Category: insider corruption

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insider corruption

Battle of the Corrupt States

The name. The hair. The gall. Illinois Governor Rod Blogojevich is getting lots of attention.

However, the governor’s favor-​trading is unique only in blatancy. The longer politicians hold power, the more readily they regard pay-​to-​play corruption as acceptable, profitable. Which is one reason I advocate initiative rights, term limits, mandatory caps on taxes and spending, and other reforms that pay-​to-​play politicos despise.

The desire to thwart such reform begets even more corruption.

Pundits say that if Illinois’s state government isn’t the most corrupt in the union, it’s in the running. But I nominate Oklahoma for the title. In Oklahoma, the bad-​old-​boy political establishment is so eager to thwart reform that politicians are willing to jail you for the “crime” of abetting democracy.

Two citizen activists and I found this out the hard way, when Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson indicted us in October 2007 for allegedly “defrauding” the state by running a petition drive to curb state spending.

The charges are phony, and Oklahoma’s residency law for signature gatherers — which we did not violate — has just been ruled unconstitutional.

Winning attorney Todd Graves said the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling “upholds an important free speech principle and joins other federal courts in upholding citizens’ First Amendment right to petition their government without threat of political prosecution.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability insider corruption

Congress Hikes Pay!

Shocking news: Congressional leaders demand to be paid just one dollar a year! Thus they acknowledge their own flagrant irresponsibility in causing the economic crisis.

According to congressional leaders (and I quote), “Our mammoth fiscal irresponsibility is the single biggest culprit in all this, not counting the easy-​credit policies of the Fed. We pretended we could spend and tax and regulate like there was no tomorrow, demand easy-​loan terms to bad credit risks, etc., with no bad consequences. Just get something for nothing. Boy, were we wrong! Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!”

Yeah, right. That’ll be the day. Congress may demand that CEOs schlepping to Washington for handouts get paid just a dollar a year, but the congressmen themselves won’t even freeze their own pay.

Of course, many of them should be resigning. Instead, they have quietly, not to say furtively, allowed an automatic pay raise to go forward, the so-​called Cost of Living Adjustment.

Representative Harry Mitchell sponsored a bill to prevent the automatic pay raise from happening in 2009. But it never escaped committee. As Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense points out, things are “wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise.” So add another $4,700 to the average congressional salary. Meaning they’ll make $174,000 beginning this January.

Because they’re doing such a swell job, right?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

Candidate No. 5

Last year I said the following, on this very program:

What is it with bribery and Illinois governors? Former Governor George Ryan was convicted of taking bribes. Now Governor Blagojevich is making bribes … to the entire legislature.

I was concerned with Blagojevich’s readiness to change his mind — flip flop — depending on getting a return. Blagojevich proved unrepentant. He knows how politics usually works.

Apparently logrolling and flip-​flopping didn’t go far enough down the bribery road. So now, his task as Illinois state governor to appoint a successor to Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate has been just as straightforward as his other politic deals.

There’s talk of a million dollars being put “on the table” by people close to a “Candidate No. 5.” By the time this appears, you will probably know more about this than I do now, as I type these words. But any uncertainties I may have about this whole affair were not firmed up by the protests from Jesse Jackson, Jr., now confirmed as that notorious No. 5.

Jackson defended his honor, his staff’s honor, in no uncertain terms. “It’s impossible,” he says, that someone on his staff — or even on his behalf — has offered anything improper.

Until he said “impossible,” I gave him the benefit of the doubt. But, folks, we’ve learned from Governor Blagojevich himself how politics works. Bribery is the art of the possible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption porkbarrel politics

The Snarl From Alaska

Senator Ted Stevens is an unrepentant porkster whose close relations and special deals with an Alaska business recently led to a conviction on seven felony counts. But he’s not giving in, and has appealed his conviction. He also ran for a seventh Senate term, and it looks like he’s won it … or no … late vote counts gave the nod to his competitor.

I have argued many times that Senator Stevens is a living, walking, snarling advertisement for term limits. In a Townhall column years ago, I emphasized that his indecent playing of interest upon interest has led to an obvious, big-​as-​the-​nose-​on-​his-​face “appearance of corruption.”

I also argued that, no matter what his below-​the-​table shenanigans may have been — may continue to be — his above-​board porkmeistering is itself a form of corruption, one that our republic should repudiate.

And his party should repudiate.

And his constituents should repudiate.

During the campaign, John McCain and Sarah Palin, asked that Stevens resign. Lots of people have demanded it. Utterly defiant, Stevens insists on representing Alaska while his lawyers “pursue the appeals to clear” his name.

Yet if as many as five or six — or even all seven — of the counts against him are not upheld, his name will still appear dirty in my book, dirty from all the porkbarelling. Senator Ted Stevens is a horrifying example of much that is wrong in government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets insider corruption nannyism too much government

The Boomers’ Bust

Remember when Bill Clinton ascended to the presidency? There were hurrahs. At last the Baby Boom generation had its own president!

We’ve gone through another Baby Boom president, and now we — and I’m talkin’ ’bout my generation, here — have our very own economic bust. Call it the Boomers’ Bust.

John Kass, writing in the Chicago Tribune, notes how different things look for Boomers, now. “In the ’70s,” Kass writes, “the slogan was ‘Do your own thing.” But today’s slogan might be ‘Washington, please save us.’”

Kass attributes some of the difference merely to age. When we were young, we took risks. Now that we’re older, we simply want to keep our houses and our cars and our TV sets, and our retirement plans.

The ominous marker in all this is the transfer of power. In our desires, demands, for security, we’ve given up a lot. Kass says we are giving up “liberty for all” and exchanging it with “power in the hands of a few.”

We can see it is who gains most: people and corporations on the inside track. But, as Kass points out, look who loses: “The casualty will be the entrepreneurs, those on the outside.… Such men and women will be on the outside for decades now.”

Since it was entrepreneurs who accomplished the most enduring good during the last 40 years, this will be tragic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom insider corruption

Beating Up Joe the Plumber?

When Samuel Wurzelbacher hit the news as “Joe the Plumber,” his story played well. Presidential candidate Barack Obama had been going door to door, with cameras, in an elaborate meet-​and-​greet binge. When he got to Wurzelbacher’s door, he got an earful. And John McCain got one of his few opportunities to really do some damage to the Obama juggernaut.

Now, the election is over, and new causes will be celebrated and reviled. But Joe’s right to speak his mind remains a live issue, one that we should all worry about.

Yes, there’s more to this story than you may have heard.

Here’s the rest of the story: Soon after his newfound notoriety, the real Joe, Mr. Wurzelbacher, found himself under investigation by the local police.

It’s an old, ignoble tradition throughout much of the world: A person speaks up, out come the billy clubs.

Fortunately, the investigation into his private records was nipped in the bud. The records clerk who actually made the inquiry has found herself under investigation. She’s even been charged with “gross misconduct” for allegedly making an improper, politically-​based inquiry.

We’ll see if the investigation goes further than just this one clerk. The higher-​up who approved the probe, Helen Jones-​Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, has defended her move. Will her maximum contributions to Mr. Obama’s campaign be judged irrelevant?

We’ll see.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.