Whose Side Are You On?
On one side: the Fed… the NSA… the CIA… Fannie Mae… Freddie Mac… the trade unions… Wall Street… the dollar… Obamacare… New York’s taxi system… QE… the wars on terror, poverty, illiteracy, and drugs… Dodd-Frank… the TSA… the ATF… millions of retirees and disability scammers… General Motors… Hillary Clinton… and many, many others…
A widely held and quite erroneous belief …
On the other: Airbnb… Uber… cryptocurrencies… “Main Street”… businesses… families… gold… young people… savers… Freemasons… Ron Paul… truck drivers… the Episcopal Church… Elks… entrepreneurs… free markets… and millions of honest people who make their livings and live their lives as best they can without holding a gun to anyone else’s head.
Yes, dear reader, maybe it was too much alcohol or too little food. But in the night, a vision came to us. It revealed the big picture in a way we hadn’t seen it. Zombies, you’ll recall, are people and institutions that live at the expense of others. How?
Some are freelance criminals. But most depend on government to get the flesh they need. People don’t give up their own blood readily. They run. They hide. They try to protect themselves. But government maintains a territorial monopoly on the one thing that does the trick – violence.
So today, we stoop to admire the institution of government. What a beautiful racket! It typically takes 20% to 50% of an economy’s output. It makes the rules. It sets the pace. And woe to anybody or anything that gets in its way…
Murray Rothbard’s concise definition of the State
Everybody Is a Customer
You can divide an economy into three estates: households, businesses, and government. Of the three, government is in the best position by far. Everybody is a customer of the government, whether he wants to be or not. And when you have control of the government, you set the terms of the deals with the other estates. And you can change the terms whenever you want.
That’s why there is so much money in politics – because you can get so much money from politics! A person can go into government with nothing; he comes out with a fortune.
Dick Cheney, for example, huffed and puffed almost his entire career in politics, except for a brief stint with a crony defense contractor. Now, he’s said to be worth $80 million.
Dick Cheney – from nada to $80 million – a political career can be quite remunerative.
Photo via politicususa.com
Or Hillary Clinton. She has never had a job in the productive economy. She is said to be worth $21 million. Successful politicians get the best parking places… the best offices… and other perks and privileges that no one else gets
Hillary Clinton: never produced anything consumers would voluntarily acquire, and yet, is said to be worth $21 million.
Photo credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press
Members of Congress also routinely exclude themselves from the rules and regulations they’ve made for others. For example, it is illegal for U.S. companies to misstate their financial positions; for government it is business as usual. In the private sector, fraud is a crime; in government it is “just politics.”
As to the business community, government has a mixed relationship. Every business is a source of funds. In addition to the money it gets from taxation, confiscations, and other predations, government also gets bribes in various forms.
A retired Congressman, for example, can look forward to a career as a lobbyist for the industries he promoted while in office. Or he can make money by giving dull speeches to industry groups. He may choose to do a little consulting, too, or haunt the board of directors.
“Where we are right now”, a public service message sent by Bastiat
Businesses usually begin as productive enterprises. But almost all have zombie tendencies. Once they reach a certain size, they recognize that the best investment they can make is in politics. They hire lobbyists. They pay crony politicians.
In return, government enacts rules and regulations to stifle competition. But as with so many of its activities, government succeeds when it fails. As a new industry arises, the money still flows from the cronies, while the feds get a piece of action from the new enterprises, too.
And households? They grouse and groan. But the masses usually love government. They think business people are greedy SOBs. But they often hold the fellows who run the government racket in the same exalted category as saints, TV stars, and sports heroes. Don’t believe it?
At a recent reception in Baltimore, we noticed people gathered around a familiar face. It wasn’t Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell; it was former senator Paul Sarbanes. Just look around Washington… or any major city for that matter. Do you find statues of Henry Ford? Where is the marble bust of Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin? Where is the pile honoring Sam Walton?
Instead, you find plenty of granite spent to honor scalawags and scoundrels – Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR, to name just a few. And who’s next?
A collection of past scoundrels and scalawags hewn in granite and cast in bronze …
Hillary Is a Terrible Candidate – but is Brain-fog any Better?
In politics, as in markets, nobody knows anything. But we were seated at dinner last night next to a seasoned political analyst…
“Hillary won’t win the White House,” he confided. “She might not even win the nomination.”
We recall that much of what he said was off record, but we can’t remember which parts. So, we will leave his name out of the Diary; he may have spoken more candidly than he had wished.
“The trouble with Hillary is that she’s a Clinton without Bill’s charm. And she’s yesterday’s news. She couldn’t even beat Obama. And he’s a terrible politician.
“Obama only got elected because of a unique set of circumstances – Hillary and George W. Bush. People were sick of Bush. Hillary is a weak candidate.
“So now we’re seeing other candidates come out. Bernie Sanders is showing us how vulnerable she is. Others will be encouraged. One of them will probably get some traction.
“Jim Webb is not getting any money from the establishment. But he has real appeal to the voters.
“As for the Republicans… Hard to say. I’ve met them all. Rand Paul is smart. But he doesn’t have the funding. Or the political network. He’s too much of an outsider and a maverick to be acceptable.
“The trouble with Ted Cruz is that he is inflexible. He’s very smart and right about a lot of things. But you have to be fairly flexible to get elected president.
“The one I really like is Rick Perry. I know, he sounds like an idiot. But he’s not. They just caught him at a bad moment, when he was on painkillers from dental surgery, or something.
“You remember – he couldn’t recall which department he would abolish if he were elected. It was just a case of brain fog. But it happens to everyone.
“He’s actually very smart… and a good campaigner.”
We’ve never met Rick Perry, so we can’t say either way…
Modern Zombies: Ms. “Hard Choices” and Mr. Brain-fog… we actually think we would be quite happy with never hearing about either of them again for the rest of our life…
Image captions by PT
The above article originally appeared as “Why Hillary Won’t Win the White House” at the Diary of a Rogue Economist, written for Bonner & Partners. Bill Bonner founded Agora, Inc in 1978. It has since grown into one of the largest independent newsletter publishing companies in the world. He has also written three New York Times bestselling books, Financial Reckoning Day, Empire of Debt and Mobs, Messiahs and Markets.
The Clintons are worth more like $200M than $20. Doesn’t matter – the low information imbecile voters love her like a starving dog on a chain loves its master.
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At least maybe Perry could figure out which country attacked us (Saudi Arabia) and bomb them instead of Iraq.
Right now my money is on Sanders because he’s honest and has some great populist ideas. We’ve swung waaaay too far to the right in the U.S. and if you open your eyes you can see it, brown shirts, checkpoints (paypers please) and all. I’d rather see the country swing socialist than fascist any day.
Why not swing sensibly back to what the constitution says you fucking westcoast tool.
“my money is on Sanders because he’s honest” ———– Westcoaster
How many lies does it take before you consider a politician dishonest. One? A hundred?
I ask because it is so easy to find instances where Bernie was dishonest … sometimes to the point of criminality … yet, you say he’s honest. This is baffling to me. Or, maybe by “honest” you mean ‘he doesn’t lie as much as the average politician’, and that low standard is good enough?
If The Donald comes out with a sane foreign policy, I think he will win. All of the other GOfP candidates, except Paul, are beyond horrible on EVERYTHING, and Paul doesn’t have the money. Likewise the Democrats are horrible as well, with Hillary being by far the worst.
Westcoaster.
We’ve swung to the right?
Not unless you’re so far to the left that Karl Marx looks like a right wing extremist to you.
Zara,
The Republican establishment will never let Trump be their candidate.
They’ll gladly throw the election before taking chance the country might change its current direction.
Right foot, left foot, right foot , left foot ………… Two feet on the same path with no intention of trying a different one.
“If The Donald comes out with a sane foreign policy, I think he will win.” ——- Zara
You’ll convert to Judaism before Trump wins.
I consider you a rather smart fellow. But, dahum, that’s special kind of stupid right there.
Stucky, if not the hair, then the lowest voter turnout ever.
westcoaster, lol. ‘at least he is honest’. You have seen his voting record on america’s wars since he has been in office right? and his unwavering support for sending OUR money to the isrealis? An honest person does not try to control nearly every aspect of your life, which is how it works in a socialist country, as well as a fascist country(which we pretty much have now)
And ya, I hadn’t heard those comments about snowden from the donald. I wouldn’t vote for him anyway, but that seals it for me. I have a few issues that are deal breakers, and thats one of them. It just shows how ‘they’ feel about their ability to spy on ‘us’, and how they view our right to know whats going on, since, as americans, its being done in our name, with our money. Thus far, Ron Paul has been the only one thats met all of my ‘deal breakers’, no one else in the republican party comes close, not even his son, which is disappointing as hell
Boomers will remember the excitement of the Gene McCarthy campaign of 1968. It had a similar feel to the Sanders’ current campaign, just as Ron Paul was in 2012. In the end, what McCarthy accomplished was to run Lyndon Johnson out of the race and create an opening for Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. That’s one of the reasons the GOP worked so hard to sideline Ron Paul in 2012.
Sanders is likely to cause the same to happen in the 2016 primaries, with Hillary Clinton run out of the race – probably after New Hampshire. If that happens and Sanders is considered too far left for the general populace, who would step into the space Hillary occupies now? 4T leaders generally emerge quickly, finding ways to unite disparate factions on all sides. FDR did, Lincoln did. So did Hitler. It remains to be seen which direction we go this time.