OFF THE WIRE
THANK YOU BIG V
You know, Not Surprised, put up what is one my most objectionable points to any RICO prosecution.
RICO’s foundations were Robert Blakely under Sen. McClellan. The base test was an enterprise test, rooted in economics.
I can say, at risk of someone giving me a good smackaroo(the type
that gets your attention, not type that dulls the senses) that I spent
many hours around several MC’s.
I knew people who had legal problems- but those legal problems were
their own doing. Some of those people decided to trade their souls for
thirty pieces of silver and try to bring their brothers into the mix in
order to save their own asses.
Well, the reality is that there was no enterprise related to the
Motorcycle Club itself. Until this bullshit, there has never really been
a whole club put on trial, never a whole chapter even. Why ?
Because motorcycle clubs fail the enterprise test that Blakely based
his RICO work under. Even Blakely has admitted that RICO has been warped
beyond all possible recognition. RICO requires an enterprise test and
that requires a portion of Law and Economics to be used. Law and
Economics is the intersecting branch of legal theory and applied
economics where economics answers some of the questions that legal
theory cannot.
The enterprise test basically asks a couple questions. Is the
organization established for the purposes of commercial, industrial, or
business activity which is established or organized for the purpose of
profit ?
There are two things I can absolutely tell you: (1)John Wayne was
never on the sands of Iwo Jima. (2) No real MC is an enterprise- it does
not exist for profit. You can find some guys who’ve got good educations
or good families or just worked their tails off, and they’ve got money-
but it is their money. NOT THE MC’s. When club dues are due, the member
that is wealthy does not pay for another brother’s outstanding dues. A
member that is wealthy does not profit from the club. Being in a club is
a zero sum game- the club most of the time does not have money for
runs(small chapters often catch shit for having rough, shitty runs, but
most everbody has a good time); the club often times doesn’t have enough
money to fully stock the well of the bar and relies on donations to pay
for a drink(and yes if you are a guest of most clubs you’ll get free
drinks til you’re inebriated- you’re just a shitty guest for not paying
the suggested donations; most club brothers have to trade parts or rely
on a brother with tools and mechanical ability to fix their bikes. I
remember one guy had purchased a 74ci EVO Sportster, and it ate it’s
S&S and Andrews wheaties and became a 96ci Sportster. Except the
people keeping it running were the guy who could do the menial machine
work, the brother with the lift and all the tools, the torque adapters,
the slugging wrenches. We kept his bike going and he quit being a damned
car hop and helped fill up the well.
You trade your individual rights to wear a patch or support gear or
some logo related to the MC for the brotherhood and the bikes. That’s
it.
No profit to it. At 36, I have a PhD that will never be finished, and
is useless. I have had encounters with law enforcements. Other people
have bruised their knuckles on me, I’ve bruised my knuckles on other
people.
In 18 years, I heard of one patch pulling and it was by a club up out
Kansas way, and they jumped on a guy and took his patch. They got the
honor of sending it FedEx overnight, they had the leather cleaned, and
the patches wear taken off and dry cleaned. They lost about $400 on the
stupidity. It was a zero sum game. Yes, one of their idiot members could
claim- “I pulled a patch”- with his Howdy Dowdy grin, but they lost
$400 and a lot of people’s respect. The club later disbanded itself
because of shame- and that’s honestly what it was.
The point is: RICO DOES NOT EVEN APPLY TO MC’s. We’re broke- 99% of
us. We’re broke off our ass. We live pay check to pay check. Our money
goes into our family, our bikes, our dues, and some people drink. An MC
exists because of biking and brotherhood. That is it.
Here is what goes on at a church meeting(boys- I got pins in my hip,
and I ain’t healed yet, so could you wait on keelhauling me ?).
1. You take roll, you remember the brothers who aren’t there because
they gave their lives for biking and brotherhood(if they gave their
lives for other stupid shit- no, typically they aren’t remembered). If
someone isn’t there, you have to go back outside church, find a
landline, and call around looking for the lazy person who didn’t who up.
2. You discuss anything to do with the club: who’s visiting, is there
someone who wants to transfer in/out, is someone on medical leave
returning or turning in club property
3. Brothers discuss matters of interest- we talk politics- as in real
actual politics that affect our jobs, retirements, and ability to ride
the way we want to ride.
4. We discuss our interactions with other clubs. We genuinely want good relations with other bikers. HONEST TO GOD, WE DO.
5. We ask each other how projects and honey do’s are going. Wife
wants a new carport for her Sienna ? Can’t afford it. One person has
timbers- 4″x4″x10′, one person works at a concrete company and can drop
off leftovers til a pad is laid, one guy has tin, one guy is a roofer.
Carport comes together. Another guy has a GM diesel that needs the motor
changed out, bring it by the garage, we got a gantry and hoist, presto
changeo, the burnt out 6.2L is replaced by a nice 6.5L Turbo Diesel by
Detroit Diesel. Yes, the catalytic converter and O2 sensors were hooked
back up so nobody get any ideas that we RICO’d Mother Nature. One dude
just needed sod hauled. We talk about each others kids, people are proud
of their children. Sometimes if a kid’s birthday is at family day or
several are near family day, we get a big cake, and there are presents
and rides. And as a side note to Billy Queen: you may have been reliving
a scene from your own childhood where mommma and daddy didn’t have no
money for presents and Aunt Bea brought you a police and a firetruck
from the Mayberry playset, but I never saw a kid not have a party on his
birthday. If a kid is getting into trouble, a brother who has been in
trouble, seen the error of his ways, may talk to the trouble maker and
tell the youngin’ what it is like to live in an environment that is
segregated, where you make a left turn when a gunbull tells you to make a
left, even though the colored line says follow RIGHT. Having to lose
all privacy and urinate and eliminate inches from another man. Being at
risk because of your skin tone or your body build or your youth. A
brother that has been behind bars will flat scare another brother’s
child straight if asked. And having heard one myself when a kid was
misbehaving, I think I eliminated a little. I know the kid joined the
baseball team, quit hanging out with spray paint huffers, and he changed
from a D/F student to a B/C student and got a welding degree.
5. We actually lecture each other: don’t do stupid illegal stuff. A
man who was a club member predicted he would go to prison for saying to
his brothers “Don’t do illegal or immoral stuff.” We still say- don’t do
it. Your business outside the club is your business but that stuff is
inseparable and condemns us all.
6. Church adjourns and we watch tv, browse the internet, federal
prisoners can email us, there are women who want to meet us, there are
men of all age, race, ethnicity, religion, and skin tone who want to
meet us and find out what MC life is about.
7. Errata: There are exceptions to every rule, there are bad people
that get into chapters for bad reasons, there are good men who let life
slug them in the chest until they become bad men. There are bad chapters
that need to be shut down and are shut down. In the fine and well
beloved but oft misunderstood short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”-
the antagonist of the story can be paraphrased to say, “They’d been
good people if someone was there to kill them every moment of their
life.” My favorite authors are Flannery O’Conner, Stephen Crane, and
Joesph Conrad, some Ambrose Bierce thrown in is also good. Were Mr.
Bierce alive, I think he’d have something to add to the Devil’s
Dictionary about this farcical judicial moment in history.
My favorite authors understood that humans are not monsters nor are
they saints. My favorite brothers and hangarounds and women understood
the same. We are human beings, prone to failings, prone to err. In the
MC world, some will err and the club will try to help guide them
back(see LV Mongol Face).
If the good jurist trying this happens to find this, I ask him to check a link I attached.
