Interviewer: Did he really [Robin Hood] steal from the rich and give to the poor?
2000 Year Old Man: No, he didn’t
Interviewer:He didn’t?
2000 Year old man:He stole from everyone and kept everything.
Interviewer: Well How did legend spring up that he was…
2000 Year Old Man: He had a fellow Marty, Marty the press agent, ran in all the papers he wrote in scrolls. ‘He took from the rich and gave to the poor’ who knew? He’d give you such a knock in a head when he robbed you you wouldn’t remember a thing.
One of the things I have argued for years is that nothing really changes because the things that drive humans haven’t changed, the only difference between a courtier of 1000 years ago and a deep state person of today is tactics and what the reward can bring.
A great example of this is USAID. The left is screaming that they are cutting live saving programs when what in fact is happening is the discovery of the giant Chicago style grift that’s been going on for decades but I suspect was accelerated greatly by the elevation of a corrupt Chicago pol to the highest office in the land.
The best way to understand how this grift works is compare what’s happening to something similar and I can’t think of anything that serves this purpose than one of Tip O’Neill’s stories concerning his relationship the legendary Boston mayor, Massachusetts Governor and US Congressman James Michael Curley.
O’Neill had been a protégé of Curley and knew him well. Ironically it was his decision to not expose Curley’s theft of a delegate election against his own group in 1948 that cemented his place within the Democrat party which aided his advancement. He tells many stories about Curley in his autobiography Man of the House (1987). This was the final one:
It happened in 1954 while I was in Congress. I came home for a few days to come home to campaign for reelection, and I ran into Curley on Beacon Street. He was, as people said in those days “on his uppers,” which meant that he didn’t even have enough money to fix the heels on his shoes.
Curley was a notorious thief but was also known for being a soft touch and giving money away particularly to the poor, so once he no longer had influence to sell things began to go hard for him. Tip continues:
Still he gave me a warm greeting. “How are you Tip? You’re going to win easy.”
“I hope so Governor, but I’m not taking any chances.”
“That’s smart of you, Tip and I’d like to give you a hand. Do I have your permission to raise a few dollars for your campaign?”
I assured him that would be fine.
Given that Tip O’Neill was an up and coming man in congress the idea that Curley was part of his fundraising crew would give the old man some clout in the area. Tip picks up the story…
The following Monday, he came to see me. “I raised five hundred dollars for you,” [a little over $5800 in 2024 dollars DTG] he said as he handed me an envelope. I thanks him and put it in my pocket. But when I counted the money I found that the envelope contained only $450. [$5250 in today’s dollars DTG]
The very same thing happened the following day, and the next, Curley didn’t show up on Thursday, but on Friday he cam in and said. “Here’s a thousand bucks for you.” By then I wasn’t surprised to she that his 10 percent commission had already been removed. I didn’t really mind because he obviously needed the money, Besides, I didn’t want to quarrel with my best fund-raiser.
So at that point we’re talking $2500 or in today’s dollars just under $30K with Curley presumably taking $3k for himself. Tip continues:
“By the way Governor.” I said to him the following week, “I’d like the names of these people so I can send them a thank-you note.”
“Oh you’re getting too smart. They’ve already been thanked.” And that was the last time I saw Jim Curley.
Now you might be thinking at this point: “Hey DaTechGuy. What’s the big deal. O’Neill got what he wanted, about $4500 bucks or $52 grand in today’s money and Curley got $5800 out of the deal? That’s doesn’t seem very significant, it certainly wasn’t to Tip who was happy to get that $4500 bucks.” And if the story ended here you might have a point but the story didn’t end here as Tip explains:
Several months later I was back home one weekend when a fellow came into my office to ask for help in straightening out a problem with one of the government agencies.
I’d never seen the man before so I asked if he lived in my district.“No.” he said. “I live in John McCormack’s district.” [House majority leader who would become speaker after Sam Rayburns death DTG]
“Then why don’t you go and see Mr. McCormack?” I asked.
“Well that’s a fine way to treat a friend.” he said, “after all I’ve done for you!”
“Excuse me,” I said “but what are you talking about?”
“Are you kidding? I gave you a big contribution during your last campaign.”
We had a list of every contributor, so I excused myself and asked my secretary to look up the fellow’s name. But there was no sign of him in our records. “You know,” I told him when I got back to my desk. “I don’t run my office on a quid pro quo basis. I do favors for people because they need my help, not because they contributed to my campaign. But the funny thing is I don’t even have your name in my book. Would you refresh my memory?“
“Sure.” he said “In your last election I paid for your television ads on the final two nights of the campaign.”
“You must be mistaken, ” I said. “You never paid for my television ads. I’ve never heard of you.”
“What do you mean?” he said. “Jim Curley came ot me and said he was raising money to put Tip O’Neill on television. And I’m the one who paid for your TV time the night you went on. Didn’t he give you my name?”
So THAT was it! I told him the story of how Curley had asked me for permission to raise money and how he had skimmed a little off the top. We both had a good laugh over that.
“Now I understand why you’ve never heard of me.” he said, “But I remember how much money I gave to Curley to pay for those ads, and let me tell you something. Jim Curley made out just fine. I’m afraid you were the one who was working for ten percent.”
In short Curley didn’t hit up this guy for $5000 and then give Tip O’Neill $4500. He hit up this guy for $50,000 ($583,000) in today’s money and kept $45,500. ($535,000) for himself. In other words 91% of that money was skimmed and only 9% actually went to Tip for his campaign
That’s pretty much what Elon Musk and his team is finding out. The Democrats and their press allies are screaming to the press and claiming with a straight face that useful items are at risk without acknowledging that they’re not worried about the 9% that might actually do good, they’re trying to protect the 91 cents out of every dollar that they are using as a slush fund. And believe me unlike Curley they aren’t given a portion of that 91% to the poor unless you count the portion given as tips given to waiters after an expensive meal or valets after parking the cars your tax dollars are paying for.
Closing thought. I highly recommend O’Neill’s autobiography if you have any interest in what of the leading figures of the Democrat party during they years when they actually gave a damn about regular people thought.
One of the reasons why the Catholic Church has a 3 year readings cycle for Sunday Masses and a two year reading cycle for daily Masses is that you have to speak and repeat things for them to sink in.
Likewise you have to state the obvious aloud a few times for people to acknowledge it. It’s not enough that “everybody knows” it, it’s that people are unafraid to say the truth right in front of them.
Yes, well, we can reasonably infer that Tehran has a horse in this race insofar as it is trying to kill one of the candidates. And no one, including the Post’s reporters, disputes Western intelligence and security agencies’ assessment that Iran’s motive is vengeance for the 2020 strike on its IRGC commander. Moreover, the report makes note of the corroborating evidence that Iran is implicated in multiple hacks of Trump campaign email accounts, in which its agents absconded with campaign secrets and retailed them to both U.S. media outlets and the Biden campaign itself. A rather lopsided pattern has emerged.
Or as John Sexton put it:
if there are two candidates and Iran is trying to kill one of them, that would seem to indicate a clear preference in the race.
This would be the same Iran who is aiding Russia in their war against Ukraine.
Now think about this for a second. If you are Putin and you think that Trump is the favorable candidate, wouldn’t you be putting pressure on Iran to leave him alone, or wouldn’t you instead be putting pressure on them to try to knock off Harris? I mean if Harris winning means we’re all in on Ukraine wouldn’t the Russians want to stop that?
In politics and real life look at what people do rather than their rhetoric. The actions of Iran and Russia and China for that matter tell us who our enemies want to see in the White House and that someone is Kamala Harris. They also tell us who they want to see in the grave and that person is Donald Trump.
It speaks volumes as to what the left has become that so many leftists want that as well.
Clarification: When I mentioned not paying attention to a candidate’s “rhetoric” I was being kind to Vice President Harris as it would be a huge stretch to elevate the standard Harris word salad anywhere near to the level of “rhetoric”.
Jim Abourezk, the South Dakota politician who died last weekend at 92, was among the most interesting and engaging people I’ve ever met.
We crossed paths in Wounded Knee during the American Indian Movement takeover in 1973 and later when he tried to get the United States and Cuba to resume diplomatic relations. But I spent a lot of time with him in Iran during the hostage crisis when he represented the Palestinian leadership, who were friendly with the ayatollah.
Later, while researching a book about South Dakota, I’d join him at his daily lunchtime gathering at his wife’s restaurant in downtown Sioux Falls. He even wrote a glowing review of the book.
Abourezk was the first Arab American to serve in the House of Representatives from 1970 to 1973 and then in the U. S. Senate from 1973 to 1979. He decided not to run again, mainly because of family reasons and a difficult campaign he always faced in South Dakota, which usually elected Republicans. Abourezk and his fellow senator, George McGovern, were the exceptions as populist Democrats.
In his 1989 memoir, Advise and Dissent, Abourezk wrote of the Senate: “Where else are your doors opened for you, is your travel all over the world provided free of charge, can you meet with world leaders who would otherwise never let you into their countries, have your bad jokes laughed at and your boring speeches applauded? It’s the ultimate place to have one’s ego massaged, over and over.”
A wonderful storyteller, Abourezk would regale people with stories of his colorful past.
He grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where his Lebanese father ran a general store.
Abourezk served four years in the U.S. Navy following World War II. He worked a series of jobs, including as a rancher, blackjack dealer, and judo instructor, and then earned a degree in civil engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines.
His job as a civil engineer took him to California, then back to South Dakota, where he worked on the Minuteman missile silos in the western part of the state. He attended law school and opened a solo practice in Rapid City.
Abourezk ran for South Dakota attorney general in 1968 and lost. But he remained undeterred from entering politics and narrowly won a U.S. House seat in 1970. Two years later, he jumped to the Senate. During his term there, he was a seatmate to both former Sens. Joe Biden and Edward Kennedy.
In the Senate, he opposed U.S. policy in the Middle East, which favored Israel then, and pushed legislation to help Native Americans.
During the vote to give control of the Panama Canal to Panama, the Carter administration barely won the day. In fact, Abourezk joked about how he held back his vote until the administration promised him millions of dollars in aid for South Dakota.
After leaving the Senate, he created the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and had law offices in Washington and Sioux Falls, where he focused on legal matters for Native Americans.
For those of us who had the pleasure of knowing Jim, his presence at his lunchtime get-togethers will be sorely missed.
SHREVEPORT – For the first time since 2006 Shreveport, Louisiana has elected a white Republican mayor. Attorney Tom Arceneaux was elected in a runoff election Saturday.
I am astounded yet also extremely cautious exactly HOW conservative this mayor-elect actually is given that he was endorsed by the much loathed, ineffective outgoing Democrat mayor and two other locally prominent Democrat politicians.
His opponent is longtime veteran state senator Greg Tarver who has a colorful political and personal history.
The abysmal voter turnout of 30% has a lot to do with the outcome of this election and local pundits point to the fact that in a primarily black city, those voters did not turn out for Greg Tarver.
Shreveport has been circling the drain economically for decades and we have been losing our young, producing citizens for decades. There is literally nothing to hold upwardly mobile young people here except family ties. There are no jobs, no industry. Even the casinos are stagnant. With Dallas, Texas three hours away why would these young people stay here when there is so much more on the table so close by?
Crime is, of course, at an all time high with shootings, murders, and other violent crime literally a daily occurrence.
This is, of course, not unique to Shreveport. Many cities, small and large, are suffering the same plight. Is a new Republican mayor a step in the right direction?
Meh. Who knows.
Is it too late?
Maybe.
Am I skeptical? Definitely!
Tom Arceneaux will take office December 31. I sincerely hope he has an impressive start and generates a lot of optimism and hope in this town. I would say that it can’t get much worse, but of course it always can.
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