The politics grifter industrial complex

All of these "bugs" are features. It's how an entire class of politically oriented professional/managerial types sustain themselves.  And it isn't just a quirk of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the national politics grifter industrial complex.  It's not something that you just see on the cable news that operates at a great remove from you. It's here in your city fucking your shit up too. The rot in the national political expression is a function of the local level corruption from which the national parties are built.  And that's what we've been describing here in New Orleans for... well.. for a very long time now.

This McGowan person and the various Obama/Hillaryites who circled in and around her company are no different from the cast of amoral crooks circling in and around the halls of power in your home town.  The game is exactly the same.  Make yourself rich pretending your for-profit service or app or whatever can or should replace basic social welfare functions. 

Unlike most digital strategists, her operation is what the IRS classifies as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit — meaning a majority of its funds must be used to promote “social welfare.” And yet, Acronym has a web of for-profit companies beneath it: a campaign consulting firm (Lockwood Strategy), a political tech company with a peer-to-peer texting product (Shadow) and a media company investing in local left-leaning outlets (FWIW Media). In the works is an apparel arm (Rogue Swag) that would be the first major liberal answer to conservative companies that skirt campaign finance laws by selling politically branded clothing over Facebook and elsewhere — spreading political messaging without having to report the spending.

It means the nonprofit Acronym is able to raise money, invest in for-profit companies to advance progressive aims and then return any profits back into its mission. “People don’t understand why I am creating a model that I can’t get very rich off of. Because I don’t own the companies; the (c)(4) does,” she says. And that’s a huge threat to political consultants’ bank accounts

The emphasis in that quote is mine because it is horseshit as anyone who understands how money laundering works can see.

[Update: For more on how the money laundering works, see Pareene here.]

But to return to the point, this isn't a new phenomenon. It isn't an aberration.  It's how things are done in the age of neoliberalism.  LaToya Cantrell expressed this quite emphatically to her supporters on election night 2017. 

 "I’m not talking now about taking from the rich and giving to the poor and all that kind of crap," Cantrell said at a victory speech Saturday night. "What I’m talking about is creating balance so everyone feels like they’re winners.

We can't tax rich people and use the money to provide basic public services anymore.  Instead we leave it to "entrepreneurs" to flatter "philanthropists" into funding a series of amusements, and shiny things that we pretend will mitigate the social ills caused by the lack of those services. The important people make more money that way. Especially when we subsidize the process through public-private partnerships.

As long as "everyone feels like they're winners," the con can perpetuate itself.  An associate of Irvin Mayfield once described this as "volunteer entrepreneurism."  We've described that in as much detail as we could muster quite a few times. Here is the one I'm thinking of currently.  It is the dominant ideology that is currently eroding your democracy. And the erosion begins here in your backyard.