As I read the news on a daily basis, I consistently feel sick to my stomach. It seems as though every day there is a new story about corruption and abuse in a government that was founded to prevent such as thing. I act surprised by that fact, however, throughout history there has always been power and those who abuse it. The corruption has spread throughout our government like the plague and is slowly causing the the foundation on which this great country was founded upon to rot away at its core. Abraham Lincoln once said "and that government of the people, by the people, for the people". This quote is what this country was founded upon, it is also a LIE. It now reads "and that government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations." Big business went from be good for the country to being the worst thing for it. Corporations can give hundreds of thousands of dollars to a politician in hopes that said politician will vote the way they want. If I ask anyone one the street what that would be called, I would bet they and you would call that a bribe. BUT if they call it a "campaign donation" it is perfectly legal and happens everyday. It has always been happening, however, in the last 30 years, there has been an increasing number of politicians being "bought".
Congress was created with the idea that we would be represented by one of our elected peers. Instead we are represented by 265 millionaires, a little over 60% of Congress. If you walked up to a person on the street, I would bet that if you asked them if they were a millionaire they would say no. This isn't just cause most millionaires don't walk down the street, but also because less than 1% of the US population are millionaires. I mean it isn't hard to believe, that since the cost of a Senate campaign is over $8,000,000 dollars. Wait a second, aren't most of campaign commercials I see just of the candidate ripping on the opposing candidate? If they didn't make all those commercials, ripping their opponents wouldn't it be cheaper? Wouldn't they save a lot of money? Yes it would, but running a legitimate campaign, where they spoke on the issues they cared about and what they stood for would be hard, it also takes time and morals. While running a sleaze campaign doesn't require any of those things, instead it requires lack of morals, but a lot of money
If you want examples of how corrupt our government has become, just read the news. Today for example, I read an article on Peter Adekeye, a Nigerian man who has educated himself and become very a knowledgeable person in the IT field. Mr. Adekeye has been a British citizen since 2004 and worked for networking giant, Cisco, in advanced engineering and technical services from 2000-2005. After which he left and formed his own company Multiven Inc. He was granted a work Visa to the United States in 2005-2007, while working for Cisco. After it expired in 2007, Adekeye moved his family back to England and began applying for a new Visa to continue his work as Multiven. The process for attaining a new Visa was coming along great until during that same time period he filed an anti-trust suit against Cisco. This is where the corruption comes in, magically Mr. Adekeye's visa was request was denied after the process was going through the stages perfectly. Then Cisco filed a counter-suit, while at the same time federal charges were pressed against Mr. Adekeye. Mr. Adekeye was in Canada at the time and tried to gain entrance to the U.S. to answer both the suit and the charges, but was still denied access. He was then arrested in Canada, in public, to be embarrassed on extradition charges. An extradition request, that was granted on falsified statements. Statements given by the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Richard C.Cheng. The extradition was denied by a Canadian judge who was appalled by the lies which included that Adekeye entered Canada on a Ningerian passport (entered with his British passport), that they couldn't verify he was a British citizen (could have easily asked Great Britian[our best ally]), did not have his address in Europe(it was listed on his latest visa request). There were more lies listed in the court documents which you can read here.
Or perhaps we can look at the audit of the Federal Reserve that was also released this week. The one that received very little press(I would wonder why), but released information on how the government also gave out over 16 trillion in bailouts in 2008 to financial institutions that we never heard about until now. How much are we in debt again? Nevermind that is for another post. Anyway the bailouts, bailouts given to those same institutions who caused the economic crash in the first place. Why did we do that? Was it because people who were on the boards of financial institutions have positions on the financial advisory committees? Was it because people on the boards of these institutions were also high up in SEC positions? But wait isn't this a conflict of interest, yes it is, but the it happened anyway through appointments within the government. I can't tell you the single cause of the fall of the economy, I can tell you that it happened parallel to collapse of the housing market and because of financial institutions. Financial institutions we bailed out and then they used the money to pay the executives their million dollar bonuses.
There is something severely wrong with this country and I don't know what the answer is and I don't know if anyone knows, but I do know that if we don't fix the problem soon it will fester to the point of no return. I love this country and know that there are still people who want to fix this country people like Charlie Wilson who knew something was wrong and fixed it. We need more like him and less of those who take bribes...sorry campaign contributions. Maybe just maybe we can find a person to be president or an influential Congress who can give us hope again. And show us just how great this country can be and has been since it was founded. Just maybe Mr. Smith will come to Washington after all.
