Tag: conspiracy

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Opinion The Last Word

The ‘Conspiracy Industrial Complex’

Who’s to blame for conspiracy theories?(Photo: Alexskopje | Dreamstime.com)

When humans organize into societies, the foundational cement upon which they build them is as strong as their shared conviction in what they should look like. Principles like “Every child should receive an education,” “Quality healthcare is a right,” and “Justice should be fairly meted out regardless of class,” are just a few ingredients mixed by mortar and pestle to produce the basis for American institutions and the society they help create.

Polls show that most Americans still share the same convictions on issues such as healthcare, housing, labor relations, the economy, civil liberties, foreign policy, and education. However, the institutions created to build that society are failing. According to a 2022 Gallup poll, Americans’ trust in institutions has never been lower, with significant declines in trust in 11 of 16 institutions tested. From 2021 to 2022, the percentage of Americans declaring they had a “great deal” of confidence in the public education system fell from 32 percent to 28 percent. Confidence in healthcare declined from 44 percent to 38 percent, and confidence in the justice system eroded from 20 percent to 14 percent. Trust in the presidency, the Supreme Court, and Congress declined by 15, 11, and 7 points, respectively. From a wider historical lens, the percentage of Americans saying they had a great deal of trust in institutions declined from 48 percent in 1979 to 27 percent in 2022.

Americans rely on institutions to form the framework of their society. But to the degree that institutions shift from providing Americans with what they need to what the institutions think will make money, Americans will lose trust in them, disbelieve them, and seek other “credible sources” for information and support.

Just a few examples of institutions losing American support due in part to profit-seeking and corruption include:

• Education: From 1981 to 2021, the cost of attending a four-year college skyrocketed from $11,840/year to $30,031/year, a 153 percent increase over 40 years. Soaring costs of public universities and fraud committed by private colleges landed Generation X and millennials in $1.77 trillion in debt, even as their degrees increasingly failed to provide the quality of life those same degrees secured for their Baby Boomer parents. After experiencing this, is it any surprise today’s Gen X and millennial parents distrust the educational system, thus giving rise to conspiracy theories about what’s “really being taught” in our schools and universities?

• Healthcare: In the early-2000s, Purdue Pharma saw an opportunity to strike it big. They encouraged (and sometimes bribed) doctors to prescribe the opioid painkiller OxyContin under the farce that it was the non-addictive solution to acute and chronic pain. Purdue raked in billions of dollars while 280,000 Americans died from overdoses on prescription painkillers between 1999 and 2021. The Sackler family, owners of Purdue, are currently negotiating a multi-billion dollar settlement that would grant them immunity from all future civil litigation despite thousands dead in the name of Purdue’s “contribution to healthcare.” After Americans watched that crisis play out, is it any surprise some have turned to conspiracy theorists who offer “alternative healthcare,” like Alex Jones and his inventory of “health products’?

• Justice: The courts may still be public institutions, but they increasingly favor business interests over non-business interests. Data shows today’s Supreme Court is the most pro-business of all time, even more pro-business than the courts of the Gilded Age. Today’s court rules in favor of business interests 83 percent of the time, siding with big business to the detriment of the environment, civil liberties, and voting rights. Add to that the recent breaking news of conservative justices benefiting from the largesse of billionaire business tycoons who often have cases before those same justices, and it’s no surprise only one in four Americans has a great deal of confidence in SCOTUS.

• Politics: Politicians may be public officials, but often in name only. Case in point, researchers at Princeton University found that one’s wealth is a direct barometer for political representation. The bottom 90 percent of income earners in the U.S. see their preferred legislation pushed for and passed by their elected representatives just 30 percent of the time. Meanwhile, the top 10 percent of income earners see their preferred legislation pushed for and passed 61 percent of the time. After watching candidates make grandiose promises on the campaign trail and immediately forgo those promises once elected so they can serve the interests of their big donors, is it any wonder many Americans have attached themselves to conspiracy theories about politicians and elections?

A population rife with conspiracy theories is not a feature of a healthy society. However, Americans do themselves a disservice when they ostracize people who believe in such theories. For one thing, conspiracy theories occasionally prove to be true, as in the case of MK-Ultra, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or the Tuskegee experiments. But even when they don’t, Americans’ collective ire should never be solely directed at the conspiracy theorists or the and fame-seeking hucksters who are often behind the scenes peddling such theories for personal gain.

Rather, Americans must demand accountability from the institutions whose consummate failures led to the growth of the Conspiracy Industrial Complex. U.S. institutions exist to serve the Americans who formed them, not the interests of private capital or the wealthy elites who see every aspect of American society as something to profit from.

Returning America from the brink of a dystopian nightmare where millions wander a landscape of their own invented reality will only occur when trust in institutions is restored. And that can only happen if those institutions are returned to their foundational purpose of serving regular Americans, not Wall Street investors and billionaire business executives.

Ren Brabenec is a Nashville-based freelance writer and journalist. He reports on politics, local issues, environmental stories, foreign policy, and the economy. This commentary originally appeared in Tennessee Lookout (tennesseelookout.com).

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News News Blog

Man Who Schemed City Out of $85K Pleads Guilty

The son of a former City of Memphis employee pleaded guilty Monday for scheming a city maintenance program and fraudulently making nearly $100,000 in the process.

Karl “Shun” Blackmon, 46, son of Leon Blackmon Sr., 70, who was formerly in charge of the city’s Housing and Community Development (HCD) maintenance program, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and conspiracy.

The HCD program’s purpose is to maintain vacant city-owned lots and properties. From April 2013 until November 2014, Blackmon recruited at least 13 friends and family members to form lawn care companies to participate in the HCD program, according to information presented in court.

Blackmon and Blackmon Sr. instructed the recruits to apply for business licenses, obtain federal EIN numbers, open post office boxes and business bank accounts, and finally apply to become city vendors.

A list of city-owned properties was given to the recruits and invoices for their work was sent to Blackmon Sr.. Except, at least half of the properties shown on the invoices were fraudulently billed and the work was never done.

City checks were generated and mailed to the recruits who then shared a portion of the money with Blackmon. The scheme costs the city approximately $84,665.

U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant said the fraudulent scheme has “significant financial consequences to the public interests of the city of Memphis and created unfair business advantages for vendors in the HCD maintenance program.

“This office is committed to the protection of the integrity of public services, and schemes to defraud programs or compromise public office will not be tolerated,” Dunavant said. “This case demonstrates our commitment to protect taxpayer resources from such disturbing crimes of dishonesty, and to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse in government programs.”

Blackmon pleaded guilty Monday and now faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison followed by three years supervised release. His sentencing hearing is set for May 22, 2020, before U.S. Circuit Judge Sheryl Lipman. Charges against Blackmon Sr. and eight other alleged co-conspirators are still pending.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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Politics Politics Feature

One Mayor’s In

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Willie Herenton made it official Tuesday. At the stroke of noon — surrounded by a medley of supporters, reporters, and the curious throngs that only a longtime officeholder of his stature (and none of his opponents so far) can command, a smiling mayor showed up at the Election Commission, wrote out his check, turned in his reelection petition, acknowledged his supporters, and named his adversaries.

In no particular order, they were the media, the power establishment, assorted plotters and schemers, and almost as an afterthought, his declared ballot opponents. Herenton was asked if he thought that any “major” opponents were yet to declare. (That was code for his longtime friend and governmental counterpart, Shelby County mayor A C Wharton.) “It doesn’t matter,” he boomed out, as a surrounding crowd cheered his confident declaration.

And it may not matter. But there is a general feeling now, with two weeks to go before the July 19th filing deadline, that the best bet — some think the only bet — to turn the mayor back from gaining a fifth four-year term is Wharton and that the county mayor is running out of temporizing time.

It seems clear that he must in very short order either declare his candidacy, risking an old friendship with the man whose campaigns he has more than once been the titular manager of, or make an unambiguous statement renouncing any possible shadow of ambition to move his mayoral chair across the downtown government mall to City Hall.

What is known is that Wharton has been tempted to run, but that, besides his native reluctance and his loyalty to Herenton, he fears a bitter campaign in which he ends up being mauled by his old friend, a former pugilist who has never been prone to pull any punches — in the ring or out.

It is further known that Wharton — or someone acting on his behalf — has researched various questions of governmental protocol, including the key one of whether he could run for one mayorship while occupying the other or even hold both offices at once.

Meanwhile, the rest of the field went on doing its collective thing:

Earlier in the week, former MLGW head Herman Morris perceptibly stepped up his schedule, appearing at a meet-and-greet on Wednesday, followed by a fund-raiser before an audience of lawyers on Thursday.

At the latter event, held at the University of Memphis-area Holiday Inn on Central, Morris pointedly condemned political appeals to “racial divisiveness,” an apparent reference to what many observers saw as a central element of Herenton’s now famous “blackmail plot” press conference.

It is now clear that Morris and his supporters are staking their hopes on his prospects of appealing to both black and white voters and thereby becoming the legitimate default candidate for those seeking an alternative to a continuation of Herenton’s tenure.

Jackson Baker

Mayor Herenton

As the leader in early mayoral polling, City Council member Carol Chumney, of course, wasn’t conceding anything. She too accelerated her campaigning over the last week, following up a Monday-night appearance before the Germantown Democrats with some extended shmoozing at Thursday night’s weekly “Drinking Liberally” event, held at the Cooper-Young bistro Dish.

Finally, on Saturday night, Chumney invited supporters to the Memphis Showboat for what she called a “kickoff” of her campaign. (For once, given the venue, the term “launch” might have been more appropriate.)

Chumney read a lengthy statement in which she noted the panoply of reformist positions and independent stances that have gained her a substantial following. Especially prominent in her audience Saturday night were a group of environmental activists.

Nor was former Shelby County commissioner John Willingham inactive. Appearing at Tuesday night’s meeting of the East Shelby Republican Club at the Pickering Center in Germantown, Willingham made the most of a brief cameo appearance before the main address by state representative Brian Kelsey, espousing a disdain for the city’s “power elite” that may have transcended even Herenton’s in its intensity.

Of James Perkins, the retired FedEx executive who is reputed to have a million dollars to load into a campaign, not much is yet known. His campaign so far remains invisible, and, to the electorate at large, so does he.

The fact remains: In the field as constituted so far, only Willie Herenton is a creature of genuine sturm und drang. Only he has demonstrated the dramatic potency that, beyond all issues and for better or for worse, can motivate a mass electorate.

What happens if Wharton does get in? Chumney insists that she will remain in the race and eschew a return to the District 5 City Council position, which three candidates — Jim Strickland, Dee Parkinson, and Bob Schreiber — now seek. Morris insists that he raised enough money and support to go the distance, and no one doubts that Willingham will stay the course.

What the other candidates — or their representatives — all say is that they have displayed a resourcefulness that the county mayor has not. “It’s easy enough for him to just say no. Why doesn’t he?” is a common refrain. The answer to that, of course, is that he may yet give the alternative answer.

• A new physical principle has been discovered about the known universe, or at least about that corner of it occupied by the Shelby County Democratic Party. It is this: That the likes of Richard Fields can be gotten rid of — perhaps permanently — but longtime gadfly Del Gill is irrepressible and will return again and again — perhaps till the end of time.

Fields, accused by Mayor Herenton of being ringleader of a “blackmail plot” aimed at deposing the mayor, was the subject of two votes at last Thursday night’s monthly meeting of the local Democrats’ executive committee. First, his resignation from the committee — tendered in a letter to party chairman Keith Norman in which Fields blamed his departure on complications arising from “my present investigation of problems in Memphis” — was accepted by a 36-0 vote.

That vote, however, came only after Gill — yes, Gill — tried to move for Fields’ expulsion and was talked by Norman into tacking that motion on to the acceptance motion as a second stage. The reason: As Norman explained it, only the state party could rule on an expulsion; hence, Fields’ resignation had to be accepted first, lest some discovered technicality bind him forever to the committee, and to the party.

And that, Norman explained, was what nobody wanted. The chairman opined that “we should never have elected him back on in the first place” after Fields was forced off an earlier version of the committee in 2006 for working with Republican lawyers to overturn the election of Democrat Ophelia Ford to the state Senate.

Norman allowed himself some additional rhetoric to the effect that Fields was best gone forever — a point that Gill and others thought had been incorporated into the resolution of expulsion, which passed 27-6. Both Norman and party secretary David Holt said afterward, however, that the word “permanently” — heard frequently in discussion on Gill’s motion — was not involved in the final vote. The point may be moot; it is hard to imagine a third coming for Fields.

The real miracle was the return to the committee of Gill, who has his own detractors. That resurrection occurred when Gill, a perennial member who was not, however, elected at this year’s party convention, got nominated by the newly formed Memphis Democratic Club as its representative on the executive committee.

The Memphis Democratic Club is chaired by Jay Bailey, the lawyer who was defeated by Norman for the party chairmanship, and numbers other dissidents among its members.

Also returned to the committee was another longtime maverick, Bill Larsha, who was accepted as the representative of yet another newly formed dissident club.

• Even as all parties to the County Commission’s Juvenile Court controversy await the state Supreme Court’s verdict on whether it will adjudge the legality of the commission’s vote for a second judgeship, the commission itself has established an oversight committee for the court. Its chair? First-term member Henri Brooks.