Posted on May 8, 2016 by Michael Covel – Link to podcast
Today, Michael Covel interviews Mike Lofgren. Mike’s new book is titled, “The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government.” We are in a world where everyone thinks their vote matters and that the next President will fix all of America’s problems.
Michael starts the podcast off reading an excerpt from Lofgren’s new book. The two dig into expectations that people had for George W. Bush. As he failed, the people then voted in Barack Obama. Obama failed to meet people’s expectations as well. Lofgren explains what he describes as a “deep state” phenomenon.
Next, Covel and Lofgren dig into: “Does our vote really matter?” Lofgren says that whoever is elected President matters on the margin. The general vector of who gets what, what the general distribution of income is, and what our general foreign policy is, is going to be pretty much the same no matter who is elected. However, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are so far out of the box that they may change those norms because of how out of distribution the system has become. The public knows something is wrong. Trump and Sanders have, at the very least, shaken up the political structure regardless of if they win the election or not.
Lofgren goes into economics and military next. He doesn’t look at economics and military as separate entities. He sees all arms of government as intricately intertwined. When you see a change in the economics of the country, you can see just as large of a shift in the military and vice versa. Michael and Lofgren also discuss Dick Fuld and the Lehman Brother collapse.
Michael moves on to ask, “Why aren’t there more whistle blowers coming out of the government?” Lofgren says that it is largely because people don’t want to go to prison. More people are being charged with espionage in America than within any other government. Michael and Lofgren continue to dig into depth about politics, corruption, and Wall Street for the rest of the podcast. Michael ends asking Lofgren, “Is there really anything on the horizon where this deep state entrenchment goes away?”