How can you tell when officials have accepted bribes? Easily, actually. You just need to use the power of observation and some common sense. Just like my favorite Agatha Christie's character, Miss Marple, who has spent all of her life in a tiny English village, yet by drawing analogies between the most mundane observable human behaviors, she is capable of solving very intricate crimes.Say, if you know that your neighbor did not inherit any family wealth, has a home-maker wife, works as a city building inspector, and yet drives a new Lexus and takes 3 vacations abroad every year, you can safely suspect that he takes bribes. Or if a city zoning commission which gives you a lot of grief and denies your petition to extend your deck by ONE FOOT because it will then be encroaching on the 3 yards easement around a sewer line, quickly approves a commercial development despite protests from neighbors, environmental groups, violation of existing zoning restrictions and exorbitant costs involved in moving roads and other infrastructure items - you can be reasonably sure that members of the zoning commission were ECONOMICALLY ENCOURAGED to make the decision in favor of this big developer.
Consider a couple more cases from our recent history as a country. BHG (bovine growth hormone) was approved by the FDA in 1993 as safe for cows after just THREE MONTHS of conducting studies. The BHG is passed to cow milk and milk products which we in turn consume. There have been studies linking this hormone to increased rates of human cancer. The hormone is BANNED EVERYWHERE in the developed world: Europe, Canada, New Zealand - you name it. Is it reasonable to assume that our own FDA was - mmm- economically encouraged to find it safe to use? You decide. I have stuck with hormone free milk products ever since, and I suspect that the FDA authorities have done the same in their personal life.
But maybe FDA is always quick to approve new and questionable treatments and additives? Let me think... Say, a chicken pox vaccine had been developed and administered in Japan for 14 years with an excellent record of safety, yet our own FDA refused to allow it on our market as being "unsafe" and "unproven" till 1996. Could it possibly be that manufacturers of the vaccine just stubbornly refused to grease the palm? Or that there were no special interest groups behind the vaccine to encourage the FDA to even study the issue (patients obviously are not a special itnerest group, or a group of interest to the FDA). Now the unanimous consensus is that there is a considerable economic impact from administering this vaccine, not to mention lives saved, and days of agony for parents and children.
Other "knee-jerk" quickly adopted policies with disastrous consequences for the country in general were, without a doubt, the Clinton-pushed NAFTA and Bush-pushed Free Trade with China. The speed of passing those sweeping changes speak loud and clear of corruption. The result of those policies were millions of US jobs lost, the almost total destruction of many American manufacturing in many areas, but multi-billion profits for corporations. If you are interested in details on how Bush willingly sold out his fellow Americans to special interest groups in his deal with China, read this summary. Incidentally, I am not sure that the Wall Street bailout was really a case of corruption. Well, in a way it was, but I don't think there was a financial payback to the architects of the bailout. I think their reward is that they are still alive.
What I am saying is that we don't even need to know the details of the shenanigans going on to KNOW that corruption is taking place. Common sense and power of observation is all it takes. If it looks like corruption, smells like corruption, and feels like corruption - in most cases, it IS corruption.
So what are our choices when we smell corrution? Just like the picture at the top of the post says, you can say nothing and hold your breath, or you can pray silently. I would say, prayer is our best strategy now.
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