Across the Board Cuts Needed to Drain the Swamp

The President

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

This is a letter of support in light of the unfair allegations that Democratic Party and fake media extremists have brought against you.  Fake journalists have made absurd claims about the significance of your conversation with Prime Minister Zelensky, including the fiction that you withheld aid or in some way functioned as a mafia boss.  Seeing the absurd spectacle of Neil Cavuto pretending to be an objective journalist while basing all of his questioning on false assumptions and outright lies isn’t surprising, but it is one more nail in the coffin of the credibility of television news.

The bigger question is how to move forward given that this series of events has revealed deep-seated corruption within the intelligence agencies.  When you were elected, I was skeptical of the expression “deep state.” As a libertarian, I was aware that the state is fundamentally corrupt.  However, I was unaware of the deep partisan infiltration of the intelligence agencies.

When you are elected to a second term, I urge you to follow the libertarian approach of across-the-board budget cuts to agencies.  This is an approach that will be a baby step toward curing the federal deficit but a leap toward draining the swamp.  The concept of corporate culture is that behavior patterns in organizations become ritualized. Cultures are collective mental programming that are next to impossible to change.  This insight was made in the 1950s by the sociologist Philip Selznick in his book Leadership in Administration.  Because you are primarily a real estate developer used to contractual relationships, you seem to have proceeded in your efforts to drain the swamp without addressing the deep cultural impediments.   

The solution that Selznick offers to change cultures is the same that libertarians have urged to cut costs:  sharply cut the staffing.  As well, shuffling personnel and hiring from without will be useful. Director Henry King’s 1949 film 12 O’Clock High depicts the reshuffling and firing approach to culture change.

As you know, the federal debt is at levels that may threaten economic growth in the short run and certainly will do so in the long run.  Across-the-board cuts in federal agencies of, say, 50% of staff in agencies like the CIA, NSA, DOL, and DOE along with reshuffling of assignments of existing staff will shake up the corrupt, deep-state culture if not end it entirely.  Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, the Squad, and the radical steps they are taking may make such a radical approach possible after 2020 because they are losing credibilty.  

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Cc: Neil Cavuto Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Mitch McConnell

Mr. Joseph Maguire

Director, National Intelligence
Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
Washington, DC 20511

Dear Mr. Maguire:

I have written to the president suggesting that radical culture change is needed in the intelligence community. The leaking of a presidential conversation is neither heroic nor legal, and it is not the work of a whistleblower. Rather, it is reflective of an intelligence community that has run amok with partisanship and corruption.

As I mention in the attached letter to the president, the antidote for a corrupt culture is across-the-board firing.  I suggest that half of all intelligence personnel be terminated. They are no longer serving the public, and the culture in the agencies is rotten.  Once half have been fired, the remaining personnel should be reshuffled. New personnel without the taint of the rotten culture that has evolved can then be hired.

This kind of step is unknown in government bureaucracies, but it is evident that it has become necessary.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Letter to DOJ Re Junk Science in Start by Believing Programs

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

I just received an email from Ed Bartlett of SAVE that says that although the overall movement to restore due process on campus continues to gain support, one aspect appears to be actually getting worse:  Campus and criminal investigations are increasingly based on guilt-presuming “believe the victim” and “trauma-informed” concepts. Each year, literally thousands of law enforcement and campus Title IX personnel have participated in sessions where they are told to repeat, in sing-song manner, “Start By Believing.” This has continued since 2016.

I am deeply concerned about this lack of concern for due process and advocacy of fascistic investigative process, apparently based on junk social science. 

Bartlett says that the U.S. Department of Justice has spent millions of dollars to promote such “victim-centered” approaches, including a national start-by-believing campaign;  a law enforcement training program "Approaching Your Work with a Trauma Informed Lens"; and an Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Report,  “Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias in Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence: A Roundtable Discussion.”

On May 29, the DOJ will be sponsoring a program on such “victim-centered” approaches titled, “Law Enforcement Response: Approaching Your Work with a Trauma-Informed Lens.”

Bartlett suggests that it's hard to imagine a more direct assault on the presumption of innocence and the impartiality and integrity of the investigative process than these programs.

It is time to bring the three-ring, junk-science circus at DOJ to an end. I am copying the president on this.

Sincerely,

Mitchell B. Langbert, Ph.D.

Failure of Cain Nomination Underscores Need to Drop Mainstream Republicans

The Wall Street Journal reports that Mitt Romney (R., Utah), Cory Gardner (R., Colo.), Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.) oppose the nomination of Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve Board.  Their opposition underscores the gulf between President Trump and mainstream Republicans, and it also underscores the meaning underlying the term deep state.   In a 2012 op-ed in the Journal Cain came out in favor of the gold standard. The gold standard is anathema to Wall Street and its pro-deep state shills. For instance, "journalist" Michael Hiltzik writes an uninformed piece in the LA Times.

Using insulting language, a habit increasingly characteristic of a media that has lost its moorings, Hiltzick makes the factually false claim that the gold standard led to instability in the interwar period.  As Friedman's history shows, the Fed's paper money policy led to the Great Depression. In turn, the mismanagement of the paper money banking system was multiplied by Herbert Hoover's jawboning about wage cuts and the Smoot-Hawley tariff. A master of nonsequitor, Hiltizck writes: 

If the economy of one country ebbed relative to another, preserving the gold standard meant that something else would have to give — laborers thrown out of work or wages brought down. 

This reflects a misunderstanding of what an economy is, what the subject of economics studies, and how paper money works. Paper money does not repeal the laws of supply and demand, Hiltzick's claim notwithstanding. The gist of the paper money system is that wages are systematically brought down through money illusion, a point that is lost on Hiltzick (but not the Keynesian economists to whom he refers). 

Hiltzick's discussion of Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom overlooks Friedman's points that the Fed caused the Great Depression and that Friedman's idea of a fixed monetary rule, which turned out to be a complete failure, could mimic a gold standard. True, following the failure of his fixed monetary rule Friedman remained a member of the helicopter crowd--a term Friedman himself first applied to monetary creation. Those who do not do good service to Wall Street do not win Nobel Prizes.

Hiltzick cites a group of Keynesian and monetarist economists hired by investment banker-financed Ivy League universities (see my piece in Industry and Higher Education) without Hiltzick's grasping that far worse instability has occurred since 1913 than before and that gold was at most an indirect cause of the Great Depression; mismanagement of the paper money system was the chief cause, along with ham-handed fiscal and trade policies. These economists are unapologetic in their advocacy of instability-causing policies, one outcome of which was the failures of 2008.

The two-pronged issue that is most important to the deep state is its control of money and its ability to direct the economy through credit.  There are two categories of gold standard opponents: The first knows that it is a servant of power and of increasing income inequality. The second doesn't know, actually believes the nonsense taught in basic economics classes, and is useful to Goldman Sachs and Mitt Romney.

That Trump would consider a gold standard advocate means that he is better than I thought in 2016. In making donations to Republicans, I will be careful to donate to PACs that oppose the deep state. I will avoid the likes of Romney, Gardner, Murkowski, and Cramer.

Austrian Economics Research Conference, Citation by Wall Street Journal Editorial Page

I spent Thursday through Sunday at the Austrian Economics Research Conference, which is sponsored by the Mises Institute. The Mises Institute is next door to Auburn University.  The conference is small but lively, and the speakers were excellent. I was delighted to meet Bob Luddy, the founder of CaptiveAire Corporation; Hans Herman Hoppe, who received an achievement award;  Sam Johnson, who is a retired Exxon executive who adjuncts at Auburn University; and the founder of the Mises Institute, Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

I gave a presentation on the historical evolution of political groupthink and intolerance in higher education. It went well, and I am looking forward to further exploring the data that I presented. 

While I was at the conference, someone from Boston emailed me to ask for links to the work I've done on faculty political affiliation because the Wall Street Journal (paid access) editorial page had cited my research on Friday.  I was thrilled to get the cite, but I disagree with the editorial.

According to the Journal,  President Trump's executive order has the right impulse, but the executive order is unclear.  It merely mandates that a list of federal agencies review incursions on free speech on campus.

The Journal argues that absent the executive order markets will correct for incursions on free speech, but the institutional history suggests otherwise.  Colleges have received enormous institutional support from government and from tax-exempt foundations, and much of this support has had ideological strings attached. Such support extends to tax-exempt endowments that shelter the leading colleges from market concerns.  As well, monopolistic media that collude with and ideologically support Antifa extremists on campus support the reputations of colleges that abuse free speech. The major media outlets take their cues from and collaborate with campus Antifa terrorists.

As it is written, the executive order merely encourages agencies that oversee funding to colleges to consider whether the colleges are violating federal laws, including the First Amendment.  One of the laws is Section 501(c)(3), which prohibits tax exemption for political or ideological advocacy.  Although when in power the Democrats may abuse these provisions, they have already abused their privileges to an unlimited extent, so that the current intolerance on college campuses can hardly be increased.  Hence, there are limited downside risks from the Democrats, who have shot their wad.  When Republican administrations are in power, they now have some impetus to enforce the law and at times to revoke tax exemptions of endowments.  Although the threat to colleges may be intermittent because it is limited to Republican administrations, colleges need to think long-term because it is difficult to change programs and policies.  Hence, an intermittent threat is almost as good as a permanent one.

An additional step that the Trump administration might take is to make explicit that all federal aid is contingent on compliance with the First Amendment and that when colleges violate First Amendment Rights affected individuals have a cause of action that includes punitive damages.

Letter to President Trump in Support of Free Speech Mandate for Colleges

Dear Mr. President

I applaud your announcement that you will sign an executive order mandating adherence to the First Amendment by colleges and universities that receive federal funds.  I support extending First Amendment mandates to all colleges, private and public, that receive federal money. However, I suggest that a limitation be placed on religious colleges when free speech would violate the religious beliefs to which the college adheres.  In other words, freedom of  religion should receive deference equal to freedom of speech. 

I was surprised to see that my good friends at the National Association of Scholars take issue with mandating that private colleges adhere to the First Amendment.  I cannot imagine that a college that wishes to restrict freedom of speech deserves public support--with the exception of religiously affiliated or otherwise religious colleges for whom certain forms of speech will violate their religious beliefs.

Otherwise, I urge you to extend the First Amendment mandate as far as possible. Private colleges, especially elite ones, have led the march toward intolerance and suppression, and they should be included in the mandate.

Sincerely,




Mitchell Langbert