Chapter 1675 No Time to Die (38)
Upstairs in the magnificently renovated mansion, a middle-aged man in a suit and leather shoes with gray hair was yelling angrily over the phone.
"A damn gang boss dares to scream at me on TV?! If he is so arrogant, federal law will lose face, and what do you FBI do for a living?! How difficult is it to rush in and catch him? !”
"Are you mistaken? I am a congressman, not an agent! My job is to maintain the normal operation of the government, not to arrest people! Why don't you go when the federal government does crisis management?"
The man took a deep breath, put one hand on his hips and kept pressing down in mid-air, and then said: "Okay, Amanda, I don't want to listen to these useless nonsense from you anymore. If the FBI is not afraid of dereliction of duty and face, Sweep the floor, then I’ll play with him myself! If I can’t go to his house and catch him, then I’ll let him know that neither he nor this rotten city will have a good time!”
The man hung up the phone angrily, but when he turned his head, he felt a blurry black figure flashing in the shadow of the curtain behind him.
He immediately twitched, turned back and stretched his neck suspiciously to look over there, and shouted with an inward voice: "Who? Who is there?! Get out, or I will call the bodyguards!"
A black figure stepped out of the shadows. Batman looked at Lauder's face and said, "I'm here to remind you, don't do anything to Gotham. This is for your own good."
"Batman?!" Lauder called out Batman's name in surprise. Of course he had heard of the Dark Knight of Gotham, but he didn't have a good reputation.
It is difficult for anyone living in a normal city to understand what kind of environment requires a tight-fitting weirdo to serve as a vigilante to maintain justice, so they usually do not understand Batman at all and only regard him as a clown who makes a spectacle of himself.
"Are you the killer sent by Cobot?" Lauder snorted disdainfully. He raised his chin and said arrogantly: "Does he really think that if he brags a few words on TV, I will be afraid of him? ?! If he dares to kill a member of the federal government, he will be a fugitive for the rest of his life!"
Obviously, no matter who he faces, Batman is not very good at explaining, and he feels that he does not need to explain at all. He just said: "Dealing with Gotham and the people here will not do you any good, and this may cause extreme You'd better think carefully about your decision and don't leave yourself with no way out."
After saying that, Batman turned and left. A smart person like him more or less underestimated the stupidity of an idiot. He felt that what he hinted at was obvious enough.
Since Cobbler is just a gangster who doesn't deserve to be on the stage, what can he do if he shouts a few words on Gotham's local show? You should have meetings, you should condemn and condemn, as long as you don't go to Gotham, how can he put you on the guillotine?
But not everyone has the extremely rational self-control ability of Batman. As the saying goes, all disputes begin with "why."
The congressmen are all elites who are used to being superior. They are the only ones who have always criticized this and that. Even if there are political opponents to refute, they always quarrel with each other. When have they ever been threatened with death?
Even if there are those who risk their lives, death threats are criminalized under the laws of most states in the United States, and the FBI caught them within a few days.
But he, Oswald Cobblepot, was just a gang boss in one area of the city. Before he was elected mayor of Gotham City, he dared to openly threaten congressmen with death, and the FBI didn't even care. This made the person named How could the threatening Laud tolerate such a tone?
Of course, he really didn't have the courage to go deep into Gotham alone. He was not stupid. The FBI didn't dare to go. If he went, wouldn't he be delivering food?
But after all, he is a state legislator and comes from a political family, and the interest groups supporting him are large enough. They dare not enter Gotham to impose sanctions, but there are ways to sanction Gotham from the outside.
First, provide funding to the Coast Guard so that they can focus on cracking down on smuggling ships on the route to Gotham. Then, promulgate a new draft environmental protection law to ban all food, medicine, textiles and other products produced by industries within the scope of marine pollution. It cannot be shipped to other cities without passing inspection.
This is followed by a series of common sanctions such as adjusting tax rates, embargoing bulk products, and customs seizure of imported products.
It can be said that this is the first time such a variety of sanctions have been used in a city within the federation.
But has this affected Cobot? Some impact, but not much.
Again, he is a gang boss, and the most valuable business he owns is the Iceberg Restaurant. Even if he has no raw materials and needs to close down, he will make less money.
Copperpot was not in a hurry, but Wayne was.
There is a saying. Although the security situation in Gotham is bad, its geographical location is indeed very good. After several generations of construction, it can also be called one of the most important heavy industrial cities on the East Coast.
Even if you use this method to sanction other countries, if you cut off your own shipping routes and prevent the transportation of industrial raw materials, isn't this cutting off an arm? How many people with cerebral palsy do you need to be able to do this? ? ?
Bruce Wayne has recently been rethinking the bottom line of these politicians' IQs, but now he's faced with a slightly embarrassing situation.
The series of sanctions adopted by Lauder and the people behind him were not aimed at Cobot at all, but were actually intended to force Wayne.
Aren't you Cobblepot hiding in Gotham? Then we can negotiate directly with Wayne, hand over the person and the goods, you can kill the one who jumps the most, and we can continue to make money together, what's wrong?
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Batman thinks it's not good.
Not to mention that Batman will never hand over the villain of Gotham to anyone else, Bruce Wayne can't even make a statement to arrest Cobblepot to the police station or find a way to make him shut up.
Because Lord's move actually tied the Wayne Group and Cobblepot together and pushed them to one side. If the Wayne Group handed Cobblepot over, it meant that he had given in, but Bruce Wayne couldn't give in, otherwise anyone could come to sanction the Wayne Group, right?
The default rule in the business world is that everyone is a wolf with sharp teeth and fangs, and wants to bite off other people's meat with green eyes. If anyone dares to show his wool, it will soon be eaten up without any residue left.
So even for the sake of Wayne Group's face, Bruce Wayne can't do anything to Cobblepot.
From Batman's perspective, he can use the illegal things that Penguin said on TV to arrest him in Arkham Asylum.
The problem is that now that Penguin has disappeared, people will not think that someone is upholding justice, but will only think that it must be the Wayne Group's tricks, and that the Wayne Group must have reached some kind of agreement with the state legislature to shut Cobblepot up.
This matter has become a big deal and is a hot topic on the East Coast recently. If Cobblepot shows any signs of decline, the Wayne Group will not be able to clear itself even if it jumps into the Yellow River.
Batman only imagined that he was caught in a dilemma by the Joker's crazy setup, and never thought that he would be dragged down by this bunch of stupid politicians with their unexpected IQ bottom line. It can only be said that the saying that fools beat masters is not completely unreasonable.
The most frightening thing is that these sanctions, which were originally intended to reach an exchange of interests with the Wayne Group, have aroused extremely strong public indignation in Gotham. The people of Gotham were already crazy because of the rain, and this has added fuel to the fire.
Everyone originally sympathized with the federal government, and it was estimated that no one would dare to come to this rotten city. If you don't help, it's fine, and everyone will just make do. But now that they have imposed such sanctions, people are shocked to find that their lives, which have already been at the bottom of the rot, can still get better!
The most serious consequence of the embargo on raw materials is the shutdown of factories. Although there are no layoffs for the time being, there is no salary to be paid if you don't work.
The newly introduced draft of the environmental protection law adjustment has caused the middle links of the food supplier's transportation chain to be diverted. For fear of being labeled as polluted in Gotham, which will make it difficult to sell their own products, they would rather give up this part of the market than ship them here, which will inevitably result in rising prices.
With lower wages and higher prices, people will be in trouble.
The Gotham people who could get wages in the factory to buy things had a sense of superiority and could barely survive. Now these people can't survive, so what are they waiting for?
There is no work to do, and they can't sit at home and starve to death. The Gotham people's little heads, which were messed up by the rain, suddenly had an idea. Isn't the Midtown area fighting a war? A few days ago, I saw their announcement for recruiting thugs. Being a thug is better than starving to death!
So, many workers living in cheap apartments in Gotham's downtown area shouted "Da Chu Xing, Chen Sheng is the king!" and joined the war in the Midtown area.
But as we all know, the war potential of a certain area is certain, including strategic depth, war reserve material reserves, personnel activity range and other conditions, which only allow a certain number of troops to fight here.
This is why the attacking side in many large-scale city defense wars looks like a tactic of adding fuel to the fire. Many network commanders question why they don't just send 100,000 troops to the border, and one person can crush the defense line with one foot. The fact is that there is not enough tactical space to accommodate so many people. The people who are squeezed out are really pork in the meat grinder.
As the residents of the lower city continue to join the war, the manpower in the territories of various families and interest groups has increased suddenly, and the materials needed have also increased exponentially, but the territories they own and the materials in the territories they can grab are not enough to supply the current manpower.
What other choices do they have? Of course, they continue to expand outward, occupy larger territories, grab more things, and then they can feed more people.
However, due to the different urban structures and different division of labor, the lower city is the main densely populated area, most of which are residential land. Although everyone is poor, if you want to rob my house, the resistance is still very strong. Even if you rob it, there is no money. It can be said that it is a thankless job.
But the Uptown is different. It is full of wide and flat parks, high-end restaurants, luxury jewelry stores with a lot of liquidity, and even many old banks.
Of course, the Uptown is also the home of these interest groups, but their location is further in, that is, the Uptown in the Uptown.
The rich don't think they are in the same class as the so-called middle-class poor living on the edge of the Uptown. What if the middle-class community is robbed?
Besides, as long as I have money, I can hire people to surround my own home. Whatever chaos is outside has nothing to do with me. In this case, the more I rob, the more money I have to build my own security system. So why not rob?
Thus, without any deliberate guidance from anyone, the greed that got out of hand prompted the masterminds behind Gotham to completely open Pandora's box. In an instant, chaos swept across Gotham like a plague.