Not to get all Old World on you, but the Oxford Dictionary defines “lawfare” thusly: “Legal action undertaken in order to exert power or control, esp. as part of a hostile campaign against a particular country or group.”
In New World parlance? Author Malcolm Feeley in 1979 published a tome with a title that best sums up the point of lawfare: “The Process Is the Punishment.”
It’s death by a thousand cuts—of red tape. You are bled out by government.
President Donald Trump was endlessly subjected to stupid, baseless charges and lawsuits filed in various courts all around the country. But while this was referred to as lawfare, I would argue the process wasn’t the punishment for which its many executors ultimately hoped.
They actually wanted to send Trump to prison. Because they hate him. And because they knew if they failed to send him to prison, he would get reelected. Oh, look.
And Trump is a billionaire. While the avalanche of idiotic charges was annoying, it wasn’t financially debilitating, as it was for, say, baselessly charged onetime Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
“[W]hether or not this leads to [Flynn’s] vindication legally, the case has come at an enormous cost for the retired three-star Army lieutenant general and his family, as he racked up millions of dollars in legal bills, was forced to sell his house, lost his job, and saw his reputation sullied,” Fox News reported April 30, 2020.
Then-President Barack Obama days before the 2010 midterms let slip the actual point of lawfare: “We’re going to punish our enemies, and we’re going to reward our friends.”
And that’s what government does. All the time.
The awful Dodd-Frank banking law—with its awful creation the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau— was written for (and by) the Big Government crony Big Banks to kill off the Big Banks’ small bank competitors. The Big Banks could then buy the carcasses and with them their market share on the cheap. That’s cronyism, and it’s working like a charm.
The main point of Net Neutrality? It was written for—and by—Big Government crony Big Tech. It was to ultimately kill off internet service providers (ISPs). Part of that plan: Outlawing charging Big Tech for the massive bandwidth they use, in another example of cronyism.
Big Government wants to kill the ISPs because they want to be the ISPs, as admitted to by one of its proponents: “[T]he ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
Except it’s government, and government is awful at everything—including its attempts to replace the private ISPs.
That was hilariously demonstrated over the weekend on comedian Jon Stewart’s “Weekly Show” podcast by his guest, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein.
As we repeatedly noted throughout the life of the failure, President Joe Biden’s administration “administered” $42-plus billion dedicated to creating government broadband. Except it created zero government broadband and connected zero people to the internet.
Of course, government was awful at being an ISP for decades prior to Biden wasting yet another $42-plus billion on the attempt. But by all means, don’t let that stop you.
On Stewart’s podcast, Klein excruciatingly detailed why and how government connected no one to the internet—during which Stewart grew increasingly and more demonstratively perturbed.
Klein walked Stewart through the 14-step process required for states to access broadband funding, highlighting excessive red tape that has hindered progress. By step 12, where states must conduct a competitive sub-granting process, Stewart could no longer contain his frustration.
“‘Oh, my [expletive] God,’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s step 12 … after all this has been done?’” Klein confirmed that only 30 of 56 jurisdictions had completed the step, with just three reaching step 13.
“I’m speechless, Ezra,” Stewart admitted. “It’s far worse than I could have imagined. The fact that they amputated their own legs on this is what’s so stunning.”
This was We the People being victimized by government’s lawfare: No one gets broadband, and we’re all out $42-plus billion. And government couldn’t care less—because they got to waste the $42-plus billion on the government process. That was the point.
I’d congratulate Klein and Stewart for finally acknowledging government sucks—except that they appear to remain steadfastly impervious to that fact.
Klein was on the podcast touting a new book he co-authored. It was touted this way by The New Republic: “An ‘abundance agenda’ for government is the anti-DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s progressive vision for how to make government great again.”
Except government was never great.
Klein regaled Stewart with his exquisite detail of government’s ceaseless broadband idiocy—while promoting his book demanding government do a whole lot more of … everything. The lack of self-awareness is astounding. The book’s unintentionally ironic title? “Abundance.”
As I explained at the launch by Elon Musk of his DOGE: You cannot make government more efficient. Human nature makes that inherently impossible. It isn’t government’s money, so government will never spend it well.
The only solution is to have the government spend less. That means having the government do less.
Memo to Klein and Stewart: If you want more abundance, you want less government.
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