Jesse and the Big Bucks
From the Outhouse to the Lucrehouse
by William L. Anderson
By the time loyal LRC readers have pulled up this article, they will already have been aware of the latest travails of Jesse Jackson and his now-infamous "love child." While I have no intention to gloat over the fall of someone even as evil as Jackson, I do believe that the disgusting double standard by which Jackson is judged will continue. That is too bad, as this sorry incident has much more to it than what has been reported in the same media that has slavishly kowtowed to this man.
For starters, nothing has been made clear about the nature of the payoffs to Jackson’s mistress – a $350,000 home, $40,000 in moving expenses, and the continuing $10,000 a month she has been receiving from Jackson. All we read in the newspapers is that Jackson paid her, but the source is still not clear.
There is no doubt that Jackson makes enough money to have made these payoffs out of his pocket and still have plenty left over. He has managed to become a multi-millionaire through extortion. His MO is to threaten large corporations with charges of racism unless they make substantial contributions to his organization called the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition. Jackson receives a cut of that money through that organization, and also receives lavish speaking fees from corporations and labor unions.
The sad thing is that Jackson has made millions by looting productive people. True, trial lawyers do the same, but they do have some legal restrictions upon their actions. Jackson, on the other hand, has moved about with almost no legal constraints and almost certainly will get away with criminal behavior in the aftermath of his infamous tryst. However, that does not mean that the media and those few honest people left in the nation’s legal apparatus should allow him to break the law scot-free.
The first important question to ask is that of who actually made the payoffs to Jackson’s mistress. If Jackson made the payments out of his own pocket, then the only question to ask is whether or not he and his mistress paid income taxes on that money. (Yes, I despise taxes (while being careful to pay them!), but since leftists like Jackson speak of one’s holy duty to pay taxes, I wonder if those rules also apply to the Left.) Of course, it might be interesting to see whether or not Jackson took some creative tax deductions for his payments in an attempt to deceive the taxman – but now I am just engaging in speculation.
Given Jackson’s history, however, it is more likely that his tax-exempt front organization put up the necessary cash. If that is the case, then we are looking at possible fraud, since it is doubtful that the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition had a line item in its budget entitled "Payoffs to Jesse Jackson’s Mistress and Love Child." However, if the necessary funds came from this tax-exempt corporation and no one accurately reported the nature of those payoffs, then someone has committed a felony.
This is not the first time that someone in a tax-exempt organization has faced scrutiny for hush money. In 1987, the television evangelist Jim Bakker was discovered to have had a mistress who was subsequently paid for her silence. Like Jackson, Bakker could not contain his secret forever.
When it became apparent that someone had funneled a large amount of money to Bakker’s paramour, the IRS and the FBI suddenly became very interested in the financial dealings of Bakker’s organization, the PTL Club. Not only did these agencies scrutinize the Bakker mistress payoffs, but they also found that Bakker had committed financial fraud during a fund raising scheme to build a luxury hotel on the PTL grounds. In the end, the evangelist served a number of years in prison.
Will Jackson undergo the same legal scrutiny? Most likely he will not. First, the US Department of Justice would have to instigate any criminal investigation, and that august agency is soon to be run by John Ashcroft, barring a successful filibuster by Teddy Kennedy. It would be ironic if one of Ashcroft’s first acts as US Attorney General would be to investigate the nation’s most visible black person. After having spent several days under the klieg lights in confirmation hearings pleading his case that he is not a racist, Ashcroft most likely would want to give this one a pass.
As for tax evasion, that falls upon the IRS, and it is unlikely that the tax police would want to make a federal case out of Jesse Jackson’s sexual hijinks. After all, the rule of law has never applied to Jackson before. Should the Bush Administration actually try to make this man accountable to the law, no doubt it would be attacked for racism. Given the racial tensions that Jackson and others have already created since Bush’s controversial win in Florida, it is doubtful that the new president would want to add to his list of problems. There is also the realization that Jackson would almost certainly face an all-black jury (anything else would be racist), which would never convict him of any crime no matter how strong the evidence.
That is too bad. Jackson has made a living speaking out for what he calls "justice." Granted, the man and his words are fraudulent, but until now, not even I had realized just how much of a fraud Jesse Jackson really is.
January 20, 2001
William L. Anderson, Ph.D., is assistant professor of economics at North Greenville College in Tigerville, South Carolina. He is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
© 2001 LewRockwell.com
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