New McCarthyite Congressional Investigations Coming Our Way

If you read this morning's frontpager by Mark Mazzetti and Eric Lichtblau, "C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence," you will find that the story does not merit the headline. The story repeats the same old stuff -- the DNC hack, the Podesta emails, the RNC hack -- and then says that CIA analysts have shifted their opinion from believing that Russia sought to sow chaos to Russia intended to elect Donald Trump. That conjecture is all there is.

Mazzetti and Lichtblau then, helpfully, mention that the FBI, the agency which is actually in charge of investigating the hacks and bringing charges against any guilty party, is unconvinced that Russia tried to steal the presidency on behalf of Trump:

And yet, there is skepticism within the American government, particularly at the F.B.I., that this evidence adds up to proof that the Russians had the specific objective of getting Mr. Trump elected.

A senior American law enforcement official said the F.B.I. believed that the Russians probably had a combination of goals, including damaging Mrs. Clinton and undermining American democratic institutions. Whether one of those goals was to install Mr. Trump remains unclear to the F.B.I., he said.

The official played down any disagreement between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and suggested that the C.I.A.’s conclusions were probably more nuanced than they were being framed in the news media.

The agencies’ differences in judgment may also reflect different methods of investigating the Russian interference. The F.B.I., which has both a law enforcement and an intelligence role, is held to higher standards of proof in examining people involved in the hacking because it has an eye toward eventual criminal prosecutions. The C.I.A. has a broader mandate to develop intelligence assessments.

Law enforcement officials said that if F.B.I. agents had the evidence to charge Russians with specific crimes, they would do so. The F.B.I. and federal prosecutors have already gone aggressively after Russian hackers, including two men detained in Thailand and the Czech Republic whom the United States is trying to extradite.

Russia has tried to block those efforts and has accused the United States of harassing its citizens.

The F.B.I. began investigating Russia’s apparent attempts to meddle in the election over the summer. Agents examined numerous possible connections between Russians and members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, including former Trump aides like Paul Manafort and Carter Page, as well as a mysterious and unexplained trail of computer activity between the Trump Organization and an email account at a large Russian bank, Alfa Bank [which turned out to be nothing].

At the height of its investigation before the election, the F.B.I. saw some indications that the Russians might be explicitly seeking to get Mr. Trump elected, officials said, and investigators collected online evidence and conducted interviews overseas and inside the United States to test that theory.

The F.B.I. was concerned enough about Russia’s influence and possible connections to the Trump campaign that it briefed congressional leaders — including Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and Senate minority leader — on some of the evidence this summer and fall. Mr. Reid, in particular, pressed for the F.B.I. to find out more and charged that the agency was sitting on important information that could implicate Russia.

But the agency’s suspicions about a direct effort by Russia to help Mr. Trump, or about possible connections between the two camps, appear to have waned as the investigation continued into September and October. The reasons are not entirely clear, and F.B.I. officials declined to comment.

Now that a partisan squall has erupted over exactly what role Russia played in influencing the election, there is growing momentum among both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to have a congressional investigation.

“I’m not trying to relitigate the election,” said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, who is one of the lawmakers calling for such an investigation. “I’m just trying to prevent this from happening again.”

Is this an attempted coup? I don't think so. I think it is business as usual. The Democratic Party is in serious trouble. The party leaders do not want to relinquish power to the Bernistas and they don't want the Republicans to coalesce behind Trump and pass a bunch of legislation. How can they achieve what they want in their present diminished state? Reboot the Cold War and McCarthyism. Conduct a big congressional investigation that will keep Democrats from straying from the reservation and isolate Trump from his party.

It is a desperate play, but it is the hand that Democratic leadership is playing. Read Krugman, "The Tainted Election," and the lede unsigned editorial this morning, "Russia’s Hand in America’s Election." It is not going to work, particularly when the activist base of the Democrats are getting their information from outlets that have been smeared as Kremlin dupes.

In Case You Have Forgotten, that Stench You Smell is the Cadaver We Call Hillary

Bad news appears to be hurtling Hillary's way. How else to interpret this morning's frontpager by Eric Lichtblau and Eric Schmitt, "Hack of Democrats’ Accounts Was Wider Than Believed, Officials Say"?

WASHINGTON — A Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic politicians was bigger than it first appeared and breached the private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups, officials with knowledge of the case said Wednesday.

The widening scope of the attack has prompted the F.B.I. to broaden its investigation, and agents have begun notifying a long list of Democratic officials that the Russians may have breached their personal accounts.

The main targets appear to have been the personal email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials and party operatives, along with a number of party organizations.

Officials have acknowledged that the Russian hackers gained access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is the fund-raising arm for House Democrats, and to the Democratic National Committee, including a D.N.C. voter analytics program used by Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

But the hack now appears to have extended well beyond those groups, and organizations like the Democratic Governors’ Association may also have been affected, according to Democrats involved in the investigation.

Democrats say they are bracing for the possibility that another batch of damaging or embarrassing internal material could become public before the November presidential election.

Clearly the intention is to inoculate the Clinton campaign from onrushing bad news. The inoculation comes in the form of red baiting, the same inoculation utilized after the WikiLeaks salvo felled the odious Wasserman-Schultz from her DNC perch.

A strong tell that we are in the realm of the dark arts is the presence of Eric Schmitt in the byline. Schmitt handles all the spook info-war stuff for the Gray Lady. His portfolio straddles continents. Though his paycheck is cut by The New York Times, he essentially works for the United States Government.

But today's story is an unusually sloppy one. The point of the Lichtblau-Schmitt piece is to drown out any content in a fresh tranche of damaging email leaks by shouting, "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" The thought among seasoned info-war veterans must be that this call still resonates in the U.S. homeland. The problem is that Lichtblau-Schmitt undercut their main premise midway through the story:

The F.B.I. says it has no direct evidence that Mrs. Clinton’s private email server was hacked by the Russians or anyone else. But in June, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that intruders had tried, and that any successful intruders were probably far too skilled to leave evidence of their intrusion behind. Law enforcement officials said he had the Russians in mind.

Lichtblau-Schmitt lead by saying the FBI is expanding its investigation of email hacks, with the Russians being the likely culprit; then they cite FBI director Comey saying that skilled hackers, like the Russians, don't leave clues behind. So what is the reader to believe? Possibly Lichtblau-Schmitt are not being sloppy but actually intend to befuddle their audience.

There is this nugget at the end of story:

WikiLeaks, the group that put out the D.N.C. emails publicly last month, interjected itself into the hacking case again this week when it offered a $20,000 reward for information on the shooting death last month of a former D.N.C. staff member, Seth Rich, outside his Washington home. His killing fueled speculation on the internet that he was somehow tied to the hacked emails, but the police have not given any credence to that speculation. 

The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has made it clear that he would like to hurt Mrs. Clinton’s bid for the White House, opposing her candidacy on policy and personal grounds. He has hinted that he has more material about the presidential campaign that he could release.

It could be that Rich was WikiLeaks' source.

The email hack conspiracy story, "rich" as it is, distracts us from the elephant in the room -- Clinton Foundation influence peddling. (See "Spokesman Explains Why Clinton Charity Donor Sought State Dept. Meeting" by Eric Lipton and Steve Eder.) Lambert Strether synopsizes the Clinton Foundation-State Department pipeline in a Water Cooler from yesterday:

Lambert here, tl;dr: It’s all true. Donors to the Clinton Foundation got special treatment at State. Emails released by State, showing this, were not released by Clinton, even though they weren’t about yoga lessons and Chelsea’s wedding. Shocked, shocked, I know, but the Clinton Dynasty’s effrontery continues to amaze. Even though Judicial Watch isn’t on my side of the ideological prism, kudos to them for their patience and persistence in getting this material released. (The headlines, incidentally, show far too much deference.) Cue the “no quid pro quo” therefore no corruption crowd. (The irony of liberals accepting the doctrine of Citizens United to save their corrupt candidate is corrosive. Or not ironic at all. At this point, I’m not sure.)

“The new emails, released by the group Judicial Watch, offer fresh examples of how top Clinton Foundation officials [on behalf of big donors] sought [and gained] access to the State Department during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure.” (I’ve helpfully added some clarifying material in square brackets.) [Wall Street Journal, “Newly Released Emails Highlight Clinton Foundation’s Ties to State Department “]. Huma’s three hats are interesting, too.

“The State Department has turned over 44 previously-unreleased Hillary Clinton email exchanges that the Democratic presidential nominee failed to include [attempted to conceal] among the 30,000 private messages she turned over to the government last year. They show her interacting with [pedding influence] lobbyists, political and Clinton Foundation donors and business interests as secretary of state.” (Here too, I’ve helpfully added some clarifying material in square brackets.) [AP].

UPDATE “New Emails Appear to Show Clinton Foundation Donors Called In Favors to State Dept” [LawNewz]. “Newly released State Department records, including previously unreleased emails from Huma Abedin, appear to show Clinton Foundation donors calling in favors from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”

The reanimation of Hillary's political cadaver is requiring a colossal amount of energy from the grid, so much so that the grid might very well crash. We can only hope.

Trump's Staying Power

The week began with a frontpage acknowledgement in the "newspaper of record" (Michael Barbaro, Nate Cohn and Jeremy Peters, "Why Donald Trump Won’t Fold: Polls and People Speak") that Donald Trump is the front runner to win the GOP presidential nomination. After repeatedly dismissing the real estate mogul as a flash in the pan, a figure that would soon diminish in the polls after voters came to their senses, the organs of elite opinion have shifted their point of view to grudgingly accept that Trump's support is broad and comparatively deep:

In the command centers of Republican presidential campaigns, aides have drawn comfort from the belief that Donald J. Trump’s dominance in the polls is a political summer fling, like Herman Cain in 2011 — an unsustainable boomlet dependent on megawatt celebrity, narrow appeal and unreliable surveys of Americans with a spotty record of actually voting in primaries. 

A growing body of evidence suggests that may be wishful thinking. 

A review of public polling, extensive interviews with a host of his supporters in two states and a new private survey that tracks voting records all point to the conclusion that Mr. Trump has built a broad, demographically and ideologically diverse coalition, constructed around personality, not substance, that bridges demographic and political divides. In doing so, he has effectively insulated himself from the consequences of startling statements that might instantly doom rival candidates.

In poll after poll of Republicans, Mr. Trump leads among women, despite having used terms like “fat pigs” and “disgusting animals” to denigrate some of them. He leads among evangelical Christians, despite saying he had never had a reason to ask God for forgiveness. He leads among moderates and college-educated voters, despite a populist and anti-immigrant message thought to resonate most with conservatives and less-affluent voters. He leads among the most frequent, likely voters, even though his appeal is greatest among those with little history of voting.

That was from Sunday. Since then what we have seen is a circling of the wagons, as columnists decry Trump's divisiveness and analysts attempt to undercut the polling that puts Trump so clearly ahead in the hearts and minds of the citizenry of the "indispensable nation."

For an example of the latter, one can consult Nate Cohn's "There’s Evidence That Trump’s Polling Support Is Overstated." But really it is the headline of Cohn's article that is overstated. For after an interesting discussion of how election opinion polls work and agreeing with the hypothesis that Trump's national numbers are soft if looked at through the prism of repeat voters, Cohn concludes that "Over all, the data is consistent with the view that Mr. Trump’s support might be overstated by public polls. But he leads among voters who have participated in one or 12 elections. His challenge among likely voters isn’t necessarily unique. His lead might be modestly overstated, but it’s not a mirage." In other words, Trump is for real. (This is basically the gist of yesterday's frontpager by Trip Gabriel, "Test for Donald Trump: Turning Crowds Into Real Voters.")

Trump's Tuesday-night kerfuffle with Univision's Jorge Ramos offered an opening for tastemakers to cluck their tongues (see Michael Barbaro's "Testy News Conference Exchange Puts Donald Trump’s Quirks on Display"). And while this kind of public confrontation exposing Trump's pomposity might bear fruit in the future, I'm sure Trump will adapt and learn how to diffuse such standoffs.

Where Trump is vulnerable is how he has made his money. David Cay Johnston effectively skewers the Trump business model as being built on consorting with organized crime and refusing to pay subcontractors.

What will keep Trump in the contest is the public's disgust for the alternatives. In closing, keep this fact in mind from a story yesterday by Eric Lichtblau, "Bernie Sanders’s Success in Attracting Small Donors Tests Importance of ‘Super PACs’ ":

Super PACs supporting Mrs. Clinton have already raised more than $20 million, records show; on the Republican side, two super PACs backing Jeb Bush raised about $108.5 million.

Trump Sitting Pretty

I woke up last night thinking about Donald Trump's ever-present "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" cap. Trump wears it whenever he is outdoors to protect his elaborate comb-over from a troublesome gust of wind. Could Trump's pomposity bear a flapping in the breeze of a comb-over revealing the baldpate of an aged man? If Trump ends up in the White House will he shun the Rose Garden? If he goes to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns will he do so with "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" firmly secured to his head?

Then I asked myself, "Why am I thinking about this?" Though it did feel like a revelation, much other significant news is aborning. There is continued movement to jump start peace talks on Syria. Jejune Saudi defense minister Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud could be proving his naysayers wrong as the Houthis appear to be on the run in Yemen.

But the news dominating the coverage in the United States is of the 2016 presidential election still half-a-year off.

At this point I don't see how Trump can be beat. Over the weekend he released his plan to deal with immigration. It is being roundly criticized in the press. There is a particularly cogent piece, "Donald Trump’s Claims on Immigration: A Reality Check," and it is short too, in today's paper by longtime Mexico reporter Julia Preston. She lists the plan's many contradictions and failings before concluding with an acknowledgement of its political potency:

Yet among Mr. Trump’s populist proposals are some that could attract support from Americans in the beleaguered middle class. He went further than his rivals calling for changes to the temporary work visas known as H-1B, to raise the wages paid to immigrants and tighten requirements for employers to search first for Americans to fill jobs.

This is an issue that resonates with many voters across the political spectrum. The digital economy is creating pockets of amazing wealth which is not trickling down to the "soccer mom" suburbs. The go-go growth is in the urban core and the jobs appear to be going to foreigners from Indian. Trump can demonize Mexicans at the low end and Indians and Pakistanis at the high end, and he'll laugh all the way to election day.

Hillary on the other hand is not laughing. In fact, she should be crying (though Nate Silver gives her an 85% chance to win the Democratic nomination; Nate Cohn, the Gray Lady's Nate Silver simulacrum, basically agrees, without quantifying the odds).

An interesting longer story today by Amy Chozick and Eric Lichtblau, "Facing Money Gap, Hillary Clinton Slowly Warms to ‘Super PAC’ Gifts," gets at why both Silver and Cohn think that Hillary will have a tough time in the general election. The GOP is raising a lot more money in million-dollar-plus Super-PAC contributions, and this money is being used by both top-contenders like Jeb Bush and also-rans like Carly Fiorina to pummel Clinton in the here and now:

Republican contenders have used their overflowing coffers to bash one another, but the money has also helped finance months of attacks on Mrs. Clinton.

In mid-September, Right to Rise, a super PAC supporting Mr. Bush, plans to spend at least $10 million on television ads in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the group. Last month, Mr. Bush’s two PACs, which raised a record $108.5 million, reported spending $100,000 on online ads in early primary states in part opposing Mrs. Clinton.

And a super PAC supporting the Republican candidate Carly Fiorina, which recently trumpeted a “fiery new attack ad aimed squarely at Hillary Clinton,” received about $1.6 million, nearly half its funding, from a single donor: A. Jerrold Perenchio, a Los Angeles billionaire who made his money in media investments. 

Mrs. Clinton’s donors have taken notice. “Over the last two months, they’ve seen in real time what’s actually happening on the other side and the severe attacks Hillary is under,” Mr. Cecil said, “and the reality that when it comes to how campaigns are won, the ground underneath us has changed.”

Romney was a weak candidate. But what 2012 proved in terms of presidential electioneering is that if you drive up a candidate's negatives sky high early on then that candidate is most likely doomed come November. This is what Hillary is up against. Sanders is going to rough her up as well.

Democrats in Trouble: If TPP Passes, Expect a GOP Landslide in 2016

Things are bad and people know it. If they are not always able to articulate why things are bad -- whether it is savage war in the Middle East, environmental planetary crisis, or the persistent lack of remunerative employment -- most will say it has something do with the growing gap between the rich and everyone else.

Obama was elected in two separate landslides to restore decency and fairness to a system out of whack. It is his profound failure, with 18 months left in office, to deliver anything substantial (besides the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid and some EPA rule making) to the vast majority of voters who supported him that creates a pervasive sense that the United States is at a dead end.

Hillary is not the answer. There are indications that this is not merely a fringe belief. The Clinton Foundation continues to make the front page. The latest example, a kick-back scheme involving model Petra Nemcova's Happy Hearts Fund, was featured in Saturday's Gray Lady, "An Award for Bill Clinton Came With $500,000 for His Foundation." The story, by Deborah Sontag, provides the reader an education on how philanthropy of the 1% dovetails with big business and government. It is not a pretty picture, not one that will motivate working-class voters to get to the polls for Hillary.

No, the Democrats are in trouble. A report yesterday by Eric Lichtblau and Nicholas Confessore, "Democrats Seek a Richer Roster to Match G.O.P.," details the difficulties the Clintons are having in raising Super PAC funds:

WASHINGTON — Over the last few months, Harold M. Ickes, a longtime ally of Hillary Rodham Clinton, has helped organize private meetings around the country with union leaders, Clinton backers and Democratic strategists. The pressing topic: Who will step up to be the Democrats’ megadonors in the 2016 presidential race?

Republican contenders have already secured hundreds of millions of dollars in commitments from a stable of billionaires, including a Wall Street hedge fund executive, a Las Vegas casino magnate, a Florida auto dealer, a Wyoming investor and, of course, the Kansas-born billionaires David H. and Charles G. Koch. But none of the biggest Democratic donors from past elections — for example, the Chicago investor Fred Eychaner, the climate-change activist Tom Steyer and the entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg — have committed to supporting Mrs. Clinton on nearly the same scale.

“No one has stepped forward as the savior,” said Matt Bennett, a longtime Democratic consultant in Washington.

The leading super PAC backing Mrs. Clinton, Priorities USA Action, has won commitments of only about $15 million so far, Democrats involved with the group’s fund-raising said. And while the absence of a competitive race for the Democratic nomination gives Mrs. Clinton more time to catch up with Republican rivals, her allies are planning to push the party’s wealthiest donors for more money than most of them have ever given.

In planning sessions and one-on-one meetings with donors, Mr. Ickes, who is a Priorities USA board member, and other Clinton supporters are discussing how to raise as much as $300 million for Democratic outside groups. That is almost twice as much as Democratic super PACs and other outside groups spent to help re-elect President Obama in 2012, when conservative super PACs far outspent liberal ones.

This ambitious goal will require the emergence of a new class of at least 20 Democratic donors who can give $5 million or even $10 million each. Mr. Ickes said recruiting them would not be easy.

“Our side isn’t used to being asked for that kind of money,” Mr. Ickes said. “If you asked them to put up $100 million for a hospital wing, they’d be the first in line.”

The hurdles begin with the candidate. While Mrs. Clinton has committed to meeting personally with potential super PAC donors, people close to her say she has not yet grappled with the kind of big-donor courting that has framed the early months of the Republican race.

The rich don't put up a lot of money unless they get something in return. For the billionaire Republican donors like the Kochs and Adelson, it is not hard to imagine what kind of return they are expecting on their investment. For starters, the obligatory tax overhaul favorable to the 1% and possibly turning Medicaid over to the states in the form of block grants and then the voucherizing of Medicare; for the Kochs, a gutting of the EPA; for Adelson, war on Iran.

For big Democrat donors what would be the point in gifting tens of millions to a Hillary Super PAC? Marriage equality? It is already here for the most part. Renewable energy? Tom Steyer donated a whopping $74 million in the 2014 election cycle, and what did he get? A Republican landslide. I doorbelled for one of his candidates, a bloodless corporate Dem running for a Seattle suburb statehouse seat. He lost. I'm sure a shrewd hedge-fund investor like Steyer is not going to make the same mistake twice.

Democrats will be in even more trouble if Obama manages to push a fast-tracked Trans-Pacific Partnership through the House of Representatives. Jonathan Weisman has a helpful story, "Obama’s Trade Deal Faces Bipartisan Peril in the House," which summarizes the issues at stake as well as the math in the House. Pelosi has promised only 17 Democrat votes, which means that Boehner will have to deliver 200 from his caucus:

Only 17 Democrats out of 188 have come out in favor of so-called fast-track authority — and many of them are being hounded by labor and environmental groups to change their minds. Opponents of the trade deal say just seven Democrats remain truly undecided.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, who has yet to declare her position, has told House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio that he will have to produce 200 Republican votes to win the 217 he needs. In other words, she is not promising a single new convert.

“We’re not quite there, but we’re getting close,” said Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and co-author of the trade legislation. But Mr. Obama, he added, “needs to deliver some votes. It’s just that clear.”

The president needs the authority to finish up the Pacific accord, the largest trade deal in a generation, linking 12 nations — including Canada and Chile in the Americas, and Japan and Australia across the Pacific — in a pact that would not just further cut generally low tariffs on goods but also put in place investment rules for roughly 40 percent of the global economy. The White House says, moreover, that the deal is an essential element in America’s strategic posture in Asia vis-à-vis the rising power of China.

Most congressional Democrats are skeptical. They argue that since the North American Free Trade Agreement was approved in 1993, such accords have only hastened the flow of manufacturing jobs overseas and pressured wages downward through international competition. Corporations, their executives and shareholders have prospered, but globalization has helped hollow out the middle class, many Democrats say.

For a helpful, easy-to-digest synopsis of just how bad the TPP is, check out Amy Goodman's recent interview of Julian Assange. TPP is not a trade agreement so much as it is a financial treaty binding the signatory nations together in fealty to neoliberalism.

Democrats who support Obama on TPP are looking at a primary challenge in 2016. Competition is something politicians loath.

If TPP passes the damage will be immense. Groups that represent mass constituencies essential to electing Democrats will not be able to mobilize their members. The GOP will win in a landslide.

Signs of Collapse: Non-Enforcement of Federal Election Law, Repeal of Prevailing Wage and the Return of Radical Chic

Something is happening here. When I got off the train after work on Friday the telltale massing of security officers was located at the mouth of the transit station. The underground bus/light-rail train tunnel must be a vulnerable and vital node in the city. Once up on street level I noticed helicopters hovering to the east above Capitol Hill, my neighborhood. The helicopters looked to be stationed over Seattle Central Community College. It was May Day. So I assumed some sort of protest had morphed into a street occupation and/or confrontation with the police.

As I walked up the hill on Pine Street, big black unmarked SUVs with police inside sped by. When I arrived in my neighborhood, the bars were full as usual on Friday evening. People seemed to be going about their business in spite of the noisy gyrations of helicopters overhead. At the grocery store, where I had stopped for weekend provisions, the young checker told me he had been on edge during the day because of rumors that anarchists armed with hammers would attack the supermarket, a local company that had been bought out some time ago by Kroger, a corporate behemoth.

I was going to deliver a mild defense of anarchism, something to the effect that when the state fails and is so completely captured by capital the people need to step in, but I stopped myself. The young checker was about to finish his shift and just wanted to get home. I understood completely because after a long week so did I. Outside the grocery store a cluster of police officials stood on Broadway next to a police van. The noise from the helicopters above blanketed everything.

The problem for the police now, for law enforcement throughout the country, is "radical chic" appears to be back several years after the last Occupy Wall Street encampment was torn down. Popular enthusiasm for protest and confrontation appears to be renewed. Case in point is during that Friday evening walk home after I left the transit center, I passed a young handsome couple very well dressed out on the town for a night out. The guy had on a tie and jacket; the woman, a dress. They both looked hip, not square, and elegant. But the problem for them is that they were out of place in an environment where helicopters were making industrial-strength noise overhead and black Chevy Suburbans packed with cops gunned up and down the street. The young handsome couple seemed indulgent and fragile, more like figurines on a wedding cake. They would have been better off in jeans and kaffiyeh.

That order is collapsing should be beyond dispute at this point. The United States is now committed to perpetual warfare. How long before a political formation arises that addresses that problem is unclear.

The problem for the U.S. homeland is that things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, Two stories in yesterday's paper illustrate this.

First, Eric Lichtblau reports in "F.E.C. Can’t Curb 2016 Election Abuse, Commission Chief Says"
of a mini-Bulworth moment for the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission Ann Ravel when she says that the commission can no longer enforce federal election law:

WASHINGTON — The leader of the Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending. 

“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.” 

Her unusually frank assessment reflects a worsening stalemate among the agency’s six commissioners. They are perpetually locked in 3-to-3 ties along party lines on key votes because of a fundamental disagreement over the mandate of the commission, which was created 40 years ago in response to the political corruption of Watergate. 

Some commissioners are barely on speaking terms, cross-aisle negotiations are infrequent, and with no consensus on which rules to enforce, the caseload against violators has plummeted. 

The F.E.C.’s paralysis comes at a particularly critical time because of the sea change brought about by the Supreme Court’s decision in 2010 in the Citizens United case, which freed corporations and unions to spend unlimited funds in support of political candidates. Billionaire donors and “super PACs” are already gaining an outsize role in the 2016 campaign, and the lines have become increasingly stretched and blurred over what presidential candidates and political groups are allowed to do. 

Watchdog groups have gone to the F.E.C. with complaints that probable presidential candidates like Jeb Bush and Martin O’Malley are skirting finance laws by raising millions without officially declaring that they are considering running.

A variety of functions usually handled by a campaign committee, such as expensive bulk mailings, are being offloaded to super PACs, which can raise unlimited amounts of money. The problem is that there is not supposed to be any coordination between candidates' campaign committees and Super PACs. This turns out to be a fictitious problem since there is no enforcement mechanism.

The basic point is the obvious one. You cannot have a democracy with concentrated wealth controlling the political process.

How the plutocratic control of the political process is making itself felt is the feeding frenzy on the corpse of organized labor that is currently underway. This is collapse story number two from yesterday, Monica Davey's "G.O.P. Expands Labor Battle to Laws Setting State Construction Wages." To go along with the raft of new right-to-work legislation is the effort to repeal prevailing- wage at the state level (and then when Scott Walker wins the presidency in 2016, you repeal the Big Kahuna, Davis-Bacon). Once prevailing wage, which provides a union-scale peg for government construction projects, is abolished income inequality will really take off.

Efforts to end prevailing-wage laws are emerging in statehouses around the nation. Opponents say these efforts would lower wages and see them as a new front in a battle by increasingly Republican legislatures to weaken labor unions. Advocates, like Mr. Bosma [House speaker of the Indiana state legislature], say the bills are aimed at sparing the budgets of struggling cities and states through free-market principles, and ending an inconsistent, inflated and sometimes politicized system for calculating what wage should be the standard.

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In West Virginia, where Republicans took control of the Legislature this year for the first time since the 1930s, lawmakers ended the prevailing wage for projects worth $500,000 or less.

In Nevada, where Republicans also newly dominate, lawmakers in March exempted school construction projects from that state’s requirement.

Proposals to repeal such laws entirely have been offered in more than a dozen states, including Michigan and Missouri, as well as Wisconsin, where one conservative lawmaker has called for a vote this week but Republicans appear divided on the matter.

In Illinois, Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican newly at the helm of a legislature controlled by Democrats, has called for changes, arguing that from 2002 to 2011 the financially devastated state “overspent by $1.6 billion” on education projects alone because of the state’s prevailing-wage rule.

During the Great Depression, numerous states passed prevailing-wage laws in an effort to prevent companies from offering low bids to the detriment of ordinary workers. The laws, which exist in 32 states as well as on federal contracts, require private contractors to pay workers on public projects wages in line with those earned by people doing comparable work in the same region.

Efforts to repeal the laws have been around for decades, and groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council have included repeal as a model policy for years. But as Republicans have gained power in the states — they control 68 of 98 partisan state legislative chambers, the most in the party’s history — they found new traction on the prevailing wage. 

Though the issue is not explicitly about labor power, unions tend to favor the wage regulations, and opponents of the prevailing wage, which states determine differently, contend that it often amounts to higher, union scale wages. 

So some view ending wage rules as a next goal for those who once were more focused on pressing for laws barring organized labor from requiring all workers to pay union fees or dues. With a flurry of those so-called right-to-work laws enacted recently in parts of the industrial Midwest — states like Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin — the prevailing wage has taken center stage.

Where is the AFL-CIO in all of this? Nowhere. Well, that is not true. The AFL is with the Democrats. That is the extent of the AFL's game plan -- elect Democrats. But Democrats are proving incapable of defending laws that have been around for generations.