bribes

Open Thread

Mark Noonan25 Comments

The latest wrinkle Leftist federal district judges have come up with – if you are illegally in the USA for some undetermined period of time and “put down roots” you now have a legal interest in remaining in the USA and can’t be deported – or even detained – without due process of law. This is entirely in violation of the law as written. There is no “if you get away with it long enough” exception to immigration law. Sure, the appellate courts will eventually strike it down but then these judges will just try the next thing…because the law doesn’t matter to them. They are in place simply to impose Democrat policy preferences regardless of what the law says, or the people vote for.

We have to arrest them – we have tens of thousands of federal statutes on the books and these judges are in violation of some of them. Sure, pretty much all of us are to one degree or another…but the law is the law and if we find the violation, we can bring the charges. It is the only way I can think of to curb these people…to let them know we’re serious. Impeachment won’t work because of the 67 vote requirement in the Senate. So, we must find some other expedient to stop these ridiculous rulings from fanatics in judicial robes.

There’s a new STD floating around out there – Trichophyton mentagrophytes genotype. No, I had never heard of it, either. But, then again, I don’t get out much these days. It is a fungal infection which seems to have originated among sex tourists in Asia and it is commonly spread via sexual activity among “men who have sex with men”…which is the CDC’s way of not saying “homosexuals”. Apparently there is now a large outbreak in Minnesota…so, we wait for word on where the male officials of the State government have been vacationing of late.

Side note: that we have something called “sex tourism” is an abomination. People who do that should be flogged within an inch of their lives.

I’ve seen a lot of Right influencers – including some major Catholic accounts – on social media moving towards overt anti-Semitism. This, my friends, is the lure of cash…there are people who will pay you a lot of money to toe a line. The Left, of course, does this – you can’t really think these Leftist accounts which repeat the most absurd lies actually believe it. But some people will sell their soul for money. Now it is happening on the Right. Keep in mind that I blog and post on X and I’m just this guy…I’m doing ok, but suppose someone proposed to double my annual income at the stroke of a pen and all I had to do was lie about Jews? It is chump change to the person buying the influence…it would be life-changing for me. To be sure, I believe I am morally strong enough to reject such an offer (and, in fact, will never get into a position to have the offer made…those who are bought are cultivated over time until the offer is made)…but no matter what, there will always be people who will give into temptation.

It is everywhere, my friends. Latest revelation is that Code Pink is apparently heavily funded by the Chinese Communist Party. Why wouldn’t they? An organization made up of people who hate America and who want it destroyed? Of course you kick a couple bucks over to them. Qatari money. Saudi money. Russian money. EU money. All of it filtered through various dark money organizations and passed out to people who will hew to a propaganda line no matter how absurd it is…because it is propaganda directed at an American population increasingly ignorant of basic history (read that in Philadelphia public schools they don’t mention things like the Civil War or WWII but they will tell you that Settler-Colonialism is evil, while Islam is good). That is, you can say really rather stupid lies and hardly anyone out there will have the knowledge to call you out on it.

There’s an article in New York Magazine which laments that the historically black neighborhoods of NYC are demographically changing…you know, the local population being replaced by outsiders. This is, I gather, bad…but apparently only if its a black neighborhood.

Side note on that: NYC is becoming a place where you can live if you are desperately poor or fabulously rich…but if you just work for a living, you can’t stay. This is same in California, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts…and we can take a guess why these areas are like that.

How Political Payoffs are Done

Mark Noonan15 Comments

From MSNBC:

A retired Chicago labor leader secured a $158,000 public pension — roughly five times greater than what a typical retired public-service worker in the Windy City receives — after being rehired for just one day of active duty on the city payroll, local news reports said…

…Gannon, former president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, was able to take a long leave from a city job to work for a union and then receive a city pension based on a high union salary. That arrangement is allowed under a state law signed by Gov. Jim Thompson on his last day in office in 1991, according to an investigation by the Tribune and WGN-TV.

The change has enabled a couple dozen labor leaders to become potential millionaires.

What is different in Gannon’s case is that he became eligible for the especially lucrative pension deal only because the city rehired the former Streets and Sanitation Department worker for one day in 1994, before granting him an indefinite leave of absence, according to the investigation. He retired from the city job in 2004 at age 50…

Now, don’t anyone out there think that any Joe Shmoe can get a job, work a day, go on indefinite leave and then collect millions in pension benefits.  This is something entirely reserved only for those the government wants to pay off for one reason or another.  I don’t know what services Gannon rendered in order to secure such a massive amount of money for no work, but it was probably pretty stupendous…and probably something the politicians of Chicago and Illinois would prefer we never find out about.  And this is just a tip of the iceberg in the total playbook of how to bribe of payoff in politics.

One other way which Matt and I discovered in writing Caucus of Corruption is to donate to powerful politicians who either run un-opposed or against token opposition.  You’ll be surprised how many such there are in politics…and even more surprised in how much money they raise for their re-election campaigns.  You become un-surprised about it when you find out that their campaign staffers, at very high salaries, are spouses, children, family members and long-time cronies.  In other words, you don’t directly bribe Congressman X, you donate to his campaign and he pays his wife $100,000.00 a year to be a campaign “consultant” against a non-existent or quixotic opponent.  All perfectly legal, just as Gannon’s pension, but always it is a bribe…it is a means of giving in return for getting without the public finding out just what sort of nauseating filth is going on.

And it is on and on like that all through politics.  To be sure, plenty of Republicans engage in it…but it is endemic in the Democrat party.  If you found me a Democrat who had never engaged in any sort of shady practice, I’d be surprised…pleased, but surprised.  It is endemic over there for two reasons – for generations Democrats were in power and never really had anyone call them to account; secondly, Democrat electorates have proven almost impervious to corruption…no matter how corrupt a Democrat is, he can usually win re-election if he’s in a strongly Democrat district (for instance, Barney Frank had a live-in whore working out of Frank’s DC townhouse; Frank fixed 33 of the whore’s parking tickets and wrote a letter on his behalf to the parole board…a GOPer who had that would be forced to resign in days; Frank has been re-elected 11 times since that scandal).  Year by year it has built up – first go ahead and do it; secondly, you never (or, at least, rarely) get punished for it.

The thing to remember is that if the MSM actually did its job and relentlessly investigated the corruption in government, it would be front page headlines every day that some senior politician is on the take…even if the take is “legal” in the sense that corrupt politicians have set up the laws and regulations to make it so, but still crooked as all get out.  Nine out of ten of the crooks would be Democrat, of course…and that is why the MSM doesn’t do its job.  It doesn’t want to implode the Democrat party in a sea of corruption stories.  And, so, it just continues…but, perhaps not for long.

The real fear in the Ruling Class is that someone will get elected next year who doesn’t care about the Ruling Class and is willing to unleash law enforcement on those who have broken the law, as well as ruthlessly exposing those who keep within the law, but are clearly taking/giving bribes and payoffs.  The Ruling Class is afraid that their time at the hog trough might be through…that is the real genesis of the Wisconsin protests and recall elections.  The Ruling Class was frightened that the corrupt deals, bribes and payoffs might come to a screeching halt…as, indeed, they will now that Wisconsin government doesn’t have to roll over to corrupt public sector unions.  If you think Wisconsin was bizarre, just wait until a TEA Party-backed candidate comes to the White House…these people will go ballistic.

But ballistic only because they are afraid they won’t get free money and an easy time in life.  That is what must be remembered.  They’ll talk like they are fighting for the little guy but all they are really fighting for is their bribes, kickbacks and payoffs…they will be upset that maybe they won’t ever get a chance at millions of dollars in taxpayer money for working a day.    There are probably 30 to 50 million people like that in the United States…who are either already living off the taxpayer or dream of doing so…on a larger or smaller scale, but still the goal is to get money they didn’t earn.  This is the core constituency of the left…and they are worried sick they might be kicked off the taxpayer’s teat.

And, glad to say, it looks like that is what will happen…a revolution is brewing in this nation.  Those who have been paying the freight for a corrupt, lying, morally degenerating Ruling Class have had enough…we’re taking it all back next year, and we’ll fix this nation and restore our greatness.  This will result in a lot of leeches having to get real jobs, but that is all to the good…it’ll teach them to be better Americans.

HAT TIP:  Mish’s