A political commonplace

[womzilla]

I believe Josh Marshall was the first person to publicly identify the Cheney/Bush governing strategy, in a December 2003 piece for The Hill. When searching for it earlier this evening, I discovered that the piece is now only to be found in Google's cache, so I'm preserving the key point here:

What we're seeing in Washington today has an uncomfortable resemblance to what, in mafia lingo, is called a bust-out.

It goes something like this.

Say you're a gambler and I'm a mobster. I've lent you lots of money. But now you can't cover your debt. I could pursue the matter through your kneecaps or toss you out of an office window, but instead I take a more constructive approach.

You own a shoe store. I take it over your operation, order everything under the sun and fence all the merchandise for as much money as I can get as quickly as I can. I run out every line of credit you have and generally squeeze the place of every dollar I can get out of it. And then when I can't squeeze anymore, I torch the place and collect on the insurance money.

Sure, it's not the most sustainable business model. But I have my money back, and what happens to you is your problem.

Comments

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Uh Kevin, this was a subplot for the "Sopranos"

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

See Watch Your Back! by Donald E. Westlake for an excellent fictional depiction of a bust-out.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Teresa Nielsen Hayden made the same observation on Making Light quite some time ago. (I haven't gone looking for just when, although I do think it was later than 12/2003.)

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Josh's frame of the mobster getting just "his money back", and the store owner of having gambled his way into trouble, is a bit off-key. I much prefer the comparison with the bust-out in Martin Scorcese's 1990 film Goodfellas. As Ray Liotta, who plays Henry Hill, narrates:

Now he's got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with a bill? To Paulie. Trouble with cops, deliveries, Tommy? He calls Paulie. But now he has to pay Paulie, every week no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. The place got hit by lightning? Fuck you, pay me.

Also, Paulie could do anything. Like run up bills on the joint's credit. And why not? Nobody will pay for it anyway. Take deliveries at the front door and sell it out the back at a discount. Take a two hundred dollar case of booze and sell it for a hundred. It doesn't matter. It's all profit. Then finally, when there's nothing left—when you can't borrow another buck from the bank—you bust the joint out. You light a match.

Sonny Bunz, the unlucky "partner" in this deal, didn't do anything to put himself in the mobster's debt, he was just being harassed so hard by the psychopathic gangster Tommy (Joe Pesci) that he asked to be put under Paulie's protection just to get it to stop. But funny thing, although the film doesn't make too big a deal of it, Tommy is Paulie's man anyway, so harassment that Paulie could have stopped before turns out to be to his business advantage.

Who's Tommy in this scenario? Maybe right wing hate radio, maybe something else, but I think this is a much better description of why the Americans vote Republican than that they've somehow incurred a debt to the Republicans. They just get tired of the endless abuse and install them to get it to stop.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

The other thing about the "bust-out" model is that it answers the question of why America would be starting wars and invading countries "for profit" when these wars are a massive loss to America. The answer is the people starting the wars and making the profit aren't "America" as a whole, they're a tiny wealthy minority who control policy. The whole process of loss to the country and gain to the minority is effectively a process of transfer of wealth from the majority to the minority.

[readwrite.livejournal.com]

"The Sopranos" plotline is in 3 episodes, including one called"Bust-Out," of the 2000 season guest starring Robert Patrick ("Terminator 2") in an excellent role as a degenerate gambler who owns a sporting goods store. It's there and in "Goodfellas" and elsewhere, probably in some Travis McGee novel, because it's for real.

And it really does parallel Bush right on down the line. New Orleans and Iraq would be the bar and sporting goods store...

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure there's a bustout-like scheme described in Joey the Hitman: Autobiography of a Mafia Killer by David Fisher from 1973 (originally entitled Killer). As you say, it shows up repeatedly because it's real.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I remember when Teresa described this, and it still seems to be the only logical explanation of what they're doing. Can somebody ask the Chinese how much insurance those guys put on us?

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

If you think that just the Mafia does this, you've got another think coming. It's called "Control Fraud." Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, and Worldcom were control frauds. So was the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and early 90s.

Blog for Arizona (http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/government_by_c.html) had a detailed examination of the control-fraud aspects of the Bush Administration. It's worth a look.