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Rent seeker runs aground

One of the premier rent-seekers in the US, Jesse Jackson, appears to be off his game. Jesse has long run what amounts to a protection racket, in which he threatens to invoke the anti-discrimination laws and boycotts against any company that doesn’t pony up to one of his phony charities.

To take one gruesome example from the book: In 1981, Mr. Jackson struck up a “covenant” with Coca-Cola in which the company not only agreed to change overseas policies but, more to the point, provided profitable distributorships to black businessmen–including Mr. Jackson’s half-brother, Noah Robinson, later convicted of racketeering, drug trafficking and murder-by-hire.

However, Jesse has made a number of gaffes and missteps in recent years that may have undercut his little empire.

His shot at the membership policies of the Augusta National Golf Club had flown straight into a water hazard. His complaints about the jokes in the movie “Barbershop” were dismissed as raving. And it wasn’t so long ago that he was outed for his close and fruitful relations with a female staff member of his Citizenship Educational Fund, a scandal that occasioned a trip into the political wilderness that lasted most of a weekend. Finally, Kenneth Timmerman’s “Shakedown,” published last year, detailed his lucrative intimidation habits, with Mr. Jackson threatening charges of racism unless corporations adjusted their policies and gave “willingly” to various causes.

The sooner Jesse disappears from the public stage, the better off we will all be. Let’s hope that day is coming soon.

8 comments to Rent seeker runs aground

  • beets

    Let me give you the other side, from a black american perspective….Jesse, Al Sharpton, Kwesie MefumeMcChanged My Name, NAACP (today, not the Thurgood Marshall variant), Carol Mosely Brawnie, reparations…….lord help us.

    Al I want is equality of opportunity. All they want is equality of situation. History has shown that “situation” to be uniformly shitt* for all.

  • Tom Wolfe wrote “Bonfire of the Vanities” more than 20 years ago. You will like it.

  • Theodopoulos Pherecydes

    Every NASCAR team should look like America: six white guys fucking with the engine, an oriental on the computer, two Mexicans pushing and a basketball player shooting from the right front seat.

    …with alternating female drivers.

  • True R. spence

    Jesse and the rest of the race-pimps have managed to develop what amouts to an empire in American politics.

    The problem is that it is an empire that requires racism to survive. No racism, no empire. No million dollar payoffs, no fancy suits or cars or fine dining.

    That being the case, they keep lowering the bar on what constitutes racism until simply being white is defacto evidence of a crime.

    Lord knows they have been helped a lot bye the Democrat/Liberal stupidity and guilt industry.

  • Jeffersonian

    And Tom Wolfe wrote “Radical Chic” more than a decade before that, using it as a stepping off point for BotV. Read it…it’s priceless and you realize how little things have changed.

    Jesse tried to shake down the local brewery once, too, a little joint called Anheuser-Busch. But he didn’t know the old man, Augie. He went to the meeting to set the terms of surrender, only to face a stern group of men with a thick file detailing certain indiscretions of a certain former associate of Martin Luther King.

    Meeting over. Issue closed.

    Unfortunately, Augie passed on and his kid caved to Jesse…now Jesse’s kid has a distributorship in Chicago, as close as you can get to a gold-egg-laying goose in this world.

  • Well, check the article again.

    The Interpol data appears to be bad. Absolute crap for Scotland’s homicide rates, and apparently also for Sweden’s (I’m still checking.)

    While this isn’t good, it does not negate the point of the article.

    If anybody can tell me why the Interpol numbers are so screwed up, I’d appreciate it.

  • Beets — you have so got that right. That’s what America is about — equality of opportunity.

    I wish there were more like you. Reproduce, would you, please? If you haven’t already?

  • Omnibus Bill

    Unfortunately, Augie passed on and his kid caved to Jesse…now Jesse’s kid has a distributorship in Chicago, as close as you can get to a gold-egg-laying goose in this world

    So, you mean to tell me, that drinking any beer other than Anheuser Busch mass produced swill has a negative affect on Jesse Jackson Jr.?

    And, since disparate impact is proof of discrimination… then whenever I crack open a cool, hoppy Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, I’m actually committing a hate crime.

    Interesting. Never has being discriminating been so discriminatory.