Billionaire Gun Play
Recently, the public has become aware of a reclusive billionaire named Robert Mercer. His name is connected to pretty much all things corrupt and deplorable – Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Cambridge Anaylytica, and many others. He’s bankrolled child molesters like Roy Moore, and poured millions into think tanks propaganda mills contributing daily to the dumbing down of conservatives and the proliferation of fake news. Along with the Kochs and Sheldon Adelson, Mercer is apparently doing all he can to destroy America as we know it and turn it into an Russia-like oligarchy where money is “speech” and poverty is “freedom”. These guys believe if they can’t win, they’ll just buy the power they want.
As disgusting as that is, he participates in what on the surface appears to be a really odd activity: he is a volunteer police officer in a tiny New Mexico town. The town of 433 people, with only ONE full time employee, the police chief, has a volunteer force of reserve officers of 84 people who come from all over the United States. That’s right, a town of 433 people out in the middle of nowhere has a police force of one, backed up by 84 (at its peak 150) reserve officers. They are each required to serve 6 days a year, train and qualify. The do sniper training and tactics. Weird, right?
Well, not so much. It turns out that Congress passed a bill in 2004 called the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act, which allows police officers to carry a concealed handgun, even if local laws prohibit it. Reserve officers qualify to carry handguns anywhere they care to in the US. After the law passed, badge factories sprung up all over the country making gun nuts a reserve officer just so they can carry guns even in jurisdictions, like New York City, that prohibit it. Besides just simply being a piggy bank for every weirdo and radical on the political right, it turns out that Mercer is a gun nut. He bought Centre Fire Arms, which manufactures and sells assault rifles. His son in law runs it. He also started, with others, Law Enforcement Education Organization which was set up to encourage the carrying of firearms by law enforcement officers across state lines under the Law Enforcement Safety Act.
The Bloomberg article linked above is a fascinating read, and a story of which I was not aware. Mercer has emerged as one of the scariest guys in modern politics.
‘It takes a good Billionaire with a gun to stop a bad Billionaire with a gun.’
Welcome to the new improved 21st Century Feudal System … Corporate Fascism
1This explains why Steven Segal was a “reserve officer” in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s band of thugs.
2Great– rich, better dressed, and more articulate gun-crazy crazy people. There was a crying need for that.
3The Mercers. That’s a fine inadvertent poster duo for restoring the ‘Death Penalty Tax’ to something in the 110% range.
Bekah Mercer. Can/would the WMDBS take on an emergency mercy appointment? When even Steve Bannon won’t touch ’em …
4Words fail me.
Dedicated trauma physicians I know volunteer with departments and train as swat officers in order to put medical care on scene where it is likely to be needed. Other well-paid professionals volunteer in office positions in order to put more uniforms on the streets. And some well-paid professionals volunteer on the street as reservists to give back to a community from which they sprung and which supported them early on in their lives.
Arrogant motherfuckers like Mercer, who’s only “qualification” in law enforcement is wealth, sully and diminish the efforts of every volunteer who currently serve. Everyone would be better off if they sold shoes or collected motor cars.
5It’s almost as if the super wealthy can get laws passed which supersede the 2nd Amendment, or the Constitution. Maybe they figured out a way to be counted as 5/3rds of a human being, one plus special powers?
6I think I recall a situation many decades in NYC where a volunteer cop overstepped himself and landed in a world of trouble despite being called a hero. I can understand why the concern over volunteer cops. The Mercers come very close to being undercover donors to various proto-fascist causes. Its hard to identify them unless they make a comment a out something like they have done in the past four years or so. Do not trust them at all. they are in this “venture” just to make sure only the “right” people populate this country; i.e., clones of themselves.
7You can read all about them in Jane Mayer’s book, Dirty Money. She is a brilliant and brave journalist who has exposed these insidious creeps.
Mercer owns L.L Bean, so boycott.
He was involved with Cambridge way way back. And is a dark creepy lifeform.
Please read anything by Ms Mayer. You will be shocked at all the connections. Richard Mellon Scaife’s lifetime devotion to destroying the Clintons and George Conway as his close friend and hubby to Kelly Ann.
8Mercer’s been the money behind Breitbart “News”.
It’s the oldest rule there is: wealth begets power begets more wealth begets more power…etc. Older than the chicken and the egg riddle
9With only billionaires one gets an interesting view of the Koch’s and the Mercers trying to take care of each other. Or themselves or anyone else who is basically unable to wash a sock or cook a simple meal. With no “servants”, why who is there to do the actual “work”? Oh yes! Work is a four letter word. Those so called people haven’t ever lived in the real world, cannot relate to anyone who doesn’t live in a similar bubble. Maybe they can all fit on a nice yacht and sail off intro the sunset.
10And he’s a total loon! Howard Hughes…but with cats!
11Grampatom, I hear Brietbart News is not doing so hot lately, certainly not like they did when Bannon was on board. Cannot possibly feel sorry for them.
As for the “volunteers”, my late husband was always leery of such a notion. He always felt that if a job was worth doing it was worth getting paid for. Or it turned into something else.
12Micr@5:
13Thankfully your first sentence was incorrect.
Sometimes the foul taste of soap is a price worth paying.
Not in Hawaii they don’t.
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