Kleptocracy’s Long-Term Consequences

America, until recently, was one of the world’s cleanest places to do business. You didn’t have to pay people off to do what you wanted – indeed you couldn’t. Regulation was not about having a handout – it was about protecting the public. Public servants weren’t allowed to take anything for doing their jobs – from the president on down. Your job was your job. Taking anything was corrupt.

That’s changed. The power of campaign contributions helped undermine the moral spine of the American economy. Lobbyists and campaign contributors who spent enough on campaigns got huge perks for their companies and stuck the costs to you. The gains are enormous. You and I would be happy with 5-20% returns on investments. Kevin Philips calculated returns to investments on large campaign contributions ranging from 5 thousand percent to 1.4 million percent.[1] Pretty good for a day’s work.

Trump compounded that. He made it clear that everything was up for sale, up to and including American foreign policy. Americans didn’t understand the two-century old language of the Constitution and had no understanding of the significance of the emoluments clauses. Those clauses said simply that America is not up for sale. Corruption is a crime and presidents must be above it. Yet Trump was ready to bend American foreign policy to reward the Russians – so grateful was he for their illegal help in the campaign that he virtually took apart the free world that had been a thorn in Putin’s side. Trump has also been prepared to ignore all sorts of damage to public health from toxins in the air, water, food and drugs in order to please his contributors. Just please keep the money flowing. And stay in Trump properties. Anything to publicize Trump properties.

The consequences are visible all around the world. People live well where government stays on the up and up.[2] People live in poverty where the government is corrupt. Democracy does not survive corruption.[3] When everyone is on the take, no institutions are reliable.

It was obvious in Iran. They had very well-trained people but never mind trying to get anything done. You need what they called parti, what we call influence. Projects that were supposed to be built waited years or decades until someone who cared and had the necessary connections demanded its completion. Sometimes, in the years I was there, projects awaited the Shah’s imminent arrival when they would suddenly be done so he could see it. But how many projects could the Shah check on himself.

Corruption is the beginning of the end. When everything is up for grabs, nothing important to the country’s welfare gets done. Some people call that capitalism, but when capitalism lives without boundaries, the people live without, and the country flounders. It loses all the sinews, infrastructure, education, training and research that make the country strong. Conservatives once understood that. But Trump’s people aren’t principled – thieves couldn’t care less.

Conservatives kept yelling “Love it or leave it” in the sixties and seventies, meaning don’t try to fix it. But if we don’t fix the corruption you can say good-by to America as number one anything. We’re on the downward slide, where the slope is very steep, and when you hit bottom there are no handholds left to climb back out. That America is not great or number one; that America is a third world laughingstock – you thought you were so great, but look at you now.[4] And none of us will live well except maybe the tenth of the one percent.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on September 8, 2020.

[1] Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy 326 (2002).

[2] Adam Przeworski, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being (2000).

[3] Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2011); Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson and James D. Morrow, The Logic of Political Survival (2003).

[4] Let me recommend Rex Smith, “Is this what our collapse looks like?” Albany Times Union, Sept. 5, 2020, A7 for an excellent discussion from a complementary perspective.

Worth Fussing About in this Pandemic

I don’t want to talk about topic no. 1. I thought talking about politics might provide comic relief. But what’s funny about that? Politics is deadly serious, precisely because people’s lives depend on how elected officials take care of the rest of us, or whether they’re focused only on optics.

Doctors and nurses are being forced to make tragic choices about priorities for medical equipment and facilities in short supply. In this kind of situation there’s always a risk of decisions being corrupted by unexamined prejudices, and that needs to be avoided. But I know that if I get the coronavirus, my treatment will depend on how overwhelmed the facilities are. The usual question is how many lives can be saved. Wherever that would put me on line is reasonable.

But this country, which constantly boasts about being the best, deserves criticism for losing a full two months by comparison to many other countries dealing with the virus. That delay meant we’ll face many more cases and lose many more people than we should have. We refused the World Health Organization’s offer of a test used across much of the globe, while the White House boaster-in-chief treated the pandemic as a hoax. That, and the fact that our health care system still doesn’t take care of everyone, even when everyone’s health depends on everyone else’s, justifies deep disappointment.

Trump repeatedly minimized and mocked the pandemic, describing it as a Democratic “hoax.” It took Fox News host Tucker Carlson to go to a party at Mar-O-Lago and tell Trump this was a serious pandemic before Trump paid attention. It took Sen. Schumer to tell Trump to activate the Defense Production Act when the man in the White House hadn’t bothered.

Now of course he’s playing catch-up, bragging constantly while the governors, mayors, and the professionals at the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control are doing the real work, as he well knows.

But let me pull back from the current details. For years we eliminated “surplus” hospital beds, everything not in regular use. This president continued, cutting “extras,” like those at the CDC whose jobs were to plan ahead to prevent epidemics, or the office at the Security Council meant to coordinate responses to global pandemics. With such efficiencies, nothing’s left when we need it now.

This country has long been so focused on efficiency and not crossing so-called bridges before we get there, that we refuse to plan ahead, and wait for problems to become crises. We’ve turned the notion of freedom into a justification for selfishness instead of an opportunity to push politicians to behave like statesmen pursuing the public interest. We’ve reached a point where civil servants, people who have spent their lives and careers on our behalf, can be maligned as the “deep state,” instead of thanking them for their service. We’ve lost a notion of the public interest and a notion that teamwork has been a great virtue of American economic and political culture. We need a balance of teamwork and independence. The combination defines the moral fiber that we have been losing and paying dearly for.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on March 24, 2020.

Happy New Year

I’ve been recording commentary on WAMC for approximately 15 years. Christmas and New Year’s are always different. It doesn’t feel like a time for argument, for praising some and condemning others. So I and many in similar positions usually talk about the joys of the holiday season and individual plans for the New Year. I tend to do it a bit multi-culturally but it really doesn’t matter; we all share the same dreams.

In reality, though, I realize that those who govern us have an enormous impact on our health and happiness – whether we’ll die on a war front, as refugees from battle or other disaster, or for lack of roads, doctors or access to health care. So I want to address my hopes for the New Year to those who have those powers.

It’s hard to read or hear the news without finding more evidence that power corrupts. George Mason, a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and a slave-owner himself, told his colleagues, on August 22, 1787, that “Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.”[1] Talking about lessons from slavery seems extreme to some except that we see frequent examples of masters taking cruel, often deadly, advantage of those who are called employees or are otherwise vulnerable. Let us not sire petty tyrants.

The promise of America goes well beyond class, race or religion. Thaddeus Stevens, a Pennsylvania congressman and a Republican leader in the fight for the 14^th Amendment, expressed the American dream when he told the House that he dreamed of the day when “no distinction would be tolerated in this purified republic but what arose from merit and conduct.”[2]  Our Constitution makes no other distinction. If you’re here you are protected. It protects not only citizens but residents, travelers, visitors, everyone. It does that by using broad terms, “people,” “persons,” without limitation. That’s one of the great features of our Constitution. Our country pioneered the concept of human rights, guaranteed for everyone.

Paul Finkelman, an old friend and former colleague, now a college president, showed me a draft he’s been writing on the point. He goes through each Amendment which make up what we call the Bill of Rights and the language of who gets those rights. The 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, 9^th and 10^th Amendments are directed to “the people.” The 5^th protects “any person.” The 6^th protects “the accused.” Otherwise the Bill of Rights simply prohibits government from infringing rights and the language is again universal. Attacks on people and their rights which depend on where they come from conflict with the great principle which this country pioneered – universal human rights.

The late, great, vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, broadened the point at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, on November 1, 1977, saying “The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”[3] That we may treat each other well are my wishes for the coming year. And, as Pete Seeger sang, “Pacem in Teris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Heiwa!” which spells peace in many languages, and in some it also means good health. Happy New Year.

[1] 2 Max Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, 370.

[2] Cong. Globe,  39^th Cong., 1^st sess. 3148  (1866) (June 13, 1866).

[3] Congressional Record, November 4, 1977, vol 123, p. 37287, available at https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hubert_Humphrey.