Category: Old Smoke

Бездепозитний Бонус Slots City За Реєстрацію, Слотс Сіті Промокод І Фріспіни

Отримайте максимальний кешбек 17% при досягненні VIP-статусу Король. Після відіграшу можна вивести кошти, отримані зі слотів з фріспінами. Для цього казино пропонують використовувати різноманітні фінансові інструменти. Серед користувачів найбільш популярними є банківські картки та електронні гаманці. Головне – не забувати вивчати усі умови відігравання бонусу та дотримуватися правил онлайн-казино.

Бездепозитний Бонус Slots City За Реєстрацію, Слотс Сіті Промокод І Фріспіни

Отримайте максимальний кешбек 17% при досягненні VIP-статусу Король. Після відіграшу можна вивести кошти, отримані зі слотів з фріспінами. Для цього казино пропонують використовувати різноманітні фінансові інструменти. Серед користувачів найбільш популярними є банківські картки та електронні гаманці. Головне – не забувати вивчати усі умови відігравання бонусу та дотримуватися правил онлайн-казино.

промокоди на бездепозитні фріспіниссылка

Виграш, отриманий за допомогою бонусу, необхідно відіграти. Це поширений тип вітальної пропозиції, яка зустрічається в багатьох онлайн-казино. Фріспіни за реєстрацію нараховуються одразу після першого поповнення рахунку. На деяких майданчиках вистачить лише грн, на деяких потрібно поповнити рахунок на суму від 200 грн.

Дуже часто отримати промокоди казино можна в листах, як гральний заклад розсилає на e-mail. Також перевірте на сайті казино, чи немає посилань на канали в месенджерах, сторінки у соцмережах. Якщо є – регулярно перевіряйте їх, щоб не пропустити промокоди підписникам. Також шукати промо коди можна на сайтах-агрегаторах, які збирають інформацію про казино – наприклад, на цій сторінці. Промо коди без депозиту надають клієнтам онлайн-казино бонуси, завдяки яким можна грати у слоти безкоштовно. Мінус полягає у тому, що фріспіни з виведенням за реєстрацію без відіграшу зустрічаються дуже рідко — це, швидше, виняток із правила.

Завжди знаю, де і як зекономити, та залюбки ділюсь цими знаннями з підписниками». Пройти верифікацію одним із запропонованих способів.

Вони видаються як бонус також за участь у квестах та лотереях. Кількість спінів залежить від зайнятого гравцем місця та від умов змагання. Окрім того, гравцям потрібно стежити за власними емоціями. Скористайтеся унікальним промокодом Emporium, щоб отримати свій бонус! Безкоштовні обертання надаються як новим, так і постійним клієнтам.

Переваги Й Недоліки Безкоштовних Фріспінів

При цьому, виграші ви зможете вивести, як це відбувається при грі на реальні гроші. Це стане в пригоді, якщо ви хочете грати на високоволатильних слотах. Серед акцій, які часто зустрічаються в онлайн казино України – слід звернути увагу на промокоди казино.

  • 195 бонусних гривень потрібно відіграти із вейджером x26.
  • Ввести промокод можна у спеціальному розділі в особистому кабінеті гравця.
  • Для підвищення свого статусу гравця робіть депозити та грайте у слоти.
  • Перейти в особистий кабінет та відкрити розділ бонусів.
  • Даний тип бонусу передбачає вкладення з боку гравця, тому він присутній практично у всіх популярних онлайн-казино.
  • Зазвичай вони передбачають обмеження за конкретними автоматами, фіксовану ставку та відіграш з великим вейджером.

З її допомогою новачок може протестувати софт, щоб потім пройти реєстрацію та застосувати на практиці безкоштовні фріспіни. Якщо в клієнта все пройшло успішно, то він отримає бонус на день народження у формі безкоштовних обертань. У разі виникнення проблем, то треба звернутись до клієнтської підтримки грального клубу. Яскравим прикладом є First казино, де на день народження гравцеві нараховують від 60 до 500 FS в залежності від його статусу в програмі лояльності. Онлайн казино пропонують безплатні оберти барабанів в слотах (free spins) за створення нового акаунта та виконання умов. Нижче подана інформація, як отримати безплатні фріспіни за реєстрацію без депозита, які надають найкращі онлайн-казино України.

Наприклад, у казино Slotor промокоди на бездепозитні фриспіни гемблери отримують за підписку на Telegram-канал клубу. Оскільки дія кожного бонус-коду обмежена, перед активацією потрібно перевіряти актуальність такої пропозиції. Промокод казино України – це гарна можливість отримати додаткові засоби для гри та прибуток. Завжди ретельно читайте умови використання та вчасно виконуйте правила відіграшу. Підписуйтеся на всі соціальні сторінки казино, щоб не пропустити новини про промокоди. У казино з безкоштовними спінами використовувати заохочення можна лише у певних ігрових автоматах.

Перший тип передбачає отримання грошей після внесення коштів на рахунок. Ми використовуємо кукі, щоб надати Вам найкращий досвід використання сайту. Онлайн-казино СлотоКінг вважається одним із найкращих та найнадійніших в Україні.

Іноді для отримання заохочення необхідно пройти процедуру верифікації. Це необхідно для підтвердження віку гравця та відсутності протипоказань до ігор. Промокод казино зазвичай забезпечує бонуси, які потрібно відіграти за певний термін. Спершу уважно перечитайте умови акції – можливо, ви не врахували якусь з умов активації. Наприклад, код був дійсний протягом якого часу, строк якого вже вийшов. Якщо ж все вірно, але бонус все одно не спрацьовує – рекомендуємо звернутися до служби підтримки казино.

В деяких випадках достатньо ввести промокод Слотокінг. Це спеціальний код, після введення якого нараховують подарунки. Після підтвердження реєстрації користувачеві потрібно в особистому кабінеті зайти в рубрику «Бонуси», де знаходиться вкладка «Промокоди».

Чи активувати фріспіни за реєстрацію – вибір кожного гравця. Але ми ще раз нагадуємо про правила та принципи відповідальної гри. Не забувайте – гру в казино варто розглядати лише як спосіб отримання задоволення, а не заробітку. Як і будь-який бездепозитний бонус, промокоди на фріспіни без депозиту користувачі отримують з певними правилами. Казино Пін Ап має багато сильних сторін, серед яких найбільше виділяється бонусна політика. Гравці платформи отримують щедрі бонусні нарахування, в тому числі Pin Up бездепозитний бонус.

Побачити його можна буде в розділі персональних акцій в особистому кабінеті. Деякі онлайн казино дозволяють відслідковувати хід відіграшу в особистому кабінеті гравця. Як тільки бонус відіграно – гроші переводяться з бонусного рахунку користувача на основний. Асортимент азартних розваг, представлений на сайті, здатний задовольнити запити навіть досвідченого гравця. Азартності ігровому процесу додають регулярні турніри та акції. Також є можливість використовувати промокод для отримання персональної винагороди.

Пам’ятайте, що участь в азартних іграх не може бути джерелом доходів чи альтернативою роботі. З питань співробітництва звертайтесь електронною поштою Брати участь у бонусній програмі оператора можуть лише ті клієнти, які пройшли реєстрацію на сайті.

Слідкуйте за нашим регулярно оновлюваним оглядом статей про бонуси, які можна знайти в офіційних онлайн-казино України. Оператор вітає клієнтів, які досягли статусу Граф, з Днем народження та дарує персональний бонус — 200 % на депозит. Щоб отримати винагороду, необхідно зробити депозит на суму від one hundred гривень.

До списку подарунків входять фріспіни, бонусні нарахування, підвищений кешбек та т.і. Slotoking активно спілкується зі своїми користувачами у Telegram-каналі та Facebook. Казино викладає промокоди для загального доступу у Телеграм-каналі та в групі Facebook.

Отримайте Бонусний Пакет 125% На Депозит Та One Hundred Twenty Five Безкоштовних Обертань

Перераховані ресурси допоможуть гемблерам завжди отримувати казино промокод бездепозитний бонус. Також можна скористатися промокодами, які розміщені на нашому сайті. Кожна ігрова платформа пропонує свої промокоди на бездепозитні фріспіни, обирає певну кількість спінів та вказує умови відіграшу. Обертання автоматично нараховуються на бонусний баланс. Отримати спіни таким чином можна у казино Slotoking, Cosmolot та Slots City.

Всі актуальні промокоди гемблери можуть дізнатись на цій сторінці. Такі бонуси пропонують багато казино, зокрема Slots City. У рейтингу на цій сторінці ви знайдете точні умови акцій кожного закладу. Такі акції дуже вигідні для гравців, адже дають змогу робити обертання без зайвих витрат, отримуючи шанси на реальні виграші. Бонус-коди казино приносять користь усім учасникам процесу. Їх використовують у кампаніях партнерського маркетингу, коли рекламу розміщують на інших сайтах, а іноді й в офлайнових медіа.

Виконання вимог щодо відіграшу бонусу – це важливий аспект, про який іноді забувають користувачі онлайн-казино. У деяких гральних клубах подібні заохочення мають вейджери та правила відіграшу, які обов’язково потрібно враховувати перед активацією. В окремих випадках активувати бонус код можна зверненням до адміністрації в чаті. Служба підтримки надасть додаткові інструкції або самостійно підключить бонус.

Тому ці подарунки є однаково вигідними як для гемблерів, так і для закладу. Гральні майданчики часто використовують їх для заохочення гравців. А ось, наприклад, релоад бонуси в казино знайти та отримати не так просто. Щоб отримати від казино Кінг бонус за реєстрацію, необхідно створити обліковий запис на сайті та внести депозит від 250 гривень.

На Що Звертати Увагу При Виборі Казино З Фріспінами?

Якщо ви заблокуєте файли cookie, які необхідні для правильної роботи сайту, це може привести до його непрацездатності. На сайті є ряд цікавих акцій, яким варто присвятити окремий розділ. У них можна виграти фріспіни, грошові нагороди, до 17% кешбеку, призи у Колесі Фортуни та бустери.

Де Знайти Промокод Для Казино?

У другому випадку кошти нараховуються на бонусний або відразу на ігровий рахунок у вигляді конкретної суми. Зазвичай винагорода коливається в межах 100–2000 гривень. Промо код на бездепозитний бонус у вигляді грошової виплати не потребує обов’язкового поповнення рахунку. З бонусного балансу приз можна вивести після відіграшу. Для отримання фріспінів за реєстрацію особі має виповнитися повних 18 років.

Завдяки цьому інтернет-казино може точно дізнатися, звідки прийшов новий користувач. Воно виплачує обіцяну винагороду партнеру і надає бонус гравцеві. Промокод вводиться в спеціальному рядку у вікні реєстрації нового гравця або в особистому кабінеті. У більшості випадків він перевіряється автоматично, хоча в деяких казино потрібно чекати схвалення модератора.

Багато надійних клубів пропонують фріспіни без депозиту з виведенням в Україні. Ці бонуси в казино роблять промоакції дуже ефективними, даючи змогу швидко розширювати клієнтську базу закладів. Вони привертають увагу початківців, які поки не готові витрачати великі суми та шукають легкий спосіб протестувати функціонал казино.

Але більшість гемблерів шукають на Слотокінг бездепозитний бонус. Бездеп рідко з’являється у списку доступних акцій на сайті, тому що не є основним різновидом подарунків. Далеко не останню роль у популярності майданчика відіграє вигідна програма лояльності для клієнтів. Серед промо є багато цікавих пропозицій, наприклад гравці можуть отримати на Slotoking 50 фріспінів або депозит без ризику. Тобто мова йде саме про бездепозитні бонуси, які можна отримати без поповнення депозиту та витрат власних коштів. За кожні поставлених гривень в казино Пін Ап гравці отримують подарункову коробку.

Які Бонуси Можна Отримати За Промокодом?

Максимально можна одержати до 5000 гривень на рахунок. Бездепозитний бонус — це вид промо, який не вимагає поповнення балансу з боку клієнта. У казино SlotoKing бездепозитний бонус можна купити за компоїнти — бали лояльності. Для цього необхідно зайти в «Магазин FS» та натиснути команду «Обмінювати CP».

Що Таке Промокод В Онлайн-казино?

Промокоди для нових користувачів активуються у вікні реєстрації при створенні акаунта, для постійних клієнтів – в особистому кабінеті. Ігрові автомати з безкоштовними фріспінами встановлюються умовами акції. Оскільки кожен спін видається з фіксованою ставкою — саме від неї залежить розмір передбачуваного виграшу. Безкоштовні спіни привертають увагу як нових, так і давно зареєстрованих користувачів. Зареєструйтесь у Ферст Казіно та отримайте 1300 фріспінів, а також бонус до 675% надбавки на перші 5 депозитів. Крім цього, бонусні коди можуть бути одноразовими чи багаторазовими.

Свіжі купони публікують рейтингові сайти та топи онлайн казино. Для отримання купону користувачу достатньо перейти з представленого списку на сторінку онлайн-закладу, де разом із описом буде вказано бонусний код. Такі ресурси постійно стежать за останніми оновленнями та разом із ТОПами пропонують своїм читачам ще й робочі промокоди. Гравцям доводиться відігравати бонуси та дотримуватися правил виведення грошей.

Гравці Pin Up можуть отримувати one hundred pc бездепозитний бонус після кожного кешауту. Сума бонусу дорівнює 100% від суми податку, що компанія сплачує до бюджету України. Казино працює офіційно та з ліцензією, це ще одна перевага цієї платформи. У випадку неправильного введення коду, система видасть на екрані помилку.

Спочатку потрібно відіграти їх, виконавши певні умови. Також існує промокод онлайн казино, який необхідно вводити лише під час поповнення рахунку в формі для депозиту. Учасники турнірів можуть отримати не лише грошові призи, а й безкоштовні прокрутки без депозиту.

Промокод казино – це унікальна комбінація цифр і букв, що відкриває доступ до бонусів та інших винагород. Зазвичай вона діє тільки один раз, тому перед її використанням потрібно уважно вивчити всі умови акції. Бездепозитні спіни в казино найчастіше нараховуються в невеликій кількості — від 10 до 30. Такої кількості достатньо, щоб познайомитися з геймплеєм нового слота та отримати виграш. Виграш, отриманий за допомогою безкоштовних обертань, не можна відразу виводити. Досвідчені гравці радять використовувати демонстраційну версію гральних автоматів.

Наприклад, новачки можуть отримати безкоштовні спіни за реєстрацію, тоді як постійні — за свою активність на майданчику та депозити. На них полюють більше, ніж на цвіт папороті на Купала. Ви знаєте, на нашому досвіді траплялися бездепозитні фріспіни без відіграшу. Зазвичай, такі акції мають тимчасовий характер і не проходять на постійній основі. Також гравцям українського казино доступні поповнення без ризику до 500₴, кешбек, бонуси та бустер.

Якщо в кінці ігрової сесії не вдасться подвоїти депозит, гемблер отримає повернення грошей на свій акаунт. Якщо не встигає – бонус згорить, якщо все вдасться, бонусні кошти стануть доступними для виведення. На цій сторінці доступна інформація про всі бонуси українського казино. Промо-розділ в казино Пін Ап насичений різними акціями. У цьому можна переконатися, відкривши відповідне меню на офіційному сайті оператора. Але всі пропозиції мають бути відіграні з певним вейджером – спеціальним множником чи коефіцієнтом.

High 9 Jeux & Purposes Pour Gagner De L’argent Facilement !

Les nouveaux casinos en ligne proposent souvent des bonus sans dépôt pour attirer de nouveaux joueurs et se faire connaître sur le marché. Ces offres sont généralement plus généreuses, mais il est essential de vérifier leur légitimité avant de vous inscrire. Malheureusement, ces bonus sont très rarement éligibles aux jeux de table. Pour dénicher les meilleurs bonus sans dépôt, il est essentiel de savoir où chercher. Notre équipe teste et évalue minutieusement les casinos en ligne pour vous garantir des offres fiables et attractives, adaptées à tous les types de joueurs.

High 9 Jeux & Purposes Pour Gagner De L’argent Facilement !

Les nouveaux casinos en ligne proposent souvent des bonus sans dépôt pour attirer de nouveaux joueurs et se faire connaître sur le marché. Ces offres sont généralement plus généreuses, mais il est essential de vérifier leur légitimité avant de vous inscrire. Malheureusement, ces bonus sont très rarement éligibles aux jeux de table. Pour dénicher les meilleurs bonus sans dépôt, il est essentiel de savoir où chercher. Notre équipe teste et évalue minutieusement les casinos en ligne pour vous garantir des offres fiables et attractives, adaptées à tous les types de joueurs.source

Assurez-vous de bien comprendre les règles du jeu et de profiter des bonus et promotions offerts par les sites pour maximiser vos probabilities de gagner. Pour commencer, il vous suffit de télécharger l’software mobile, de créer un compte gratuit et c’est tout ! Choisissez la catégorie de jeu et faites défiler la liste disponible des partenaires qui proposent des jeux avec la possibilité de gagner de l’argent réel sans dépôt. Vous pouvez aussi profiter des bonus de casino en ligne pour jouer gratuitement aux machines à sous et autres jeux de casino.

Si vous pensez que vous êtes en practice de devenir accro aux jeux, nous vous recommandons de chercher de l’aide sans délai ou de consulter le website des Joueurs anonymes. Et si ces bonus ne sont pas suffisants, vous pouvez trouver encore plus de bonus de casino ici. La somme minimal pour les dépôts sur ce casino est de 20 euros et la somme most de retrait est de euros, sauf pour les retraits effectués avec Skrill, qui peuvent monter jusqu’à euros. Vous pourrez utiliser votre carte bancaire, un virement bancaire ou votre portefeuille électronique sur le web site. Ce on line casino accepte tous les moyens de paiement importants, à savoir les cartes de crédit, les virements bancaires, et les portefeuilles électroniques Skrill et Neteller. Le site de Lucky Treasure est construit en HTML5 et s’adapte donc parfaitement aux petits écrans, du smartphone à la tablette.

Pour jouer et gagner à des jeux de cartes tels que le Poker ou le baccara, la likelihood ne suffit pas. Il faut en effet entraîner son cerveau à mémoriser et visualiser des stratégies complexes, à anticiper sur les différentes probabilités et à s’adapter en toute circonstances, pression ou non. Utiliser les nouvelles applied sciences (et notamment des jeux cell pour gagner de l’argent) vous permet de commencer dès que vous le souhaitez. Le token SMCW convient aux investisseurs à lengthy terme qui peuvent consacrer du temps à la plateforme.

Si vous pensez être à risque d’dependancy ou de subir des dommages liés aux jeux de hasard, vous ou quelqu’un d’autre, veuillez consulter notre guide du jeu responsable ou visitez Gambleaware. Il y a plusieurs autres jeux accessibles sans dépôt sur les functions mobiles d’Android et d’iPhone qui ont été très populaires auprès de ceux qui jouent aux machines à sous pour de l’argent réel. A toutes sortes de jeux, des jeux de desk comme le poker, la roulette et le blackjack, aux machines à sous et aux jeux de vidéo poker. Les jeux avec croupiers en direct, en revanche, sont rarement disponibles en mode démo. Vous pouvez vous familiariser avec de nouveaux jeux sans risquer de perdre votre argent.

  • L’avantage de la maison va varier en fonction des jeux gratuits de casino auxquels vous jouez en ligne.
  • Il se montre très innovant en termes d’univers et de nouveaux jeux, automotive il propose bien plus que les traditionnels casinos en ligne.
  • Lors de la section de préparation, Nine Chronicles prend toutes les décisions liées au gameplay.
  • Que vous soyez étudiant, mother or father ou joueur expérimenté, Freecash est accessible à toute personne disposant d’un smartphone et d’une connexion Internet.

L’un des meilleurs jeux gratuits en ligne pour gagner de l’argent sans dépôt est le livre des morts. Bienvenue dans l’univers des jeux en ligne, une nouvelle tendance qui permet de gagner de l’argent réel sans débourser un centime. Inutile de rechercher des heures sur web pour trouver les meilleures méthodes. Nous avons fait le travail pour vous et avons rassemblé la crème de la crème des jeux en ligne. Une occasion rêvée pour tous ceux qui souhaitent faire fructifier leur temps libre.

Jeu Pour Gagner De L’argent Réel Sans Dépôt

La approach est facile, vous devez choisir une dizaine de chiffres parmi les 80 sur la feuille distribuée. Après le tirage, vous recevrez vos positive aspects en fonction des numéros gagnants que vous avez obtenus. En effet, le Keno est un jeu de hasard, mais certains joueurs français de casino choisissent de tester des stratégies populaires pour augmenter leurs possibilities de gagner.

Bien souvent, vous pourrez tester leurs jeux sans aucun engagement et sans créer de compte. Parfois, pour tester un website, l’inscription est requise, ce qui est plus contraignant. À half les jeux, jouer gratuitement vous permettra de savoir quels sont vos opérateurs favoris parmi les créateurs de logiciels de jeux. Parmi les plus célèbres, on retrouve Play’n GO, Pragmatic Play, Microgaming ou encore NetEnt.

C’est une plateforme complète qui vous permettra de toujours trouver des réponses et des méthodes pour arrondir ses fins de mois. Les jeux vidéos Play to Earn, ou jeux P2E, sont des jeux qui permettent à leurs utilisateurs de générer des récompenses au sein du jeu, qui peuvent ensuite être converties en argent réel. Ce jeu play to earn permet à ses joueurs de choisir parmi quatre types de personnages. Le personnage aura ses propres armes et recevra de la nourriture qu’il utilisera uniquement quand il en aura besoin.

Trouver la approach gagnante au baccarat est d’une très grande significance pour tous les joueurs. Si vous n’avez jamais tenté votre likelihood au baccarat, il est temps d’en profiter et de vous entraîner sur notre site avec plusieurs jeux de baccarat en version gratuite. Chez Bitstarz Casino, vous trouverez une vaste sélection de jeux adaptés à tous les goûts. Des machines à sous avec des jeux comme Book of Dead, Wolf Gold, et Starburst sans investir de votre propre argent.

“Toutes les espèces se sont toujours déplacées pour assurer leur survie.” insiste… À l’âge des choix et de l’autonomie, celui où l’on expérimente le monde adulte, la maladie a brusquement remis en question la stabilité de la vie de Tim. Nous vous apprenons remark créer facilement un compte sur le on line casino Lucky Treasure. Le service consumer du casino est très réactif et peut être joint par téléphone, e-mail et sur le chat.

Vous pouvez accéder à la plateforme, commencer immédiatement à jouer et profiter des machines à sous et des jeux gratuits proposés sur le web site. Créer un compte n’est pas nécessaire surtout si vous tenez à rester discret et que vous ne voulez pas communiquer vos données personnelles. Avec l’évolution de la technologie et surtout la facilité d’accès à web, les jeux de on line casino en ligne sont en plein essor. Parmi les jeux souvent proposés en mode gratuit sur les casinos en ligne, voici les plus populaires.

jeu pour gagner de l'argent réel sans depot

Pour jouer en ligne et gagner de l’argent réel, il est conseillé de choisir des jeux avec un avantage de maison faible et de créer une stratégie de pari adaptée au jeu auquel vous jouez. Vous trouverez ici les pourcentages d’avantages de la maison pour les meilleurs jeux gratuits de casino en ligne d’argent réel en 2020. Choisissez l’un des jeux gratuits de la liste qui correspond à votre expérience en matière de jeu, et vous maximiserez les probabilities de gagner. De plus, en choisissant des jeux avec des avantages de maison bas, vous gagnez du temps et vous gagnerez de l’argent réel plus rapidement. C’est l’un des tremendous jeux gratuits en ligne pour gagner de l’argent réel sans dépôt.

Vous pouvez jouer une, deux ou trois lignes et modifier facilement vos paris en fonction de votre price range. C’est la prime que vous vous donnez une chance de réclamer lorsque vous choisissez Âge des dieux . Il est disponible sur Casino.com et pour les utilisateurs de différents pays. Pour ne pas perdre votre temps et vous prévenir des déconvenues, n’hésitez pas à faire appel à des comparateurs comme Kuzéo.

De nombreux joueurs se demandent s’ils peuvent gagner en jouant à des jeux gratuits. Jouer sur des jeux gratuits implique que vous ne pouvez pas obtenir des gains en argent réel. Si vous voulez vous former et apprendre à jouer sans miser votre argent réel, beaucoup de versions gratuites sont accessibles sur notre plateforme. En effet, après un peu de pratique des meilleures methods de blackjack, vous serez également prêt pour commencer à jouer au Blackjack.

Meilleur On Line Casino En Ligne D’argent Réel

Sans payer,  jouer à des jeux gratuits en ligne pour gagner de l’argent réel sans dépôt avec l’ascension des pharaons. Il est aussi essential de vérifier les options de paiement proposées par le on line casino. Les websites de jeux en ligne autour de la thématique des casinos proposent souvent des jeux qui sont également des jeux de casino. Vous pourrez alors facilement retrouver votre jeu d’argent préféré sur ces websites.

Les Avantages Des Jeux Sans Dépôt

Les joueurs peuvent y exploiter, chasser et collecter des ressources du monde réel. Ils ont de plus la possibilité de choisir le rôle qu’ils veulent jouer dans l’économie du jeu. Ces derniers peuvent devenir des pirates de l’espace, des commerçants ou des mineurs. The Sandbox est un jeu play to earn qui utilise les applied sciences blockchain, DeFi et NFT pour créer un métavers 3D. Le monde virtuel permet aux joueurs de personnaliser et de créer leurs propres jeux et actifs numériques à l’aide d’outils de conception gratuits. Ainsi, on peut dire que ce jeu est la version DeFi de Minecraft sur la blockchain.

Nous avons dressé pour vous à cet effet une liste de jeux gratuits en ligne sans dépôt pour vous aider à commencer. Ces bonus sont les fameux tours gratuits ou free spins qui permettent de faire quelques parties gratuitement sur un casino sans dépôt. Par contre, c’est souvent que vous devrez jouer sur une machine à sous en ligne prédéterminée. Energy Casino est une autre plateforme populaire qui offre des bonus sans dépôt attrayants. En utilisant le code bonus JOHNNYBET lors de votre inscription, vous pouvez obtenir un bonus sans dépôt pour commencer à jouer immédiatement.

La plupart des joueurs apprécient le fait que les actifs du jeu sont également des NFT enregistrés sur la blockchain. Ainsi, ils peuvent les utiliser dans le jeu, mais aussi les vendre s’ils décident de ne plus jouer. C’est la raison pour laquelle les jeux NFT et la blockchain peuvent constituer d’excellentes choices d’investissement et une supply de revenus très intéressante.

Mistplay est une application mobile populaire qui suggest à ses joueurs une variété de jeux différents parmi lesquels choisir et gagner des récompenses. Il s’agit essentiellement d’une plateforme que vous pouvez utiliser pour accéder à des jeux, principalement des jeux de réflexion et de stratégie. Si vous débutez votre parcours avec les applications et plateformes de jeu, Freecash est l’une des premières plateformes que vous devriez envisager pour gagner de l’argent réel sans dépôt. Freecash est une plateforme incroyablement facile à utiliser où vous pouvez gagner de l’argent réel en effectuant des tâches simples, des sondages ou des offres. Plus de 29 millions d’utilisateurs emploient cette méthode de paiement dans le monde. Elle propose non seulement des frais de transactions très faibles, mais aussi des dépôts instantanés.

Ci-dessous, nos consultants ont noté les meilleurs websites de jeux d’argent en ligne selon plusieurs critères tels que l’expérience utilisateur, la variété de jeux en ligne, les promotions, et bien d’autres. Pour choisir le meilleur website pour vos jeux, nos évaluations vous permettent de cibler les critères qui vous semblent le plus essential pour jouer en ligne. Découvrez ces casinos et profitez des nouveaux jeux et de jeux gratuits pour vos events en ligne. Ces casinos vous proposent des fonctionnalités très agréables comme de nouveaux jeux et quelques jeux gratuits pour se faire la main.

Certaines offres vous permettent de jouer à des jeux gratuits avec des free spins. Vous êtes-vous déjà demandé remark jouer dans un casino, mais sans payer ? Eh bien, Chumba Casino est l’un des meilleurs jeux de on line casino qui vous permet de faire exactement cela.

Pionnier dans l’univers des jeux flash gratuits de casino depuis plus de 20 ans, NetEnt est un leader incontestable et de qualité supérieure dans le domaine. Ce fournisseur est un incontournable sur les plateformes de jeux accessibles sans dépôt sur Android et iPhone. Jouer à des jeux sur des casinos gratuits vous permet de tester le sérieux des offres du on line casino afin de vous faire votre propre avis avant de choisir de vous inscrire. Vous êtes libre de choisir sans effectuer de dépôt qui vous « bloquerait » sur un casino que vous n’aimez pas. Le baccarat est un jeu de cartes qui fait partie de la famille des jeux de tables, comme le blackjack et la roulette.

Il s’agit d’une forme de test de jeux vidéo, qui contribue aussi à booster leur popularité. Plus vous passez de temps à jouer sur l’application, et plus vous êtes récompensé, sous forme de pièces qui peuvent ensuite être transformées en bons, cartes cadeaux ou virement Paypal. Vous aimeriez entrer dans la partie à votre tour mais vous sentez perdu ? La réponse à toutes vos questions tout de suite dans notre high eleven des meilleurs jeux pour gagner de l’argent en ligne. Sur MadNix, vous découvrez l’univers d’un professeur unique qui vous accueille dans son laboratoire pour jouer aux meilleurs jeux en ligne. De plus, la version des jeux pour appareil cell fonctionne aussi bien pour les téléphones mobiles que sur tablette.

Les Jeux De Grattage

Pour les jeux sur MadNix, plusieurs méthodes de paiement sont possibles. Vous pourrez réaliser vos dépôts par carte bancaire, virement, portefeuille virtuel, afin d’être plus libre de profiter des jeux. Les joueurs réguliers seront également gâtés par des bonus en fonction des jours de la semaine. Du cashback est également disponible pour que votre expérience du site soit encore plus agréable. Kings Chance a tout prévu pour que les joueurs puissent effectuer facilement leurs dépôts et retraits sur le site.

Pour autant, nous cherchons à vous proposer des websites de jeux avec des logiciels de hasard qui garantissent l’impartialité des résultats des jeux. Les méthodes de paiement – Tout site de jeux en ligne doit proposer différentes méthodes de paiement et de retraits pour vos jeux en ligne. Les casinos crypto qui acceptent de nombreuses cryptomonnaies sont également mieux notés pour cette modernité.

Gods Unchained est l’un des meilleurs jeux gratuits qui vous donne la possibilité de jouer pour gagner de l’argent en ligne. Il s’agit d’un jeu play to earn de cartes à collectionner qui vous offre des cryptomonnaies pour vos réalisations. Le jeu a vu le jour en 2018, lorsque ses développeurs ont vendu des millions de cartes mystiques et collecté 15 millions de dollars lors d’une levée de fonds de série A. Parmi les meilleurs jeux de casinos en ligne permettant de gagner de l’argent réel, on retrouve les machines à sous, le blackjack, le poker en ligne, et d’autres jeux de cartes. Pour jouer et gagner de l’argent réel sans dépôt, il vous suffit de trouver des websites de confiance proposant ces jeux.

Vous pouvez aussi visiter directement les websites de casinos mais cette resolution n’est pas la plus efficace. N’utilisez le bonus qu’une fois que vous êtes prêt à démarrer la session de jeu. Entrez dans le thème ancien de style égyptien de Book of Dead et préparez-vous à gagner gros comme des tens of millions de joueurs à travers le monde.

Ils vous permettent d’accéder à des jeux sans avoir besoin d’inscription ni de dépôt d’argent. Avant de créer un compte sur un nouveau on line casino en ligne et de faire des dépôts sans être sûr que vous allez vous y plaire, le fait de pouvoir accéder gratuitement aux jeux du on line casino peut s’avérer très utile. Voici donc 8 avantages à opter pour des sites de jeux gratuits selon les consultants. Il existe plusieurs applications de casino en ligne qui offrent des bonus sans dépôt, mais Bitstarz Casino et Energy Casino sont parmi les meilleures.

Par exemple, vous avez besoin d’acheter trois NFT de créatures Axie pour vous lancer sur Axie Infinity. Et, vu le succès fulgurant qu’a connu le jeu, les prix de ses jetons non fongibles sont montés en flèche. Selon DappRadar, le NFT le plus cher du jeu a été vendu pour 2,33 hundreds of thousands de dollars de tokens WETH. Le Centre Pompidou-Metz, centre d’art dédié à l’art moderne et contemporain, est conçu comme une expérience unique, un espace de découverte de la création artistique sous toutes ses formes. La célèbre bande Dessinée Astérix prend vie à l’Atelier des Lumières grâce à une expérience immersive qui promet d’enchanter petits et grands. En collaboration avec les Éditions Albert René, cette création numérique…

Une fois que vous avez gagné des récompenses, vous pouvez les encaisser à partir d’une somme minimale de 2 $ sur votre compte PayPal ou choisir des cartes-cadeaux. Si vous avez des jetons, vous pouvez participer à des tirages au type pour avoir une chance de gagner des récompenses de grande valeur. Vos gains peuvent varier en fonction du temps que vous passez à jouer, mais en général, les gens peuvent gagner environ 40 $ par mois !

D’ailleurs, l’avatar Cubie Blueprints sera bientôt disponible sous forme de NFT. Coin Hunt World combine des éléments des jeux en ligne les plus célèbres et les assemble dans un jeu crypto. GODS, le token natif du jeu, peut être utilisé en tant que mode de paiement dans toutes les étapes du jeu. La valeur unique des cartes rares est qu’elles peuvent être échangées contre des tokens GODS, qui peuvent ensuite être convertis en monnaie fiat. Ainsi, les joueurs gardent entièrement le contrôle de leurs actifs au sein du jeu, chose qui les encourage à continuer.

Par ailleurs, le mécanisme de ces jeux peut favoriser la spéculation par des joueurs cherchant à réaliser des plus-values, et donc engendrer des dépenses élevées, mais aussi être propice à l’addiction. Ces objets sont monétisables, c’est-à-dire qu’ils peuvent être achetés directement auprès des développeurs du jeu, échangés entre joueurs, ou vendus sur des plateformes spécialisées. Les JONUM transforment ainsi des activités de loisirs en une source potentielle de revenus. Vous pouvez profiter des jeux sans avoir besoin d’un téléchargement de logiciel supplémentaire à installer sur votre disque dur. C’est un jeu très intéressant avec plusieurs variantes comme le bingo 90, le bingo 80, le bingo seventy five et le bingo 30. Bien que le bingo soit un jeu de parfait hasard, il existe quand même d’ingénieuses stratégies qui peuvent vous aider à compléter vos grilles et à calculer la probabilité des résultats.

Michael Rosano, City Hall Insider

The first month’s name honors the god Janus, whose two faces let him simultaneously contemplate past and future. I suspect most of us look backwards, contemplating time spent, which increasingly for me is marked by death.

In my college’s quarterly alumni newsletter, nearly 25 years after my graduation, an increasing number of familiar names appear among the obituaries. I was throwing out old papers in yet another failed attempt to clean my office when I noticed an obituary I had clipped from The New York Times. Michael Rosano, who was and still is my friend, died a little more than a year ago, on October 13, 2000. He was 42 years old. He was a rarity: a political animal who was also a human being.

I first met him 20 years ago this month. On January 1, 1982, I attended the inauguration of Andrew Stein as Manhattan borough president. I would work for Stein, on and off, for the next 11 years. (My rabbi, Walter McCaffrey, introduced me to the Stein staff. Walter is neither Jewish nor a religious sage, although one would always be better off for heeding his wise advice. According to Lardner and Reppetto’s NYPD, this use of the word “rabbi” is peculiar to New York, dating from the late 19th century when some Irish Catholic police officer first used the term to refer to the senior officer or politician, usually also Irish Catholic, who was his mentor, protector, and counselor.)

Anyway, I was by then a self-taught editor and speechwriter, so I ended up in the Borough President’s press office, where Michael’s desk was conveniently located in the far corner, out of the line of sight of anyone bursting in the door to see the press secretary. Michael and I both came from Albany County: he from the city of Albany and I from Latham, which is, as F. Lee Bailey once said in a courtroom speech, “an unincorporated hamlet.” Albany is the last fortress of upstate yellow-dog Democracy. Among the family legends is my grandfather’s explanation of an infected hand: he had brushed the GOP lever on a voting machine. Even Michael only once admitted to voting for a Republican, although he was excused his apostasy because she was a woman and an Italian, and she lost.

Michael was darkly handsome, gentle, and dryly humorous. He often claimed that, although born of Italian heritage and a gay man (someone once called him “the capo di tutti frutti”), his soul was that of an uppity Jewish woman from the Upper West Side. A few weeks ago, while watching Robin Bartlett’s wonderful performance in Richard Greenberg’s Everett Beekin, I found tears in my eyes because, somehow, her manner and intonation vividly reminded me of my friend’s manner of camping it up.

We both took politics seriously while taking politicians lightly, so we hit it off. He had studied English literature at New York University and written for the school’s daily paper. Occasionally, after the second or third drink, he murmured about interviewing Sid Vicious at the Chelsea Hotel. “Mr. Vicious,” as Michael insisted on calling him, had received Michael in the squalid room the singer then shared with Nancy Spungeon. Sid was nearly stupefied when he opened the door to the boy reporter, and his answers were increasingly tangential and then incoherent. Finally he fell asleep between one sentence and another. Michael called the musician’s name a couple of times. The only replies were snores. Michael picked up his notebook and stole silently away.

Michael entered politics in 1976, when he volunteered to work for the great Bella Abzug in her Democratic primary campaign for the U.S. Senate against Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Michael was unusual for an 18-year-old in politics: he was efficient, hardworking, and enduringly patient, and Mrs. Abzug’s managers took note of him. After his graduation from NYU, Michael briefly worked at Channel 13, where, as in most not-for-profit organizations, the infighting might have tested the political skills of the Borgias. Then he came to the Manhattan Borough President’s office.

Michael was the first openly gay man whom I knew well. He told me that he had known from childhood that he was gay (I found nothing odd in this: I knew I liked women at the age of six, although I could not have told you why). His family loved him; his colleagues trusted and respected him. Nonetheless, he felt alienated, with a mild sense of always being the Other nearly everywhere save among his friends or among gay people. Despite his gracious manners and self-control, he bitterly resented anyone who did not accept his right to live as he wished without criticism or discrimination. In particular, he developed an antipathy to organized Christianity in general and Roman Catholicism in particular, although his relationships with individual priests and ministers were often quite friendly.

We have lived with AIDS as both a disease and a political question for nearly a generation. It first became prominent during the initial year or two of our friendship. Back when a citizen could still stand on the front steps of City Hall without the mayor’s prior permission, ACT UP, the gay and lesbian activist group, chained shut the Hall’s doors as protest against some forgotten municipal failure. I was then inside the building, sitting at a desk. In common with most folks in City Hall back in those days, I felt inconvenienced but not terrorized.  Politicians then understood that being the target of the public’s wrath was part of the job description. Probably we understood too that, at best, most City Hall politicos are hacks with good intentions. We would have laughed to think ourselves as important as city politicians seem to think themselves now—so essential to public life that they must be protected by effectively barring the people from City Hall.

Anyway, there was not much else to do until the guys from the Department of General Services appeared with the bolt cutters. The telephone rang. It was Michael. From my point of view, he was safely across the street in the Municipal Bldg.

“What’s happening?”

“Well,” I replied, “we’re being held hostage in City Hall by gay terrorists.”

“In your case, they have a good reason,” he replied, and hung up.

His experience of seeing friends die radicalized and hardened him. He believed that the government was responsible for solving the problem, in part because the public sector can throw an infinity of tax dollars at a problem, which many believe will solve it sooner or later; in part because he did not believe the free market would devise an affordable cure for the disease in time to save his friends; and in part because his political ideas were expressed through the rhetoric and legal precedents of earlier civil rights movements, all of which had relied on state intervention to further their agendas. He thus focused his talents on furthering government intervention by learning how one quietly amended statutes or modified budgets, the kind of practical political work that few ideologues bother to master because it often requires years of heartbreaking work.

As Michael gradually became an insider, he never forgot being an outsider. This meant his more radical acquaintances hurt him more deeply than they could have known when they called him a sellout. The best proof of Michael’s humanity was that he could tell these idiots to go to hell, and mean it, and still take their calls the following day.

He never lost his humanity. A Democrat clubhouse lawyer told this Michael Rosano story over drinks at Dusk on 24th Street. This guy intends to marry his girlfriend at a big formal event on Cape Cod in June 1991. He decides to go through a civil ceremony in front of a judge in November 1990 so the girlfriend might share his health insurance benefits. They get the license from the city clerk. Then the lovebirds realize they need two witnesses to the ceremony. For that matter, they need a celebrant. On the morning of the blessed event, this guy pokes his head into the office of the judge for whom he then works and asks whether she would mind performing the ceremony that afternoon. The judge, whose infinite patience is much taxed by this guy, replies, “Yes, I’ll do it. You really believe in advance notice, don’t you?”

The would-be bride talks her cousin, the pastry chef, into being her witness. The guy has a busy day and understandably forgets about getting his witness until about an hour before the big event. At the 11th hour, he knows there is only one man he can rely on. Like several thousand people who have outrageously imposed on Michael in the past, this guy is right.

He sprints from the Tombs to the Municipal Building, takes the elevator up to the 15th floor (there were no metal detectors in the lobby then) and sticks his head into Rosano’s office. Rosano, as usual, is on the telephone. This guy asks Michael to stand witness at his wedding in 15 minutes. “Sure,” Rosano replies. “Thanks for all the notice.”

The judge is conducting a murder trial when Michael, the pastry chef, and the blushing bride, in Dior suit and big hat with bouquet in hand, sweep up to the courtroom door. A court officer asked, “Who’s getting married?” The bride, who then and throughout her marriage is never at a loss for words, seizes Rosano’s hand and replies, “Michael and I are tying the knot.” Michael and the court officer arch their eyebrows into their respective hairlines. As the bridal party enters the courtroom where the judge is conducting a murder trial, the Assistant District Attorney asks the witness, “Is this the knife that you saw in the hand of the defendant?” Michael turns to the bride and pats her on the arm, murmuring, “So auspicious for our wedding, dear.”

He moved from government to lobbying and back to government, ending his career as deputy communications director to state Sen. Martin Connor, then the minority leader of the state senate. He worked harder than ever, and as do most who remain young in spirit, neglected his health, certain that he would live forever. When he was finally diagnosed with cancer, his condition was nearly untreatable.

Michael was as principled in death as in life: his estrangement from the church in which he had been born and raised was so profound that he requested no religious service over his remains. Last spring, his friends celebrated his life at New York University. Every seat was taken and there was standing room only in the hall. There was some rhetoric, which he would have tolerated, having written a bit of it himself. However, those who knew him best spoke of his hard work, kindness, wit, and blithe courage in the face of his own death, which takes some doing. One speaker called Michael a foul-weather friend, and quoted Maurice Baring’s “In Memoriam, AH,” which seemed right:

No one shall take your place.
No other face

Can fill that empty frame.

— January 8, 2002, New York Press

The Road of Hubris

Occasionally, we think about investments we  could have made that might have made us rich. Armed with clairvoyance, who would not have sunk the farm into Microsoft, back when Bill Gates was a nebbish? But we probably would have put our money into AT&T, U.S. Steel or Western

Occasionally, we think about investments we  could have made that might have made us rich. Armed with clairvoyance, who would not have sunk the farm into Microsoft, back when Bill Gates was a nebbish? But we probably would have put our money into AT&T, U.S. Steel or Western Union—sound investments that would become much riskier through technological change and management by mediocrity.

It’s easy to see why a century ago, an investor choosing between, on the one hand, an automobile factory promoted by an obscure Michigan mechanic named Henry Ford and, on the other, the New York, Westchester & Boston Railway, backed by J.P. Morgan & Company and controlled by the bluest of blue chips, the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, might have opted for the known quantity.

The Westchester—“the Road of Ease”—ran its first train on May 29, 1912 and its last on December 31, 1937. It was safe, stylish, and efficient. Its trains ran on time. Though it never turned a profit, part of its main line survives as part of the IRT number 5 line, carrying passengers  between East 180th Street and Dyre Avenue in the Bronx.

The Westchester was an old idea. On March 20, 1872, the New York, Westchester & Boston Railway was incorporated to build from New York through the Bronx to the Connecticut border beyond Portchester. The Panic of 1873 cut off new investment in the scheme as abruptly as the 2001 recession cut off the dotcoms, and so the Westchester slumbered as a paper railroad—a file of corporate papers, including its franchise to build through the Bronx to Westchester—in its lawyers’ office. In 1906 investors headed by J.P. Morgan and William Rockefeller (John D.’s roguish brother) bought control of the Westchester for $11 million. This was a lot of money for an abstraction.

However, the corporate charter and the franchise justified the expense to Charles Sanger Mellen, the New Haven railroad’s arrogant, sharp-tongued, and audacious president. Throughout his presidency, from 1904 to 1913, Mellen enjoyed the confidence of J.P. Morgan, who was as much a financial statesman as an investment banker.

Morgan had dominated the New Haven through sheer force of personality since 1892. Mellen later testified that without Morgan the New Haven’s board of directors would have been “as lacking in interest as a herd of cows deprived of a bull.” Morgan’s policy was simple: eliminate competition. He saw the railroad as a route to a monopoly over southern New England’s surface transportation that would literally control “everything that moved.”

By 1912, Mellen had achieved this. Through new construction, stock control, or lease, the New Haven operated over 2,000 miles of track: nearly every inch of steam railroad and trolley in Connecticut and Rhode Island and most of southern Massachusetts. The New Haven even controlled the coastal shipping companies—like the great Fall River Line with its huge white wedding-cake four-decker steamers Commonwealth and Priscilla. (The heroine of John O’Hara’s Butterfield 8 ends her life aboard a thinly disguised Fall River Line steamer.)

The Westchester’s peculiarity was that, though controlled by the New Haven, it would directly compete with its parent for commuter passengers between New York City and its northern termini, White Plains and Portchester. Yet this wasn’t an absurdity. First, Mellen believed the Westchester would eventually save the New Haven money. The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which regulated railroads, required the New Haven to operate commuter trains with cheap tickets between Westchester and Connecticut and Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, which was owned by a rival company, the New York Central. The New York Central charged the New Haven up to twenty-four cents for each New Haven passenger passing through Grand Central. This meant the New Haven lost money on every commuter it carried.

The Westchester’s planned southern terminus was at 132nd Street and Willis Avenue, where its riders could board the IRT subway at 129th Street or the el train at 133rd. This obviated Grand Central’s terminal charges. If the Westchester charged lower fares than the New Haven, New Haven commuters might shift to the Westchester, cutting Mellen’s losses.

Second, Mellen believed that New York City’s commercial center would continue expanding northward. Between 1800 and 1850, the commercial district had grown from the tip of Manhattan to Canal Street; by 1900, it had passed 42nd Street. Mellen expected that it would reach the South Bronx between the 1930s and 1950s. (The city fathers planned for this: look at a map of the roads, railroads, and subways that converge at 149th Street in the South Bronx neighborhood nicknamed “The Hub.”) The Westchester would be right there, waiting for it.

The Westchester drove its first spike in 1909. Mellen spared no expense: Roger Arcara described it in Westchester’s Forgotten Railway as “the culmination of railway development: the most modern and efficient design, the most solid and sturdy construction, the greatest capacity (for its amount of trackage), and the most attractive layout and appearance of any line in the world.” It cut through rocks and hills and filled gullies and bogs to keep a straight, level right of way. Its bridges, viaducts, embankments, and retaining walls were designed to last for the ages. Although most of its route was then rural, the line was solidly built as a four-track heavy-duty electric railroad using the finest technology of the day.

It opened on May 29, 1912. From the beginning to the end, it was a first-class operation. Its 72-foot-long olive-green steel cars, with upholstered double-seat benches and a toilet compartment, could reach 57 mph within a minute. At E. 180th Street, Morris Park, Pelham Parkway, Gun Hill Road, Baychester Avenue, and Dyre Avenue the railroad built fabulously ornate stations of poured concrete and steel, designed in a kind of Spanish Renaissance style (“modified Mission” it was called), several of which still serve the MTA today. It carried 2.8 million passengers in 1913, 4.5 million in 1916, and 14 million in 1928.

Yet the Westchester never quite caught on. Its elegant trains were rarely more than five coaches long, in contrast to the fourteen-coach commuter trains run by the New York Central and the New Haven. Commuters preferred a one-seat ride to midtown over changing to the subway at the East 133rd Street terminal. Second, the city’s zoning laws, adopted four years after the Westchester opened, effectively set the northern limit of commercial development at 59th Street.

Third, the Westchester never developed much freight traffic: indeed, it operated only one freight locomotive throughout its existence. Some said it hauled a single load of coal up to White Plains in the fall and took out the ashes in the spring.

Fourth was the fall of Charles S. Mellen. The New Haven’s press bureau made the railroad seem a financial Rock of Gibraltar. Yet as early as 1907, Louis Brandeis, then a Boston lawyer, later a justice of the United States Supreme Court, had shown that Mellen’s profits were largely bookkeeping magic. Few paid attention then. In May 1912, a few days before the Westchester accepted its first paying passenger, the ICC began a routine review of the New Haven’s services and freight rates. Their accountants found confusing transactions between the New Haven and its 336 identified subsidiaries. The review became a full-scale investigation.

The report, issued in early 1913, proved Brandeis correct. The New Haven was insolvent: it had lent money to its money-losing subsidiaries, which they used to pay dividends to the parent company, which the parent then classified as income. Worse, Mellen had constantly shuffled assets between subsidiaries to inflate profits. One relatively clear example, outlined in George H. Foster and Peter C. Weiglin’s Splendor Sailed the Sound, was the New Haven’s coastal steamship operations. The ships themselves were sold in 1907 by one subsidiary, New England Navigation, to another, Consolidated Railway. They were not paid for in cash but with Consolidated Railway stock, worth $20 million but only because Mellen said it was.

The New Haven’s accountants showed a paper profit on the sale for New England Navigation, which was reported as real income, and an increase in the assets of Consolidated Railway. It looked like the real thing. With each transfer, though, the corporate books became works of increasingly elaborate fiction, showing explosive growth without any real increase in value. The steamboats alone shuttled from subsidiary to subsidiary (Consolidated Railway to New England Steamship to New England Navigation and back) over the next five years, pumping up the asset values on one or another set of books, depending on which one needed to be made attractive to investors at any point in time.

An immediate result of the investigation was Mellen’s resignation in August 1913. Within the year, the ICC offered and Mellen accepted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. He described the steamboat deals and numerous other secret transactions. The New Haven’s treasurer, Hiram Kochersperger, was taken ill; his doctors advised him to travel to Europe for a rest, rendering him regrettably unable to testify. Mellen, when asked how long Kochersperger had been ill, replied, “Since the Commission began to get after the New Haven’s accounts.”

On November 2, 1914, a federal grand jury indicted twenty-one New Haven directors; Mellen spent thirty-one days on the stand at their trial.

Meanwhile, the Westchester lost money on its day-to-day operations from 1912 until 1921 and from 1932 through 1937. Even in the good years, it never made enough to cover the bond interest, which was paid by the New Haven. Much as the dotcoms relied on infusions of fresh venture capital, so the Westchester relied on advances from its parent. In 1935, six years into the Great Depression, the New Haven went broke. The advances stopped. In its annual report for 1935, the New Haven wrote off the Westchester, stating that “The advances made to the New York, Westchester & Boston Railway Company amount to $21,460,494.87, but as the prospect of their being repaid is very remote, they have been reduced to a nominal value of $1.” The next day the Westchester defaulted on its bonds and filed for bankruptcy.

By April 15, 1937, the Westchester’s receiver determined the line was hopelessly insolvent. On December 31, 1937, the Westchester made its final run. In June 1939, scrappers began removing the tracks in Westchester County; a year later, the City of New York purchased the line between E. 174th Street and Dyre Avenue for $1.7 million—much less than it had cost to build—and began operating it on May 15, 1941.

Here and there, the Westchester survives. The East 180th Street and Morris Park stations still bear the initials “N.Y.W.B.” The overpass at Brady and Matthews Avenues bears the railroad’s symbol: the caduceus, a staff entwined with coiled snakes, symbol of Mercury, the swift messenger of the gods. According to Cox Rail, an online site for collectors of obsolescent railroad securities, one of the Westchester’s handsomely engraved bonds, meant to be redeemed in 1946 for $1,000 in gold, is worth about $50.

New York Press, February 19,2002

The Road of Anthracite

Phoebe Snow started here. I mean the train, not the singer–although she started here too, come to think of it. Born in New York City, she borrowed her stage name from the premiere express train of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, “The Route of Phoebe Snow,” “The Road of Anthracite,” which passengers boarded by taking a ferry boat from the railroad’s lower West Side ferry terminal to the massive Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Phoebe Snow started here. I mean the train, not the singer–although she started here too, come to think of it. Born in New York City, she borrowed her stage name from the premiere express train of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, “The Route of Phoebe Snow,” “The Road of Anthracite,” which passengers boarded by taking a ferry boat from the railroad’s lower West Side ferry terminal to the massive Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey.

The ninety-two-year-old ramshackle bronze-green Beaux-Arts giant, now operated by New Jersey Transit, still crouches a mile upriver from Jersey City’s financial district, its ferry slips gaping toward Manhattan. There, the Lackawanna began its long run to Scranton, Elmira, Binghamton, and Buffalo, where it connected with the Wabash, the Erie, the Nickel Plate,  and other trains serving all points west. It is the last working railroad-ferry terminal on the Hudson’s west shore.

Until the Hudson Tubes (now the PATH lines) linked New Jersey and New York in 1908, the Hudson had been untunneled and unbridged south of Poughkeepsie, ninety miles from the sea. Most regional railroads terminated at Jersey City, Hoboken, Weehawken, or Edgewater. They built or shared vast terminal stations where trains met the Manhattan steam ferries. It was a magnificent, leisurely way to enter or leave the city.

At the turn of the century, the Lackawanna’s locomotives burned what they hauled, smokeless anthracite coal. The railroad’s advertising emphasized this cleanliness through Phoebe Snow, a fictional woman passenger whose flowing white dress remained spotless by using the Lackawanna. The line even named its premiere express train for her. Thus the jingles ran:

Says Phoebe Snow about to go
Upon a trip to Buffalo,
“My gown stays white from morn till night
Upon the Road of Anthracite.”

With dimpling face all full of grace
Fair Phoebe pictures in a daze
That journey bright when clad in white.
She used the Road of Anthracite.

The same copy writer probably later worked on Burma Shave.

In 1914, the Pennsylvania Railroad—The Standard Railroad of the World (their ads said so)—finished tunneling under the Hudson, through Manhattan, and under the East River to Long Island while completing Pennsylvania Station at 34th Street. The Pennsy spent some 400 million prewar dollars over two decades to create history’s greatest privately financed public works project. (Advocates of a new Yankee Stadium should note: not one cent was the taxpayers’ money.)

However, the Pennsy monopolized Penn Station. At Hoboken, the Lackawanna’s passengers still changed to either ferries or the Tubes. A new jingle made the best of it:

Now Phoebe Snow direct can go
From Thirty-Third to Buffalo.
From Broadway bright the “Tubes” run right
Into the Road of Anthracite.

For another two generations—until they went bankrupt one after another—The Lackawanna and the other railroads ran passenger trains into their Jersey terminals. The Lackawanna ran boats between Hoboken and Manhattan’s Barclay Street until November 25, 1967, when the old steam ferry Elmira made its last run. The Phoebe Snow was discontinued. The Lackawanna (which in its last years was nicknamed the “Lackamoney”), vanished into Conrail and New Jersey Transit. Most of the terminals were torn down. But Lackawanna Terminal endured to link New Jersey Transit’s commuter trains with PATH and New York Waterways.

In May 1998 New Jersey Transit held its annual Hoboken Transit Festival in the Terminal’s great train shed. NJT displayed its latest, brightest, and best equipment. Little railroads also showed off their toys. The Morristown & Erie (called the “Ben Central” after its late president, Ben Friedman) had a fire-engine red switcher and the New York, Susquehanna & Western (“The Susie-Q”) a stainless steel rail-diesel car.

I thought of the fallen flags, the railroads that run no more. Gone are Thomas Wolfe’s “names of the mighty rails that bind the nation,” those names “that roll richly from the tongue and fire the imagining with sonorous and heroic imagery, with the sweep and wonder of plains and deserts, great rivers of empire…” Most modern railroad names seem selected by the accounting department. The CSX Corporation is the anonymous successor to nearly a dozen famous lines: Chesapeake & Ohio, Baltimore & Ohio, Western Maryland, Seaboard Air Line, Atlantic Coast Line, Louisville & Nashville, whose Pan American express—“Old Reliable”—was so prompt that a radio station used its thunderous passage by an open mike to signal noon every day.

Some names live on in old songs. The Wabash Cannonball. The Rock Island Line. The City of New Orleans. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. And who would not be intrigued by the Memphis, Ultima Thule & Arkadelphia?

Amid all the cheery modern colors at the festival darkly loomed a massive steam locomotive. The legend CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO in gold lettering emblazoned its tender, while the number 614 decorated its cab. The engine is the last dual-service steam locomotive built in North America, and it used to haul passenger trains across the Appalachians to Chicago, as well as deliver half-mile long strings of coal-laden hopper cars from West Virginia to tidewater, no sweat.

As with any work of art, the 614 symbolizes things uncontemplated by her makers, particularly the speed of obsolescence. The machine is fifteen years younger than my father, who in 1948 was shooting hoops with Waterford High’s sophomore team as the 614 rolled new from the Lima Locomotive Works in Hamilton, Ohio. Only eight years later, the C&O put her in storage where she remained for a generation until a new owner restored her to service.The 614 is as complicated as its 28,000 parts and as simple as boiling water. The same force that makes your teapot whistle sounds the 614 steam chimes,which can be heard five miles away booming two octaves below middle A.

As recently as a decade ago, the United States government tested the 614 for fuel efficiency, putting her back to work hauling coal trains in the West Virginia mountains. The results were inconclusive. Diesels are much less expensive to operate and maintain. However, a steam locomotive as large as the 614 is more powerful than most individual diesel-electric units, and it burns domestic coal, not imported oil. Only recently have diesels rolled out of the shops with power approaching that of Union Pacific’s Big Boy steamers, which hauled freight trains of up to five miles long at 55 to 60 miles an hour across the Rockies.

Even forty years ago, steam locomotives had largely disappeared from American railroads. And yet, and yet…on July 8, 1998, an express freight train failed at a siding at Carr, Colorado. The ultra-modern diesel’s computer went down, poor thing. Oddly, the nearest locomotive was one of Union Pacific’s two working steamers—the 844, a fifty-six-year old similar to the 614. Union Pacific had never retired the 844 (the railroad proudly claims it never totally dieselized), which now hauls fan trips and employee specials.

Now UP put the 844 to work. She passed and backed into the siding. The crews coupled her to the dead diesel, hooked up the air hoses, and tested the brakes. Waves of heat rippled off the firebox as gray oil smoke drifted from the stack.

The whistle sounded twice. The engineer released the brakes. The 844 sighed and eight brake shoes relaxed their grip on the drivers. He set the valve gear forward. Then, the engineer’s gloved hand opened the throttle, one notch, releasing steam into the cylinders, slowly forcing back the pistons, moving the main rods, turning the drivers.

A puff of exhaust burst from the stack. Steam hissed from the cylinder cock and the pistons returned. She crept forward. The engineer opened the throttle, notch by notch, and she slowly accelerated.

At five miles an hour, the exhaust began barking up the stack in rhythm with the moving pistons. She gained speed, effortlessly rolling into the Colorado hills, the stack talk faster and louder until the blasts blended into continuous roar that lasted all the way to Denver.

New York Press, September 1, 1998

My Neighbors Got It Wrong

Back on October 30, 2010, I announced my intention to vote for Tom Vendittelli, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Representative from the 13th District of New York. http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/5585 My motives were simple (although I admit a general sympathy for political independents and insurgents of all kinds). The Establishment party opponents, Democratic Congressman Michael E. McMahon and Republican challenger Michael G. Grimm, had harassed my wife and me with up to ten telephone calls a day. Mr. Venditelli and his friends had not.

I find such interruptions extremely annoying at the best of times. I was enraged when the candidates’ volunteer callers began arguing with my wife about why she should listen to them. As I knew neither McMahon nor Grimm, I took their measure from the people who supported them. Hence Tom Vendittelli. At least his followers weren’t harassing me in my home.

I thought my readers and neighbors here in Bay Ridge, some of whom had also complained to me about the calls and the empty glossy mailings jamming their mailboxes, might join me in protesting this abuse by voting for Mr. Vendittelli. I knew nothing about him beyond the materials on his website. But Tom was clearly sincere about his libertarianism. He’d left me alone.

My neighbors apparently didn’t share my concerns. The New York State Board of Elections’ official results were: Grimm, 65,024; McMahon, 60,773; Vendittelli, 929. Out of 126,726 votes, Tom had polled less than one percent. As he noted on Facebook, “We lost by a nose.”

While my neighbors clearly disagree with me, I can only note that next year, the politicians will be back, harassing me in party games.

Pocket Change

If you want to find a mirror of a society’s ideal—the image of what it hopes and imagines itself to be—public sculpture is as good a place as any to start, and none is more common or readily available than the public sculpture we carry around with us on the

If you want to find a mirror of a society’s ideal—the image of what it hopes and imagines itself to be—public sculpture is as good a place as any to start, and none is more common or readily available than the public sculpture we carry around with us on the coins in our pockets.

This year will bring some changes to the world’s most common public sculpture, the Lincoln penny. The occasion is the Lincoln bicentennial, and the Mint is happy. Collectors and speculators were glad to pay $8.95 for the two-roll sets of the new coins (worth $1.00) that went on sale on February 12, 2009 and sold out within a month. And so far few have complained about the new reverse design, which represents the Kentucky log cabin at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site. (Of course, that cabin is itself a representation of someone’s idea of the original structure.)

Three more designs, one to be issued every three months throughout the year, will represent respectively Lincoln’s education, his pre-Presidential careers as lawyer and politician, and his Presidency. In 2010 and beyond, the Mint will issue yet another reverse, “emblematic of President Lincoln’s preservation of the United States of America as a single and united country.” So there will be five new designs, each issued by the mints at Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco (each mint’s coins has a special mint mark, P, D, and S, respectively), creating fifteen new coins for the delectation of collectors within less than thirteen months.

The original Lincoln cent, designed by Victor David Brenner, reflected the genius of the sculptor and of President Theodore Roosevelt, himself an aesthete, who forced change on the Mint bureaucracy of his day because he found the coinage of the United States unworthy of a great republic. It still is. For the most part, the heroes on our coinage and paper money depict the men considered great half a century ago.

Surely John F. Kennedy’s reputation has undergone re-evaluation since he replaced Benjamin Franklin on the half-dollar in a moment of national grief. Walt Whitman, George Gershwin, George S. Kaufman, Jonas Salk, Earl Warren, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Sojourner Truth—from the arts and sciences alone the list of possible alternatives to the present set of political icons on our coins and currency (which date from the New Deal or before) is almost limitless.

All this brings to mind something I thought about while emptying my pockets the other day.

At some time in the last century, I was taken to a Broadway revival of the musical comedy “1776.” In one scene, an actor named Paul Michael Valley, who played Thomas Jefferson, briefly stood in profile, silhouetted against an open door. Some suburban housewife in the next row murmured to her neighbor, “He looks just like the guy on the nickel.” Indeed, he did, which may explain his casting.

Anyway, while putting my pocket change on the dresser, I noticed one of those odd nickels struck by the Mint to commemorate the bicentennials of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The obverse looked like the Man in the Moon. Of course, the head was still old Tom’s, but the image had changed.

The Purchase itself was commemorated in 2004 by adapting the design of Jefferson’s Indian Peace Medal for the reverse of the five cent piece. The Indian Peace Medals, a British tradition continued after Independence, were large, attractive silver medals awarded by the United States to Indian chiefs or other important men on such occasions as major conferences or the signing of treaties. Intriguingly, this custom reflected the European tradition of exchanging decorations at historic moments of concord, which the United States has otherwise never adopted.

In place of the King appeared the current President, and on the reverse, in Jefferson’s case, appeared two clasped hands, the one to the right with a metal wristband such as frequently worn by Indian chiefs, and the one to the left with an army officer’s braided cuff, all beneath a crossed hatchet and inverted peace pipe. The medal also bore the words, “Peace and Friendship.”

Many of Jefferson’s medals were given to Indians during Lewis and Clark’s expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific Coast between 1804 and 1806. They are mentioned in the Expedition’s Journal as among the articles taken for presentation to the Indians. On August 1, 1804, the Journal records the gift of a “First Grade” medal and flag to a “Grand Chief,” medals of the Second Grade to lesser chiefs; and of the Third Grade to inferior chiefs. Certificates to accompany the medals were also issued, such as one surviving in a California collection which refers to “the special confidence reposed by us in the sincere and unalterable attachment of War Charpa the Sticker, a Warrior of the Soues Nation, to the United States…”

Later in 2004, the Mint issued yet another kind of nickel with a reverse featuring one of the Expedition’s flatboats, driven by both sail and poles, like a Mediterranean war galley.

In the spring of 2005, the year of the coin I found in change, the Mint had doubly changed the coin. The obverse had Jefferson’s profile, oddly presented as to leave the coin resembling the Man in the Moon, with the word “Liberty” in Jefferson’s handwriting. The reverse adapted one of the Mint’s most popular designs, James Earl Fraser’s Buffalo nickel of 1913-1938, for the next coin in the series. Over 1.2 billion Buffalo nickels were struck during that quarter-century. They have now vanished from circulation. But as late as the 1960s, one still found Buffalo nickels in change, with the stern profile of an austere Indian warrior on the obverse and the massive buffalo on the reverse.

Fraser’s visual economy in its design is profoundly moving: without a touch of sentimentality, few accessible works of art so powerfully visualize the nobility of tragedy. And his commanding, virile bison dominates the design of its coin.

But as is often the case in the Mint’s modern adaptations of older designs from a heroic past, the modern buffalo, despite its unequivocal masculinity, lacks confidence. It seems neutered, almost cringing, standing, somehow off-balance, on a small, sloping patch of prairie, fenced in by the words “United States of America.”

In the fall and winter of 2005, the coin was changed yet again: the Man in the Moon obverse was coupled with a new reverse, a view of the Pacific Ocean with a quote from Captain Clark: “Ocean in view! O! the joy!” The minor irritant here is that Clark, whose writings betray a libertarian, if not Shakespearean, attitude toward standardized spelling, had written “Ocian.” While the Oxford English Dictionary includes “ocian” among its citations, the Mint corrected Clark’s usage. According to CNN, when questioned about this, a Mint spokeswoman answered, “We didn’t want to confuse anyone into thinking we couldn’t spell.” Again, a lack of confidence, this time in the reality of Clark’s spelling.

The following year showed the most unusual change in the design. Even as Monticello returned to the reverse, the obverse had Jefferson gazing at the viewer in one of American coinage’s first full-face designs. This is unusual for a technical reason. Coins first show signs of wear on the highest point of the design. The traditional profile tends to wear gracefully. But a full face design tends to wear out nose first.

The most notorious example of this was Copper Nose coinage of England’s King Henry VIII. By the 1540s, Henry was running out of money due to his personal and public extravagance. He both raised taxes and debased the coinage, transforming the nominally silver shilling to a copper coin which was dipped into a silver nitrate solution. Electrolysis left a thin wash of silver on the coins.

Instead of a conventional profile, the new coins bore the King’s facing image, executed with surprising candor, bearded and repellently bloated. Even a little wear on the coin’s highest relief – which with a facing portrait is the nose – revealed its copper core. As the coating wore off the most prominent feature – Henry’s nose – it became reddish brown. Hence, the king acquired the nickname “Old Coppernose.”

Such a sobriquet is unlikely to be attached to Jefferson, who is, after all, nearly two centuries dead. His coin is silver-colored metal all through. But the full face design is off-putting and unattractive, and one hopes the Mint will return to the customary usage in its future coinage.

Aurelia Greene, Evergreen

Last week, a special election was held for Bronx Borough President, a job which, since the Charter reforms of the early 1990s, is largely ceremonial. The marvelously named incumbent, Adolfo Carrion, had resigned office to accept appointment as Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs….The Assemblywoman’s name rang a chime in memory. She had been

Last week, a special election was held for Bronx Borough President, a job which, since the Charter reforms of the early 1990s, is largely ceremonial. The marvelously named incumbent, Adolfo Carrion, had resigned office to accept appointment as Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs.

Even before State Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. had won the Borough Presidency, he had announced that he would appoint State Assemblywoman Aurelia Greene his Deputy Borough President. She will be the deputy to a public official who doesn’t have much to do. Her duties are unlikely to be taxing.

The Assemblywoman’s name rang a chime in memory. She had been involved with Bronx Community School Board #9. Both she and her late husband, the Honorable Reverend Dr. Jerome Greene, who favored using all his titles at once, had been elected to the Board repeatedly. The Honorable Reverend Doctor had been its president from time to time, and by coincidence, Board #9 had employed several of Assemblywoman Greene’s relatives while she was serving on the Board.

Pastor of the Bronx Charismatic Prayer Fellowship, a church that met in his family manse, and Founder and President of the Bronx Unity Democratic Club, Dr. Greene had pled guilty in 1991 to larceny when he admitted using City money to pay for cameras, television equipment, and other merchandise purchased for his personal use. He also admitted using Board of Education employees to print political campaign literature at Board of Education expense.

The Greenes had previously been indicted for stealing a piano from Intermediate School 145. They beat the rap on that one, although the piano had ended up in their house, where it was supposedly used in his religious services. Dr. Greene was re-indicted on misdemeanor theft of services charges for using school employees to transport the piano to his house. However, that charge was apparently resolved when Dr. Greene pled to the larceny charge.

Both Greenes were serving on Board #9 when, in 1988, the late Chancellor Richard Green suspended them and the rest of the board amid charges of drug use and drug trafficking, extorting money from teachers, and stealing school equipment. The investigations leading to the Board’s suspension had stemmed from the arrest and subsequent conviction of a Board #9 principal, Matthew Barnwell of P.S. 53, for buying crack.

In addition to Dr. Greene and Mr. Barnwell, eight other people from Board #9 were convicted of crimes that included signing phony invoices, bribery, and defrauding the government. The Chancellor removed the district superintendent, Dr. Annie Wolinsky, for mismanagement. Dr. Wolinsky was unable to explain how, while schools went without basics like chalk and paper, thousands of dollars of uncatalogued supplies were stacked in the district warehouse, or why eight district employees worked only at videotaping the board members. She also couldn’t explain her failure to discipline Mr. Barnwell for, among other things, 142 instances of lateness or absence in the course of a 184-day school year.

However, death pays all debts. Despite his criminal record, Dr. Greene has been immortalized by the New York City Council which, by enacting Local Law 131 in 2005, renamed part of Teller Avenue in The Bronx as Reverend Jerome A. Greene Place. In his remarks at a December 29, 2005 public hearing before he signed the bill, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated that the individuals commemorated that day-Dr. Greene among them-were being honored for their lifetime accomplishments.

I gather that one commentator has suggested that Assemblywoman Greene wanted a job that wouldn’t require a commute to Albany. As she trades the State Capitol for Bronx Borough Hall, everything looks pleasant for her: she is trading one well-paid job for another equally remunerative, and as she journeys toward the sunset of life, the downhill road is comfortably paved with city paychecks.

The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush

Theodore Roosevelt, that most virile of presidents, insisted that, “To announce that there should be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people.” With that in mind

Theodore Roosevelt, that most virile of presidents, insisted that, “To announce that there should be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people.” With that in mind, I say: George W. Bush is no conservative, and his unprincipled abandonment of conservatism under the pressure of events is no statesmanship. The Republic would be well-served by his defeat this November.

William F. Buckley’s recent retirement from the National Review, nearly half a century after he founded it, led me to reflect on American conservatism’s first principles, which Buckley helped define for our time. Beneath Buckley’s scintillating phrases and rapier wit lay, as Churchill wrote of Lord Birkenhead, “settled and somewhat somber conclusions upon… questions about which many people are content to remain in placid suspense”: that political and economic liberty were indivisible; that government’s purpose was protecting those liberties; that the Constitution empowered government to fulfill its proper role while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power; and that its genius lay in the Tenth Amendment, which makes explicit that the powers not delegated to government are reserved to the states or to the people.

More generally, American conservatives seek what Lord Acton called the highest political good: to secure liberty, which is the freedom to obey one’s own will and conscience rather than the will and conscience of others. Any government, of any political shade, that erodes personal liberty in the name of social and economic progress must face a conservative’s reasoned dissent; for allowing one to choose between right and wrong, between wisdom and foolishness, is the essential condition of human progress. Although sometimes the State has a duty to impose restrictions, such curbs on the liberty of the individual are analogous to a brace, crutch, or bandage. However necessary in the moment, they are best removed as soon as possible, as they tend to weaken and to cramp. Thus American conservative politics championed private property, an institution sacred in itself and vital to the well-being of society. It favored limited government, balanced budgets, fiscal prudence, and avoidance of foreign entanglements.

More subtly, American conservatism viewed human society as something of an organism in itself. This sense of society’s organic character urged the necessity of continuity with the past, with change implemented gradually and with as little disruption as possible. Thus, conservatism emphasized the “civil society”—the private voluntary institutions developed over time by passing the reality test (i.e., because they work) such as families, private property, religious congregations and neighborhoods—rather than the State. In nearly every sense, these institutions were much closer to the individuals who composed them than the State could ever be. They had the incidental and beneficial effect of protecting one’s personal liberty against undue intrusion from governments controlled by fanatics and busybodies—the phenomenon Edmund Burke presciently termed “armed ideologies”—and thus upheld our way of life as flying buttresses supported a Gothic cathedral.

But the policies of this administration self-labeled “conservative” have little to do with tradition. Rather, they tend to centralize power in the hands of the government under the guise of patriotism. If nothing else, the Bush administration has thrown into question what being a conservative in America actually means.

Forty years ago, when Lyndon Johnson believed the United States could afford both Great Society and the Vietnam War, conservatives attacked his fiscal policies as extravagant and reckless. Ten years ago, the Republican Party regained control of Congress with the Contract with America, which included a balanced-budget amendment to restore fiscal responsibility. But today, thanks to tax cuts and massively increased military spending, the Bush administration has transformed, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a ten-year projected surplus of $5.6 trillion into a deficit of $4.4 trillion: a turnaround of $10 trillion in roughly 32 months.

The Bush Administration can’t even pretend to keep an arm’s length from Halliburton, the master of the no-bid government contract. Sugar, grain, cotton, oil, gas, and coal: These industries enjoy increased subsidies and targeted tax breaks not enjoyed by less well-connected industries. The conservative Heritage Foundation blasts the administration’s agricultural subsidies as the nation’s most wasteful corporate welfare program. The libertarian Cato Institute has called the administration’s energy plan “three parts corporate welfare and one part cynical politics…a smorgasbord of handouts and subsidies for virtually every energy lobby in Washington” that “does little but transfer wealth from taxpayers to well-connected energy lobbies.” And the Republican Party’s Medicare drug benefit, the largest single expansion of the welfare state since Johnson’s Great Society, was designed to appeal to senior citizens who, as any competent politician knows, show up at the polls.

None of this is conservative, though it is in keeping with the Bush family’s history. Kevin Phillips, whose 1969 classic The Emerging Republican Majority outlined the policies that would lead to the election of President Reagan, describes in his American Dynasty the Bush family’s rise to wealth and power through crony capitalism: the use of contacts obtained in public service for private profit. Phillips argues that the Bushes don’t disfavor big government as such: merely that part of it which regulates business, maintains the environment, or aids the needy. Subsidizing oil-well drilling through tax breaks, which made George H. W. Bush’s fortune, or bailing out financial institutions, such as Neil Bush’s bankrupt Silverado Savings and Loan, however, is a good thing.

This deficit spending also helps Bush avoid the debate on national priorities we would have if these expenditures were being financed through higher taxes on a pay-as-you-go basis. After all, we’re not paying the bill now; instead, it will come due far in the future, long after today’s policy-makers are out of office. And this debt is being incurred just as the baby boomers are about to retire. In January 2004, Charles Kolb, who served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush White Houses, testified before Congress that, at a time when demographics project more retirees and fewer workers, projected government debt will rise from 37 percent of the economy today to 69 percent in 2020 and 250 percent in 2040. This is the sort of level one associates with a Third World kleptocracy.

Even worse than this extravagance are the administration’s unprecedented intrusions into our constitutional privacy rights through the Patriot Act. If it does not violate the letter of the Fourth Amendment, it violates its spirit. To cite two examples, the FBI has unchecked authority through the use of National Security Letters to require businesses to reveal “a broad array of sensitive information, including information about the First Amendment activities of ordinary Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing.” Despite the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure, the government need not show probable cause: It does not need to obtain a warrant from a judge. And who can trust any law enforced by John Ashcroft, who single-handedly transformed a two-bit hubcap thief like José Padilla first into a threat to national security and then, through his insistence that Padilla, an American citizen, could be held without charges, into a Constitutional crisis?

All this stems from Bush’s foreign policy of preemptive war, which encourages war for such vague humanitarian ends as “human rights,” or because the United States believes another country may pose a threat to it. Its champions seem almost joyously to anticipate a succession of wars without visible end, with the invasion of Iraq merely its first fruit: former Bush appointee Richard Perle, from his writings on foreign policy, would have us war against nearly every nation that he defines as a rogue. The ironic consequence of this policy to stabilize the world is greater instability. It reminds me of the old FDR jingle from the Daily Worker:

I hate war, and so does Eleanor,
But we won’t feel safe until everybody’s dead.

To be sure, there’s more than enough blame to go around with the Congress’ cowardly surrender to the Executive of its power to declare war. The Founding Fathers, who knew war from personal experience, explicitly placed the war power in the hands of the Congress. As James Madison wrote over 200 years ago:

The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war… The separation of the power of declaring war from that of conducting it is wisely contrived to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted.

But since the Korean War (which the Congress defined as a “police action” to avoid using its war powers), war has been waged without its formal declaration. Thus Congressional power atrophies in the face of flag-waving presidents. Perhaps Congress is too preoccupied with swilling from the gravy trough that our politics has become to recall its Constitutional role as a co-equal branch of government, guarding its powers and privileges against executive usurpation. The Congress has forgotten that the men who exacted Magna Carta from King John at sword point instituted Parliament to restrain the executive from its natural tendency to tax, spend, and war.

Moreover, there is nothing conservative about war. As Madison wrote:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. [There is an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and…degeneracy of manners and of morals…No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

By contrast, business, commerce, and trade, founded on private property, created by individual initiative, families, and communities, has done far more to move the world forward than war. Yet faith in military force and an arrogant belief that American values are universal values still mold our foreign policy nearly a century after Woodrow Wilson, reelected with a promise of keeping America out of World War I, broke faith with the people by engineering a declaration of war within weeks of his second inauguration.

George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign supposedly rejected Wilsonian foreign policy by articulating both the historic Republican critique of foreign aid and explicitly criticizing Bill Clinton’s nation-building. Today, the administration insists we can be safe only by compelling other nations to implement its vision of democracy. This used to be called imperialism. Empires don’t come cheap; worse, “global democracy” requires just the kind of big government that conservatives abhor. When the Wall Street Journal praises the use of American tax dollars to provide electricity and water services in Iraq, something we used to call socialism, either conservatism has undergone a tectonic shift or the paper’s editors are being disingenuous.

This neo-conservative policy rejects the traditional conservative notion that American society is rooted in American culture and history—in the gradual development of American institutions over nearly 230 years—and cannot be separated from them. Instead, neo-conservatives profess that American values, which they define as democracy, liberty, free markets, and self-determination, are “universal” rather than particular to us, and insist they can and should be exported to ensure our security.

This is nonsense. The qualities that make American life desirable evolved from our civil society, created by millions of men and women using the freedom created under limited constitutional government. Only a fool would believe they could be spread overnight with bombs and bucks, and only a fool would insist that the values defined by George W. Bush as American are necessarily those for which we should fight any war at all.

Wolfowitz, Perle, and their allies in the Administration claimed the Iraqis would greet our troops with flowers. Somehow, more than a year after the president’s “Mission Accomplished” photo-op, a disciplined body of well-supplied military professionals is still waging war against our troops, their supply lines, and our Iraqi collaborators. Indeed, the regime we have just installed bids fair to become a long-term dependent of the American taxpayer under U.S. military occupation.

The Administration seems incapable of any admission that its pre-war assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction were incorrect. Instead, in a sleazy sleight of hand worthy of Lyndon Johnson, the Administration has retrospectively justified its war with Saddam Hussein’s manifold crimes.

First, that is a two-edged sword: If the crimes of a foreign government against its people justify our invasion, there will be no end of fighting. Second, the pre-war assertions were dishonest: Having decided that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, the policymakers suppressed all evidence that it did not. This immorality is thrown into high relief by the war’s effect on Iraqi civilians. We have no serious evidence of any connection between Iraq and 9/11. Dropping 5000-pound bombs on thousands of people who had nothing to do with attacking us is as immoral as launching airplanes at an American office building.

To sum up: Anything beyond the limited powers expressly delegated by the people under the Constitution to their government for certain limited purposes creates the danger of tyranny. We stand there now. For an American conservative, better one lost election than the continued empowerment of cynical men whose abuse of power unrestrained by principle is based upon the compromise of conservative beliefs. George W. Bush claims to be conservative. His administration’s unwholesome intrusion into domestic life and personal liberty, and the local governments who imitate it, suggest otherwise. George W. Bush is no no friend of limited, constitutional government—and no friend of freedom. The Republic would be better served by his defeat in November.

New York Press, August 4, 2004