A Chronicle of Corruption

How the West Was Lost

We blogged yesterday on egalitarianism.  We argued that modern Western democracies are rife with bribery and corruption.  Recently, the son of the Vice-President, Joe Biden was dismissed from the US Navy because of cocaine use.  His father has been using his position to line his son’s pockets for a long, long time.  His son, Hunter has proved no slouch operating on his father’s influence peddling coattails.

Michelle Malkin documents the systemic corruption:

The Hunter Biden Chronicles

His serial nepotistic jobs belie his father’s regular-guy image.  

By Michelle Malkin
October 22, 2014 
National Review Online

Everything you need to know about Beltway nepotism, corporate cronyism, and corruption can be found in the biography of Robert Hunter Biden. Where are the Occupy Wall Street rabble-rousers and enemies of elitist privilege when you need them? Straining their neck muscles to look the other way.

The youngest son of Vice President Joe Biden made news last week after the Wall Street Journal revealed he had been booted from the Navy Reserve for cocaine use. His drug abuse was certainly no surprise to the Navy, which issued him a waiver for a previous drug offense before commissioning him as a public-affairs officer at the age of 43. The Navy also bent over backward a second time with an age waiver so he could secure the cushy part-time job.

Papa Biden loves to tout his middle-class, “Average Joe” credentials. But rest assured, if his son had been Hunter Smith or Hunter Jones or Hunter Brown, the Navy’s extraordinary dispensations would be all but unattainable. Oh, and if he had been Hunter Palin, the New York Times would be on its 50th front-page investigative report by now.

Despite the disgraceful ejection from our military, Hunter’s Connecticut law license won’t be subject to automatic review. Because, well, Biden.  Biden’s bennies are not just one-offs. Skating by, flouting rules, and extracting favors are the story of Hunter’s life.

Hunter’s first job, acquired after Joe Biden won his 1996 Senate reelection bid in Delaware, was with MBNA. That’s the credit-card conglomerate and top campaign donor that forked over nearly $63,000 in bundled primary and general contributions from its employees to Senator Biden. As I’ve reported previously, Daddy Biden secured his custom-built, multimillion-dollar house in Delaware’s ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood with the help of a leading MBNA corporate executive. Average Joe went on to carry legislative water for MBNA in the Senate for years.

Hunter zoomed up to senior vice president by early 1998 and then scored a plum position in the Clinton administration’s Commerce Department, specializing in “electronic commerce,” before returning to MBNA three years later as a high-priced “consultant.” While he collected those “consulting” (translation: nepotistic access-trading) fees, Hunter became a “founding partner” in the lobbying firm of Oldaker, Biden, and Belair in 2002.

William Oldaker was Papa Biden’s former fundraiser, campaign treasurer, and general counsel — a Beltway barnacle whose Democratic-machine days dated back to Teddy Kennedy’s 1980 presidential bid. Under Oldaker’s tutelage, Hunter lobbied for drug companies, universities, and other deep-pocketed clients to the tune of nearly $4 million billed to the company by 2007.  Coincidentally, then–Illinois senator Barack Obama personally requested and secured cozy taxpayer-subsidized earmarks for several of Hunter’s clients.

Hunter got himself appointed to multiple corporate board positions, including a directorship with Eudora Global. It’s an investment firm founded by one Jeffrey Cooper, head of one of the biggest asbestos-litigation firms in the country. SimmonsCooper, based in Madison County, Ill., donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Biden the Elder’s various political campaigns over the past decade — all while the firm poured $6.5 million into lobbying against a key tort-reform bill, which Biden worked hard to defeat. Cooper also contributed to the Delaware attorney-general campaign of Hunter’s older brother, Beau, and paid Beau for legal work on lucrative asbestos-litigation cases.

Hunter also was previously a top official at Paradigm Global Advisors, a hedge-fund holding company founded with Vice President Biden’s brother, James, and marketed by convicted finance fraudster Allen Stanford. As Paradigm chairman, Hunter oversaw half a billion dollars of client money invested in hedge funds while remaining a lobbyist at Oldaker, Biden, and Belair. Cooper chipped in $2 million for the ill-fated venture, which went bust amid nasty fraud lawsuits.

Continually failing upward, Hunter snagged a seat on the board of directors of taxpayer-subsidized, stimulus-inflated Amtrak, where he pretended not to be a lobbyist, but rather an “effective advocate” for the government railroad system serving the 1 percenters’ D.C.–New York City corridor.

So where does a coke-abusing influence peddler go after raking in gobs of Daddy-enabled dough and abusing the U.S. Navy’s ill-considered generosity? Back to Cronyland! Hunter joined Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings — owned by a powerful Russian government sympathizer who fled to Russia in February — this spring. The hypocritical lobbyist-bashers at the White House deny he will be lobbying and deny any conflict of interest.

Meanwhile, Just Like You Joe was whipping up class envy in South Carolina last week. “Corporate profits have soared,” he railed, thanks to “these guys running hedge funds in New York,” who are to blame for “income inequality.” You know, like his son and brother and their Beltway back-scratching patrons.  The Bidens: They’re not like us.

— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies. Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com. © 2014 Creators.com

The US is an exemplar of a modern secular Western democracy.  It has all the trimmings.
 

Driven to Drink

The Consequences of Forced Equality

Equality is a tricksy notion.  It has intrinsic appeal.  For example, the principle that there should be one law for all, and that before the bar of justice all should be treated equally, regardless of wealth, title, position, or lack thereof is intrinsically and self-evidently just.  It is the unjust society which has one law for the rich and another for the poor, and which has regard for a man’s “face” when deciding guilt or innocence.

This is a fundamental Christian principle.  The law of God declares that judges must never take a bribe and that justice is to be administered “blindly”–that is, neutrally, without regard for class, colour, or culture.  Justice, in order to be just, must maintain strict impartiality.  (Deuteronomy 16:19)  Because God does not take bribes, nor must His judges.

When a culture moves from being grounded upon God and His law, bribery rapidly reappears.
  In democracies, it starts with the ballot box.  Politicians and political parties in secularist democracies offer bribes to voters (who are the ultimate judges within a secular democratic system).  To secure electoral support, craven politicians openly bribe the voter, promising him wealth, income, assistance, and direct monetary benefits if he will vote for the craven bribe-offerer.  Such a system rapidly perverts justice, not the least because such bribes–to be paid–require the forced extraction of property from one’s neighbour via the oppressive taxing power of the state.  It is no accident that secular western democracies have become vast engines of bribery and corruption, where equality before the law was tossed out long ago.

A Christian Commonwealth would be expected to remove this aspect of inequality before the law.  It would move against such electoral bribery and corruption.  Politicians who promised money or the equivalent to certain interest groups and sectors of society in exchange for their votes would likely be charged with bribery and corruption of the electorate.

In our secular Western democracies, money talks–and virtually everyone listens.  Bribery in one form or another is rampant.  Corruption and influence peddlers are welcome guests in the judgement halls of government.  Contributors to politicians and political parties line up for the payback, the “return on investment”, whether it be a plum government job, the legislative consent for a construction project which will be awarded to the donor, or the passing of legislation favouring one’s own business either directly through subsidies or payouts, or indirectly, through shafting competitors with a brazen piece of twisted law.  All these are examples of judicial inequality, which, by definition, are unjust.  Equality before the law is a fundamental principle of justice largely dismembered on the gibbet of the modern democratic state.

But other idealistic notions of equality are manifestly unjust and contrary to the very creation order itself.  Human beings are exceedingly diverse, equipped by nature with a broad range of gifts and capabilities, aptitudes and abilities.  Some are born healthy; others born sick and afflicted with disease.  Some are tall; others short.  Physical characteristics and features vary widely.  Whilst in some measures human beings are precisely equal–they are all born reflecting the image of God Himself–in virtually all other measures they are diverse.  This diversity is part of the glory of mankind as a species.  To insist upon equality in such things is manifest nonsense, if not carnal envy, or an attempt to assuage feelings of guilt on the part of the better off.

Moreover, each person is born into a family or household or living situation of some kind or other.  Some are born into immensely wealthy households; others are born into poverty and squalor.  Some soar on the heights of fame and fortune, yet die from drug overdoses or from becoming enslaved to alcohol or addicted to cocaine or meth.  Some use their wealth and success to serve others less accomplished or successful, not out of guilt but true charity and compassion.  Others are destroyed by their success.  Whilst none of us choose the circumstances of our birth and early life, our character and scruples and morals deeply affect what we subsequently make of our lives.  Such choices–for good or ill–affect our lives and exacerbate socio-economic inequality.

Moreover, throughout our lives we play a multitude of roles, some of which cast us as equals with others, some cast us as superior to others, whilst others cast us as inferior, weak, and dependant.  We are surrounded by those superior to us in strength and experience and often wisdom whilst we are children and teenagers.  As adults we work amongst equals, but live as superiors to our children when they are in their infancy.  At the same time we are inferior to those who employ us when it comes to receiving and following work instructions, but were an employer to join a sports team of which we were the coach, the roles would be  reversed.  In the church, in ancient times, a Christian household may have consisted of masters and slaves, but in the local church where the family worshipped, the slave may have been a ruling church officer, and the master the congregant.  The Scriptures command the slave to obey the master at home, and the master to obey the elder/slave in church matters and life.

In the light of all these rich diversities and social complexities, the drive for social equality or monochrome socio-economic egalitarianism tears human societies apart.  It denies (and seeks to destroy) the rich tapestry of diversity of  roles and responsibilities and the changing swirl of roles of inferiority, superiority, and equality which contributes to the wonder, the complexity, the diversity, and joy of existence in this wonderful world.  In these matters, the drive for social egalitarianism is destructive as anything can be.  In the end, to progress towards such a utopian and spurious goal requires a leveller, a regulator whose commands and demands enslave everyone.  It is not by random accident that egalitarian doctrines in atheistic materialist societies encouraged (and required) children spying and informing upon their parents.  The mad drive for spurious and impossible equality inevitably produced egalitarian uniformity and destroyed human society.

It is said that modern Russia is riven with alcoholism.  This, it seems, is the unexpected consequence of living under Communist-forced egalitarianism for over fifty years.  The new model Soviet man and woman were literally driven to drink under the tortuous weight of the relentless drive for social equality.  One of the few “comforts” people could find was in the bottle.

Peter Hitchens, who worked in the Soviet Union for a number of years, describes what the dying years of enforced egalitarianism were like:

. . . ordinary male Muscovites (women wouldn’t have dared go there) patronized beer-bars so horrible that I could only wonder at the home life of those who used them.  You took your own glass–usually a rinsed-out pickle jar–and a handful of brass coins worth a few pennies, along with some dried fish wrapped in an old newspaper.  you fed your coins into a vending machine, and pale, acid beer dribbled intermittently out of a slimy pipe into you jar.  you then went to a high table, slurped your beer (which tasted roughly the way old locomotives smell), and crunched your fish, spitting the bones onto the floor.  There was no conversation. . . .

I visited one of the special police stations that handled the drunks, and they showed me a dismal museum of the things Russians drank when the could not get vodka.  Cheap Soviet aftershave, apparently, was bearable and intoxicating if drunk through cotton waste.  A sandwich of black bread and toothpaste was mildly alcoholic if nothing else could be found.  A popular and bitter jest told the story of a conversation in a drinker’s home after the state announced a rise in the price of vodka.  “Daddy,” asks the child with hope in its heart, “will this mean you will drink less?”  “No,” replied the head of the household, “It means that you will east less.” [Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010),  p.88f.]

The idolatrous dystopia of forced equality destroys human beings.  It’s only fruit is near universal drunkenness and alcoholism.  

Why the Fuss?

A Bit of Bribery and Corruption Makes the World Go Round

There has been a long tradition in the West against bribery, followed by the inevitable corruption of judges, rulers, and officials.  But billions of people in the world live in jurisdictions where bribery is simply the way things are done.  For centuries the Chinese have used “fragrant grease” to get officials and administrators to deliver what they are seeking.  Bribery and corruption are common in India, where it is regarded as “paying–or tipping–in advance”. 

Every so often a non-Westerner enters a Western jurisdiction and attempts the age-old practice of bribery and public wrath and condemnation is called down upon his head.  We have seen this very thing in New Zealand over recent days.  The opposition Labour Party has been fulminating against the government, accusing it of taking bribes to favour a certain Chinese investor who has become a New Zealand citizen.  Corruption, corruption, corruption has been the cry.  Well it may have been.  But, sadly for the Labour Party, it has now emerged that it too has apparently been equally corrupted by the same Chinese immigrant, who, in the past has given money to Labour, as well as the current administration.  Shame and red faces all around. Oh, dear.  Never mind.
 

Millionaire businessman Donghua Liu has confirmed for the first time that he donated to the Labour Party.  The 53-year-old has been at the centre of political scandals involving National and Labour for months but yesterday broke his silence to say he had given “equally to Governments of both colours”.

National declared a $22,000 donation in 2012, but Labour found no records of Liu donations after the Herald revealed that he paid $15,000 for a book at an auction fundraiser in 2007.  There is also a photograph of his partner receiving a bottle of wine from a Labour minister at an auction.  “Any political donations have always been given in good faith without any expectation. It is over to the politicians to make any appropriate declarations,” Liu said in a statement.

“However, because I’ve built relationships with politicians, made donations, because it’s election year and, dare I say, because I’m Chinese, I suppose I’ve been an easy target for some to gain some political mileage and score some points.”  Investigations by the Weekend Herald this year have shown that Liu forged links with MPs from both sides of the political spectrum.  [NZ Herald]

Now, Liu has good reason to be both disconsolate and discombobulated.  After all, he is doing nothing different from what is common amongst his countrymen–and has been for time immemorial.  What is all this fuss about in New Zealand?  Why is New Zealand (or the West) so puritanical on this matter?  After all, aren’t we all secular evolutionists?  New Zealand shares the same cosmological assumptions as China: we are all materialists.  If bribery works, what’s wrong with it?  Surely life and its operating principles must be grounded in pragmatism because that’s the root principle of materialism and evolutionism.  If it works, it’s OK.  

For our part, we think Liu has it dead to rights.  It’s New Zealand which is confused on the matter.  In reality it is the Bible which condemns bribery and the excision of bribery from Western culture is a peculiarly Christian contribution.  Remove the Christian faith, replace it with evolutionist materialism, and there is not reason why it should remain proscribed.  None at all. 

Here is a summary of relevant biblical passages:

Moses was to select judges over Israel.  The qualifications for a good judge were as follows:

Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.  (Exodus 18:21)

The Lord has laid down standards for justices:

And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. (Exodus 23:8)

God Himself is not partial–but fair and just.  God does not take bribes.  Therefore, nor must we.

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. (Deuteronomy 10:17)

Bribery is inimical to justice. It perverts the cause of justice–and any society which tolerates it foments injustice against its own citizens.

You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. (Deuteronomy 16:19)

Therefore, what stands against the centuries of bribery in China and India and other non-Christian nations?  The Bible.  If the West continues to be embarrassed and too worldly to respect the Christian Scriptures, its present rejection of bribery will not withstand the relentless onslaught of amorality arising from materialism and evolutionism. 

The Grievance Industry, Part I

The Art of the Bribe

In New Zealand we have a grievance industry.  In a word, the industry’s ratiocination runs like this: “I am hurt, offended, aggrieved, suffering because someone did something bad to me.  Someone, therefore, owes me restitution.”

The “bad thing” varies.  For some it was not being breast fed when they were infants, resulting in all kinds of deprivation when they “matured” into adults.  For others it was the failure of schools to educate them–so they are owed restitution because their illiteracy and innumeracy has left them deprived.  For others, they are debilitated with long term illness and they are owed care and compassion from society at large.  Others find themselves geriatric–something clearly caused by others–and so society owes them support, financial sustenance, a pension.  And so it goes. 

Some of these grievances have been institutionalised into government policy and the law of the land.  In fact, arguably the majority of them have.
  Theoretically the mere existence of an itch of any kind becomes a principial justification for monetary restitution by others, that is, society-at-large.  The only impediment is lack of political clout–by which we mean, the command of potential votes.  Take, for example, the current “grievance” fad of cyclists who are arguing they are owed special infrastructure on our roads because cyclists are being hit by cars, and because cycling is a legitimate lifestyle choice which must not be impeded, and because its “good” for the environment and one’s health, and therefore everyone has a monetary obligation to cycling and its promotion.  The only impediment to their grievances being assuaged is the number of votes the issue commands.  But the fundamental rectitude of the claim has already granted by society.  We are all in the grievance industry business now. 

We believe this whole maelstrom is an evil construct.  Insofar as it requires the state to atone for the grievance and make restitution from the pockets of taxpayers, it violates a fundamental principle of justice.  The state ought never have regard for the socio-economic circumstances of those to whom justice is being adjudicated.  Rich and poor alike must receive equal treatment–both in the construction of the law and its adjudication.  Justice worthy of the name must always be blind–favouring no-one.  (Deuteronomy 16: 18-20) Otherwise bribery and corruption are inevitable and are immediately institutionalised. 

If we were to identify one cause of the corruption and sleaziness of modern politics and government, it rests right here.  Political discourse in this country has become the “art” of the bribe.  We have more fragrant grease than China.  Modern politics and government is the art of establishing an electoral constituency by bribery: promising money, goods, and favour in exchange for electoral support.  People constantly sell their votes, electing politicians who they believe will favour them, and succour their grievances.  Butt this up against Scripture, and behold the institutional corruption of our modern, secular democracy. 

Exodus 18:21

Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.

 

Exodus 23:8 And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right

Deuteronomy 10:17

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.

Deuteronomy 16:19

You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. 

Leviticus 19:15

“You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour.

Are there any cases where grievances and their restitution are upright and honourable?  Of course.  For example, they abound in civil law.  Covenants and contracts freely entered into obligate the parties.  Failure to meet the obligations amounts to a fraudulent action, and a lawful claim of restitution by the aggrieved, damaged parties.  When one’s actions cause damage to a neighbour’s person or property, a case for restitution might well be mounted.   When the Crown acts in breach of its obligations, doing damage to citizens, a lawful case may well be taken. 

And now we come to one of the most public grievances of our modern era–that of Maori against the Crown.  What should we think of that?  Rort or just cause?  We endeavour to address that in a forthcoming piece. 

 

 

Slow Learners

Bribery and Electoral Suborning

Since we have entered an election year, political bribery is in full swing.  At his first major announcement, the Labour leader, David Cunliffe announced new government spending that will cost well over $1 billion dollars per year.  Will the electorate be seduced by this bribe?  We will have to wait and see. 

New Zealand is just emerging from a long, dogged recession.  In the early days of the Global Financial Crisis (which hit just after our recession began in earnest) we were at risk of having a run on our banks.  The country was in a dangerous position of rapidly rising fiscal deficits at a time when no-one was lending.  Credit had dried up.  How come?  Because the previous Labour government had spent all the fiscal surplus and had committed to spending way beyond that in various electoral bribes, middle class welfare and unaffordable programmes, so that our deficit was inevitably going to become a black necklace around the nation’s throat. 

We can still hear the gleeful tones of the then Minister of Finance, Dr Michael Cullen as he taunted the Opposition with a peculiar channelling of Mother Hubbard  that the fiscal cupboard was now bare.  He had “spent it all”, he chortled.
  Apart from his reckless spending on Kiwi Rail, buying it back at a price no-one with a smidgen of financial prudence would have ever approved, the biggest new spending was upon Early Childhood Education (also known as over-engineered, gold plated, daycare centres) and Working For Families (a middle class welfare programme). 

They say that socialism eventually runs out of other people’s money.  Election bribery was in such full swing that not only had Labour run out of other people’s money, it had started spending money no-one had, thereby debt-enslaving our children and grandchildren. 

Through the last six difficult years the government has worked to reduce wasteful spending, increase its effectiveness, and return the nation to a fiscal surplus (before starting to pay down the billions of accumulated debt).  We are now just on the cusp of a surplus.  Economic growth is picking up pace.  Employment is starting to rise.  The hard and difficult climb is coming to an end. 

Labour’s response?  Reckless bribes of new spending to drive the country back into deficit and to start the cycle of spend, boom, bust, recession/depression all over again, making the struggles of the last six years a waste of time.  The question before us now is, Has the electorate learned its lesson, or will it be seduced and suborned by the bribes?  We will see. 

Cunliffe is denying that his bribery will increase the deficit.  His reckless new spending is going to be paid for by raising taxes, he says.  Oh, don’t worry.  It’s only the “rich” who are going to pay these new, higher taxes–but we won’t talk about that until after the election.  Two problems: Cunliffe has already defined households earning $150,000 per year as being worthy recipients of his new welfare bribes–so clearly, they are not rich in Cunliffe’s world.  So, a very, very small percentage of taxpayers are going to have to pay huge tax increases to pay the bill for the new spending.  And then there is the airily announced and long promised Labour capital gains tax, which is a fig.  Such taxes are very costly and complex to administer, and raise relatively little revenue.  We already have capital gains tax in New Zealand, but it is rarely enforced for those very reasons. 

Here is the most odious of the egregious bribes:

Most parents of newborns will get $60 a week until that baby turns 1, while those on middle and lower incomes will continue to receive the payment until the child turns 3.  Mr Cunliffe said the party had set the income threshold relatively high so that it would be near-universal, although its primary aim was to help address child poverty. (NZ Herald)

Cunliffe is either too dumb to consider, let alone understand, the perverse consequences of ill-conceived government policies, or he is too reckless to care.  The worst poverty occurs in the underclass, which is ridden with solo-mothers, dependant upon government welfare.  One of the easiest ways for such folk to achieve an increase in income is to fall pregnant and have another child. You get more of what you pay for.  Under Labour’s bribe, every new child born will increase a household’s income by over $3,000 per year. 

The perverse outcome?  A rapid increase in the numbers of solo mothers with four or more children with multiple anonymous fathers leading to further social dislocation and much worse child poverty, suffering, and degradation.  Cunliffe’s policy will exacerbate child poverty, not alleviate it.  He appears ignorant of human nature and its motivations–or, more likely, he foolishly tells himself that, “this time, it will be different”. 

The real issue is whether the electorate is going to be seduced or offended by such crass, reckless bribes.  We will see.

>Know Thyself

>Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Theodore Dalrymple
(First published in CityJournal, 7th May, 2010)

Rather than pointing fingers, Greek citizens should look in the mirror.

In normal circumstances, people in Britain would have viewed the riots in Athens with a certain disdainful amusement: those excitable Mediterraneans at it again! What else can you expect, really? But thanks to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Britain is now the Greece of the North Sea; he has turned the healthiest public finances in Europe into the sickest, with a budget deficit as large as Greece’s (and soon to be much larger) and a public debt that will before long exceed 100 percent of GDP. So when we look at what is happening in Athens, we have the eerie sensation that this might be London a few weeks or months hence. We have seen our future, and it riots.

In fact, Greece is only a particularly acute or virulent case of the sickness that afflicts much of the Western world. Greece’s overall debt is higher, no doubt, and its deficit larger, than those of other countries, but the difference is one of degree, not of kind. Like most of the rest of us, the Greeks have been living beyond their means.

When the crowd tried to storm the Greek parliament, shouting, “Thieves! Thieves!,” its anger was misdirected. It was a classic case of what Freudians call projection: the attribution to others of one’s own faults. It is true that the Greek politicians are much to blame for the current situation, and no doubt many of them are thieves; but their real crime was not stealing, but offering a substantial proportion of the Greek population a standard of living that was economically unjustified, maintained for a time by borrowing, and in the long run unsustainable, in return for votes. The crime of that substantial proportion of the Greek population was to accept the bribe that the politicians offered; they were only too prepared to live well at someone else’s expense. The thieves were not principally the politicians, but the demonstrators.

Such popular dishonesty is by no means confined to Greece. In varying degrees, most countries in the West have displayed it, Britain above all. It is perhaps an inherent problem wherever the universal franchise is unaccompanied by widespread virtues such as honesty, self-control, providence, prudence, and self-respect. Greece is therefore a cradle not only of democracy, but of democratic corruption.

The Greek demonstrators did not understand, or did not want to understand, that if there were justice in the world, many people, including themselves, would be worse rather than better off, and that a reduction in their salaries and perquisites was not only economically necessary but just. They had never really earned their wages in the first place; politicians borrowed the money and then dispensed largesse, like monarchs throwing coins to the multitudes.

It is an obvious but often forgotten lesson of economics: what cannot continue will not continue.

>Fighting Bribery

>Would Zero Koha Notes Work Here?

We posted recently upon the endemic corruption that exists in China, where “fragrant grease” is required to get official approval for virtually any economic activity. Corruption is not isolated to China. India is also notoriously corrupt and lower level public servants have made the bribe an art form.

A rather quixotic idea is apparently helping break down the institution of bribery: zero rupee bank notes. An anti-corruption Non Government Organization, called 5th Pillar has started issuing the notes. The idea is that the poor and defenceless can use these false banknotes as a protest against officials who will not do their jobs until someone pays them money–which, of course, is officially illegal.

The concept is explained as follows:

The zero currency note in your country’s currency is a tool to help you achieve the goal of zero corruption. The note is a way for any human being to say NO to corruption without the fear of facing an encounter with persons in authority.

Next time someone asks you for a bribe, just take your country’s zero currency note and hand it to them. This will let the other person know that you refuse to give or take any money in order to perform services required by law or to give or take money to do something illegal.

Strange as it may seem, apparently these protest bank notes have an effect. Vijay Anand, 5th Pillar’s president recently explained how it works.

According to Anand, the idea was first conceived by an Indian physics professor at the University of Maryland, who, in his travels around India, realized how widespread bribery was and wanted to do something about it. He came up with the idea of printing zero-denomination notes and handing them out to officials whenever he was asked for kickbacks as a way to show his resistance. Anand took this idea further: to print them en masse, widely publicize them, and give them out to the Indian people. He thought these notes would be a way to get people to show their disapproval of public service delivery dependent on bribes. The notes did just that. The first batch of 25,000 notes were met with such demand that 5th Pillar has ended up distributing one million zero-rupee notes to date since it began this initiative. Along the way, the organization has collected many stories from people using them to successfully resist engaging in bribery.

One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success. Had the zero rupee note reached the old lady sooner, her granddaughter could have started college on schedule and avoided the consequence of delaying her education for two years. In another experience, a corrupt official in a district in Tamil Nadu was so frightened on seeing the zero rupee note that he returned all the bribe money he had collected for establishing a new electricity connection back to the no longer compliant citizen.

Anand explained that a number of factors contribute to the success of the zero rupee notes in fighting corruption in India. First, bribery is a crime in India punishable with jail time. Corrupt officials seldom encounter resistance by ordinary people that they become scared when people have the courage to show their zero rupee notes, effectively making a strong statement condemning bribery. In addition, officials want to keep their jobs and are fearful about setting off disciplinary proceedings, not to mention risking going to jail. More importantly, Anand believes that the success of the notes lies in the willingness of the people to use them. People are willing to stand up against the practice that has become so commonplace because they are no longer afraid: first, they have nothing to lose, and secondly, they know that this initiative is being backed up by an organization—that is, they are not alone in this fight.

This last point—people knowing that they are not alone in the fight—seems to be the biggest hurdle when it comes to transforming norms vis-à-vis corruption. For people to speak up against corruption that has become institutionalized within society, they must know that there are others who are just as fed up and frustrated with the system. Once they realize that they are not alone, they also realize that this battle is not unbeatable. Then, a path opens up—a path that can pave the way for relatively simple ideas like the zero rupee notes to turn into a powerful social statement against petty corruption.

We could do with some of these notes in New Zealand. We could call them zero Koha Banknotes. Imagine how a certain now convicted and imprisoned Cabinet Minister might have been cut off at the pass if a particular Thai tiler had handed him a Koha Note, instead of working on his houses for “free”. And it could have saved one Owen Glenn an enormous amount of money if he had paid Winston Peters his simony money in zero Koha Notes. Not to mention his large donation to the Labour Party in zero Koha Notes. His gong would not have cost him real coin, then. Not to mention those smelly immigration deals in exchange for “donations” to a certain political party.

Oh, but hold on. We are getting confused. All those shady deals had to do with bribing officials and politicians to do wrong, not with getting them to follow the law. Zero Koha Notes would not have worked at all. It strikes us that New Zealand’s corruption is more like the Chinese than the Indian variety. In India, public officials require bribes to persuade them to do their jobs. In China, officials receive bribes in order to bend, if not break the law. And so, it seems, is the case in New Zealand.

>Institutionalised Bribery

>Rotten Carcasses

We have argued previously that Western democracies, of which New Zealand is one, are institutionally corrupt. They exist by means of a tacit and frequently overt practice of bribery. The fact that it takes place all the time, and is part of the warp and woof of public and national life does not make it any less destructive, evil or corrupt.

Politicians bribe electorates and citizens by offering them money in exchange for their electoral support. Voters, for their part, effectively sell their votes and allegiance to politicians which offer them the best financial deal. Now, of course, if a politician were to walk into the local pub and promise he would mail a $50 bill to everyone who voted for him, he would be committing a crime. He would be guilty of corrupt practice. If, however, that same politician promised the same pub crowd that he would give them a new $50 welfare grant through something like “Working For Families” no-one would turn a hair.

Try to explain why the one action is corrupt and criminal and the other is not. Oh, yes, we know. The second example is not considered a corrupt practice because it is a bribe to everyone, not just those in the pub. The more expansive and inclusive and massive the bribery is, the less it is deemed to be criminal and corrupt. The lesson is that if one is going to act corruptly it is best to do it on a grand and massive scale.

Fran O’Sullivan has exposed how corruption runs deep within the halls and corridors of government. But this time, folk are likely to get a little bit upset about it because the bribery is too limited. It turns out that the Maori Party has both solicited and accepted a bribe from the government to buy their initial support for the reckless Emissions Trading Scheme. But in order to support it all the way into law, they will need more money. It’s called taking care of business, in this case, whanau. It’s criminal when the Mafia do it. And for the Prime Minister and National–it’s all just a bit of “fragrant grease”, as the Chinese say.

Maori Party co-leaders Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia are proving to be politicians of principle who know which side their toast is buttered on.

The Maori Party co-leaders’ opposition to the emissions trading scheme fell the moment National’s negotiators promised some sweeteners.

They have secured free insulation packages for houses in areas where low-income Maori live.

But what does that particular promise tell you about New Zealand today if the National-Maori party initiative is not also made available to all other Kiwis at a similar income level, regardless of ethnicity or colour on a pro rata basis.

What really stinks is the fact that Sharples and Turia are now in secret negotiations with National over the extent to which Maori – as opposed to those of all New Zealanders – will be able to protect the future value of their assets from being eroded through major Government policy changes.

Ironically, the Maori Party had opposed changing the present Labour ETS in any way unless polluters were made to pay big money for their crimes against humanity. That was until there was money on the table. Clearly this is corruption any which way you look at it. The fact that the whole country is not up in arms over this is only due to the fact that it is the kind of corruption we have grown used to over the past one hundred years.

The Chinese do not see “fragrant grease” as a corrupt practice. It is simply the way life is. Putting cash into the palm of the official/policeman/judge/politician to get things done is universal and accepted. It is now the norm here as well in government circles.

Not a few have warned that Emissions Trading Schemes will open up the door to all kinds of shams, scams, rip-offs, and theft. We believe these warnings are not histrionic. It has already started in the highest reaches of government. John Key, Nick Smith, Tariana Turia and Peter Sharples are calling down curses upon us all.