Source: Washington’s Blog

Preface: There’s always been some corruption in the United States … but it’s never been this bad before.

The Cop Is On the Take

Government corruption has become rampant:

• Senior SEC employees spent up to 8 hours a day surfing porn sites instead of cracking down on financial crimes

• Nuclear Regulatory Commission workers watch porn instead of cracking down on unsafe conditions at nuclear plants

• An EPA employee who downloaded 7,000 porn files, then spent 2-6 hours each workday watching porn. He’s been doing it for years … but the EPA never fired him. Another EPA employee harassed 16 women co-workers … and then was promoted to a higher-paying job with more responsibility, where he harassed more women

• NSA spies pass around homemade sexual videos and pictures they’ve collected from spying on the American people

• NSA employees have also been caught using their mass surveillance powers to spy on love interests, such as girlfriends, obsessions or former wives … and to eavesdrop on American soldiers’ intimate conversations with their wives back home. And see this (“routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted” … “‘Hey, check this out … there’s good phone sex’”)

• An employee of the Transportation Security Administration admitted that TSA agents share – and laugh at – nude scans of passengers. Another TSA employee says that screeners make excuses so they can grope and fondle travelers that they’re attracted to (maybe that’s why the TSA failed to find mock explosives or banned weapons going through checkpoints in 95% of trials)

• Investigators from the Treasury’s Office of the Inspector General found that some of the regulator’s employees surfed erotic websites, hired prostitutes and accepted gifts from bank executives … instead of actually working to help the economy

• The Minerals Management Service – the regulator charged with overseeing BP and other oil companies to ensure that oil spills don’t occur – was riddled with “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity”, which included “sex with industry contacts”

• Agents for the Drug Enforcement Agency had dozens of sex parties with prostitutes hired by the drug cartels they were supposed to stop (they also received money, gifts and weapons from drug cartel members)

• Drug Enforcement agents also RAN New Jersey’s sleaziest strip club – using illegal, undocumented girls – which included a prostitution ring

• Pentagon employees used government credit cards to pay for adult “escorts” (i.e. prostitutes) and to gamble

• Federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Secret Service investigating Bitcoin money laundering extorted and stole over $1 million in Bitcoin

• The IRS gave promotions to employees who were themselves tax cheats

• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has conspired with big banks to manipulate commodities prices for decades

• The government-sponsored rating agencies committed massive fraud (and see this)

• The Treasury department allowed banks to “cook their books”

• Regulators knew of and allowed the use of debt-hiding accounting tricks by the big banks

• The SEC has been shredding Wall Street documents for decades to help the big banks cover up their fraud

• The Secretary of Treasury (Tim Geithner) was complicit in Lehman’s accounting fraud, (and see this)

• The former chief accountant for the SEC says that Bernanke and Paulson broke the law and should be prosecuted

• The government knew about mortgage fraud a long time ago. For example, the FBI warned of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud in 2004. However, the FBI, DOJ and other government agencies then stood down and did nothing. See this and this. For example, the Federal Reserve turned its cheek and allowed massive fraud, and the SEC has repeatedly ignored accounting fraud (a whistleblower also “gift-wrapped and delivered” the Madoff scandal to the SEC, but they refused to take action). Indeed, Alan Greenspan took the position that fraud could never happen

• Paulson and Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving Tarp money were healthy, when they were not. The Treasury Secretary also falsely told Congress that the bailouts would be used to dispose of toxic assets … but then used the money for something else entirely

• A high-level Federal Reserve official says quantitative easing is “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time”

• Bailout funds were not used to help Main Street or the little guy. Instead, the government threw money at “several billionaires and tens of multi-millionaires”, as well as hedge funds, giant corporations like McDonald’s and Harley-Davidson, and numerous foreign banks, including Gaddafi’s Libyan bank, the Arab Banking Corp. of Bahrain, and the Banks of Bavaria, Korea and Mexico

• The non-partisan Government Accountability Office calls the Fed corrupt and riddled with conflicts of interest. Nobel prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz says the World Bank would view any country which had a banking structure like the Fed as being corrupt and untrustworthy. The former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said said he worried that the failure of the government to provide more information about its rescue spending could signal corruption. “Nontransparency in government programs is always associated with corruption in other countries, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be here,” he said

• Arguably, both the Bush and Obama administrations broke the law by refusing to close insolvent banks

• Congress may have covered up illegal tax breaks for the big banks

• Congress recently told the courts that Congress can’t be investigated for insider trading

• Congress has exempted itself from the healthcare rules it insists everyone else follow

• State lawmakers are routinely wined and dined by corporate lobbyists who literally TELL THEM what laws to pass

• North Carolina passed a law LEGALIZING PROSTITUTES for state lawmakers.

• Police have been busted framing numerous innocent people

• Systemic corruption at the FBI lab led to the EXECUTION of innocent people

• Police raise money by handing out tickets … and they’re given quotas by their bosses. And see this

• Law enforcement also grabs massive amounts of people’s cash, cars and property … even when people aren’t CHARGED with – let alone convicted of – any crime

• Private prisons are huge profit-making centers for giant companies, and private prison corporations obtain quotas from the government, where the government guarantees a certain number of prisoners at any given time

• The government has gone to great lengths to cover up nuclear accidents, radiation dangers, and unsafe conditions at nuclear plants

• The government made sure that false claims were made about the amount of oil spilled by BP in the Gulf

• The government covered up the health risks to New Orleans residents associated with polluted water from hurricane Katrina, and FEMA covered up the cancer risk from the toxic trailers which it provided to refugees of the hurricane.  The Centers for Disease Control – the lead agency tasked with addressing disease in America – covered up lead poisoning in children in the Washington, D.C. area (the Centers for Disease Control has also been outed as receiving industry funding)

• The government’s response to the outbreak of mad cow disease was simple: it STOPPED TESTING for mad cow, and PREVENTED cattle ranchers and meat processors from VOLUNTARILY testing their own cows (and see this and this)

• In response to new studies showing the substantial dangers of genetically modified foods, the government passed legislation more or less PUSHING IT onto our plates

• When one of the most respected radiologists in America – the former head of the radiology department at Yale University – attempted to blow the whistle on the fact that the FDA had approved a medical device manufactured by General Electric because it put out massive amounts of radiation, the FDA installed spyware to record his private emails and surfing activities (including installing cameras to snap pictures of his screen), and then used the information to smear him and other whistleblowers

• In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of wrongdoing – the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this)

• The Bush White House worked hard to smear CIA officers, bloggers and anyone else who criticized the Iraq war

• The FBI smeared top scientists who pointed out the numerous holes in its anthrax case. Indeed, the head of the FBI’s investigation agrees that corruption was rampant

• Senior judges in Pennsylvania have pleaded guilty to falsely convicting and imprisoning hundreds of YOUTHS (they got kickbacks from the prisons).   The Pennsylvania Supreme Court refused to hear a case regarding the corrupt judges. A month later – only after the judges confessed to criminal wrongdoing – did the Supreme Court change its mind and take any interest

• The government has intentionally whipped up hysteria about terrorism for cynical political purposes.  For example, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge admitted that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help the president win reelection

• Warmongers in the U.S. government knowingly and intentionally lied us into a war of aggression in Iraq. The former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the highest ranking military officer in the United States – said that the Iraq war was “based on a series of lies”. The same is true in Libya and other wars. Indeed, the U.S. has often launched or proposed launching wars based upon FALSE PREMISES

• When the American government got caught assassinating innocent civilians, it changed its definition of “enemy combatants” to include all young men – between the ages of say 15 and 35 – who happen to be in battle zones. When it got busted killing kids with drones, it changed the definition again to include kids as “enemy combatants”

• $8.5 TRILLION dollars in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 has NEVER been accounted for. The military wastes and “loses” trillions of dollars. And Congress pushes expensive boondoggles that our generals say are unnecessary and unhelpful … because it’s pork for their district

• The government lied when it said it doesn’t conduct mass surveillance on Americans, and then lied again when it said that spying was aimed at protecting America against terrorists (Why do so many in Congress support NSA spying? Because NSA contractors give them money)

• The government also lied when it said America doesn’t torture (and see this), and then lied once again when it said torture was aimed at protecting America against terrorists

•  The government protects criminal wrongdoing by prosecuting whistleblowers.   The Obama administration has sentenced whistleblowers to dozens of times the jail time of all other presidents COMBINED). And the government has framed whistleblowers with false evidence

• The government treats journalists who report on government corruption as CRIMINALS OR TERRORISTS.  And it goes to great lengths to smear them. For example, when USA Today reporters busted the Pentagon for illegally targeting Americans with propaganda, the Pentagon launched a SMEAR CAMPAIGN against the reporters

• The intelligence services BLACKMAIL people in both government and the private sector with evidence of homosexuality, nude pictures and other information that people want to stop from going public

• Terror attacks such as 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Texas shooting all happened because of PERVASIVE CORRUPTION in our intelligence agencies

The biggest companies own the D.C. politicians. Indeed, the head of the economics department at George Mason University has pointed out that it is unfair to call politicians “prostitutes”. They are in fact pimps … selling out the American people for a price.

Government regulators have become so corrupted and “captured” by those they regulate that Americans know that the cop is on the take. Institutional corruption is killing people’s trust in our government and our institutions.

Neither the Democratic or Republican parties represent the interests of the American people.  Elections have become nothing but scripted beauty contests, with both parties ignoring the desires of their own bases.

Indeed, America is no longer a democracy or republic … it’s officially an oligarchy. And the allowance of unlimited campaign spending allows the oligarchs to purchase politicians more directly than ever.

No wonder polls show that the American people say that the system is thoroughly corrupt.

Moreover, there are two systems of justice in America … one for the big banks and other fatcats … and one for everyone else. Indeed, Americans have less access to justice than Botswanans … and are more abused by police than Kazakhstanis.

Big Corporations Are Also Thoroughly Corrupt

But the private sector is no better … for example, the big banks have literally turned into criminal syndicates engaged in systemic fraud.

Wall Street and giant corporations are literally manipulating every single market.

And the big corporations are cutting corners to make an extra penny … wreaking havoc with their carelessness. For example:

• Fracking companies dumped 3 billion gallons of highly-toxic waste into California’s drinking water supply. Fracking is polluting water all over the country. A study published in the journal Ground Water predicts that the highly-toxic fluids used in fracking can migrate to aquifers within a few short years. In addition, it is now official that fracking can cause earthquakes. Yet fracking companies are using military psychological operations techniques to discredit opponents (and see this)

• U.S. military contractors have pocketed huge sums of money earmarked for humanitarian and reconstruction aid. And see this (whistleblowers alerted the government about the looting of Iraq reconstruction funds, but nothing was done)

• General Electric and other nuclear companies KNEW their designs were faulty and unsafe … but hid that fact for decades

• Monsanto has claimed for decades that Roundup is safe, but the World Health Organization just said that it probably causes cancer. Monsanto forbids independent scientists from testing its GMO crops for safety, attacks the computers of people who oppose GMO foods and sue small farmers when Monsanto GMO crops drift onto their fields

• Big farmers are drenching their crops with Roundup right before harvest … to save a buck

• Big food companies work hand-in-glove with the government to dish up unhealthy food

• BP’s criminal negligence led to the giant Gulf oil spill

• There is systemic corruption among drug companies, scientific journals, university medical departments, and medical groups which set the criteria for diagnosis and treatment

(Further examples here, here, here, here and here.)

We’ve Forgotten the Lessons of History

The real problem is that we need to learn a little history:

• We’ve known for thousands of years that – when criminals are not punished – crime spreads

• We’ve known for hundreds of years that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies, as it destroys all trust in the financial system

• We’ve known for centuries that powerful people – unless held to account – will get together and steal from everyone else

Beyond Partisan Politics

Liberals and conservatives tend to blame our country’s problems on different factors … but they are all connected.

The real problem is the malignant, symbiotic relationship between big corporations and big government.