Question Earthority!

In writing polemic, two usually reliable rules of thumb are to focus on cui bono? (”who benefits?”) and to “follow the money” to divine the true motives of actors on the political stage. The lessons of the last few years — the Iraq contracting scandals, the collapse of Jack Abramoff’s lobbying empire, etc. — have reinforced those rules.

Rules of thumb, however, are just that: “rude processes or operations” (per Webster’s 1913) that can usually be relied upon to get one into the right ballpark … but not necessarily to help one connect swinging bat to flying ball. Cui bono/”follow the money” reasoning can become dangerous when it leads one to jump to final conclusions without additional evidence.

Let’s talk about Howard Rich. But first, let’s get my own cui bono/”follow the money” problems out of the way.

I don’t know “Howie” (as he’s called in the libertarian movement) Rich. I do know that he’s been supportive of organizations and causes I’ve worked with or for, or have admired. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he contributes to ISIL, the organization which owns this blog (I don’t know, and I haven’t asked). The closest I’ve come to meeting or speaking with Howie Rich has been some brief correspondence with his lovely wife, Andrea Millen Rich, when I worked for Free-Market.Net (back before it was an ISIL asset) and she ran Laissez Faire Books. As a matter of fact, that correspondence is my main tool for evaluating Mr. Rich. To put it bluntly, my imagination can’t stretch itself to accomodate the idea of Mrs. Rich being married to a man of anything less than sterling and heroic character.

My bias should be noted. I’ve worked indirectly with Howie Rich, have almost certainly benefited financially and otherwise from his contributions to libertarian efforts, and have a favorable impression of him from a remove. There’s my disclosure. Decide for yourself whether or not you think it biases what I have to say next:

The fact that Howie Rich is a “real estate mogul,” and the fact that he finances libertarian efforts, are not necessarily related in the way that cui bono/”follow the money” reasoning would imply.

Mr. Rich and another great libertarian whom I’m proud to say I do know and have worked directly with, Paul Jacob, are main forces behind a number of ballot initiatives nationwide, aimed at limiting taxation, government spending and the abuse of government eminent domain powers.

Ray Ring of High Country News (among others) has made a little political hay by attempting to impute sinister motives to Rich’s financing of these efforts.

Cui bono/”follow the money” reasoning: Mr. Rich has money, so his efforts to limit taxes are purely a function of his desire to reduce his own tax burden. Mr. Rich works in real estate and development, so his efforts to limit eminent domain are purely a function of his desire to secure his holdings (perhaps indirectly as a “sneak attack” via eminent domain but actually targeted at environmental and other land use regulations).

On a “rule of thumb” basis, those conclusions make a bit of sense. But rules of thumb are “rude processes or operations.” A closer look at the facts leads to a very different conclusion.

Nobody except Howie Rich knows how much money Rich has put into various efforts, but Ray Ring’s numbers make the case for a minimum of a couple of million dollars. I’ve got news for you: Two million smackers invested in straight congressional lobbying would buy Mr. Rich all the little bill riders and amendments and other gimmicks he needed if his goal was simply to protect his own business interests (or, alternatively, that money would buy him enough government contracts to generate “extra” profits to buy the exceptional treatment he wanted). Happens all the time.

If Howie Rich was just feathering his nest, he could do it more simply and more cheaply. Instead, he’s funding ballot initiatives to turn important questions over to the people of various states. And he’s been doing it for years. He could have curried favor with politicians who were in a position to take care of him. Instead, he financed term limits initiatives which enraged those politicians. He could have bought legislators and legislation (don’t pretend that you don’t believe that happens) and maximized his profits with little effort. Instead, he says “let the people decide” and puts his money where his mouth is, win or lose.

Something else is going on here. If I had to guess (and that’s all I can do), I’d guess that Howie Rich believes in some things — limited government and private property rights, of course, but also the efficacy and goodness of the democratic process and “people power” and, well, America.

You’re probably wondering by now what the “environmental” angle of this piece is. There are two.

The first is tangential, insofar as state-oriented environmentalists are screaming that Howie Rich and his money and his desire to limit government eminent domain powers are the camel’s nose into the tent of draconian land use regulations. They may be right, but it’s not obvious that they are, nor is it obvious that if they are they’re right for the right reasons. As a matter of fact, Rich’s support of curbing eminent domain abuse, if successful, will limit his own ability to get land he wants by having government take it at gunpoint. If there’s a raw profit motive underlying his interest, it would seem to be in the way of “leveling the playing field” by preventing his competitors from abusing the state influence that he declines to abuse himself.

The second is more direct: If we apply the same cui bono/”follow the money” reasoning to environmentalists themselves as they are applying to Rich, the picture isn’t pretty. Many large, well-funded environmental organizations receive oodles of corporate funding, and many of those organizations’ initiatives seem to track with the interests of those corporate funders.

For example, in 1986, DuPont announced its support for a ban on CFCs, and environmental groups subsequently focused their efforts on promoting such a ban. Laudable corporate responsibility combining with grassroots activism in support of the public interest? Or manipulation of the environmentalist movement by a corporation with an expiring patent on the most well-known CFC, Freon, and a non-CFC replacement for that product ready for market? Rumors abound of substantial contributions from DuPont and/or DuPont-backed foundations to environmental groups. If you can follow the money, you’re a better tracker than I am, but something smells.

And when was the last time an environmental organization put any of its agenda items up to a vote of the people? These groups operate substantially by lobbying politicians and bureaucrats, “grassroots” pretensions notwithstanding.

Follow the money? Absolutely. Ask who benefits? Obviously. But that’s just the beginning.