corruption

We have all witnessed government corruption in some way during our lifetime and one of the big complaints that outsiders have against government is the corruption. The thing that amazes me about it is the way it is openly displayed. I am not picking on Rahm Emanuel but he has been in the news and I will use him as an example.

He was just an ordinary citizen of modest means and he decided to help out on some political campaigns in Illinois, his home state. He first worked on Senator Paul Simons campaign and this got him a position on the Clinton campaign.

In 1998 he resigned from the Clinton administration and took a job as a banker with the firm Dresdner-Kleinwort. He has a B.A. in liberal arts and Masters in speech. He had never worked in a bank and certainly his education was not in banking.

He became managing director of the firms Chicago office in 1999 and in the next two and one-half years he made 16 million dollars as a banker.

He resigned from that job and Clinton named him to the Board of Directors of the Freddie Mac and on this job he had no specific assignment but attended board meeting at 6 times per year and his salary for this was $320,000 per year. It was estimated that these meetings lasted two hours so his pay was $26,000 per hour.

During his time on the board Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals.

You would think that this type of activity would be secret so as not to arouse suspicion that something might be remiss, but not so. Corruption has become so rampant that the corruptors no longer have to hide it.

Now you know why people are finally getting fed up and this coming election will bring some new faces to Washington. Whether this means that things will change is yet to be decided.