The Sun /Sunday, June 8,2014 VIEWPOINT www.sunnewspapers.net C OurTown Page9


When a presid


oes rogue


hat Winston
 Churchill said
 of Secretary
of State John Foster
Dulles that he was
a bull who carried his
own china shop around
with him is true of
Susan Rice, who is, to be
polite, accident prone.
When in September
2012 she was deputed
to sell to the public the
fable that the Benghazi
attack was just an unfor-
tunately vigorous movie
review a response to
an Internet video it
could have been that
she, rather than Sec-
retary of State Hillary
Clinton, was given this
degrading duty because
Rice was merely U.N.
ambassador, an orna-
mental position at an
inconsequential insti-
tution. Today, however,
Rice is Barack Obama's
national security advis-
er, so two conclusions
must be drawn.
 Perhaps she did not
know, in advance of the
swap of five terrorists
for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl,
the, shall we say, ambi-
guities about Bergdahl's


departure from his
platoon in Afghanistan,
and the reportedly
deadly consequences of
his behavior. If so, then
she has pioneered a
degree of incompetence
exotic even for this
10-thumbed administra-
tion. If, however, she did
know, and still allowed
Obama to present this
as a mellow moment of
national satisfaction, she
is condign punishment
for his choice of such
hirelings.
 Perhaps this exchange
really is, as Obama
said in defending it, an
excellent thing "regard-
less of the circumstances,
whatever those circum-
stances may turn out
to be." His confidence
in its excellence is
striking, considering


that he acknowledges
that we do not know the
facts about what would
seem to be important
''circumstances."
 Such as the note
Bergdahl reportedly left
before disappearing, in
which he supposedly
said he did not approve
of the U.S. mission in
Afghanistan. And the
notably strong and
numerous expressions
of anger by members
of Bergdahl's battalion
concerning his comport-
ment and its costs.
 Obama did not
comply with the law
requiring presidents to
notify Congress 30 days
before such exchanges.
Politico can be cited
about this not because
among the media it is
exceptionally, well, un-
derstanding of Obama's
exuberant notion of
executive latitude but
because it is not. Politico
headlined a story on his
noncompliance with
the law "Obama May
Finally Be Going Rogue
on Gitmo." Politico said
Obama's "assertive"
act "defied Congress"


- Congress, not the
rule of law in order
"to get that process [of
closing Guantanamo Bay
prison] moving." It sent
"a clear message" that
"Obama is now willing
to wield his executive
powers to get the job
done." Or, as used to be
said in extenuation of
strong leaders, "to make
the trains run on time."
 The 44th president,
channeling not for the
first time the 37th (in
his post-impeachment
conversation with David
Frost), may say: "When
the president does it,
that means that it is not
illegal." Already the ad-
ministration says events
dictated a speed that
precluded complying
with the law.
 This explanation
should be accorded
open-minded, but
not empty-minded,
consideration. It should
be considered in light
of the fact that as the
Veterans Affairs debacle
continued, Obama
went to Afghanistan
to hug some troops,
then completed the


terrorists-for-Bergdahl
transaction. And in light
of the fact that Obama
waged a seven-month
military intervention in
Libya's civil war without
complying with the
law (the War Powers
Resolution) that requires
presidents to terminate
within 60 to 90 days a
military action not au-
thorized or subsequently
approved by Congress.
 Sen. Saxby Chambliss,
R-Ga., vice chairman
of the Intelligence
Committee, says the
administration told him
he would be notified
about negotiations for
the release of terrorists.
He now says he cannot
"believe a thing this
president says."
 Obama says his
agents "consulted with
Congress for quite some
time" about prisoner
exchanges with the
Taliban. Mike Rogers,
R-Mich., chairman of
the House Intelligence
Committee, says there
have been no consul-
tations since 2011. Sen.
Jay Rockefeller, D-WVa.,
says, "I don't like it when


the White House says the
intelligence committees
were briefed. Because we
weren't." He says Obama
is "referring to ... 2011-
2012, when I was still in
grade school."
 Now, now. "Assertive"
presidents can't be
expected to "go rogue"
without ruffling feathers.
And omelets cannot be
made without breaking
eggs. Etc.
 This episode will be
examined by congres-
sional committees, if
they can pierce the
administration's coming
cover-up, which has been
foreshadowed by the
response to congressio-
nal attempts to scrutinize
the politicization of the
IRS. If the military stalls
on turning over files
to Congress pertaining
to the five years of
Bergdahl's absence, we
will at least know that
there is no national
institution remaining to
be corrupted.
 George Will is a colum-
nist for The Washington
Post. Readers may reach
him at georgewill@
washpost. com.


'The Rich, the Right, and the Facts


while back I pub-
 lished an article
 titled "The Rich,
the Right, and the Facts,"
in which I described po-
litically motivated efforts
to deny the obvious -
the sharp rise in U.S. in-
equality, especially at the
very top of the income
scale. It probably won't
surprise you to hear that
I found a lot of statisti-
cal malpractice in high
places.
 Neither will it surprise
you to learn that nothing
much has changed. Not
only do the usual sus-
pects continue to deny
the obvious, but they
keep rolling out the same
discredited arguments:
Inequality isn't really
rising; OK, it's rising, but
it doesn't matter because
we have so much social
mobility; anyway, it's a
good thing, and anyone
who suggests that it's a
problem is a Marxist.
 What may surprise
you is the year in which
I published that article:
1992.
 Which brings me to
the latest intellectual
scuffle, set off by an
article by Chris Giles,
the economics editor
of The Financial Times,
attacking the credibil-
ity of Thomas Piketty's
best-selling "Capital
in the Twenty-First
Century." Giles claimed
that Piketty's work made
"a series of errors that
skew his findings," and
that there is in fact no
clear evidence of rising
concentration of wealth.
And like just about every-
one who has followed
such controversies over
the years, I thought,
"Here we go again."
 Sure enough, the
subsequent discussion
has not gone well for
Giles. The alleged errors
were actually the kinds of
data adjustments that are
normal in any research
that relies on a variety of
sources. And the crucial
assertion that there is
no clear trend toward
increased concentra-
tion of wealth rested


on a known fallacy,
an apples-to-oranges
comparison that experts
have long warned about
- and that I identified in
that 1992 article.
 At the risk of giving too
much information, here's
the issue. We have two
sources of evidence on
both income and wealth:
surveys, in which people
are asked about their
finances, and tax data.
Survey data, while useful
for tracking the poor
and the middle class,
notoriously understate
top incomes and wealth
- loosely speaking,
because it's hard to
interview enough billion-
aires. So studies of the
1 percent, the 0.1 per-
cent, and so on rely
mainly on tax data. The
Financial Times critique,
however, compared
older estimates of wealth
concentration based on
tax data with more recent
estimates based on sur-
veys; this produced an
automatic bias against
finding an upward trend.
 In short, this latest
attempt to debunk
the notion that we've
become a vastly more
unequal society has
itself been debunked.
And you should have
expected that. There are
so many independent
indicators pointing to
sharply rising inequality,
from the soaring prices
of high-end real estate
to the booming markets
for luxury goods, that
any claim that inequality
isn't rising almost has to
be based on faulty data
analysis.
 Yet inequality denial
persists, for pretty
much the same reasons
that climate change
denial persists: There are


powerful groups with a
strong interest in reject-
ing the facts, or at least
creating a fog of doubt.
Indeed, you can be sure
that the claim "The
Piketty numbers are all
wrong" will be endlessly
repeated even though
that claim quickly col-
lapsed under scrutiny.
 By the way, I'm not
accusing Giles of being
a hired gun for the
plutocracy, although
there are some self-pro-
claimed experts who fit
that description. And
nobody's work should be
considered above criti-
cism. But on politically


charged issues, critics of
the consensus need to
be self-aware; they need
to ask whether they're
really seeking intellectual
honesty, or are effectively
acting as concern trolls,
professional debunkers
of liberal pieties. (Strange
to say, there are no trolls
on the right debunking
conservative pieties.
Funny how that works.)
 So here's what you
need to know: Yes, the
concentration of both
income and wealth
in the hands of a few
people has increased
greatly over the past few
decades. No, the people


receiving that income
and owning that wealth
aren't an ever-shifting
group: People move fairly
often from the bottom
of the 1 percent to the
top of the next percen-
tile and vice versa, but
both rags to riches and
riches to rags stories
are rare inequality in
average incomes over
multiple years isn't much
less than inequality in
a given year. No, taxes
and benefits don't greatly
change the picture in
fact, since the 1970s big
tax cuts at the top have
caused after-tax inequal-
ity to rise faster than


inequality before taxes.
 This picture makes
some people uncom-
fortable, because it plays
into populist demands
for higher taxes on the
rich. But good ideas
don't need to be sold
on false pretenses. If
the argument against
populism rests on bogus
claims about inequality,
you should consider
the possibility that the
populists are right.

 Paul Krugman is a
columnist for The New
York Times. He can be
reached via www.new
yorktimes.com.


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