevers – got us in this situation, they aren’t just leftists who believe in a socialist utopia reached by printing money on a scale never before seen and likely to reach an end that we have seen far too often. To have pushed this man, this weak and corrupt man (we don’t need to shed that many tears for the shame of Biden because he was never a stateman nor even a moderately honest politician) into the limelight of meetings such as this. His policies give us programs contradictory and all designed to destroy America’s culture (programs of graft, choices of one group over another, the push for Critical Race Theory, schools), military (see above) and (not unrelated) economics by destroying policies that made us energy independent, that led to more peace in the middle east, that encouraged entrepreneurship and a lively involvement by so many in the daily economic life of the country. Instead, we have a presidency mired in its own graft and hardened approach to human suffering appropriately partnering with the cartels on the border as they enslave so many in drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and the snare of drugs – multiple times enough to kill all of us.
Anyway, using the bumbling Biden as a front man is the act not just of someone crafty and a puppeteer – someone devoted to a deeply flawed communist policy – but of someone with contempt for America. Standing in the shadow of Washington and Lincoln, few have measured up. But this is a farce and only someone of the meanest sentiments and the cheapest of jealousies and most virulent of hatreds would have chosen this form for their conquest of America.
Isn’t the Principle Agent problem also a reflection of the narcissistic (perhaps) nature of many people’s definition of their roles: no duty to the institution they represent, the principles of that institution or the larger community.
Have you seen Theodore Dalrymple’s <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/the-degeneration-of-public-administration" piece on public administration?
Here is another example, from a different sphere: the arts. Maria Balshaw is currently director of the Tate Galleries, one of the most important positions in the visual arts in the country, responsible for the national collections of both British and modern art. This is a post whose appointee requires the prime minister’s approval””in this case, from Theresa May.
Before her appointment to the Tate, Balshaw was director of the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester University’s splendid art gallery, and then of the Manchester City Art Gallery. I take as my text the transcript of a video talk that she gave while still director of the Whitworth. This has the advantage both of brevity and of illustrating to perfection the type of person who now rises to the top in British administration.
Her manner is one of self-satisfaction so great that she makes Mr. Podsnap seem as self-questioning as Hamlet. She begins by telling us one of the important functions of a director of an artistic organization: “I think taking large artistic risks is part of the job of a good director of any artistic organisation.”
The rest of it is hilarious.
The Dalrymple link.
We owe this regime nothing. If it won’t pretend to be legitimate we shouldn’t pretend to respect it.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/hunter-biden-art-selling-500k.amp
Hunter Biden’s art to sell as high as $500K and the buyers will be kept ‘confidential’
Hunter Biden’s art dealer says ‘sales are always confidential to protect the privacy of the collector’
Pretty much what Brian said – treat them with the disinterested contempt which they so richly deserve.
They pretend to respect us … so we pretend to respect them.
“To facilitate that objective, Garland announced that DAG Monaco is reconstituting “the domestic terrorism executive committee“, an investigative agency process used in the aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing in 1995.”
These people are fools. Again, they won’t survive an actual opposition party that seeks to oppose.
Garland is either as senile as Biden, or is attempting to relive his greatest success like Captain Queeg and the strawberry ice cream caper. The January 6th rally wasn’t like the Oklahoma City bombing. You can call a tail a leg, but that doesn’t make it so.
I have a distinct recollection from the 1990s that the political establishment concluded that the Clinton efforts to hang the OK. City bombing around the necks of the GOP saved him in 1996, but I doubt it. I think what saved Clinton was vast sums of Chinese money and the betrayal of the GOP base by the GOP establishment- or its simple incompetence- but no matter.
This is not 1996. The presumption of good faith that appears to have greeted Garland in 1995 is no longer present, at least and especially by the people who support Donald Trump.
In fact, I’ll assert that the key problem for the present regime is that the presumption of good faith that the people in power enjoyed has been slowly and inexorably erased over my lifetime.
That’s why Trump was successful and why these idiotic efforts by Garland et al won’t be.
“Hunter Biden’s art to sell as high as $500K and the buyers will be kept ‘confidential’
Hunter Biden’s art dealer says ‘sales are always confidential to protect the privacy of the collector’”
I’d just like to note that any genuine opposition party that wanted to oppose would be screaming with incandescent accusations of bribery aimed at the President of the United States and his family, thanks to the incandescent evidence of bribery casually noted in this news spam from Fox blah blah.
This is how the gop operates. Do nothing to oppose actual corruption, but hold a hearing or note a Fox story and let the audience conclude something is being done.
The proper people to object to Hunter Biden’s crackhead art sales aren’t Fox anything. It should be Mitch McConnell or whatever lackey is at the top of the House GOP this cycle.
They should be demanding criminal charges, period. Those demands should be the headlines, not how much Hunter will get for his crackhead “art.”
More of the rot that infects our military,
The CNO has recommended reading Kendi’s book about “anti-racism.”
Asked whether he had read Kendi’s book, Gilday said that he had. The book was included on the reading list, he said, “because I think it’s really important to consider a variety of views.”
“This is a bigger issue than Kendi’s book. What this is really about is trying to paint the United States military, and in this case, the United States Navy as weak ”” as ‘woke,’” Gilday shot back and Banks.
“Admiral, I’ve met you, I respect you,” Banks said. “I remain astonished that you put this book on a reading list and recommended every sailor in the United States Navy read it. I’m also surprised you read it.”
Banks continued: “If sailors accept Kendi’s argument that America and the United States Navy are fundamentally racist, as you’ve encouraged them to, do you expect that to increase or decrease morale and cohesion or even recruiting in the United States Navy?”
It would be nice if he could get our ships from colliding.
I thought it was obvious that in America the political class serves money. Its pretty well the same all over the world but worse in some places, like America and the UK for instance.
You make a very good point about the agents being beholden to whoever owns them. The principles that used to govern human behaviour are pretty well gone. No one with any would enter public life these days, unless propelled by some higher purpose, and these are often really lower purposes.
The only ones who do not serve money are the Chinese. Money serves them or it gets slapped down. One of the reasons I think their way may be a better way forward.
8:27 pm — that is when the broken clock is telling the correct time.
It is really sad that PenGun has a firmer grasp of reality than the entirety of the US Political Class.
As to whether China’s CCP elite can avoid the temptations of success, only time will tell.
Evil currency walks the land. What kind of government does this country have, when they are trying to destroy the DoD, and in particular, the USN?. We are a maritime, trading nation, the USN is our, and, indeed, the World’s only guarantee of freedom of the seas. I fear for us all.
“Admiral, I’ve met you, I respect you,” Banks said. “I remain astonished that you put this book on a reading list and recommended every sailor in the United States Navy read it. I’m also surprised you read it.”
Banks is Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican House member. I’d like to know, exactly, why he respects this Admiral Gilday and why he felt the need to start off his questioning with this sort of ritual bootlicking.
Gilday appears to be some sort of moron who doesn’t understand how damaging his incompetence manages to be.
“Our strength is in our diversity, and our sailors understand that,” Gilday said. “Racism in the United States is a very complex issue. What we benefit from is an open discussion about those issues, that we don’t try to ignore it or rewrite it, but we actually have a discussion about it.”
Yes, let’s have a discussion about it. What Banks should be asking Gilday is just why exactly is diversity our strength? Isn’t our strength our collection of navy ships that can kill our enemies? What does diversity have to do with successfully preventing navy ships from colliding? Why is the navy recommending any political book in the first place? Shouldn’t you be worrying about the colliding navy ships and not politics?
One of the things the navy did during the Bush administration was to end the 18-month course to teach navy officers shiphandling, and instead gave them a set of DVDs on the topic and told them to watch them on their own time, while they were being deployed to landlocked Afghanistan because reasons. This was a factor in the subsequent you-know whats.
Banks should ask Gilday about that. He apparently didn’t, and I bet he’s never even heard about it. Gilday of course isn’t an actual moron, he’s a leftist ideologue who was promoted for exactly that reason by other leftist ideologues who have been expressing their intent to “fundamentally transform” the United States since at least 2008.
Compared to that lofty goal, the US navy just doesn’t rate.
Banks added in his letter that he is “flabbergasted by the Navy’s decision to officially endorse such a harmful and subversive book”
Flabbergasted, he is. Perhaps someone could send him a DVD about the Obama administration, because he seems to have missed it.
My DIL’s sister;’s husband retired from the Sea Bees this year. We talked a bit last weekend during our visit. He said this has been going on about 5 years, He had been threatened with “Insubordination” repeatedly for resisting this indoctrination. He spent 20 years, mostly working with SEALs, doing construction jobs in the Navy. He is highly skilled and is now finding how valuable his skills are. He was a CPO and might have stayed in if the current indoctrination had not been so blatant. I fear we are back to the hollow force that followed Vietnam.
Some of you are old enough to remember Convergence Theory, which had a branch where the USSR and USA would gradually “converge” in the sense that their outward antagonism would lead in both countries to the same result: autocratic-oligarchic control over masses of
semi-citizens who are constantly spied on and lied to (SO,LT)
Watching Putin in Geneva makes me appreciate the theory, even though (or because?) it
survived the fall of the USSR . . . And the wit who pointed out back in the early 2000s that
the USSR was replaced by . . . a dozen mini-USSRs.
I believed strongly, and still do, that the USA/West was morally superior to the Evil Empire of Red Fascism, but since then the distance has closed rapidly.
Cousin Eddie (SO,LT)
The only ones who do not serve money are the Chinese. Money serves them or it gets slapped down. One of the reasons I think their way may be a better way forward.
You would have made a good slave master, Pen. Slavery in Canada You have the korrect mindset.
Good hands
https://mobile.twitter.com/HansMahncke/ … 3076555780
I fear we are back to the hollow force that followed Vietnam.
I’m certain we are based upon conversations I’ve had with recently discharged navy veterans. But it’s worse, because at least post Vietnam the navy was a professional service that simply lacked resources. Once the resources appeared, the navy was quickly able to put them to good use. I have zero faith that people like Admiral Gilday are capable of fixing the issues the navy has now, regardless of resources.
The only ones who do not serve money are the Chinese. Money serves them or it gets slapped down. One of the reasons I think their way may be a better way forward.
I’m with PenGun here. I think he is saying that the actual government of a country should rule it, not a behind-the-scenes assortment of its richest people and their paid minions.
No one doubts China is ruled by the internationally recognized government of China, or that Russia is ruled by the similarly recognized government of Russia. I’m well aware that the leadership of both have gotten rich via their control of their governments.
Who, exactly, is ruling the United States? The elected head of state is a senile sex offender who should be dying in a prison hospital. The Vice President is an awful politician with all the charm of a dead trout.
And in all actuality the election was stolen from the rightful winner, via a vast and lawless conspiracy involving members of both of the supposed political parties- but also an expensive conspiracy.
The people paying those bills are the actual rulers of the United States, because they’ve bought effective control of the US government- and use that to enrich themselves at least as thoroughly as the others noted above.
But they avoid the sort of accountability that necessarily accrues to Vladimir Putin of Chairman Xi.
So far.
More evidence that our politicians are bought and paid for.
The Navy budget proposal released last month seems an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Not only does it fail to acknowledge the obvious dangers of the present day, it further defers making good on long-overdue commitments to meet the threats of tomorrow.
Take a look around. Russia recently conducted large naval drills around Ukraine. Chinese aircraft and warships are busily trying to intimidate Taiwan and bully Philippine fishermen in the South China Sea. All the while, Beijing assiduously has been expanding its navy at breakneck pace.
To meet these aggressive Chinese and Russian behaviors, the United States should push to recapitalize its naval infrastructure, invigorate lackluster shipbuilding, and build needed end-strength. Unfortunately, the Navy budget proposed by the Biden administration does none of this.
They seem to have enough money for CRT indoctrination, I could support R&D if they can build better ships than the LCS fleet.
From the article linked by Mike K: “Our national security demands that we sustain our critical network of allies and compete with China and Russia. “
No it does not!
Our national security demands that we first rebuild the capacity to manufacture our own medications, our own electronics, our own nuts & bolts, even our own weapons — instead of relying on China or unreliable suppliers like the Swiss or the Taiwanese.
We need clear thinking — but the Deep State is lost in its own forest of lies, more concerned about transgendered sailors and “white supremacists” and “climate change” and the CovidScam than about clear thinking.
Reality is that the US has already lost the capacity to be able to sustain any future war with a country like China or Russia — through the self-inflicted destruction of our own industrial capacity. The choices in any future conflict with China or Russia will be (a) go nuclear and take the inevitable destructive nuclear response, or (b) sue for peace on whatever terms they dictate. That is reality.
And who are these “allies” that the US should be sustaining? The English, who provided the lies which were used to undermine President Trump? The Germans, who are dead set on making themselves ever more dependent on Russian gas? The Philippines, who do not want US forces in their country? The US has far too many entangling alliances which we don’t need and can’t afford and bring us nothing in return.
The US should be pulling back from foreign obligations and focusing on restoring our own economic health and self-sufficiency. That is the clear path to avoiding future wars. But when President Trump pointed in that direction, the Deep State’s Best & Brightest did everything they could to thwart him in every possible way. If China & Russia really have bought off our nomenklatura, they are certainly getting their money’s worth.