Thieves’ Guilds

     If you’ve read any of David Eddings’s fantasies, you might have encountered the concept expressed by the title of this piece. And if you’re moderately well educated, you’re aware of the principal function of a guild. That gives Eddings’s notion a particularly piquant irony.

     Medieval occupational guilds existed to protect their members from occupational competitors. They often possessed a de facto legal privilege to use force to do so. That made them extensions of the State: a status for which they often paid a heavy fee to the “official” rulers.

     Today we don’t have guilds of that sort. Instead we have licensure: The State plays arbiter over who can offer what services to whom, and extracts a fee from those it permits to operate. In effect, it steals one of the peaceable man’s rights – the right to earn a living as best he can – and sells it back to him...or not. Over the century behind us, licensure has expanded to cover more than 1100 different occupations.

     Very few significant occupations remain unaddressed by licensure. However, there is one unlicensed occupation of massive significance...the most lucrative of all.

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     No one needs a license to run for elective office. Whether it’s local, state, or federal, the requirements for assuming an elective office are spelled out in plain English in the relevant Constitution or charter. Normally, they reduce to three:

• The candidate must be at least X years old.
• He must be a citizen of the United States (to become president, a “natural born” citizen).
• He must reside in the relevant locality (and in some cases, must have done so for a minimum interval).

     A candidate who attains elective office can begin to steal at once.

     What’s that you say? A public office is a public trust? Such offices should be occupied solely by men of unquestionably high character? I can’t disagree. But all too often, it turns out to be exactly the other way around.

     Consider the percentage of our federal legislators that are exceedingly rich men. Many of them didn’t become rich until they were elected to Congress. And despite Honore de Balzac’s fervent declaration, while it isn’t quite true that “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime,” you could bet on it without going against the odds.

     The principal attraction of political office is power. However, more often than not those who acquire such power will use it to benefit themselves and their families materially. The corruptocrat who will be inaugurated into a stolen office tomorrow at Noon is only the most prominent example before us. His political mentor, who is likely to use him as a puppet, was himself no slouch in that business.

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     Allow me to recount a tale from an old book: Quentin Reynolds’s book Courtroom, a legal biography of the great defense lawyer Samuel Leibowitz, who later became a judge in the Brooklyn courts. The segment I have in mind concerns the murder trial of one Joseph Scutellaro, a building contractor who operated in the 1930s and 1940s in Hoboken, New Jersey. At that time, political power in Hoboken was tightly gripped by the McFeeley family, described by Reynolds as follows:

     The McFeeley family represented the Hague machine in Hoboken. The McFeeley family? Well, there was Mayor Bernard J. McFeeley; his brother, Police Chief Edward J. McFeeley; Police Captain Bernard McFeeley Jr.; Police Lieutenant Dennis McFeeley; James McFeeley, contractor; and David and Joseph McFeeley of the Hoboken Law Department.

     Broadly, in that period you had to have the good will of the McFeeleys to get anywhere or do anything of even modest consequence in Hoboken. The demonstration:

     Joseph Scutellaro, a small, dark, intense-eyed man, also lived in the city of Hoboken. He and his father operated a small building concern. They were prosperous in a modest way and their future seemed assured. Then father and son made a grave mistake. Frank Barletta, a member of the City Commission, broke with the McFeeley machine and ran as a Republican. Both Joseph and his father campaigned for Barletta. But Barletta lost and so did everyone active in his campaign. Suddenly the Scutellaros found that they couldn’t get any contracts. If they did manage to pick up a small job here and there, the people engaging their services found they couldn’t obtain the necessary building permits at City Hall. Finally not a single vestige of a once-prosperous business remained. No other contractor would hire either of them.

     The story gets worse from there. Without going into details, the Scutellaros were even denied public relief. Poormaster Harry Barck, a loyal cog in the McFeeley machine, simply refused to disburse it to them despite repeated applications. In consequence the whole Scutellaro family, which included two minor children, neared death by starvation. When Scutellaro appealed personally to Barck, the Poormaster suggested that Scutellaro’s wife become a prostitute.

     The tale doesn’t end there. Joseph Scutellaro was arrested and tried for the murder of Poormaster Harry Barck. Despite Leibowitz’s efforts, he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison. What became of his family is unrecorded.

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     Sometimes it seems the world is wholly made of irony. As its substance is at least one-third nickel-iron amalgam, what remains is hardly an obstacle.

     These past four years, we have enjoyed the tenure of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. Trump is one of two presidents in the past century to attain that office without having held any other elective or appointive public office; the other was Dwight D. Eisenhower. He’s also the first man in at least a century to leave that office a poorer man than when he arrived in it.

     Trump campaigned as a political outsider, one who would “drain the swamp” that the federal government had become. He strove mightily to do so, and despite considerable opposition from the swamp-dwellers and their political protectors, he achieved a great deal. But he never had the allegiance of the political Establishment: the men and women who deemed federal power to be theirs by right. Given his outsider status, he could not have imagined that they would approve of him...and they did not.

     We have witnessed the Establishmentarian rejection of Trump and all he represents. The silent acquiescence of a great part of the Republican elite to the theft of the presidency makes clear that while there is no “official” licensure for elective office, the unofficial mechanisms of Washington were incensed by his rise and determined to see him fall.

     Trump ran for president knowing that it would be so. He knew that he, his whole family, and every element of his many enterprises would come under attack. He knew that should he win, the attacks would escalate to previously unimagined heights. He accepted that that would be the price.

     But the price might not have been levied in full quite yet. The Establishment doesn’t merely want to see Trump removed from office; it also wants to prevent, in perpetuity, any other outsider candidate from doing what Trump did: The privilege of stealing from the public must be reserved to us and us alone! The most effective way to deter non-Establishment candidates for high office is to present them with the prospect of paying an exorbitant price.

     What the thieves’ guild we call the political Establishment has in mind for Trump, his family, and his business interests once he’s departed the White House can easily be imagined, in magnitude if not in all its details. Pray for him.

The Demise of Congress

     Congress no longer has any claim to dignity – nor any claim to moral authority – after this display of unlimited venality:

     The patent absurdity that these Democrats would demand that Attorney-General William Barr appear before them, face their harangues, yet not permit him to speak goes beyond anything in American politics to date, including the felonious farce that was the “Russian collusion” hoax. At least that was mostly a “Deep State” operation, with little participation by elected Democrats until it was plainly a failure.

     As usual, Ace has some penetrating comments:

     The Democrats shredded the social compact today.
     As they shred it every day, lately -- there's not much left.
     Today they shredded the social compact by defending and justifying terrorist attacks on law-abiding Americans.
     They also shredded it by holding a Stalinesque show trial of AG Barr.
     They would "ask questions" -- really lob unfounded accusations -- and then cut off Barr as he attempted to answer. They would shout "I'm reclaiming my time!" as a way of telling Barr to shut up, as they did not want his answers to count against their five minutes of time.
     I wondered why Barr didn't just walk out of the hearing.
     I think that obese malignant dwarf Jerry Nadler might have actually tried instructing the Sergeant of Arms of the House to put Barr under arrest if he tried to leave.

     John Hinderaker expands on the theme:

     [T]he Democrats were outrageously rude to the Attorney General of the United States. The hearing was devoted to their abusing him on various ridiculous grounds. He barely got a word in edgewise. At one point, he said something like, “This is a hearing. Aren’t I the one who supposedly is being heard?” Of course not. Whenever he got to mid-sentence, the Democrats interrupted him. “I’m reclaiming my time” was the theme of the day.
     I am not sure who the Democrats think is the audience for this sort of nonsense. Sentient voters watching on television couldn’t possibly have been impressed. Maybe they are just looking for sentence fragments they can use in fundraising emails.
     Then there is the larger point. The Democrats are committed to the view that what is happening in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta and other cities is mere “peaceful protest.” Thus, the Trump administration is unjustified in sending in federal officers to protect federal property, like courthouses. And to the extent that anything untoward happens, it is Donald Trump’s fault. This was the main theory that the Democrats tried to advance through their “questioning” of Attorney General Barr.

     Outrageous. Insupportable. If any of these vipers in human guise continue in office after the November elections, it will cast a final judgment of condemnation upon the Democrat Party.

     Was there nothing the Republicans on the committee could do to compel a degree of fairness (not to demand courtesy, which is plainly beyond any Democrat in federal office) toward the Attorney-General, who had appeared voluntarily before them? Are the “rules of the House” unable to compel fairness toward a Cabinet Secretary who has presented himself before a committee of his own volition?

     I’m more disgusted than I can say. Accordingly, I’ll stop here and fume silently, though I may be back later.

Wait For The Sequel

     Recently, a young Trump supporter from Virginia named Scott Presler decided to act rather than merely point at a problem and speak about it. What was his target? Why, Baltimore, of course:

     MAGA fan Scott Presler was tired of all the constant bickering in the media about Baltimore's numerous problems, so he personally decided to do something about it. Rather than simply complain or join the online chorus, he has organized a massive trash clean up of the city set to take place in the near future. Presler just wants to help out in any way that he can.

     "I’m so tired of people saying, ‘We should do this, we should do that'....I was just like, ‘I’ve had, it. I’m going to go to Baltimore, even if it’s just me on a street corner picking up trash,'" he told The Epoch Times.

     On Saturday, July 28, the activist told his online following that anybody who wanted to come to help clean up Baltimore was welcome. He encouraged Trump supporters to wear Trump gear but told The Epoch Times that anybody can participate when the event takes place.

     "I just want the citizens of Baltimore to see [that] we do care. We do give a darn. And at the end of the day, we’re all American and if ya’ll are struggling in Baltimore and you guys need help, then we’re going to be there for you," he said.

     "I don’t want this to be an anti-Rep. Cummings event. That’s not what this is about. This is about helping our fellow American citizens," he added.

     Sounds good, doesn’t it? Everyone loves a noble volunteer effort to “help our fellow American citizens.” And how could anyone say a harsh word about the man who organizes one? Don’t expect to hear one from your humble Curmudgeon. But I do have some observations to make about the matter.

     First, as this effort is likely to be heavy with conservatives and Trump supporters – hey, we’re the people who believe in doing things personally rather than delegating them to the Omnipotent State, remember? – a response by Antifa is virtually guaranteed. So Presler has to “keep the specifics under wraps for now.” That won’t preclude such a response completely, though it might help to reduce its magnitude. Given the political leanings of the city government of Baltimore, what provisions will the police make to prevent Antifa’s specialty: violence against people in the Right?

     Second, I’d like to know how many Baltimore residents will take part in the cleanup, both as an absolute tally and as a percentage of the total cleanup force. It’s their city; they “should” participate more enthusiastically than an outsider from Virginia Beach, VA. Indeed, it should be Baltimore residents organizing and energizing the effort. But when it gets under way, my expectation is that the Baltimorean fraction of the cleanup effort is paltry, close to nonexistent.

     Third and last for this morning’s tirade, what will really matter most is what follows the effort – i.e., what becomes of the improved districts once the volunteers deem their effort complete and go home. Mind you, the volunteers, however public-spirited they may be, won’t completely empty Baltimore of its public trash. They certainly won’t exterminate all the rats that plague the city. But I have little doubt that they’ll bring about a visible improvement in some delimited sector. What then?

     You see, all that trash and waste didn’t materialize by spontaneous creation. It was produced and distributed by humans, as are all human products. Moreover, the humans that did so are the previous and current residents of Baltimore. Will more trash and waste replace that which the volunteers remove? If so, how quickly – and what will be done about it then?

     These are questions all decent Americans should be asking, both now and after the cleanup effort is over.

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     Cities attract predators. They also attract those comfortable with the centralization of services that characterize cities. A city in chaos, such as Baltimore, will be full of persons who find the conditions there acceptable. After all, they accept them today. They’re doing little to nothing to redress them.

     So Scott Presler’s well-meaning volunteers might make a difference for the moment. But that they’ll make a difference that persists is doubtful. Indeed, they might encourage the very persons responsible for Baltimore’s trash problems to assume that “someone else will always clean up after us.” That, be it remembered, is part of the nature of a city: centralized, municipalized trash collection and disposal. Sensible persons are already aware of this. That probably includes Scott Presler. So what is he hoping to achieve?

     I don’t know the gentleman. I have no idea of his ultimate objectives. But if he’s thinking clearly, he can only be hoping to embarrass Baltimoreans into taking care of their own city. What hope is there of doing so for this filthy, crime-ridden, utterly disordered city?

     I can’t see it. I’m skeptical about the efficacy of an attempt to embarrass a city filled with welfare clients, petty criminals, drug abusers, and Democrats into better behavior. But I’m not cynical enough to say that it can’t happen. So I intend to watch the sequel as closely as possible.

     In this regard, the news media will be critical. It’s in the character of our contemporary media to suppress stories that reflect badly on blacks, Democrats, and the Left. If they cease to cover developments in the portion of Baltimore most affected by Presler’s volunteers, that alone will tell a very grim tale. Let’s hope there are enough citizen journalists to fill the gap, as the sequel will tell us much about the city of Baltimore, those who live there, and those who rail against criticism of them as “racist” that all Americans ought to know.

The Best Dots Connect Themselves

     A good commentator needs to say as little as possible. Facts should always be allowed to speak for themselves. People trust the opinions they form from direct observation and factual reportage far more than those foisted upon them by others who probably have axes to grind.

     Today I have three citations at hand that dramatize the above rather nicely. First, courtesy of Mike Hendrix, comes this highly illustrative piece from NBC News:

     "The president is absolutely trying to reinforce the feeling among his allies and surrogates that the media went overboard in its coverage of the Russia investigation, that certain lawmakers were reckless in their claims, and that the investigation itself was flawed in its inception," said Bradley Moss, a Washington lawyer who specializes in national security issues.

     "The problem here is that even if the president has legitimate gripes on one or more of those things, his overly aggressive commentary is doing nothing but exacerbating the situation," Moss said in a text message. "There were real and legitimate red flags that justified the investigation. Lawmakers had real and legitimate bases for viewing the existing evidence as reflecting collusion."

     The contents of Mueller's full report remain a mystery not only to the public but to the lawmakers who oversee the Justice Department. Yet even Barr's brief summary acknowledged what Trump has been so unwilling to admit himself: that Russia tried to help him win the presidency.

     Please read it all, if you have the stomach for a cavalcade of blatant, demonstrable falsehoods written in the most egregiously self-righteous tone ever adopted by a “news agency.” Ask yourself: What is the purpose of such a piece of mendacity? What does NBC News hope to accomplish by posting it?

     Second, the indefatigable Sarah Noble provides some fresh scrofulosity from the ever more scrofulous Washington Post:

     The president has rarely seen much value in being magnanimous when he wins. Now that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation is finally done, with no further criminal charges forthcoming, Trump is following the same pattern he always has after a triumph: Through half a century in business and politics, his instinct is consistently to keep the battle going, even in victory.

     Since Mueller delivered his report to Attorney General William P. Barr, Trump has been crowing about his “Complete and Total EXONERATION,” even though Mueller specifically said that the report “does not exonerate him.” But he’s also already moving to take his pound of flesh from those who opposed him. Trump said that “there are people out there who have done very bad things, I would say treasonous things, against our country,” and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Democrats and media figures who accused Trump of working with Russia have made accusations “equal to treason, which is punishable by death in this country.” For Trump, there can never be enough winning.

     Once again, ask yourself: What is the purpose of such a piece of mealy-mouthed whining? Read it in combination with the NBC News piece. Does that suggest a motive to you?

     Rather than assemble ever more such clips, I’ll cut to the chase:

     Ragin’ Dave’s one-word title seems sufficient, wouldn’t you say?

     Could it possibly be clearer that the Democrats, the media, and their Deep State operatives, who’ve spent more than two years fabricating and promoting this baseless collage of formless accusations of wrongdoing against the duly elected President of the United States, want the attention on President Trump and not on their own marginally treasonous doings? Let’s see, now: Why would the Democrats and the media, a gaggle of persons and institutions that famously love the spotlight, suddenly want it to shine on someone else? Someone they detest?

     Don’t all answer at once, now.

Biden is Vulnerable

...if he choses to run in 2020.

Expect a WICKED Last-Ditch Attack...

...just before the Wall crumbles.

We MAY be on the verge of the uncovering of the Deep State. The link is to a LONG post, but worth it.