My new post at Huffington Post looks at a dinner of the Panetta Institute and what it says about cozy relationships among the Washington establishment:

So let’s see … an institute founded by and bearing the name of the secretary of defense, who also served 17 years in Congress, including four years as chairman of the House Budget Committee, and as director of the Office of Management and Budget, White House chief of staff, and director of the CIA, is giving an award to his immediate predecessor, who also served as CIA director, and to a quintessentially establishment Washington journalist, and to a scholar at both Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution who in addition to her time at the Federal Reserve has served as director of the Congressional Budget Office, director of OMB, co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Debt Reduction. That is like an entire Washington establishment at one head table.

More on what this establishment has wrought, and right and wrong ways to break up the iron triangle, at the link.