The Leaky Boat Of American Political Class Corruption - Home And Away
I am constantly amazed at the amount of corruption that tends to follow our political class around
, both on our domestic shores and overseas. Consider a story that appeared in the September 24, 2010 issue of The Week Magazine entitled, "The Fight Against Corruption In Afghanistan." According to the article:- Afghan President Hamid Karzai has recently blocked several investigations of graft in his administration.
- There have been ongoing complaints of corruption related to members of his government including his two half brothers who are allegedly involved with drug trafficking, bribery, and smuggling cash out of the country.
- Karzai recently freed one of his senior aides from prison who had been arrested on corruption charges.
- A recent in-country survey in Afghanistan found that 70% of those Afghans surveyed said that their local government officials are engaged in drug trafficking.
In return for this web of corruption and deceit from the Afghan government, the United States taxpayer expends roughly $100 billion a year and many dead American soldiers trying to get this situation right. Who should one be more mad at, the Afghan government officials and crooks who get away with this theft or the American political class that allows them to get away with it.
Another article on foreign corruption of U.S. taxpayer money comes from a New York Times article that appeared in the St. Petersburg Times on September 26, 2010, "Corruption Gobbles Up Gifts To Children." This article reviewed a program that the U.S. political class put in place to get almost 8,100 laptop computers into the hands of Iraqi children. The computers' value was estimate to be $1.8 million. The laptops arrived in Iraq last February but were not distributed right away.
While trying to track them down, it became known that in August, 4,200 of them had been auctioned off by some Iraqis for $45,700. The location of the other 3,900 computers was unknown at that time and still unknown today. Now, the article does acknowledge that ten government-employed customs people have been arrested in this case. However, seven months after the taxpayer funded computers landed in country, not a single on has been distributed to an Iraqi child and the location of the computers has apparently not been determined.
These are just two of the myriad of corruption instances that the American taxpayer has paid for in both war zones, Iraq and Afghanistan. And, as always, there does not appear to have been any person in our government or political class held accountable for the corruption and the waste. From $100 billion a year we waste in Afghanistan supporting a thoroughly corrupted government down to the relatively small, but symbolic loss of $1.8 million of laptop computers in Iraq, we are left with the classic political class situation: everyone is in charge but no one is accountable.
But I guess we should not be too upset that taxpayer dollars are being wasted via corruption half a world away. Consider just a sample of political class corruption examples we have faced domestically in recent years:
- Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye has been accused of using the leverage of his Senate office to coerce government regulators to bailout a distressed Hawaiian bank in which the Senator had made a significant investment, an investment that would be lost if the bank was allowed to fail like the regulators wanted.
- Congressmen James Traficant, Randy Cunningham, and William Jefferson have been found guilty of various corruption violations and have served or are serving prison time.
- Many former Illinois governors have either spent time in jail (Kerner and Walker), are serving time in jail (Ryan), or are trying not to go to jail (Blagojevich).
- California Congresswoman Maxine Walters is accused of doing the same deal in order to save a bank that her husband had heavily invested in.
New York Congressman Charles Rangel is likely to go on trial later this year in Congress for his alleged misdealings and corruption in many areas.
- Florida Congresswoman Ginny Waite Brown was reported by the Associated Press to have been trading stocks in financial institutions at the same time she was sitting on a House committee that would determine which financial institutions got how much government/taxpayer bailout money. For most Americans, this is called insider trading and is a felony. For political class members this is called business as usual.
- Many of President Obama's nominees for high level government positions were found to have not paid their fair share of taxes including Tom Daschle, ex-long time Senator, and Tim Geithner, currently the Secretary of the Treasury. Again for most Americans, this type of tax evasion is at least a misdemeanor. For the political class, it sometimes feels like it is a way of life.
- The government organization that runs Medicare is so rife with corruption and mismanagement that it wastes, loses, and misspends almost $100 billion a year in government/taxpayer funds.
- Various Associated Press reports have reported that employees in the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Interior Department and most recently in the Defense Department (The Week - September 17, 2010) have been extensively involved, on work time and on government computers, in searching and downloading pornography off of the Internet. The latest Defense Department pornography finding identified over 250 Pentagon employees and contractors, some with the highest security clearance, had viewed and purchased child pornography, sometime with their government issued computers. This form of corruption at best involves the misuse of government salaries dollars and equipment, at worst sets up users of pornography for blackmail and other forms of corruption.
When the Democrats took control of the House Of Representatives in 2006, newly appointed Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, stated that she would lead "the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history" and that she wanted to "drain the swamp" of Congressional corruption. Part of this effort was a bill signed by President Bush called the "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act" in 2007. Parts of this bill called for disclosure of lobbyists' spending and contributions to politicians, a ban on lobbyist gifts to lawmakers, curtailment of free vacations from lobbyists, creation of an independent ethics office, and the identification of earmark sponsors.
While sounding great, the ethics bill and the push to root out corruption has fallen short, according to a recent Associated Press article:
- It appears that few in Congress are disclosing how lobbyists are helping them raise campaign cash for their re-elections even though there is a provision in the above law that requires them to do so.
- Even though the ethics office that was created by the above bill has found grounds for misconduct with two Democratic members of Congress, Maxine Walters and Charles Rangel, Pelosi will probably be able to delay their House trial until after the November elections. You cannot say you are fighting for good ethics if you use your power to postpone possibly embarrassing ethics violations and investigations for political gain.
- Recent news reports show that three Democratic members of Congress awarded Congressional Black Caucus Foundation scholarships to their relatives. Talk about conflict of interest and a serious ethical violation, in spirit if not law.
- While the 2007 ethics law that Bush signed required earmarks to be identified by lawmaker, it obviously did nothing to curtail earmark creation and waste since they are close to an all time high. Earmarks are nothing more than thinly disguised ways for the political class to direct taxpayer money to entities that turn around and give some of that money back to the lawmaker for his or her re-election campaign, i.e. it is a giant kickback scheme. In essence, the shell game of having taxpayers pay for incumbents' re-election campaigns is as healthy and as destructive as ever, it is just now we know who is doing the destruction.
- Recently, an influential former lobbyist, Paul Magliocchetti, pleaded guilty to funneling more than $380,000 to the re-election campaigns of three House Democrats. This $380,000 cash for incumbents cost the American taxpayer $137 million - this is the amount of defense contracts that the three Democratic Congressmen directed towards Magliocchetti's clients.
- Beyond the above ethics violations involving money, Pelosi could be considered in serious breach of ethics as leader of the House Of Representatives on many fronts. She has allowed members of her party to call American citizens, with legitimate differences of opinion with the Democrats actions and positions, racists. Pelosi herself called Americans opposed to Obama's health care plans un-American even though those Americans have a right to disagree with any politician. While she censured a Republican Congressman who called Obama a liar during a health care reform speech (even though the Republican apologized and his apology was accepted by the President), she had no problem with one of her fellow Democrats calling all Republicans "knuckle dragging Neanderthals." You cannot be considered an ethical person if you do not respect the opinions and rights of others to have those opinions. She should know better, she is a leading political figure in the country. However, her behavior in berating common citizens is unethical and despicable.
Thus, while Pelosi is taking credit for a law that is supposed to reduce corruption, a law that was signed by a Republican President and passed with wide Republican support, the fact is it does not make any difference who was responsible. Corruption, earmarks, lobbyists' influence, conflict of interest, non-disclosure, etc. are still major corruption issues with our political class. While her boat might look better, it is just as leaky as all of the previous political class boats of corruption.
As with the corruption that wastes our foreign policy dollars, nobody (so far) of any importance has faced an consequences from these domestic acts of corruption. That is what is frustrating the American people today, we pay and pay and pay through taxes and our dead soldiers just to have these types of wasteful corruption instances thrown back in our faces.
And the sources of the corruption are never fixed. We are so afraid of losing to the Taliban in Afghanistan that our political class tolerates the corruption from Afghan officials who are more concerned with their wealth and well being then fixing their country. We prop up another government in Iraq that is so corrupt that it would deny the simplest joys to their children, the ability to have a free computer. Our politicians feast for themselves on the taxpayer dollar while comparable behavior by those same taxpayers gets them jail time. Obama passes a multi TRILLION health care plan but never fixed the leaks of corruption in the current government health care plans. Thus, we will have a bigger boat that leaks more taxpayer money quicker.
When does it end and how do we fix the leaks? The following initial steps would be a good start:
- Step 1 - reduce Federal spending by 10% a year for five years. If the political class has less of our money to spend, they are likely to waste less money also.
- Step 2 - make a conscious and determined effort to crack down on tax and other government fraud and waste, aggressively bringing those crooks and fraudsters to justice. This step would also include the strengthening of ethics violations process and prosecution of current politicians in office.
- Step 3 - bring home almost all of our foreign deployed troops. The world is full of corruption and criminals, why should we put them into power and then watch as they plunder our taxpayer money? Using this step and a much more restrained foreign policy should reduce the Defense Department budget significantly and eliminate the type of fraud that our political class subsidizes in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
- Step 4 - remove those members of Congress, sitting on those committees that are responsible for the oversight of the waste, corruption and fraud, from their committee posts for incompetence when appropriate. For example, whatever House and Senate committees are responsible for those Iraqi missing laptops, and the other billions and billions of taxpayer dollars that have been flushed down the Iraqi hole of corruption, those politicians should be removed from their committee posts and replaced. No more being in
charge but not accountable.
- Step 5 - institute term limits for all politicians so that they are out of office in a relatively short time, before they can learn the ropes of Washington corruption and profit both personally and politically by that culture of corruption.
Until you fix the leaks in the boat, corruption will find a way in and our tax dollars will find a way out. With TRILLIONS of dollars of national debt piling up and American families struggling in a very weak economy, every patch is needed if you are to fix our financial situation and make our taxpayer dollars more impact and useful in honest ways. Hopefully, the above suggestions to fix our culture of political corruption floats your boat also.
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