Polly Dogood

A Catalogue of Small Kings

Wherein the Author, the Week of No Kings, observes that Kings come in all Sizes, and sets down a List of the smaller ones for the Reader's Convenience.

To the Readers of this Publick Blog,

On Saturday a great many of my Countrymen turned out under Banners that read No Kings, and I was proud of every one of them. But I have been thinking since about Kings, and I find there are rather more of them than one.

Mr. Paine settled the Matter in 1776, in Common Sense: "in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other." No other. Not a large one in a Great House, and not a small one in a State Capitol or a Counting-House either.

The Declaration of Independence is mostly remembered for its Opening, but the greater Part of it is a List: twenty-seven Grievances, each beginning "He has." Our Forebears did not trust the Reader to see Tyranny in the Abstract. They wrote down the Particulars. I shall do the same, in three Sizes.

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I. The King in the Great House

I have written of the present President before, and shall try not to repeat myself. But a Catalogue of Kings that left him out would be a poor Catalogue.

He has turned the Department of Justice against his Enemies. Last September he wrote publicly to his Attorney General that three of his Critics were "guilty as hell," and that "JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!" The Prosecutor who would not charge them was pushed out, and the President's own former personal Lawyer put in his Place. She indicted two of them within three Weeks. A federal Judge threw out both Cases, ruling that her Appointment was unlawful, and Grand Juries have twice refused to indict one of them again.

He has made a Market of his own Announcements. Hours before he paused his Tariffs, he told the Country "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" Hundreds of millions of dollars in Oil Wagers were placed minutes before he reversed himself on Iran, and the Referral for Insider Trading was reportedly ordered withdrawn. His own Company has tried to sell Wall Street early Access to his Posts. I do not say he traded. I say the People's Business has become somebody's Business.

He has put his Thumb on the Scale of private Commerce. When a Company he disliked bid for Warner Bros., he called the Deal "a problem," and demanded that it fire a Director "or pay the consequences." The Studio went instead to a Rival run by the Son of his Ally, and his Justice Department approved the Purchase without a single Condition.

He has had People killed at Sea without Trial or Charge. Since September of last Year our Military has struck small Boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, killing at least 239 People whom the Government calls Narco-Terrorists, and has shown the Publick little Proof of it. In the first Strike, two Survivors clinging to the Wreck were killed by a second. The United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights says the Strikes violate international Law. Congress twice declined, each time by a Vote or two, to stop him. The Fifth Amendment says no "person" shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." It makes no Exception for the Sea.

He has taken the Killing of two Citizens out of the State's Hands. In January, federal Agents killed Renee Good, and then Alex Pretti, in the Streets of Minneapolis. His Government shut the State's Investigators out, declared the first Shooting Self-Defence before any Inquiry, and refused a Civil-Rights Investigation. Several federal Prosecutors in Minnesota resigned. To this Day his Government withholds the Evidence, the Gun among it. No one has been charged with anything.

He has made the Presidency pay. By the Count of The New Yorker, which calls its Figure conservative, his Family had taken in some $4 billion from his Presidency by January of this Year, most of it in Crypto-Currency, some of it from Buyers whose Names we do not know and whose Interests we can guess. The Constitution forbids any Officer of the United States to accept "any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State," without the Consent of Congress. Congress has not been asked. Nor has it asked.

He has dismissed the Inspectors General whose whole Office was to watch him, some seventeen of them, by Letters of two Sentences. A federal Judge has since found the Dismissals unlawful.

He has sent Soldiers into our Cities over the Objections of their own Governors, and a federal Judge has found that those he sent to Los Angeles were used against the Law. Our Forebears charged King George that "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power."

He has laid Taxes upon our Trade by Proclamation, until the Supreme Court reminded him, six Justices to three, that the Power to tax belongs to Congress.

He has pardoned some fifteen hundred Persons charged in the Attack upon the Capitol, and barred Reporters from his House for the Words their Papers print.

He has punished the Law Firms that crossed him, until nine of the great Firms bought their Peace with hundreds of millions of dollars of free Work. The four that went to Court won.

Mr. Hamilton warned of this Man in the very first Number of The Federalist: "of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants." The Founders did not need to imagine him. They described him. And Mr. Madison called "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands" the "very definition of tyranny." He did not say it must be accumulated all at once.

II. The Royal Governor

In my Grandmothers' Day, the King did not govern the Colonies himself. He sent Governors, and the Governors overruled the Assemblies the People had elected. The Declaration complains of it twice, and most bitterly of all "For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever."

I am told the Free State of Florida is very fond of Freedom, and so I have looked into it.

He has forbidden the Towns of Florida to require Water and Shade for those who labour out of Doors. In Florida. In Summer.

He has set aside the Votes of the People of Key West, who wished fewer Cruise Ships in their little Harbour.

He has made the Ballot a Thing that must be bought back. When the People, with 64.5% of the Vote, restored it to those who had served their Sentences, he signed a Law declaring that no Sentence is served until every Fine and Fee is paid.

He has made the Citizen's Petition nearly impossible. A federal Judge, in the very Act of upholding the new Law, wrote that the Process is now "virtually dead save for the most controversial issues." And when the People last tried it, the State sent Police to the Doors of those who had signed.

He has removed from Office two Prosecutors the People elected. The People of Orlando elected one of them again.

He has abolished the Boards by which Citizens looked into the Conduct of their own Police.

He has dissolved the Government of a whole District soon after the Company that ran it criticised one of his Laws.

He has emptied School Libraries by the Shelf. A federal Judge, ruling on the Law that did it, wrote: "None of these books are obscene."

He has signed a Law against Wokeness in the Name of Freedom, and the federal Courts have struck it down twice, in the Workplace and in the University, for violating the Freedom of Speech. The Freedom Law violated a basic Freedom. Very Florida, indeed.

He has drawn the People's Districts to suit himself. In 2010 the People of Florida wrote into their Constitution, with 62.9% of the Vote, that no District "shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent." The Governor vetoed the Legislature's Map and had his own passed instead. The State's highest Court upheld it, five Justices to one. All five were his Appointees. This Year a new Map was drawn in the middle of the Decade, and from January a single Congressman will represent part of St. Petersburg and part of Polk County, together with all of Manatee, DeSoto and Hardee. I set out to walk it with my Quill, and was stopped by Tampa Bay. The same Constitution requires that Districts "shall consist of contiguous territory," and since this one reaches from South St. Petersburg to Manatee only across the Mouth of the Bay, I am given to understand that Water counts. Bring a Boat.

A Train might have helped. The People of Florida voted in 2000 to put high-speed Rail into their Constitution; a Governor campaigned for its Repeal, and four Years later it was gone. In 2011 another Governor sent $2.4 billion of federal money for a Tampa Railway back to Washington. When the People of Hillsborough taxed themselves for Transit in 2018, the State's highest Court struck the Tax down. The People keep buying Tickets. Tallahassee keeps cancelling the Train.

In Fairness, which I promised, the Governor once vetoed a Bill that would have stopped Towns from banning Plastic Straws, writing that the local Bans had not "frustrated any state policy." So a Florida Town may still govern its Straws. It may not govern its Shade.

The Governor's Party has long called itself the Party of small Government and local Control, and it cannot say it lacked the Opportunity to show us. It has held the Legislature of Florida since the 1990s and the Governor's Office since 1999: more than a quarter of a Century with the Run of the Place. I find it has kept the Promise of small Government most faithfully. It is a Government small enough to fit in one Office in Tallahassee.

And in all that Time, the only Thing I can find in Florida that is truly free is the Rise in the Cost of Living. The Floridian now pays, on Average, $8,471 a Year to insure a House, nearly three times the $2,872 the rest of the Nation pays. It costs more than Money. Florida remains one of only ten States that will not expand Medicaid to the working Poor, and the Labourer in the Field may not be promised Shade. Those Costs are paid in Health and in Sweat, and nobody in Tallahassee refunds them. The only Thing free in Florida, it seems, is the Freedom to agree with the small King.

I would say all of this of a Governor of any Party who did the same.

III. The Company

Readers of my Tea Letter will remember the East India Company. It never went away. It only learned to dress better.

Maryland put it plainly in her Declaration of Rights of 1776: "That monopolies are odious, contrary to the spirit of a free government, and the principles of commerce; and ought not to be suffered." Mr. Jefferson asked that the Bill of Rights include a "restriction against monopolies." He did not get it, and we are paying the Difference.

Today's Company does not sit in a Throne Room.

It sits in your Rent, where the Department of Justice charged that a single Software let Landlords pool their Data to set what you pay. The Company settled without admitting any Wrong.

It sits in the House you cannot buy, where Investors bought nearly one in five of the Homes sold this Spring in the Cities Redfin tracks, and one of the richest Men alive has dug a Shelter of five thousand square Feet beneath his 1,400 Acres of Kauai, so as to be comfortable when the rest of us are not. A Man may keep as many Houses as he likes. When the Fortunes buy up the third and fourth while their Neighbours cannot make the Rent on the first, and the Law is written to suit them, that is no longer Property. It is Dominion.

It sits in your Concert Tickets, where a Jury this April found Live Nation and Ticketmaster liable as a Monopoly.

It sits on your Dinner Plate, where four Firms slaughter some 85% of the Nation's fed Cattle.

It sits in your Mother's Nursing Home, where a careful Study found that Private Equity Ownership raised the short-term Death Rate by about 10%.

It sits in the Price you are shown, which the Federal Trade Commission found may be set by where you are, what you have browsed and even how you move your Mouse.

It sits in your Newspaper, where in 2024 the Owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times each forbade their own Editors to endorse a Candidate.

And it sits in your Ballot, where since the Supreme Court's Decision of 2010 there is no Limit on what a Fortune may spend to choose your Representatives. One Man spent more than $290 million in 2024, and is reported to have given some $366 million more this Year.

None of these Gentlemen was elected to govern your Tuesday. Yet they do.

And I will say this plainly, because it is the Point: I would distrust such Power even in the Hands of a Man who shared my every Opinion. The Founders did not fear only wicked Kings. They feared Kings.

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Here is the plainer Version.

A Tyrant is any Power that answers to no one: not to a Vote, not to a Court, not to a free Press, not to a Market it cannot buy. Some of them wear a Crown. Most of them wear a Suit, and sign Things.

You need not wait for a Crown to know one. You will know him by what he says, or what he does without saying it:

"Rules for thee, but not for me." That is a Tyrant.

"You cannot afford it, but I can, and so I do not care." That is a Tyrant.

"The Process is the Punishment." That is a Tyrant.

The Remedy is the one Mr. Paine gave us: the Law is King, and there ought to be no other. Vote, and vote the whole Ballot, not only the Top of it: the County Commission, the School Board, the State Legislature, the Governor, the Congress. Sign the Petition while you still may. Read a Newspaper whose Owner does not frighten you. And on the 3rd of November, send a Congress to Washington that remembers it was given the Purse, the Sword and the Power to inquire precisely so that no one Man, in any House, could rule the rest of us.

P.S. The Gerrymander is an Invention of my own Generation, and I apologise for it. It is named for Mr. Elbridge Gerry, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and whose Massachusetts District of 1812 was drawn in the Shape of a Salamander. The People of Florida outlawed the Trick in 2010. It appears the Governor did not receive the Letter.