Follow the Money

Free Speech is the easiest and simplest of the Bill of Rights protections. The Constitution says plainly that “Congress shall make no law” that restricts our right to express ourselves

Friday, May 03rd, 2024

Bill Bonner, writing today from Dublin, Ireland... 

Randall Mindy: The truth is way more depressing. They’re not even smart enough to be as evil as you’re giving them credit for. 

Kate Dibiasky: Would you please, just stop being so [bleep] pleasant? I’m sorry, but not everything needs to sound so goddamn clever or charming or likeable all the time. Sometimes we need to just be able to say things to one another. We need to hear things! Look, let’s establish, once again, that there is a huge comet headed towards Earth. 

— Don’t Look Up (2021) 

As the nation keeps its head down... its eyes on its own feet...  

... it rejects the principles that made it great…and the comet speeds up.    

Setting aside Social Security contributions, the federal budget has not been in the black since the 1970s. The US dollar — a real money backed by gold — was replaced with ‘Federal Reserve Notes,’ (IOUs from the Fed), in 1971.

Free enterprise has turned into managed enterprise... subject to control by Congress, the White House and bureaucrats in hundreds of agencies and departments, with mountains of paperwork and a plethora of rules and regulations. Just try to open a mine or factory in California! 

Free Speech is the easiest and simplest of the Bill of Rights protections. The Constitution says plainly that “Congress shall make no law” that restricts our right to express ourselves.  

But here, in the news from yesterday... Congress is proposing just such a law. And it has the support of a majority of our elected representatives. First Amendment... first schmamendment... Washington Post: 

House passes divisive antisemitism bill as GOP denounces campus protests 

GOP leaders this week announced plans for new oversight investigations of elite universities where — in the words of House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) — “pro-terrorist anti-Semites [are] taking over.” And on Wednesday, they passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which its advocates said would empower the federal government to crack down on anti-Israel protests on campuses by codifying a definition of antisemitism...  

If this passes, we will still be free to criticize Albanians... Indonesians... or even those “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” in France. But when it comes to Israelis, we will hold our tongues... lest we say too much. The deciders will determine what is permissible to say and what is not.  

We remind readers that we have nothing to add to the discussion of stupidity or venality of Congress... or to mass murder, Zionism, war in the Ukraine, white supremacism, racism, anti-semitism or any other kind of ‘ism.’ Who’s right? Who’s wrong? It’s not for us to say. We’re just looking at how the dots connect... and wondering when the debt comet is going to strike.  

The question for us is not whether the proposed law is ‘good’ or ‘evil’... but what it means. Why would the elected representatives of ‘The People’ want to throw overboard a constitutional protection that has served us well for 233 years? Why now? 

Why would they want to ditch a common sense rule — such as, don’t spend more than you can afford — when everyone knows it is crucial to our financial security? 

Why would they want to entangle the US in fights all over the world... where it cannot win, has no clear objective... and no real business getting involved in the first place? 

At a practical, readily-understood level, the answer is simple: Follow the money.

The Guardian: 

A handful of pro-Israel groups fund political campaigns in support of individual candidates in US elections, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), a powerful force in American politics. Before the 2024 election, Aipac plans to spend tens of millions of dollars against congressional candidates, primarily Democrats, whom it deems insufficiently supportive of Israel. 

Take representative Don Bacon, for example. He seems like a decent fellow. But he knows which side his bread is buttered on. He has received about a quarter of a million dollars from Pro-Israel donors. Naturally, he does what he is paid to do.  

“Whatever Israel wants ... we should be there to help,” he says. 

And here we find the definition of corruption in the late, degenerate US empire. Tom Emmer, mentioned above, valiantly stands up for truth... at least for the part of it his paymasters want to be heard. Who butters his bread? Surprise, surprise... his largest single campaign donor is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. 

Neither Bacon, Emmer, nor any other member of Congress may be particularly corrupt. The rot is deeper and more pervasive than that; decisions are made at the behest of special interests, not the US public. 

And it is not just the Israelis who have Congress bought and paid for. Here’s Breitbart: 

“People talk about how, you know, the Democrats are the problem, or the Republicans are the problem in Washington. And, you know, presidencies come and go and the swamp still remains the same,” [Brody] Mullins explained. “So, we wanted to dig deeper and say, ‘What’s really at the core of the problems in Washington?’ and we look at the lobbying community.” 

“Corporate lobbyists spend so much money on Washington, they have both parties in their pockets and they really get passed, whatever they want for the last 40 or 50 years... corporations are spending to change public policy in ways that help companies, but hurts the rest of us. 

Follow the money. 

Regards, 

Bill Bonner