As a guide for reviewing political class corruption, we have been relying on the multi-level definition of corruption that the Webster online dictionary provides:
a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : depravity
b : decay, decomposition
c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery)
d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct
Keep these definitions of corruption in mind as today we review a hodgepodge of corruption stories from different sectors of the political class. We started the hodgepodge yesterday with tales of a boozed up political class in Washington, illegal campaign fund raising activities, and greed and corruption at the state and local government levels. Today you will see more examples of integrity and moral impairment, depravity, decay, unlawful inducement, etc., along with good old basic greed.
EPA greed and wasteful spending corruption
On March 4, 2014, the inspector general (IG) at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that because of a severe lack of oversight, EPA Federal employees misused company credit cards:
- EPA employees spent taxpayer funds on items such as gym memberships, gift cards and food expenses.
- The total scope of the greed, misspending, and waste was estimated at $29 million in purchases that occurred just during fiscal year 2012, according to stories carried in both The Washington Post and The Washington Examiner.
- The IG sampled $152,600 in “high risk” purchases and found that nearly 52% were in violation of the EPA’s mandatory review of payment management, which occurs at least every two years.
- All in all, the IG discovered $79,300 in “prohibited, improper and erroneous” charges including $17,235 for “fitness” or gym memberships, $8,163 spent on gift certificates, $7,500 in “split purchases,” purchases were split to stay under the EPA’s allotted threshold for the expenses, $7,129 in purchased hotel rooms, $4,001 spent on food, and $1,596 spent on office supplies.
Cashing in on government service corruption
I do not know how to prevent the following example of impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle corruption but it certainly does not sit right from a morality perspective. A recent Wall Street Journal article reviewed the fact former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had a speaking engagement in Abu Dhabi at the Emirate’s Palace.
It was coordinated by the National Bank of Abu Dhabi with the major sponsor, Citibank, hosting the affair. As Fed chairman, Bernanke had a major, major say on how Citibank would be treated relative to government policies and bailout funding back during the Great Recession and afterwards.
According to the article, he was paid $250,000, a whopping quarter of a million dollars, for just a 40 minute speech. For those forty minutes of talking, he made more money than what he made in all of 2013 when he was the Fed chairman, a government position that paid him $199,000. In other words, he earned over $6,000 per minute to justify to the audience his questionable Fed policies and actions taken over the past five or six years by the Fed.
If Bernanke gives just three more speeches this year and gets paid like he did in Abu Dhabi, he will have made a million dollars, 5 years worth of his government salary in less than three speaking hours. Not too shabby work if you can get it.
I have always felt that government service should not be a pathway to making you rich. But the political class, from Congress to the White House to the Fed, has rigged the game that those fortunate enough to be in those political class positions can leverage those positions and the American government to their personal enrichment. That, to me, is the very definition of corruption and impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle.
Skimming money from government agencies corruption
This is another example of a more general problem and deceit when political figures find a way to divert government and taxpayer funds to themselves or their accomplices (which eventually gets back to them). If this alleged story is true, then New Jersey Senator Cory Booker is merely not smart enough to get away with the corruption and swindle, he is not an isolated case.
Some background. Cory Booker used to be the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, capping a long political career within that city. He was recently elected to the U.S. Senate. According to a March 8, 2014 report from the Western Center For Journalism, since the 1970’s, a long line of crooked Newark politicians have been skimming millions of dollars from The Newark Watershed Conservation Development Corporation (NWCDC), the agency that is the major supplier of water to Northern New Jersey.
A recent New Jersey State Comptroller’s report outlined the depth of the criminal activity related to this agency during the last several years of Booker’s term as Newark’s mayor. It alleges that NWCDC’s chief, Linda Watkins-Brashear, once a close political ally of Senator Booker, spent most of her time lining her pockets and those of her friends with money siphoned from the budget of the agency.
The Comptroller’s report alleges that:
- Watkins-Brashear wrote unreported checks to herself for about $200,000 and collected another $700,000 in severance pay.
- She diverted a million dollars to her ex-husband and other friends.
- She lost about $500,000 in “dubious stock ventures.”
- The Comptroller’s report also alleges that when Newark laid off 160 police officers in 2010, Watkins-Brashear, acting like a Hunger Games elite, treated herself and 20 guests to a lavish feast in an Atlantic City restaurant costing $1,400, dining on “… lobster, king crab, and filet mignon, washed down with martinis, cognac, and wine,” according to the Comptroller’s analysis and report.
- Watkins-Brashear insisted she should not be blamed for her actions since she “… acted at all times with the knowledge and approval of then Mayor Cory Booker’s administration.”
This is how fall our politicians have fallen from an integrity based culture: as long as another criminal politician approves the corruption, it is okay. And according to the article from Western Journalism, Booker is not the first one to abuse taxpayer funds via this agency, it has been going on for decades, he is just the latest one to allegedly continue the tradition of corruption.
That will do it for today. Three cases of the political class making themselves wealthy at three different levels of the government structure and political class: Federal EPA employees treating themselves with taxpayer wealth, a Fed chairman leveraging his dubious time as head of the Fed to get rich quick, and the continuing tradition of Newark political corruption, now being justified by citing the approval of other corrupt politicians.
We will finish up this corruption and Hunger Games theme tomorrow with an essay from an African-American journalist where he passionately and correctly calls out the greed and corruption, financial and moral, of the Obamas and other politicians in true Hunger Games fashion.
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