Amerika

For those who think corruption is a new thing in America, consider that it was there just after our founding when political machines recruited migrants to vote for them.

Since the Clinton years, however, the corruption has intensified as socialism, diversity, and equality have eroded our Anglo-Saxon founding culture of honesty and retribution against the incompetent and malevolent:

Addressing businessmen in Florida, where financial fraud cases jumped by 42 percent in the last year, FBI Miami Division Special Agent in Charge John Gillies said failures in personal ethics and integrity sowed the initial poisonous seeds of corruption in a society.

Gillies, a 27-year veteran of the FBI, called corruption in all its multiple forms, whether in law enforcement or in the judicial system, or involving tax cheats and fraudsters, “our number one criminal threat” in the United States.

What causes corruption? The same thing that causes individualism: a desire to sacrifice order so that the individual can place himself first before all else, the group of individuals can decide what is real and not, and the bad can be accepted as good so that no one has to worry themselves about it.

This is the essence of the bourgeois mentality that comes out of cities. People want to be more important than obvious reality, and in order to do this, they have to suppress those who notice too much reality. One way to do this is by sabotaging the society around them.

Dying societies have lots of vandalism, ugly egotistical artwork, navel-gazing theory, and yes, corruption. In a me-first world, you seize what you want.

While corruption is part of human life, it accelerated after the world wars because no one had faith that this civilization was doing anything but dying, and the WASPs were gradually being replaced by mixed-whites.

One interesting case involved looking into how people made money in big finance. It was called Abscam and it shocked people who grew up before the 1960s wrecked what was left of our culture:

It all started in July 1978, when we set out to catch New York City underworld figures dealing in stolen art. We set up a bogus company in Long Island—Abdul Enterprises, thus the name “AB(dul)SCAM”—said to be owned by a wealthy Arab sheik who wished to invest oil money in valuable artworks. Then, we recruited an informer who connected us with crooks willing to sell us stolen treasures.

Within months, we’d recovered two paintings worth a combined $1 million.

Our undercover work ended up halting the sale of nearly $600 million worth of fraudulent securities.

When the dust settled, one senator, six congressman, and more than a dozen other criminals and corrupt officials were arrested and found guilty.

Two things come to mind here: first, this must still be going on today; second, the participants will have become a lot more savvy.

Back in the innocent days, people kept records. The Clintons came from the era afterwards: write nothing down and systematically destroy evidence both good and bad for your case. Leave question marks in your wake.

An earlier scandal, the payola debacle, showed how easily people got tripped up before they discovered these rules:

As the Payola hearings got under way in February 1960, the public was treated to tales of a lavish disk-jockey convention in Miami bought and paid for by various record companies. One disk jockey, Wesley Hopkins of KYW in Cleveland, admitted to receiving over the course of 1958 and 1959 $12,000 in “listening fees” from record companies for “evaluating the commercial possibilities” of records. Another DJ named Stan Richard, from station WILD in Boston, also admitted to receiving thousands of dollars from various record promoters, and though like Hopkins he denied letting such fees affect his choice of which records to play on the air, he also offered a vigorous defense of Payola, comparing it to “going to school and giving the teacher a better gift than the fellow at the next desk.” He practically likened it to Motherhood and Apple Pie: “This seems to be the American way of life, which is a wonderful way of life. It’s primarily built on romance—I’ll do for you, what will you do for me?” It was this comment that prompted President Eisenhower to weigh in on February 11, 1960, with his condemnation of Payola.

In an earlier era, people stopped by the office with envelopes of cash. This leaves an obvious trail with witnesses.

These days, they simply make a suggestion… and then have a friendly board of directors hire your daughter or wife as a member.

Either that, or they contract with a company for a lucrative contract, knowing that this company will in trade then do a favor for you.

This is how power is transacted in America now, and it has definitely rotted the soul and fabric of the nation.

Tags: abscam, corruption, payola