Political Insanity - Worldwide And Locally

Nikita Khrushchev of Russia once said: "Politicians are the same all over, they will build you a bridge even if there is no river." Following up on his insight, let's look at some political insanity around the world and a few local examples to prove that the political class is truly an international animal:

• An article that was summarized in The Week magazine on November 27, 2009 was originally written by Ninez Cacho-Olivares of the The Daily Tribune. The article discussed the corruption that emanates from Constancia de Guzman who, ironically, is the President of The Philipines' Anti-Graft Commission. Ms. de Guzman hired both her son and his girl friend as consultants and declared this was not nepotism since her son was qualifed for the position. These were just two of several family members she hired. While the Philippines is a notoriously corrupt government, she has not investigated, never mind prosecuted, a single major official during her term as President of the Commission. When the president of the country was accused of diverting federal money to her presidential campaign, de Guzman promised to investigate but never got around to it. All of this left Cacho-Olivares wondering what de Guzman and her family do all day.
• Another article from The Week, this one from the November 13, 2009 issue, discussed the plight of Jacques Chirac of France. He was the president of France from 1995 to 2007. He has been ordered to go on trial becuase of corruption during his presidential term when he operated a "grace and favor" system that provided ghost jobs and Paris apartments to his friends and cronies. It involved kickbacks from contractors that went to Chirac's political party and suitcases of cash that were left at his residence. There were so many accusations of corruption that the presiding judge decide to ignore the lesser charges since to prosecute all of the charges would have taken years. However, many in France do not want the case to go forward. Why? The article sums it up in the final paragraph: "If Chirac goes down, he could take a lot of others with him. Many members of France's political class have an interest in preventing such an outcome." Sounds similar to Pelosi's refusal to investigate or censure members of her own party in the House Of Representatives (e.g. see the exploits of Congressmen Rangel, Murtha and others as outlined in previous posts).
• In an article published on Earthlink's news page on November 18, 2009, it was revealed that a senior Afghanistan government official allegedly took a $20 million bribe to steer a billion dollar copper mine project to a Chinese company. Bad enough he took a bribe, but his actions cut out companies from countries (United States, Canada, and others) that are fighting against the Taliban and Bin Laden's thugs for control of the country. According to several sources cited in the article, the selection process was highly secretive and done behind closed doors without consulting experts both within and outside the government who could have constructively helped with the bidding process.
• Back in the United States, the St. Petersburg Times reprinted a NY Times article on December 6, 2009. The article reported that U.S. Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, had nominated a woman to be the U.S. district attorney for his home state of Montana.....that he also was currently dating. The woman had worked for Baucus as his state office director from 2003 to 2009. Of course, a Baucus spokesperson insisted that the woman was nominated "solely on the basis of her credentials."
• And to no one's surprise since it is related to Illinois politics, the law offices of the lawyers defending former governor Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges were burglarized recently and eight computers and a safe containing evidence to be used to defend the ex-governor were stolen. This is interesting from two perspectives. First, of all the burglaries that could have happended, it just so happened to be associated with a potentiall corrupt Illinois politician. Second, even though the news reports of the burglary said that an alarm had been tripped and police were dispatched, the burlgars were still able to escape with the eight computers and the safe. Makes you wonder how quick the police were in reacting to the alarm, walking out of a lawyer's office with that many computers and a safe cannot be done that quickly. I am pretty sure we will revisit this event many times in the future.

Thus, it looks like Nikita was right, politicians are the same all over. Nowhere do they realize that the appearance of conflict of interest is just as bad as actual conflict of interest. Nowhere do they have any trepidation of misserving the public to their own enrichment or the enrichment of their associated friends and political parties. One charateristic that they all seem to have in common is that they all seemed to have been in the same government position/office a long time. Previous posts in this blog showed a high correlation between the degree of corruption of U.S. Congressional members and their terms of service, i.e. the longer they are in service the more corrupt they appear to be. Chirac was in the same office thirteen years (and in the political arena even longer), de Guzman had been in her position for many years, and Baucus has been in his Senate position for over thirty years. Either way, that is why the need to impose term limits on U.S. Congressional terms as outlined in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are so necessary. It is one of the best ways to cut down on rampant corruption and conflicts of interest. We do not need any extra bridges.

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