BOOK REVIEW: EXTORTION: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line The

[Foxfyre]

The author is right. He is saying exactly what I have been saying for some time. If you remove the reason to bribe someone, you remove the bribe.

We have given our politicians way too much power over our lives. For example, the ability to provide tax deductions, credits, and exemptions. The ability to provide subsidies.

If we banned politicians from being able to provide tax deductiions, credits, exemptions, and subsidies, then special interests would have no incentive to bribe our politicians to give them tax deduction, credits, exemptions, or subsidies.

See how that works?

The idiots who are trying to stop money from flowing into the coffers of our politicians can't see the forest for the trees.

Likewise with regulations. As we have continually moved toward ever more concentration of power at the federal level, we have made it simpler and simpler for special interests to capture that power. It is far easier to capture a single federal regulatory body or a single federal legislative body than it is to capture 50 such bodies.

When, oh when, will the mad lovers of federal power ever learn? They concentrate all power at the top and then scream and stomp when it is captured, never realizing they are the ones who made it possible to begin with!


Now with Obamacare, we have opened a whole new four lane highway to corruption. We have made our politicians the gatekeepers to a massive part of our economy. "You want to get listed on a health insurance exchange? Fuck you, PAY ME!"

Interesting. I need to make a medical taxi run with my aunt shortly, but I will return. Hold my place.

 

[g5000]

I gave your securities derivatives a federal pre-emption! Pay me!

 

[Foxfyre]

Still in Chapter II "America's Most Expensive Toll Booth", Schwiezer gives a detailed summary of HR 1002 introduced with wide bipartisan support in 2011. Zoe Lofgren, a liberal from California, and Trent Franks, a conservative from Arizona, with almost nothing in common politically, introduced the bill that was cosponsored by 230 of their colleagues The bill prevented state and local governments from levying new taxes on cell phone users' bills for at least five years.

The bill had huge ramifications for big internet based companies like Verizon and AT&T whose bottom lines would have been strongly affected in the products they would sell and the plans they would offer as well as it being a huge nightmare having to comply with differing tax codes among the 50 states and thousands of different towns and cities. And it was a very popular bill with consumers too.

The bill sailed through the House Judiciary committee on a voice vote, but Boehner didn't bring it up for a vote by the whole House for months. And just about when it appeared it would never be brought to a vote, voila! Mega money was pouring into campaign coffers for both the GOP and Democrats--mostly the GOP.

And when the leaders thought they had milked the issue for as much as it was worth--Verizon and AT&T alone wrote over 200 checks totaling more than $200,000 to various party pacs, members of Congress etc, the bill easily passed with a voice vote. It would die in the Senate, however, as Harry Reid, who apparently had not been paid sufficiently, would not bring it up for debate and vote.

A similar bill in 2013 was reintroduced and is going through the same process. The last I saw, it had a good chance to pass the House but only about a 10% chance to become a law. It proably depends on how much the internet providers are willing to grease the palms of the Senate this time. We'll see.

 

[Foxfyre]

Okay, moving on to Chapter 3 - PROTECTION FOR A PRICE

Opening lines:

It's one of the oldest and most effective forms of extortion: the protection racket. Pay me money and I will promise to not make your life miserable. Fail to pay and bad things will happen to you.

Protection money has been the Mafia's bread and butter for centuries. In the city of Palermo on he island of Sicily, 80 percent of the businesses pay protection money (pizzo) to the Mafia. If you fail to pay, you will be harassed, you might have your business burned down, and you might even lose your life. . . .

The Permanent Political Class in Washington plays the protection racket too. Failure to pay will not get you killed--but it could kill your business. It might even make a difference in whether you will end up in jail. . . .​

What do you think? Is Schweizer really off the rails here? Or do you see a possibility that he is telling it like it is?