On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington, #1)

by David Weber

"it isn't the Fleet budget that's breaking the bank. It's the increases in the Basic Living Stipend. We've got to tell the Dolists that any trough has a bottom and get them to stop swilling long enough to get our feet back under us. If we could just get those useless drones off our backs, even for a few years—" "Oh, that's a wonderful idea!" Frankel snarled. "Those BLS increases are all that's keeping the mob in check! They supported the wars to support their standard of living, and if we don't—"

But Haven had become a threat. After almost two T-centuries of deficit spending to shore up an increasingly insolvent welfare state, Haven had decided it had no choice but to turn conquistador to acquire the resources it needed to support its citizens in the style to which they had become accustomed, and the People's Navy had proven its capacity to do just that over the course of the last five decades.

He'd find himself hauled home and buried in one of the Prole housing units on Haven, drawing a Basic Living Stipend right alongside all the other Dolist scum as an example to other fuck-ups, and he came from one of the aristocratic Legislature families. All of his friends, all the other useless drones drawing the BLS with him—everyone—would know about his disgrace. They'd laugh at him, mock him, and he couldn't face that. He couldn't.

"Oh, but I will, Commander. I will. I believe your parents are senior partners in the Duvalier Medical Association?" Despite herself, Honor twitched in surprise at the complete non sequitur. Then her eyes narrowed, and her head tilted dangerously. "Well, Commander?" Hauptman almost purred. "Am I correct?" "You are," she said flatly. "Then if you insist on making this a personal confrontation, you should consider the repercussions it may have on your own family, Madam, because the Hauptman Cartel controls a seventy percent interest in that organization's public stock. Do I make myself clear, Commander?"

Fear that Haven might try again had turned the Conservative rank and file against Janacek's long fight to downgrade Basilisk Station, and the Liberals and Progressives had been driven into full retreat. In fact, the Act of Annexation had been amended in ways that neither Countess New Kiev nor Baron High Ridge had ever imagined in their worst nightmares.

The bigger the lie, apparently, the more likely the uninformed were to accept it, simply because they couldn't believe any government would tell such an absurd story unless it were true.