Of Me, By Me, and For Me: Conclusion

Posted on February 13, 2026 by Professor Taboo

Having left off at #1— Former Illinois Governor (D) Rod Blagojevich in the previous blog-post, I will pickup at the next section now. Thank you all for your patience and understanding with my deceased mother who suffered from Early Alzheimer’s Disease and her daily care during those last weeks. Meanwhile, her affairs have limited my free-time to blog, but are now receding as my wife and I return to a more normal life together. Without further adieu I pick up where I left off in October 2025…

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Just how pervasive is corrupt money in our 21^st-century U.S. politics? It is much worse than you might imagine. Let’s take a close look at Ohio’s political corruption between 2017–2020.

#2 – Borges, Householder, Clark, Cespedes, Longstreth, & FirstEnergy Corp.

U.S. Federal Marshals cuffed up conservative politician Matt Borges, the former chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, soon after being arrested for the largest corruption scandal in Ohio’s history. A day earlier a U.S. District Judge dealt out to Ohio House Speaker, Larry Householder, a 20-year sentence for organizing the scheme known as the FirstEnergy Corp. and Ohio utilities scandal or HB-6 scandal. Using FirstEnergy Corp. they funneled $38-million into dark money groups, i.e. anonymous, secret Super PAC’s, that funded Republican election campaigns and legislation. In other words, bribes. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Singer who prosecuted the racketeering conspiracy further said, “It’s interesting that some people are piling on (Householder) after the fact,” he said. “So many knew what was happening in real time and did nothing about it. Not only did they do nothing about it, they helped facilitate it.”

**FirstEnergy public corruption trial begins**, *Jan. 27, 2026 — Chuck Jones, left, and Michael Dowling, right. (Photos by WEWS.)*

It is worthy to note that this one scandal in Ohio’s Congress and the dark money corporations funding legislatures while company CEOs, CFOs, etc., take kickbacks from “favorable” state laws, is a nationwide problem reaching an epidemic far worse than it was in the Gilded Age of the 1800’s.

Neil Clark was an Ohio political lobbyist and a mule, for lack of a better word, a broker for hyper-wealthy donors, corporations, and executives, and their state legislative counter-parts. Clark was more than willing to commit illegal bribes, payoffs, buy legislation, or give kickbacks if it meant “everyone” wins and everyone gets filthy rich (see above image of Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling). But Clark was facing charges of major federal crimes and briberies investigated by the FBI. Days later Clark was found dead by suicide March 15, 2021, by the Collier County Sheriff’s department wearing a “DeWine for Governor” t-shirt.

Ohio Governor, Mike DeWine, was never indicted of illegal activity in the scandal, however, he was heavily associated with FirstEnergy’s scandal through shady relationships and secret backroom deals. The Ohio Capitol Journal writes about DeWine’s political-corporate relationships as “Big Money, Big Favors” in an April 2024 article found here. He and Neil Clark met frequently during election campaigns and specific legislative bills. Clark apparently had lost control and saw no way out (see image below).

Why does someone take their own life? To escape punishment and shame? What did Neil Clark leave behind after his suicide? Well, as a matter of fact Clark’s memoir, “What Do I Know? I’m Just A Lobbyist,” sheds light on Ohio corruption and the events leading to his suicide. Consider another similar situation with no way out that ended the same for another rich, powerful man. It’s the question equally valid being asked today, Why did the two guards on duty fall asleep that night and did not check on Jeffrey Epstein at regular intervals? Why did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself in jail and why were the two surveillance cameras in his cell the night of August 9^th, 2019, malfunctioning? Lots of “coincidences” and similarities between Clark and Epstein falling perfectly in line on one single night.

*Neil Clark’s crime or suicide scene and body in a remote lawn near Naples, Florida.*

In his memoirs Neil Clark writes that he had a slew of ugly nicknames like “Prince of Darkness” and “Prick” to name just two. Is it a coincidence that Clark was proud of his deep Sicilian background? He goes on to write:

“I was willing to push the envelope, bend the rules, play unfair and make sure anyone who got in my way received disproportionate punishment.”

— Neil Clark, Conservative Ohio Lobbyist Memoirs

The FBI had many phone taps and body wires/mics recording Clark and his lobbying tactics that he arrogantly, brazenly boasted about freely in wealthy Columbus, Ohio restaurant meetings with government clients or potential slush-fund clients:

“Every politician’s got to have somebody that is the “hitman.” Everybody’s got to have that person that will go out there and do the dirty shit.”

— Neil Clark, Conservative Ohio Lobbyist Memoirs

Neil Clark was swept up into unlimited money-waves where he could no longer recognize what was Constitutional (right) and what was Un-Constitutional (wrong and very illegal) nor how egregiously he was breaking the laws. But like a gambling addict, he didn’t care. Clark power-brokered Super PACs that soon made the highly controversial Pro-choice or Anti-abortion acts in Ohio by unprecedented, small wealthy minority groups—i.e. abortions were now illegal in Ohio even if the mother’s life was at serious risk of death—get passed into law. As a result, the untempered colossal amounts of slush money bought off those Ohio legislators ushering in the state laws whether the majority of Ohioans wanted them or not. How did this happen against the Ohio majority that didn’t want abortions banned?

Simple. It was the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United vs. FEC landmark decision to allow mega-wealthy American corporations to spend unlimited amounts of political money in anonymous donations to special interest campaigns and government officials, most often through a power-broker like Neil Clark. That SCOTUS decision January 21, 2010, threw open the flood-gates for rampant, massive, unfettered, indirect government and corporate corruption schemes and they did not care about The People’s democracy, voice, or votes. Worse still SCOTUS suggested to Americans that these limitless amounts of money donations would be transparent for public viewing. Unfortunately for the ordinary American voter, that did not happen. Enter stage Right the IRC 501(c)(4) organizations.

Unlike 501(c)(3)’s, 501(c)(4)’s have no limits on how much money is donated for “social welfare organizations and the organization’s purposes” of massive political money bags and “must be intended to benefit a community or the public at large, not a private group.” Yet again, this did not happen. It happened only for very small interest groups and mega-wealthy individuals, all of whom in the minority of public opinion. Worse still is that these millions and billions of donated dollars are totally anonymous, or dark. Untraceable for the most part. And this secrecy is deliberately intentional, to cover up corrupt motives and/or ideologies and their backroom activities. Neil Clark was so swept up into the power-funding that when he was being caught red-handed, it cost him his mental health and life.

*Ohio lobbyist Juan Cespedes, image by The Columbus Dispatch*

Juan Cespedes, a Columbus-area lobbyist like Neil Clark, was part of the HB-6 bribery scandal with Borges, Householder, Jeffrey Longstreth, another corrupt Ohio lobbyist, and Neil Clark. They all used dark money briberies and “anonymous” donations to build up Householder’s political power in Ohio’s Congress while also enriching their own private lives. National Public Radio (NPR) reported in July 2021:

Longstreth and Cespedes pleaded guilty to racketeering in October 2020. Generation Now pleaded guilty in February to one count of participating in a more than $60 million racketeering conspiracy.

Before his death in March, Clark pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. Borges also pleaded not guilty to charges and continues to dispute the allegations against him.

Following revelations that alleged House Bill 6 passed using bribery and other illegal means, lawmakers worked to repeal two major pieces of the legislation. A separate bill removed the more than $1 billion financial bailout.

In June of [2021], the Ohio House expelled Householder from the state legislature.

Jeffrey Longstreth was the other power-broker in the Ohio FirstEnergy Corp. and HB-6 scandal. Along with Cespedes they pleaded guilty to participating in a racketeering conspiracy involving more than $60-million paid to again, a 501(c)(4) entity (that Citizens United and SCOTUS allowed) to pass and uphold a billion-dollar nuclear plant bailout. Indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2020 they were all charged with confiscated documents alleging Larry Householder, of Glenford, Ohio, Matthew Borges, of Bexley, Ohio, Neil Clark, of Columbus, Jeffrey Longstreth and Juan Cespesdes of whom conspired to violate the racketeering statute through honest services wire fraud, receipt of millions of dollars in bribes and money laundering. The 501(c)(4) entity Generation Now was also charged. According to the U.S. Attorneys Office of the Southern District of Ohio’s website:

“The defendants [Cespedes and Longstreth] then also allegedly worked to corruptly ensure that HB 6 went into effect by defeating a ballot initiative to overturn the legislation. The Enterprise received nearly $61 million into Generation Now from an energy company and its affiliates during the relevant period.

In his plea, Longstreth admits to organizing Generation Now for Householder, knowing the entity would be used to receive bribe money to further Householder’s bid for Speaker of the House. Longstreth managed Generation Now bank accounts and engaged in financial transactions designed to conceal that the energy company was a source of funding to Generation Now.”

*Jeff Longstreth, then the campaign manager for Ohioans for Health Care Reform, in an appearance on “The State of Ohio” in July 2011.*

Cespedes and Longstreth both made plea deals to avoid prison in return for cooperation with prosecutors and federal government investigators.

Tragically for 20^th and 21^st-century U.S. state and federal lobbyists, the politics and government puppets controlled or bought by mega-wealthy corporations and their executives, no thanks to Citizens United, and the rampant immorality, dark money, and depraved ethics… doesn’t stop in Ohio. This cancer, if you will, has reached even the highest court in the land: the U.S. Supreme Court bench.

#3 – Clarence Thomas and Brett Cavanaugh

It is an often employed legal-political defense tactic by attorneys and their wealthy, powerful male clients caught in, or accused of degrees of sexual misconduct, to assault, or to raping a woman. The tactic? It is to humiliate, to marginalize, to demean, or to verbally assault the character of a female victim or victims. The current Jeffrey Epstein files, Epstein and Maxwell’s illicit illegal sex-trafficking and pedophile crime-ring, and the cover-up and/or divert facts and events that allow very powerful men (such as President Trump) to repeatedly escape prison sentences and convictions. Blame the victim and rip up the (absent? indifferent? mentally-ill?) parents because big-money buys unaccountability and avoids real justice, especially for the victim(s), family, and close friends. There are two prime examples of this defense tactic: Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh.

*Associate Justices Clarence Thomas (left) and Brett Kavanaugh (right) of the U.S. Supreme Court*

The date is October 6, 1991 and soon after conservative lawyer Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by then President George H.W. Bush – (R), debate proceedings were to take a sordid, ugly turn.

Anita Hill, of Oklahoma and a graduate of Oklahoma State University (Bachelor’s Science) and Yale University (Doctorate of Law) and later admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1980, Hill had a successful law career to look forward to and the opportunities to go far in the U.S. Justice courts. She had everything ahead of her and as a result had no ulterior motives to risk that bright future. None at all. Why do that?

But Hill was subpoenaed by Congress to testify publicly in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing regarding her FBI interview about sexual harassment done to her by Clarence Thomas, also of Yale University, and her supervisor at the Department of Education and the EEOC.

Hill endured over 8-hours of grueling questions by an all white-male judiciary committee, some of which were ridiculous and not relevant to the accusations at hand on Clarence Thomas’ misconduct. The October 1991 Thomas scandal turned out not to be about the details of his behavior, but the real scandal was all the evidence that America did not get to hear and witness. Why not? The Senate judiciary committee—again all white males—worked to change and to redirect the conversation away from the character and background of Clarence Thomas, a potential justice in our land’s highest court. Instead, the committee made it about the victim. The hearing devolved into a he-said-she-said spat or squabble. Americans watching didn’t know what was true and what was fabricated. And keep in mind, Senator Joe Biden (D) was the chairman of that hearing.

For the sake of argument, if it were only one woman bringing the accusations against Clarence Thomas, then perhaps it was a bad misunderstanding, a squabble between coworkers. That is the oversimplified view that can overlook human errors, as is often done with powerful men and the American public soon loses interest and forgives and forgets any wrong-doing. After all, Americans have a long, long history of romancing our famous or infamous bad boys and/or girls, almost a weird love-hate affair for deviant bad boys and girls like Bonny and Clyde, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, or Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid to name three duos. But that was not the case with Clarence Thomas.

When at least two other women (and perhaps more) corroborate and support Anita Hill’s testimony of Clarence Thomas, that is different than one woman; very different. And after the televised treatment of Anita Hill by the Senate Judiciary Committee to the nation, any other corroborating women with similar stories of Thomas’ sexual misconduct at work in 1991 would understandably think twice and fear for their public image and careers. Furthermore, it begs the question again, Why would Anita Hill risk all in doing this alone publicly and also damaging her reputation in the field of law as a successful lawyer? What did she have to gain other than her conscience, that felt it her duty to the American people to testify about Clarence Thomas’ integrity, character, and inappropriate sexism against women in the workplace?

Notably the other women were Angela Wright, Sukari Hardnett, Rose Jourdain, and Moira Smith, perhaps others who were too afraid to risk all from a pro-misogynist Senate Judiciary Committee in front of the world. This alleged behavior of Thomas indicates or suggests a trend of sexual misconduct that goes unreported, and maybe unpunished, repeatedly, but also not examined or investigated by authorities. If anything, this clearly shows very questionable patterns in Thomas’ views or beliefs about women, particularly a certain type of woman (not all women) that tempt or drive Clarence Thomas to inappropriate, unprofessional words, innuendos, and actions in secret without possible witnesses. Otherwise, Clarence Thomas wouldn’t have multiple women in his past accusing him of rude, vile, sexual misconduct in the workplace. If he were beyond reproach, there would be no women coming forward risking their public image, careers, and dignity in front of the nation.

What has America learned from the Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas hearings? As Cornell University grad, Harvard Law School grad, and University of Wisconsin Law School, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw states, “Very little,” and we certainly haven’t progressed enough in stopping the abuse of women and holding abusers accountable as she writes in her report on Civil Rights and Discriminations against women entitled, “We Still Have Not Learned from Anita Hill’s Testimony.”

Why haven’t we learned something? Continue reading.

Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court bench on July 9, 2018, by then first-term President Donald Trump. Almost as if the American people were reliving the interrogation and spectacle that was the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings from Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas, once again another associate justice nominee seemed to have a checkered past with women, Brett Kavanaugh.

The question once again, as it was 27-years ago with Clarence Thomas, was about Cavanaugh’s past behavior, ‘is there more than one woman accusing Cavanaugh of sexual assault or misconduct unbecoming of a Supreme Court justice?‘ And once again there was more than just one woman; there was at least three other women, perhaps more.

Christine Blasey Ford stated to the Senate Judiciary Committee during Kavanaugh’s nomination hearings in September 2018 that a very drunk Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in the summer of 1982, along with Brett’s friend Mark Judge watching, at a party in Bethesda, Maryland, and had “corralled” her in a closed bedroom at the house pinning her on the bed, groped her, and tried to remove her clothes. But both Kavanaugh and Judge were too drunk to rape her and she escaped. It is interesting to note that Judge, today a journalist and author, suffered from alcoholism growing up in the D.C. suburbs, recovered from alcohol abuse and later wrote about that rehab and recovery in his book, Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk. The Washington Post did a 7-minute fact-checking video that determined Brett Kavanaugh’s veracity about the questions the Senate Judiciary Committee asked him under oath and his rebuttals of Ford’s testimony with regard to the other three accusers named. The video fact-check paints a very bad picture of Kavanaugh’s ability to be a real justice on the U.S. Supreme Court bench. Watch below…

Ironically, or not, on September 29, 2018, other individuals who spoke to the FBI who knew Brett Kavanaugh at Yale University and Mark Judge in his teens and young adult years, detailed claims of violent drunken behavior by Kavanaugh at Georgetown Preparatory School and in college, and that he lied about the full extent of his heavy drinking at the Senate hearings. This was reported by Charles Ludington, a Yale classmate, to the FBI. For some unknown reason the Judiciary Committee never had Ludington testify or pursue the investigation of his claim.

The details of the other women accusing Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault or witnessing the drunken assaults by Kavanaugh were soon muddled up, redirected to defending Kavanaugh, and shut out by the Judiciary Committee members. They are well documented and easy to research today. The FBI investigations into the allegations against Kavanaugh were ignored or blocked by White House Counsel and never given the go-ahead authority “to unilaterally investigate the 4,500 tips it received without first receiving further approval from the White House Counsel” and the President. Five years later after Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the bench, “the FBI confirmed that it didn’t investigate many of those tips. When it actually followed up on some relating to Kavanaugh, the White House curtailed the scope of the investigations and let them fizzle out and fade into history.”

Retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy administers the Judicial Oath to Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh in the Justices’ Conference Room, Supreme Court Building. Mrs. Ashley Kavanaugh holds the Bible – image: Fred Schilling / Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

In my mind, whether or not these allegations against Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh—from multiple women ready to talk to authorities at the FBI about these two men’s behavior toward them and other untold numbers of women—isn’t so much the the real issue. What it does represent is a still pervasive abuse or harassment culture on women in this nation by wealthy, powerful men and likewise their male and female accomplices, partners, or protectors in their “Good Ole Boys Club” circles. Felony crimes or not, many rich, powerful men get away with it time and time again because of said American patriarchal culture. Furthermore, it is actually more telling, more damning of the men and those perverted patterns they are still insulated from that are the crushing realities in this country. Women in the U.S. are still vulnerable and unprotected by our law-enforcement, justice system and investigators from (male dominated) local areas to the (male dominated) top federal or corporate sectors by these free-range sexual male predators. Trends tell a story, patterns and track-records tell a more whole story, and where there is smoke or multiple smoke plumes over time, there is almost always fire and more fires.

This abuse has to be stopped. It has to be punished appropriately with thorough investigation, due process, and the current “Boys Club mentality” in this country must be exposed for what it is and how they get away with it over and over with repeated cover-ups and victim shaming by their power, authority, and money. Is that what America stands for, discriminating justice for some, and less so for others?

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Has America increasingly become a safe-haven for wealthy, powerful ~~white~~ men and their unspoken backroom “Good Ole Boys Club” shelters? If so, then we are no better than those evil, undemocratic, lawless, drug-cartel countries of authoritarian rule and male domination at the expense of the unprotected and victims of misogyny, or racism, or religious persecutions by men who take and do whatever they want.

By the way, is this honestly the United States of America today?:

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag
of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one Nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.“

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always

Of Me, By Me, and For Me

Posted on October 22, 2025 by Professor Taboo

In the wake of what has happened here September 10th, 2025, in Orem, Utah, USA, where severe, violent extremism rose another notch, I am begging all Americans, every single one of you to please, please, please, PLEASE prove me wrong with the obvious direction this country is being led. Please prove me wrong! Speak up, do not stay silent… sadly, at the risk of your own life, like Charlie Kirk had the political right to do, whether his world-view, his political persuasion was right or wrong, fascist or American, SPEAK THA EFFIN UP and get active in your governmental process! I cannot emphasize this dire NEED enough, never.

Therefore, let me show all of you Americans the very poor state, the decaying cancer that has become the United States of America due to the apathy and non-participating American public standing up with their citizens of power to the unscrupulous authority, corrupt government, and persuasive mega-wealthy Dark Money into a Constitutional revamp that has been bringing down this republic democracy in which our 18th-century Founding Fathers fought so hard with their own blood, toil, tears, and sons.

Also, on a sidenote I do not mind one bit the length at which I examine and write about this subject of the decaying, cancerous condition and health of American democracy today and of the severe apathy and willful ignorance of American voters/citizens. Thus, if this blog publication becomes 3,000 or 5,000 or 20,000 words long, so be it. This understanding of the scummy, swampy, cesspool that is our nation’s current politics and corrupt wealth in it… is far, far, FAR too important for me to worry needlessly about reader’s short attention spans and shallow comprehension, or more to the point, their shameful laziness to read intently and earnestly what I’ve written here. So grin and bear it if you care about the terminal illness of your country, my country, our country as true Americans.

Let’s get started!

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There is a juxtaposed personality, or a duel and conflicting personality, or personalities in American politics. Not that that is big news, but the reality is that it has been present in our nation (and other nations) since the first cries of our 18th-century independence from Great Britain. 21st-century Americans must wake up and accept the state and condition of their dying nation! The fight to keep this democracy functioning is a DAILY responsibility. Period. Always has been, always will be.

This begs the question: where is the problem? Where is the cancer? I will tell you.

Our politicians and government no longer fear the American public or the American voters. Why? Because the “average American,” the masses of this country can no longer hurt those in positions of power and wealth, or they do not know how. The American public, the ordinary American voter/citizen has allowed this impunity to manifest inside U.S. government and its puppeteers. How? How has this been allowed to happen?

Our Lust for In-Your-Face Entertainment Value

Americans have always embraced affectionally their evil-doers, their entertaining criminals, e.g. D.B. Cooper, Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, Anna Delvy, etc., and the long list goes on. Americans LOVE their defiant icons of cultish personality. Power, wealth, authority, defiance, and fear are extremely intoxicating, addicting to American politicians and the American public. Most of Americans are endlessly tempted and they fall from grace because of the severe pressures that go with a “public image,” celebrity status, and many of us worship them by our obsessive following of them like love-sick puppy dogs.

This too often permeates into our national and state governing as well. There is no exception either as a politician “Of the People, By the People, and For the People,” probably much more than all American voters could possibly imagine that goes on in Washington D.C., or those of us who become addicted roadies, followers, worshipers of them. And those officials/criminals in government roles must live up to a 24/7, 365-days a year, certain public image until they resign or retire from public service whether they like it or not, or whether they can demonstrate the moral fiber, character, and willpower to just say no… repeatedly. They must fake it publicly in order to generate campaign funding to stay in office and maintain their constituent’s support at the polls. Many fail, many are outright hypocrites whether intentional or not, and yet sadly the American people are duped over and over by these sketchy types of political personalities still to this day! This is and always has been the overly glamorized American culture by Hollywood. How? What are they really feeding it?

The Conscious, Preconscious, and Unconscious

Why is this lust for power, authority, and enormous wealth such a regular occurrence past and present with our American political officials? How do they keep getting appointed or voted into office? What is the psychology behind these public figures, and equally as much, with is the psychology behind their constituents and supporters that make them their elected governing officials?

*Sigmund Freud’s model of the human psyche* – *Image from The Living Philosophy, Oct. 2021*

The father of psychology Sigmund Freud, theorized in his 1915 paper that the human psyche had three distinct levels of consciousness, preconsciousness, and unconsciousness using a metaphorical diagram of an iceberg. I personally like Freud’s theory of the human psyche. In several ways I think there is much truth in its content and it is demonstrated every day and night by our human species, particularly in times of crisis. What exactly was Dr. Freud explaining to us?

Freud’s iceberg model was a metaphor for the structure or makeup of the human mind. Above the water was our awake, conscious mind of thoughts and perception that the general public around us witness. Everything below the waterline was the preconscious and unconscious, i.e. memory stored knowledge learned from life experiences and deeper below the waterline our instincts, fears, dark defiant inclinations, and selfish motives of the Me we usually hide from the general public. I believe this blueprint is a very true representation of all human psyches around the world; in all of us like it or not.

More precisely though the “Id” or ‘the It’ and the Ego and the Superego are all in conflict with each other for dominance and according to Freud are the driving forces of all human internal conflict with the bad, good, or neutrally egalitarian human decisions we make throughout our lifetimes.

The Id is the genetic, hormonal, and transgenerational part of the psyche we are born with. The Ego and Superego develop after and from the Id. In other words, the former is all formed from nature and genetics. The Ego and Superego are formed from our immediate family (parents, siblings, etc.), extended family, and our communal environment. There is no nurturing in the Id, but over time more and more nurturing is impacted upon the Ego and Superego. Below the waterline are all of our basic instincts, physiology, primal urges (libido) and impulses running wild inside our bodies, heads or perhaps sometimes manifested in actual behaviors. The Id is not organized or managed by logic and reasoning. According to Dr. Freud the Pleasure Principle rules the Id—it is energized by self-satisfaction and not by what society and others dictate. In my lifetime, I have found this principle, this Freudian theory to be mostly true.

The Superego can be thought of as the counter-balance to the Id and what we have individually learned throughout our own social life experiences. In short, the Id is the For Me, By Me, Of me, and the Superego is the bigger than me and my wants, or the ‘Of the People, By the People, For the People‘ manifestation. Within this third are two subparts: the full conscience and the Ego ideal. The conscience is the summation of what our culture, our parents, family, and community have taught to us and everyone what is right and what is wrong morally and ethically. When we do not live up to that standard or code, we feel shame and guilt, not only from society and family, but the Superego as well. The Ego ideal therefore would be the best internal version of one’s self that family, society and culture approves. And this approval has benefits: accomplishment, pride, and value to name just three.

The Superego also has the ability of forethought. It has the long-term in mind rather than the immediate primal urges and self-satisfaction. It is more altruistic in nature/role than self-gratifying and narcissistic, the angel on your shoulder so to speak, rather than the devil.

The Ego, according to Freud and in the proper German translation, is nothing more or less than the ‘I’ of your existence, the literal awake part of you. It has a very difficult role to play. It serves three domains, three masters. It must fairly manage the impulses of the ‘Id‘ and the Superego as well as reality or your societal/cultural world. This struggle is demonstrated daily by our individual actions 24/7, 365-days and nights a year. When your Superego and your Id are aligned and balanced with reality, then all seems to be happy, content, peaceful, and hopeful.

“There is nothing in the id that could be compared with negation… nothing in the id which corresponds to the idea of time”⁠
—Sigmund Freud

Whether one agrees wholly with Freud’s model, partly, or not at all in any way, I find much truth to his theory of all human psyches—it can be found one way or another in every single human being on the planet.

Applying Psychology and the Human Psyche to Our Nation

How our better self, the Ego as Freud puts it, manages the conflicts within us and without us between the Id and the Superego. It is of course the ultimate and never-ending debate of what’s best and what is not best in the timeline of human endeavors. I want to show how poorly, how dismally America is doing today on a psychological, societal, and political level both domestically (locally) and internationally.

Never before in the whole history of the United States has the wealth of one nation, in nearly two and half centuries, been so atmospheric, so high, so abundant among so few citizens than in the 21st-century United States. The USA is currently the 10th richest country in the world by GDP per capita constant prices. That might be a surprise to many, but when compared to 196 designated official nations, that is remarkably outstanding. That leaves in the dust all of our perceived “enemy” nations like China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. But underneath this outer shell of glitz, bling, and power is a fragile, decaying illness inside. The biggest growing, cancerous tumors inside the U.S. are its economic model (hyper-capitalism) fed by mega-corporations, as well as its bribed, corrupt, scandalous government officials by those wealthiest individuals, their corporations, and their Super PACs. American history has shown adequately that it isn’t just one political party either. It is now the 21st-century millions, billions, and trillions that has infested our entire political and judicial systems. What and/or who is specifically responsible for this metastasized cancer inside the United States? Many well-educated, well-informed, secular Americans who know inside and out this country’s Charters of Freedom, as a whole, and their Core Founding Fathers who designed them will say two things or two people:

Citizens United and James Bopp in 2010, and…
Leonard Leo and Robert Schenck.

Pick your poison, any of those four in conjunction with each other and backed secretly, anonymously by a few extremely wealthy Super PACs and donors are the cancer, the power players that now rule or ruled this country straight to the ER. Let’s look at the consequences of these four entities since before 2010 and the Supreme Court’s eventual Landmark decisions of Citizens United vs FEC, followed by Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022.

The Root of All Evil

It is the popular pop cliche that “Money is the root of all evil.” Yes, it probably is given how human behavior around it, with it, and using it too often leads to many sins and evil. But this cliche is actually a misquote and misinterpretation of 1 Timothy 6:10 which actually states:

“For the love of money is a root of all ^[a]sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” — NASB 1995

In this passage’s correct exegetical meaning the author(s) intends that the love of or affection for or obsession with money and/or power is a root, a pathway to all sorts of evil, corruption, scandal, bad moral judgement, and destruction of not only marriages, families, and careers, but also of one’s public image… but only temporarily in 21st-century America.

How many people, friends, family members, celebrities, sports stars do you know or can think of that clearly change in their behavior toward others (you?) and change their personality when enormous fortunes fall upon them? Think about it. Who can you list? Abnormal wealth, usually in large degrees, changes a person’s life sometimes for the better other times for the worst. Some can handle the change, others fail miserably.

Personally, I have almost always found in my experience, about 90% of the time, people, family, or friends who have come upon vast amounts of money and with it inevitable socioeconomic status, they definitely change. More often than not, the change is quite unhealthy for them and everyone around them. All of us see this in our lifetimes and learn about its corrupting nature throughout human history. We have learned about the Seven Deadly Sins, that too often distract us from a virtuous altruistic life of healthy inclusion. Of the seven deadly sins, the ones always associated with massive wealth are greed, gluttony, and implicitly, sloth. The many temptations, distractions from true life as Henry David Thoreau alludes in Walden: Or, Life in the Woods, and the slippery slopes of falling into the other four deadly sins are more often than not irresistible to most. This is why personally I am and always will be a Minimalist. As a result, I would never in a million years make a popular, quid pro quo American politician or lobbyist; not ever. I do not have the stomach for, much less the Machiavellian traits required today for either Washington D.C., or Austin, Texas, careers. As the saying goes, my soul or integrity are not for sale.

Does Money Equal Free Speech?

Beginning in 2008 a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization called Citizens United led initially by Floyd Brown and later David N. Bossie, both very Right Conservatives and well connected to extremely wealthy conservative donors and the corporate sector of campaign donors who all share the same ideology, won the Landmark Supreme Court Decision in January 2010 Citizens United vs FEC. With the legal assistance of Indiana attorney James Bopp, Jr., specializing in anti-abortion legislation, election laws, American campaign finance, and a staunch Republican activist, Citizens United, Brown, Bossie, Bopp, and several other extremely wealthy donors and organizations successfully pushed the argument of Money Equals Free Speech past the Supreme Court and into law. This SCOTUS decision would change the landscape of American politics, true democracy, campaign finance and donations entirely upside down for untold decades, possibly centuries given the new floodgates of enormous, ungodly amounts of money everywhere in our government and its elections. Worse still would be the start of the United Oligarchs of America where the wealthiest govern and control all aspects of American freedom and liberties.

And the numbers above have only skyrocketed since 2020 into stratospheric amounts to 2024. Since Nixon and Watergate lobbyist spending exploded to the Bush administrations from a $100-million dollar industry to a $2.5-billion dollar industry by 2009. It has only gotten gluttonous and hideously obese through 2024. Why now is our election process so vulnerable to the most heinous of corruption and bribery?

The arguments for and against money = free speech came down to basically two opposed positions: 1) the hiding and disguising (misleading) of unlimited amounts of campaign donations from the wealthiest donors, albeit individuals or corporations, or 2) the insane amounts of temptations that unlimited money favorably influences actual legislation for special interests groups, minority beliefs, and minority ideologies, and thus literally screw over the greater common American, whether they are in the majority or not. In other words, a few richest entities and individuals of our nation can dictate what sort of life the vast and ordinary Americans from coast to coast can have or not have despite their votes at the ballot boxes.

Fortunately, for the Living Evolving Constitutionalist of which I advocate, the poster boy for the deplorable corruptions, briberies, and deceit in our money-loaded repulsive elections was nurtured and manifested by Citizens United and James Bopp, Jr. Who is the caught, criminal poster boy? It is Jack Abramoff. Jack Abramoff has served two prison terms because he always wanted to circumvent the Law of Our Land. And there are many others that could be listed. But just in Abramoff’s investigation-scandal twenty-four (24) others were convicted of corruption or bribery directly nurtured by Citizens United, James Bopp, Jr. and two other key accomplices: Leonard Leo and Robert Schenk. I highly recommend that Rev. Schenk’s link be thoroughly read and comprehended! Why? Because Schenk later realized, far too late, that all the Christian Nationalism he had fought for and gone to jail for previously was a huge, huge regrettable mistake.

“When religion is placed at the service of a political party, it corrupts both. To claim that one political figure uniquely represents God’s will is a form of anti-Christian idolatry.” — Reverend Robert Schenk

Rev. Robert Schenk would be a second poster boy of what Citizens United and attorney James Bopp, Jr. have irreparably created—pure, unadulterated corruption and bribery at the highest levels of our federal government. Period, including our Supreme Court. No ifs, ands, or buts. Period. James B. Mintz founder of the Mintz Group, a research and financial investigation group and a former adjunct professor at Columbia University Journalism School, finds six components of how corrupt politicians and lobbyists launder the “gratuity gifts” that buy-off and bribe our federal officials. His example is Paul Manafort and his indictment as Trump’s 2016-17 campaign chairman:

And this sort of corrupt underhanded dealing and influence on elections happens all the time in various forms. What Citizens United and its champion, Bopp created was nothing short of legalized bribery of Washington D.C. In fact, this is a direct quote straight from James Bopp, Jr.’s mouth:

“I have found that being rich is always an advantage. It’s always an advantage to have money. You get a nicer house, a nicer car, you know, steak every night, whatever it is you are into, okay… and fine wine, and you can pay for speech if you want to. Okay? So there is always an advantage to have money and people with money will always have an advantage. Always.”

Boy howdy, if that isn’t rich, superior, snub-your-nose, white-man arrogance, then I have land on the Moon to sell you. That is the most undemocratic, uncouth, audacious hubris stuff to say to a nation, his nation founded upon the People, the ordinary, hard working People of America who are not the upper 10% or 15% of the most wealthy in the nation. They are average Americans who absolutely have a voice, as equally as anyone else has a voice Of the People, By the People, and For the People whether they are filthy rich or not! Man, James Bopp, Jr. chaps my ass royally with that level of blatant pomposity! And readers, he is the reason Citizens United succeeded in 2010 and directly corrupted this supposedly fair democratic republic nation. No debate whatsoever; he and the ramrodded Supreme Court Justice appointments by the last six (6) Republican administrations going back to Richard Nixon to deliberately ideologically fix our highest court in the land.

Though there are many Jack Abramoffs to list as incapable of resisting corruption, deceit, and bribes in our nation’s capitol due directly to Citizens United, James Bopp, and several other big money players, Abramoff is one of the few who was caught and who could never learn his lesson even after two lengthy prison sentences. What does that say about unlimited money flooding into our politics and government the last 15-20 years? How many excuses will be made to keep unlimited big money inside our elections and government?

Before moving on I want to address the heavy power and influence “campaign finance” via Citizens United now has inside Washington D.C. with Leonard Leo, the puppeteer, and come back to Robert Schenk’s part in it as the puppet.

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Who is Leonard Leo the man? What has shaped his life and character? Well, describing Leonard Anthony Leo is not at all difficult. Why? Because he has single handedly reshaped our nation’s Supreme Court. The highest of all courts in our country. That’s right, one man, not several presidents, not the People of the United States—that is to say, not ALL the People—but one single man created the line of dominos then tipped the first one forward and the domino effect is still happening today.

*Federalist Society co-chairman and former Executive Vice President Leonard Leo speaks to media at Trump Tower in New York, Nov. 16, 2016. Carolyn Kaster/AP*

Leo’s biggest accolade to date was his engineering of the Republican supermajority of our current Supreme Court Justices via his Federalist Society and several/many players and donors. Soon after SCOTUS followed HIS personal agenda and rolled back a woman’s right to an abortion, especially in critical or emergency situations. Does Leo’s version of Catholicism represent all the People of the United States? Is this a true republic when fringe minorities rule the land? He thinks it does. Leonard Leo, let me remind you of two Scriptural passages:

“Therefore ^[a]whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. ³ For rulers are not a cause of fear for ^[b] good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; ⁴for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.”
— Romans 13: 2-7 (NASB 1995)

“Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, ¹⁴or to governors as sent ^[a] by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.”
— 1 Peter 2:13-14 (NASB 1995)

On the contrary though, Holy Scripture does not always apply to the whole, but only to the individual interpretation or belief of that Scripture’s exegesis (Opus Dei). Often one person or one tiny group believes their ideology applies to the world, not just themselves. This was and still is Leonard Leo.

Personally, Leo has been deeply shaped by his radical religious faith of ultra-conservative Catholicism, and the death of his daughter by complications of her spinal bifida at 14-years old. Yet, somehow (and who knows) that tragedy caused him to attack abortion rights for American women and to go relentlessly after the Roe v Wade’s repeal. It was purely a personal vendetta on our country and he succeeded with the aid of the Federalist Society… very sadly though at the expense of a much higher mortality rate for American pregnant women and their unborn or infants in 14 states with new abortion bans, including one of the highest ones, my native state of Texas. That is horribly and grossly disproportionate for one 14-year old girl named Margaret Leo, his daughter, for all the deaths due to inaccessible emergency medical care. Really? One girl for 100’s and 1,000’s of other women and infants? WTF Leonard! But I assure you 100% that Leo would say something like, ‘That’s God’s domain and only His domain, not man’s.’ I’ve heard that over and over and over ad infinitum from religious fanatics. In the end, Leonard Leo received in particular a $1.6-BILLION dollar donation that he used for slush funds to buy off near hundreds of activist leaders, including one that violently marched upon our Capitol building on January 6, 2021, in an insurrection on our federal government killing several people and Capitol Police sworn to defend the very institution Leo, Trump, his Federalist Society, and his crony politicians were attacking!

However, when so many powerful, well-connected, wealthy men in Washington D.C. serve only themselves, they will turn on you in a heart beat. Has Leo learned this painful lesson of who he serves or uses as a puppet? From Politico.com, May 2025:

Trump goes after Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society in fury over court ruling

“The president, in a post on his social media platform, slammed Leonard Leo, the former chair of the Federalist Society, calling him a “sleazebag” who “probably hates America.”

[…]

Trump’s attack came after the U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday struck down his tariffs, a massive blow to the primary pillar of the administration’s economic agenda. The ruling was temporarily stayed by an appellate court on Thursday. One of the judges on the three-person panel that blocked the tariffs is Timothy Reif, who was appointed by Trump in his first term.

The blame, Trump said, lay with the Federalist Society.

“I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations,” he wrote. “This is something that cannot be forgotten!”

[…]

And at a time when much of Trump’s agenda is facing tests at the Supreme Court, Trump’s vitriolic attack on Leo has the potential to further distance the president from the court’s conservative justices. All three of Trump’s high court nominees, as well as Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, are known to be close to Leo.”

What lessons has Leonard Leo and his closest associates really learned from their Supreme Leader in the White House? Dealing with fringe special interests and greedy megalomaniacs has a risky, high cost. When the proverbial feces hits the fan, historically it has always been “every man for himself; everyone will go down with me” mentality.

Robert Schenk was one of Leonard Leo’s, James Bopp’s, and David Bossie’s puppets from the Evangelical activist circles to help galvanize the nation’s Conservative Right behind Citizens United, ironically very much a minority group in our country. As many corrupt lobbyists and D.C. politicians say, “Money talks, bullshit walks,” even when you are a fringe minority money dictates the minority’s ideology upon the majority, as attorney James Bopp, Jr. boasts above in his direct quote of ‘being rich.’ Today, Rev. Robert Schenk has done a complete 180-degree turnaround on his beliefs; listen/watch closely:

Rev. Robert Schenck, one of the first to abandon the Far Right Conservative’s extremist movement on Pro-life abortion laws (Roe v Wade) after years of being a radical activist in that same movement.

Bottom-line? Easy, there is just a corrosive, obese amount of buy-off money (bribery) everywhere in Washington D.C. and Citizens United, James Bopp, Jr., Leonard Leo and their created culture in the money schemes/scams are simply too predominate in our modern politics. Period, full stop. And unless Citizens United v FEC is overturned, repealed… it will never stop; it will only get worse every year, two years, and four years until American democracy completely collapses precisely like the Roman Empire in the 4th- and 5th-centuries CE. Guaranteed.

#1 – Former Illinois Governor (D) Rod Blagojevich

Though indicted and sentenced, former Democratic Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was just two years prior to the SCOTUS Landmark decision of Citizens United vs FEC, he is still one of the best known victims, or rather criminal felons who got caught, who fell victim(?) in the 21st-century to ungodly, obese amounts of money in U.S. state or federal politics and legislation thanks to the lead-up of Citizens United.

Every day across the United States, in every single state, our political system is bankrolled by an onslaught of armies of wealthy fund raisers and their associate donors throwing in millions and millions of campaign dollars to their own special interests and puppet candidates. When those super wealthy donors front $50k, $200k, or $1-million dollars, they demand favors, paybacks, or kickbacks.

And no thanks to Citizens United in 2010, Brown and Bossie, attorney James Bopp, Jr. Leonard Leo, and our Republican supermajority Supreme Court, a wink and a nod that borders ever so thinly on bribery, U.S. politics has been and is as corrupt as it ever has been. Before it was cool to be filthy corrupt, soliciting bribes, wire fraud, and attempting extortion prior to 2010, Rod Blagojevich was the poster boy forerunner and first major consequence of too much money in state-federal politics.

#2 – Borges, Householder, Clark, Cespedes, Longstreth, & FirstEnergy Corp.

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#3 – Clarence Thomas and Brett Cavanaugh

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Temporary note — I am trying to finish this post while dealing with my Mom’s soon and eventual death from severe dementia/Early Alzheimer’s and other medical complications. I am handling a LOT at the moment. Please bear with me and thank you so much for your patience and understanding.

To be continued…

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always

Black Underworld Inc. – Part IV

Posted on May 11, 2019 by Professor Taboo

Well, after a few breaks from my inundated, unavoidable family and life obligations and the time-effort they required, I have finally finished and posted Part IV! Thank you for your patience and understanding these last four months.

Previously in Part III we learned that the higher and wider the gap of inequality in the United States, the more extreme, converse abuses and crimes its population will engage and endure. America’s corporate world dabbles in, even thrives off of this inequality and distress and often yields to the temptations of the more profitable grey market which is never far removed from the black market—in several cases the two are indistinguishable. In this Part IV I want to burrow into five of at least fourteen specific markets or tentacles that comprise the insatiable beast called BU Inc.

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Illegal Gambling & Games
The sole reason illegal gambling and gaming take place in the U.S. or by way of the U.S. is its highly lucrative profits without any taxation. “Each year, it is estimated that casinos and sports-books in Nevada pay $868.6 million in taxes” says Casino.org an online casino guide website. Imagine if those gambling-gaming houses could keep that money. The combined illegal gambling-gaming market is reportedly a $67 – $380-billion dollar industry, a tax free industry. Too many American citizens and businesses, whether law-abiding or not, seem to not want to pay taxes or their legitimate fair share of taxes. Why?

There are perhaps four generally popular, risky or life-threatening gambling-gaming activities in the U.S. Street racing packs high-speed, oil, carbon-monoxide and rubber for an adrenaline high and big money for winning crews and driver. Though illegal high-stakes racing is on the rise across the nation, Southern California is the epicenter. There is typically a race or races every night. If caught, drivers can sit in jail for up to 90-days; a small price to pay (in their minds) given the huge rewards of winning, upwards of $20,000+ in some big races. Reaching 100 MPH in about 6-seconds then over 130+ MPH in longer races, they do it for street respect and a winner-takes-all prize. But it can be at the expense of pedestrian bystanders and other non-participating drivers caught in the middle of chance “takeover” races they were oblivious to. Only a small group of drivers and fans know about the when and where of races. Injured or killed pedestrians are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. For more, read Out of Control by the L.A. Times.

Cock-fighting and dog-fighting in the U.S. have become lucrative illegal games of gambling the last 25-years. The ASPCA states in their A Closer Look at Dog Fighting report Why Do People Get Involved with Dog-fighting:

There are many reasons people are drawn to dog-fighting. The most basic is greed. Major dogfight raids have resulted in seizures of more than $500,000, and it is not unusual for $20,000 – $30,000 to change hands in a single fight. Stud fees and the sale of pups from promising bloodlines can also bring in thousands of dollars. […]

For others, the appeal simply seems to come from the sadistic enjoyment of a brutal spectacle.

Cash confiscated from an illegal gambling ring in Nashville, Tennessee. (Source: wsmv.com)

Today elaborate and extensive breeding techniques for hostile/killer animal bloodlines with very basic, crude genetic education has turned cock- and dog-fighting into a thriving and growing million-dollar black industry.

Finally, there is the widely popular, fanatical and illegal Sports betting in and by way of the U.S. Currently sports betting is an approximate $150-billion per year illegal market according to the American Sports Betting Coalition. This year in 2019 there is a race by some 20+ states to make sports gambling legal, regulated, and to take chunks out of wagers and winnings for state tax-revenues. Gamblers and underground gambling-gaming houses are fighting these changes; they do not want to give up more of their “profits.” This means there will likely always be illegal sports betting in the U.S. to evade state and federal taxes. This creates more problems. A large sector of America, mostly the economic upper 20% – 30% do not want to pay their taxes. Therefore, this breeds and sustains black markets such as sports gambling and affiliate laundering markets.

Phony Pharma
The majority of American prescription drug patients want or need their pharmaceuticals for one or two reasons: 1) they must have them to survive their chronic medical issues and illnesses, and/or 2) the cost to patients and insurers fluctuates relative to economic variables throughout the entire chain of manufacturing, from research, to FDA approval, to production and distribution, to end-user and their insurance coverage, semi-coverage, or no coverage. The fact will always remain, everyone in that entire pharma chain affects all the others. Period. Legislatures must factor their policies with all six phases in mind.

When it comes to a matter of life or death, or even getting by until something improves, legally or not, patients or end-users will do whatever it takes to survive. Common medicines such as inhalers, antibiotics, or insulin for diabetes are rarely affordable. Those three widely used meds for chronic illnesses are a very small part of America’s health problems overly managed by pharmaceuticals. Just a one-month supply of legal legitimate insulin costs $900 at the pharmacy. Between 2002 and 2013 legal insulin prices tripled that. According to a February 2019 Fortune.com article:

According to a survey by the Commonwealth Fund, just 12.4% of Americans ages 19 to 64 are uninsured, a rate the Commonwealth Fund notes is statistically unchanged since 2016 despite efforts by the Trump administration to weaken the law.

But the number of underinsured Americans has steadily climbed, increasing from approximately 29 million in 2010 to 44 million in 2018. Underinsured is defined by those whose out-of-pocket costs or deductible comprise 5-10% of their income. These individuals find it more difficult to cover their medical bills, which can often turn into debt.

As healthcare and pharmaceutical costs remain fairly steady, or higher, and/or rising, millions of Americans are increasingly underinsured. These are a handful of causes for a thriving black underground phony pharma market. With demand on the rise exponentially, a demand now higher than heroin, this illegal trade has gotten uglier and usually the consequences are deadly, immediately and in the short and mid-term.

A vast number of phony pharma dealers and distributors risk their liberties and rights as “free” citizens and going to prison if caught in order to deliver patients their life-giving prescriptions—prescriptions they otherwise could not legally afford due to insurance denials and/or deductibles nor the mandatory health guidelines of obtaining prescription refills, i.e. the monthly or bimonthly doctor checkups, tests, etc. Those checkups are by no means cheap for further additional reasons. And as law-enforcement clamps down on this illegal business, they push it further underground. In turn, black market prices rise, then more ruthless criminal opportunists get involved for the higher profits. Despite good intentions of sons, daughters, nieces or nephews making Robin Hood pharmacy deliveries for family and friends, consuming or injecting unregulated, untested medications from producers sold without the licensed experienced permission of a medical doctor and staff puts the user at high risk for overdose, misuse, and severe side-effects or permanent damage, sometimes death.

Many self-made self-taught pharmacists setup their own chemical labs, mix-up and package their own knock-off meds that are in high demand. For example, many of the aforementioned chronic illness prescriptions above stimulate a rise of homemade pharma labs. Their kitchens become a mini-production line based on internet printed recipes of chemical ingredients, volumes, weights, and procedures making a sketchy cheaper consumer street-product. But very high profit margins for kitchen-pharmacists in a high-demand American society who cannot get enough pills and vials for every type of discomfort, pain, relaxation, or pleasure make all the risks worthwhile to improve their own economic distress.

Human Trafficking
For migrants entering illegally from Central America through Mexico to the U.S., surviving the days and nights in the desert is daunting, exhausting, and sometimes lethal. Yet, to flee the escalating violence in their native country they’ll pay Coyotes up to $5,000 upfront for ‘protection’ and a one-way attempt across the border. Along the way immigrants also face extortion, pathetic conditions, while young females are sometimes forced into global prostitution. For more detailed reports click here and here. If they make a successful entry across the border and get to their final, main hub like Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Antonio, or Houston, the gang/cartel extorts another large fee of up to $3,500 – $5,000 for “employment hookups” with corrupt American business owners. More on this later.

For over two decades street gangs and crime syndicates or cartels have taken over the billion dollar human smuggling operation into the United States. The entire chain of illegal immigration from origin, to stash-houses (holding as many as 150 people in small 2-bedroom homes with no plumbing or electricity), to the next hub-transfer, to more stash-houses, to final destination, gangs, grey business groups, and cartels… here in the U.S. each are extortion setups for cash percentages. Everybody takes their large cut.

Over 62 illegal immigrants living in a Houston, TX stash-house for several weeks, 2017 – photo by U.S. I.C.E.

In a 2015 National Geographic investigative documentary, a 26-year old U.S. small business owner/contractor in Phoenix, AZ nicknamed Vicente, who has perfect English, told journalists how lucrative human trafficking works on the American side of the border:

As long as there is a hard border with a wall, no wall, threats from this President or that President, I.C.E, law-enforcement like Border Patrol, and an endless demand by American business owners wanting cheaper, cooperative, no hassles, blue-collar workers accepting minimum wage or less to work 12-16 hour days, and for no job health benefits, my life and family are good!

In fact, the harder the U.S. government makes it to cross, the more money I can demand and make! They keep me in business. And in D.C. when they demand less government intrusion into businesses and work operations, pass laws for more lax regulations and enforcement, that makes my job and money easier! [Vincente chuckles] Yeah, I’d be STUPID not to make fat cash like this. All the other American-born “taxi drivers” or human wranglers [also business owners/contractors] here I know have been doing this for generations. And this is just Phoenix! In the larger cities they rake in 2-3 times as much as I do! I want a piece of that American dream just like anyone else here… or coming here. To be honest, that dream is really a nightmare on BOTH sides of the border. But damn it sells; and for just about any amount.

Now that gangs and cartels are involved in every part of trafficking immigrants from origin to U.S. destination, any migrant that can’t pay or causes problems, gangs like Barrio 18 in Guatemala or Honduras will threaten or kill their family members back home until the debt is paid in full. When the operation goes difficult or bad, money is not the only tender—children or teen-girls are bartered throughout the gang/cartel systems as sexual commodities.

Regarding those aforementioned “employment hookups,” I personally have two cousins (Caucasian of course) near Austin, TX that have been in all aspects of the business-residential construction industry for all their lives—started out as 17-year olds with uncles. By 34 and 36 years old, they had their own official contracting businesses, one in plumping & electric, the other in residential and commercial landscaping. Both eventually progressed financially up into storage-unit facilities (several different locations), in particular RV & Boat storage for the highly popular, recreational lakes of Lake Travis, Lake Marble Falls, and Lake Georgetown. These three areas, as well as West Lake Hills and Rollingwood, are some of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S., and certainly in Texas. My cousins are both in their early 50’s now and fully retired from their 30-years of work, the last 10-15 managing their hired supervisors. By the way, my cousins both speak decent Spanish, their “supervisors/foremen” are always bilingual.

After many family reunions that take an entire day to socialize, eat, drink, socialize more, eat more, drink more, and perhaps some games or dancing, I overheard and learned firsthand from these two cousins the tricks-of-the-trade and their yellow brick road to fortune and the high-life. Their success, fortune, and retirement was really made when they owned their contracting/sub-contracting businesses in construction and landscaping, most of it on the sweat and backs of a Hispanic labor-force who almost always accepted low wages (compared to Caucasian workers) and who demanded no health benefits for themselves or families. Wages and salaries, much less benefits, were NOT one of their biggest business expense. One reunion when asked indirectly how he avoided immigration problems he replied with a grin,

Who tha hell wants more government!? As long as we have under-staffed and under-funded State and Federal labor and immigration agencies (led by some we know personally) or are virtually non-existent agencies and staff that I don’t want to pay taxes for and try not to, and Texas stays Red and/or D.C. has a Red Administration and Congress, there’s no worries—the economy is great! [he winked and smiled]

Needless to say, I didn’t need to ask what party-ticket he always voted for and supported. Just two more native Texans/Americans that fuel this ugly, inhumane BU Inc. For the appalling reality of official statistics, go here: The Facts of Human Trafficking. For an investigative look into human sex-trafficking going on inside the United States, like Phoenix, AZ, also a hub for illegal migrants, watch PBS Frontline Sex Trafficking in America.

Ghost Guns
When economic inequality is rising or high, other social and criminal problems follow. Street gangs, pimps and international drug cartels require untraceable guns to enforce their activity. Enter the booming black market of ghost guns: an illegitimate exact replica that has no ballistic record and has never been serialized. Hence, governments and law-enforcement have no records, and background checks on buyers are completely bypassed. For felons with history and illegal operations this is the only means of acquiring weapons. With recent technology in metal-milling just about anyone over the age of 12 can now make firearms at home. This is exactly what 17-year old Alwin Chen built himself and regularly carried inside his Clarksburg High School in Maryland.

Imagine for a minute that you are born into a very impoverished, violent crime-ridden neighborhood anywhere in the world, including the highest violent-crime cities in the United States like St. Louis, MO, Detroit, MI, Baltimore, MA, and Memphis, TN (2017 stats)… the nation’s top four lethal metro areas respectively. Economic, occupational, and mental-illness programs are either non-existent or extremely under-funded and under-staffed. This leaves most all residents with very few legitimate options to earn enough to pay rent and utilities just to barely get by. The more convenient choices for better money (but with a low education-level) are illegal choices. For a 13-year old Guatemalan boy whose parents and siblings were threatened or executed by street gangs and drug cartels, if he didn’t work for them, what would you do to save the lives of your family?

Street and drug gangs in corrupt, poor, violent Central American countries as well as in Mexico and the United States, e.g. Fresno, CA, home of the Fresno Bulldogs, usually buy with their Black Underground earnings ghost guns or “burner guns” to protect, maintain, and enforce their illegal business operations against other cartels/gangs and law-enforcement. Homemade ghost guns today are now the gang’s and syndicate’s bread and butter, their Savior of convenience with no serialization or backgrounds. Clean weapons.

Wealthy, well-supported pro-gun, 2nd Amendment fanatics, retailers, gun-shop owners, and national weapons organizations all lobby heavily in Washington, D.C., to keep regulation of weapons and weapon-sales to the “general public” either non-existent or very minimal/lax. When all the past chronic gun problems and legal issues of weapons manufacturing fade away—because producing them in your home-garage, or inside the cartel’s and hidden warehouses/stores of street gangs is too easy, more profitable—ghost gun milling will (and has already started) replace such traditional brand-names as Smith & Wesson, Heckler & Koch, Sig Sauer, Colt Defense, and many others. The only effective defense against such a future, extensively weaponized, trigger-happy armed society will be a total ban on gun-part sales.

Sadly, even a drastic nationwide ban on the sell of gun-parts won’t stop home-made produced weapons getting into the hands of 13-year old boys from extremely destitute families, homes, and neighborhoods or violent gangs and cartels, no matter what country is poor or wealthy, corrupt or compassionate, civilized or uncivilized. The genies will be out of the bottles. They will be near impossible to put back in unless Congressional countermeasures are swift and atomically comprehensive.

Human Organ Trade
Of all the fourteen tentacles of this Black Underworld market, the human organ trade is one of the most despicable black markets in existence for me personally. But for desperate impoverished people, severe desperation causes people to do unthinkable desperate acts. Once again, gross economic inequality creates yet another inhumane market: the buying and selling of human body-parts. Whether the donor is alive and consenting or not, doesn’t necessarily matter to the business dealers.

With legal supply unable to meet demand, the black market organ trade is thriving, and crime syndicates with global reach pocket millions from the desperately poor. Kidneys and livers grab some of the highest dollar amounts because they are 2-of-5 organs most vital to sustained life.

According to the World Health Organization:

The international organ trade links the incapacity of national health care systems to meet the needs of patients with the lack of appropriate regulatory frameworks or implementation elsewhere. It exploits these discrepancies and is based on global inequities. Accordingly, the growth and regularization of the international organ trade should be regarded as a global public health issue.

What part does the U.S. play in this global public health issue? The 2009 arrest of 44 people in New Jersey working in and knowingly benefiting from trafficking human organs shined a dark light on a growing, gross exploitation of health and economic inequities, in the U.S. and around the world. Wealthy patients pay top-dollar for organs from poor third-world residents and the 2009 arrests revealed only one out of many crime-rings of organ brokers operating within our country. Levy Rosenbaum, a rabbi in Brooklyn, NY and Finder-Middleman between donors, surgeons, and recipients boasted to the FBI agents he had been operating in this market for over 10-years. After serving about 2-years in prison, Rosenbaum was released.

Why would anyone get involved in this black market of human body-parts? The graphic below illustrates why.

Dr. Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the Dept. of Anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley is perhaps the most renown advocate and activist against human organ trafficking. In an April 2016 interview, Dr. Scheper-Hughes stated:

…some of the U.S.’s topmost medical facilities have been caught with illegally trafficked organs. Scheper-Hughes has tracked organs to hospitals and medical centers in New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, among other places. At one point, she found herself across the table from a group of organ transplant surgeons at a top Philadelphia hospital.

In the shadows of these transplant operations are the organized crime syndicates using many deceptive illegal scams. Sometimes they’ll convince the target they have a (false) medical issue, get them to a clinic, put them (forceably?) under anesthesia and remove the organ(s) they seek. Other means are promising a large cash payoff and some aftercare treatment… but after its removal. Then they short-change the donor and offer no rehab afterwards. In most of these 3rd world countries, the poor and powerless can do nothing.

Once the syndicates have the fresh organs, they fetch anywhere between $20,000 to $200,000 per organ depending on its destination country and wealth of the patient. The donors rarely receive $5,000 for their naivety. Organ brokers deal with anyone around the world and put them in touch with “broker-friendly” surgeons and hospitals in developed countries like the U.S., Canada, or China… wherever top-dollar is acquired. Many U.S. hospitals and doctors, says Scheper-Hughes, either ignore the organ’s point of origin or how, they simply don’t ask, or pretend the black organ trade doesn’t exist. Many doctors and hospitals knowingly get involved for the big cash-payoff, which in turn requires “experts” in laundering that income. They often justify/defend their illegal behavior, like Levi Rosenbaum remarked, by stating How is saving a life a crime?

Perhaps one of the most maligned, indignant defenses or justifications for participating in and promotion of organ trafficking is conveyed by author and investigative journalist Alison Weir regarding Scheper-Hughes’ assistance in the 2009 New Jersey arrests:

When the [New Jersey] events became public, [Scheper-Hughes] said that much of the world’s illicit traffic in kidneys could be traced to Israel. In a 2008 lecture, she is reported as identifying two motivations of Israeli traffickers as “greed” and “Revenge, restitution—reparation for the Holocaust.” She is reported as describing speaking with Israeli brokers who told her “it’s kind of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We’re going to get every single kidney and liver and heart that we can. The world owes it to us.’”

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In my final part five, the Conclusion, I want to further explore how chronic poverty and socioeconomic inequality (America’s desperate and/or homeless) is not only a petri-dish for extreme exploitation of the needy and Have-nots by the criminal Black Underworld as we’ve seen in these four parts, but more importantly in the end, in the long-run, costs everybody in a town, community, state, and nation—especially the U.S. with its exorbitant wealth among the top 10% of its population—no matter your social-economic class, status, or public image! You cannot buy yourself out of it or buy exclusivity from it. Everybody ends up paying for the cumulatively self-perpetuated crime, despair, and poverty in one way or another. Period.

I hope you’ll stay tuned for the Conclusion. Meanwhile, please do share any thoughts or questions in the comment-section below. Thanks.

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Black Underworld Inc. – Part III

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Professor Taboo

In Part II of Black Underworld Inc., the economic repercussions of foreign and American exploitation in Central America has sired many, if not most of our modern illegal immigration-refugee problems at our southern border. Economic indicators over 35-years show substantial income per capita inequality in Texas, the state that makes up half of the southern border as well as one of four states that immigrants-refugees might first enter. The reality is most illegal immigrants enter the U.S. through points-of-entry like airports and seaports, and stay well beyond their visas when here then disappear into the general population. A tiny percentage actually gain entrance through our southern border.

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According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics there are five (5) sectors driving the current national economy and have been for many years. Construction and Retail/Service are #3 and #4 respectively. Both of these U.S. industries illegally hire tens of thousands of low-wage workers via contractors, subcontractors, by mid-size and small businesses. Mega-corporations rarely do because they are high profile and therefore utilize buffer methods, or scapegoat contractors. In Texas and the U.S. this unprincipled, illegal labor finessing has become a booming underworld relationship, benefiting America’s upper 10% – 20% along with the mega-corporations or companies they own or are employed by.

The fact that the other three big driving GDP sectors of the U.S. economy—healthcare, technology, and non-durable manufacturing—demand highly educated, degreed, sector-specific experienced workers able to garner high wages. This trend has another domino effect. Sparse high-wage jobs channel most U.S. citizens or Texans without the under or post-grad degrees, or impeccable industry-experience into low-wage construction or retail/service occupations once again profiting the upper 1% – 20% of the nation’s population. This in turn contributes to America’s amassing economic inequality and a host of other domestic hardships and unlawful markets.

The More Extreme the Inequality, the More Extreme the Converse Abuses and Crimes

The majority of the U.S. economic wealth in 2014 was accumulated in 18 firms or corporations. The Hill reports:

[Those 18 firms hold] 36 percent of all wealth last year, a jump from 27 percent in 2009 with the gap expected to widen further, according to a report from Standard & Poor’s, a New York-based credit rater.

That means that out of a record $1.53 trillion in cash and short-term investments held by U.S. corporations the wealthiest 18 held about $535 billion.

“In our view, current U.S. corporate tax policy and accommodating credit market conditions have been primarily responsible for this growing wealth gap,” the report said.

Furthermore, the wealthiest top 20 percent held 89 percent of total cash, leaving only 11 percent for the bottom 80 percent of firms.

The top 1 percent are mostly investment-grade businesses — Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Apple, Oracle, Ford, Coca-Cola and Boeing — and are concentrated in technology and healthcare industries.

By utilizing advantages of foreign deposits and other minor investments, these 18 wealthiest corporations mostly or completely avoid their ethical and taxable obligations back home.

The corporate analysis shows that the top 1 percent gets about 55 percent of its revenues offshore, and that more than half of the cash flow is generated overseas, as well.

That cash is rarely brought onshore because of the U.S.’s 35 percent tax rate, which would be on top of the taxes paid in the country in which the revenue was generated.

“As a result, overseas cash continues to accumulate untouched,” the report said.

click here to enlarge

Before stepping into the lethal venomous part of BU Inc., it is critical for readers to fully grasp the gravity of obscured, illegal American labor practices and abuses onto economically average and below-average Texas and U.S. citizens. This cannot exclude exploitation of abundant undocumented workers and the corporate evading of fair, compulsory reinvestment back into our nation’s general well-being via effective statutory tax rates. I am hence obliged to drive home how grim this toxic disparity has become, how misconstrued Americans perceive it and the ulcerating consequences of the American (and Texas) naïvety or shirking of the elephant in the room.

In order for a single person to live alone safely and comfortably in 50 of the biggest U.S. cities one must earn (in 2014) an average of $57,879 per annum—in Texas’ seven largest cities it is an average per annum of $50,686 with San Antonio the lowest and Houston the highest, $46,238 and $60,795 respectively. As I noted in Part II, the per capita annual income of Texans in 2017 was only $28,985 for about roughly ±25-million Texans. The American population, according to a 2011 study, of any political persuasion grossly underplays the nation’s true wealth inequality.

And so as the elephant of growing severe inequality continues to lounge unimpeded in our room of false patriotic optimism, then the horrors of the darkest parts of BU Inc. here in our own backyard will continue to feast and cannibalize our malnourished middle and lower classes.

Essentially, the wealthy possess greater financial opportunities that allow their money to make more money. Earnings from the stock market or mutual funds are reinvested to produce a larger return. Over time, the sum that is invested becomes progressively more substantial. Those who are not wealthy, however, do not have the resources to enhance their opportunities and improve their economic position. Rather, “after debt payments, poor families are constrained to spend the remaining income on items that will not produce wealth and will depreciate over time.” Scholar David B. Grusky notes that “62 percent of households headed by single parents are without savings or other financial assets.” Net indebtedness generally prevents the poor from having any opportunity to accumulate wealth and thereby better their conditions.
—Causes of Wealth Inequality, Wikipedia, accessed Feb. 24, 2019

Whether the abuses and crimes take place on this side of our southern border or just across it in Mexico or clear down to Colombia in South America and everywhere in between—a small part in a enormous picture is not a “crisis” and especially not a national emergency—then we native-born U.S. citizens, our corporations, and our federal and state governments have a major role in how we address, reduce, and cure ourselves of the venom and pestilence we have helped create and sustain. Vague political rhetoric does not make the beast go away.

Tentacles of Our BU Inc. Monster

There are at least fourteen (14) known tentacles to this insatiable monster. Its den of Lords, its associates and offspring are too numerous to count and as difficult to identify. Ignored for so many decades and as many to prepare and countervail, the BU Inc. beast has slithered into a litany of feeding grounds. Some are familiar I assume, others maybe not so much:

I will probe only five of these tentacles since there is not enough time to probe all fourteen and I could not do each justice and the exposure they deserve in this series. However, if you would like to read brief summaries of the other nine black (tentacle) markets then click here. Following are the five I believe harbor, amplify, and distribute plutocracy, not democracy, increased tyranny and the worst of human trauma and suffering to disadvantaged millions and their families. That in turn rewards the few BU Inc. kings, lords, their associates and spawn. As I soon conclude this 5-part series, next in Part IV then five, will be close up ugly and frightful looks into America’s illegal gambling, phony pharma, human trafficking, ghost guns, and the human organ trade. The nemesising black byproducts of America’s unlawful corporate grey market.

And in my conclusion (Part V) I will share some of my one-on-one personal stories of three homeless people (out of ten) I spoke with over the last 12-months. Just over a mile away from where I currently live is a part of Dallas called Preston Hollow. Further up a bit is North Dallas where the Dallas North Tollway cuts through on its way to Addison and Frisco, Texas, two suburbs that are some of the wealthiest in the DFW Metroplex. Barely over 1,400 feet from me to the south then east of 75/Central Expressway is a large number of rotating, roaming homeless persons.

I met six of them at one nearby convenient store where they often loiter hoping to receive money or food and drink. The other four I met were not too far away either. There I often purchase my car’s gasoline at another convenient store that borders one of our many city public transit rail-stations. In this area are two or three times as many homeless people roaming and loitering for the exact same help. The stark demarcations of haves and have nots within a 2 ½ square mile area is remarkable and curious. I hope you can return to read their personal stories that speak directly to what my BU Inc. series reveals: how and why these underworld markets thrive and who suffers.

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Black Underworld Inc. – Part II

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Professor Taboo

Previously in Part I we learned that what happened then—119-years ago in our Pan-American hemisphere—ripple-effects what happens now and into the near and not-so-distant future both in prosperous and horrible ways. Part I was the more visible and dirty, complex public domain where historical facts and political motivations are not always freely attained nor aggressively sought by the average American. Here with Part II let’s follow the Pan-American histories of the 19th and early 20th century and examine what is going on today on the north side of our nation’s southern border.

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Involved with the North American FTA’s covered in Part I and their decades socioeconomic impact on Caribbean and Latin American nations (CLAN) are the foreign corporation’s abilities to conquer the CLAN’s through Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanisms. There are two development distinctions between politicized “economic development” and how much of that development by foreign “investments” are really stimulating and occurring inside the CLAN’s, or not, and how much “foreign stimulus” is benefiting the investing, foreign corporate pacts. From Dr. Walter Ferrier, University of Kentucky:

Through the 1990s, foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) seemed unrelenting in their quest to invest in and conquer this culturally rich land of more than 500 million people, upwardly mobile consumers, and promising industrial markets. Between 1991 and 2001, the ownership of the 500 largest companies in Latin America changed dramatically, with non-Latin multinational ownership growing to 39 percent from 27 percent. (see Exhibit 1 and 2 below.) The rising foreign competition pressured local Latin companies, which historically served only their home-country markets, to consolidate and expand into other Latin American countries, transforming themselves into “multilatinas.”
—Multinationals vs. Multilatinas: Latin America’s Great Race, Gatton College of Business & Economics, University of Kentucky

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Also mentioned in Part I, the Latin populace rightly protested in the streets against foreign Multinational FTA’s (and BIT’s) that ultimately did benefit those foreign interests. Since 2009 Multilatina investment pacts are slowly able to acquire some CLAN foothold, but in doing so they become competitive threats to powerful American and foreign investment groups and their international law firms.

However, to date few local Latin firms have taken on the world or tried to create large multilatinas. In fact, very few Latin American companies earn more than 50 percent of their revenue outside their domestic market. […]

The post-2000 stock market collapse, currency devaluations, mounting political disorder, and the prospect of defaults on debt obligations have considerably reduced both the rate and the value of foreign investment in Latin America.
—Multinationals vs. Multilatinas: Latin America’s Great Race, Gatton College of Business & Economics, University of Kentucky

Since the early and mid-20th century, perhaps too going back to the Age of Imperialism, Latin America’s and the Caribbean’s prosperity has essentially been dictated or at minimum heavily influenced by North American and European interests and their own economic stability or volatility and recessions. This 118-years of exploitation created the modern Black Underworld Inc., then creating further repercussions domestically to the USA. What are some examples of those American-made repercussions?

Big Texas and American Businesses Perpetuate BU Inc.

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It’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. We live in a society where we don’t really want to acknowledge that… precisely because business depends on those workers. —Bill Beardall, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Center – Austin, TX

Minimum wage in Texas is $7.25 per hour, $290 per 40-hour week, or just $15,080 per year. This wage was last changed in 2008 from $6.55 per hour. The vast majority of the jobs that pay minimum wage are food preparation/servers, restaurant dishwashers, retail cashiers, hosts or hostesses, cinema ushers/ticket-takers, and farm workers (any farm). Just 19-years ago it was $3.35 in 2000. The latest Texas per capita income (2017), in other words for legal, documented citizens was $28,985 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That figure amounts to a $13.93 per hour wage. Texas has a minimum (legal) population of 28,300,000 assessed in 2017. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 6.3% of that 28-million people (i.e. just 1.8 million people) earn over $200,000 per year, or a $98.16 per hour wage.

Yes, the economic inequality or simply the buying power of those 26.5 million average Texas consumer-laborers (see this Texas Tribune article) is frankly atrocious by American standards, particularly in light of rising housing and living costs in an economic model that in so many ways favors and rewards wealth (or proven credit) with more wealth/credit. Texas’ disproportionate wages does not include those wages of the border states: southern California, Arizona, or New Mexico.

And yet despite the wage disparity, oddly enough the U.S. apparently has a big illegal, undocumented immigrant and refugee crisis according to Conservative Republican ~~rhetoric~~ reports, but more bizarre is that we have no hiring or labor crisis. To be honest, in the entire context “border security” immigration is just a small component of a bigger dynamic, but it is not a crisis, much less a National Emergency. What the causes are is never quick or simple to pinpoint. It’s not just one cause either.

No Shortage of Low-Wage Jobs for Illegal Immigrants-Refugees

Within the larger historical political context the United States has a significant debt and responsibility to many decades of political and financial instability/poverty in the Caribbean and Central America since 1901. Recently, one of the major contributing factors of illegal immigrant entrances—that many erroneously describe as a “crisis”—is the constant available work undocumented Latinos and Afro-Caribbeans can easily find throughout the U.S. and here in Texas. Unauthorized immigrants are constantly “hired” illegally by Texas employers and businesses. The current enabling by American-Texas illegal hiring practices creates a non-stop merry-go-round of U.S. invite, seduced migration then/or deportation, and false work/reward dreams to Latinos going back to 1992, but in several ways even to the 1980’s with Ronald Reagan’s overt and covert interventions in Latin America.

unauthorized-immigrants-testimony-REPORT-03+05

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As reported by one of the nation’s most unbiased news and media organizations, The Texas Tribune, in 2016 – 2017 launched an investigative project over several months into U.S. border security, immigration, the reality and the rhetoric. Their findings in “Bordering on Insecurity” are painfully sobering and about as far away from patriotic pride as an American could ever muster, unless hypocritically mustered. I will briefly pull from this outstanding and extensive report.

Let’s not forget that our U.S. Capitol building, the White House, and many buildings and landmarks in Washington D.C. and throughout the entire U.S. proper—most of the fifty States—heavy hard labor and construction inside the ‘Land of the Beautiful’ was mostly done on the backs of slaves and minorities. During modern times of prosperity, booming business and economic stimuli, certain disadvantaged ethnic groups still do all the hard labor for exploitative wages and labor abuses by their supervisors and employers:

Though it’s illegal, brothers Israel and José Martinez [native Mexicans] have no shortage of work, moving from one construction job to the next in the ongoing building boom of Central Texas. They’ve worked on homes in affluent communities along the Upper Colorado River and renovated sprawling apartments in North Austin. They were on a crew that erected a new health center at a high-end retirement community, and as expert masons have built luxury pools, interior chimneys and backyard grilling stations. […]

In all their years in Texas, Israel and José — pseudonyms, since both asked that their real names not be published — have experienced a lot. One thing they say they haven’t seen: U.S. citizens doing the heavy lifting on construction projects.

“We’ve never seen any Americans carrying cement, picking up stone, working from sunup to sundown,” Israel said. “Never.”

This is the economic and social reality in which the brothers, and millions of other unauthorized immigrants, find themselves — a country so reliant on cheap labor that substantial portions of the economy are built largely on the backs of immigrants willing to do work most Americans won’t, and for lower pay.
—Bordering on Insecurity, The Texas Tribune by Travis Putnam Hill, December 2016

Because of Wild Wild West circumvention, good ole boy private agreements, and rear-door activities by (usually) well-educated or street-smart, unscrupulous, native-born American big business owners and supervisors, they’ve learned over decades how to finish “under budget and before deadlines.” With this success comes higher motivation for repeating their illegal rewards for the project-foremen and upper/middle management, and habits are formed blatantly bypassing lawful prohibitions of hiring workers illegally. Next, their competitors duplicate the illegal methods and work abuses to stay in the game of hyper-capitalism… and the vicious cycle continues. Much of the time these native-born American and Texas executives and hiring managers silently know, before and during work projects, that casual oversight in hiring and paycheck finagling are not only illegal, but they also ignore the long-term DAMAGE to many American principles and values. More audacious is that these same good ole boys publicly and “patriotically” rally and campaign for diversionary “problems” in election years. The rally speeches are all the same, the usual vague, oversimplified political rhetoric from candidates. But the damages and the ignored red-white-blue “elephant in the room,” as Beardall described, do not stop there.

Another negative side-effect from these native-born patriotic American business owner’s/employer’s and their subversive double-standard practices cheat all American citizens out of public state and federal tax-funded services and programs:

Many undocumented immigrants also find informal work paid in cash under the table, often at rates far below minimum wage, and the employer can pretend they were never hired.

Operating in the shadows of this clandestine labor market puts the workers in a vulnerable position: Yes, jobs are plentiful, but only in exchange for working long hours for low pay and little recourse against unscrupulous employers who cheat or exploit them.
—Bordering on Insecurity, The Texas Tribune by Travis Putnam Hill, December 2016

And these unethical, illegal practices by (advantaged, wealthy, white?) American and Texas business owners and supervisors create more negative ripple-effects of social, economic, domestic, and illegally explicit temptations and behaviors. These are the native-born Americans with criminal records and/or ties to organized crime-groups which prey upon the thousands of undocumented immigrants. The snaring of illegal, struggling immigrant workers fuel increased problems of drug addiction/abuse, drug dealing or running, further public mental-health problems—due to state or county clinic’s following proper, legal admission protocols so they go back out to the streets—and prostitution and/or sex-trafficking.

The Martinez brothers in the Tribune’s article are fortunate. They are mobile when they recognize employer abuses. The brothers state repeatedly just how ‘easy and endlessly available the service or construction jobs were to find.’ The never-ending availability of low-wage jobs is due in large part because the vast majority of college-educated young Americans are not seeking low-wage jobs after 4-5 years of going into thousands of dollars of debt or spending it to acquire their Bachelor’s degree. It was easy for Israel and José to work multiple 10-12 hour a day jobs, 365 days a year. However, as state and federal immigration policies become increasingly strict, he and his brother had to adapt or counter the new, stricter policies and laws:

[Now] they have to get past the laws that forbid their being hired. For many undocumented immigrants, that path forward is through fraudulent documents.

“The workers present false documents of the kind that the law requires the employer to inspect,” said Bill Beardall, executive director of the Equal Justice Center, a nonprofit law firm that represents low-wage workers, many of whom are undocumented, in employment rights disputes. “Now, the employers know this. The workers know this. The prohibition on hiring undocumented workers has stimulated the growth of that whole industry in creating false documents.”
—Bordering on Insecurity, The Texas Tribune by Travis Putnam Hill, December 2016

Yes indeed, today large American and Texas corporation CEO’s, department Heads, Hiring Managers and Supervisors are for the most part familiar with the numerous benefits of low-wage illegal workers laundered through (sketchy) subcontractors. There are many who are so familiar with hiring and labor laws they know what not to see, hear, read or inspect closely. They also understand the buffering benefits of having scapegoats, ala Senior Executive Bunny Greenhouse of the USACE, Lt. Colonel Oliver North and National Security Advisor John Poindexter, Capt. Charles McVay of the USS Indianapolis, or famously PI Bryan Wagner employed by Board Member/External Director Patricia Dunn of Hewlett-Packard, or more famously Kareem Serageldin of the Credit Suisse Group.

As the nation’s 39th ranked company in total revenues on the 2018 list of Fortune 500 American corporations, the Target Corporation and its many subsidiaries is the 8th largest retailer in the U.S. As of Sept. 2018 Target had 1,839 stores across the USA with 148 in Texas.

In 2004 or 2005 an Austin-area Target store hired/contracted a local janitorial-cleaning company, Jim’s Maintenance, to clean bathrooms, take out garbage, wash windows and carpets, and polish floors to a reflective white sheen, something the Target Corporation publicly prides itself. An undocumented Mexican immigrant nicknamed “Chunco” had been working for several contractors cleaning Target stores. Chunco told The Texas Tribune that all the cleaning-janitorial workers he’s ever known in those 12-years are illegal immigrants. They go in the stores between 10 and 11pm and are scheduled to leave between 7 or 8am on company records. However, he said, that rarely happened.

Target night managers locked them in and they couldn’t leave until a walk-through inspection by the manager was completed, usually well after 8:30 or 9am. Working this way in the wee-hour shadows puts Chunco and fellow immigrant workers at risk for exploitation. They were hired by Austin-area contractors and companies with full unspoken knowledge and oversight they were or might be unauthorized to work in the U.S. and Texas. Many times Chunco reported that he and fellow custodians were paid less than minimum wage and no overtime pay for working 7-day work weeks.

“We’ve realized that [employers] prefer us for being undocumented because we just keep our heads down to get jobs,” Chunco said. “[We] can’t afford to complain. They take advantage of us being undocumented.”

Chunco and 28 other custodians represented legally by the Equal Justice Center filed a lawsuit against Target and Jim’s Maintenance for unpaid wages and overtime. Despite the fact that it was Target night managers letting the workers in back doors late at night, directing them what to do for 10- or 12-hour shifts and letting them out the back doors late into the following morning, attorneys for the large retail corporation claimed they were not co-employers with Jim’s Maintenance. The case was eventually settled out of court in 2008. Jim’s Maintenance, however, had already been put out of business in 2006 because Target terminated its contract with him and withheld $496,000 in fees owed to Jim’s for its services. This buffering tactic has sometimes been called scapegoat contracting.

Executive Director of Austin’s Equal Justice Center Bill Beardall talked about how disadvantaged workers like Chunco are not informed by native Texas (or American) business owners and contractors of any labor rights they actually do possess:

“Employment rights apply equally to all workers, regardless of their immigration status,” Beardall said. “The problem is most undocumented workers don’t know that, and employers may not know that. If they do know that, they will nevertheless use those workers’ vulnerable immigration status to discourage them from enforcing their rights.”

The H.E.B. Grocery Co. is a supermarket chain I am very familiar with; it was founded in 1905 in my Mom’s 20-year hometown of Kerrville, Texas, now based in San Antonio, Texas. Today H.E.B. and its many subsidiaries, including in Mexico, has 350+ locations with over $21-billion in revenues in 2018. According to the National Retail Federation’s 2017 ranking of retail stores, H.E.B. ranked 20th in the USA. Like the Target Corporation, H.E.B. also practices in scapegoat contractors.

In 2012, produce workers filed a class action lawsuit against Pastrana’s Produce and H.E.B. for cheating them out of minimum wages and overtime pay. As in the case with Target, the H.E.B.-Pastrana’s undocumented workers worked long 10-12 hour shifts and frequently 7-day work weeks. And…

As in the Target case, lawyers from the Equal Justice Center argued that the workers were jointly employed by H-E-B and Pastrana’s because they were a vital part of H-E-B’s business. They worked only in stores owned by H-E-B and under supervision of H-E-B managers, who determined their work hours and daily production.

Once again this case was also settled out of court with H.E.B. shouldering no responsibility for their ties and contract with Pastrana’s Produce. What is more aggravating to note is that in both of these cases the immigration status of the plaintiffs was never a concern in the court case! Care to guess why?

Consequently, like hundreds of thousands of unauthorized immigrants and refugees, construction workers Israel and José Martinez step closer into illicit, illegal activity to keep jobs and keep working. Chunco is still cleaning the exact same bathrooms and floors of Austin-Target stores he always has for the last 14-years with a host of custodial companies all contracted by Target, but below minimum wage and still 10-12 hour shifts with no overtime pay. Yet, in their native countries everyone knows work in the U.S. is very easy to come by. So they come. And keep coming because the standard of living in their hometown or city is much worse and in many cases has been as far back as 1901, as covered in Part I.

Added Dec. 13, 2019:
North Texas construction company owners charged for continuing to employ undocumented workers, reads the Dec. 13, 2019 Dallas Morning News headline. It goes on to say:

For the second time in as many months, a North Texas business has been accused of defying the government by continuing to employ undocumented workers despite being caught in the act and agreeing to fire them.

Four corporate officers of Speed Fab-Crete in Kennedale [just south of Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex] admitted in court papers to shifting their undocumented workers to a staffing company instead of firing them — one year after an I-9 audit first exposed hiring problems. The plea documents say the defendants hid their continued employment of 23 undocumented employees.

For these immigrant workers and thousands of others who can find abundant work, but want some protection from exploitative Texas and American contractors, better hours, and better pay, they then slip into another side of a growing profiteering equation, the underground market of forged and falsified documents and I.D.’s. For each work document or I.D. a forger charges $100 – $1,000. This puts them at risk for another type of exploitation. But Israel and José Martinez are men. Associating with and having to depend on certain mechanisms and unethical or abusive people in positions of power over their American dreams, or its dormancy, or detection and arrest. It is a racket with daily temptations for the American-Texas extortionist or blackmailer. And these vulnerabilities for illegal, but hired workers are significantly higher for female teenagers and women, and possibly their children.

The Effectiveness of a Great Wall of China

On a final note, when there are hundreds to thousands of American corporations, business owners, upper and middle management supervisors/foremen illegally hiring undocumented immigrants—either directly or through scapegoat contractors—and have been doing it since at least the late 1990’s, what is any practical use of a fixed, and quite permeable 1,954 mile Medieval wall when American big businesses are (allowed) happy to give illegal immigrants jobs? A near 2,000 mile symbolic hurdle seems insanely asinine to me.

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In Part III I want to further peel back the uglier, illegal black market a majority of every day Americans know little about, are too busy and/or naïve to connect all the dots of how their own business-as-usual consumer-values and American corporate profit-models fueled and have sustained the inhumane virulent tri-continental black market. It gets worse.

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