Our elected officials are in a position of trust.
Bribery is money, favor or promises to a person or persons in a position of trust to influence their judgment or conduct. Bribery is a form of corruption. I always understood bribery of an elected official to be a crime.
If that is true why haven't the Koch Brothers been indicted?
Banks, oil companies and other major corporations are all guilty of this practice as are the lobbyists who work for them. But it is up to the attorney generals and district attorneys to bring these cases to justice.
Some unions have given unions a bad name by being as corrupt as politicians, but good unions have raised the standard of living for the middle class, and along the way helped make many people rich. Isn't it absurd that billionaires who've gotten rich off the system are now blaming the system and finding fault with the middle class union workers who've been asked for wage givebacks and risk losing a piece of their pension - a pension that they negotiated for with their employers in good faith. Isn't it absurd that politicians who get the best healthcare plan our money can buy, who make sure they get their own pensions and who use their expertise and influence as politicians to later work for the industries they helped legislate are blaming the middle class union worker for the nation's budget ills.
Who's the problem here? The billionaires who've bought the system or the working class trying to live within it? Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has said his state faces a $3.6 billion shortfall for the next two years. Now think about the fact that the Koch brothers, who helped fund his campaign, helped fund the Tea Party, are behind his move to break the unions and may soon end up running a Wisconsin public utility (as a present of privatization), are worth, according to Forbes, over $40 billion by themselves.
Really, it's the school teacher who's the problem?
Not every elected official is on the take - there are some good ones - but until we can get bribery out of public life we will never have honest government and we will never have government that works for the working class majority instead of the wealthy minority.
About Me
- Mickey Gee
- Bronx, New York, United States
- I was politically weaned by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the United Auto Workers, where I was a shop steward and wrote the political column for the local union newspaper. I also worked for the C.I.O. Political Action Committee and have long campaigned for candidates sympathetic to workers' rights. I am not an ideologue, I don't speak a party line and have never been or plan to be a flak for any party or candidate. I do not profess that my view is the only correct view. So please feel free to disagree with me - we may learn from each other.