It's All In the Cards

First the shorter version of this analysis.

In conversation with Og, he made reference to our current boat load of "natural leaders." Yes dear reader, Og used scorn quotes.

He's right of course.

It's not that they are leaders in any real sense of the word. It's simply that they have bought their microphone, and so they are all we hear and we are permitted to assume they are leaders of a sort. Ask Michael Bloomberg's microphone what it costs since Bloomie ain't gonna talk.

His is not leadership. He's like someone who buys the pot in every poker hand. In a poker game without raise limits, all a well financed player need do is raise the bet until nobody else has enough money to match it. He doesn't even need do anything but hold cards in his hand -- nobody can afford to call his bluff. It doesn't take any time at all for a savvy poker player to know there is no point in putting in his ante in such a game. So the buyer of pots soon discovers he has nobody to play with. Good; that is as it should be.

But in politics we are supposed to have a choice. When there is someone who acts like a pot buyer, those who are forced to live under his rule are left with only with hope and prayer that he is not completely nuts, or faced with a messier solution if he is. Our founders fought to free us from the haphazard system of divine rights of kings and aristocratic rule -- only so we could allow this to happen on our watch? Sad to say, it looks like their spirits are shrugging "well, we gave them 200 years more or less."

In NYC politics, Bloomy scared off the opposition from the start. Nobody who wanted to be NYC mayor could afford to run against him. Essentially nobody could afford to "call" his bluster.

Going on, there is a lesson to be learned.This is a sign that maybe there was some truth in the progressive income tax. Had Bloomie been taxed at 95%, he'd not have had the money and power to get himself elected 3 times. And, in keeping with traditional political behavior, moneyed backers would not have been inclined to pave the path of someone too much like themselves. Why? Because other big money would not trust someone who has been, or could easily become, in competition with them. Another one of those features of checks and balances.

You might say that due to the tax law loopholes anyway, the big money could always find ways to keep it. But it was much harder when the top rate was high. Many charitable" foundations are what is left of 19th century robber baron's wealth -- and they live on to torment us. They have funded 501c3s and c4s that do all sorts of mischief. And the power brokers know it, which is surely one reason why TEA Parties were having such difficulty getting their paper work approved at the corrupted IRS.

The power to tax is the power to destroy all but your friends.
Well, until THEY become troublesome that is. Or no longer useful. Period.
Utilitarian nutcases will wipe them all out too when they are no longer needed.

Of course the wealthier ones will sneer: "Well, we had fun while it lasted, unlike you losers."

See, the diff between the foundations and today's office buying pols is that before they had to launder the foundation money by arranging all those non-profits to carry their water and buy votes that way.

Now that they have been able to accumulate wealth themselves, the Dem corridors are filled with those who could "buy the pot."

In other words, they need less to buy the loyalty of lower beings.

I think that has to eventually blow up on them. At least it is on us now that the public sector unions are insisting on bringing down the house of cards just to pay out pensions.

And this was the Soviet influenced plan to destroy us: Cloward-Piven. A house of cards has to fall.

A more detailed version of this analysis, that I hope answers some of your questions, is below the break.


-----------------------
Frequently remarked upon is what a blooming fool is NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg.  Bloomie is such a fool about everything except what it took to build his media empire that I decided it was time to take a closer look at both how he was able to accumulate his wealth and how it empowered him to  where he is now.

From reports I'd read years ago, Bloomie got himself on the ballot by first essentially buying his position as the GOP nominee for mayor.¹
Then, once he was up against only a single Democrat, he was then able to spend enough of his own money to swamp the opposition again.

The best analogy to how Bloomie got into office is to compare him to a high roller in a poker game who can afford to buy every pot. It takes another nutcase, someone who has loads of money and the itch to spend it, to call Bloomie's bluff. Or perhaps a civic minded group of big rollers who could combine their larders to protect the public from a nutcase with more money than sense. (But that was possible only in the days prior to campaign finance "reform." More on that later.) Nobody in NYC dared do that in either the primary or the general election. Even the usual Democratic machine pols weren't gonna spend their war-chest on trying to defeat him.

So he essentially bought the pot and everybody else folded. He was so effective at this that he wound up overturning the term limits laws to allow him to serve a third term. It's no fun playing in the poker game when you know ahead of time that every ante you put up will be stolen by the man who has so much money he will buy the pot. That's a card game nobody but Bloomie wins. ²

All this was made possible by his wealth. Let's look at that. Not how he achieved it, but how he was able to amass and keep it -- and apparently to our detriment as some of earlier generations warned.

In 1961, JFK got the top income tax bracket reduced from 95% down to (IIRC) 50%. In 1986 Ronald Reagan got the tax code simplified and further reduced the top tax rate to around 35%. The consequences were that people at heads of corporations could now take home bigger pay and benefits checks without it being virtually eliminated by taxes. So instead of American corporations (in which so many of us commoners could make investments) retaining that cash, it ostensibly went to executives who allegedly had to be paid higher and higher to get their services (nice PR that was too). Then, that combined with campaign finance "reform" made it more and more possible for anyone who was lucky enough to strike it big to also move on to seize the levers of power to rule the rest of us. And pay back old scores with former competitors.

"My money proves I'm bright enough to run everybody else's life" is essentially what we see with Bloomie -- in spades!

Now because Bloomie took over NYC does not mean that the usual Democratic interests groups would go along without getting their share. In order to placate the union demands, that city like other cities is shoveling all revenues it does not spend into paying off public employee pensioners, which amounts to building the house of cards higher with ever more promises that future taxpayers have no way of paying. But Bloomie and those union thugs will be long gone -- they hope -- when the house of cards tumbles.  That is Cloward-Piven's aim.

Now let's move onto the older money from the days of the robber barons of the 19th Century. In order to preserve their fortunes they moved them into tax free foundations. For instance, JD Rockefeller's ghost is consequently still using his money to run our lives, but through lieutenants carefully screened to follow that old reprobates views of the lesser people. But at least in the Foundations there is some possibility that the lieutenants might rebel at some point. (If only!) However, they did go on to pass out grants to bastards like the authors and shock troops that are carrying out the nastiness of the Cloward-Piven societal unraveling strategy. In that, all the money that people like Bloomie wastes and all the caving he does to the other corrupted (and dangerous to him) officials, adds to the coming crisis.



Readers who come here know that I am regularly seeking and providing evidence to invigorate all of humanity to notice why it is not safe to follow leaders who never have a harsh word to say about Malthusian, Utilitarian, and Green nutcases. This undermining of our electoral politics, placing moral morons in positions of authority, is another notch in our destruction.

------
1. I know that it not possible in some cities (such as L.A.) where the race for mayor is usually a free for all followed by a runoff between the two largest vote getters.

2. The really sad thing is that in conversations with New Yorkers, they think he's been okay. (But only when they consider that since they were once saddled with David Dinkins for 4 years, Bloomie's Big Apple is heaven as compared to their worst nightmare.)