Nothing Is Ever On The Level

Date
Canonical
13445
Archive
13445 [history]
Categories
Politics

After the crooked FBI agent, Andrew McCabe, was finally fired by Mister Magoo, there were posts in official media about the wrongness of it. After all, he would lose his pension, we were told, because of politics. Of course, that was never true. He would lose some extra benefits, but it would be a drop in the bucket. A former FBI man of his status will land in a high six-figure job. Given his status he could even end up at a financial house, making seven figures.

Soon after that round of stories, a new set of stories popped up about his crowd-sourced fundraising effort. He was up on GoFundMe. The point of the stories was to show that the public was rallying to the side of this poor man, a victim of the evil Donald Trump and his Nazi minions. Regardless of the agit-prop, there was no doubt that he was raising a lot of money. Then, it turned out to be a complete fraud. The whole thing was an elaborate PR effort from a lobbying firm.

Andrew McCabe recently raised over half a million dollars from small donors by way of crowdfunding platform GoFundMe. McCabe’s cash-collecting prowess was buoyed by several #Resistance-linkedpersonalities and MSNBC’s own Rachel Maddow, who suggested McCabe should run for office because he’s so good at raising money.

Was this apparent “grassroots effort” actually a PR campaign put together by high-priced, well-connected, and experienced PR professionals in order to take advantage of the #Resistance’s seething anger at the Trump administration? A Monday report in Slate suggested as much. Law&Crime can now confirm that some of those allegations are true, while some of them appear to oversell the issues at hand.

Most likely, the firm behind this scheme provided the logistics, but also the seed money to get the fund going. The theory behind this stuff is that people will donate if they see other people donating. If other people are giving to this guy’s fund, then you may feel more comfortable giving money, because you assume it is the right thing to do, based on the fact others are doing it. This is marketing 101. Companies often use various forms of indirect peer pressure to sell product.

Of course, there is another angle to this.

Melissa Schwartz is a crisis and communications consultant who currently works for The Bromwich Group. After previously working for then-Senator Barbara Mikulski, the Department of Justice, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (where she served under her once-and-future boss), Schwartz joined The Bromwich Group as their chief operating officer in 2012. She’s also McCabe’s present spokesperson.

The Bromwich Group is a K Street consulting and PR firm headed by Michael R. Bromwich. Immediately prior to founding the firm, Bromwich served as the first director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management under President Barack Obama. As a former mineral extraction regulator, Bromwich promised that his firm would never lobby for energy industry clients. Prior to this role, Bromwich served as the Inspector General for the Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton.

Given the people involved, would it surprise anyone if McCabe is eventually found stretched out in Fort Marcy Park? That’s most likely been carefully explained to the McCabe family in detail. Even the most generous reading of events suggests McCabe is a man who knows too much. For now, the syndicate is looking out for him, but eventually he’ll have to be dealt with in a more permanent manner. You don’t want to be the guy selling him life insurance right now.

That aside, it is a good reminder that nothing is on the level. Politics has always been crooked, but the degree of dishonesty is different. Rachel Maddow is a dunce, but the people running MSNBC are not stupid. They knew what this firm was doing. They probably offered to help promote it. Today, it is prudent to assume everything in mass media is a carefully considered PR campaign. The point of the media is to bamboozle the public in some way. Nothing is on the level and no grift is too small.

To keep Z Man's voice alive for future generations, we’ve archived his writings from the original site at thezman.com. We’ve edited out ancillary links, advertisements, and donation requests to focus on his written content.

Comments (Historical)

The comments below were originally posted to thezman.com.

43 Comments

Guest #57849 April 7, 2018 17
This post provides an opportunity to respond to the statement you made in a previous post that nothing much changed when white voters abandoned Bush the Elder for his betrayal on taxes, among other things. I have to disagree with this sentiment.The failure of Bush the Elder heralded the arrival of the Clintons onto the national political scene. While government has always had a measure of corruption, the Clintons provided the template for pervasive government corruption by manipulating the Department of Justice via the appointment of the dullard Janet Reno as Attorney General. Reno may not have been part of the Clinton cabal, but she was too dim witted to provide any effective opposition to the Clinton machine or to control Deputy AGs Jamie Gorelick and Eric Holder.The Obama administration institutionalized DoJ corruption by appointing overt political hacks to the position of AG–first Holder then Lynch. The most amazing thing about the Obama administration’s DoJ manipulation was there was no effort even at making a pretense of objectivity. The corruption at the DoJ was blatant and in-your-face. Holder brazenly lied to Congress about Fast and Furious and when he was caught in his lies and held in criminal contempt of Congress Obama basically said “fuck you America” and refused even to investigate Holder, citing Executive Privilege. If ever in American history there was a case for a Special Counsel, this was the case. In my mind, that’s the precise moment at which the rule of law died and America became a banana republic.The rot in the DoJ was turned up to 11 by Lynch, whose exploits have been covered here in detail and need not be repeated. McCabe richly deserved to be fired, but at the end of the day he was just a pawn in the game run by Lynch, et al.My point is that there were tangible and severe consequences resulting from the loss of Bush the Elder. Maybe the Clintons would still have ascended to Washington in 1996 and the same course of events would have unfolded, but shifted four years later in time. Maybe not. Who knows?Trump has been hit and miss on execution of his agenda, and I have been extremely critical of Sessions for unnecessarily recusing himself from the Russia investigation, but at least they are attempting to restore the rule of law to the DoJ. I’ll vote for Trump again based on that issue alone.
Karl McHungus #57856 April 7, 2018 6
The Clintons are the symptom, not the disease.
LineInTheSand #57864 April 7, 2018 1
And the disease is? (I didn’t downvote you.)
TomA #57866 April 7, 2018 6
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Term limits would change the math considerably.
Glen Filthie #57869 April 7, 2018 5
Yeah but the Clintons were hopelessly corrupt before they even got near the Whitehouse. I read somewhere that Wilhelm Von Blowjob got accused of rape back in his college days.Somebody is playing those two idiots from the shadows – and that is probably where you will find the disease…
Bud Keegan #57873 April 7, 2018 2
Read McCarry’s ‘Lucky Bastard’– the Clintons were put together Day 1
David Wright #57841 April 7, 2018 11
Sometimes the little boy in me just screams that the world is not fair. You mentioned feeling black pilled lately, coincidentally I have Discovered this channel called just that. Probably a lot of over the top messages but I found this one somewhat relevant to what you are talking about today. The Stephen Colbert incident is especially revealing. https://youtu.be/e7wc4z2QGKUProbably not too revealing to our crowd.
thezman #57842 April 7, 2018 27
If the alt-right wanted to do something wildly subversive, they would organize a group to attend a liberal chat show. The audience for these things is about ~400 tops. So, 100 guys booing when the applause sign goes on would create mayhem.
David Wright #57845 April 7, 2018 17
Colbert was surpised and caught off guard when the trained seals didn’t understand what the correct response was. If he did face real disagreement, you’re right, panic would ensue.
nmassello #57863 April 7, 2018 7
A Ceausescu Moment.
LineInTheSand #57876 April 7, 2018 0
I looked up “Ceausescu” but don’t get your reference. Can you explain?
ubik #57887 April 7, 2018 7
Nicolae Ceaușescu was the dictator of Romania. He and his wife were out on the balcony, gave speech to the assembled crowd. This time, they didn’t quietly applaud and go home.They started booing and 4 days later he and wife were dead after fleeing by helicopter.
RDG #57875 April 7, 2018 4
Security would clear the house at the immediately unscheduled commercial break. Forget this plan.
Jummy #58402 April 12, 2018 0
That’s not a reason to not do it. The reason it won’t get done is because it means 100 trolls would have to coordinate IRL. But if we agree that disrupting the MSM is a worthwhile goal, getting kicked out of a building for booing is not a reason to not do it.
Karl McHungus #57855 April 7, 2018 8
While wearing Bernie or Hillary t-shirts.
Chet #57898 April 8, 2018 1
Most of us are working for a living during that time slot.
Saml Adams #57852 April 7, 2018 4
Very well done. Funny how much is still hard coded into the good old lizard brain.
BestGuest #57853 April 7, 2018 4
That looks like an interesting channel. Thanks for the tip.
Pimpkins Nephew #57927 April 8, 2018 0
It’s a heck of a video; thanks for the link.The lesson of the video is that the herd makes Stephen Colbert, more than Colbert makes the herd; he has a job to do, they have an existential need to be satisfied – the need to know which pen to crowd into. Colbert is a kind of border collie – and border collies are good or bad depending on their intelligence and training. Mistakes will be made, but the natural impulse of a herd animal is to re-join the herd, and Colbert was resourceful enough to redirect and bring the strays into the pen.On the eve of the 2012 election my wife and I drove 800 miles of interstate to watch our son graduate from Basic Training. The absence of Obama stickers was very surprising. People sensed a Romney victory; I know I did. They were awaiting further information.Graduation Day was the morning after O’s re-election, which wasn’t even close. I had to smile and clap despite agreeing with Auster on that dismal morning that it was “their country now”. My son was a new element in a foreign army…Anyhow, driving home along the same 800 miles of interstate, I noticed that a spike of 3-5 times the previously-noted Obama stickers had strangely occurred. The herd had learned what pen to crowd into.
Glen Filthie #57861 April 7, 2018 9
“The point of the media is to bamboozle the public in some way….”—————————————————————————————It’s been that way for at least the last 20 years, and even before that their integrity was spotty at best.My question is this: you say you wouldn’t want to be selling this guy life insurance right now. How do you know he isn’t one of the big fish that could, say – put a hit out on the Clintons?There has to be someone propping up the Clintons and the Obamas – face it – they’re all dumb as fuggin posts, a couple are blatant perverts if not outright criminals who aren’t smart enough to handle themselves, never mind entire agencies and nations. I would love to know who the real power brokers are in the world right now.
thezman #57862 April 7, 2018 18
The media has always been biased. They have often excluded key facts or included dubious facts, in an effort to sway opinion. I think we crossed into a new world in the 90’s, where the media just makes it all up without much concern for the facts. Maybe it is just the logical end point of narrative journalism that started in the 60’s. Still, 30 years ago you could read the news and find some facts. Today, they search is fruitless and pointless.
Glen Filthie #57868 April 7, 2018 8
Z, it’s so bad now that whatever they’re peddling – I will buy the opposite. I don’t care if they tell me the sky is blue – I will go out and check first.That’s the thing we forget about free speech in all our rage at the people trying to suppress it. All they’re really doing is undermining themselves and encouraging their fellow homo sap to rise up against them. Even in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union – propaganda only went so far. In today’s internet age? I would say it’s almost useless.
TomA #57843 April 7, 2018 9
Comey is the weak link in the Clinton exposure more so than McCabe, and not even the Arkansas mafia is going to take them both out. If he rolls over, then the Clinton crime organization is in real trouble. An important clue will be how many indictments Huber releases in the next few weeks.
Herrman #57844 April 7, 2018 8
“Nothing is on the level and no grift is too small.” My new motto for the 21st century so far. Is it same as it ever was, or has the shrinking world put a snake oil salesman on every doorstep?
Bilejones #57890 April 7, 2018 2
The original Rockefella was literally a snake oil salesman. See James Corbett site for details.
JohnTyler #57846 April 7, 2018 7
“….You don’t want to be the guy selling him life insurance right now…..” Yea you do; the sales person will receive a commission regardless of the customer’s life expectancy; it’s the insurance company that may lose out. Rachel Maddow is no dunce; she is, like all the mainstream media folks, a hard core left wing propagandist. Just another talking anus spouting whatever the democrat party wants her to spew.
Lorenzo #57874 April 7, 2018 6
The corruption, despicable as it is, doesn’t surprise me. The big shocker for me was learning that somebody created a “Bureau of Ocean Energy Management”. Wut?
Aggie #57897 April 8, 2018 2
It was created out of the old Minerals Management Service, or MMS, after the BP Macondo / Transocean Deepwater Horizon incident in 2010.
hokkoda #57854 April 7, 2018 6
Remember, McCabe is the direct connection to Comey with no buffer. Comey is the guy who signed at least one of the FISA warrants to wire tap the Trump campaign (or at least, we’re told, “surrogates” of Trump…which is all they needed to tap Trump). So, Comey signs the FISA warrant, and the FISA warrant (in the footnotes) states that the basis for the warrant is the Steele memo paid for by the Clintons. No, the FISA warrant doesn’t state this explicity, they lied to the FISA court by concealing the names of the people behind the Steele memos. At any rate, if Comey signed the FISA requests, and Comey ALSO knew that Clinton was behind those “salacious and unverified” allegations, then Comey lied to President Donald Trump when he briefed Trump on those “salacious and unverified” allegations. There has been ZERO news reporting or testimony that Comey specifically told Trump that Clinton paid for Steele’s work, nor that Steele’s main sources were Russian government officials.McCabe is one of the people who actually knows this, and who has already testified that the FBI did not alert the FISA court explicitly about their source (the Clinton Campaign), even though they knew Clinton was the source of the funding.That means McCabe also knows Comey lied to Trump by concealing information that is so important that to fail to disclose it constitutes an outright lie to the POTUS by Comey himself.Both McCabe’s story and Comey’s story cannot simultaneously be true.
thezman #57859 April 7, 2018 6
The hiring of Huber to work with the IG means they have found violation of the law. The way IG’s work is they are like the HR department, looking for violations of company policy. A condition of employment means you have to answer their questions, but they have no authority to convene a grand jury or file criminal charges.The thing is, Huber has been working with the IG for a while, so that probably means those text messages revealed criminal wrong doing by McCabe and maybe Comey. Why this is taking so long is the mystery. It’s possible there is something bigger than just lying to investigators and the FISA court. Maybe they are just slow walking the whole thing, never intending to do anything. After all, if they make it past November, the coast will be clear.
Dutch #57860 April 7, 2018 5
I get the feeling the FBI, parts of the DOJ, and other parties are simply sitting on their hands, ignoring subpoenas and so on, waiting for the midterms so the impeachment process can get under way after that. Which means the alternative, which is producing the documents, is damning indeed for what is in them. Trump’s “fake news” is shorthand for “fake everything”.
TomA #57867 April 7, 2018 5
“Why this is taking so long is the mystery.” Because the shear volume and severity of the crimes they are uncovering is staggering. Wait until Awan brothers story blows up next year. It will make the Clinton crime spree seem like petty larceny.
joey junger #57872 April 7, 2018 5
The media, intellectual, political, and corporate class doesn’t seem to have any more credibility to damage, but they still have what Steve Sailer called “the megaphone.” Even when we’re shooting holes in their arguments, we’re responding to their framework. The whole thing is a bit like that dystopian vision of the massive face on the screen barking at the shuffling masses below. The people below know the big face on the screen is just a tyrant who’s full of shit, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop it, at least not yet. Not even ignoring it shuts it up. Since most media is part of “package” deals and the numbers for ratings and ad effectiveness is fudged, it’s not even as if tuning out or unplugging seems to be the way to hurt these entities. The worst part of course is that the more severe their nervous breakdown, the louder they seem to get.
Observer #57850 April 7, 2018 4
Those rascally Roundheads strike again, right?Honestly, this constant griping about the symptoms while deliberately ignoring the cause is getting old.
Karl McHungus #57857 April 7, 2018 3
I am seeing a Godfather like montage of various dem players meeting grisly ends.
Karl McHungus #57858 April 7, 2018 2
Zman (et als), have you ever watched “The Parallax View”? Superbly captures the paranoid/conspiratorial ambienace of the 1970’s — which is being repeated now.
Frip #57848 April 7, 2018 2
“Nothing is ever on the level.” We’ve all got our groups to protect. And we’ll hype, play-down, or ignore things accordingly. So do take the headline seriously, knowing that it applies to the good, the bad, and the Zman himself.
Guest #57907 April 8, 2018 1
You didn’t touch on this wrinkle: Bromwich is also McCabe’s lead attorney. Thus, the charity drive is geared to pay himself!
Din C. Nuffin #57871 April 7, 2018 1
Everybody knows. Late 1980’shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEQldSi-heE
Outside the good peoples circle #57847 April 7, 2018 1
Thanks for the reporting.
Pimpkins Nephew #57937 April 8, 2018 0
Thirty years from now, when the new syndicate is firmly in control, we’ll learn more about the string of murders ordered by the Clintons. It’ll be an American version of Khruschev’s secret speech against Stalin in 1956. Or a reprise of the movie “Chappaquiddick”. The main thing is that it won’t matter at that point, except to ‘erase’ the mental chalkboards of the loyal, to revive the purity which the “vanguard” always represents.
Frip #57851 April 7, 2018 0
Maybe a stupid question, but is this a young Joe Sobran on Buckley’s right in this TNR story? https://newrepublic.com/article/147826/national-reviews-struggle-ideological-diversity
David Wright #57870 April 7, 2018 0
I am 99% sure he is not.


Back to top