Is it any wonder that a nation, which for close to 100 years has increasingly relied on deceit to push policy, would eventually collapse into corruption?Wherever you look, whenever you hear, and when you read in current news there is corruption. Our local officials, military generals, financial officials like Madoff, election officials, and on and on, are exhibiting the type of ho-hum everyday corruption a banana republic would have.
Our behaviour defines what we are, and that behaviour says we are becoming a corrupt banana republic:
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said today that it will overturn the convictions of up to 1,200 juveniles in the wake of a corruption scandal that is sending two county judges to jail for more than seven years.(USA Today, emphasis added [it was censured, so here is the Wayback Machine Copy]). Judges sending kids to jail so corrupt private prisons can profit. That is as low as a banana republic gets.
Last month, veteran Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan pleaded guilty to taking $2.6 million in kickbacks to send juveniles to privately run detention centers.
The FBI director testified this week that the FBI has thousands of corruption investigations going on.
He said that the FBI is saturated with corruption investigations, and has already prosecuted thousands of officials for corruption.
He said that the FBI is running out of resources with which to investigate and prosecute such corruption.
This daily corruption plague has now reached into The US Department of Treasury and again into your tax dollars, to wit:
A top bank regulator has been placed on leave pending a Treasury Department investigation into regulators' approval of backdated cash infusions for troubled thrifts.(Huffington Post). A year ago in May 2008, under Bush II regime Treasury Secretary Paulson (who was able to receive over a hundred million dollars tax free for coming to Treasury) it became obvious to The Office of Thrift Supervision that IndyBank was going down.
The Office of Thrift Supervision said Thursday that its acting director, Scott Polakoff, was placed on leave "pending a review by the Department of the Treasury of the OTS' August 2008 actions related to post-period capital contributions."
For some reason Scott Polakoff backdated capital infusions that added up to a thousand times more than the AIG bonuses.
That "small" (by comparison to this $18 billion) AIG amount was enough to drive the nation into anger. Will there be a thousand times more anger now?
Anyway, back to the story. This backdating of cash infusions by Polakoff would allow the IndyBank people to spend the $18 billion in the way they wanted to before the FDIC attained the authority to take over and freeze assets and accounts.
They could selectively take care of "special people" but not others. They could pick and choose as if they had done it "a while back".
It does not look good to say the least. Actually no corruption or deceit by the government looks good does it?
When generals can imprison people who are innocent, including citizens, then torture them, then through propaganda get by with it with impunity, that is the essence of a banana republic.
ReplyDeleteOur government has been taken over by this military-industrial complex and persons like Obama and others will do their will..
ReplyDeleteThey try to have a person in charge that Americans will believe in their lies and BS until their looting and transfer of economy and power is complete. Then there is not a d... thing anyone can do about it.
For me, living with MS, I was disappointed to hear Obama ridicule medical marijuana this week, forced to address the most popular topic on his stupid forum.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't like the number one question Americans were asking.
He had to debase himself in the name of CORRUPT ORTHODOXY.
I have been thinking the same thing recently, especially when reading the same story of the judge receiving kickbacks a few weeks ago. It saddens me to say it but I believe that greed more than anything is going to bring our country down and bring it down soon...
ReplyDeleteLook, everyone is looking for a "bailout," no one is being held responsible for thier actions and no one is being asked to sacrifice. Our country is out of control and I don't see it coming back, certainly not lead by the current actions we are taking domestically. Sadly it seems our entire system needs to fail in order for things to be "reset."
Wild how we have all become corrupt in such a short time... During the 60's everyone reacted in shock when their leaders were exposed as liars and now it is assumed they all are and we have taken that example as the way to go.