Pass the Guilt, please…
Why is it that America’s finest city seems to be America’s most corrupt city as well. The latest official to get slapped (I lost count) is Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who has finally pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from not one, not two, but three different defense contractors. Yup, he’s a crook. A filthy, dirty, lying criminal… who will probably never see the inside of a jail cell.
Two things really bother me about this story. The first is that “Duke” gets a plea-bargain at all. It seems to me that you should only get to bargain for a lowered sentence if you haven’t already claimed innocence… or rather LIED about it. It’s one thing if it could be shown that you really didn’t know that what you were doing was illegal, but the guy knew. Why should he get a bonus because he finally realized that the Feds were about to bust his ass and so screams, “ollie ollie income free!” Yeah, sure, it saved the tax payers a few bucks in court costs, but damn… I’d have paid money to see a judge really throw the book at that guy. How about 15 to 20 in a local prison where there’s a 20-1 ratio of hispanics to whites. But no, he’ll probably pay a fine and get off with some community service.
But even more disturbing is the fact that no one is mentioning the contractors themselves. It seems to me that offering to bribe a Congressman should be just as illegal as accepting it, maybe more so. But there hasn’t been one word about who those contractor were. The CEO’s of those corporations should be serving time right along side old Duke baby, but because “it would hurt the economy” we see, hear and speak no evil. That just sucks. Personally I think we should whack those contractors really hard. Say… no more government contracts for five years. Hell, make it ten. It’s not like there won’t be some other corrupt company to fill their space at the carcass of American capitalism.
Or… we could start branding the word “CRIMINAL” to the foreheads of corrupt politicians. The current set of incentives just doesn’t seem to be working very well.