Independent Voting recently hosted the 20th Annual Anti-Corruption Awards honoring Farhad Mohit, Gaby Cardenas and Katherine M. Gehl.
Video: The 20th annual anti-corruption awards
The 20th Annual Anti-Corruption Awards
Why was it so easy for Santos to lie throughout his campaign? As it turns out, it’s pretty easy to scam a broken system.
Nate is a communications consultant for RepresentUs, a nonpartisan organization focused on minimizing corruption in the U.S. political system.
In 2009, comedian Robin Williams quipped, “Politicians should wear sponsor jackets like NASCAR drivers.” Just one year later, the Supreme Court decided to drive in a different direction. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates to dark money, exacerbating our existing political corruption problem.
George Santos was expelled from the House of Representatives on Dec. 1 for defrauding campaign donors and members of his district, but the entire saga should be seen as a broader indictment of a broken system that enables (and seemingly encourages) political corruption. Santos was enabled by insufficient reporting laws and ineffective federal oversight. As the Campaign Legal Center reported, “Dysfunction at the FEC has reduced transparency in our elections and faith in our political system.”
In its 56-page report, the House ethics committee concluded, "Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.” Santos is accused of utilizing campaign funds for Botox treatments, luxurious clothing and even an OnlyFans subscription.
Santos’ alleged pattern of fraud and corruption only came to light after his election in early 2023, when local media discovered Santos had fabricated virtually his entire resume. Despite the breadth of his lies, he might have gotten away with it if he'd just been a bit more careful.
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Why was it so easy for Santos to “fraudulently exploit every aspect” of his campaign? As it turns out, it’s pretty easy to scam a broken system.
The system is so broken that members of Congress routinely get away with legalized insider trading. The existing system also encourages members of Congress to spend more time raising money than serving their constituents. And we’ve seen numerous examples of other lawmakers “gaming the system” for personal gain thanks to campaign finance loopholes. We shouldn't be surprised that someone saw our broken system as ripe for exploitation.
We must see Santos’ fraud for what it is — the natural byproduct of a broken system in desperate need of reform.
Fortunately, there is hope! Grassroots anti-corruption groups like RepresentUs are fighting to strengthen campaign finance laws and put strict limits on special-interest campaign funding. The problem is so much bigger than any one politician. To uproot corruption, we must fix the broken system that encourages it to flourish.
Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
A lot of politicians throughout the world have claimed they are the victims of weaponized, political persecution and a witch hunt when they encounter legal trouble. Among them: former President Bill Clinton, former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President Donald Trump.
Trump has got to be the witch-hunt legal defense king in the world. He claims the New York, Georgia, Florida and District of Columbia court cases – totaling 91 felony charges – are politically motivated and are an American legal system “witch hunt” aimed at restricting his ability to run for president in 2024.
Anyone with a modicum of intelligence would realize the hypocrisy of Trump’s current ploy if they knew he never once declared “witch hunt” in the 62 lawsuits he filed and lost while contesting the 2020 election. Note: Trump-appointed judges were among the 80-plus magistrates who dismissed his election fraud lawsuits.
Let’s not forget it was nine jurors (six men and three women), not the judge, who awarded E. Jean Carroll $5 million because Trump sexually abused and defamed her – a fact-driven, not witch-hunt-motivated, verdict. (A federal judge ruled the ex-president’s comments about Carroll were libelous.) A second trial involving Carroll and Trump is set to start Jan. 15, the day of the Iowa GOP caucus.
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The MAGA faithful probably haven’t let it sink in that Judge Arthur Engoron of New York City already ruled that Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization repeatedly committed fraud during the last decade; again, a fact-driven (not political) decision.
Furthermore, Trump never once – to the best of my knowledge – cried wolf or uttered “witch hunt” in the 4,000-plus lawsuits that encompassed his life. Arizona Central-USA Today notes Trump has been the plaintiff 2,121 times and was a defendant on 1,929 occasions. The media’s ongoing analysis of Trump’s legal findings are broken down as follows: 1) 17 political campaign cases; six within the last year, 2) 190 government and tax cases, 3) 85 product branding and trademark cases, 4) 1,863 casino-related cases, 5) 208 class action cases over contract disputes tied to real estate developments, 6) 130 employee-employment cases, 7) 63 golf-club-related cases, 8) 14 media outlet or individual defamation cases, 9) 697 personal injury cases, 10) 622 real estate cases and 11) 206 other miscellaneous cases.
And, let’s remember “Donald Trump has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment, including non-consensual kissing or groping, by at least 25 women since the 1970’s.” Since past actions are the best predictor of future behavior, it’s not surprising Trump has not yet made good on his promise that “all of these liars (females) will be sued after the election (2016) is over.” Again, crying wolf.
Here’s a quick review – thanks to a Dec. 6 Politico report – of Trump’s current criminal cases that appear to be the real deal rather than a witch-hunt:
Might Trump be crying “witch hunt” and his lawyers purposely throwing as many counter arguments onto the court systems so the cases won’t have a verdict until after the Nov. 5, 2024, election? Of course.
His history of life-long legal issues – starting at age 27 (accusations of violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968) – should cause any registered Republican, independent or Democrat with an ounce of brain matter to think more than once about whether a man like Trump is fit to lead the greatest country in the world and abide by the Constitution and laws.
The words of Theodore Roosevelt are fitting: “No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was nominated for speaker by his fellow Republicans, but still needs to secure enough votes to win the post.
David Jolly, a former Republican member of Congress who has become a leading figure in efforts to break the two-party hold on American politics, has turned his newest organization's efforts toward Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s campaign to be speaker of the House.
Jolly and Maria Cardona, a public affairs veteran and Democratic strategist, recently formed Facts First USA with the goal of preventing lawmakers from using their oversight powers for political gain. This week, the group is focused on McCarthy’s negotiations with his fellow Republicans as he seeks to shore up enough votes to be the next speaker.
As first reported by Politico, Facts First President David Brock has sent a memo to the group’s allies warning of deals McCarthy may make with “ultra MAGA extremists” in the House in exchange for their votes for speaker.
“The corrupt bargain comprises specific promises and concessions being made to right wing caucus members to advance their own narrow special-interest partisan agendas that ill serve the American people,” Brock wrote. “The corrupt bargain is an abuse of power by McCarthy and an indication he is so desperate to run the House he is willing to burn it down.”
(“Corrupt bargain” is a reference to the 1824 presidential election, in which Speaker Henry Clay arranged votes in the House to ensure John Quincy Adams was named president rather than Clay’s rival Andrew Jackson.)
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With Republicans holding a very narrow majority in the new Congress, McCarthy needs to hold together nearly every member of the caucus in order to win the speakership. Facing pressure from multiple factions – including Republicans who won in districts carried by Joe Biden, the hard core Freedom Caucus and devout allies for Donald Trump – McCarthy may need to strike deals to secure enough votes.
Multiple media outlets have reported that McCarthy has taken a more aggressive approach to oversight of the Biden administration, particularly Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and his management of the southern border, to win the support of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other vocal Republicans.
“If McCarthy doesn't get to 218, perhaps a unifier does and everyone goes home quietly. But in a multiple ballot scenario, we can expect certain GOP members to begin to look at coalition governing,” Jolly said, who identified a possible unity candidate.
“Outgoing Michigan Rep. Fred Upton could get 175 Republicans and 50 Dems to lead the next House should the body devolve into a multiple ballot situation on January 3,” he said. “I'm sure there are others, but he is the perfect speaker candidate in this moment.”
Jolly is a former Republican member of Congress who left the GOP and became executive director of a new political party known as the Serve America Movement. Rather than focusing on carving out a partisan niche, the SAM Party was created to support candidates who back political reform. Earlier this year, the SAM Party merged with two other organizations to create the Forward Party, which is now led by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey.
Jolly continues to support the Forward Party but is not formally involved so he can focus on his work in the media.
With his new organization, Jolly wants to hold his former colleagues’ feet to the fire.
“Facts First is intended to be the leading rapid response organization providing information to the public in the face of House Republican investigations,” he said. “Republicans don't get to make allegations simply because they read something in a chat room. Facts First will also focus on the hypocrisy of House GOP chairs issuing subpoenas when they personally refused to respond to January 6 subpoenas, and the hypocrisy of ignoring oversight convictions during the Trump years.”
Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Last week, we asked our readers and the larger community of the Bridge Alliance to give us your take on corruption. Specifically, we asked, “Is all corruption equal?” My quick take is yes, all corruption is equal. But the impact of corruption is not.
I have long held that as a society, we have allowed small corruptions to become normalized. Then when obvious or public corruption is revealed, we take corruption less seriously. We make excuses about “so-and-so is worse.” Small corruptions leave us dirty and slimy, but we quickly forget them and wash off the residue. These could be incidents of disrespect, where we could have spoken up or “forgot” to take out the trash because we just didn’t feel like it. Neither will have broad impact, and if our conscience is not easily pricked, what will we allow next? A personal growth training I once attended had a saying, “99.5 percent effort is hard, 100 percent is easy.” Why? Because if you make a 99.5 percent commitment, you’ll constantly be maneuvering the exception. If there are no exceptions, it’s easy. This is a good strategy for personal exercise plans, dieting and commitments to our ethics.
When it comes to corruption, I’m in the 100 percent category. In what feels like a previous life as a young adult, I was asked to take a lie detector at work. Some cash had gone missing and they brought in a specialist to test everyone who had access to the cash. During that process, I revealed I had taken candy bars that were stored near my desk before being put in the vending machine. Not many, maybe two or three over the course of a year. It was a small lapse in my ethics, a corruption of my values. What I learned about myself was that to live comfortably with myself, I needed to honor my values and act ethically. Always – 100 percent is easier.
Now I pause to re-examine my thoughts on corruption. Among the slew of responses we received, a handful stood out to me. These responses stood out because I had to stop and re-read them. Several times, in fact.
In brief, they were pointing out that my examples were about more than corruption. They were also about moralism, ethics and legality. Many examples were included and have expanded my thinking about corruption and how connected it is to other aspects of our lives today. I’ve taken the liberty of selecting the core of their responses.
About moralism and corruption, Bruce Jewell laid out a well-reasoned thought that false charges of corruption (akin to racism) are often used today to tar others arguments and the person taking a particular position. In the bridging community, we would call this demonizing the other. The accuser defines what is right and wrong as a means of taking or maintaining power. The accusation cleaves our connection to each other. He goes on to suggest an antidote:
The viewpoint that strengthens bonds between people and encourages compassion is “morality and ethics”: that behavior which enhances life and promotes compassion and empathy. This is a more challenging approach to understanding the content of a discourse in that it requires opening oneself to inquiry, understanding and thought.
Our country’s people are now deeply divided by various power elites who enhance their power through our division. One may well be appalled by some of the political groups now on the national stage or even the position that some of our friends may hold, but taking a firm moralistic stand will only deepen division and our troubles.
A truly moral position is a position that takes the war out of our words, unifies, seeks peace and proposes solutions to the problems facing us all.
In other words, we have to listen, care and think for ourselves, with consideration and good will for others. Another reader, Erik Olsen, points out:
It seems as though morality and ethics are taking a back seat to the ends justifying the means. For many of our institutions this appears to be the case. There is a decided lack of confidence in the honesty and integrity of government, law enforcement and the press. This leads to a belief that truth is in the eye of the beholder. And we are losing any source of defining arbiters of what is true, what is good.
Sometimes this problem is in individuals being unwilling to listen and consider their own biases. Other times it is the demonstrated dishonesty of the institutions we depend on.
It starts with us. Listen, think, challenge your beliefs, apply ethics and morals to your own decision-making.
Another respondent, Janet Basu, used examples from her community to make her point:
All corruption is the same. Yet some rises to another level of evil.
Take half a box of pencils from the office supply closet: Your colleagues run out of pencils unexpectedly and that sets back somebody's work day.
Take a bribe from a wealthy contractor: You have the power to make sure that the permit process for his next building project goes smoothly. Petty corruption corrodes.
Redevelopment of neighborhoods and placement of freeways have displaced communities. It may have been legal; the result is gentrification without representation.
A veneer of legality does not disguise the fact that extreme gerrymandering and extreme measures to make it more difficult to vote violate the intent of the Constitution. When vast amounts of money are spent to skew the vote, that is corruption writ large.
These kinds of corruption go beyond petty dishonesty or self-aggrandizement. All corruption is not the same when some types (of corruption) undermine society.
My take on corruption was summed up by Wayne Anson, who wrote, “Corruption breeds instability on all levels and quietly undermines peace and justice.”
I have become better at discerning corruption, ethics, morality and legality by listening to our community. This is the challenge for us all: Do the work to eliminate corruption from ourselves and our politics. Long live the republic if we do.
More transparency is needed in the nonprofit space, including the Black Lives Matter organizations, writes Clough.
Clough is a public service technologist focusing on the design of government and nonprofit technologies, and she is a Frederic Bastiat economics fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.
Activism has an accountability problem. And it’s causing burnout.
We’re used to the rallying cries for government transparency. The rationale that public servants’ stewardship over our tax dollars is the public’s business is nothing new for Western democracies. Still, for all of the effort to bring the government into the spotlight, many of our social movements have trended in the opposite direction.
Of late, many movements seem to be protests without ends. Activism is increasingly a journey with no destination, and many organizations now subsist on the ambiguity that comes from having no express purpose or goal. Fewer movements are defined by concrete policy priorities for fear that actionable goals will dampen enthusiasm. If suffragettes were online today, they’d likely trade in their “Votes for Women” banners for far vaguer #SupportWomen hashtags.
It may be easier to identify with a problem than a solution, but this strategy is short-sighted. Focusing activists on manufactured emergencies might generate short-term buzz but does little to create long-term interest or feelings of self-efficacy. Roughly half of Americans don’t stay interested in the same social issue longer than a week, according to the United Way, and a third report their attention span lasting only a few days. Knee-jerk donation is becoming the norm, especially as younger donors come to view their giving as less geographically constrained.
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Social media currents reflect the social cause of the week with intermittent cameos from organizations offering their donation buttons alongside the highest trending hashtag. Properly executed, volunteerism and charitable giving should be fun. Psychology tells us that supporting causes helps us feel like problem-solvers and boosts happiness. Of this dynamic, happiness and nonprofit management expert Arthur C. Brooks says, “When people give their time or money to a cause they believe in, they become problem solvers. Problem solvers are happier than bystanders and victims of circumstance.”
The role of nonprofits in helping people act as problem solvers for the causes they care about can only be sustained with sufficient trust in that relationship, but the ease with which donations can be given means that legitimacy is not always clear. Recipients of donations can range from questionable to outright fraudulent. Many activists are beginning to question where their social media donations go, like in the case of grassroots Black Lives Matter chapters complaining publicly about the lack of transparency in their national organization’s finances and governance. Worse still, online donations have opened the door to fraudulent impersonations of charity organizations, like those that preyed on donors in the wake of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire.
While supporting causes should make activists feel more empowered, this lack of trust is leading to burnout. The United Way found over 60 percent of Americans have “burnout” about social justice issues, with self described empathy dropping over time due to “activism fatigue.” Without intentional transparency, this fatigue could have existential consequences, especially for younger supporters. One report by the Case Foundation found that three quarters of millennials would stop donating to an organization if the impact of their donations was unclear.
In the spirit of solution-oriented dialogue, some organizations are starting to get it, and the digital era is making simple solutions possible. Some social justice organizations have begun to place greater emphasis on the direct impact of donations, publishing their operational costs for things like intern stipends and weekly newsletters directly on their donation page. Another grassroots movement successfully changing this burnout pattern on an even broader scale is the American Conservation Coalition.
Rather than focusing its messaging on climate change being an insurmountable problem, its focuses on keeping activists educated and up to date about concrete steps to help save the environment. Founded and run by Gen Z digital natives, ACC recently released a new approach, The Climate Commitment, for the sole purpose of keeping its policy priorities transparent. The site makes the organization’s purpose clear, listing in detail not only a breakdown of the problem but also six expandable policy areas and granular concrete priorities in each area. Statistics, case studies and international comparisons supporting their claims about renewable energy sources make an optimistic case for progress that’s convicting yet encouraging.
The digital era has helped social initiatives communicate faster and to more of their supporters than ever before, but the capture of activists’ attention requires more responsible stewardship than we’ve seen from recent movements. In an environment where activism networks are quickly hemorrhaging support due to fatigue, burnout and exhausted attention spans, the increasing transparency of innovative organizations should serve as examples of how to craft rallying cries around solutions, not problems.