America’s “Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy”: Part II

Earlier this month, I reviewed some evidence and analysis about the corruption in Washington.

Today, let’s look at some tangible examples of how the political elite routinely exploit their positions to enrich themselves by pillaging taxpayers.

We could start with the obvious example of Hunter Biden, but he’s just the tip of the iceberg. I noted way back in January that several members of Joe Biden’s family have cashed in on their connection to the former Vice President.

It goes without saying that lobbyists and other special interests are funneling money to the Biden family because they expect that they’ll be rewarded with lucrative contracts and other goodies from the government. Heck, the Biden family is basically cutting out the middleman in this picture.

But this isn’t a partisan issue. Plenty of Republicans also play the same game.

A column by Larry Getlen in the New York Post describes how this racket works.

Rather than risk their careers taking bribes for potentially minuscule rewards, …today’s politicians are savvier, engaging in what he calls “corruption by proxy.” While politicians and their spouses are often subject to rigid regulations on what gifts they can accept and what sort of business they can conduct, others around them — like their friends or children have no such obstacles. So while a politician could theoretically wind up in prison for accepting $10,000 for doling out favors, establishing overseas connections that could land your children multi-million-dollar deals is harder to detect, and often legal. …This ethical looseness is endemic throughout the federal government. …it has spread like a virus through Congress, where the lines between members, their families, and lobbying groups have become indistinguishable.

Senator Mitch McConnell gets some unfavorable attention in the column, along with many other lawmakers from both parties.

And if you want even more examples, you can easily search the Internet if you want to learn about the unsavory actions of other senior officials – including Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein.

The inescapable takeaway is that we have an unholy trinity of politicians, big government, and corruption.

And it’s totally bipartisan.

For instance, the Atlantic put together a very harsh assessment of the Trump Cabinet back in 2018.

Shulkin and Carson face the same problem: dubious use of taxpayer dollars in their duties as secretaries. They can console themselves knowing that they’re in good company. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been caught in extravagant expenditures, too. Less heartening is the sixth example, Tom Price, who was unceremoniously forced out as secretary of health and human services in September 2017. There are so many cases of huge spending of taxpayer dollars by Cabinet secretaries that it’s easy to lose track of them all—or simply to become desensitized.

The list is damning (and is costing taxpayers a lot of money).

…a trip to Europe during summer of 2017. The government paid not only for Shulkin, but also for his wife, a security detail, and other staffers. Almost half of the trip was devoted to tourism, visiting castles and then the Wimbledon tennis tournament, to which the Shulkins improperly accepted tickets. …Carson’s big problem is a $31,000 dining-table set purchased for his office, which far exceeded regulations on spending for decoration. …Price was forced to resign after spending more than $1 million on travel on private and military jets. That’s the largest single figure to emerge, but only by a hair, while the type of behavior has occurred repeatedly. Documents obtained by the left-leaning watchdog group CREW suggest Mnuchin racked up nearly $1 million in his own travel, including a notorious trip to watch the eclipse at Fort Knox in Kentucky, publicized by his wife Louise Linton’s Instagram feud about it. …Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who took a security detail along when he went on a non-work-related two-week vacation in Greece and Turkey last year. …For still-opaque reasons, the Interior Department paid $139,000 for a door for Zinke’s office… Scott Pruitt, the EPA chief, who has spent more than $100,000 on first-class tickets, an expenditure he attributed to the need for security.

But even more damning is this sentence.

Because fiscal conservatism isn’t an organizing principle for the Trump presidency, it’s easier for Cabinet secretaries to justify big spending.

In other words, taxpayers are getting screwed because Trump has been profligate (even more of a big spender than Obama!).

And let’s not forget that the corruption is so bad that some Trump insiders have wound up in legal trouble.

But remember, this is a problem with both political parties, and it’s a near-inevitable consequence of having a bloated federal government that is collecting and redistributing trillions of dollars (and also wielding enormous regulatory power, which also can be improperly used to reward friends and punish enemies).

Let’s close by adding to our collection of politician humor. After all, if they keep ripping us off, we at least deserve a few laughs.

P.S. The silver lining to all the bad news discussed above is that the American people are aware there is a problem. According to Chapman University’s Survey of American Fears, “For the fifth year in a row the top fear of Americans is corrupt government officials. And as in the previous five years, the fear that our government is corrupt far exceeds all others we asked about. More than 3/4 of Americans said they are afraid or very afraid of corrupt governmental officials in 2019.”

P.P.S. If there was a gold medal for insider corruption, the Clintons would own it (Obama and his people were sleazy, but amateurs by comparison).