Amerika

Tammany Hall provides the most famous example of a political machine, or permanent bureaucracy that trades favors to voters in exchange for their votes, operating by impoverishing, bullying, and excluding everyone except those loyal to the machine.

Famously, Tammany Hall operated by buying votes from immigrants, minorities, alcoholics, and elderly dementia cases. It then worked by buying loyalty from all politicians through trades of positions of power, and ensured that no one would blow the whistle.

It seems that at some point the political machine went nationwide when administrative agencies gained enough power and buried transparency under enough red tape to operate independently of political parties, trading lobbyist money for appointments in order to advance their loyalists.

We can see the same thing happening at the local level, with a diversity connection as one might expect, in places such as Los Angeles, where they recently caught one administrator trading favors:

A jury in March found that Ridley-Thomas schemed in 2017 and 2018 with Marilyn Louise Flynn, then dean of USC’s School of Social Work, to funnel $100,000 from a Ridley-Thomas campaign fund through the university to a nonprofit run by his son.

Prosecutors said the son also received graduate school admission, a scholarship and a paid professorship in the course of the conspiracy and bribery scheme.

It was a stunning fall for a once-commanding figure in LA politics, who earlier served in the state Senate and Assembly, and was known for his involvement in civil rights.

He was a civil rights leader, so he could secure a powerful minority vote, and therefore was the right guy to bribe since because people vote demographically, he was unlikely to leave power except through arrest and scandal.

In turn, the favors he provided consisted mostly of taxpayer money which went to a [[[ FLYNN ]]] at a public university, who gained millions for only a few hundred thousand of expenditures, resulting in the money flowing toward the family of the corrupt councilman:

The case, which ties to suspended Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, alleges that during her time as dean, Flynn conspired with Ridley-Thomas while he was a member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors from 2017 to 2018, something prosecutors say resulted in the university receiving lucrative county contracts, which were expected to generate about $9 million a year.

According to the 20-count indictment, Flynn, 83, agreed to provide Ridley-Thomas’ son, Sebastian, with graduate school admission, a full-tuition scholarship and a paid professorship at the university. She also allegedly arranged to funnel a $100,000 donation from Ridley-Thomas’ campaign funds through the university to a nonprofit to be operated by his son, former Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas.

Prosecutors allege that as part of the bribery scheme, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Flynn took steps “to disguise, conceal, and cover up the bribes, kickbacks, and other benefits.”

When you see the son or daughter of a politician getting appointed to the board or a non-profit or corporation, you are most likely seeing the same thing. The politician grants a favor, the taxpayer pays for it, and in return the politician funnels money back into his family.

Hunter Biden may be only the most visible example. Those who have money are bound to want to keep it in the family so that they may have dynasties, and they cling to power so that they can protect this money, since democracy is the best all-around cover for corruption.

In the meantime, the suckers out there who take society at face value are working wage slave McJobs in the hope that some of that wealth will trickle down, not realizing that most of it has been seized by taxes and spent on those canny (and sociopathic) enough to work the system.

Tags: marilyn louise flynn, mark ridley-thomas, political machine, tammany hall