David Warsh: Discovering an octopus of their own
G. Frederick Keller's "The Curse of California,'' which appeared in The Wasp on Aug. 19, 1882, is the likely origin of the depiction of the Southern Pacific Railroad monopoly as an octopus.
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
Last week, when the tax bill and Michael Flynn’s plea deal dominated the news, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson came under increased pressure from the White House to resign. Might that story be almost as important as the others?
The question to ask is, why did the former Exxon CEO take the job? The 65-year-old Texan has grandchildren and well over $50 million in the bank. The secretary and I are not pals, but I think I understand. He did it because he was an Eagle Scout, and because his old hunting buddy, former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, told him that he thought it would be worth the struggle.
Struggle it has been. The diplomatic press corps has been all over Tillerson for months, accusing him of wrecking, or unravellng, or dismantling the State Department by reorganizing it in an effort to comply with the 31 percent budget cut ordered by Trump.
Tillerson replies that the department’s $55 billion budget was at an all-time high under the Obama administration. He is seeking to impose an 8 percent cut among the agency’s 35,000 employees. His aim, he says, is to make a somewhat smaller department function much as it did under his friend Baker, in the George H. W. Bush administration. No doubt the human costs of careers derailed have been significant; the extent to which the department’s mission had been impaired will be an open question for many years.
Meanwhile, Tillerson has disagreed with the president on nearly every important foreign-policy question: the Paris Climate Accord, the Transpacific Partnership, the pursuit of a diplomatic track with North Korea, the Saudi campaign against Qatar, maintenance of a strong line against Russia in Ukraine. He hasn’t denied calling the president, not just a moron, but a crude slang term for a four-star moron, the highest rank of moron that there is.
Public life has few afflictions more annoying than a specialist press corps whose favorite sources have been spurned. If there were any doubt that outrage has overwhelmed reason at the editorial board of The New York Times, its story "Help Wanted: Top Diplomat'' should resolve it. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, said to be the front-runner to replace him, is “potentially every bit as inimical to the national interest” as is Tillerson, according to the Times. Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, is very much a member of the president’s inner circle. As Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky wrote yesterday in Politico, Rex Tillerson Isn’t the Problem – It’s Trump.
The president, it is often said, doesn’t like to fire people. He prefers to humiliate them until they quit. My guess is that Tillerson won’t make it easy for him. The clamor of the diplomatic press notwithstanding, actually dismissing Tillerson might cost the president dearly in many quarters – Congress, for example, or the Pentagon – as did firing FBI director James Comey. It is conceivable that, despite the ruckus, Tillerson stays.
William Allen White, turn-of-the-20th-Century Kansas newspaper editor and Progressive sage, wrote in 1905, “It is funny how we all found the octopus.” He was talking about the giant business and money trusts, whose significance he had dismissed only a decade before, in the heat of a populist onslaught.
In a similar way, those in the "mainstream media'' who doubted the existence of a “deep state” a few months ago, mainly for the sinister connotations of the term, may soon be discovering an octopus of their own. An American Establishment exists, attenuated but still powerful. Like the roster of firms that compose the once-dominant Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Establishment’s uppermost ranks have changed a great deal over the years. Broader indices have come into play. But, in the words of another wordsmith, Mark Twain, reports of its death have been exaggerated.
So far the Establishment has caused President Trump to appoint a series of moderates to top jobs, of whom Tillerson and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly are the foremost. Who knows what happens if those bonds give way.
David Warsh is a long-time economic historian and political and financial columnist. He is proprietor of economicprincipals.com, where this first ran.
Why Trump sucks up to Putin?
Donald Trump, unlike other presidents is the past 40 years, refuses to release his tax returns or other data related to his conflicts of interest, The information below suggests some reasons why:
Why did Putin order hacking to help Trump get elected? Stacey W. Porter posted to Facebook as follows:
1) Trump owes Blackstone/ Bayrock group $560 million (one of his largest debtors and the primary reason he won't reveal his tax returns)
2) Blackstone is owned wholly by Russian billionaires, who owe their position to Putin and have made billions from their work with the Russian government.
3) Other companies that have borrowed from Blackstone have claimed that owing money to them is like owing to the Russian mob and while you owe them, they own you for many favors.
4) The Russian economy is badly faltering under the weight of its over-dependence on raw materials which as you know have plummeted in the last 2 years leaving the Russian economy scrambling to pay its debts.
5) Russia has an impetus to influence our election to ensure the per barrel oil prices are above $65 ( they are currently hovering around $50)
6) Russia can't affordably get at 80% of its oil reserves and reduce its per barrel cost to compete with America at $45 or Saudi Arabia at $39. With Iranian sanctions being lifted Russia will find another inexpensive competitor increasing production and pushing Russia further down the list of suppliers.
As for Iranian sanctions, the 6 countries lifting them allowing Iran to collect on the billions it is owed for pumping oil but not being paid for it. These billions Iran can only get if the Iranian nuclear deal is signed. Trump spoke of ending the deals which would cause oil sales sanctions to be reimposed, which would make Russian oil more competitive.
7) Rex Tillerson (Trump's pick for Secretary of State) is the head of ExxonMobil, which is in possession of patented technology that could help Putin extract 45% more oil at a significant cost savings to Russia, helping Putin put money in the Russian coffers to help reconstitute its military and finally afford to mass produce the new and improved systems that it had invented before the Russian economy had slowed so much.
8) Putin cannot get access to these new cost saving technologies OR outside oil field development money, due to US sanctions on Russia, because of its involvement in Ukrainian civil war.
9) Look for Trump to end sanctions on Russia and to back out of the Iranian nuclear deal, to help Russia rebuild its economy, strengthen Putin and make Tillerson and Trump even richer, thus allowing Trump to satisfy his creditors at Blackstone.
10) With Trump's fabricated hatred of NATO and the U.N., the Russian military reconstituted, the threat to the Baltic states is real. Russia retaking their access to the Baltic Sea from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and threatening the shipping of millions of cubic feet of natural gas to lower Europe from Scandinavia, would allow Russia to make a good case for its oil and gas being piped into eastern Europe.
Sources: Time Magazine, NY Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian UK.
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