Grifting Too Far From The Shore
By CHRISTOPHER MANION
In the past years, The New York Times has criticized many among Trump’s family and supporters as “grifters,” a term which denotes folks who cash in while claiming to represent “high principle.”
Of course, that’s a temptation that assails the multitude. Just look at Washington, where billions are made each year by graduates of Capitol Hill (both members and staffs) and the Deep State bureaucracy in their second careers, their profession discreetly described as “lobbying.”
Lobbyists go to their former colleagues and agencies to secure legislation and taxpayer dollars for their clients. Who are their clients? They are “tax feeders” ranging from government contractors to foreign governments, especially the “pariah” countries. That group includes several African countries, Latin American dictators, and members of the former Eastern Bloc. Over half of the member countries of the United Nations are run by corrupt cliques, and they all need representatives in Washington to make sure they get their fair share of U.S. taxpayer-funded foreign aid grants.
Lobbying is legal, of course. Democrats do it, Republicans do it, liberals do it, and conservatives do it. Lobbying pays well and it’s one of those fields that, like Washington real estate, never suffer a recession.
And it works. When your client gets billions, you get many millions. When he gets millions, you get a few hundred thousand. And it’s a growing field: One study showed that, between 1986 and 2016, the amount paid to Washington’s registered lobbyists rose by a staggering 5,000 percent — a factor of fifty.
Yes, those figures are on public record, but you have to dig to find them.
Lobbyists representing foreign countries have to register as “foreign agents” with the Justice Department as well. Sometimes scandals erupt — like when John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager was working for the country of Georgia while McCain was encouraging U.S. intervention in on behalf of the client; or, more recently, the anti-Trump “Republican” Lincoln Project founder who was working for Russia while resonating the “Trump Russia” hoax.
Like any other beneficiary of federal largesse, grant recipients jump at the chance to please their paymasters. Consider the airline industry. After 9/11, they received $25 billion in federal grants. In the current “COVID Relief” Bill — under ten percent of which goes to China Virus relief — airlines will receive up to $75 billion. Oh, surprise! Bloomberg reports that the airline industry has just “requested” that the Biden administration “take the lead in developing standards for temporary COVID-19 health credentials that would help reopen global travel by documenting vaccinations and test results.”
Good doggie!
We’ve often pointed out how Catholic bishops lobby as well, and receive over a billion a year from taxpayers for their NGOs in return. But they aren’t grateful to the taxpayer, they’re grateful to the government. And it shows.
Bought And Sold?
Or Only Bought?
Yes, the political world is full of grifters — but The New York Times, of course, is above all that. Its journalists are “objective,” and never suborned.
Well, almost never. This week, Buzzfeed revealed that deep-thinking Times columnist David Brooks, a master of unctuous prose, has now been outed as a run-of-the-mill grifter who took generous amounts of cash while lavishing his bag man — Facebook — with praise, all without telling anybody.
Of course, the cash was laundered, so to speak, through the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit which is generously funded by Facebook. In turn, Brooks lauds Facebook, somehow failing to warn readers of Facebook’s bad habit — and business model — of cashing in on users’ personal information.
“Facebook Groups has 1.8 billion users, and more than half of them are in five or more groups,” Brooks gushes. “Clearly people have come to really value the communities they are building online.”
Yes, “really.” Especially when they’re pro-life and banned from Facebook.
Unlike registered lobbyists, Brooks isn’t required to reveal this circuitous funding connection, or the amount involved. Legally, he doesn’t have to. But should he? Buzzfeed cites Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Brooks has a responsibility to disclose to his editors, and to readers, his connections with the Aspen Institute and Facebook,” Culver says. “If the Times and David Brooks are asking people to trust his opinion journalism, then he should be clear about any entanglements that might affect the independence of that journalism.”
By now you might be asking, “Wait — why write about this? Doesn’t this go on about a million times a day among the elites?”
Of course it does. But we’ve all heard of the “Cancel Culture,” where those who haven’t signed on to the latest version of the Woke religion are ostracized, shamed, and fired.
In its first stage, the Times has been in the lead, trashing conservatives in general, and Trump and his supporters in particular. But “stage two” is slowly developing, and it could well turn lethal, even for alleged grifters like Brooks. Even today The New York Times newsroom itself is rocked by a rebellion of younger staffers over their inadequately “Woke” (and more experienced) superiors — like Brooks.
And the Times is not alone. Everywhere among the elites — on college campuses, in business, in sports, entertainment, and countless other realms — leftists are turning on one another, each demanding that his own private version of the new religion be worshipped on the public altar.
Those who deny are treated harshly, called out and forced to confess their lagging sensibilities. The Rulers of Woke might forgive them, if — and only if — they are willing to suffer the required shaming and groveling before the idol’s throne. But as the “correlation of forces” changes, the restive sinner can turn on his tormentor and soon be master of the altar, and of the guillotine. Just ask Danton and Robespierre, devoured by their own revolution, or the purge victims of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
Pondering The
Prelates’ Priorities
This week USCCB leaders issued a “Pastoral Message on the COVID-19 Global Pandemic.” It offers the public a view of our bishops’ thoughts as they ponder the events of the historic “lockdown year.”
They first address the suffering: “sickness, death, mourning, a lack of food, unstable housing, loss of work and income, struggles with education, separation, abuse, isolation, depression, and anxiety . . . racial injustices, the diminishment of the poor and the elderly, and painful divisions in our political life.”
They next express gratitude for the sacrifice and kindness of millions of “health-care workers, first responders, chaplains, those who work in our soup kitchens and homeless shelters, mail carriers, agricultural and grocery store workers…our priests, deacons, religious, teachers, catechists, and lay ecclesial ministers.”
But there is hope for “every human being on the planet” if “the vaccines [are] universally available. Richer nations and pharmaceutical companies must work together to ensure that no nation, no person is left behind.” And we can offer more hope by “creating more social structures that not only heal the fractures and isolation felt by so many during this pandemic but will prevent such divisions from occurring again. As Pope Francis has implored, ‘Let us dream, then, as a single human family’.”
We bear in mind that this Pastoral Message is directed to the public at large, so it is not primarily spiritual. After all, shouldn’t we expect a “Social Justice” analysis? It’s from the USCCB, after all.
But clearly, this time around, the bishops’ priorities are blind to our priorities. Especially absent from the “suffering” are millions of Catholics whom the bishops fail to mention at all. Consider: For the first time in our history, we have been denied the Mass for months on end. Wasn’t that sort of a “sacrifice?” What kind of vaccine do our shepherds offer for that? “Dreaming together”?
They don’t say, although they do look forward to “welcoming the Catholic faithful back when we all may safely participate physically” at Mass.
For the past year we have begged our bishops endlessly to defy Caesar. The Mass is certainly as “essential” as abortion, yet abortuaries thrived while our shepherds were deaf to our pleas as they complied with Caesar’s every whim.
How “pastoral” is that?