Who’s Blackmailing the President & Why Aren't Democrats Upset About It?

Deep State to Trump: "You know what you have to hide. So do we. Are you feeling lucky?"

by Gaius Publius

Until now, getting into the news and reports about Russia and Trump meant getting into some rather dense weeds (PDF of declassified report here), but with the recent release by Buzzfeed of the full 35-page dossier on Trump and Russia (the explosive one, with the women peeing on Obama's former hotel room bed), which was distilled into a two-page appendix in the classified version of the report, the road to clarity just presented itself.

So I offer the text of three tweets (mine), a longer discussion of those main points, and comments by Glenn Greenwald on the latest Trump-Russia-intel community contretemps. Everything else, as I now see it, is detail, a gloss on these three points.

First, the tweets, a bullet-point capsule of all the main points up to now:

1) It certainly looks like our Security State is using Russian blackmail material against Trump to blackmail him for their own purposes.

— Gaius Publius (@Gaius_Publius) January 11, 2017

2) Where's the outrage from the usual Dem suspects about federal agents interfering in the political process now?

— Gaius Publius (@Gaius_Publius) January 11, 2017

3) is this difference in treatment obvious only to me, or is the nation noticing as well? If so, not good for "usual Dems" & their cred.

— Gaius Publius (@Gaius_Publius) January 11, 2017

This hits, I think, the main elements to watch in tightly compressed form. Read on for the long version of these three points. Click here to jump ahead to Greenwald's take on all this.

Blackmailing the U.S. President

As I said above, there only three elements to "get" to get this story. First, there's the blackmail element. According to the 35-page dossier, Russia (supposedly) prepared blackmail material on Trump but isn't using it.

But it's clear that American intelligence services certainly are using it, or using the threat of using it, and doing so very publicly (per CNN, quoted here, my emphasis):

One reason the nation's intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN.

"For your information, sir"? Or "Careful; you don't know what all us intel types know about you ... sir"? Again, Trump was presented with just a two-page summary of the full dossier. The actual information, which we have thanks to the later publication of the 35-page dossier, was reportedly not presented to him, perhaps to leave to his imagination what it contained.

Now the detail: According to an ex-MI6 (the British CIA) agent, whose dossier, I understand from talking with journalists, was shopped around to a number of publications and rejected as unreliable before it seems to have found a home on David Corn's desk — according to this ex-agent, Russia had assembled a fair amount of blackmail material on Donald Trump, including his sexual practices while staying at first-class hotels in Russia. But Russia, we're told, isn't using the material against him since Trump is in sync with their goals anyway.

American sources, however, have published this material since it came to them as well from the same ex-MI6 agent. In other words, the 35-page dossier was available both to American intel services and the U.S. press because its author had been shopping it around broadly for publication. But almost without exception, the American press considered it unreliable and wouldn't touch it.

Yet a summary of this widely-considered-unreliable dossier appeared in the classified briefing the U.S. intel chiefs presented to Donald Trump. Why? The obvious answer is to blackmail Trump for their own purposes.

We can speculate on what those purposes are. My best guess is to keep alive the new cold war with Russia; others like Corey Robin think maybe just agency revenge. But using unreliable information to frighten Trump is an obvious shot across his bow. It says, "We're the we-know-everything National Security State. There's more where this came from. You're vulnerable to anyone who knows this stuff. Think that through ... sir."

The Security Services, the Political Process, and the Democratic Party

Second, there's the element of multiple intrusions into the political process. Russia certainly attempted to tilt the election their way, but they were not alone in that effort. For example, the present use of blackmail material by U.S. intel chiefs, or the threat of its use, is itself an intrusion of the U.S. security services (what Greenwald calls the "deep state") into the 2016-2017 political process.

But even this is not unique. Consider the James Comey affair. Prior to the election, there were many hands meddling to tilt the political outcome as well. For example, Comey's "no charge" charges against Clinton count as one attempt to intrude. As I viewed the evidence against her (see here), a Comey recommendation to indict would have been justifiable. (Remember, the FBI doesn't indict; that's left to Loretta Lynch and the Dept. of Justice, a duty she couldn't credibly perform after her secret tarmac meeting Bill Clinton was revealed.)

Or barring a recommendation to indict, Comey could have just stood down, recommended not to indict — and then kept his mouth shut. Had he done that, it might have been a political act since Comey is a careerist serving a Democratic president and a Democratic Attorney General. (Again, there was ample cause to turn what he correctly called "gross negligence" into a recommendation to pursue the investigation to the grand jury level. After all, the same statute has been wielded by Obama many times to punish less-well-placed individuals for far less negligence than running a secret, private, wide-open server through which all her government communications were passed, whether classified or not.)

But caught between an Obama administration that signaled clearly it wanted no indictment — political interference on their part — and a group of right-wing agents who clearly wanted one, Comey tried to have it both ways and failed to please anyone at all. The speech in which he indicted without indicting was certainly a political act in both senses of the phrase. He tried to get the political outcome of a recommendation to indict without recommending to indict, and in the office politics sense, he tried to please both his bosses and his employees to preserve his standing and his job.

Unfortunately, his bosses and his employees wanted opposite things. Many of the FBI agents involved in the server investigation clearly wanted an indictment, and when one wasn't forthcoming, started leaking what they knew — or what they wanted people to think they knew — to the press. This represented political interference as well, not only by agents of the FBI, but also by investigators in the NY Police Dept, which had control of Anthony Wiener's laptop, and who were also leaking to the press.

The Democrats at this point, I think rightly, felt heavy "cop hands" on the scale of this election (without at all acknowledging the president's own hand, or that of Loretta Lynch), and said so — loudly.

But Comey was not alone. The CIA and NSA (the largest part of the "national security state") were intruding politically in the other direction, by endorsing Clinton and demonizing Trump (my emphasis):

For months, the CIA, with unprecedented clarity, overtly threw its weight behind Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and sought to defeat Donald Trump. In August, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell announced his endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed that “Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” The CIA and NSA director under George W. Bush, Gen. Michael Hayden, also endorsed Clinton, and went to the Washington Post to warn, in the week before the election, that “Donald Trump really does sound a lot like Vladimir Putin,” adding that Trump is “the useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.”

It is not hard to understand why the CIA preferred Clinton over Trump. Clinton was critical of Obama for restraining the CIA’s proxy war in Syria and was eager to expand that war, while Trump denounced it.

Now Trump is president and the pro-war national security forces are at it again, leaning again on Trump in yet another intrusion into the political process.

So who again tried to tilt the field for or against Clinton or Trump? Including Russia, the administration, Comey, agents of the FBI and NY police, the CIA and national security forces, I count five groups. This is a lot of political intrusion, regardless of which candidate you favored — all within the last year — and we're still not done. I'm sure we're only halfway through this extended drama.

The Selective Blindness of the Democratic Party

Third, with all this political interference, where are the Democrats? Do they condemn it all, praise it all, or pick and choose?

Bottom line: They see what they want to see, not what's in front of us all and in plain sight. Which is not only unprincipled, it's dangerous ... for them as well as us.

Again, they did not see Obama's original declarations of Clinton's innocence as political intrusion. But they did see Comey's eventual "won't indict, but will condemn" speech, and his and other investigators' pre-election actions, as political intrusion. They did not see the "pro-war" security apparatus' endorsement of Clinton and trashing of Trump as intrusions. But they do see Russian interference as intrusion. And they absolutely don't see the security services' present blackmail threats against a duly elected president as political interference.

They see what they want to see, what they think helps them politically and electorally, and they're blind to the rest. This is highly unprincipled. And again, it's dangerous as well.

After all, one reason the institutional Democratic Party nearly lost to Sanders, a highly principled man — and did lose to Trump, a man who pretended to be principled — is that plenty of voters in key states were just tired of being taken for a ride by "say one thing, do another" Democrats. Tired, in other words, of unprincipled Democrats — tired of job-promising, job-killing trade deals pushed hard by both Democratic presidents, tired of the bank bailout that made every banker whole but rescued almost no mortgagees, tired of their reduced lives, their mountain of personal debt, tired of the overly complex, profit-infected, still-unsolved medical care system — tired of what 16 years of Democrats had done to them, not for them.

If Democrats want to start winning again, not just the White House, but Congress and state houses, they can't continue to be these Democrats — unprincipled and self-serving. They must be those Democrats, Sanders Democrats, principled Democrats instead.

Does the above litany of complaint about political interference when it suits them, and non-complaint when it doesn't, look like principled behavior to you?

Which brings me to the end of this part of the discussion. If some people see this party behavior as self-serving hypocrisy, you can bet others do as well. Democrats can only turn this decade-long collapse around by not being who they appeared to be in the last three election cycles. They have to attract the Sanders voters who stood aside in the general election and see them very negatively. Yes, Democrats will continue to get votes — some people will always vote Democratic. But in the post-Sanders, post-Trump era, will they get enough votes to turn the current tide, which runs heavily against them?

I'm not alone in thinking, not a chance.

But this is the long form of what I wanted to say. For the elevator speech version, just read the three tweets at the top. I think they capture the main points very nicely.

Glenn Greenwald: "The Deep State Goes to War with the President-Elect, and Democrats Cheer"

Greenwald's take is very similar to mine, and there's much more research in his excellent piece. Writing at The Intercept, he says (emphasis in original):

The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer

In January, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.

This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”

Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.

You can see where this is going. The "deep state," the CIA, NSA and the rest of the unelected national security apparatus of the U.S., is going to war with an elected president even before he takes office, and Democrats are so eager for a win that they're siding with them.

Did Russia attempt to interfere in the U.S. election? Of course, and Democrats condemned it. Did the agents of the FBI et al attempt to interfere in the U.S. election? Of course, and Democrats condemned it. Is the national security state today interfering in the outcome of a U.S. election, by trying to destabilize and force its will on the incoming administration? Of course, and Democrats are cheering it.

As horrible and as monstrous as this incoming administration is — and it will prove to be the worst in American history — who would aid the national security apparatus in undermining it?

Apparently, the Democratic Party. Greenwald continues:

The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.

But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.

And Greenwald agrees that this tactic is not just craven; it's also dangerous:

Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?

All of this, don't forget, rests on the one document mentioned above, the material summarized in an appendix to the classified version of the security services' report on Russia (emphasis mine):

the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.

I'll send you to the Greenwald piece for much more of this detail. As I said above, this story has seemed muddy until now, but it just came clear.

A Coup in the Making

This is not a game, even at the electoral level. It has nation-changing, anti-democratic consequences. Democratic voters fear a coup, or a kind of coup, led by the Trump administration, and for good reason. But there's another coup in the making as well, and Democrats are cheering it.

If a Republican elected official had publicly warned Obama to not oppose a policy the Republicans and the CIA/NSA favored because "they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you," what would — what should — our response to that be? Mine would be horror and shock that a Republican had dared make that threat, followed by fear that he, and the agencies behind him, will make good on it. At which point, it's farewell democracy, likely for a long long time.

Yet the following actually did happen (Greenwald again, my emphasis): "Just last week, Chuck Schumer issued a warning to Trump, telling Rachel Maddow that Trump was being 'really dumb' by challenging the unelected intelligence community because of all the ways they possess to destroy those who dare to stand up to them." And yet there was no shock or fear, at least from Maddow or her viewers.

And Schumer really did use the phrase "they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you." The video is embedded here. Is that how Democrats plan to defeat Trump? Is it better, more comforting, if a Democrat makes that threat and appears to side with the security agencies' (the deep state's) strong-arm tactics?

A coup in the making — not the one we fear, which may also occur — but a coup nonetheless. This really is not a game, and both sides are playing for keeps.

GP
 

AmericaBlog's Gaius Publius points out that the Bush tax cuts HAVE EXPIRED, and therefore . . .

by Ken

Over at AmericaBlog, Gaius Publius notes: "Bush tax cuts have expired, no law has replaced them." As he points out :

No, a handshake between Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell is not a new law, desite what you're reading in the papers. And yes, the negotiating ground has changed, despite what you're reading in the papers.

I'm not absolutely sure that's the case, bearing in mind what WaPo's Village Fixer Chris Cillizza pointed out the other day about congressional electoral math: that whatever the polls say, congressional Republicans are pretty much invincible in their districts, and have no need to curry favor with people who aren't going to vote for them anyway. (Witness the announced opposition to the Senate "deal" of that illustrious statesman Eric Cantor. If you believe in, or are just curious about, the "deal," here's Ezra Klein's "Everything You Need to Know About.")

Still, the congressional Republicans' high-bracket paymasters, who for the time being have lost their tax goodies, may start to get restless about the payoff for their investment. You or I might say, "Serves you right for bankrolling those doody-brained Teabaggers," but I suppose it's theoretically possible that they could be calling for the head of "Sunny John" Boehner on a silver deficit-hawk platter.

So let's follow along with GP's premise, because it leads to a honey of a hypothetical letter from the president ("pretend-Barack") to his congressional negotiating partners, "John & Mitch," in which he offers a set of nonnegotiable proposals, including a number that they either agreed to or had negotiated better terms than "before you blew it by not sending me a bill in time." The list includes going back to $250K as the cutoff point for restoration of the Bush tax cuts; taxing capital gains and carried interest at 25% (not the agreed-upon 20%!); extending assorted tax credits and fixes as well as unemployment benefits; a full-year pushback of the sequester; and so on -- "AND I'm going to tell the American people every single day, starting this very afternoon, that their tax breaks are in your hands."

And with it pretend-Barack offers terms that include passage in both houses of Congess "without amendement," at penalty of having the package reinstated with the $245K threshold dropped to $245K, and then to $240K, and so on.

This is how pretend-Barack plays the game after January 1, after the Bush tax cuts have already expired with no new bill. Unless they’ve changed the constitution, or we don’t have rule of law, or something. Or unless Barack had something totally different in mind -- and totally different masters to obey (dare you to click).

It's such a pleasant fantasy that I'm prepared to indulge GP a bit. Of course those last two conditions he cites pretty much take the air out of the tires of the fantasy by themselves, even without the consideration of the Republicans' electoral disincentive to budge.

That said, I confess that I have also fantasized about an administration media blitz, since even the president has seemed prepared to make an issue of the R's' commitment to tax favoritism for the wealth. However, the blitz would have to be clear and specific, to try to communicate to voters that when the chips are down, the R's' nonnegotiable concern is for people who earn above $250K and the very small group of richies who are actually subject to estate taxes.

In reality, though, I suppose we have to wait for the House Republicans to do their worst and then see what has been given away.

#

Now Everyone Knows That Gaius Publius Uses The Pen Name "Thomas Neuburger" When He Writes For Mainstream Media

Earlier this week, Gaius did a an OpEd for the San Francisco Chronicle, hidden behind a paywall. (The paper charges $2.50 a copy, by the way.) His piece is too important to leave it there.


The Next U.S. Constitution Is Forming Now
by Thomas Neuburger

Each year on this day, Americans celebrate our founding principles and the birth of our nation, but in these chaotic and polarized days, it is also important to remember that the United States was born from a crisis of unity and has experienced two more at roughly 70-year intervals-- the Civil War and the Great Depression.

Both nearly tore us apart, yet each sparked a civic rebirth. After each great rupture, the government was restructured; each took the nation closer to its founding ideals; each brought greater liberty, justice and opportunity to expanding groups of Americans; each changed forever and for the better the relationship between government and the people.

We’re now in the midst of a fourth crisis, from which will emerge the next agreement about how and for whom our government operates. Will it produce a constitution that once again advances our founding principles and expands opportunities, or will this be the first American crisis that institutionalizes a stripping of rights, freedom and wealth?

In past crises, the nation found the will and leadership to correct its course. Will we be so blessed again?

More fundamentally, will the structure of our present political process allow us to select the right leader, should she or he emerge? Or will the power brokers of our parties work to eliminate the candidacy of a potential Washington, Lincoln or Roosevelt?

A nation’s constitution is not just contained in a document but includes as well the practices and agreements that determine how government operates and what it’s permitted to do. In that sense we’ve been governed not by one constitution but by three.

The first grew out of armed revolt against the British Crown, but it also sprang from revolt by the emerging manufacturing and merchant classes against colonial status. Americans wanted to compete alongside the British economy and not be forced into the role of mere consumers.

From that revolution came the original U.S. Constitution-- slave-enabling and voter-restricting, yes, but largely democratic-- and from its government came the policies of Alexander Hamilton, which gave American manufacturing its first strong boost.

The second constitutional agreement grew from a mainly nonviolent revolt in the North against slavery, an institution that sustained the Southern economy. This threat to slavery produced a bloody Southern revolt against the national government. The social aspects of that conflict still rip our society, but the constitution that emerged-- that of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments-- was radically different: It abolished slavery, established equal protection as a fundamental right and greatly expanded the vote.

Each of the first two crises broke into violence-- the Revolutionary War, the Civil War-- before producing constitutional change. The third, the Great Depression, also produced a revolution of our politics and governance, but one in which violence was averted by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election and bow to the need for a restructured government. This led to vast reforms, citizen-protecting regulation and the economic-opportunity programs known as the New Deal.

Each crisis resulted in a constitution that brought us closer to our principles: the original Constitution bound the separate states into one country; through amendment an anti-slavery document replaced the pro-slavery original; and through reinterpretation of the Commerce Clause and other changes, the New Deal constitution overturned the laissez-faire government from which it evolved.

Through each, the nation righted itself. Crucially, success also depended on the emergence of the right political leader-- and by the people’s ability to elect him.

Our nation is once more in the grip of division and change. When we emerge, the United States will be different. Our government and society will once more be restructured and new rules will be decided.

What will the next American constitution look like, given the trajectory of the Trump presidency and the swirl of conflict around it? Like Turkey’s and Hungary’s, with dictatorial government wrapped in old constitutional forms? A naked kleptocracy, where forms and norms are simply ignored?

With the resignation of Justice Anthony Kennedy and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s rush to confirm a Trump appointee-- an opportunity he openly denied the previous president-- we see yet another attempt to turn the constitution on its head.

Impeachment is our formal protection against presidential misadventure, not just a way to address proven violations of the criminal code. Could a lack of impeachment enshrine in our practices continued debasement of our democratic norms and principles? Is impeachment alone sufficient to correct our course?

We are already changed by what led us here, and the political, racial and economic dysfunction that so many rejected with their votes in the 2016 election cycle shows no sign of ending without another restructuring of government. This crisis of unity has brought us to transition, no matter what happens to Donald J. Trump.

The past three times our government was forced to change, we chose leaders up to the task of correcting our national course to the benefit of increasing numbers of Americans.

Will we get that lucky again?

Thomas Neuburger is an essayist, poet and story writer. He has published political analysis under the pen name Gaius Publius since 2010.

How to Run a Rogue Twitter Account with an Anonymous Email Address and a Burner Phone

by Gaius Publius

Thanks to the dark dawn of the Age of Trump, I suspect, we're seeing a bloom of Twitter accounts purporting to be either Alt-Agency accounts of current government employees, or more likely, Alt-Agency accounts of former employees of the department named in the account.

One rather large list of alt or rogue accounts is this one — Rogue Federal Tweeter. I've started a much smaller one here — RogueGovt — just to see what was going on in the alt-twitter world.

No one here wants anyone to break the law, but not all "rogue" or anonymous Twitter activity is unlawful. In fact, many would argue that the ability to be anonymous, if one chooses to be, is a right.

This got me wondering, in theory, what the process might look like if one wanted to be completely anonymous on Twitter, independent of the purpose. How would one do that? Could one even succeed at it?

As it turns out, there are indeed ways to do that, and yes, if one is careful, once can even succeed. One such guide recently turned up at The Intercept by the always-good tech and security writer Micah Lee.

So consider this an introduction, if only for the academic purpose of demonstrating that anonymous twittering is indeed possible. The purpose could be completely unrelated to politics. Let's say, for example, you are a Red Sox fan, so adamant a fan, in fact, that if people at work knew the depth of your passion and commitment, they might shun you at your regular Friday Happy Hour outings, or even cost you devoutly wished opportunity to make very good friends with, say, Janice in Accounting, sadly, an equally rabid Yankees fan.

Let's also add that, for example, like some people much more famous than yourself, you suffer from a terrible modern failing — you can't stay off of Twitter, especially when rattling around your lonely pad at night, and especially when your dander is up.

Micah Lee's piece offers these suggestions, including a step-by-step process, to create and use successfully an anonymous Twitter account, @Alt-RedSox, say. (Note the two parts to the problem — creating the account successfully so that your ownership can't be traced; using the account successfully so that your activity can't lead back to you. More on the second problem in a bit.)

Creating an Anonymous Twitter Account

Lee starts this way. (Note that his theoretical example involves the government, whereas me, I'm just theoretically worried about the Red Sox, my coworkers, and Janice in Accounting. The problem is the same in both cases.)

How to Run a Rogue Government Twitter Account With an Anonymous Email Address and a Burner Phone

One of the first things Donald Trump did when he took office was temporarily gag several federal agencies, forbidding them from tweeting.

In response, self-described government workers created a wave of rogue Twitter accounts that share real facts (not to be confused with “alternative facts,” otherwise known as “lies”) about climate change and science. As a rule, the people running these accounts chose to remain anonymous, fearing retaliation — but, depending on how they created and use their accounts, they are not necessarily anonymous to Twitter itself, or to anyone Twitter shares data with.

Anonymous speech is firmly protected by the First Amendment and the Supreme Court, and its history in the U.S. dates to the Federalist Papers, written in 1787 and 1788 under the pseudonym Publius by three of the founding fathers.

But the technical ability for people to remain anonymous on today’s internet, where every scrap of data is meticulously tracked, is an entirely different issue. The FBI, a domestic intelligence agency that claims the power to spy on anyone based on suspicions that don’t come close to probable cause, has a long, dark history of violating the rights of Americans. And now it reports directly to President Trump, who is a petty, revenge-obsessed authoritarian with utter disrespect for the courts and the rule of law.

In this environment, how easy is it to create and maintain a Twitter account while preserving your anonymity — even from Twitter and any law enforcement agency that may request its records? I tried to find out and documented all my steps. There are different ways to accomplish this. If you plan on following these steps, you should make sure you understand the purpose of them, in case you need to improvise. I also can’t guarantee that these techniques will protect your anonymity — there are countless ways that things can go wrong, many of them social rather than technical. But I hope you’ll at least have a fighting chance at keeping your real identity private.

For this exercise, I decided to pick a highly controversial political topic: Facts. I believe that what we know about reality is based on evidence that can be objectively observed. Thus, I created the completely anonymous (until publishing this article, of course) Twitter account @FactsNotAlt. Here’s how I did it.

The article then details the process, and frankly, if you're a Jack Reacher fan, you may find some of it thrillingly familiar. I'll send you to the piece for the highly readable step-by-step detail, but in general the process Lee outlines is this:

• Download and install the Tor Browser, which anonymizes Internet activity.

• Using Tor, get an anonymous email account (Lee offers suggestions).

• Get an anonymous phone number (here's where you'll feel the Reacher blood in your veins).

• Using Tor Browser, create the Twitter account of your choice (for example, @Alt-RedSox) and associate it with your anonymous phone number.

• Using your anonymous email address and anonymous phone, confirm the account to Twitter's satisfaction.

• Tweet.

These really aren't hard steps. A child could do them, or a child-like adult with time on his hands. Being neither, you could accomplish this much with ease.

Interesting exercise, isn't it, if a little academic. You could even call it a literary exercise if you're working on a novel about a mad Red Sox tweeter who has managed to score a friendship with Not-Janice in Accounting (who, it turns out, runs an equally anonymous Alt-Yankees account — shhh).

Maintaining Your Anonymity

The easier part of the process is creating the account. Just follow Lee's advice about which locations and networks you use while doing it. The harder part is maintaining your anonymity as you tweet away about the rotten management of your favorite team, its personnel and new budget policies, and so on.

About that part of the problem, Lee has some excellent, indeed vital, suggestions. Again, these aren't in general difficult to do; it's that they must be done always — no slippage, in other words. I'll send you to the piece for all of it, but for example:

• Be careful how you interact with people, both in real life and online. Especially, don't brag. The most common way operations like this fail is the old one — loose lips. Other Lee suggestions include not uploading images (of documents, say) unless they are screen grabs, since many images contain metadata. To upload a document, take a screen grab of it first, then upload that.
  
  You don't even want to write in a style that "sounds like you." Some people can ID writers by style (I'm one of them — shhh).

• Stay very compartmental. This means, use Tor for all tweeting from that account. Tweet from public networks only. Never use your anonymous phone number for anything but to create the account; then turn it off, record the number in case you need it for later verification, and destroy it. Don't tweet from work, especially if Janice is hovering nearby. Don't "follow" your anonymous account, or even read it outside of these restrictions (using Tor in a coffeeshop). And so on.
  
  If someone is out to find you — the off-the-leash FBI in Lee's example; Janice's brothers in mine — the chain of connection can't ever lead from your Twitter account to anything that touches you or your friends. In other words, complete lockdown compartmentalization of this small part of your life; zero traceability of its activity.

But that said, all should be fine in your Alt Twitter world. Your Sox-love can be as Red as you like, and your Yankee friends will never know. Just remember; don't break the law doing this. No one here wants that.

Scheduling note: My comments appear regularly here on Monday and Thursday, or Tuesday and Thursday if Monday is a holiday.

GP
 

The Monopoly-Driven Price of Health Care; Case in Point, Alan Grayson's Hip Replacement

You can see the trend. Hospital "consolidation" — a polite term for monopoly formation — in the hospital industry (source: Federal Reserve of Minneapolis)

by Gaius Publius

I'm on Alan Grayson's email list, and this recently came through. As usual with Grayson's work, it's well (and entertainingly) written. But it's also a shocker.

As a result of a fall playing basketball last year, Grayson found himself in need of a replacement hip, and so had the surgery. For Grayson, things went fine. For the hospital, things went even better. The bill he received for his three-day hospital stay plus the cost of the device itself — not including any doctor fees, which were billed separately — was four times what is charged in the U.K. for the same surgery and ten times what is charged in Spain. Further, Grayson was charged more than twice the usual cost in the U.S.

Shocked, Grayson took a look at these prices, how they compared elsewhere and what keeps them so outrageously high in the U.S. Note the role of monopoly in the discussion below (emphasis mine).

Dear Gaius,

I broke my leg a few months ago, playing basketball with my kids. (Note to self: stop lunging for every loose ball I see.) I actually sat cross-legged on the court for a few minutes, thinking that the pain would go away. It certainly did not.

My wife took me to the hospital, where X-rays showed that the part of the bone inside my hip looked like someone had hit it with a sledgehammer. My surgeon expressed extreme skepticism that he could put it back together again. He recommended a hip replacement, which puts a metal head and a plastic shell in place of the ball and socket inside your hip. I said fine.

Not being Henny Youngman, I refrained from asking him whether I would ever be able to play the piano again.

The surgery took place the morning after I was admitted to the hospital, and I was released two days after that. Less than 72 hours from in to out.

The hospital bill was $69,240.

That’s just the hospital bill. The surgeon, emergency room doctor and physical therapist all billed me separately.

Admittedly, this bill was on the high side. According to a report by the International Federation of Health Plans, the average hip replacement in the United States in 2015 cost $29,067. Only the most expensive five percent of hip replacements here cost $57,225 or more. Somehow, my hospital bill alone was more than that astronomical sum. But even $29,067 is a very pretty penny.

(Blue Cross, my insurance carrier, said no to the $69,240 hospital bill, and paid $32,395 instead – which is still a lot of money. I paid a $500 copayment, having already paid my deductible for the year.)

I worked for four years as an economist. Economists associate the price of things with their cost of production. (Specifically, their marginal cost of production, but for present purposes, that’s an unnecessary nuance.) In a free market, competition is supposed to drive prices down to the cost of production.

What did it cost the hospital to host me for those three days? It had to pay the nurses, but there certainly were fewer nurses than patients, so at most we’re talking about three days of nurses’ pay. It had to pay for the metal and plastic parts that the surgeon put inside me, and the surgical glue that was used to close me back up, which are mass-produced. (2.5 million Americans have replacement hips.) The hospital had to buy the medicine that it gave to me, which was modest, because I’m really not into opiates. It had to buy my gown, the kind that ties in the back. It had to feed me eight meals of hospital food. It had to pay for the electricity and water for my room (and the cable TV, which I did not use, but thanks anyway.)

The hospital had to pay for one hour’s worth of time in a surgical room, which I never got to see because I was under general anesthesia during that hour. (I hate the sight of blood, especially mine.) It had to pay for three days’ worth of time in the room where my hospital bed was located, one of 211 in that hospital. My hospital opened in 1993, so those costs have been amortized over 24 years already.

Let’s say that each bed cost $100,000 to build, 24 years ago. Amortize that over a quarter of a century, and it works out to $11 a day.

The hospital didn’t have to pay the doctors, because they billed me directly. It didn’t have to pay taxes, because it’s a non-profit.

Perhaps I’m simply obtuse, but I’m not seeing $69,240 in costs here.

The International Federation of Health Plans helpfully notes that the exact same surgery costs $16,225 in the UK, one of those “socialized medicine” countries that Fox News always warns about. That’s half as much as the cost here. In Spain, a hip replacements costs $6757, less than a quarter of the cost in the United States, and less than a tenth as much as my hospital bill.

Why would the same surgery cost $29,067 in the United States, $16,225 in the United Kingdom, and $6757 in Spain? Well, our hospitals don’t really compete against each other; in Orlando, two hospital chains own pretty much everything. Our insurance companies don’t really compete against each other; in Florida, Blue Cross alone has almost half of the market. (Across the state line, in Alabama, it’s 92%.) Both the hospitals and the insurance companies can charge almost whatever they want, provide as little as possible in return, and keep the difference.

My hip replacement surgery went very well. Two weeks later, I was walking without assistance. Two months later, I walked eight miles in one day at Petra, in Jordan. As to the quality of my care, I have no complaints. And I concede that my health is more important than the cost of care.

But $69,240 for one hour in surgery and three days in the hospital? Come on!

We spend more money on healthcare than any other country, our life expectancy is fiftieth in the world, and even now, one tenth of us have no health coverage. People wonder how we can spend so much, and enjoy so little in return.

As I see the GOP begin its ruthless gutting of Obamacare, I feel constrained to point out that regress is not progress.

Better health, less cost. What’s so complicated? And is that asking so much?

Courage,

Alan Grayson

“These prices are insane!”
—“Crazy Eddie” pitchman Jerry Carroll

One of the biggest scams in the world is monopoly-creation for the purpose of wealth-extraction (the classic "Where else you gonna go?" problem that every major corporation covets). And as an industry, none is more vicious — or deadly — than the health care industry. Since everyone needs health care, those who make it their goal to extract the highest price are literally killing people for money.

Think of it this way. If your goal is maximum profit for a product or service, and you own a monopoly on what you sell, literally the only constraint on your profit is a price above the point where too many people stop buying. Not the point where many people stop buying — the point where so many people stop buying that it reduces your "take" and you make less money. You've priced a lot of people off your customer list, but you've maxed your revenue to do it.

Now apply that to health care. The only constraint on profit is to price what you sell above the point where too many people are dying from its unaffordability. Not the point where people are dying — the point where so many people are dying that it reduces your "take." You're killing people with your prices, but not so many people that your gross revenue suffers. Your pricing goal is to find that "sweet spot" (though sweet only to you).

Death for Money

It's as though your goal is to deliver, not life, but death for money — as much death as you can get away with and not lose revenue. If you deliver too little death and there's more total revenue to be had at a higher price, you're not doing it right.

This is well and truly criminal. It's not just pathological behavior, as Jeffrey Sachs once observed about Wall Street executives. It's literal death for money. There are words for deeds that, and punishment too, so long as you're not among the privileged classes.

And it's about to get worse. Now the merely bad — Obamacare, a compromise that increased coverage for some people while protecting both industry monopolies and extractive pricing — is about to get horribly worse.

GP
 

U.S. Can Unilaterally Withdraw from TPP and NAFTA Whenever the President Chooses

Senator Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 promising to use the threat of presidential unilateral withdrawal to force renegotiation of NAFTA

by Gaius Publius

I mentioned something in passing, on the way to make another point in this piece, that deserves to be a point on its own. Neither NAFTA nor TPP are "set in stone." Each so-called "treaty" (in fact, these are executive or congressional-executive agreements) has a Withdrawal clause that allows for any signing nation to unilaterally exit the agreement at any time.

And if I hear Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama correctly in the clip above, the president has that unilateral authority. Neither talks about "going to Congress to get authorization." Clinton would certainly know, as would Al Gore, who was quoted by the moderator, since NAFTA was signed by Bill Clinton with Gore at his side as vice-president.

From the NAFTA text:

Article 2205: Withdrawal
A Party may withdraw from this Agreement six months after it provides written notice of withdrawal to the other Parties. If a Party withdraws, the Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

From the TPP text:

Article 30.6: Withdrawal
1. Any Party may withdraw from this Agreement by providing written notice of withdrawal to the Depositary. A withdrawing Party shall simultaneously notify the other Parties of its withdrawal through the overall contact points designated under Article 27.5 (Contact Points).

2. A withdrawal shall take effect six months after a Party provides written notice to the Depositary under paragraph 1, unless the Parties agree on a different period. If a Party withdraws, this Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

This means that even if President Obama gets Congress to pass TPP and then signs it, the next president, whoever she or he is, can unilaterally exit each agreement.

Just because these deals are signed, doesn't mean they can't be unsigned at any moment. Something to keep in mind, both during the lame duck session and during the next administration. After all, both major-party candidates now say they oppose TPP.

Put Them on Record About the Withdrawal Clause

The time to put each candidate on the record with respect to the Withdrawal clause is now, since now, before they have your vote, is when they are most inclined to say yes. If you wait until after the election, good luck.

Or, to put it more generally, Gaius' Rule of Acquisition #47 states: The best time to trade with someone is before they have what they want from you, not after. That's also my Theory of Change (number 47).

GP
 

Gaius' Quick Senate Scorecard for 2014 Races

-by Gaius Publius

As we move to election day, I'd like to offer the following as a quick scorecard, a list of Senate races to watch.

In the following table, the first seven races (bolded) are those marked "competitive" by the New York Times in an interesting interactive write-up. The second group (Roman font) lists races I'm interested in, for a variety of reasons. In some, the Republican is likely to win (for example, McConnell, Collins, Capito). In others, the Democrat is given at least a chance (Pryor, Landrieu). The Weiland race you've likely read about; he has an interesting but uphill path, to be sure.

In the last race listed (italicized), Amanda Curtis, the Democrat trying to take Max Baucus' Montana seat, is widely expected to lose. In every other race, the ones not listed, the incumbent party is expected by the Times to hold the seat.

Column 1 shows the name of the incumbent or the candidate of the former incumbent's party; columns 2 and 3, her/his state and party; column 4, her/his challengers.

2014 Senate Scorecard — Races to Watch

Begich	AK	D	Dan Sullivan
Udall	CO	D	Cory Gardner
Perdue*	GA	R	Michelle Nunn	*No inc.
Braley*	IA	D	Joni Ernst, Butzier	*No inc.
Roberts	KS	R	Orman (I)
Hagan	NC	D	Thom Tillis
Shaheen	NH	D	Scott Brown
Pryor	AR	D	Tom Cotton
McConnell	KY	R	Grimes
Landrieu	LA	D	Bill Cassidy
Collins	ME	R	Shenna Bellows
Weiland*	SD	D	Rounds, Pressler	*No inc.
Tennant*	WV	D	Capito	*No inc.
Curtis*	MT	D*	Steve Daines	*No inc; should flip

As I said, in all other races, the incumbent is expected to hold serve. This and a box of popcorn are all you need to enjoy the unfolding show.

Outcomes

The current Senate is composed of:

53 Democrats
2 Independents (Sanders and King)
45 Republicans

One of those Independents is reliably progressive (Sanders); the other is a "centrist" (King) and thus a man to watch. With the expected Democratic loss in Montana, the count becomes 52 Democrats, 2 Independents and 46 Republicans. If all Republicans lose in the "competitive" races bolded above, the lead grows to 53 Democrats, 3 Independents, 44 Republicans. (Note those three Independents.) At that point control of the Senate comes down to the second group of races.

Two things to keep in minds as you keep score. First, if the eventual composition (after run-offs) is 49 Democrats, 3 Independents and 48 Republicans, will the two non-Sanders Independents shop their wares to both parties — seek the best "deal" in committee chairs, appointments and other gifts and favors — in exchange for supporting that party's bid for the majority? If that occurs, by the way, I'd be willing to bet they "shop themselves" as a set, a new Gang of Two. (If so, I'd also bet that this exact phrase is widely used in the press. But you read it here first, folks.)

Second, if the Democrats do lose the Senate, it will be interesting to armchair-quarterback the mid-race support decisions. For example, what if the result is the above-mentioned 49(D)–3(I)–48(R) — better than it could have been — with Weiland losing? In that case, a Weiland win would have given them 50 and control of the Gang of Two. Could Harry Reid's early determination to back the deeply corporate, conservative Herseth-Sandlin, and his equal determination to withhold support from Weiland, mean he losses himself the Senate? If so, it would add some credence to this analysis.

We'll see. There's a lot of ball to play before second-guessing can start, but at least we're in the fourth quarter. Time for that popcorn.

Does FitBit Owe a Royalty to the Writers of This Song?

by Gaius Publius

Something fun. Lately I've been inundated with ads for something called "FitBit" — a health toy that sits on your wrist and, apparently, talks to the Health app on your iPhone. Or something. The problem is the song. It's catchy, yes, very earwormy. But if you know your punk (or "parody punk") French popular music, it's also way too familiar.

Bear with me; this will be worth it. In 1977 Yvan Lacomblez composed the song "Ça plane pour moi" — slang that means "Everything's going great" or "It works for me." (It could be either, depending on whether Ça is used for things in general, as in Ça va, or something specific, as in Ça marche.) The song is a loose, feel-good, verbally kinetic piece of French fun that, in the hands of a classical music student and percussionist who called himself "Plastic Bertrand," became a big hit in Britain and elsewhere.

"Plastic Bertrand" went to lunch on that song the rest of his career, and he's still at it. If you say "ça plane ..." to a French adult of a certain age, they'll get the reference immediately.

"Ça plane pour moi"

Musically "Ça plane" is simple but deceptive. It has a straight 12-bar blues structure — I-I, IV-I, V-I — which you can hear immediately in the chorus. But in the verse there's a lot of "phrase syncopation." If you count the beats ("one, two, three, four") starting from the instrumental intro, and try to keep track of where the verbal phrases start and end, you'll see what I mean. The lyric of the first verse starts after the first downbeat, not on it or before it, so they're already not synced. Unlike the chorus ("Ça plane pour moi, ça plane pour moi..."), the verse is never in sync with the music, and its phrases aren't the same length. Simple but deceptive.

It's that phrase syncopation, by the way, that made the singer's percussion background valuable. He never loses the rhythm in live performances, like that at the end of this piece. (French, by the way, is a natural language for rap. Equal syllable length is built into it.)

The center of the song is a short, flying, non-verbal four-note phrase — you'll spot it as soon as you hear it. Overall the lyrics are a kind of French nonsense (click to see a version with translation). A great fun song and again, a major earworm.

Here's a live but lip-synced 1978 performance from Italian television that offers a good sense of the performer, the song, and why it was so successful. Click and listen — and if you feel like counting the beats, start from the instrumental intro:

There's a more relaxed physical performance in this 1978 lip-synced recording from British TV. The official released version, is here. But the best YouTube'd version is below — my favorite in fact. Scroll down to listen.

Me, I'm stuck; the song's been burned into my brain for the last few years.

Did FitBit Kinda-Sorta Steal this Song?

Now the FitBit jingle, the one that's everywhere this gifting season. Is this a version of "Ça plane pour moi" with subtle changes? Listen — it's not just the rhythm. The first four musical notes after the drumbeat intro are a huge tell:

The opening notes are damning, in my hearing, or at least reimbursement-inducing. Property rights freaks, does someone owe someone a payment? Seem so to me, unless FitBit has already paid up.

Once More With Dancers

Either way, both of these piece make great earworms, and you've now been infected. So, since I can't do any more damage than I've already done (you're welcome), here's a more modern version. "Bertrand" is obviously older, but he's fit, in full control of his chops, and still having fun. This is my favorite version.

From French TV:

Care to Help a Non-Corporate Bro?

FitBit corporate HQ is here:

FITBIT, INC. 

405 HOWARD STREET 

SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105

The composer of "Ça plane pour moi" is Yvan Lacomblez, and I think he's still alive.

Anyone want to give him an early Season's gift? You can write to FitBit and suggest you're onto them (maybe they'll tell you they've already ponied up). Or write to the composer — if you get contact info, let me know  — wish him a merry, then send him a link to the FitBit jingle. Or both. The Plastic Bertrand official website is here (professional contact page here).

The composer may well need the money, or not, but at least he's a person. FitBit, on the other hand ... well, you may already know what I think of corporations and their billionaire venture investors. (Read the résumés, then scroll down to "Our Investors". Look for Qualcomm.)

Wishing you a merry as well,

GP

Trump's Infrastructure Bill? It's a Trap

Refugees? Dissidents? Collaborators?

by Gaius Publius

That big infrastructure bill you keep hearing about, and Democrats are starting to come on board with? It's a trap.

Ronald Klain writing in the Washington Post (my emphasis throughout):

As the White House official responsible for overseeing implementation of President Obama’s massive infrastructure initiative, the 2009 Recovery Act, I’ve got a simple message for Democrats who are embracing President-elect Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan: Don’t do it. It’s a trap. Backing Trump’s plan is a mistake in policy and political judgment they will regret, as did their Democratic predecessors who voted for Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 and George W. Bush’s cuts in 2001.

First, about the author. The Washington Post article tells us, "Ronald A. Klain served as assistant to President Obama and oversaw the team implementing the American Recovery and Renewal Act from 2009-2011. He was an adviser to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign."

His discussion of Clinton's plan may well be biased toward Clinton, but if so, it's moot at this point. Clinton advisor or not, he's right about Trump's plan based a look at the Trump team's underlying analysis (pdf). Here's Klain's discussion of the Trump bill's many problems.

It's a "Tax Cut for Investors" Bill, Not an Infrastructure Bill

Trump's so-called "infrastructure" bill is really just a tax cut bill for investors in infrastructure and would do nothing to guarantee that the most needed (as opposed to the most profitable) projects are undertaken. Klain:

First, Trump’s plan is not really an infrastructure plan. It’s a tax-cut plan for utility-industry and construction-sector investors, and a massive corporate welfare plan for contractors. The Trump plan doesn’t directly fund new roads, bridges, water systems or airports, as did Hillary Clinton’s 2016 infrastructure proposal. Instead, Trump’s plan provides tax breaks to private-sector investors who back profitable construction projects. These projects (such as electrical grid modernization or energy pipeline expansion) might already be planned or even underway. There’s no requirement that the tax breaks be used for incremental or otherwise expanded construction efforts; they could all go just to fatten the pockets of investors in previously planned projects.

Moreover, as others have noted, desperately needed infrastructure projects that are not attractive to private investors — municipal water-system overhauls, repairs of existing roads, replacement of bridges that do not charge tolls — get no help from Trump’s plan. And contractors? Well, they get a “10 percent pretax profit margin,” according to the plan. Combined with Trump’s sweeping business tax break, this would represent a stunning $85 billion after-tax profit for contractors — underwritten by the taxpayers.

What else would you expect from Donald Trump but an opening of the purse to builders and contractors. But jobs too, yes? Actually, no, not as the bill is written.

No New Jobs Guarantee; No American Jobs Guarantee

Keep in mind, this bill doesn't fund projects; it funds investors. Now Klain on whether it will create new jobs:

Second, as a result of the above, Trump’s plan isn’t really a jobs plan, either. Because the plan subsidizes investors, not projects; because it funds tax breaks, not bridges; because there’s no requirement that the projects be otherwise unfunded, there is simply no guarantee that the plan will produce any net new hiring. Investors may simply shift capital from unsubsidized projects to subsidized ones and pocket the tax breaks on projects they would have funded anyway. Contractors have no obligation to hire new workers, or expand workers’ hours, to collect their $85 billion. To their credit, the plan’s authors don’t call it a jobs plan; ironically, it is Democrats looking to align with Trump who have given it that name. They should not fool themselves.

Yes, there will be jobs — but new jobs? No guarantee. There's also no guarantee, zero, that projects funded by this bill would hire U.S. citizens as workers. Trump himself is notorious for trying to use (very cheap) imported foreign labor on his domestic projects.

From Fortune in 2015:

Donald Trump’s companies tried to import at least 1,100 foreign workers

Companies owned by GOP frontrunner Donald Trump have sought at least 1,100 foreign worker visas since 2000—a practice that stands in stark contrast to Trump’s self-portrayal as a presidential candidate who would create and project American jobs.

A Reuters’ analysis of Department of Labor data shows that nine Trump-majority-owned companies have applied to bring waitresses, cooks, vineyard workers, and other laborers into the country on foreign worker visas. Most of the visa applications have gained approval, Reuters says. Palm Beach, Fla., resort Mar-a-Lago Club has sought the most foreign workers of the nine Trump-owned businesses. It has submitted applications for 787 workers since 2006. This month, it sought to bring in 70 foreign workers to work as maids, cooks, and servers on H-2B workers later this year[.]

The visas the Trump companies have relied on the most—H-2B—is a subset of the H-2 visa program that covers nonagricultural foreign workers. (H-2A visas are for farm workers.) The H-2 program is often criticized for leaving workers vulnerable to employer abuses. Last month, a Buzzfeed investigation portrayed the system as one that—at times—fosters modern-day slavery.

All of these problems, by the way, can be easily exploited by any Democrat not looking to be "bipartisan" with the new president. Unfortunately, Democrats are starting to look like easy marks for this plan.

Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine on Chuck Schumer's plans:

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer is plunging ahead with his plan to help Donald Trump pass a gigantic infrastructure plan. One apparent reason for this decision is a misunderstanding about how public opinion works — a mistaken belief that Democratic senators will get credit for working with Trump, when in reality the primary credit will flow to Trump, and the secondary credit to Republicans in Congress, even those who might oppose popular bills."

Chait goes on to discuss how Schumer is hoping to triangulate the Republicans, to put them in a box, since Republicans didn't really want to spend on massive infrastructure when Obama was president. "[Schumer's] premise is that he can force Trump to choose between a large public infrastructure plan supported by Democrats and the opposition of fiscal conservatives in the Republican Congress, who have opposed such a plan for several years. Signing an infrastructure bill, Schumer says, would mean 'breaking with the Republicans who have always opposed these things.'"

Shorter Chait: "Silly Schumer."

Here's why. Schumer, according to Chait, wants to offer a substitute infrastructure bill, a "real" one instead of this tax-cut giveaway bill, on the assumption that Republicans won't bite. If Schumer does that, Chait thinks Republicans will bite (as do I).

And here's what would happen:

To be sure, it will be slightly awkward and embarrassing for Republicans in Congress to suddenly toggle their rhetoric from denunciations of wasteful pork to support for necessary infrastructure upgrades. But this is where Schumer plans to come and rescue them. His party will supply the votes for the bill that will create the jobs needed to make Trump popular, and thus to supply the tailwind for down-ballot Republicans. Conservative Republicans eager to maintain their anti-spending purity can cast symbolic votes against the bill without preventing it from coming to the floor. Then they can enjoy the political benefits from rising wages under their party’s government. And if the deficit rises? (Which it probably will, after a debt-financed infrastructure law, debt-financed tax cuts, and debt-financed defense hikes.) Well, then Republicans can point to the big-spending infrastructure bill Democrats passed over their objections, stuffed with Democratic pork. And they can demand cuts to social spending to rectify it.

Outfoxed again, should it play out this way. And even if it doesn't, the appearance of Democratic collaboration will stain them all anyway. They should never touch this thing, in any of its forms.

It's a Trap

I can think of no better way for Democrats to validate Donald Trump's presidency — and guarantee that their own party remains in the minority throughout the lifetime of every Sanders voter who refused to pull the lever for Clinton — than to give, or even appear to give, any support to this.

It's true that individual Democrats (the self-serving "Schumercrats") may keep their own seats at the moneyed insider table. But the Party as a whole will complete its own destruction, the one that the Party accelerated during the disastrous Clinton candidacy. Protecting the Inside Game at the expense of their Party's fortunes, or worse, the nation's, will destroy both the Party and the nation.

It looks like Bernie Sanders isn't suckered into this one, no matter how many well-placed others are. That's one clear mind at least among the muddled.

GP