On the bright side, it’s all a great excuse to get hold of The Great McGinty, and watch Preston Sturges in the starring role enact the rise and fall of a corrupt politician — from a foot-soldier of fraud at the ballot booth, to a bagman for the mob boss, to crooked mayor, to governor of a state. McGinty’s sole and fatal mistake is that having reached the governor’s mansion, he has the audacity to try to turn honest.
We can at least credit the American system that a certain amount of corruption does come to light, and even high-ranking politicians sometimes get punished. The same far too rarely applies, for instance, at the diplomatically immune UN (which is basically nothing but a huge gang of governments), or among the ranks of its more despotic– and not coincidentally — most corrupt member states.
On the darker side, the Illinois political machine, with its industrial-scale output of graft scandals, offers Americans a thumping reminder of the basic nature of politics, and danger of big government. Power corrupts, and the bigger the government and greater the license for politicians to meddle in our lives, the broader the opportunities for corruption — which steals from us all. That’s one of the best reasons for keeping government small.
President-elect Obama does not figure in today’s complaint against Blagojevich, except by way of his empty Senate seat, which Blagojevich (in a line that would fit right into The Great McGinty) according to the affidavit described as “a [bleeping] valuable thing — you just don’t give it away for nothing.”
But as Obama gins up programs for the vast expansion of a federal bureaucracy already monstrously swollen on President Bush’s watch, the Blagojevich case sounds a warning. Government enjoys the power to coerce, to take away, to dole out, to restrict, to permit — and with every moving part of that machine come opportunities for graft. With every move to create a Car Czar, giant new public works programs, a colossal dole, and state controls over every act of combustion, come fresh openings for corruption. It would be a big mistake to bank on changing human nature; the only real answer is to try in whatever ways possible to keep government down to a modest size. In today’s political climate, that may sound absurd, and hopelessly unrealistic. It bears repeating, nonetheless, because it is true.
Since I pay a fortune in cook county property taxes for microscopic services I would say there is little that is funny or dear in the ways of these filthy thieves. Just listen to the cultured voices of our Governor and his bride, nothing but base greed there.
I was reading this morning about the latest raid of Pakistani military at the camps of Jamaat ud Dawa – a group responsible of the Mumbai attacks, and how the United Nations have been supporting the same very groups and its camps in 2006 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5402756.stm) – when I saw the message on this Governor. Disgusting !!
McGinty was played by Brian Donlevy, a great actor.
I fear it’s too late for controlling the growth and size of our already out of control Jabba-The-Hutt government.
Nothing escapes its gigantic maw.
While generations of citizens have been subtly (and not so subtly) conditioned to believe that we, the sheeple, serve government and not that government exists at the behest of We, The People.
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
~James Bovard
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
~P.J. O’Rourke
Lot of fun stuff going on.—Just think Obama had no idea all this was going on. It is like a guy hanging around a pool hall for twenty years and then saying he did not know they played pool there.