Mirror
mirror on the wall, who is the most corrupt of all?
Americans
pride themselves on being different from other nations and of course
they are. But so are other nations different from each other and from
us. Each has a language, a culture, a history. Each has an official
story about itself that is most likely pretty mendacious, and a more
honest story that is not often heard. Our being different from others
does not make us different from them.
But,
of course, we also think that we are better, although in many ways
that is not true. Other countries provide better healthcare for less
money than we do. Other countries do a better job educating their
children. Other countries have made greater strides in the treatment
of indigenous peoples or in reducing greenhouse gases. We are not as
good and certainly not as superior to others than we keep telling
ourselves.
These
observations come to mind in connection with a great deal of
publicity of corruption in Ukraine. A colorful collection of
Americans of the impressive moral caliber of Rudy Giuliani go back
and forth to Ukraine ostensibly to help them overcome the threat of
corruption. That's
worth a chuckle or two, not only because Rudy Giuliani is not a model
of the upstanding citizen with remarkable integrity, but more
importantly because corruption pervades transactions in our country
just as it does in the Ukraine.
Corruption
may be different here. It has certainly changed. 50 years ago when a
Chicago policeman stopped you for a traffic violation you would hand
him your driver's license wrapped in a $20 bill and that would take
care of it. Petty bribery – and not so petty bribery – were daily
events. Corruption today is somewhat more sophisticated and not quite
as blatantly public. But corruption is a problem here as it is in
most, if not all, countries of the world.
Our
court system employs judges, and magistrates who deal with lesser
problems. Both of them are appointed by the governor of each state
assisted by a Governor's Council and appointments do not only depend
on the merit of the candidate. Being the friend of the governor or of
the Lieutenant Governor definitely helps. In some cases it is said to
be more important to be well-connected than to be a competent lawyer.
Local
government, state government, and the federal government all spend
large amounts of money purchasing supplies from pencils and erasers
for the schools to battleships and sophisticated military planes that
cost multiple billions of dollars. Often these purchases are made
without proper bids from competent suppliers. A friend of the city,
the county, the state, or the Feds gets the contract. There is good
money to be made by connecting suppliers to buyers. Multiple
suppliers will rig their bids so that everybody will get a part of a
lucrative contract.
In
the United States approximately 160 million people are in the
workforce. Full-time or part-time, they go to their jobs and get paid
by the hour or by the job. Merit alone does not determine who gets
hired or fired from a job. Recently a story circulated of a person
who had worked in a funeral home for 20 or more years before she came
out as a transgender woman. She was promptly fired in spite of having
done an outstanding job for many years. The customers, according to
the employer, would not have patronized a funeral home where they
negotiated caskets and wakes with a transgender woman. The
employment history of African-Americans is a more striking example of
how little merit matters in getting a good job. The same of course is
true of all women who are still being excluded from many excellent
jobs.
In
many countries it is well known that corruption is a serious
hindrance to economic development but the government does not take
action, presumably because it is complicit in the corruption. The
United States is no different. Goldman Sachs and other banking firms
are widely considered responsible for the 2007 – 2008 economic
crash that did enormous damage to many working families who not only
lost their jobs but also their houses and what little wealth they had
managed to accumulate over many years of hard work. Goldman Sachs and
the complicit enterprises have been investigated by the government.
But nothing ever happened. They have been investigated since then for
domestic and international suspicious dealings but nothing ever
happened. If your financial transactions are complex and large enough
and if members of your firm circulate in and out of government, you
can operate pretty much with impunity. The many families who lost
their homes were not responsible for the crisis. The financiers who
were received bonuses from the banks where they worked.
We
could go on and on pointing to corrupt practices. Healthcare of poor
people, of people of color is not as good as healthcare of people
with money. The education offered to poor black or Hispanic children
is not all of the same sophistication and excellence as the education
of white above middle-class children. Opportunities are not
distributed equally. The oft repeated claim that our society is a
meritocracy is a blatant lie and everyone knows it.
Patriots,
or better pseudo-patriots, will insist that corruption in the United
States is not as profound as in, say, India. That may well be true
but is surely totally irrelevant. Are we really going to continue
tolerating and encouraging corruption on all sides in the US until
the people in India clean up their act? Are we going to keep bragging
about our meritocracy, which does not actually exist, until all
transactions in the Ukraine are beyond reproach? That is obviously a
silly question.
Whether
we are more or less guilty of corruption is not interesting. What is
worthy of being said loud and clear is that integrity in politics, in
business, in many other areas of our society is sadly lacking. The
problem is in some ways more serious than it is in Ukraine or India
where the existence of corruption is generally accepted. Our
political leaders, our candidates for public office, rarely if ever
target corruption. It has not become a public issue yet except in the
polemics between opposing political parties.
There
is no hope for ever cleaning up our economy or society so that
everyone will truly have an equal chance as long as we are not
willing to acknowledge how corrupt our current practices are.
