Commentary
Can a stack of papers next to my computer keyboard stare at me? I often get that feeling. You may have heard someone mention that while referring to their “to do” list staring them in the face.
Regular readers may recall that from time to time I refer to my stack of stuff, a stack of material I have saved to share with you when I have exhausted my list of single-topic ideas, like my last one – Where’s the Outrage.
Real or not, I was drawn to it as I sat down to research and draft what I thought would be another from my stack of stuff post. However, as I shuffled through the pile, one topic – corruption – surfaced over and over, so I decided to address that as a sole topic.
Until I began writing on the political scene, I viewed corruption primarily in connection with bribery and embezzlement. It wasn’t long, however, that stories of influence peddling, patronage, nepotism, cronyism, kickbacks and election fraud expanded my view of corruption.
Thinking back, I believe it was a couple of years before I started this blog, during my residence in Texas, that my interest in the subject was piqued by Robert A. Cato’s biography on former president Lyndon Johnson. A review noted that “Johnson was a grotesquely corrupt person willing to say and do anything to accumulate power and enrich himself.”
Dirt poor but obsessed with money when he entered Congress in his late twenties, Johnson managed to retire with a fortune valued in excess of $100 million over more than three decades as an elected federal official. The stories of his backroom deals with cash changing hands during elections noted for scandal are many.
Who can forget watching an arrogant Joe Biden on national television threatening to withhold $1 billion in aid if the Ukrainian prosecutor looking into Hunter’s business dealing wasn’t fired?
Today, we find President Biden enmeshed in a family corruption scandal involving his son, Hunter Biden, his brother James, and other family members, that reeks of influence peddling offering foreign governments access to the Biden White House. Reportedly, millions of dollars have been funneled to Biden interests by the Chinese government.
With the discovery of classified documents in several Biden locations, Attorney General Merrick Garland was forced to name a special counsel to investigate Biden’s mishandling of classified material and what the content of those documents might imply.
In addition, Republican Rep. James Comer, new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has acknowledged that the president himself, not Hunter, would be the target of his investigation.
Reading a transcript of a news-of-the-day discussion between Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, I found it interesting that Taibbi suggested that the Democrat party was “pulling a Frank Pentangeli (of Godfather II fame) on Joe Biden. Essentially saying, dude, the clock has run out on your presidency. You’re out. Somebody else is going to run, and you might want to do the honorable thing. And if you don’t, this is going to get worse.”
When Kirn noted that special counsels are appointed by bureaucracies, Taibbi reminded that there’s “widespread expectation that bureaucracies are too corrupt to investigate themselves.”
Those unelected regulators, many in their positions because of the swamp’s revolving door, have hefty salaries matching those of the companies they oversee. The conflicts of interests are many in what has been labeled a cottage industry of consultants, attorneys and lobbyists.
We have seen a different form of corruption in the Justice Department and the FBI, when the politicization by opposition party members in the Deep State were involved in an attempt to defeat Donald Trump in 2016 and preventing news of the Hunter Biden laptop from the public in 2020.
Surely, you recall the text FBI agent Peter Strzok sent to fellow agent Lisa Page stating, “there’s no way he (Trump) gets elected, but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” referring to a proposed “insurance policy.”
Former members of our intelligence community, James Clapper, John Brennan and Michael Hayden were recruited by the leftist TV networks to discredit Trump in 2016 and then, in 2020, they signed-on to a letter in which they falsely referred to the information contained in the Hunter Biden laptop has Russian disinformation.
The FBI and the Justice Department will be the focus of Rep. Jim Jordan, new head of the House Judiciary Committee, who pledged accountability.
But as we know, members of Congress can be corrupt as they openly trade stocks based on inside information, and recently protected that activity.
It’s why a vote on term limits again surfaced during the seating of Kevin McCarthy as the Speaker. Fox News recently reported that eleven members currently serving either in the House or Senate have served more than 35 years in one or both chambers. The service of Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley’s service spans nearly 65 years. Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Ed Markey has a combined 46-year service in both chambers.
The new 118th Congress is our best bet to root out corruption, but it will be a heavy lift.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
