yeah... him

Bernie Madoff behind bars

Morning readers.  this next post is probably something I should have adressed a while ago, but quite frankly felt that talking about him would be redundant because everyone knows what he did.  I'm speaking of course, about Bernie Madoff, the man who pulled off the single largst ponzie scheme in United States history.  This man took the entire life savings of some people and spent it on luxurious homes and cars, runing their lives when they found out the whole thing was just a joke.  Madoff was able to pull off such incredible robberies because people believed that they were getting money from him, and he was a powerful and supposedly charismatic man. The new york times writes: "TO some, Bernard L. Madoff was an affable, charismatic man who moved comfortably among power brokers on Wall Street and in Washington, a winning financier who had all the toys: the penthouse apartment in Manhattan, the shares in two private jets, the yacht moored off the French Riviera.  Although hardly a household name, he secured a longstanding role as an elder statesman on Wall Street, allowing him to land on important boards and commissions where his opinions helped shape securities regulations. Along the way, he snared a coveted spot as the chairman of a major stock exchange, Nasdaq.   And his employees say he treated them like family."  In the end, Madoff robbed over 50 billion dollars from people, and after his arrest on December 10, 2008, he pleaded guilty to 11 fellony counts that were added together for a 150 year jail sentence for a 70 year old man.  For a time, there was a push to find a way to keep Madoff alive long enough for him to live out the entire sentence behind bars.

In an interesting way, Madoff reminds me very much of McMurphy from the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  This was a man who was charismatic, quickly becoming as referred to it "the bull goose looney," and through different activities like poker and making outrageous bets, McMurphy very qickly amassed a large amount of money from the other paients on the ward.  Of course, McMurphy is also considered to be a hero and a martyr, where Madoff is neither.  Also, while Madoff was put into jail for his crimes, McMurphy was already in a mental institution.

Randall Patrick McMurphy

So, we could compare Madoff to Jay Gatsby from F. Scott Fitzgerald's  The Great Gatsby. Both men were charming and important people, and both ammassed their wealth through an illegal means.  However, gatsby did it to try and win the heart of Daisy Buchannan, whereas it is not entirley clear why Madoff did what he did, so no real conncection there.

Jay Gatzby

I suppose, in the end, Madoff is simply a corrupt person whose greed eventually imploded on him, and now he is suppossed t serve 150 years in jail even though he'll most likely be ded before even a third of that time goes by.

where does it go?

Have you ever made a charitable donation?  If you have, have you ever wondered where that money has gone?  Well, for anyone out there who made a donation to the campaign of John Edwards, he is now on trial for using your money to pay off his pregnant mistress. "Records introduced Tuesday at John Edwards' corruption trial show his campaign finance chairman paid the candidate's mistress a $9,000 monthly cash allowance, on top of other living and travel expenses."  So, the man who was planning on running for the president of the united states, who is not always the most honest person as I have stated in previous posts, is using money donated from people who thought that he would be a good president, to help pay for a luxurious lifestlye for a woman he got pregnant, who isn't even his wife.  I mean come on people, this is just ridiculous.  I'm not even going to get into the fact that he was having an affair, because this blog simply isn't about that.  However, to use money that people are giving you, to help you become the most powerful man in the world and you used it on personal matters, that's just wrong and the man deserves to go to jail.  I mean look at this!: "Money from the wealthy donors was also used for private jets, stays at luxury resorts and a $20,000-a-month California rental mansion."

john edwards and his daughter cate outside the courthouse

federal shame

Okay, so while I was out looking for some new corruption news to blog about, I stumbled across an article written by two students from Dartmouth.  I thought that this article may have an analysis of some kind of political corruption in america, and it did, just in a very confusing way.  The article tried to assert the following: "state governments are particularly vulnerable to public corruption by comparison with local governments or the wealthier Federal government. The Federal government has higher levels of administrativeprofessionalism; Washington draws both the best and brightest of administrators alongside more professional and reelection-minded politicians who are more mindful of the consequences of their and

others’ misdeeds. Further, there is putatively greater review and monitoring of subordinates’ actions by

Washington’s leaders."(3)  So the federal government is less inclined to have corrupt officials, I personally tend to disagree, and my first witness will be former president Richard Nixon, over here on my right.  

Presiden Nixon was involved in the watergate scandal, a botched attempt to place listening devices inside the democratic party's headquarters at the watergate hotel complex.  Afterwards, Nixon tried to cover everything up, but the truth slowly leaked out, and Nixon resigned one day before his impeachement. 

So, to you bright young dartmouth students who say that Washington D.C. is less likely to be corrupt than say the New York senate up in Albany, I point out the fact that only a few short decades ago, the single most powerful man in the world, and the head of Washington, became the first president to resign from office because he was corrupted by the belief that the president is above the law.

justice or injustice?

the scottsboro boys meeting with their lawyer

Okay, so everyone knows the classic image of that blindfolded woman holding a balanced scale?  That is supposed to symbolize justice and how it is blind, and impartial, or at least that's how its supposed to be.  The reality of the situation is that one side of the scale has been loaded with things like money, racism, and biased juries.  A classic example of this is the scottsboro trial.  The supposed case of how nine black boys raped two white girls on a train in 1927.  Now, the trial was held in alabama, and considering the time frame, the boys were instantly found guilty, despite the fact that the evidence was shoddy at best, the two girls were prostitutes, and one of the boys was only 9 years old!  Take a look at the article.

Okay, so terrible tragedy, but no good unless it can be connected to something right?  So for another corrupt court case, we're going to take a look at an old american classic, Arthur Miller's The Crucible.  This play is an account of the Salem Witch trials.  What made it corrupt, was the fact that anyone who was accused of being a witch was automatically assumed guilty, because if they said that they were not a witch, then they would be accused of trying to put a spell on the judges!  Not to mention the fact that the group of girls under Abigail Williams had a habit of leading her followers into wild delusions to try and show how the witches were "corrupting them"

From a literary point of view.....

The "Big Nurse"

Since this blog is about corruption in american society, it makes sense to look at other aspects of american society besides politics and economics.  So, let's take a look at some books.  One book that really deals with corruption is the classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest  by Ken Keesy.  The center of corruption in this book is Nurse Ratched or the "Big Nurse" as she is called.  This women, supposedly in charge of rehabilitating thses men, trying to help them, ends up making them meek and subserviant to her will, to the point where they're doing chores in their own mental institution!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NyyC-UjBM&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active  This is a video about what I'm talking about.  The woman won't let them have their cigarettes.  You are taking people whose sanity is viable to flipflop at the drop of a hat, and when they want the one thing in the world that will clam them down yo ration it out and say no?!  Why would a person do this you might ask?  Well, this Nurse here, doesn't care about helping these people, doesn't care if they sit around like vegtables all day.  All the nurse wants is to be in charge and in power.  So the moral of the story as we wrap up today's post.... power can corrupt people, hey, who knew?



"fat cats" control the senate



Okay, so now rather than go decade by decade I'm going to connect the past to the present.  So, one of the biggest scandals in american society is politicians being influenced by money.  It was a problem in the 20th century and it is a problem now.  People who run for office take millions of dollars in campaign dnations from big multinational coroporations in excahnge for lobying in the intrest of those companies.  In a past prospective, one of the most infamous cases of this was tanmney hall, which, as seen in the cartoon on the side, controlled govenrment, rigged elections, and bribed officials, all in the intrest of their individual corporations.  In a modern perspective, a New York Times article talks about corruption in the present govenrment, and the desicion made by the supreme court about unlimited spending on campaign donations.  "It is not merely an academic question. The Supreme Court has consistently said that only fighting corruption or the appearance of corruption justifies laws that restrict political spending. Other rationales — like leveling the playing field between the haves and have-nots — are not enough.

Defenders of the rules say their case for tighter restrictions on campaign money is obvious to anyone who knows Washington. Private influence-seekers shower big contributions on politicians because they want to gain access and shape policy; they would not spend the money if they got nothing in return."  So while the supreme court ays that they can only stop donations if they see evidence of corruption, others would argue that it is not so superficial, and that people who truly know the workings of washington D.C. knows that money dropped into the pockets of politicians is how government keeps its influence, like B.P. oil having such a strong lobby community in the House of Representatives.



The corrupt 20's

All right!  So, continuing with our journey on corruption in american society we take our second stop in he 1920's america, also known as the roaring 20's.  The economy was booming, jazz was just comng into its own right, and congress passed the 18th amendmant.  This particular law was prohibiton, preventing the sale and distribution of alcoholic bevrages.  This ended up fostering the biggest undergorund smuggling empire in hisotry.  Bringing fame to people like Al Capone and Lucky Lucciano.  Some examples of coruuption o like this, "Prohibition quickly produced bootleggers, speakeasies, moonshine, bathtub gin, and rum runners smuggling supplies of alcohol across state lines. In 1927, there were an estimated 30,000 illegal speakeasies--twice the number of legal bars before Prohibition. In 1919, a year before Prohibition went into effect, Cleveland had 1,200 legal bars. By 1923, the city had an estimated 3,000 illegal speakeasies, along with 10,000 stills. An estimated 30,000 city residents sold liquor during Prohibition, and another 100,000 made home brew or bathtub gin for themselves and friends.



Al- Capone



Prohibition also fostered corruption and contempt for law and law enforcement among large segments of the population. Harry Daughtery, attorney general under Warren Harding, accepted bribes from bootleggers. George Remus, a Cincinnati bootlegger, had a thousand salesmen on his payroll, many of them police officers. He estimated that half his receipts went as bribes. Al Capone's Chicago organization reportedly took in $60 million in 1927 and had half the city's police on its payroll."  Prohibition produced these wealthy, ruthless, and powerful men and turned hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens into regular lawbreakers.  Police officers took bribes to look the other way as lquor was smuggled in, and people were going so far as to make alcohol in their bathtubs.  The greatest irony of prohibition, was that it created more criminals than it destoyed and killed dozens of people in gang violence, such as the St. Valentine's day massacere.  So, for everyone out there who thinks that corruption is worse now then it ever was.... at least Al-Capone's not still running around with a tommy gun in his hands and a cigar in his mouth.