A THOUGHT ON CORRUPTION
By Publius II
Jefferson’s letter to President Washington dated May 23, 1792: “Of all the mischiefs objected to the system of measures before mentioned, none is so afflicting and fatal to every honest hope, as the corruption of the Legislature. ————– will be the instrument for producing in future a king, lords ——-.” BRIEF INSERTION
Jefferson’s future has arrived: government of the citizens, by the president and the Congress and for the elitist rich. Lincoln 1863: “And that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
In July the FBI completed a comprehensive probe of New Jersey’s top public officials. Thruout the state the agency was hard pressed to find a clean “public servant.” Is Washington next? (Actually, no. The lid blew off New York state’s sleaze during March 2010.)
As of February 2009 one king has departed. The present one does not act like a king. Not yet, but the system has over the past 50 or so years gradually become amenable to royalty in Washington.
Many if not most US citizens are descended from places where kings/queens ruled. Furthermore, to be led as citizens rather than ruled as subjects requires thinking citizens among the populace. Lewis Lapham’s book The Wish for Kings underscores this point.
When citizens aren’t watching closely public officials will be tempted. Huge piles of taxpayer money flowing daily into Washington trigger the dark side of human nature. Citizens get ripped while a tiny minority become — well, quite like kings, queens and lords. (Pocket Gofer 7 elaborates.)
Rich fat cats, big companies unions and other special interests buy special favors (laws and, indirectly, regulations) from congressmen. They use this dirty money to get re-elected and line their and their friends’ deep pockets, but the impact of those laws and regulations pries money out of taxpayers’ shallow pockets. This is a cleverly hidden transfer of wealth to the rich from the peasants in the boondocks.
John McCain lost in 2008. It seems that nowadays straight shooters don’t win. When asked about health care reform during the New Hampshire primary he said, “The problem is the democrats are in the pocket of the trial lawyers and we republicans are in the pocket of the insurance companies. And so there is gridlock, and there will continue to be, until we get the special-interest influence out of politics.”
Someone said, “We put the petty criminal in jail. But the really big thieves we elevate to high public office.” Nothing in the Constitution provides for special favors for any person or group, whether or not bought and paid for.
So corruption is unconstitutional. The main purpose of the Constitution is to protect the fundamental liberty of each individual citizen against force or fraud. This protection was intended to operate against other citizens and groups, domestic and foreign, and his/her own government. The founding fathers understood how temptation influences behavior.
Fundamental liberty includes property, which in turn includes money. Amendment IV: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ———–.” The IRS springs to mind.
George Washington said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
Who is to determine when an increasing taking such as the infamous withholding tax from tens of millions of paychecks becomes unreasonable? The government? The father of the nation would say no. The Constitution was designed to belong to the people. Citizens should make this determination.
The kicker is that corruption infects even otherwise honest officials. They see others becoming wealthy and getting away with it. When corruption has spread thruout government no action within the system will root out the rot.
The ultimate kicker lies in human nature. The problem is not money, but rather the love of money. For those infected the acquisition of even big money only whets their appetite for more, and without end.
Corruption includes bribery, contractual bidding without competition, kickbacks, lobbying to buy special tax breaks, pork barrel spending, and plain old-fashioned thievery. Extortion is another form of corruption. Specific examples follow.
Ted Stevens was a powerful veteran Alaska senator. He first arrived in 1968. In the senate seniority determines personal power, not merit. Therefore he used this power to bring home billions of taxpayer dollars. Alaskans called him “Uncle Ted” and joked about calling the dollar “the Ted.”
Alaska was number one in per capita federal spending for some 16 years, with $13,800 being spent on each Alaskan in 2006. All but a tiny fraction of that money was pried loose from taxpayers in the other 49 states.
In fall 2008 the FBI raided Stevens’s home. Agents found evidence of pork barrel money routed to his son and business partners. There was well over $100,000 of taxpayer cash involved. He survived unpunished.
Here is the explanation. There are no outside watchdogs with political clout, so only the senate disciplines its own members. Nearly every senator does the same thing, so punishing one risks all.
This is arrogance. With elections rigged (see “A Thought on Election Campaigns”), members of the House and Senate believe that hopping mad citizens cannot touch them. This is democracy?
Senator Stevens got caught again with his hand in the public cookie jar, this time to the tune of $250,000. Did this get him expelled from Jefferson’s fraternity of lords? Yes. A convicted felon cannot be a senator. This was a rare victory for the taxpayer.
In today’s Washington personal power regularly trumps law. The principle of Rule of Law, where absolutely no one is above the law, has faded into history along with the many other parts of the Constitution.
A rare instance of serious reporting got the Stevens theft into the news media. With more of this type of reporting citizens could pitch the whole bunch of bums out of office. Members of congress insist on being addressed by letter as “The Honorable _____.” No wonder so few citizens today write to their congressmen. With a free press we could hang them.
A second example is assistance to farmers. Billions of taxpayer bucks are shipped to mostly rich farmers every year. They kick parts of these billions back to congressmen to make sure the sugar keeps coming. A 2004 survey found that 58% of respondents believe that government needs to splash out these megabucks in order to ensure a steady supply of food.
This is a crock. The truth is that farmers produce far more food than citizens can eat. They export the excess and make more profits. Economists agree that without those billions farmers would still produce huge quantities.
So why this 58%? People don’t think, even when their pockets are being picked. No one should believe that he/she has finished paying for her family’s food when exiting the supermarket.
More than half of the $1.9 billion ten-year sugar program lines the pockets of the wealthiest one percent of plantation owners. Consumers are forced to pay an extra $2 billion a year for sugar and products made with it.
In 2005 a quarter of subsidies came in the form of “direct payments,” which go to landowners regardless of what they farm, how much they farm or if they farm at all. These included ExxonMobile, Chevron, International Paper and Caterpillar.
These companies don’t farm the land. Their lobbyists “farm” the corridors of congressional office buildings bringing tainted money with them. No need to kick manure off their shoes, but the smell follows them anyway.
About 25,000 cotton farmers get most of $4 billion a year in subsidies. This about doubles what they would make selling in a free world market. These subsidies enable them to depress the world cotton price to where poor African cotton farmers cannot compete. Thus 25 thousand wealthy farmers grow richer at taxpayer expense while 11 million African farmers remain mired in poverty.
US taxpayers are getting ripped from two directions. They pay for the subsidies and then pay more than they would without subsidies for anything made in the US that has cotton in it.
Here is another example. In March 2007 newly elected Ohio governor Strickland wanted to obliterate a two-year-old school choice voucher program. It was similar to the successful Cleveland program. These programs encourage excellence in education thru competition among schools.
But Ohio’s teachers unions wanted to kill both programs because many union members who are poor teachers would lose their jobs. With this in mind the unions supported Mr. Strickland’s election with bags of dirty money. For the foreseeable future thousands of Ohio’s children will not get a good education. See the essay “A Thought on Government Rhetoric about Education.”
Here is an example abroad that takes money and lives from US taxpayers. When the conflict was most active the Iraq war cost taxpayers $300 million a day (Total as of 9/30/2008 was about $960 billion. Estimates of the final tab run up to $3 trillion). Money from Iraqi oil was supposed to rebuild the nation.
But a third or more of the output from Iraq’s biggest refinery got diverted to the black market. Tankers were hijacked, drivers were bribed, papers were forged and meters were manipulated.
Much of this money got routed to the insurgency, which has killed about 4,000 US soldiers. (The news media don’t report this.) And some Iraqi officials claim that since the Americans destroyed much of their country they should rebuild it.
Senator Claire McCaskill was interviewed in February 2007 by the Associated Press. “It’s bad enough how much this war is costing. But it’s heart-breaking the amount of money that has just gone up in smoke.” But then, along with the killing, maiming and destruction, that’s war. See the essay on the futility of war.
These are examples of citizens’ tax dollars at work. Social Security could be saved and made healthy for the next 50 to 75 years for a fraction of what the Iraq war is costing. (As Iraq costs less the war in Afghanistan costs more.)
The Pentagon is a $800 billion-a-year monster that thrives on media-hyped panic among the citizenry. Most of the money spent in Iraq was kept off the books, so it is hard to determine exactly the total that this out-of-control bureaucracy digs out of taxpayer wallets. In early 2010 Obama’s proposed budget for 2011 asked for $800 billion. He did not say where this money would come from.
Defense contractors are part of the huge military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against when he retired in January 1961. No published figure provides a realistic estimate of the defense department’s true requirements, which would be based on reasonable thinking.
Panic is not reason. Career warriors think, but not about price. That $800 billion plus is just for starters, and it is half of total world spending on the military.
When congressmen go overseas on government business defense contractors and their lobbyists often tag along. They and their dirty money entertain the lawmakers in grand style, paying for posh accommodations, meals, golf and entertainment.
But not just any congressmen. Those treated in this way control hundreds of billions of dollars that will be spent on defense contracts. All this acts against House rules and also the Constitution, but no one seems to care.
The last statement is inaccurate. Congressmen do care as they eagerly await the kickbacks after contracts have been awarded. One member of the appropriations committee received bribes including cash, a Rolls Royce, oriental rugs and free use of a yacht.
Six big defense contractors were secretly invited to bid for about $900 million in post-Iraq war contracts. These six contributed a total of over $3.5 million to candidates during two election cycles, with most going to republicans.
President Bush created a Corporate Fraud Task Force. But a watchdog group called Corp Watch reported that Bush diverted 59 FBI agents assigned to this organization, transferring them to anti-terrorism. Apparently the Fraud Task Force was itself a fraud.
Bush supported a bill that protects credit card companies from borrowers who declare bankruptcy. The largest credit card company, MBNA America, donated the largest amount of money to Bush’s 2000 election campaign.
The 2006 election gave the House to the democrats. New house speaker Nancy Pelosi promised that she would lead “—– the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.” Did she learn how to do political promises from Bill Clinton? Probably not. Washington is jam-packed with practitioners.
In 2006 Citizens Against Government Waste recorded 10,656 pork-barrel projects totaling $22.9 billion. Today congressmen call these instances of corruption “earmarks,” presumably to erase the “pork” stigma.
During his campaign President Obama promised to eliminate earmarks. But he allowed the Congress to cobble together the $787 billion stimulus bill, so it was crammed with earmarks. As a career politician he too knows how to do political promises. Members feel a deep need to “bring home the bacon” during their rare trips back home to campaign for re-election.
Splashing pork far and wide means jobs for citizens and votes for career politicians, but this is a horribly inefficient and wasteful way to get work done. Examples include a $980 million Mars probe lost before it began work; a lost weather satellite; the extremely expensive Hubble telescope sent aloft with a bum mirror; the loss of five rockets in a two-month period; the explosion of a Titan rocket; a $220 million satellite lost one day after launch; six more rocket failures in 9 months costing $3.5 billion; and the terrible tragedies of January 1986 and February 2003 when entire crews of astronauts perished. And this list is incomplete.
Sending people into space is dangerous, horribly expensive and scientifically all but useless. Unthinking citizens watch astronauts’ antics and high drama on the tube while aerospace companies such as Boeing pocket billions of their dollars. At least 90% of the work could be done by robots at 1/3 the cost and no deaths.
Back in 1991 the American Physical Society warned that the potential contribution of a space station to scientific knowledge was seriously overhyped, probably due to political reasons. Today it is obvious the members were right as private companies begin to penetrate space at a small fraction of the cost and with no taxpayer money involved. (The actual beginning was in 2004 when a private company took a passenger into space, thus introducing the era of space tourism.)
No thought on corruption should omit comment on what is arguably the most powerful lobby in Washington: AIPAC, or the American Israel Political Action Committee. (The ATLA or American Trial Lawyers Association competes for this dubious honor.)
Perhaps for a good reason there has been no recent news. However the suspicion remains that the US government continues to send $3 billion of taxpayer money annually to Israel, around 2/3 of it military aid. On January 9, 2009 the House voted 390-5 on a resolution providing unwavering commitment to Israel. The news bulletin made no mention of money.
During the most recent of many wars between Palestinians and the Israeli army hundreds of innocents were killed by airplanes dropping bombs and missiles flying into Gaza. World opinion came down hard on Israel’s government.
It is a well established fact that Israel can do this any time it likes so long as the US government permits it. An equally well established fact states that it cannot win. A thinking citizen might wonder if the taxpayer should have something to say about this abuse. A 12/31/08 poll had 44% of people still for Israel with 41% against it. This sample was drawn before the bloody attack on a UN school in Gaza.
During March 2010 the prime minister announced plans to construct 1,600 buildings in the Palestinian sector of Jerusalem. He did this just when US vice-president Joe Biden was there trying to restart peace talks. Thinking taxpayers are wondering if that annual $3 billion of their money is being well spent.
The following suggestion describes a resource outside the system that could be utilized by citizens concerned about corruption. But wait. There was a proposal from inside the system. It was intended to have the public believe that the Congress hears people’s concern about corruption and is acting on it.
It was called the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. (Honestly, this is the correct title.) The democrats had been working to pass this bill since retaking Congress in November 2006. Mrs. Pelosi’s promise fulfilled?
But Senator Tom Coburn said the bill “— not only failed to drain the swamp, but gave the alligators new rights.” A thinking citizen might conclude that here comes yet another batch of smoke and mirrors. A thinking citizen might also conclude that congressmen think citizens are airheads.
In Washingtonspeak the word “honest” assumes a totally different meaning. Small wonder that President Bush’s popularity rating hit 20 percent and that of Congress is around13 percent. Pocket Gofer 19 elaborates.
As stated above, the only workable solution to corruption must come from outside the system. Within it there are far too many rich and powerful people covering their backsides. Here is a proposal that may generate discussion.
Berlin’s Transparency International does frequent surveys of national governments. It ranks them on a scale of squeaky clean to rotten. Knowing how to measure corruption logically leads toward how to eliminate it. On a 0-10 scale the US ranks 18th out of 180 nations, but because the economy is so large and wealthy the total amount of sleaze vastly exceeds that of any other nation.
The United Nations would provide needed funds, economists and other experts. The news media would provide investigative reporters and broadcast the results widely. A team of auditors would ensure that this money was well spent. (It is intriguing to speculate on the impact that would ensue if those talented investigative reporters currently in the employ of the tabloid press could be talked into targeting the Congress and other top public officials.)
Courts with appropriate jurisdiction would weigh the evidence and render decisions and sentences. At the very least, everyone convicted must be removed from public office and kept that way. Along with prison time fines should be levied, especially among those who have dishonestly become rich. Jefferson said, “The art of government consists in the art of being honest.”
The whole idea here is to strongly discourage future misbehavior as the temptation will always be there. The new government should be watched closely by concerned and active citizens. Eventually only public-spirited and honest people would enter public office. Career looters would vanish.
The people would accept nothing less. They would minimize the money they send to the government. This would minimize the temptation and thus make the job of watching public officials easier. Citizens should also demand deep investigative reporting by the news media because they would want to know who is stealing their money, how much and where it is going.
The prominent economist Friedrich von Hayek once said, “Only scoundrels stand for public office.” He surely had a point. Today’s Washington is overrun with them. This need not be so, but the only people who can enforce clean government are those who are being ripped and deceived. These folks live and breathe outside the system. They yearn to breathe free.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” This saying should be prominently engraved in every government building at every level and permanently tattooed on the mind of every citizen. The law of human nature cannot be repealed. Therefore, no matter the type of government someone is always busy nibbling away at citizens’ liberty.
In a democracy there would be no need for intervention. Citizens would keep their public officials’ behavior constantly under a microscope. Their public servants would know this and behave with the ax eternally ready to fall on them.
Government officials should be afraid of citizens and not the reverse. This means free, fair, clean and frequent elections and news media that are forced by citizens to report truth. The force must always be with the people.
During the past 30 or so years rulers like Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton instructed the news media to help keep the multitudes constantly hunkered down in fear. This force induced the peasants to trust BIG GOVERNMENT to protect them from a multitude of threats, many of them imaginary. See the essay on the external threat.
This fabricated state of fear distracts citizens from questioning government’s ability as a problem solver. Furthermore this distraction leaves corrupt politicians free to siphon off taxpayer money to reward their rich friends and themselves, the former for doing little besides being friends.
As more and more looters crowd into Washington the ship of state will eventually capsize. The question is not whether, but rather when. May it be soon, as the rot has penetrated to the very core of government.
The Tea Party movement has got off to a rip-roaring start, but beware. The establishment will surely attempt to co-opt it or otherwise lead it astray. Citizens should rejoice: here is a grassroots organization that is striking fear into top officials, which is the very state of being that Jefferson recommended.
The nation’s peasants will continue to believe government can solve problems until they get to thinking and talking and learn the truth. Pocket Gofer 19 speaks to this issue.
Confucius: “Sincerity and truth are the basis of every virtue.”
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32.
The national anthem asks “Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and home of the brave?” But only thinking citizens understand that the free cannot exist without the brave.