What we are all living through is nothing new, it has been going on since the founding of the Republic. I would guess that the frustration felt is that the scale has reached all new heights, the taxation level has become an extreme burden and yet those grifting at the top still aren’t satisfied.
It dawned on me the other night changing channels. There I sat, channel changer in hand, cold fresh glass of iced tea at the ready, enjoying a low calorie frozen fruit bar, when I realized that I was logging into a show all about complete and utter government corruption. The entire show I was clicking to view was based on real life past American corruption of the highest order.
The wife and I had somehow missed “Boardwalk Empire” back in the day, and we were fresh out of new shows to binge, when it dawned on me that we could just go back, start from the beginning, and binge “Boardwalk Empire” together. I’d seen a few episodes years back, but never actually watched the entire run. And the wife had never seen the show.
If you’ve missed the show yourself the show is all about the political boss of the New Jersey shore town of Atlantic City in the 1920’s, when prohibition came into being, and illegal liquor became just one of the many ways the politicians, policeman, alderman, and others skimmed money and ran rackets to maintain power and control.
As Atlantic City was a vacation town for the region, and a very popular tourist destination, there was an ample cash flow and demand for “sin” that kept the graft flowing. Atlantic City really was the original Las Vegas, albeit running all the casinos illegally.
Of course in the years prior to the 1920’s New York had their Tammany Hall, and Louisiana is said to have been a swamp of corruption. On political boss in Louisiana back in the 1980’s famously said that the only way he could lose office would be “to be caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy”. Such was the confidence of the crooked political machine that ran Louisiana that corruption and rule there were one party sewn up tight.
That we have seen a uni-party form these past thirty years that was mostly under Democratic control by the Clinton machine, that was as nakedly corrupt as anything I’ll witness in the seasons to come on “Boardwalk Empire”, where Nancy Pelosi became rich beyond compare on a Congressional salary, where the Clinton’s themselves managed to raise well in excess of a hundred-fifty-million dollars in their “charity” funds, and where Obama has managed to create an estimated four hundred million dollar net worth since leaving office. Not bad for a “community organizer”.
And that might be the problem, the actual totals accumulated, the amount of money being skimmed. The average middle class American watches as fifty percent of his income goes toward taxes and social security and he is left to struggle on half his personal effort and output, while everyone at the top of our food chain is gaining generational wealth in just one generation.
Nancy Pelosi is said to have a net worth of over two-hundred-million dollars. Enough that her grandchildren will have trust funds and never have to actually work a day in their lives. Affording them the opportunity to live as the robber barons children did back in the 1920’s, the “Roaring Twenties”, when their offspring were men and women of leisure who traveled the world collecting art, and sculpture. The same “Roaring Twenties” depicted in “Boardwalk Empire”.
Ironically, some offspring of the wealthy had such excellent tastes, and bought up the new artists they met in Paris after the war, a new wave of artists whose works later soared in value. They arrived just after the end of the Belle Epoque and their leisure pursuits in collecting art ended up merely enhancing their wealth ten and twenty fold.
How wonderful.
You spend your time being an art patron and get even more fabulously wealthy buying Picasso, Modigliani, and Chagall. Of course back then they could also pick up Cezanne, Matisse, and Rodin from the Belle Epoque era at reasonable prices, bring their work back to America, and see prices rise exponentially. How fortuitous.
Similar to the ways in which a Barack Obama can buy up a huge parcel in Hawaii, and purchase an estate in Martha’s Vineyard, and see both triple in value.
Plus Ca Change, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
On “Boardwalk Empire” the Atlantic City Treasurer wields great power. Of course once liquor became illegal this forced these men to associate with the likes of an Arnold Rothstein, and Al Capone, legendary thieves and mobsters. A river of dirty money flows, but some finds its way to help the poor, and downtrodden. The purloined cash lubes and greases all manner of “sin” from casinos to red light districts, to shylocking and illegal gambling on horses and sports.
And while Atlantic City was exceptional in leading the nation in corruption of that time period, it was not the exception in America, it was the rule. Machine politics ruled, neighborhood precinct bosses ruled, and to vote against the machine was to both lose the free Thanksgiving Turkey as well as perhaps take a set of brass knuckles to the jaw. Everyone voted as a block, everyone voted the party line, and favors were distributed to those who could keep the people in line, and maintain order.
All government jobs were patronage jobs, handed out in reward for loyalty and service to the machine. And further, a portion of earnings from the gift of that government job was sent up the chain to the benefactors, nothing in life was “free”.
Even today the machine politics is alive and well, Chicago is run strictly by Democrats, and woe to those who don’t vote Democrat in the city of Chicago. The Teachers Union there wield great power, and things are run by the Democratic machine. The Alderman distribute favors based on the size of the political contributions, or family relationship. Chicago may be bankrupt from such a system, but it is their bankrupt town. Theirs and theirs solely. And besides, once friends in the Democratic Party take national office, the bail out will be approved, and the constrictions of bankruptcy disappear.
Machine Party Politics; it is the “American Way”.
And one Party rule leads to full corruption. For exhibit “A” see the transit project in California, the billion dollar boondoggle of a train where they’ve overspent the budget by billions, and still don’t have even two miles of track. One Party Politics is how you get wildfires that occur annually but empty reservoirs to fight them. Or empty lots and no permits over a year after the inevitable fires.
When everyone has a hand out in the process, when disparate groups are attempting to exert some level of control, or dictate policy for a particular project, the system breaks down. The money is gone before ground breaking. Too many mouths to feed in the planning stages, too many hands out. Too many promised too much, too easily.
And not a dime left to accomplish the real goal.
I think things would be running rather swimmingly if they had just allowed the middle class enough to prosper. Not to attain wealth mind you, but just to stay ahead of the curve.
But their greed today knows no bounds. A hundred million isn’t enough, they all want to be a billionaire. They want their own private jet to escape ever having to see the proletariat. Which is us.
From the gated communities, to the vacations required to escape the general public, to the private clubs, the private country clubs, the yachts, the toys, to rise above even the somewhat wealthy these days takes a great deal of money.
And make no mistake, our “betters” in Congress, in Washington, in the White House today, they want Little Palm Island at five grand a night, they don’t want to go to the Ritz Carlton Naples. You and I can afford the Ritz Naples, and they need to get as far away from me and you as possible.
If they just left enough on our plates so that the cost of our kids braces didn’t have to be financed, or that the purchase of the new car didn’t require us to take a second job on weekends, or work a dry wall job for a contractor buddy where we had to miss the kid’s ballgames, we wouldn’t have such anger.
But they didn’t. And don’t want to.
More is never enough for them. Our politicians and political leaders want it all.
There is no more free Turkey at Thanksgiving, there is nowhere to turn on that cold December night when Christmas is going to be a bust, and you need a hand out.
Their greedy hands are closed tight.
Maybe that is the difference.
And maybe, just maybe, I need to be satisfied they left us enough to have HBO, so I can be reminded of their grift watching “Boardwalk Empire”.
Boardwalk Empire was an excellent series and a very accurate historical piece on the political and criminal history of the time. While most current day conspiracies and collusions are a tad more well veiled, "machine politics" was and IS both alive and well, and serves as the rampant undercurrent that propels it all. Nucky Johnson (played very well by Steve Buscemi) was quite the rogue dandy, and blended in well with the more hardcore organized criminals of the day. Today's band of thieving scamps falls well short in terms of likeability and flavor.