The Shutdown

One of my favorite economists, Paul Krugman, has abandoned his New York Times column after 20 plus years. He has, however, continued his daily subscriber letter, which I receive, and in a recent one, he addressed the  embarrassing pre-Christmas clown show that threatened to shut down the government. He titled the essay–quite appropriately–“The Chaos Monkeys Have Already Taken Over the Zoo.” 

In an earlier Times piece, written before passage of the last-ditch, last-minute deal to keep government over, Krugman had written

Speaker Mike Johnson (soon to be ex-speaker?) is scrambling to put a budget deal together to avoid a government shutdown tomorrow. What a Holiday Gift from President Musk and First Laddy Trump. More at The NY Times here.

They couldn’t even wait till January to unleash the chaos. Classic hubris — too bad the country and the world are within the blast radius.

One more thing. Assuming Johnson is unable to remain Speaker in the next Congress, the days and weeks it might take the GOP to select a new ‘leader’ might take them past the deadline to certify the election.

(I hadn’t considered that possibility, and quite probably, neither did the congressional monkeys, aka “the usual suspects.” An inability to certify Trump’s election, brought on by the most MAGA members of the House, would have been..interesting…)

Krugman was far from the only observer who pointed out that the reasons “President Musk” gave for torpedoing the initial bipartisan measure were mostly bogus. His enumeration of the items in the measure he found unacceptable included a number that weren’t actually included in the measure. (I’m sure everyone reading this is shocked by the revelation that Musk is happy to depart from the truth when it serves his purposes…) A number of reports have zeroed in on what was apparently the real reason he wanted to kill the measure.

As the Hill explained,

In a Friday letter to congressional leaders, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) claimed Musk derailed the deal that would have avoided a government shutdown “in order to protect his wallet and the Chinese Communist Party at the expense of American workers, innovators and businesses.”

The spending agreement released Tuesday included a bipartisan provision to limit and screen U.S. investments in China, among dozens of other proposals attached to the 1,500-page bill.

As the CEO and largest stockholder in Tesla, Musk has extensive business connections to China. The company operates a major manufacturing plant in Shanghai and has sought to build deeper connections with Chinese companies.

Interestingly, although the final bill did not include Trump’s demand to scrap the debt ceiling, it did omit the provision that would have curtailed Musk’s business with China. Musk evidently had more clout with lawmakers than Trump–quite possibly because he has ample resources to fund his threat to primary any legislators who failed to knuckle under.

What is most stunning about this particular “Chaos monkeys” episode is that the entire fiasco was triggered by a man with no official government authority–a man who has never submitted himself to the electorate, who has never received a single vote– yet clearly considers himself a co-President, and just as clearly, intends to use the considerable power of his purse to protect his personal financial interests, if need be, at the expense of the American public’s interests.

Musk is by far the richest of Trump’s proposed governing cabal, but he’s not the only billionaire, nor is he the only one who will bring multiple conflicts of interest to a designated role. The grifter-in-chief proposes to surround himself with other rich men (almost all of his designees are White “Christian” males) who are equally ignorant of government operations and constitutional constraints. They are clearly unconcerned about what policies might be in the national interest. Their first impulses will be to protect their own sources of wealth (or, in the case of RFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, to impose their loony-tunes worldviews on the country.)

The dictionary defines Kakistocracy as “government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state,” and Corporatism as economic control by powerful corporate interests.

I think we’re there.

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The Mump Regime

Well, I see where Elon Musk has recently praised Germany’s neo- Nazis. That’s not a big surprise–anyone who has followed the remaking of Twitter/X into a platform filled with racism, anti-Semitism and other assorted bigotries promoted by the world’s richest man can hardly be shocked by an explicit admission of his already-obvious political preferences.

What has been shocking–at least to me–has been the growing evidence that Musk used his riches to purchase the Presidency. The last few days–as our dysfunctional Congress struggled to avert a pre-Christmas government shutdown–Americans have been introduced to a stunning reality: for his expenditure of a quarter-billion dollars to elect Trump, Musk evidently expects to be a co-President. 

Despite the old adage, there really is something new under the sun…

Timothy Snyder–author of a best-selling book about tyranny–has summed up the situation in his Substack.

How to call this thing that is coming to America in a month?

“Administration” seems inaccurate, since it assumes that the elected president just administers a government for four years, whereas Trump clearly wants to rule indefinitely. It also seems wrong since the people he has appointed will chiefly break things rather than run them.

And so “regime” rather than administration. But whose?

As Snyder points out, the correct answer to that question might be Musk. Compared to Musk, Trump is a poor man. He’s also a man who owes Musk a lot more than he owes his voters or even his other ultra-rich donors. And as Snyder predicts, “Looking ahead, it will be Musk, not Trump, who pays for all the lawsuits to quiet the rest of us, or for the campaigns to primary dissenting Republicans.”

As he says, given that reality, any effort to accurately describe the upcoming regime should probably put Musk’s name first. Snyder dubs it “The Mump Regime.” It’s a title that does double duty.

And that recalls a very essential element of the collapse. One weakness of democracy in the United States has always been public health. The lack of a national health system brings us shorter lives, greater anxiety, and less freedom.

Now, with RFK Jr., we face the rollback of vaccinations, and thus a return, precisely, of mumps. And rubella and measles, which are halted by the same vaccine. And much else. The rest of oligarchical cabinet will weaken government by law through incompetence, spite, or avarice. But RFK Jr. will break society by making us sick.

And, thus, another reason to call this thing the Mump Regime. Get ready.

The chaos of the past few days hasn’t just highlighted the inability of Republicans to govern. (Anyone who’s been following the GOP clown-show in the U.S. House already knew that.) It has introduced us to an unprecedented display of the power of wealth.

However, it has also foreshadowed what is likely to be an epic clash of egos.

Musk and Trump share a couple of obvious attributes: massive ignorance of the way government works, and huge egos that prevent them from recognizing their own limitations. The outcome of Musk’s effort to throw a monkey wrench into the original bipartisan bill (itself a stopgap measure that displayed the inability of House Republicans to legislate) was a bill that defied most of their demands. It was also something of a PR disaster for Trump–and if there’s anything that is really important to Trump, it’s hogging the limelight.

The likely implosion of the Mump administration–an epic, forthcoming battle between two massive egos– may save the country from at least some of Trump’s “promises” that would vastly increase inflation, harm millions of Americans, and reverse the strong economic progress made under the Biden administration.

It’s probably too much to hope for, but the antics of these man-child know-nothings might also help undercut the widespread, mistaken belief that very wealthy people are rich because they’re smarter than the rest of us. That belief–that unwarranted respect for those who have managed (for Musk and Trump, via inheritance) to be richer than most people–has been critical to Trump’s support. His wealth and bluster have allowed him to escape public accountability for multiple manifestly stupid acts and pronouncements. The same is true of Musk. (Because they are rich, observers often assume that there must be a method to the madness.. )

By a very slim margin, American voters elected one rich ignoramus. They didn’t elect the other, richer one, although he is acting as though his “investment” entitles him to a “co-Presidency.”. A “come to Jesus” moment can’t be far off.

Pass the popcorn…..

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Happy Holidays

Today is Christmas. Few of you will have time to read a preachy post, but in case you do, I’ve reached back to a prior holiday message (from 2013) which is still mostly accurate….although there’s been slippage.

_______________________________

Word count: 672   Last edited on August 7, 2005 at 2:22 pm

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Speaking Of Unanticipated Consequences…

Forgive me if today’s subject seems unnecessarily repetitive, but I recently came across an article from The Bulwark that eloquently explained my concerns with our digital information environment. The article was titled “American Folklore,” and “Folklore” was an apt description of what has become of my original excitement/thrill/misunderstanding of the then-new communication mechanism called the Internet.

The dream of the internet was that it would create a high-information, high-trust society. Technology was supposed to make facts and primary sources immediately available to everyone, thereby ushering in an age of rationality and data-driven decision-making.

If you lived in Bumblefuck, Missouri, the internet meant that you were no longer beholden to the limited stream of news provided by your local paper, three broadcast networks, and assorted cable news players. You’d be able to see the information with your own eyes.

A Senate committee issued an important report? A scientific journal published a landmark study? You’d be able to sit in your living room and pull up the actual study or report and read it yourself, from soup to nuts. Your local newspaper might run a 600-word story about a speech some politician gave. The internet meant that you could watch the entire speech, unfiltered, and draw your own conclusions.

It was a lovely dream. And as we all know now, incredibly unrealistic..

As the article acknowledged, the internet has, indeed, made all of that data readily available to people. But the magnitude of even credible information is overwhelming, and much of it is too complicated for non-experts to understand. Furthermore, as the author says, the “bigger problem has been the sheer volume of noise that the internet gave rise to.” That noise has overwhelmed the information, and is largely the reason for the decline of trust in institutions.

I think there is another, even bigger problem.

Not only does the massive amount of information and disinformation challenge ordinary citizens, the way in which the Internet distributes information– the way that information is made accessible–requires each of us to be our own gatekeeper. It requires us to know what it is we need to know, and then to search it out and determine its credibility.

Let me use an example. A site called Chalkbeat provides vetted, credible information about education in several states, including my own state of Indiana. A couple of years ago, I asked over twenty reasonably bright, educated people if they had ever heard of the site or visited it; every one of them was unaware of its existence.

When we had local newspapers that were widely read, gatekeepers (editors) determined what subjects were important to disseminate–what informed citizens needed to know. They weren’t uniformly right, but those papers included education news, and readers who may not have had children in school or who were unaware of or disinterested in how education policy affected them (think property taxes, the effects of school reputation on sales price of homes, etc.) would at least see headlines that might lead them to better understanding of why they should keep informed about the subject.

The gatekeepers weren’t perfect, but they were helpful. Today, we can remain blissfully unaware of what is occurring in many  policy areas and the relevance, let alone the existence, of sources of information on the topics.

The scattered nature of our information environment not only puts the onus on the individual to determine what s/he needs to know and where to find trustworthy sources, but it is the major reason that we Americans occupy incompatible realities. The “zone”–that is, the Internet–has been flooded with propaganda, misinformation, and conspiracy theories, as well as sincere but different ideological approaches to most subjects. There’s a reason so many people have turned to social media for their “news”–it is simply unreasonable to expect every American to decide what subjects s/he needs to know and then to  search out and evaluate information on those subjects.

As the linked essay notes,

The result of all of this [changing economics of media] is a growing consumer alienation from the actual sources of information, a return to a kind of folk-story society ripe for manipulation by demagogues who promise simplicity in an increasingly complex world…

We are now a folk-story society. The drones. The immigrants eating cats and dogs. The crime wave and “economic hardships” that haven’t been real since 2022.

It’s all folklore. Stories that a post-literate people pass on to one another in the oral tradition.

Our information environment isn’t the only cause of our current dysfunctions, but it is a major contributor.

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Unintended Consequences

One of the trickiest problems facing policymakers is the risk of unintended consequences. Even policies passed with the best of intentions can produce very negative outcomes, often to seemingly unrelated issues. Good policy decisions rest both on proper diagnosis–that is, a thoughtful and informed analysis of the problem to be solved and its causes–and on recognition of the effects a proposed policy change might have on other areas of American life.

Those two requirements of sound policymaking–proper diagnosis and an understanding of what we might call the “inter-relationship” of policy areas–require policymakers to be competent and informed. Enormous damage can be done by ideologues impatient with pesky realities, or self-important ignoramuses acting with limited understanding..

Considerable harm can be done unintentionally by people who lack the knowledge necessary to see the probable consequences of their ignorance. What makes the coming Trump administration so terrifying is that it is composed almost entirely of such people.

Trump himself is clearly unable to understand the logical outcomes of his threats–think his love affair with tariffs, which would vastly increase inflation, or the effects of his plan to deport millions of immigrants, many of whom American farmers rely upon to pick their crops.

I thought about the problem of unintended consequences when I came across an article focused on the unfortunate effects of even well-meaning legislation passed by thoughtful legislators. 

Richard Rothstein wrote The Color of Law, a book I heartily recommend. It was an eye-opening history of the many laws that created America’s residential segregation, and any reader who comes to it while laboring under the misapprehension that such neighborhoods arose by chance or choice will discover otherwise. (I will admit to being shocked when I read it, and I did know some of what he covered.)

In the linked article, however, he takes analysis a bit farther, and shows how that shameful history led to a seemingly unrelated bill that worsened the negative outcomes of residential segregation.

I was recently asked how I came to write The Color of Law. The answer is this: In the 1990s and early 2000s, I had been a journalist and policy analyst studying public education. At the time, it was conventional wisdom that the “achievement gap”—black students having lower average performance than white students—was caused by lazy or incompetent teachers of low-income children. In 2002, this view, shared across the political spectrum, was enshrined in federal legislation: the “No Child Left Behind” law. Its theory was that if we shamed teachers by publishing their low-income African American students’ test scores, the teachers would work harder and the achievement gap would disappear. Residues of this law continue to this day. If you wonder why elementary and secondary schools are so obsessed with administering standardized tests and reporting their scores, it’s because of that policy.

Rothstein eventually concluded that lower average achievement of these pupils wasn’t due to deficits of instruction, but to the

social and economic challenges that children brought with them to school—for example, greater rates of lead poisoning that resulted in damaged cognitive function; living in more polluted neighborhoods that led to a higher incidence of asthma that kept children up at night wheezing and coming to school drowsier the next day; lack of adequate health care, including dental care, that brought more children to school with distracting toothaches, and on and on…

Looking back on this now, it’s remarkable that the book treated these all as individual student disadvantages, and made very little mention of segregation. But I soon thereafter realized that it was one thing if individual students came to school with one or more of such challenges; it was quite another if many students in a school did so, overwhelming the ability of even the best teachers to overcome them. We call such schools “segregated” schools and so I began to think of school segregation as the greatest problem facing American public education. And as I thought about it further, an obvious fact struck me: the reason we have segregated schools is because they are located in segregated neighborhoods. For me, a logical next step was to view neighborhood segregation as a school problem, one that writers about education policy should consider more carefully.

That insight led Rothstein to write The Color of Law. It should caution us to recognize the complex and inter-related nature of so many of the issues modern America faces.

We will soon see what happens when the government is run by people who don’t understand H.L. Mencken’s observation that “For every complex problem, there’s an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

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