How are we supposed to tell the illegal bribes from the legal ones

By David McElroy · August 12, 2011

It was big news in Alabama Thursday when federal prosecutors in Montgomery suffered a humiliating defeat in a public corruption trial. A jury returned not guilty verdicts on many of the charges, but were split on the remainder. There wasn’t a single guilty verdict.

It was a mix of gambling industry tycoons — including Milton McGregor, the guy on the right in this picture — plus state legislators and lobbyists who were accused of trying to give bribes or take bribes to influence legislation that would have legalized new forms of gambling in the state. (The legislation had passed one chamber of the Legislature, but the arrests spooked the politicians and the bill died.)

During the trial, federal prosecutors played tapes of conversations in which politicians, businessmen and lobbyists talked about what it would take to get the bill passed. The lobbyists and gambling people promised campaign contributions to legislators who supported their position.

But here’s the big question. If you can show that certain people wanted legislation passed and were willing to give money to support the politicians who were favorable to what they wanted, how is that any different from anything else in politics? Do people think that campaign contributions are given out of the goodness of people’s hearts? Of course not. Contributions are made to candidates who support whatever you want, whether you’re a business or union or representative of any other narrow interest. How else would you expect people to decide who to contribute to?

I’m not saying that I don’t believe the gambling industry was buying votes. I’m merely saying that’s the way the majoritarian system works.

After the verdict Thursday afternoon, I got an email from someone I’ve worked with in politics in the past. He said:

“…[N]one of the bingo boys did anything different from any other interest group. They were giving money to people who supported their cause and threatened to run [candidates] against ones who didn’t. The Eagle Forum [a religious right group] does the same thing, as does every other special interest group. If they sent Milton [McGregor, the biggest gambling figure] to jail, they would have to send the heads of ALFA [farmers lobbying group], BCA [state business interests], AEA [state teacher union], and Eagle Forum down the river, too. The entire system works like that.”

I understand that people don’t want to accept this, but the entire system is about special interests competing with one another for control over the money and power that the state claims over us. The one that uses its money and membership numbers most effectively to get favorable legislators (and presidents and members of Congress) elected is the one that wins the right to control your life. That’s the truth.

For me, this realization many years ago was among the first steps toward giving up on the majoritarian system. The second step was to realize that it’s impossible to end the corruption. The third step was to realize that if the state didn’t have the power to grant favors to special groups and hurt other groups, the incentive to bribe anybody would be gone.

The key isn’t stopping people from using their own money and time to get people elected. The key is to take away the power of those people elected to control people’s lives. That was what originally led me to become a libertarian. (I’ve moved quite a ways down the road past that by now, but it’s the realization that started the process for me.)

What these gambling industry types in Alabama were doing was absolutely vote-buying, but that’s what every serious campaign contribution is. (It’s also what groups with a lot of members do when they promise votes to candidates and threaten other politicians with having their members vote against them.)

The coercive state is going to collapse. But if you want to understand in the meantime why the two mainstream parties are so corrupt and why taking power away from the state is the only way to end corruption, think about this.

These gambling figures and legislators agreed to deals to support gambling in exchange for votes — but as my friend said Thursday, “The entire system works like that.” Most people just don’t want to acknowledge what’s going on.

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I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

After Tampa Bay, Fla., musician Colt Clark had all of his gigs canceled last year for months on end, the entire family felt trapped at home as most of the world was on quarantine lockdown. His wife, Aubree, had an idea that would let Colt make music and involve the whole family in making music videos to share with their friends and family on Facebook. Aubree is a photographer and homeschooling mom to a daughter and two sons, who range in age from 6 to 11. After their friends started asking to share the videos, they made the performances public — and a few of them are now on YouTube, where they go by the name of Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids. The younger son, Becket, is on drums. The older boy, Cash, plays keyboards, strings and guitars. Dad supplies lead vocals and plays guitar, while 6-year-old Bellamy mostly dances but sometimes does backup vocals. There’s even a dog who makes an occasional appearance. The Clark family has just raised the bar for what I need to create with my future children. And best of all, they seem to be having a great time together. I hope they make you as happy as they make me.

Have you ever wondered how the social media world works for so-called “influencers”? I find it comical, so I thought I’d share with you. I frequently get offers such as what I’m about to describe. And if I’m getting such offers — as a relative nobody in the online world — you can only imagine what people with huge audiences are offered. It starts with an email appealing to my ego: “We came across your online presence and we LOVE your style. We’d love to have you as one of our Brand Ambassadors. To celebrate our new [Brand Name] collection, we want to give you a FREE Watch so you can post a picture of you wearing it and drive more exposure to our brand.” Did you hear that? They love me. They want me to be seen wearing their cheap $59 watch so other people will think, “If this amazing influencer wears that, surely I should buy one.” They even offer me commissions on the watches sold from people clicking from my site. So the next time you see some alleged “influencer” touting something online or on social media, remember that this is what it’s probably all about. It’s laughable.

Modern culture is going insane. The latest evidence comes from the effort to redefine children’s author Dr. Seuss as a racist whose books should be banned. Why? Because a few images in those books don’t meet modern political standards. The drawing you see here is one of those “dangerously racist images,” and it comes from the Dr. Seuss classic, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” The book catalogs all the wild diversity seen by a child on one street, including the offending drawing of a Chinese boy. What’s racist about it? Apparently, it was racist to show the boy eating rice, wearing a funny hat, using chopsticks and (worst of all) having eyes represented by a slit. (The bearded man near him has dots for eyes, but that’s apparently OK.) In other words, the stereotypes are considered racist today. (Oddly, the culture warriors who fret over such things are never concerned if a white southerner is depicted as ignorant trash living in a trailer. Some stereotypes are great, especially if the left hates those people anyway.) Theodore Geisel — the name of the real-life Dr. Seuss — was a product of his time and nobody at that time would have seen any of this as racist. Using stereotypes and exaggerations is how artists depict differences in simple ways. You can argue that it’s better to achieve the end result in a different way, but it’s insane to pretend that everybody from the past should have his work erased because it doesn’t match the preferences of modern leftists. Unfortunately, the company that publishes Dr. Seuss books has caved to the insane people — and six of his popular works will no longer be published. The world has simply gone insane.

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