Writes Eric Spiess:

Regarding this scandal with the city of Bell, CA, I confess that I don’t know all of the details, but I do know that the City Manager was collecting something like an $800,000 salary.  I haven’t bothered with the fuss because I would expect nothing less from a professional criminal class. Moreover, while this is outrageous, I believe it is such a drop in the bucket compared to the far bigger rackets that go on with the military-industrial-corporation complex run out of Washington.

That said, when I hear that one of the Bell people could be jailed for up to 58 years for his antics, I can’t help but think of a passage from Franz Oppenheimer in The State:

“When, pursuant to their own ideals of justice, the aristocrats as a social group execute one of their own class for murder or robbery, for having exceeded the bounds of permitted exploitation, the thanks and the joy of the subjects are even more heartfelt than after victory over alien foes.”

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.