Southern Utah Real Estate
Friday, February 5th, 2010
With all the attention to the recent federal criminal charges against the current governor of Illinois and before that the federal conviction of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and before that what seemed like an endless stream of congressmen convicted of federal crimes, you have to wonder what is so wrong with America's political system. When public corruption is rampant, what kind of democracy do we have?
Political corruption describes the use of governmental powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. It is all about behavior that is directly related to their official duties. Think of bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft and embezzlement. Better yet think in terms of the violation of a public official's responsibility to honestly serve their citizens and community. Usually you hear about an official that has accepted something of value or tried to get something of value in exchange for a favorable decision. Public corruption is committed on the federal, state, or local level by anyone elected, appointed, hired, or otherwise in the employ of a unit of government. It may be a governor's decision, a judge's ruling, a legislator's vote, a police officer's taking of a bribe, or a bureaucrat's action that favors a person or company, anything that puts private interest above the public interest.
In 2006 it was reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had more than 2,000 public corruption investigations under way, including the Jack Abramoff lobbying inquiry that ultimately resulted in many convictions, and the corruption probes after the guilty plea by Randy Cunningham, a former Republican House member from San Diego. He resigned and pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2 million for steering military contracts to friends and supporters.
FBI statistics for 2004 and 2005 showed more than 1,060 government employees were convicted of corrupt activities, including 177 federal officials, 158 state officials, 360 local officials and 365 police officers. From 2004 to 2005 the number of convictions rose 27 percent.
Many of these public corruption cases take a long time to end. For example, a Louisville businessman pleaded guilty in federal court in Virginia to bribing Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, with more than $400,000 in payments, stock in his high-tech company and a share of the profits to promote the firm's high-tech business ventures in Africa. But Jefferson stayed in office and has denied ever accepting payments in return for government service. Only this year was he defeated in his reelection bid.
In 2007 the Corporate Crime Reporter analyzed Department of Justice statistics. It reported that more than 20,000 public officials and private citizens had been convicted of public corruption over the past two decades. This equated to an average of 1,000 a year over twenty years. Better yet it presented the corruption ranking among the 35 most populous states of the nation. It used data from a 2006 report from the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section. But these data were not the whole story because the Justice Department only reported public corruption convictions that resulted from a federal prosecution. Not included were convictions that resulted from prosecutions pursued by state district attorneys or attorneys general. However, most public corruption prosecutions - perhaps as many as 80 percent - are brought by federal officials.
So where does your state stand in the national hierarchy of public corruption? Here are the results, including the corruption rate, defined as the total number of public corruption convictions from 1997 to 2006 per 100,000 residents.
1. Louisiana(7.67)
2. Mississippi (6.66)
3. Kentucky (5.18)
4. Alabama (4.76)
5. Ohio(4.69)
6. Illinois (4.68)
7. Pennsylvania (4.55)
8. Florida (4.47)
9. New Jersey (4.32)
10. New York (3.95)
11. Tennessee (3.68)
12. Virginia (3.64)
13. Oklahoma (2.96)
14. Connecticut (2.80)
14. Connecticut (2.80)
15. Missouri (2.79)
16. Arkansas (2.74)
17. Massachusetts (2.66)
18. Texas (2.44)
19. Maryland (2.31)
20. Michigan (2.14)
21. Georgia (2.13)
22. Wisconsin (2.09)
23. California (2.07)
24. North Carolina (1.96)
25. Arizona (1.88)
26. Indiana (1.85)
27. South Carolina (1.74)
28. Nevada (1.72)
29. Colorado (1.56)
30. Washington (1.52)
31. Utah (1.4117)
32. Kansas (1.4109)
33. Minnesota (1.24)
34. Iowa (0.91)
35. Oregon (0.68).
With all the recent attention to the Illinois governor it is easy to forget that other Illinois governors had established an incredible record of corruption. Otto Kerner (D) governor 1961-1968 was convicted on 17 counts of bribery, conspiracy, perjury, and related charges. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison and fined $50,000. Daniel Walker (D) governor 1973-1977 was convicted of improprieties related to the First American Savings & Loan Association of Oak Brook. It was reported that he had received over a million dollars in fraudulent loans for his business and repairs on his yacht. He pleaded out to three felonies and was freed after 17 months in prison because he was supposedly frail and chronically ill, but is still living 20 years later and living near the ocean in Mexico. And George Ryan (R) governor 1999-2003 was convicted on 20 counts of a federal indictment included racketeering, bribery, extortion, money laundering and tax fraud; he received a 6.5 years sentence.
And then there was the famous case of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) who was indicted in 1994 on 17 felony charges, including the embezzlement of $695,000 in taxpayer and campaign funds. The longtime powerful House Ways and Means committee chairman plea-bargained his way down to just two counts of mail fraud and served only 17 months in a minimum-security prison.
Illinois really is a corruption spectacle. From 1995 to 2004, 469 politicians from the federal district of Northern Illinois were found guilty of corruption. The only districts with higher totals were central California (which includes Los Angeles), and southern Florida (which includes Miami). Eastern Louisiana (and New Orleans) ranked somewhat further down the list.
Of course there have been many other governors convicted of crimes. In 1997 a federal jury in Phoenix convicted Arizona Governor Fife Symington of lying to lenders to get millions of dollars for his failing real estate ventures, making him the state's second governor to be ousted in less than a decade. In 2005, Ohio Governor Bob Taft pleaded no contest to charges that he broke a state ethics law by failing to report golf outings and other gifts He was found guilty and fined him $4,000. In 2004, former Connecticut Governor. John G. Rowland was driven from office by a corruption scandal and pleaded guilty to a single federal charge of conspiracy to steal honest service, a felony. And then there was Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards who got 10 years for crimes, Alabama's Guy Hunt who got 5 years probation and Alabama's Don Siegelman who got 10 to 13 years in prison.
One expects high levels of public corruption in backward third world countries. But here we are in the USA, supposedly a quality democracy, with a never ending stream of convictions of public officials. Why is it that the two major parties seem to get so many people elected to high public office who turn out to be criminals? Maybe our two-party plutocracy has far too much power and what the American political system lacks is political competition. And maybe voters need to become far more aware that politicians lie about everything to get elected and what matters more than what they say is their moral character.
