Friday, October 29, 2004

Bill Jones & Bill O'Reilly

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Lecture Notes: 10-28-04

But your fees are not included in the tuition.

Counselor: No, of course not.

Well I just wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding ---

Counselor: . . . You are on.

Yes! Welcome back to New Ruskin. Welcome. . . . uh, let’s clarify a few points. Some College visitors have asked if we meant to imply that Mr. Jones the putative Republican candidate for U. S. Senate had thrown the election in order to secure the continued support of Marin Senators Boxer and Feinstein for his state mandated “ethanol?”

No certainly not. We did not mean to imply that. We meant to categorically affirm it.

Earlier in the campaign Mr. Jones made a point of letting everyone know that he had funded his campaign with $2 million of his own money. (He is said to be worth $14 million.) Recently he let it be known that, due to business difficulties, he is illiquid and not able to fulfill his promises to make available to his campaign the financial resources which he had previously represented to the Republican Party of California would be spent on advertising. In other words he reneged on the promise to fund the campaign.

Let me be clear. If I had $2 million I would not spend it on a campaign for Senate, so I do not condemn Mr. Jones for prudence. I condemn him for being a liar.

Mr. Jones represented to the Party that he would use some of his own money. He made a promise and now says he will not keep the promise. There are others who would have been willing to fund their own campaigns had Mr. Jones not made his misrepresentations. Mrs. Jack Swanson has reported (on KSFO AM) that Mr. Jones has collected back from the contributions made to his campaign, by others, the $2 million he had previously “given.” He lied even about the original funding of the campaign.

I submit for your consideration that Mr. Jones knew from the beginning that it would be better for his “ethanol” plant to have the Marin Senator Boxer returned to office; that he deliberately failed to campaign, failing even to use the free media; ignoring issues, ignoring opportunities, deliberately sabotaging the Republican Party; all in furtherance of a collusive agreement with the Democrats to fix the Federal election for Boxer; and all of this in return for the continued support of the Democrats for Mr. Jones’ “ethanol” plant.

Our Governor has again said that another candidate for public office, Poizner, (who is spending $8 million for a State Assembly seat), is so rich that “he can not be bought.” It will be recalled that the Governor had previously said the same thing about himself. Further recall that, at the time, we reminded the College visitor of G. K. Chesterton’s point that, “A politician who claims that he is too rich to be bought is a fool, for he fails to perceive that he has already been bought.”

Let us offer the Governor, Mr. Jones as an example of just such a rich man as G. K. Chesterton describes. The problem with the Governor’s thesis is that it assumes that a man who has $14 millions is “above” mortal cares. For one thing Mr. Jones, like so many others, having arrived at $14 millions now wants $15 or $20 millions. Then too there is “insurance.” With so much of his capital sunk in the “ethanol” plant, (he did say he was illiquid), Mr. Jones far from being care free has a great many cares, a lot of them tied up, along with his millions, in his “ethanol” plant, which depends on state mandates as no consumer will voluntarily pay for the product of Mr. Jones’ plant.

Unfortunately I doubt that even this scandal of a deliberately thrown election will cause the Governor to reconsider his position about the superior virtue and trustworthiness of the rich. As we have said so many times before, the rich are no friends of free markets. They in general prefer to use the power of the state to fix and pervert the market. Mr. Jones for example.

As we have explained, (see The Magnificent Five in the E-Mail Archives at the Moynihan), the $7.4 trillion in national debt is especially favored by the rich because this allows them to completely withdraw from the vicissitudes of the market. No late nights studying what the consumers want, or how to meet those demands, etc. When your capital is in Treasury Bonds all you need do is clip coupons and let the I.R.S. shake the money out of the people. Even though the Governor is from Austria I have never heard him mention the Austrian School of Economics. In any case the Governor does not impress me as a man given to long reflection and deep introspection.

The other point that needs clarification is the issue of Mr. O’Reilly’s news judgment. Some College visitors have suggested that he may simply have considered the story presented here at this website and deemed it not newsworthy.

Possibly so. Two networks, one intentionally interfering with a private contractual relation, the other burglarizing a notebook. Both involved in years of harassment, over a decade, interfering with employment with one employer after another, electronic eaves dropping, on and on it goes, ending in suicide ---- well, ok so maybe it isn’t news.

But now look at what has happened. I claimed that my troubles started when I wrote some letters to the Senate. I claim that because I expressed conservative Republican views I became a target here in the ultra liberal Bay Area of San Francisco.

Now, Bill O’Reilly claims that he has been targeted in an extortion attempt, by politically motivated Democrat partisans who are taking advantage of some risqué after hours talk between collaborating adults.

Just on the correspondence of the two stories, wouldn’t you think that just these similarities would prompt interest?

One guest on the O’Reilly radio show complemented him on his great insight in recognizing the importance of the Swift Boat Vets story, “from the start.” O’Reilly accepted the complement.

Yet anyone familiar with the facts knows that O’Reilly repeatedly accused the Vets of a political “smear.” That he compared them to Michael Moore. That he famously concluded the Friday broadcast by informing his radio audience that the Vet’s story was a one week event and that they will not be heard from again.

The following week he announced that he was excited to have gotten an interview with John O’Neil for his TV show the following week, i.e. two weeks after O’Reilly had announced that the story would have been over.

I had said at the time, (see Lecture Notes), that O’Reilly took the side of the elite, in this case Kerry, over the merely middle class Vets. Subsequent events suggest another reason O’Reilly may have decried the “smear” and “lies,” etc. etc. At one point he even propounded the theory that the Swift Boat Vets were not “primary sources” because they were not actually on Kerry’s boat.

They were not “primary sources” because they were not flying away down river with Kerry. They were only fishing the wounded out of the water, trying to save the damaged boat, providing first aid, etc. etc. The absurdity of this argument is self evident.

What may not be so clear is why O’Reilly repeatedly makes these “mistakes” in judgment. His first consideration is his own ego: what is best for O’Reilly? Some times he guesses wrong. For example he not only did not investigate the charges made here about Weiner he positively endorsed him, even doing promotional spots for Weiner’s show. He seems enamored of Imus too. He even used Bo Dietl, Imus’ friend, in his own case, where clearly Dietl has seriously done damage.

O’Reilly has tried to befriend the very people who now abuse him, Imus, Weiner, and Dietl, who, as I say, has actually done immeasurable harm to him. Imus even went on the air, (when O’Reilly tried to get air time after the filings in court), abusing O’Reilly publicly and ridiculing him.

So, O’Reilly, not only did not take up the story presented here about Imus and Weiner, but O’Reilly tried to befriend both of these cowardly bastards, and both have betrayed him. All his efforts backfired. But the problem starts with the fact that he does not start his analysis by trying to find out what is true, he starts his analysis by thinking what is best for O’Reilly.

Had he started with the truth, he would now have a huge story about how two powerful networks, ABC and NPR, set out to destroy a man; how Don Imus and Michael Weiner for years have burglarized, harassed, and oppressed, this man, etc. etc.

Instead we have a story about how he has harassed, etc.

So Governor, now what? Jones, O’Reilly, Imus, Weiner, Dietl, all rich men. Millionaires several times over. And yet you still propound the argument that “rich men can not be bought?” Sir? Sir? Is this what you are continuing to argue?

Sir? If you do not answer I will kill myself in protest of you too?

No?

Then it is done. I will protest you too! Come death lead me away from these villains and fools, whores and monsters, . . . I can say no more.

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

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