Government Corrupts

By Monty Pelerin  /  Economic Noise

This post is meant for all who believe that more government involvement is necessary to solve economic and societal issues. Some amount of government is necessary but beyond that level, it creates problems that result in self-serving opportunities.

A debate on the proper functions of government is beyond the scope of this  article although such a debate is badly needed.  This article contains two parts:

1. The reason(s) why government corrupts. It is in the DNA of government to do so. And, there is no way to prevent it.  It can be reduced, but only by reducing the scope and power of government.
2. The Florida school shooting as a case study of this corruption and its consequences.

The Reason Government Corrupts

Government corrupts and big government corrupts absolutely. The simple reason for this is because it can.

Lord Acton used “power” in place of government in his famous observation: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But what is government but power? Stripping aside the  political  propaganda, George Washington observed:

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

Washington’s warning was made when the  country was in its infancy and government was miniscule. Imagine today if small municipalities were required to operate with similar restraints — legal and monetary — that characterized the  federal government back then. The wailing would be severe.

Big Government Corrupts Absolutely

The  Constitution was initially respected and restricting. The Founders intended individual rights to be supreme. They were brilliant but not naive. Thomas Jefferson knew that time and human nature would corrode the protections afforded by the document:

I see,… and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power… It is but too evident that the three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic.

Joseph Sobran, a recently-deceased political commentator,  described the Constitution as anti-trust legislation designed to protect the people from its government. His description contained the understanding why the Constitution could not succeed. The Supreme Court, a body of government itself,  officiated disputes between the government and its people. Anyone watching a Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the last fifty years cannot fail to see the  influence of politics on this “august” body.

Corruption Galore

For more than 200 years the anti-trust act protecting the people against its government has been under assault by government itself. Public servants, a term now laughable, have become public serpents exploiting offices for personal gain. No one sacrifices or “serves” today. The political class is in it for the money and spoils!

Generally, politicians are second-rate  people who would have difficulty making it in competitive markets. Even organized crime has to compete for business. Unless they provide a decent product or service that is wanted, they have no market.

Not so for politicians. They have a monopoly  over your disposable income and the  laws of the land. No service or product need be provided for them to get money.  Coercion and extortion are the only requirements. They determine how much of your income you can keep.  They determine how much debt is going to be imposed  on you and your children.  In the case of businesses, they control rules and regulations that determine profitability and even survival.

Rahm Emmanuel once said no serious crisis should ever go to waste. What he meant was that a crisis provided opportunities to do things. Another axiom, unstated to the best of my knowledge, is to never let a wealth opportunity go to waste.

Laws and regulations create and  destroy wealth. To the extent that politicians own this power,  they have the ability to enhance their personal wealth. If a particular piece of legislation is worth $500 million dollars to a company or industry, then a politician can be bribed up to that amount for his vote. Corporations or even individuals faced with such outcomes are acting economically rationally (perhaps immorally and illegally) by protecting themselves.

Does this go on? Well, it would be letting a wealth opportunity go to waste if it didn’t. How else does one turn a $175,000 annual salary over ten years into a $5 million increase in net worth? These second-raters all leave office wealthy. Do you think any of them could answer how this happened if an honest forensic audit were done?

The insidious nature of power and greed runs rampant in government. There is virtually no individual entity to police and prosecute the offenders. Noble idealists are quickly corrupted and embedded into the system. If not, they are excised even more quickly.

The reaction to outsider Donald Trump is interesting. While there are many reasons to be for or against Donald Trump,  the almost universal Establishment reaction is that “he is not one of us.” The Cosa Nostra is threatened by outsiders. Trump is potentially this kind of  existential threat to the scam that  is being run 

goverment-corruption on the  American people.

A Case Study of Corruption

One can touch government at any level and find the  inefficiency,  self-serving behavior and corruption. The magnitude of the  abuse is directly proportional to the magnitude of the government entity investigated. Thus, enormous agencies like the military, healthcare and welfare agencies are the biggest offenders in terms of dollars wasted and crimes committed, there is virtually no level of government that is not corrupted. The following article by Clarice Feldman in the American Thinker provides a wonderful case study of the recent tragedy of the  school shooting in Florida.

When you read this, remember that the tragedy that occurred in Florida caused the focus. All across this country similar behavior is going on in government at all levels. Hopefully, it will not take more tragedies for this criminal behavior and dereliction of duty to be uncovered and corrected.

With or without the tragedies, the exploitation of citizens by government is rampant and universal. That is the nature of government. It is in the DNA. Government corrupts; big government corrupts absolutely.

Exposing the Deep Rot in the Deep State

February 25, 2018

By Clarice Feldman

Once again, the president has pried behind the stucco of the Deep State’s institutional edifice and shown that the pillars are termite-ridden.  Over at Instapundit, law professor Glenn Reynolds said it most succinctly:

FL Shooting Survivor Colton Haab: CNN Told Me I Needed To “Stick To The Script”; Entire Town Hall Scripted. 

Trump’s luck is pretty amazing. The entire media sets up a week-long hatefest aimed at the NRA, culminating in that shameful fake “Town Hall,” and then the very next day it comes out that there was a police officer there who was too cowardly to do anything, and Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, who was shaming and lecturing gun owners the night before, must have known it while he was up there on stage.

Trump’s superpower is his ability, just by existing, to bring out the deep and pervasive rot in America’s institutions and the people who run them.

In fact, there were four armed deputies at the Parkland, Florida high school, none of whom entered to intervene when the shooting occurred.  Heroes like the JROTC students and the coach gave up their lives to protect others, while four armed cops did nothing to end the carnage.  At least one witness said he saw the first deputy (Scot Peterson), who has since resigned, hiding behind a stairwell in a separate building while talking on his phone during the four to six minutes the shootings occurred, and it is likely he was talking to his superiors at the time.  It defies belief that four deputies at the scene did nothing and that their headquarters were not informed and fully aware that the men were not going in to help.

After Columbine, the FBI training and tactical advice to local law enforcement officials was not to wait for a SWAT or tactical team to show up, but to immediately engage and disarm the shooter.  On Facebook, Philip Smith notes, citing various FBI planning guides:

Lessons learned from this tragedy included the need for all police officers to be properly trained, equipped and empowered to immediately intervene in an active shooter situation to stop the ongoing violence regardless of their assignment.

Modern day law enforcement training and tactics dictate that the primary objective of the first law enforcement officer(s) on the scene of an active shooter situation is to locate and stop the person or persons believed to be the shooter(s). As law enforcement active shooter training has evolved, there has been a move away from waiting for several officers to arrive and form a “team” prior to searching for the shooter.

Today, many agencies and trainers recommend a solo officer entry into an active shooter situation if it is believed the officer on scene can locate, isolate and/or stop the shooter prior to other arriving law enforcement officers. The solo officer entry can be a very dangerous response strategy. However, properly trained and equipped police officers acting alone without the benefit of backup have stopped ongoing active shooter situations, thereby saving lives.

So how is it that four armed cops remained outside the building and did nothing?  For that, you have to go to Sundance on Conservative Treehouse, who, beginning with the Trayvon Martin case, has been keeping an eye on the Broward and Miami-Dade County Police Departments, filing FOIA requests and winkling out a major scandal.  In sum, these actors, in order to obtain federal grants under Obama and Eric Holder, who conned governments into thinking that disparate outcomes – that is, more arrests and school expulsions of black kids than white kids – were the result of discrimination, did not discriminate regarding conduct issues.  Local governments were rewarded with grants if they kept school arrests down, the cover being “let’s stop the pipeline from schools to prisons.”  Without arrests, there was no record in background checks to keep violent people from having guns.  It’s that simple: no matter what steps you put into place to prevent such things, if the procedure is corrupted, it won’t work.  No matter how many armed deputies are at the site, if they are following orders not to intercede, or at least permitted to just stand idly by, they will be useless as protection.  And yet the same people who are for disarming law-abiding citizens want to give the very people who are refusing to follow commonsense dictates for our protection more power and us less.

If journalism awards were handed out to those who actually are engaged in journalism, Sundance would be getting one.  Here are some of the things he turned up in his hard years long slogging through Broward and Miami-Dade Counties’ police practices and operations.

Broward and Miami-Dade Counties’ law enforcement departments are deeply political.  Scot Peterson was, until he resigned, a school resource officer (SRO).  Backed by responses to repeated FOIA requests, Sundance concludes:

The roles of SRO’s are political, not law enforcement.

Here’s what people don’t understand.  When the county policy is intentionally constructed to ignore criminal behavior in schools, the Sheriff and School superintendent cannot rely on “law and order-minded” SROs to carry out the corrupt policy.

The SRO must carry a political hat and be able to intercept behavior, modify the action based on a specific policy, falsify documents, manipulate records etc, and engage in the system with an understanding of the unwritten goals. SROs are given political instructions, NOT, I repeat, NOT given instructions to uphold laws and regulations.

The School Officers are the primary foot soldiers carrying out political policy. Engaging an active shooter on campus is the furthest thing from their skill-set you could imagine.

Security of school students is just not their role. The Broward County SRO is in place to protect the School System “policy.”

While the press is now reporting the many instances where neighbors and others phoned in warnings to the FBI about the shooter and the many visits (39) by the police to his home about disturbances there, Sundance argues, they didn’t “miss warning signs”; they ignored them as part of school and police department policies.

Sundance details the many times tips about the shooter were given the department and deliberately ignored.

Even modern technology was jiggered to help the Broward officials carry out their continuing cover-up of student crimes.

Broward County law enforcement (Sheriff Israel), in conjunction with Broward County School Officials (Superintendent Runcie and School Board), have a standing policy to ignore any criminal engagement with High School students.

When the police are hiding current, actual and ongoing unlawful conduct as a matter of standard procedure on a regular basis, what do we expect the police would do with reports of potential unlawful conduct? Of course they would ignore them.

This is not a “mistake” on their part, the ‘doing nothing’ is part of the standard practice.

♦ Secondly, the 27-minute tape-delay in the CCTV system is not an “accident”, “flaw” or “mistake”. It is entirely by design.

As a standard Broward and Miami-Dade practice, when school law enforcement need to cover-up or hide behavior, they need time (when that behavior happens) to delete the evidence trail. As such, the school policy – as carried out in practice – is more efficient with a 30-minute tape delay affording the school officer enough time to deal with the situation, then erase the possibility of a recording of the unlawful activity surfacing.

Building in a 30-minute delay on the CCTV system was one of those pesky add-on items that happened a few years ago when the School and Law Enforcement officials established the policy of intentionally not arresting students.

With modern technology it’s tough to hide criminal behavior, especially the violent stuff, when it is being recorded. Duh. Ergo the tape-delay was the best-practice workaround.

Why would they do such a thing?  Sundance again documents it: money.  State and federal funds were given to districts who improved their statistics, so Broward and Miami-Dade Counties hid the crimes, improved their statistics, and got the money.  (They did this earlier as well when the “secret discipline and diversionary program” was in place allowing Trayvon Martin to avoid a criminal record.)

Initially the police were excusing misdemeanor behaviors. However, it didn’t take long until felonies, even violent felonies (armed robberies, assaults and worse) were being excused.

In time, the situation got so bad that to keep lowering their statistics, they were hiding evidence and failing to recover stolen merchandise because to return it would be to admit that the stuff was the fruit of criminal activity.

Criminal gangs soon realized that the way to avoid arrest was to recruit students to carry out their actions, and they also realized that when the quota for arrests near the end of the month was reached was the best time to get away with crimes.

The system had in a short time become totally corrupted, and the SROs were the “most corrupt.”  The local media cooperated in covering it all up, and the cops who wanted to do their jobs were demoralized and deprived of the benefits the corrupt ones got, including free housing close to the schools to which they were assigned.

Indeed, Broward County sheriff Scott Israel used the public funds he got by faking crime statistics and ignoring crimes to hire political supporters for his re-election campaign.

This is the story worth telling, not the scripted anti-gun pap CNN offered up or the ten-minute hate town hall designed to play on your emotions while ignoring the truth.  But only one blogger, Sundance, did the work to expose it.

The rest of the MSM seem to be fine with jeopardizing students’ lives, enabling criminals, and using public funds to advance the fortunes of Democrat candidates who allowed this tragedy to occur.  As the press in South Florida stinks, do me a favor – pass this one to friends and relatives who live there and who have elected to Congress these avatars of a one-party system: Alcee Hastings, Ted Deutch, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Frederica Wilson.

http://www.economicnoise.com/2018/02/25/government-corrupts/

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