Corruption is Just a Thing

Your government is corrupt. I mean corrupt at every level. I don’t mean just that members of the executive branch, and the legislative branch in the federal, state and local governments are enriching themselves through pay-to-play schemes, insider trading, and advantageous book, broadcasting and real estate deals. I mean that private individuals find themselves at the mercies of bureaucrats and elected officials at every turn.

We – well, those of you who do not rely on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times or the other organs of the news media deeply embedded with the liberal/progressive movement – have in recent days read the results of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump/Russia collusion fantasy. In concise terms, Mr. Durham demonstrated that the entire tale, and every twist from its beginning, was orchestrated by failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. It was assisted by the leadership of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the senior members of the Justice Department and the State Department and trumpeted without verification by most of the media outlets mentioned above. It included those lying weasels in Congress Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and enabled by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

It’s not just the millions of dollars spent by Congress, the Justice Department and the FBI trying to prove a tale that they knew to be a lie at inception, nor the additional millions spent by Mr. Durham excavating the truth from tons of crap heaped on the truth by those offending entities. Or even the millions spent by private citizens attempting to exonerate themselves from the vitriol with which the liars attacked not only President Donald Trump (R) but all those who supported him. Or even the time wasted by all those elected and appointed officials chasing their tails while they should have addressing the major problems then confronting the nation – illegal immigration, growing drug abuse, a tax code so complicated that it requires working men and women to hire tax professionals, a welfare system that encourages sloth rather than a return to productivity, and an enormous overreach by government health officials in the response to COVID that resulted in the shutting down of the economy, the closing of schools and the terrifying of our nation’s children. In short they did everything but take care of business.

No, what is infuriating is the lack of accountability. Not since former President Bill Clinton and his corrupt wife Hillary Rodham Clinton began selling access to foreign and domestic entities has a single person been held to account for their actions. Sure, there have been people charged, convicted, sentenced or fined but not for their actions but for trying to cover up – mostly perjury charges or some other minor infraction discovered while being investigated – but not for their original corruption.

The tone of an entity – private or government – is set by its leadership. If the leadership is corrupt it sends a clear signal to all of those below that corruption is acceptable. And in this instance I am talking about the corruption that surrounds the arbitrary and capricious actions of bureaucrats at all levels – from the former head of the FBI, James Comey, to Lois Lerner of the IRS, to CIA chief James Brennan, to National Intelligence chief James Clapper and a myriad of others. They lied to Congress. They lied to the courts. They altered evidence. They withheld other evidence. They slow walked their duties and they turned their heads to the corruption of others. And while you might get away with that when your are in league with the mainstream media, all of the agency employees knew exactly what was going down and that the system will protect them.

But dishonorable leadership and a lack of accountability are not the only elements that have led to the corruption of the whole system. The law as established by the United States Supreme Court which gave deference to the acts of administrative agency in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.* encouraged petty bureaucrats to act with personal bias knowing that they were immune from judicial review. And that was further enhanced by the public employee union contracts negotiated by officials dependent on the public employee unions for campaign donations and volunteers – it is virtually impossible to dismiss, let alone discipline, a union employee.

As a result we have instances such as follow:

FOXNews reported last week:

The New York City professor who went on an expletive-filled rant and destroyed a student group’s pro-life display has now allegedly threatened a reporter who was covering the story by putting a machete to his neck.

“Shellyne Rodriguez, a Hunter College adjunct assistant professor of art, responded to a New York Post reporter who knocked on the door of her Bronx apartment Tuesday morning by holding a machete to his neck and allegedly threatening to “chop” the man up, according to a New York Post report Tuesday.

“Get the f— away from my door, or I’m going to chop you up with this machete,” the professor reportedly shouted at the reporter, who was identified as Reuven Fenton.”

Nothing happened to Ms. Rodriquez as a result of destroying the students pro-life display because. . . well, because she was a public employee union member and being pro-abortion is the only acceptable norm on college campuses. But when she picked up a machete and went after a sacrosanct reporter she overstepped progressive orthodoxy. But Ms. Rodriquez remains unapologetic for her behavior and, in fact, ranted in her court appearance that she, not the students and not the reporter, was the real victim herr. The New York Post reported following Ms. Rodriques’ arrest charging her with felony menacing:

“The manic Manhattan arts professor who held a machete to a Post reporter’s neck and threatened to ‘chop’ him up flashed a brazen smile Thursday after law enforcement sources say she was slapped with harassment and menacing charges.

“A smirking Shellyne Rodriguez, 45, held her head high as she was escorted out of the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx in handcuffs just after 11 a.m. — several hours after turning herself in over Tuesday’s caught-on-camera ordeal.

“The professor had her slew of tattoos on full display, including “FTP” (for “F–k the police”) inked on her fingers, as well as an image of brass knuckles and the boxing term ‘southpaw’ scrawled across her hand.”

And while her public employee union has backed away from defending her currently you can rest assured – with a high degree of confidence – that when the news cycle dies, the union will seek her reinstatement.

According to a March 10, 2023 in FCW Insider Chat:

“Federal employees overwhelmingly pay their taxes and do so on time, but the Internal Revenue Service’s watchdog wants to see a significant uptick in enforcement on the growing minority of delinquent civil servants.

”Just 5% of current federal workers owed the IRS money or did not file their taxes in 2021, according to a new report from the agency’s inspector general, up from 3% in 2014 and 4% in 2015. The number of tax delinquent feds jumped by 32% between fiscal years 2015 and 2021, however, while their collective debt rose by 36% to $1.5 billion. More than 1,000 of the nearly 150,000 feds who owed taxes were delinquent for six years or longer.”

All of that despite a specific federal law that prohibits the employment of IRS personnel who have continuous delinquencies.

And in probably the most egregious example of corruption, there still looms the identification of the person who leaked the draft opinion in the recent Supreme Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which overturned Roe V. Wade. A year’s long “investigation” has failed to reveal the culprit but the investigation was done by the internal security personnel of the Supreme Court and not by a qualified law enforcement agency unbeholdened to the justices of the Supreme Court. Because there will never be a thorough investigation we are left to speculate that the reason why is that the “leaker” is a member of the court – a liberal member of the court – and neither the Chief Justice nor the majority of the Associates want to tarnish the image of the court by disclosing base prejudice on the part of one of its members.

The point here is that corruption is a daily part of life in the local, state and federal governments. It ranges from doing favors for friends and acquaintances to selling access for hundreds of millions of dollars. It is made worse by the institutional reluctance for self-examination. It is reminiscent of a story told by a friend of mine who had been a government welfare worker. When I was complaining about the amount of taxpayer dollars that were being used to support illegal immigrants she responded that that wasn’t permitted. I asked her whether they investigated that status of recipients and she said they weren’t allowed to ask.

A recent investigation of welfare fraud found:

Improper welfare payments, including welfare fraud and welfare abuse, are estimated to be 15.2% of all federal welfare payments. They total $161 billion in the fiscal year 2021. The estimate stems from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) [i] and The General Accounting Office (GAO) reports. Eight of the Welfare Programs make the OMB list of “High Priority Programs.” These are programs with improper payments greater than $2 billion annually.”

Your government is corrupt. And little is being done to remedy the problem. And while our political leaders set the tone for corruption, it is you the voters who continue to return them to office – by doing so you give tacit approval to the corruption. This is one of those cases where if you are not a part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.

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* The majority of sitting Justices of the United States Supreme Court that made up the non-existent penumbra of rights creating the “constitutional right” to abortion on demand were still at it when they made up, without any constitutional basis, the deference to administrative agencies of the federal government. States soon followed the practice and the American public has suffered the petty tyranny of state and federal officials ever since. However, that may soon dissipate as the new United States Supreme Court considers Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo in a direct challenge to the Chevron doctrine. The Raimondo being Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo who has been pushing the edges of administrative authority since the beginning of her term.