What is Public Corruption? What's the impact of Others People's Money? And Why does it Matter? Part 2
When Public Life Leaders use their position and influence to benefit themselves or their supporters, the cost is born by all the taxpayers. I did a quick search and landed on the Internal Revenue Service’s page listing examples of such money corruption, Examples of Public Corruption Investigations - Fiscal Year 2015[1].
Department of Justice officials announce the conviction of Veterans Administration official who skimmed $1.2 million on $6.0 million in construction contracts in New Jersey.
Public Corruption 101. Say you are an Engineering Supervisor for the Veterans Administration in New Jersey in 2008. You and three friends set up construction companies to do construction work for the VA. You use your position at the VA to direct over $6 million in construction work to these companies. In return, you get $1,277,205 in kickbacks siphoned off this work between 2008 and 2013. That means the Federal Government paid $1,277,205 EXTRA for these projects so the Public Life Leader could pocket the money. Nice work if you can get it. If you are into being a criminal. Welcome to the life of Jarod Machinga, of Hopewell, New Jersey!
Stacey Jackson, former head of the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership, convicted of skimming $424,000 in from Hurricane Katrina recovery money.
Public Corruption 201. Say you are the Executive Director of New Orleans Affordable Homeownership (NOAH), a city agency and non-profit corporation, and say you received money from the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to address blight within the city and to remediate homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina. As the Executive Director of NOAH, you can determine how much each contractor would be paid, and you arranged to overpay certain contractors, instructing them to kickback portions of the overpayments to you and to do renovation work on property you own, to the tune of $424,000. When you get investigated, you provide fraudulent documents to a contractor in an effort to mislead the federal grand jury investigation into the fraud. That’s the actual story of Stacey Jackson.
These are some of the public corruption stories we know about, because they were caught, the investigations went forward and uncovered the facts, and they were both convicted to multi-year jail terms for using their Public Life leadership authority to steal money.
Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzi, according to WikiLeaks, gave a "Heads Up" to Hillary Clinton's Campaign Chair, John Podesta, about FBI and Congressional investigations.
Political Corruption 301. Political corruption can be about more than just money, however. If Public Life leaders use their power, information, and influence to help the people they like to get or stay elected, that is public corruption on maybe a more insidious scale. This happens regularly but seems to be prosecuted less often than money corruption. Maybe the reason is we have become fatigued with the regularity of what I will call here Pubic Life Political Corruption. Examples happen every day. Here is one from today. I am typing this at 6:15 am, November 3, 2016, and as I look at my phone the first tweet I see is from Breitbart: Emails revealed by WikiLeaks show that Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik shared information about congressional investigation of Hillary Clinton with his friend John Podesta, Chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign. Here is the email:
Fwd: Heads up
From:john.podesta@gmail.com
To: jpalmieri@hillaryclinton.com, bfallon@hillaryclinton.com, cheryl.mills@gmail.com, hsamuelson@cdmillsgroup.com, kschake@hillaryclinton.com, nmerrill@hillaryclinton.com
Date: 2015-05-19 11:12
Subject: Fwd: Heads up
Additional chances for mischief.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Peter Kadzik* <peterkadzik@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Subject: Heads up
To: John Podesta <john.podesta@gmail.com>
There is a HJC oversight hearing today where the head of our Civil Division
will testify. Likely to get questions on State Department emails. Another
filing in the FOIA case went in last night or will go in this am that
indicates it will be awhile (2016) before the State Department posts the
emails.
Did you catch that? A top FBI official (Kadzik) sent a warning to Hillary’s campaign chief (Podesta) that Congress was about to bring up the Emails, that FBI agents would testify, and that a Freedom of Information Act request to release emails wasn’t going to be fulfilled until next year. Then, the Hillary campaign chief, Podesta, forwards the intel to six Clinton campaign leaders with the added comment, “Additional chances for mischief.”
If a person accepts a role in “Public Life,” then they are accepting the requirement for making the public good their goal, rather than their own good. Mr. Kradzik is a senior official at the Department of Justice, the ones who would prosecute , where I feel certain he is under strict standards about sharing information on cases, and here is an email, sent on his gmail.com account not his justice.gov one, where he shares inside information from the FBI about the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server to Hillary’s Campaign Chair!
Former Secretary of State and current Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton and her 2016 Campaign Chair and longtime adviser, John Podesta, who received a "Heads Up" email in May 2015 from his long-time friend and Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik about Congressional and FBI investigations into Clinton's private email server.
We don’t go see heroic movies about the dirty politician Boss Tweed and the Tammany Hall life in Chicago, where politicians were are on the take, making themselves rich at the expense of the taxpayers. Why? Because Political Corruption is slimy.
#FreedomIsBetter, and it requires that we hold our leaders to the standards of Public Life.
[1] https://www.irs.gov/uac/examples-of-public-corruption-investigations-fiscal-year-201