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Political Corruption The Serious You: How Current Events Affect You

Started 5/9/22 by WALTER784; 102265 views.

Msg 10 of 1279

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Staff

From: WALTER784

5/9/22

This has been moved to this thread:

WALTER784 said...

Showtalk said...
It’s shocking to me how much money politicians make after they leave office.

After they leave office? Many make millions while in office.

How do you think Bill & Hillary Clinton, Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Feinstein, McConnel and many others made all their millions.

#1: Buying stock on intel not privy to the general populace (i.e. insider trading)

#2: Pay for play...

#3: Illegal campaign donations

Etc.

None of the above are done after they're out of office... it's all done while in office.

But lucrative jobs continue after they're out of office too!

FWIW

Msg 11 of 1279

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Staff

From: WALTER784

5/9/22

This has been moved to this thread:

Showtalk said...

The Clintons and Obamas left office with modest worth.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/04/the-clintons-erased-16-million-in-debt-and-accumulated-45-million.html

The Obamas made quite a lot toward the end of his presidency but nothing like what they have made since then.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/life/president-barack-obamas-net-worth-as-he-leaves-the-white-house/

Msg 12 of 1279 to WALTER784WALTER784

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Host

Thank you! That was a lot of work. Some will say it’s not corruption when politicians become “businesspeople” and earn a lot of money. They aren’t looking at how it’s done. Is it really possible to make millions only through legitimate speaking fees?

Msg 13 of 1279 to Showtalkshowtalk

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Staff

From: WALTER784

5/9/22

Corruption (including Political Corruption) comes in all forms and sizes:

Political corruption

Political corruption is the use of powers by government officials or their network contacts for illegitimate private gain.

Forms of corruption vary, but can include bribery, lobbying, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, influence peddling, graft, and embezzlement. Corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking, though it is not restricted to these activities. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is also considered political corruption.

Over time, corruption has been defined differently. For example, in a simple context, while performing work for a government or as a representative, it is unethical to accept a gift. Any free gift could be construed as a scheme to lure the recipient towards some biases. In most cases, the gift is seen as an intention to seek certain favors such as work promotion, tipping in order to win a contract, job or exemption from certain tasks in the case of junior worker handing in the gift to a senior employee who can be key in winning the favor.

Some forms of corruption – now called "institutional corruption" – are distinguished from bribery and other kinds of obvious personal gain. A similar problem of corruption arises in any institution that depends on financial support from people who have interests that may conflict with the primary purpose of the institution.

An illegal act by an officeholder constitutes political corruption only if the act is directly related to their official duties, is done under color of law or involves trading in influence. The activities that constitute illegal corruption differ depending on the country or jurisdiction. For instance, some political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another. In some cases, government officials have broad or ill-defined powers, which make it difficult to distinguish between legal and illegal actions. Worldwide, bribery alone is estimated to involve over 1 trillion US dollars annually. A state of unrestrained political corruption is known as a kleptocracy, literally meaning "rule by thieves".

Political corruption - Wikipedia

FWIW

Msg 14 of 1279

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Staff

From: WALTER784

5/10/22

How Democrats Became the Party of Monopoly and Corruption

This wasn't an accident.

By Matt Stoller

October 22, 2019, 7:00pm

The following is an excerpt from Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.

In 1985, the Dow Jones average jumped 27.66 percent. Making money in stocks, as a journalist put it, "was easy." With lower interest rates, low inflation, and "takeover fever," investors could throw a dart at a list of stocks and profit. The next year was also very good. The average gain of a Big Board stock in 1986 was 14 percent, with equity market indexes closing at a record high.

For the top performers, the amounts of money involved were staggering. In 1987, Michael Milken awarded himself $550 million in compensation. In New York City, spending by bankers—a million dollars for curtains for a Fifth Avenue apartment, a thousand dollars for a vase of precious roses for a party—was obscene. A major financier announced in the Hamptons one night that "if you have less than 750 million, you have no hedge against inflation." In Paris, a jeweler "dazzled his society guests when topless models displayed the merchandise between courses." In west Los Angeles, the average price of a house in Bel Air rose to $4.6 million. There was so much money it was nicknamed "green smog."

Ambitious men now wanted to change the world through finance. Bruce Wasserstein had been a "Nader's Raider" consumer advocate; he now worked at First Boston as one of the most successful mergers and acquisitions bankers of the 1980s. Michael Lewis wrote his best-seller Liar's Poker as a warning of what unfettered greed in finance meant, but instead of learning the lesson, students deluged him with letters asking if he "had any other secrets to share about Wall Street." To them, the book was a "how-to manual."

Finance was the center, but its power reached outward everywhere. The stock market was minting millionaires in a collection of formerly sleepy towns in California. Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Los Altos, Cupertino, Santa Clara, and San Jose in the 1960s had been covered with "apricot, cherry and plum orchards," and young people there often took summer jobs at local canneries. Immediately after Reagan's election, in December of 1980, Apple Computer went public, instantly creating 300 millionaires, and raising more money in the stock market than any company since Ford Motor had in its initial public offering of shares in 1956. A young Steve Jobs was instantly worth $217 million.

"I gave up the idea of changing the world. I set out to get rich."—Wayne Thevenot, lobbyist under Bill Clinton

Meanwhile, the family farmer had lots of people who said they were friends at election time—even the glamorous music industry put on a giant "Farm Aid" concert in 1985 to raise money for bankrupt growers. But there was no populist leader like Congressman Wright Patman had been during the New Deal in the Democratic Party anymore. On the contrary, "new" Democrats like Dale Bumpers and Bill Clinton of Arkansas worked to rid their state of the usury caps meant to protect the "plain people" from the banker and financier. And the main contender for the Democratic nomination in 1988, the handsome Gary Hart, with his flowing—and carefully blow-dried—chestnut brown hair, spoke a lot about "sunrise" industries like semiconductors and high-tech, but had little in his vision incorporating the family farm.

It wasn't just the family farmer who suffered. On the South Side of Chicago, U.S. Steel, having started mass layoffs in 1979, continued into the next decade, laying off more than 6,000 workers in that community alone. Youngstown, Johnson, Gary—all the old industrial cities were going, in the words of the writer Studs Terkel, from "Steel Town" to "Ghost Town." And the headlines kept on coming. John Deere idled 1,500 workers, GE's turbine division cut 1,500 jobs, AT&T laid off 2,900 in its Shreveport plant, Eastern Air Lines fired 1,010 flight attendants, and docked pay by 20 percent. "You keep saying it can't get worse, but it does," said a United Autoworker member.

And all the time, whether in farm country or steel country, the closed independent shop and the collapsed bank were as much monuments to the new political order as the sprouting number of Walmarts and the blizzard of junk-mail credit cards from Citibank. As Terkel put it, "In the thirties, an Administration recognized a need and lent a hand. Today, an Administration recognizes an image and lends a smile."

Regional inequality widened, as airlines cut routes to rural, small, and even medium-sized cities. So did income inequality, the emptying farm towns, the hollo

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Msg 15 of 1279 to WALTER784WALTER784

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Host

From: Showtalk

5/10/22

It took a long time to build the system we have now.

Msg 16 of 1279 to Showtalkshowtalk

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From: WALTER784

5/10/22

Yes, but they've continually and slowly erroded much of the fabric our country was built on/made of over those years.

Slowly... little by little. Initially it was mainly the Democrats, but for the past 10 or so years... some Republicans joined in on the money making schemes as well.

That's when Republicans started giving up hope on the Republican party. It's mainly the establishment and RINO crew who are in on it. And that's why Trump won over all the other contenders and became POTUS in 2016 too because many saw that he was a DC outsider and he related with the people.

FWIW