There is growing evidence of corruption in our governance structures.  And it is time for citizens to demand transparency and investigate.

Life is complicated.  Managing kids, partner.  Getting food onto the table.  Keeping appointments.  Staying on top of the email inbox.  So paying attention to those people who oversee the purity of our drinking water, decisions about the rising cost of health care, height of buildings, training of police, assurance of food safety, corporate compliance with tax debts – these are some of the assurances we expect from government officials- the people we elect and their appointees at the local, state and national levels.  Our taxes pay for their services. 

It’s hard.  No one can do all that investigating and regulating themselves. It’s a complicated world and we count on government officials to work in our interest to keep us safe, healthy and ensure a society that allows us the opportunity to earn a living wage, to care for ourselves and families.

But are those government officials stepping up and doing what we count on them, pay them with our tax dollars, to do?  It always bears watching. Newspapers have traditionally been one way of keeping watch. But now our communities are becoming “news deserts”. Radio and TV are another.  Social media like Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) give us information but offer no assurance of accuracy.  Given the complexity of information flows in the 21^st century, do we even know what to look for?

When something goes wrong, like the water quality in Flint Michigan or the lack of regulatory control over healthcare availability across the US, or the loss of good jobs in your region, we should know who to hold accountable. 

When that ceases to happen in a way that affects the well-being of a class of people or the population of a geographic location, then the system is corrupt.   There is a delicate balance between the roles and responsibilities of the government officials and of the people living within the area governed.

It is the obligation of citizens to watch for the corruption of the system of government that they assume cares for their best interests.

What Should Count As CORRUPTION in Government?

Starting at the national level- there is ample evidence that, independent of party affiliation, government officials have failed to maintain a balanced ratio in the income growth earned by the richest US citizens compared to the income growth earned by the average (50^th percentile) US citizens since 1990 (calculated in 2020 dollars). (https://www.statista.com/statistics/203265/household-income-of-low-paid-and-high-paid-workers-in-the-us/)  During the period from 1990-2020, three decades, the average income of the 5% highest paid households grew at the rate of 77%, from $285,000 to $504,500.  The average median of all household incomes grew from $61,500 to $ $76,600, a growth of 24%.  The average earnings of the poorest 20% of households in the US grew from only $14,720 in 1990 to $16,530 in 2020, a 12% growth rate.  In short, the nation’s highest income households, the top 5% of households in the country saw their earnings grow at over SIX TIMES the rate of those of the poorest 20% of US households.  $504,500 compared to $16,530.  For comparison, the most expensive city for a family of four to live in, New York City, would require a household income of $318,406 to have a “living wage”.  Houston Texas is the least expensive city in the US for a family of four and requires $175,219 for a family of four.  Even that is a long way from the 20% of US households that average $16,530!

(For more information on calculating living wages:  https://www.thebalancemoney.com/living-wage-3305771 ;  https://livingwage.mit.edu/ ;    https://smartasset.com/data-studies/salary-needed-live-comfortably-2024; https://www.statista.com/chart/4514/income-inequality-us/)

Finding Corruption at the National Level

Why has the ability of the average US citizen, let alone the poorest 20% of our population, fallen so far from the ability for US households to maintain a living wage in some proportional relationship to the rate of growing income of the richest 5%?  The simple answer, the levers of government that would normally preserve and protect a proportionate relationship of income growth, sharing in the wealth of the economy, has been badly corrupted.  Lack of regulatory authority over private sector efforts to increase the value of privately owned as well as publicly traded corporations resulting the effects of billions of dollars of business lobbying efforts going to publicly elected officials to stop regulation, to inhibit the strength of unions, to destabilize the distribution of funds, to block the efforts of the IRS to collect taxes from the wealthy….. all these tactics, and more, have corrupted the fair distribution of income between the average American and the higher income American.  The machinery for corrupting a fairer distribution has been steadily baked into the system of federally elected officials, congressional and presidential, for decades. 

This corruption was exacerbated with the US Supreme Court approving passage in 2010 of the “Citizen’s United v. FEC” case, legislation that equated huge corporations with all the rights of individual citizens when it came to control over funding of federal (and state) elections.  (“In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the court’s ruling represented “a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government””).  That opened floodgates of private corporate money pouring into the pockets of elected officials with the clear understanding that, in return, elected officials would be most attentive to their corporate funders, not their voter constituents.

“Laboratories of democracy” is a phrase popularized by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1932, regarding the case New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, to describe how “a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” ^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratories_of_democracy}

Finding Corruption at the State Level

That was in 1932.  And there have been many examples of how states can develop publicly beneficial policies and programs that eventually get adapted by other states and the federal government.  In 2006 Massachusetts was a leader in developing a health care reform law that, four years later, became the model for the national “Affordable Care Act”.

But in recent decades states are more likely to be laboratories for wealthy, powerful private and corporate entities to develop methods for undermining the interests of the general public in a state.  The Koch brothers, the Heritage Foundation, the State Policy Network, etc. have taken Brandeis’s advice to heart and very effectively built a national network of “dark money” (https://publicintegrity.org/politics/what-is-political-dark-money-and-is-it-bad/)  with the intention of influencing state legislators.  They assume, correctly it seems, that people don’t watch their state legislators.  https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/koch-brothers-think-tank-report-099791  …  David Pepper, in his excellent book “Laboratories of Autocracy” shows the powerful influence of private corporate funds that override the clear interests of the public by “buying” state legislators, using the state of Ohio as an example. 

Because the state capital is more distant from most citizens than the city or town hall; and because the local and state news sources are dying across the country so there is little coverage of state politics and governance issues, state elected officials are able to do some truly outrageous things on behalf of their lobbyist donors without their constituents and voters knowing what they’ve done. This has enabled national syndicates of lobbyists for major corporations both in and out of the state to create their own “laboratories” at the state level to manipulate policies for the corporate interests, not for the citizen interests.

Finding Corruption at the Local Level

Lacking adequate local news sources (although more communities across the country are developing their own nonprofit digital news sources), news is often spread by word of mouth through school PTO members, church members, parents comparing notes on the sidelines at soccer games, and direct notifications from the city or town hall.  The failure of Flint Michigan’s city officials to act responsibly to prevent or then remediate the damage to the city’s drinking water stands for another kind of corruption.   Money may change hands, but it is nothing on the scale of state and federal corruption.  Typically, this money may be a payoff to a staff or board member for favorable building inspections or zoning decision.  

But at the local level, corruption can be much more subtle.  It can be the waiving of professional qualifications for a municipal job.  It can be changes in the hiring process to effectively limit all but one choice for the position.  It can be making government decisions behind doors, without proper public record.  It can be a faction of the officials colluding for an outcome that favors personal interests.  Of all of these, the failure to appoint competent staff with proven credentials in a competitive process allows the local government to devolve into “cronyism” and “nepotism”.  The interests of local citizens are not well served.  While it may not result in a poisoned water supply, it can result in overstaffing one department (police for example) and understaffing another department (parks and recreation for example).  It can result in bad fiscal management, the failure to budget appropriately for building maintenance requiring higher budgets down the road to replace boilers, roofs, buildings and roads when they fail, and the municipality is in crisis.  

Caring for the well-being, rights and privileges of citizens, whether earning a living wage or having safe drinking water, is the responsibility of government officials.  We support our local, state and federal employees and elected officials with our taxes. And those taxes should be affording all of us one of the highest standards of living in the world.  But checks and balances are required. 

Read your local news sources. Listen to reports on state and federal government issues. Attend public meetings and ask questions. Seeking out corruption in government is the job of the people, private citizens like you and me.

Extra reading:

• Evil Geniuses, The Unmaking of America by Kurt Anderson
• Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case & Angus Deaton
• Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman
• The Peoples’ Hospital by Ricardo Nuila