The sad thing is that politicians being charged and convicted of fraud are becoming too common. From a congressman allegedly getting caught with $100,000 in his freezer, to a senator allegedly accepting $250,000 in gifts from an oil company executive — I sometimes wonder if I am living in a foreign land, where we would expect this to be the status quo. Please note, there are many more examples of public figures getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar in recent history. Please note also that the incidents of alleged corruption involve leaders of different political affiliations.
As we are only days now from President-elect Obama's administration taking office, we face the worst financial crisis since the depression. Not only are we experiencing a financial crisis, but many believe our nation is severely divided; and to top it off, we are at war.
President-elect Obama has spoken out many times on the evils of special interests and lobbyists, who seem to be able to control our government's destiny. Even after Wall Street laughed all the way to the bank (for years) when the mortgage crisis was created — it seems we are being held hostage to bail them out or face even more severe financial consequences.
Change is what is needed and hopefully that is what is about to occur. On his transition website, President-elect Obama is encouraging open government and soliciting us all to write in with our own ideas. I think this a good thing and we all should do it. Our nation was founded in part because of taxation without representation and if you think about it, an argument might be made that this what we've been seeing in recent history.
During the election, I struggled a lot with how to cast my vote; my uncle (who is a huge Obama advocate) sent me a YouTube video about Obama set to John Lennon's song, Imagine. For those of us who still remember his music, Lennon had another song called Gimme Some Truth. What we need now is to imagine our leaders are there for us and to stop finding reasons to lose faith in them.
Article comments
1 - Doug Hunter
Politicians and bureaucrats (and to a lesser extent CEO's and corporate management) are spending other peoples money . You will always have poor management and corruption in that situation. It is human nature to give friends and family a break whether it's a policeman passing on a ticket, a city council granting a variance, or a governor suggesting who to give a $$$multimillion contract.
The way to minimize it is to cut the amount of power the government has over us and make everything government does absolutely transparent. Make lack of privacy part of the job description for a public servant with every communication, every meeting, and every document recorded and posted for public consumption. Make it illegal for officials to talk state business off the record and offer very large rewards for those uncovering fraud waste or abuse. When these rules are violated make the punishments at least as harsh as those in the 'drug war'.
2 - pablo
Excellent comment.
3 - Baritone
While I certainly agree that corruption in government is (and pretty much always has been) a serious problem, I don't ascribe to a drastic reduction in government oversite. It is just that "hands off" notion promoted largely by the Bush administration that allowed our economy to plop into the shitter.
Keep in mind that for every public servant found with his or her hand in the till, there are probably several more in the private sector who are prompting and guiding that hand.
Transparency is important in government, but it is also necessary in the private sector to the extent that it has dealings with government and the public sector.
B
4 - Baronius
"Transparency" is the new buzzword, which usually means that its importance is overrated. Crooked people will find a way of committing crimes, and decent people will keep behaving properly. Blagojevich wouldn't have been made more ethical by stricter laws.
That being said, and leaving aside the matter of presumed innocence, there's nothing out there to indicate that Richardson has done anything wrong.
5 - Joanne Huspek
Unfortunately for us, a person with a sense of ethics is hard to find.
6 - Baronius
Joanne, I was thinking about you when Obama appointed Governor Granholm to his economic transition team. Do you think we can duplicate the Michigan magic on a national scale?
7 - Glenn Contrarian
Doug -
By this, do you mean less oversight of our financial system?