Skip to main content

Political Corruption

 What is Corruption? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption


Political corruption occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts in an official capacity for personal gain.


It’s essentially the protection racket: unless you pay me, you will be threatened and you will not get what you want; even though they are legally required to provide aservice.


Corruption: why is this a secular (real) sin?

It causes individual and societal harm causing everyone to be poorer and bullies to be crueler.


Because it breaks the golden rule of ethical requirements. 


Kant: Categorical Imperative. The same rule must apply to everyone.

Copernicus: Anthropomorphic principle. You are not the center of world, 

Dawkins: Intelligent Design: Morals must be supported with reason.

Dennet: The basis of morals come from evolution, but they are not constrained by it.


Ethics must be universal: All men are created equal in the eyes of the law (the state must not play favorites.)


Why must ethical laws be universal? It’s the only way to guarantee morality for everyone.


If ethics depends upon who is who, then ethics invariably becomes an excuse to make others suffer in society while you immorally profit off of their suffering because of greed. That’s a secular sin.


Non-universality allows for other non-optimal societies: illiberal democracy. 

It would allow for treating some citizens as second class with fewer rights.

Essentially slavery, racism and nationalism seem to be okay in a society that failed this moral test. This is not a set of ethics for a society I want to live in.



Definition of political corruption: personal benefit for providing a public good.


This is the basis of Royalty. All the benefits, none of the cost. It makes the law a matter of money, power and contacts; not an unbiased, fair and equal system. It makes a society poorer and crueler. It is how modern society fights the greedy and cruel that wish to profit personally by using their power to exploit others. This ends up making a country poorer and less safe.


It’s why  emoluments are forbidden by our constitution (payments by foreign countries to our politicians.) 


It’s why bribes are illegal. You pay the service fee to the government, not the inspector. So they can’t be tempted to ignore the regulations and safety requirements… so your house doesn’t collapse in an earthquake because your concrete company was paid off to deliver a non-compliant product. It makes society work. Corruption makes societies that fail.


Corruption is insidious. It’s extremely hard to rip it out of a system without serious and dangerous work. When the board of directors of a hospital in Russia take the finances from the government meant to pay their doctors for themselves, the doctors become impoverished and have to request payments from their patients to survive themselves, thus corruption is self-propagating! One person’s corruption spreads throughout the economy and poisons many more transactions than just the original corrupt stealing.


What’s Trumps stance on corruption? He’s for it. He’s written several EOs endorsing it: he’s not enforcing the foreign corruption practices act which forbids US companies from bribing foreign officials. He’s putting up opportunities for corruption in public: meme coin, truth social, his properties: where foreigners can bribe him or pay tribute… He accepts foreign cash as donations laundered through non-profits that can hide the sources (NRA forwarded him $70M in donations, financed by Russia.) @GOP stopped foreign reporting requirements. (thanks, McConnell)


He blatantly asks for corporate sponsorships for his inauguration, his energy policy, his tax policy and of his Easter egg hunt, all unaccounted for and which goes directly into his pocket. This is legalized corruption. Elon Musk is just as morally bankrupt as Trump. He’s in government, attempting to unconstitutionally eradicate those agencies that regulate his companies and complaining that American’s are boycotting his Tesla’s while he burns the unsellable cars for the insurance money (who else profits?) For the past 250 years prior to Trump, Presidents and Cabinet members put any business dealings they had into blind trusts just to avoid even the appearance of corruption. This no longer seems to be the case with the current Republican party. 


It’s a breakdown in societal norms. It’s a push to treat people differently depending on their loyalty and tribute. It’s discrimination and bigotry and it makes our entire society poorer, crueler, and more stratified. Nothing a sane, ethical person would want.


It’s one of the worst secular (real) sins possible in the world. 


How to prevent corruption from spreading throughout a society? Prosecution from the government (state, local, federal) refusal by the populace to submit. Do not surrender. More laws that stop the blatant legal corruption in our government such as trading on inside information in the stock market by our representatives.


Let’s look at a particular case. Adams, mayor of NYC took bribes, favors and donations from Turkish companies and officials and in return ordered approval of building permits and ignored other regulations and reporting requiremnts for his bribers. This was under prosecution during the last administration and was shut down with an ‘I promise to be loyal to Trump and his policies’. And they want this to be hung over his head so they can bring it back at any time. Absolutely corrupt on both sides. Hopefully, the judge will fix this, because the governor of NY, who could fix this, is too scared of Trump to do her official duty.


Let’s take another example. Tariffs. Companies petition the government and donate to political parties to remove tariffs on their products. Politicians return the favor to their voters, the exception data show this plainly and clearly, exemptions are available for purchase.


Same for the immigration ‘gold’ cards. The $5M for US citizenship is easier than bribing random immigration officials.


But the worst legalized corruption is from Citizen United where essentially unlimited donations to politicians are allowed and made directly for new laws and new tax breaks to be purchased. This corruption leads to it being over ten times more likely for a bill to be passed that supports the billionaire’s interests versus an ordinary American's interest. This is the road to oligarchy and dictatorship. We are well on our way to the broligarchy. This will not be good for ordinary American citizens, no matter how much Trump lies about it all.


Overturning Citizens United and continuing to reform election financing should be a high priority to make the society reflect the citizens ideals, not raw money and power.


Impeachment is my recommendation of how to get corruption out of the government. Success has been sporadic.


Thanks for reading.

 -Dr. Mike

 

Further things to think about:

How can corruption be removed from a society?
Can corruption every be useful?
Have you ever personally suffered or profited from corruption?
What does corruption do to a society?
How can it make a society pooorer or more stratified?


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Grand Vacations or Burning Man on Mars. It could happen.

Precursors No, it will happen. At least if the aliens don't get here first. But we'll talk about that in another blog post. What I want to talk about today is the mistaken idea that progress will end. There's a neat book by John Brockman , actually a series of books that I call 'blog fodder.' The one that drove me to write about Grand Vacations is: " This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories that are Blocking Progress ." John has put together several books of this type where he asks scientists, economists and others to write something provocative on his chosen topic. These books are great fun to scan. Many of the articles are great fun, many are just crazy, some are so bad they aren't even wrong (as Wolfgang Pauli would say.) The article that started my train of thought that has led to this blog post was: "Economic Growth." Cesar Hidalgo , an Associate Professor at MIT claims the idea of economic growth must die. He makes two arg...

Capitalism is not inherently bad, unethical or immoral. Limited Liability Companies? They are the engines that pollute the world.

What is wrong with capitalism? I blame Limited Liability Corporations . Let’s be clear: Corporations are not human beings. Corporations have no conscience. Corporations are immoral, doing whatever it takes to survive. Capitalism tried to harvest that greed to benefit all mankind. Most would say it's been successful; however, without regulations, Corporations will do anything to improve their profits. They will lie, cheat and steal. Corporations will force their costs on anyone they can, refuse to clean up their messes and kill people if it means they will make more profits. They have no other incentive without regulations. As Limited Liability Corporations the owners have no fear of retribution from the state, except to lose their investment. It’s a perfect storm of corruption. Capitalism is designed to harness this immoral greed and attempt to benefit mankind. And it works surprisingly well. The number of people in abject poverty has fallen absolutely in the last few decades. [ UR...

It's been fixed! There is no longer an insane narrowing of the 280 Freeway in Santa Clara County.

UPDATE: BREAKING NEWS (8/15/21): They painted the final lines and messed it up again at Pagemill road (going down to three lanes and taking one as a dedicated exit and barely fixed the entry of the diamond lane... so it's still a little bit screwed up at one place... backups will not be eliminated entirely. DOH! It seems the California Department of Transportation has taken my suggestions made four years ago and decided to repave the 280 freeway so that there are four continuous lanes for the entire trip between San Francisco and San Jose.  My last report on this crazy backup causing 'improvement' was here:  https://www.wiigf.com/2016/11/a-proposal-to-fix-unnecessary-freeway.html. I pointed out that there was space to stop the backups and increase the traffic flow and was flabbergasted as to why they had designed the freeway to impede traffic flow. Now they've gone back and repaved it and fixed it. I have no need to repaint the lines anymore as the DOT has done it thems...