“The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked but to be ineptly defended.” ― Frédéric Bastiat

When I first read the excellent Politico story about Kent Sorenson’s fall and change of conscience, which you should read right now if you haven’t already, I wasn’t surprised that Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign was implicated in his bribery scandal. Ron Paul always had a knack for attracting opportunistic grifters like moths to a lamp — that was true before his presidential campaigns, it was true after his presidential campaigns, and it’s true now. He also had a knack for attracting marks — a simultaneously cynical and credulous crew of volunteers and checkbooks willing to pledge money and fealty to the so-called “liberty movement.”

In order to be a leading light of the “liberty movement,” you had to hold two opposing views simultaneously. First, you had to cynically believe that “the elites,” whomever they might be at any given moment, were not only capable of, but regularly engaged in, cartoon supervillainy that turned everyone into mind-controlled “sheeple” (spraying the air with “chemtrails,” poisoning our precious bodily fluids with fluoride, and so on). Second, you had to credulously believe that, despite the elite’s unstoppable environmental drug cocktail, there were a few good people out there, good people who needed your help (and money, always money) to restore your liberties and stop the dark, malevolent forces collecting at the edges of our vision. All you needed to do was buy the vitamins and potions the good people were selling, buy the books the good people were publishing, enroll your children in the good people’s curriculum, and so on.

This is classic redirection: Aim the mark’s vision at a large, seemingly unsolvable (because it doesn’t exist) problem, then pick their pockets while they’re looking at the skies.

Many of us, sooner or later, saw through his hustle. Sure, Ron Paul said some of the right things about personal freedom, the injustice of the PATRIOT Act, America’s overbearingly imperial foreign policy, drug legalization, and so on; those messages are what attracted so many to his banner in 2008 and 2012, including many of my libertarian friends. However, many of us also noticed that he positioned himself as the incomparably principled guru of libertarianism despite some rather obvious ideological inconsistencies. We noticed that there didn’t seem to be a money-making scheme he didn’t attach his name to, whether it was "his" newsletters (which apparently weren’t written or read by him, despite being named after him), various apocalyptic books and videos prepared by scam artists, or hawking gold on national TV while trying to keep his personal portfolio afloat. We noticed that he treated other prominent libertarians as competition and repeatedly endorsed idiosyncratic nobodies instead.

Not everyone wised up, however.

When considering the flotsam and detritus Ron Paul’s campaigns dredged from the fetid swamps and stagnant streams of the body politic, it’s important to ask which group they belonged to: Were they the grifters, or were they the marks?

Grifters will chase money, power and exposure wherever it might be available. Grifters will insist, without a hint of irony, that a media outlet owned by the Russian government, a media outlet that airs stories about aliens shooting missiles off the coast of California, a media outlet that a journalist quit from on-air because of its “disregard for the facts,” is somehow super trustworthy. Grifters profit handsomely from the lies they tell the faithful. Grifters are political kudzu and should be treated as the suffocating weeds they are.

This guy is a grifter. This woman is also a grifter.

Marks, on the other hand, are something else.

Marks are the fertilizer that the grifters grow and profit from. In order to be a good mark, the sort of mark that grifters make a positive example of, you have to be hard-working, dedicated, selfless, and, most importantly, incredibly gullible.

Cindy Lake, candidate for Clark County Commissioner G, is a consummate mark.

We know Cindy isn’t a grifter because she’s absolutely terrible at grifting. The last time she ran for county commissioner, she didn’t even raise $20,000; her opponent, for comparison’s sake, raised more than $600,000. We know she’s dedicated and hard-working because she tirelessly overwhelmed the defenses of the Clark County Republican Party and became its chair, tirelessly divided the party in two, then tirelessly lost her re-election after her first term. We know she’s gullible because, even now, she shares articles about the dangers of fluoride on her Facebook page from one of the most notorious sources of unfiltered male bovine excrement on the internet and was complaining about water fluoridation (an element that occurs naturally in Nevada’s water) in 2014.

Speaking as a dues-paying member of the Libertarian Party, I’m personally rather impressed by her term as Clark County Republican Party chair. I’m sure there are more than a few Democrats in Nevada who feel the same, and for similar reasons. What I’m not impressed by is her latest quixotic campaign for county commissioner. I’m not impressed because her issues page shows a stunning detachment from reality. Let’s take them one by one:

• Lake wants an audit of the county budget. But contrary to the protestations of Lake and many a Ron-ulan, “audit” is not a magic word that means “Find free money under the government’s couch,” nor is it a magic word for “Find proof that the government is spending money on things it shouldn’t be spending money on.” Audits merely confirm that the government is spending money on what it says it’s spending money on. If you want to know what Clark County’s government is spending our money on, you don’t need an audit; you need only read the county budget yourself.
• Lake wants property owners to not face foreclosure if they don’t pay their property taxes. She also wants to issue a five-year moratorium on business licenses. That’s fine (I hate taxes, too) but that’s $555 million in revenue she’s suggesting cutting from the budget and the only spending that’s being cut is… well, she’s promising more spending, actually, because audits and the accountants hired to conduct them aren’t free.
• Lake wants to see diversity of political leanings on the commission. “One party has controlled Clark County government for a decade!” Good thing self-proclaimed activist mover-and-shakers and former county party chairs have no responsibility for this, otherwise someone might call the quality of her leadership to account.
• Lake is concerned about clean water and air. “Water quality and availability is of the utmost concern to each and every one of us. Cindy will ensure we are getting all the facts and make adjustments to current water and air policy as necessary.” Hey, remember that time Cindy Lake talked about defunding government to fight fluoride and chemtrails? Her fans do.
• Speaking of Lake’s favorite conspiracy theories, I have good news, Clark County residents — as soon as “every question about October 1 is answered,” then and only then will County Commissioner Cindy Lake let you have another park.
• I’m sure the federal government would be happy to go along with Lake’s plan to house the county’s homeless at Nellis AFB. I’m also sure we all share Lake’s misconception that Clark County residents only pay Clark County taxes and not federal taxes. And that’s good because housing homeless people at a highly secure military installation sounds incredibly expensive — more expensive, in fact, than housing them just about anywhere else. I'm also quite positive that I have a bridge to sell you, if you're buying.
• Lake is outraged about per capita county spending. I’m sure the reason Clark County’s budget is so much higher per-capita than most county budgets doesn’t have anything at all to do with Clark County also serving as the municipal government for more than a million other people, right? I also am sure that rolling all of the municipally-funded police departments into Clark County-funded Metro has had no effect on the size of the county budget, either. Nah. Lake surely is on to something, here.

 

The truth is, if you want to vote for a county commissioner candidate who wants to lower your taxes, you don’t have to settle for a conspiracy theorist. You don’t have to vote for someone who wants to spend your tax money chasing imaginary boogeymen in her water, her skies, in Clark County’s accounts receivable ledger, and at Mandalay Bay while simultaneously cutting nearly 10 percent of the county budget. Reducing the size, scope, and reach of Clark County’s government is a good cause. It’s also worth defending, sanely and competently.