"Trump is nothing if not the King of Distractions."

"With his Venezuelan Victory fresh in the news again due to his new award for protecting world peace, the president also happily announced this week that he had already sold his first half-billion dollars worth of Venezuelan crude oil to an unnamed recipient. As further evidence of the transparency of the Trump regime, he also said the money from the redacted sale would all go into an offshore bank account somewhere in Qatar, as is now standard Trump Treasury protocol. ...

"Not disclosing the buyer of this US oil—now that the US [government] owns all Venezuelan oil—is also how businesses is properly done by the transparent Trump regime because they’ve realised that redacting names ahead of time will make it easier to comply with likely congressional mandates to release files about these offshore oil transactions ... Protection of the name of the buyer also helps assure that the public will never know if the oil went to one of Trump’s top billionaire campaign supporters, a guy Paul Singer, who recently bought Citgo, the American arm of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. ...

"Singer bought Citgo for a song, paying dimes on the dollar for the Venezuelan-oil producer when US courts ordered its sale to one of Singer’s companies shortly ahead of Trump’s invasion. The court-ordered sale came because the Venezuela state-owned rig was unable to pay its bonds due to typical commie mismanagement … and possible due to Trump’s embargo on Venezuelan oil. The president keeps his reputation clear of sending billion-dollar windfall deals to his most loyal supporters by keeping their names well-redacted out of his deal disclosures.

"If the president of the United States of Armerica proved nothing else this week, it is that using American arms to change the press news cycle away from the topics you are tired of—a long-favoured ploy of many a US president—really does work well because, outside of Blondi boasting about her Republican Redactors, there was not a second left in the week for news about the Epstain Files.

"Trump is nothing if not the King of Distractions.

"It was practically a stain-free week … other than the American bloodstains inside of an SUV where a mother was shot in the head ...

"The need to battle the fires of internal insurrection by trying to turn the nation into a police state is clear proof of a peaceful president, meriting his coveted Nobel prize."

~ David Haggith from his post 'A DEEPER DIVE into the Chaos'

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff's plan for peace in Ukraine has Kremlin fingerprints all across it. That's no surprise, says Їne Back Їversen in this guest post, because his entire career does too.

Let’s talk about Steve Witkoff

Guest post by Їne Back Їversen

LET'S TALK ABOUT STEVE WITKOFF, because I think the narrative of him being a “useful idiot” is a dangerous trap to walk in.

It’s darker than that.

Witkoff has spent three decades swimming in russian money, russian mob circles, and russian real-estate pipeline.
 
He isn’t just “a MAGA dude” advising Trump on Russia–Ukraine. Witkoff is of russian descent, built his fortune through New York City networks flooded with post-Soviet criminal money, and is now pushing the Kremlin wish-list, aka the so called “peace plan.”

It’s not a coincidence. It’s continuity. 

In the 1990s, Manhattan’s luxury real estate became the #1 laundromat for russian criminal networks fleeing the collapse of the USSR.

The FBI has testified to Congress about this era. It was no secret.

And who rose to power right then?

Steve Witkoff & Donald Trump.

The Trump Tower in the 80s–90s was filled with Russian mobsters, arms dealers, money launderers, “businessmen” tied to Russian crime boss Semion Mogilevich, and shell companies buying in cash.

Trump didn’t just tolerate it — he blindly” welcomed it.

Trump's buddy Witkoff played on the commercial version of the same ecosystem.

While Trump handled condos bought with suitcases of cash, Witkoff handled big office buildings financed through opaque partnerships & distressed sellers.

Two men, one pipeline of russian capital.

Fast-forward to 2024–25, and Witkoff is Trump’s point man on Russia–Ukraine policy.

A man with zero diplomatic background, zero Ukraine expertise, & a large Russian network and a history of loud Pro-Kremlin cheerleading.

And here we are again, with the U.S flashing Russia's wish-list.

Déjà vu: In 2016, Paul Manafort (the former Trump campaign chairman) met Konstantin Kilimnik (a Russian intelligence asset) to discuss a “peace plan” for Ukraine that legitimised Russia’s invasion, installed a Moscow-approved leader, lifted sanctions, and forced Kyiv to negotiate under duress.

Sound familiar?

And how absurd to hear Trump again and again say “The war would have never started if I were president.”  When he knows darn well Russian invaded Ukraine in 2014. And you better believe that Trump will have hear the Manafort “Peace Plan” conversations many MANY times. 

So here we are again, this time with a 28-point “peace plan” presented handed over by Witkoff.

Same unhinged demands.

Same twisted narratives.

This is not innovation. This is recycling Kremlin policy. Delivered by business partners disguised as diplomacy. 

LET'S GO BACK TO Trump Round 1 again.

It’s easy to forget how disturbing Trump’s private meetings with Putin were:

• No US officials present
• No transcripts
• •No accountability
• Interpreters’ notes seized
• Policy outcomes mysteriously aligned with Russian goals 

And it’s the same now;

• Trump’s closed Alaska meeting with Putin. 
• Witkoff’s quiet trips to Moscow
• Off-record negotiations about Ukraine
• No transparency? Just “take my word for it, bro.”

Why is US policy on Ukraine being decided behind closed doors, without Ukraine?!

Yet the US demand from Ukraine is a the complete opposite, constant transparency, public statements, oversight, disclosures, visibility, “THANK ME!”

But from Russia?

Not a single demand, just “give them two weeks”

This isn’t diplomacy. It’s appeasement.

Witkoff’s public statements are indistinguishable from Russian propaganda regarding Russian language, “Territory is negotiable” etc.

Even in 2018, Witkoff criticized Western economic sanctions against Russia, imposed after Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea.

And notice how Witkoff consistently omits Russian war crimes, mass deportations, missile strikes on civilians, nuclear blackmail, and the documented genocide intent.

This is selective ignorance, aimed to whitewash & erase Russia's crimes & force the victim to compromise.

And many say: Witkoff & Trump are businessmen, they just want a deal.

But that deal with Russia was done long ago, many times; now Witkoff & Trump are doing their part of it: appeasing Moscow, pressuring Ukraine, undermining sanctions, forcing a deal ... and declaring it “peace.”

WITKOFF MADE HIS CAREER in a world where Russian money laundering was normalised, with Russian crime lords depicted as “investors,” “partners,” or “buyers.” This is the world that Manafort monetised, Trump depended on & Russian intelligence used as cover.

They didn’t exit that world, they brought it in.

Witkoff operates with zero scrutiny, because he’s framed as a “businessman” instead of a geopolitical actor. But he is shaping  US posture toward Russia, the U.S stance on war crimes, the direction of NATO policy, and Ukraine's future security.

Off the books, next to russia.

Witkoff is all but openly declaring that the U.S. now advocates for Russia. It’s not concealed. It’s directly hostile to Ukraine & EU security.

That’s the man who is tasked to sit with Russia to “negotiate” Ukraine —without Ukraine even at the table.

The pressure, demands & ultimatum all fall on Ukraine.

Yet Witkoff is a Russian echo chamber: “Ukraine should give up land”; “Ukraine can’t win”; “Peace requires Ukrainian concessions.”

These are not “opinions.”

These are Kremlin foreign-policy objectives. And Witkoff has  publicly stated this long before his current position.

The pattern is clear:

1990s: Russian capital enters NYC real estate, money on which both Trump & Witkoff thrive 
2016; Russia uses these lines for political access
2024 : Witkoff re-emerges as Trump’s Russia whisperer
2025: A new Kremlin-shaped “peace plan” is born

The “Russia hoax"-is far from a hoax. It’s misunderstood.

Are they russian agents? Probably not. Are they useful idiots, vessels for Russian policies with a history in the network. 100%!

They are men whose worldview, networks & financing were shaped inside a system of russian influence.

The question isn’t “Is he compromised?” The question is:

Why is US policy on Russia being shaped by someone whose entire worldview was formed in the one American industry that Russian intelligence spent decades infiltrating?

Ask instead: why is there so much willingness to ignore that? 

"There may be damage – serious damage – to public trust and confidence in the Police when the rot and corruption are present at such a high level."

"The Rule of Law is one of the foundational principles of constitutional democracy. ... Its essence is that law—not individuals—governs the polity, and that all exercises of public power must be rooted in, constrained by, and accountable to the law. ... Public officials—from Ministers to constables—must act within and according to the legal powers Parliament or the Constitution grants.

"All individuals—from Prime Ministers to ordinary citizens—are equally subject to the law. ...

"The Rule of Law constrains Government power and ensures that majorities cannot act outside legal limits.

"It protects individual rights and freedoms. ...

"But the Rule of Law goes beyond the institutional realm. It operates through a culture of legality. It requires respect for legal norms by citizens and officials, habitual compliance by state actors, a commitment to constitutionalism, openness to scrutiny, and entrenched expectations of fair process. ... At the front line of the Rule of Law in our society are the Police and the Courts. Both rely on public trust and confidence for their continued legitimacy. ...

"Society expects the highest standards of its police officers from the constable on the beat to the Commissioner’s office in Wellington. And when those standards are not present there must be an almost automatic erosion of public confidence in the Police.

"Indeed the Police force has had its problems recently. A failure by Police to alert the Beehive when a press secretary’s phone was found at a brothel; more than 100 police recruits who had been allowed to start training despite failing fitness and language tests; that over the last 5 years a total of 159 serving police officers have been charged with crimes including serious family violence and sexual offending – none have been dismissed. In October 2025 it was revealed that more than 100 officers are under investigation for falsifying breath tests.

"And it is clear, from the McSkimming scandal, that the rot was at the highest level. ...

"[Quite] apart from the various other elements of cover-up and evasiveness on the part of the Police top brass there was their use of the Courts to prosecute a complainant and use Court processes to further the cover-up.

"There may be damage – serious damage – to public trust and confidence in the Police when the rot and corruption are present at such a high level. But in addition the activities of these officers challenges some fundamentals that underpin their independence and the Rule of Law.

"Like it or not another institution central to the Rule of Law that depends on public trust and confidence – the Courts – has become involved. ...

"Ultimately, public confidence depends on citizens seeing the courts and the Police as fair, impartial, and accessible - institutions that reflect their values while standing above politics and corruption.

"Without that faith the Police are no more than a paper tiger, distrusted and to be avoided in times of trouble.

"Without that faith, the judiciary’s moral authority—the only sword it wields—grows dangerously blunt.

"And in either case, the Rule of Law suffers."

~ Cranmer from his post 'Public Confidence and the Rule of Law'

"Trump is effectively admitting he has no idea who he’s pardoning, but he’s doing it to help his corrupt sons."

From Robert Tracinski's latest roundup of his work for Executive Watch at The UnPopulist, this one focusing on the spectacular personal corruption of this administration, comes this news:

A Crypto Conman Whose Platform Helped Hamas Launder Money Receives a Full Pardon After Investing in Trump’s Crypto Fund

One of the most flagrant abuses of Trump’s second term is his more or less open sale of pardons to those who enrich him and his family. Early this year, Executive Watch noted the Trump family’s deal with Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange whose Chinese founder Changpeng Zhao was lobbying for a Trump pardon. Now Trump has delivered on his end of the deal.

The New York Times reports:

President Trump granted a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, wiping away one of the U.S. government’s most significant crackdowns on crypto crime.
    Mr. Zhao had pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023 and served four months in federal prison, after a yearslong investigation by financial regulators and U.S. prosecutors. …
    To seek the pardon, Mr. Zhao hired lawyers and lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration, while Binance struck a business deal with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto start-up.
    That deal alone is poised to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trumps and the family of Steve Witkoff, the president’s top Middle East adviser. …
    Long considered the crypto industry’s richest man, Mr. Zhao—a Chinese-born executive who now lives in the United Arab Emirates—admitted that he had violated the law by failing to install rigorous compliance systems at Binance. That allowed people in countries under sanctions, and terrorist groups like Hamas, Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State, to move money on his platform.

This is typical of Trump’s pay-to-play presidency. Writing an op-ed critical of Israel can get you branded as a supporter of Hamas and rounded up by government goons. But funnel enough money to the Trump family and you can get a free pass for helping terrorists launder money.

60 Minutes quizzed Trump on this. (This the crazy 60 Minutes segment in which "they just edited out a segment where Donald Trump tells them to edit out a segment in which he brags about getting CBS to pay him because of them editing out part of an answer by Kamala Harris, and he notes that CBS clearly did the wrong thing in editing Harris in the same fucking sentence he tells them to edit out what he’s saying.") Techdirt summarises:

From the full (unedited) transcript ... :

NORAH O’DONNELL: This is a question about pardons. The Trump family is now perhaps more associated with cryptocurrency than real estate. You and your son– your sons, Don Jr. and Eric, have formed World Liberty Financial with the Witkoff family.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Helping to make your family millions of dollars. It’s in that context that I do wanna ask you about crypto’s richest man, a billionaire known as C.Z. He pled guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Looked at this, the government at the time said that C.Z. had caused “significant harm to U.S. national security”, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon him?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay, are you ready? I don’t know who he is.

Um. That’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?

Trump’s own administration is claiming Biden’s pardons are invalid because he didn’t know who he was pardoning. And Trump just proudly announced, on camera, that he has no idea who CZ is.

Then he admits that his sons basically told him to do this for their crypto business:

My sons are involved in crypto much more than I– me. I– I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry. And if we’re not gonna be the head of it, China, Japan, or someplace else is. So I am behind it 100%. This man was, in my opinion, from what I was told, this is, you know, a four-month sentence.

But this man was treated really badly by the Biden administration. And he was given a jail term. He’s highly respected. He’s a very successful guy. They sent him to jail and they really set him up. That’s my opinion. I was told about it.

By whom? Who told you about it? A good reporter would have stepped in and asked that question, but this is the new Bari Weiss 60 Minutes where you won’t see follow-ups like that. Or if you did, they’d be edited out.

He continues:

I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.

Again, “who told you this?” is the next question any reporter should be asking. O’Donnell did not. Though she at least did point out that he pleaded guilty to allowing terrorist groups to engage in money laundering, which seems notable for a guy who keeps talking about fighting crime.

NORAH O’DONNELL: The government had accused him of “significant harm to U.S. national security”–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That’s the Biden government.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Okay. Allowing U.S. terrorist groups to, you know, essentially move millions of dollars around. He pled guilty to anti-money laundering laws. That was in 2023. Then in 2025 his crypto exchange, Binance, helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin. And then you pardoned C.Z. How do you address the appearance of pay for play?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, here’s the thing, I know nothing about it because I’m too busy doing the other–

Um. Isn’t that exactly why your administration is claiming Biden’s pardons don’t count?

NORAH O’DONNELL: But he got a pardon–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can only tell you that–

NORAH O’DONNELL: He got a pardon–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Norah, I can only tell you this. My sons are into it. I’m glad they are, because it’s probably a great industry, crypto. I think it’s good. You know, they’re running a business, they’re not in government. And they’re good– my one son is a number one bestseller now.

So here Trump admits (1) he doesn’t know who CZ is, then (2) admits that basically his sons are the ones into cryptocurrency and “not in government,” and effectively admits that (3) he pardoned CZ on the advice of his sons, who directly profit from the pardon through their cryptocurrency business, while claiming ignorance of the entire arrangement.

This isn’t just yet another example of the most corrupt pay-for-play administration in the history of the United States but one that literally does everything it falsely accuses past administrations of doing, but way worse. Just as they’re claiming that Biden’s pardons weren’t valid, Trump is effectively admitting he has no idea who he’s pardoning, but he’s doing it to help his corrupt sons.

DOGE represents both a triumph of cronyism & a scaling back of conservative ambitions

"Ostensibly, the goal of DOGE [the US Department of so-called Government Efficiency] is to cut government spending. ... 

    "Anyone who knows anything about the budget understands that the goals that DOGE has set are basically impossible to reach, and practically nothing it does will significantly impact the debt. As The Economist points out, ... 'no matter how aggressive DOGE is, its actions are focused on barely more than a tenth of the overall federal budget' ..."[E]ven if you let go of 1 in 4 government workers, you’d only reduce federal spending by 1%. You’d need to cut spending by about a quarter to balance the budget, so firing that many people would get you about 4% of the way there....
    "But even if DOGE has limited effects on the budget, that doesn’t mean that it won’t have a major policy impact ... the better way to understand DOGE is as a tool to reshape the federal workforce and its activities in accordance with the wishes of Elon Musk and Donald Trump. ...

"We can make an analogy here to the way that ... the Red Army used political commissars who reported directly to the Communist Party to maintain loyalty to Bolshevik ideology, a system that continued after the establishment of the Soviet Union. ...
    "DOGE ... maintains direct lines to Trump and Musk, ensuring that departments do not thwart the will of the president and his agenda. Members of the DOGE team have reportedly been conducting short interviews with employees asking them to justify their jobs. This is ostensibly to help the government work better, but in practice this control over personnel selects for loyalty to the administration and a willingness to do its bidding. ...
    "Getting past a screening process focused on 'government efficiency', as defined by Trump-Musk ... tells you a lot about a person’s politics.

"We can think of the administration right now as a coalition of three forces: Trump himself, Musk, and the entirety of the conservative movement. Each has its own reasons for being enthusiastic about the DOGE project. Trump would like to be able to do whatever he wants, and not face legal consequences ... Musk in turn has all kinds of business interests before the government, as shown in the figure below. If you’re a federal bureaucrat who makes a decision that goes against the interest of Tesla or SpaceX, good luck keeping your job.

"Conservatives, and probably Musk himself, also want to cut spending. However, that is a fundamentally difficult if not impossible thing to do through the executive branch alone ... DOGE [therefore represents] a scaling back of conservative ambitions. ... Republicans used to dream about cutting Social Security and Medicare and changing the budgetary realities of the federal government at a macro level. Now, they celebrate firing a DEI consultant, which will have no impact on the size of government or our fiscal outlook."

~ Richard Hanania from his post 'DOGE as a Control Mechanism of the Trump-Musk Co-Presidency'

Henry Clay’s “American System” Was Bad News for the American Economy *Then*, and Will Be Again [updated]

 

GUEST POST

This bizarre protectionist manifesto (above) was posted and now appears to have been scrubbed from the Daily Caller's website. No wonder.

The author—a former Senior Policy Advisor to JD Vance in the Senate—has recently been appointed as Trump's "Special Assistant for Domestic Policy." An archived link of his article gives a glimpse of what this "Special Assistant" and his bosses believe. In short, as Phil Magness and James Harrigan explain in this guest post, it's outright Neo-LaRouchie lunacy rooted in the mercantilist economic doctrines of 19th century arch-protectionist Henry Clay—and "American System" whose modern rehabilitators conveniently leave out the fact that every time it was tried in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Clay’s program unleashed a torrent of preventable policy disasters.”

In other words, it's protectionist junk all the way down that will lift no-one anywhere ....

Henry Clay’s “American System” Was Bad News for the American Economy Then, and Will Be Again

by Phil Magness & James Harrigan

Some ideas are so bad we are doomed to relive them with each successive generation. Until recently, economic central planning from the political right received far less attention than its well-known manifestations on the left. Think of all the repeated attempts to rehabilitate Marxism and socialism, despite their disastrous track record over the last century. Unfortunately, an emerging faction on the political right has decided to deploy economic planning of their own as an intended countermeasure against their progressive foes. For inspiration, they’ve resurrected a failed and long-forgotten idea from the 19th century: Henry Clay’s “American System.”

Clay’s program was first articulated in an 1824 speech, in which he proposed using the Constitution’s tax and regulatory powers to execute America’s first national foray into centralised economic planning. His basic idea was to enlist the might of the federal government to strategically develop certain sectors of the American economy by subsidising them with tax dollars, and penalizing their foreign competitors with high protective tariffs.

Clay maintained that import tariffs could be used to give American manufacturers a leg up over European goods, while also cultivating “infant industries” that he deemed to be in the young nation’s strategic interests. Topping off the package, Clay proposed a spending spree on federally subsidised “internal improvements,” such as roads and canals to facilitate internal commerce, and a strong central bank to facilitate the financing of large government programs through the issuance of sovereign debt. In total, the program amounted to a comprehensive attempt at economic planning around the mistaken belief that trade is a zero-sum game, and countries were locked in a continuous struggle to maximise their industrial outputs by subsidising themselves and taxing their perceived foreign competitors.

If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. It’s part of the protectionist-tariff playbook we witnessed during the Trump presidency. Or maybe it’s better seen, as William Galston asserts, as representing “an effort to bring some ideological coherence to the impulses Donald Trump represents—nationalism, isolationism, social conservatism, and hostility to immigration.” Indeed, Robert Lighthizer, the former Trump cabinet official who is considered the architect of his international trade policy, recently called for the adoption of a “New American System” based on Clay’s 1824 proposal at a speech in Washington, D.C. Henry Clay’s scheme similarly assumed centre stage at a National Conservatism Conference in Miami, Florida, when historian Michael Lind depicted him as the true successor to the American founding, by way of Alexander Hamilton. Clay’s ideas have also found an institutional home at the American Compass, a think tank set up by Oren Cass, Mitt Romney’s former economic advisor. 

It would be difficult to overstate the rapid pace at which Clay’s ideas have surged out of obscurity and into political discussions on the right. Barely two decades ago, discussions of it were almost entirely relegated to the peripheral fringes of American politics. Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio invokes Clay as a model for constructing a US industrial policy to counter the economic rise of China.

The fundamental problem with this line of reasoning is that it rests on bad economic history, overlaid with the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc.

The “new American System” advocates tell a version of US economic history that goes something like this: 

• In the early 19th century, the United States entered the world scene as an economic backwater facing insurmountable competition from the established industrial nations of Europe, and particularly Great Britain. 
• By the turn of the twentieth century, the United States had emerged as one of the world’s great industrial powers, even surpassing the Old World despite getting a later start. 
• The credit for this growth, they claim, goes to the “American System” policies that Clay championed: high protective tariffs, subsidized “internal improvements,” the gradual expansion of a powerful central bank, and all around economic planning.

Even the basic claims of this story are in error. however. As economist Douglas Irwin has shown, proponents of the theory that tariffs drove American economic growth “have tended to present statistics that overstate late nineteenth century US growth in comparison to other periods and countries.” After examining the empirical evidence, Irwin concludes, 

It is difficult to attribute much of a positive role for the tariff because import tariffs probably raised the price of imported capital goods, thereby discouraging capital accumulation.

He accordingly rules out the theory that trade protection, the main plank of Clay’s platform, caused the United States to become a world economic power.

But there are even-more-fundamental problems with the new “American System” theorists’ history. They get basic facts wrong about the nature of 19th century economic policy, while simultaneously obscuring or ignoring the many downsides of Clay’s program and its attempted implementation.

The Rise and Demise of the American System

Though once a popular political slogan, Clay’s American System fell into disrepute after a series of discrediting blows in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The first came in 1832, when President Andrew Jackson vetoed legislation to recharter the United States’ corruption-plagued central bank. The creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 resuscitated this legacy, along with its tendency to engage in political manipulation of monetary policy, though the Bank War did manage to constrain the push for centralisation on that front for much of the 19th century.

Clay’s original tariff program endured a bit longer, finding legislative support at various points between 1824 and 1930. As the chart below shows, however, the 19th century was not an uninterrupted experiment in Clay-style protectionism. Clay only briefly got his way when a series of tariff measures between 1824 and 1828 jacked the average rate on dutiable goods to over 60 percent. The “Tariff of Abominations,” as the 1828 measure came to be known, sparked a political crisis that brought the country to the brink of disunion, after South Carolina attempted to nullify the high tax measure. As the graph shows, from 1833 until the Civil War, the United States charted a course of tariff liberalization, save for a brief interruption when Clay’s Whig Party attained power in 1842. In fact, in 1846 US Treasury Secretary Robert Walker orchestrated a major tariff liberalization to coincide with Great Britain’s famous repeal of the protectionist Corn Laws that same year.

The United States did not reimpose high tariffs in the Clay model with any degree of permanence until the second half of the nineteenth century. While this period did coincide with economic growth, the claim of a causal relationship ignores the fact that the American economic ascendance was already well underway, preceding those tariffs by several decades, and getting its start in a time of relative trade liberalisation on both sides of the Atlantic.

One of the main reasons Henry Clay struggled to get his American System launched in his own lifetime (1777-1852) was the political corruption it always attracted. In practice, the American System’s rationalization of trade protectionism provided cover for rampant graft and favoritism. From the moment of its inception, politically connected special interests seized control of federal tariff legislation and reshaped it to their own benefit. They lobbied for punitive tax rates on their competitors and pork-laden handouts for themselves, even if it meant overtaxing commerce at the expense of revenue itself. At several points in the 19th century, protectionist tariffs pushed the US tax system into the upper half of the Laffer Curve, where rates became so onerous that they undermined the intake of federal tax revenue. This was by design, as protectionist tariffs use taxes as a weapon to deter foreign goods from even entering the country.

The American System and Slavery

Clay’s American System also struggled to disentangle its doctrines from the institution of slavery. Its underlying theory held that the American economy could be “harmonised” and internally integrated through national economic planning. That meant deploying “internal improvements” and the tariff schedule to bind northern industry and southern agriculture together in economic symbiosis. Clay’s doctrines amounted to an early experiment in import substitution: the strategy of using tariffs and other commercial restrictions to divert raw-material production away from international markets and into a heavily subsidised domestic industry. In practice, this meant intentionally shifting southern cotton production away from transatlantic markets and into the textile mills of New England. In order for the American System to function as intended, it would have to subsidise plantation agriculture as well as northern industry.

Some of the American System’s proponents, including Clay himself, eventually recognized that a full “harmonisation” of the US economy under the American System would entail significant public expenditures to develop southern agriculture, thereby politically entrenching slavery in perpetuity. Clay (who, despite being a slave-owner, had reservations about the institution) therefore devised what is often referred to as the “Whig formula” for addressing slavery through a scheme of federally compensated gradual emancipation.

To facilitate this program, Clay appended the American System doctrine with another plank. In addition to paying for “internal improvements,” federal land sale revenue would be allocated to “colonise” or resettle the African-American population of the United States in faraway tropical locations such as Liberia or Central America. As Clay explained in an 1847 speech, federally subsidised colonisation “obviated one of the greatest objections which was made to gradual emancipation,” that being the “continuance of the emancipated slaves among us.” Following Clay, American System theorists such as economists Mathew Carey and his son Henry C. Carey began to champion the black colonisation movement as a “solution” to the problems that slavery presented to their tariff and subsidy scheme. In order to make the system work without plantation slavery, they would simply export the freed slaves abroad.

Aside from a few experiments such as the founding of Liberia, such schemes proved impractical, and eventually succumbed to political obstacles during the American Civil War. Clay’s tariff system nonetheless gained a foothold on the eve of the war, as protectionist interests exploited the chaotic “secession winter” legislative session of 1860-61 to cram the pork-laden Morrill Tariff Act through Congress—dramatically hiking tariffs from (declining) average rate of below twenty percent, to a suffocating imposition of almost fifty percent!

A Civil War Diplomatic Disaster

Although the 1861Morrill Tariff succeeded in finally installing an American-System-style tariff regime for the next half-century, it quickly turned into a diplomatic disaster. The new law’s steep protectionist rates alienated the British government, which would otherwise have been a natural anti-slavery ally to the Union cause. At the outbreak of the war, British abolitionist and free-trader Richard Cobden wrote his friend Charles Sumner, the US Senator from Massachusetts, to plead the importance of free trade to the anti-slavery cause. “In your case we observe a mighty quarrel: on one side protectionists, on the other slave-owners.” Citing the Morrill Tariff supporters’ publicly expressed reluctance to move against slavery, Cobden predicted the measure would imperil his efforts to steer Britain to the aid of the North. As he rhetorically asked his fellow abolitionist Sumner, “Need you wonder at the confusion in John Bull’s poor head?”

As part of the fallout, the Lincoln administration entered the White House facing an irate diplomatic landscape. In part alienated by the tariff, Britain adopted a stance of neutrality toward the two American belligerents. After successive missteps further soured the Lincoln Administration’s relationship with London, abolitionists such as Cobden had to mobilise opinion on the British homefront against the Confederacy by reminding people of slavery’s central role in the war. The diplomatic row, which began with an ill-conceived and opportunistic tariff bill on the eve of Lincoln’s inauguration, would plague US-UK relations for decades to come. Its wartime effect thrust the incoming administration into a needlessly hostile diplomatic situation, handicapping the Union’s war efforts from abroad.

As a domestic economic policy, the Morrill Tariff served a slew of special interests in the northeast by placing punitive taxes on their competitors. It did not finance the Union war effort (as is often incorrectly claimed by American System enthusiasts) as it was never intended for the purpose of raising revenue. The Morrill Tariff primarily aimed to deter commerce from abroad at the behest of domestic manufacturing, allowing them to capture increased prices on their own goods. As a war measure, it amounted to a self-inflicted wound by alienating Britain from the Union’s cause.

How Clay’s Tariffs Gave Us the Income Tax

After the Civil War, the tariff issue came to dominate American economic policy. Until 1909, the successors to Clay’s “American System” generally enjoyed the upper hand. That year, President William Howard Taft called for a routine revision to the federal tariff schedule that quickly devolved into a corrupt free-for-all of tariff favoritism and special-interest handouts.

Amidst the backlash against the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act’s special-interest free-for-all, a coalition of free trade Democrats and breakaway Republican “insurgents” in the US Senate turned to a radical solution. Realising that they would never break the monied interests of the protectionist lobby, they proposed restructuring the entire federal tax system by shifting it away from the corruption-prone tariff schedule. The result was the 16th Amendment, a flanking move that tried to substitute the protective tariff system with the federal income tax. The amendment, one legislator boasted at the time, would serve as a “club to beat down the tariff” by separating the federal tax system from the entrenched protectionist lobby.

For a fleeting moment, the strategy worked. In 1913, Congress cut import tariffs to their lowest point since the 1850s, and imposed a modest income tax to make up for the loss of revenue. The special-interest groups quickly reconstituted though, and in 1922 they succeeded in exploiting an economic downturn in the agriculture sector to make the case for renewed protectionism. Since the income tax already provided the lion’s share of tax revenue, lawmakers no longer had to worry themselves about jacking up tariff rates to prohibitive levels. As a result of this post-World War I resurrection of Clay’s “American System,” the United States ended up with the worst of both worlds: high tariffs to raise the prices on imported goods at the behest of their domestic competitors, and a new federal income tax to extract revenue from them at every opportunity.

When Americans complete their income tax filings today, few realise that the interminable frustrations of this annual ritual have their origins in a now-obscure tariff bill. It was the corrupt overreach of Clay’s “American System,” though, that ultimately bequeathed us with the modern IRS.

Smoot-Hawley and the Collapse of Clay’s Doctrine

The legislative progeny of Henry Clay’s doctrines finally came to a catastrophic head in 1930 when Congress enacted the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. The measure passed in a desperate attempt to shield special interests from the 1929 stock market crash, although its legislative origin predated “Black Monday” – October 28, 1929 – by several months. The congressional record shows that Smoot-Hawley took its direct inspiration from Clay’s doctrines. The debate on the bill commenced in the House of Representatives earlier that May. Making the case for the protectionist side, Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-NY) declared that “the Republican Party has just one viewpoint, and that is to protect American labour and American industry, not through a competitive tariff but through a tariff that actually protects.” To reinforce his point, Fish quoted “a brief extract from a speech of Henry Clay in favor of a protective tariff…which has never been improved on and has constituted the Republican tariff doctrine for the past 70 years.” After quoting Clay’s American System speech from 1824, Fish offered his rationale for adopting a renewed protectionist policy in 1929. It reads like a talking point from Oren Cass’s American Compass today:

The prosperity of this Nation [claimed Fish] has been built up because the Republican Party has hewed to the line to protect American labor and American industry and to conserve the home markets from ruinous competition with the low-paid labour in foreign countries.;

In a prescient response, another representative challenged Fish by warning that a tariff hike could lead to economic turmoil, including triggering a harmful turn in already-uneasy unemployment numbers. If the tariff passed, was Fish ready to take “credit for the general condition of unemployment that now exists in the United States?” After dissembling over particular, contested tariff rates and the need to serve a multitude of special interest constituencies, Fish reiterated the philosophical justification for pushing ahead. He again invoked Henry Clay’s American System:

That principle was laid down by Henry Clay—the principle of protecting the home market. It is just the reverse of the English attitude. They export 90 percent and only absorb 10 percent of their products in their own home market: We consume in this country 90 percent of our home product and export 10 percent. The question is simply whether you prefer to conserve the home market and protect American wage earners or let the products of low-paid foreign labour destroy the home market for the American producer.

The stock market crash in October poured gasoline onto an already-burning fire as the Smoot-Hawley bill progressed through Congress. The pork-barrel free-for-all saw money changing hands between lobbyists and legislators on the floor of the committee rooms, as industry after industry attempted to purchase “protection” for itself from the unfolding economic recession. They thought they were weathering the storm by obtaining legislative favors. Instead, the cumulative hikes of Smoot-Hawley boosted tariff rates to a historic high of almost 60 percent on all dutiable goods entering the United States. The measure provoked a wave of retaliatory protectionism across the world. In just four short years, Smoot-Hawley had inadvertently triggered a global collapse in international commerce.

The effects may be seen in the famous “spiral” graph published by the League of Nations’ World Economic Survey in 1933. By pursuing the course advised under the “American System” doctrine, the United States directly helped to put the “Great” in “Great Depression.”

Repeating Old Mistakes

The National Conservative argument for the “American System” correctly observes that there were moments in United States history when the country largely adhered to Henry Clay’s suite of high protectionist tariffs, public works projects, and allegedly "strategic" industrial subsidies. They also choose to deemphasise, or may even remain ignorant of, the American System’s more ignominious legacies. You will seldom encounter, for example, a NatCon who seriously engages with the moral conundrum that slavery created for Clay’s import-substitution scheme before the Civil War. The American System’s colonisation plank is almost entirely absent from these discussions, and its propensity for attracting graft and corruption in its later iterations is almost always swept under the rug.

Instead, the version they present is an idealised form of seamlessly executed economic planning, albeit for “strategic” purposes in the “national interest” instead of the left’s usual litany of social justice causes. The inherent coordination problems of centralised economic planning do not simply melt away when it is directed at nationalist objectives instead of progressive, redistributive goals.

But there’s an even-more-fundamental problem with the American System narrative. Its modern rehabilitators conveniently leave out the fact that every time it was tried in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Clay’s program unleashed a torrent of preventable policy disasters.

In 1828, a protective tariff pushed the country to the brink of disunion while also demonstrating Clay’s own inability to extricate his program from the slave economy. In 1861, Clay’s economic philosophy triggered a diplomatic crisis with Britain that unwittingly alienated an anti-slavery ally from the Union cause. In 1909, the heirs of Clay’s economics became so thoroughly beholden to the corrupt dealings of the tariff lobby that a section of their own party revolted and ushered in the haphazardly designed federal income tax system that plagues us to this day. And in 1930, Clay’s political progeny steered the country directly into economic ruin by embracing an American-System-inspired tariff program as its main countermeasure to the unfolding Great Depression. While Clay’s latter-day advocates jump at every opportunity to credit him for late-19th-century American economic growth despite a weak empirical basis for the claim, they also conveniently omit the track record of real and tangible blunders that followed from a century of experiments in American System economic policy.

In the case of the Clay-inspired Smoot-Hawley Tariff, the resulting collapse in international trade proved so disastrous that it largely expunged the American System’s advocates from both political parties in the post-war 20th century. Starting with the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act in 1934, Congress embarked on a slow-but-steady retreat from protectionism that continued until the early 2000s. The passage of time has, unfortunately, dampened our memory of Smoot-Hawley’s self-inflicted wounds, to say nothing of Clay’s 19th-century failings. Now the National Conservatives deceive themselves into believing that they have rediscovered hidden knowledge from our economic past: knowledge that will allow them to beat the central planners of the left by putting their own spin on central planning from the right. In reality, they risk haplessly stumbling into the same mistakes that discredited Clay’s American System in the eyes of the last generation to experience its results.

America’s progressive left have always, either tacitly or by expression, bought into the impulses of economic planning. The shocking thing happening now is that we have conservative participation in the American System too, and why wouldn’t we? Tariffs are a dyed in the wool political winner for anyone who wants to push them onto the American people—even as they're a loser economically. Those people never seem all that interested in getting past the emotive costume of tariffs. “Let the other guy, the foreigner, pay the bill for a change.” That tariffs are coming back around to steal all kinds of American wealth never quite makes the evening news.

So elements of the right have jumped onto this centrally-planned economic train. And why wouldn’t they? There are illusions of easy political wins to be had. And that’s all you really need to know.

* * * *

Phil Magness is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and the David J. Theroux Chair in Political Economy. He has served as Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, and as Academic Program Director at the Institute for Humane Studies and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public Policy and Government at George Mason University. He received his Ph.D. from George Mason University' s School of Public Policy.

He is the author of multiple books and essays including Social Science Quarterly (Summer 2019) “James M. Buchanan and the Political Economy of Desegregation,” Co-authored with Art Carden and Vincent Geloso; “The American System and the Political Economy of Black Colonization.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought, (June 2015); “Morrill and the Missing Industries: Strategic Lobbying Behavior and the Tariff of 1861.” Journal of the Early Republic, 29 (Summer 2009);  The 1619 Project: A Critique; and Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement.

James Harrigan is a former Senior Research Fellow at AIER. He is also co-host of the Words & Numbers podcast.
Dr. Harrigan was previously Dean of the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani, and later served as Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Humane Studies and Strata, where he was also a Senior Research Fellow.
He has written extensively for the popular press, with articles appearing in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, and a host of other outlets. He is also co-author of Cooperation & Coercion. His current work focuses on the intersections between political economy, public policy, and political philosophy.

This article was previously post at the AIER blog, and is republished here under a Creative Commons 4.0 License.

UPDATE:

So you now have the information to correct the bizarre a-historical assertion just made (below) by the Moron In Chief. So as a quick pop-quiz question, explain in 20 words or less why he is so mistaken. [HINT: In relation to tariffs and the production of wealth, you should probably use words like "despite" rather than "caused by."]

The Trump Administration: "This gets back to my 'three levels of corruption' idea ... "

"This gets back to my 'three levels of corruption' idea, which I would summarise this way: Level 1 is 'Slip us come cash and we’ll do something extra for you.' Level 2 is 'Slip us some cash and we’ll actually do our job for once.' And Level 3 is 'Slip us some cash and nobody gets hurt.' 

    "The biopharma executives who are flying in for personal audiences with Trump or staying quiet while muttering about needed to keep up good relations are hoping for some Level 1 action, bracing for a lot of Level 2, and are terrified at the thought of Level 3.
    "They should be. Level 3 corruption is where government short-circuits into becoming a protection racket. And that, I should add, is one of the only ways in which our current president is capable of seeing the world and all the transactions in it. He’s a real estate developer from Queens who came up as a protegé of Roy Cohn - of course he does. His approach to dealing with Congress, to international relations, to trade, to most any issue at all is that of a mob boss: who’s shaking down whom, who gets the payoffs, who owes the favours, who takes a cut (...  this stuff has been glaringly evident for many years).
    "But that worldview is not (thank God) the ironclad rule of all human existence."

~ Derek Lowe from his post 'Stand Up And Be Counted' [hat tip Duncan B.]

RELATED (from 2018):

“I'M GOING TO GET a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don’t know, I’m an adjunct professor at Indiana University – Robert H. McKinney School of Law, where I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.
    "Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of 'The Art of the Deal,' a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you’ve read 'The Art of the Deal,' or if you’ve followed Trump lately, you’ll know, even if you didn’t know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call 'distributive bargaining.'
    "Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you’re fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump’s world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins.
    "The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. 

    "In integrative bargaining the two sides don’t have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.

     "THE PROBLEM WITH TRUMP is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can’t demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren’t binary. China’s choices aren’t (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don’t buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.
    "One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you’re going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don’t have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won’t agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you’re going to have to find another cabinet maker.
    "There isn’t another Canada.
    "So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.
    "Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours.   

    "Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM – HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.

"TRUMP HAS THE SAME WEAKNESS politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that’s just not how politics works, not over the long run.
    "For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here’s another huge problem for us.
    "Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.
    "From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn’t even bringing checkers to a chess match. He’s bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether it's better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”

— David Honig, from his (now widely distributed) 2018 Facebook post

Dole for developers

"[M]inisters [are] going to offer free downside price/liquidity insurance to large and established property developers. It [will] be sold as strictly 'time-limited' except that there [will], in fact, be no time limit specified. ...
    "This government (rightly) made much of inheriting a large structural fiscal deficit, and wanting to get government out of business. Instead, they jump in boots and all. And all apparently on the basis that a couple of Cabinet ministers and their Ministry of Housing and Urban Design officials know better than the market what should be built when, where, and by whom ...
    "[I]t brought to mind that old jeer about business-friendly (as opposed to pro-market) governments [helping businesses] to 'capitalise the gains and socialise the losses.' [Or that govts 'helping business' quickly corrupts into 'helping particular businesses.'] ... Plenty of people and firms will have undergone huge stress in the last couple of years, as inflation was squeezed back out of the system. It was and is a necessary adjustment. But most didn’t enjoy the favour of ministers. ...
    "[T]here is just no good or compelling analytical foundation for any sort of intervention of this sort (none are provided, and none are readily conceivable)."

~ Michael Reddell from his post 'Public policy just keeps on worsening'

...and it will deserve to.

"Is it time to regulate access to the Beehive for lobbyists? With growing awareness of the potential conflicts of interest involved in the 'revolving door' between the Beehive and lobbying firms, it might be possible for some strong rules to be forced on the lobbying industry and politicians. If not, public confidence in the political process will surely erode."

~ Bryce Edwards, from his post 'Lobbyists helping and influencing the new National government'

'The buying of the media is nothing less than political corruption of a scale hitherto unknown in New Zealand'

 

"This [Garrick Tremain cartoon] aptly sums up the disgraceful sell-out by our print [and electronic] media to toe the government line.... willingly prostitut[ing themselves] to the government bribe in return for the taxpayer’s unwitting subsidy...
    "The buying of the ... media, so cleverly summed up by Garrick’s cartoon, was nothing less than political corruption of a scale hitherto unknown in New Zealand."

~ Bob Jones, from his post 'Political Corruption'

"[Some] imagine that some omnipotent giant conspiracy is destroying America, that the rationalisations are hiding some malevolent, fantastically powerful giant. The truth is worse: the rationalisations are hiding nothing but a nest of scurrying cockroaches." #QotD

"When a society insists on pursuing a suicidal course, one may be sure that the alleged reasons and proclaimed slogans are mere rationalisations. The question is only: what are the rationalisations hiding? ...
    "[Some] imagine that some omnipotent giant conspiracy is destroying America, that the rationalisations are hiding some malevolent, fantastically powerful giant.
    "The truth is worse than that: the truth is that the rationalisations are hiding nothing -- there is nothing at the bottom of the fog but a nest of scurrying cockroaches."
        ~ Ayn Rand, from her article 'The Pull Peddlers'
.

"Although cases of actual corruption do undoubtedly exist among legislators & government officials, they are not a major motivating factor. The truth, most likely, is that they did not regard it as bribery or as betrayal of their public trust; they did not think that their particular decision could matter one way or another, in the kinds of causeless choices they had to make." #QotD

"So long as such a concept as 'the public interest' (or the 'social' or 'national' or 'international' interest) is regarded as a vlid principle to guide legislation -- lobbies and pressure groups will necessarily continue to exist. Since there is no entity as 'the public,'  since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.
    "If so, then all men and all private groups have to fight to the death for the privilege of being regarded as 'the public.' The government's policy has to swing like an erratic pendulum from group to group, hitting some and favouring others, at the whim of any given moment -- and so grotesque a profession as lobbying (selling 'influence') becomes a full-time job. If parasitism, favouritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.
    "The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly. The wisest man in the world, with purest integrity, cannot find a criterion for the just, equitable, rational application of an unjust, inequitable, irrational principle. The best that an honest official can do is to accept no material bribe for his arbitrary decision; but this does not make his decision and its concequences more just or less calamitous.
    "A man of clear-cut convictions is impervious to anyone's influence. But when clear-cut convictions are impossible, personal influences take over.... He is the natural prey of social 'manipulators,' of propaganda salesmen, of lobbyists.
    "When any argument is as inconclusive as any other, the subjective, emotional or 'human' element becomes decisive....
    "Although cases of actual corruption do undoubtedly exist among legislators and government officials, they are not a major motivating factor in today's situation. In such cases as have been publicly exposed, the bribes were pathetically small. Men who [hold] the power to dispose of millions of dollars [sell] their favours for a thousand-dollar rug or a fur coat...
    "The truth, most likely, is that they did not regard it as bribery or as betrayal of their public trust; they did not think that their particular decision could matter one way or another, in the kinds of causeless choices they had to make, in the absence of any criteria.... Men who would not sell out their country for a million dollars are selling to out for somebody's smile and a vacation trip [away]. Paraphrasing John Galt, 'It is of such pennies and smiles that the destruction of your country is made'."
    ~ Ayn Rand, from her article 'The Pull Peddlers'
.

"If politicians can be bought for [these] amounts ... it’s the politicians who are wrong not the threshold." #QotD

“Politicians having to justify their work to supporters, members, and donors is healthy. Public funding would give a huge advantage to the established political parties. It professionalises politics and stamps on the grass roots.
    “The vast majority of donations made to political parties are small. That is a good thing. It means politicians and party bosses are accountable to many.”
    "If politicians can be bought for the amounts under the threshold for disclosure, it’s the politicians who are wrong not the threshold."

~ Taxpayers Union (italicised) and Ele Ludemann, from her post 'Honest People Keep Rules'
.