Decadence, Waste, Corruption in
the New American Empire [Part II]
"The
abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important
part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to
the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to
the rule of emperors."
Plutarch
(c. 46 A.D.-127 A.D.)
"An
imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all
republics."
Plutarch
(c. 46 A.D.-127 A.D.)
"It should be no surprise that
when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable
to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such
people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will
continue to rip off the rest of us. Perhaps the reason is that rich men are very
clever at covering up what they do."
Andrew Greeley
Corruption and moral bankruptcy take
many forms. They are usually the end results of an
insatiable lust for money, power and privilege, above and beyond any common
decency. And money in politics is at the nexus of nearly all forms of
corruption.
In the United States, for example, big money is so
central to politics and to the functioning of political parties that anybody
running for high office, even if he or she is personally a millionaire, is
obliged to court those who have the big cash. Many good candidates thus refuse to enter into, or soon
bow out of presidential races, because they do not want to submit to this kind
of prostitution. As a consequence of the deals that must be made to raise the
huge amounts of money required to be successful, it is difficult for any
administration, once elected, not to get entangled in a web of scandals.
Indeed, big cash is the key to influence in Washington D.C., and cash used to
bribe politicians ultimately leads to greed and scandals. It happened to the
Nixon administration (Watergate scandal), the Carter administration (Lance
scandal), the Reagan administration (Iran-Contra-cocaine scandal), the Clinton
administration (Whitewater scandal) and now, to the Bush administration.
There was the Enron scandal, the Abramoff scandal, and the Tom Delay scandal. In the aftermath of the
Enron scandal, for example, it was made public that Enron spent a total of
$5.8m on American federal elections, over a period of 12 years, with 73 percent
of the money going to Republicans. Globally, 71 out of 100 senators and 188 out
of 435 House members benefited from the company's largesse. President George W.
Bush himself, a staunch opponent of any campaign finance reform,
received
$826,000 from this single Texas company over a period of eight
years, since he first ran for governor of that state. —This seems to be
all part of a pervasive culture of corruption.
The
revelation that super lobbyist Jack Abramoff
offered $100,000
to meet President George W. Bush and top adviser Karl Rove to push for
legislation of his liking is an indication how things can degenerate quickly,
even in the most solid democracy. Super lobbyist Abramoff was one of George W.
Bush's principal fundraisers, earning the honorary title of "pioneer" in his
fund-raising organization. And, in what is typically
American, both Abramoff and Delay said that 'God' was somewhat behind their
actions. –For one, Abramoff confessed that "I felt that the
resources coming into my hands were the consequence of God putting them there. " –And, in Delay's
words, "I firmly believe I'm innocent of the charges against me. We
believe that God in fact is in control and indeed he does work all things for
good for those who love the Lord." This is an indication that for some, religion and
political corruption do mix.
In fact, what money buys in Washington D.C. is
access to those in positions of power, direct influence on the framing of
public policies and preferential allotment of jobs and juicy contracts.
Corruption of civil servants and Congress by lobbyists follows. Political
corruption quickly becomes a vicious cycle: The corrupters select the
politicians they want to see in office by dumping tons of money in their
campaigns, while the politicians thus selected are anxious to pay back their
benefactors by opening jobs of influence and by dishing out rewarding contracts
to them. —And the wheel turns. In particular, why do you think all
leading Democratic presidential hopefuls this year are calling for
an unprovoked American attack against Iran? It is because the big money
contributors they are soliciting are pro-Israel hard-liners. Those who pay make the policy.—That may be the
overriding reason why 60 percent of Americans do not bother to vote, come
election time. They are not apathetic; they only know that plutocracy is not
democracy and that there is not a chance in hell that the system can reform
itself. Plutocracy is the government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.
This is a far cry from the Lincolnian view of democracy of "a
government of the people, by the people and for the people."
When Paul Wolfowitz,
the principal
technical architect of the war against Iraq, went from the U.S. Defense
department to preside the World Bank, the world had a vivid
demonstration how corrupt the American political system could be. Wolfowitz had
no formation (political science) or experience in finance, but was nevertheless
named to be president of the important World Bank for services rendered.
Another example is the curious spectacle of Dick Cheney, a member of the
American Enterprise Institute and a former CEO of Halliburton Energy Services, who, in 2001, chose himself to be George W. Bush's
vice-president (he was Bush's Vice-Presidential search committee) and as
chairman of the president elect's transition team found himself in charge of
naming most of the high officials in the new Bush administration. How could he
manage to do that, one may legitimately ask? Also, why did George W. Bush, on
March 25, 2003, sign executive order 13292,
giving Cheney
the power to declassify intelligence and granting the greatest expansion of the
power of the vice-president in US history? Why did Dick Cheney end up having so
much power within the Bush administration that George W. Bush once even joked
about 'President Cheney'? No
political scientist that we know of has found satisfactory answers to these
questions.
Another
form of corruption in America may be derived from the first type. It comes from
the fact that while the super rich gorge themselves on cost-plus military
contracts and tax cuts, the poorest Americans
are becoming relatively poorer.
Indeed, economic inequality
in the U.S. has
increased markedly between 1979 and 2006: During this time, more than a quarter
century, incomes adjusted for inflation of those at the top increased 34
percent, incomes of those at the median increased by 11.5 percent and incomes
of those at the bottom have remained about stagnant, increasing a meager 4
percent over 27 years. —Recent reports have also shown that the
percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a
32-year high as the gulf between the nation's "haves" and
"have-nots" has continued to widen.
In 2005,
for example, 35 million Americans
went without
enough to eat. This is due to the fact that 13 million American children, or
17.8 percent, were living in severe poverty.
And, with the cost of health care increasing each year in the two digits, some 47 million Americans
find themselves in the precarious situation of not being covered by
any health insurance, all the while their government is wasting billions and
billions around the world.
But perhaps the most insidious corruption in a democracy
occurs when elected officials are not truthful with the people
and rely on lies and propaganda rather than truth in the public discourse. Then
confidence and trust are destroyed, and so is the moral fiber of the nation.
Such public corruption is often
accompanied by the corruption that feeds political corruption, the corruption
of the media. When the government and the media are both corrupted, all the
other forms of corruption follow. The increasingly incestuous relationship
that exists between large segments of American media and the
government is harbinger of things to come. Indeed, propaganda machines seem to
have replaced genuine investigative journalism in many media organizations
where a cohort of "useful idiots" and
yelling village idiots feel free to engage in public campaigns of
disinformation and of outright lies.
When this happens, confusion and
disarray result, and this is when the worst mistakes are made. The 2001-2007 episode
will go down in history as such an instance when the American people were lied
to, both by the Bush-Cheney administration and by the major American media.
This has
led, indeed, to a show of massive incompetence
and to the monstrous American moral and financial corruption,
which has been observed in Iraq, where the
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Feith-Bremer wrecking crew went on a rampage
that did great and irreparable harm, not only to Iraq, its economy and its
people, but also to the United States, to Americans and to the international
system of law and justice. The gross misuse of money, the suspension of the
right of "Habeas Corpus" and the reliance on torture techniques in
occupied Iraq (Abu Ghraib) are only the tip of the iceberg of what has the
potential to be one of the biggest corruption scandals in American history.
_________________________________________________
Rodrigue
Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Also
visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's
Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book
"The Code for Global Ethics" at: http://www.MoralityWithoutReligion.com
_______________________________________________
Posted,
March 12, 2007, at 5:30 am
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