US states score poorly on cronyism & corruption test

It's quite surprising to me that the whole world thinks that corruption & cronyism don't exist in the Western world. Somehow, white skin means fairness, equality, merit, compassion etc. International organizations, like Transparency International, deride governments of Brazil, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Russia etc. for their unaccountability, corruption, & no ethics, but governments of UK, Canada, US, Australia, Japan etc. get a free pass. Why?

The latest election of Donald Trump, & then his appointments of his own son-in-law & daughter, in the White House posts are great examples of nepotism & cronyism (yes, his daughter doesn't have an official post, but she is sitting in on all presidential meetings.) Government lawmakers keep threatening that Trump could be in serious legal trouble if he doesn't divest of his personal business while he is the President of US, but they all seem to be empty threats. Some might say here that that's because he is a Republican, & Republicans / Conservatives are corrupt. But, as the article states, that even Democratic states have the same level of corruption as Republican states. So, the corruption is bipartisan. Ironically, corruption is one thing which unites every stateperson, all over the world, regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, etc.

As I always say that the colour of the human blood is red. Every human is same. Corruption in the government exists everywhere; be it in Pakistan, or UK, or US, or Canada or Madagascar. Politics has become the playground of the rich & corrupt. Ethically conscientious people are never given a chance to prove their mettle in the highest office in the land. Corrupt people in the government don't want an ethically conscientious person in charge of their affairs because then they will need to straighten themselves up. As Mr. Stern says in the last paragraph of the article that, "it’s very, very difficult for legislatures to focus on these things and improve them because they don’t want these laws, they don’t want to enforce them, and they don’t want to fund the people enforcing them."

Furthermore, what does it say about the democracy in the West. Democracy is supposed to mean that the general public not only freely chooses its own leaders but also keeps a tab on its leaders, & if & when, they seem to be not working for the general public, then the the public has the full control to remove that leadership. Well, in the absence of accountability of opaque state records, wouldn't you say that it would be a little hard to keep an eye on what the government is actually doing, & hence, harder still to remove them if they don't follow what the general public wants them to do. So, if the general public doesn't have any control on the government, then is this democracy? May I kindly remind you here that merely voting is not democracy. Voting takes place in many places. That doesn't mean that there's democracy.

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https://www.rt.com/usa/321359-state-governments-ethics-integrity/

The majority of state governments are hotbeds of cronyism, with the public shut out from true accountability by loophole-ridden open-records laws, according to a new report on the integrity of statehouses throughout the US.

Eleven of the 50 US states received failing grades for transparency and accountability, while only three earned a score about 70%. Alaska, with a score of 76, a "C" grade, was rated highest by the Center for Public Integrity, which just released its 2015 State Integrity Investigation, "a data-driven assessment of state government." Michigan came in dead last, with a score of 51.

"The State Integrity Investigation assesses the existence, effectiveness, & accessibility (i.e. citizen access) of key governance & anti-corruption mechanisms through a qualitative & indicator-based research process," the Center for Public Integrity and its partner, Global Integrity, explained their comprehensive probe of state laws & political cultures from coast to coast.

The investigation's findings are a cavalcade of embarrassing revelations about the overall climate of government transparency in the United States. From states that exempt entire branches of their government from open-records laws to states that absolutely refuse to seriously investigate ethics violations, the report's findings are “disappointing but not surprising,” said Paula A. Franzese, a state government ethics expert at the Seton Hall University School of Law.

In New Mexico, for instance, legislators passed a resolution – without needing the governor's approval – to exempt their emails from public records inquiries. "I think it’s up to me to decide if you can have my record,” one New Mexico representative said of the 2013 effort.

Delaware's Public Integrity Commission, the state's lobbying & ethics watchdog, has just two full-time staff members, the probe revealed. In 2013, a special state prosecutor found that the agency was so shorthanded, it was not able “to undertake any serious inquiry or investigation into potential wrongdoing.”

In 70% of states, part-time state lawmakers can vote on bills that present a clear conflict of interest with their private dealings. Such was the case in Missouri this year, when a legislator introduced a bill barring municipalities from banning plastic bags at grocery stores. The lawmaker – the director for the Missouri Grocers Association – claimed he was standing up for shopper rights. The bill eventually passed, overriding the governor's veto.

The investigation included assessments of 13 categories within all 50 state governments. Those categories included: public access to information, political finance, electoral oversight, executive accountability, legislative accountability, judicial accountability, state budget processes, state civil service management, procurement, internal auditing, lobbying disclosure, ethics enforcement agencies, & state pension fund management.

For each state, the Center for Public Integrity & Global Integrity contacted numerous state-level organizations & experts involved in government transparency & accountability to weigh-in on a host of questions pertaining to state government operations. The report, then, is a result of a "blend of social science and journalism" with an "aim to assessing the most salient corruption risks in each state."
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Many lowest-ranked states are bastions of American conservatism, where politicians champion limited government. Yet those states, such as Nevada & Wyoming, were joined at the bottom by the likes of Pennsylvania & Delaware, East Coast states that are considered politically liberal compared to the rest of the US.

“It’s very, very difficult for legislatures to focus on these things and improve them because they don’t want these laws, they don’t want to enforce them, and they don’t want to fund the people enforcing them," said Robert Stern, former president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a now-defunct organization dedicated to ethics & lobbying laws in local & state governments.

An Occupier's Peace or a Just Peace - Shir Hever on RAI

The decades-old conflict in Middle East, between Israel & Palestine, won't end so easily, as the Global West perceives it to be, because a "just peace" have to be brought in for everyone living there. In a society, where there's "just peace," people need to have equal rights & obligations.

The current conflict will continue on until the occupying force, Israel, only wants peace on its terms, & of course, the conflict itself is helping to line the pockets of influential people in Israel & around the world. Political & military elites, & esp. the conservatives in North America & Europe want this conflict to continue on because they are profiting from it immensely. Of course, the average joe in Israel & the occupied territories of Palestine merely wants peace where everyone has equal rights.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWYeWeoQ-uQ

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: So if you're going to talk about what the future might look like, what a peace, if possible, might look like, you've first got to talk about, well, who actually wants peace, and on what basis do they want peace? ... There are a few people in Israel who are doing extremely well out of the current situation. There's a stratum of multimillionaires and billionaires, a political stratum. I mean, why would they want anything other than what they got?

SHIR HEVER, ECONOMIST, ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER: I think the vast majority of the Israeli public wants peace. But a famous German military thinker, Clausewitz, has once said the occupier always wants peace. Peace means the status quo. That's why Palestinians don't call for peace, they call for a just peace. And that's also why the Israeli peace movement has collapsed because the peace movement had this kind of idea that if Palestinians would be offered peace, they would just accept that the current situation will continue. And, of course, that's a completely false premise.

But there are, of course, people in Israel who do have an incentive to end the occupation and to end the injustice. A lot of Israelis are suffering because of the massive cost of security that is needed to repress the Palestinians. I would say the majority of Israelis are losing in their standard of living because of this continued repression of Palestinians, because of the continued conflict. So they have a real interest even in a just peace, but their voices are not heard and they cannot be heard within this kind of colonial system, which is dominated by those elites who are actually profiting.

JAY: So talk a bit about the elites because it's a very small group that own the dominating, commanding heights of the Israeli economy.

HEVER: Yeah. And I would say the major forces that push Israel in this direction of continued conflict and continued occupation are actually outside of Israel. These are the forces--the U.S. government and right-wing groups within the U.S.--that fund the most extremist and violent political movements inside Israel. Sheldon Adelson in the U.S. has opened up a free newspaper in Israel in order to make sure that Netanyahu keeps winning the elections with a massive investment that no one on the other side can match. So that sort of support makes sure that the hawks continue to dominate the political structure.

Sure, there are also Israeli security companies and military companies that are very powerful and very influential. In fact, there was a meeting in 2011 of 80 of Israel's biggest capitalists but not from the security sector, which said, if Israel will continue on this path, we're going to get to the situation of South Africa, we're going to be boycotted by the world, we have to do something. They had this emergency meeting. But they couldn't actually do something. It shows that even capital has its limits. They couldn't find a way to convince the government to act differently because there's just no historical precedent for that. There is no historical precedent of a colonial power which just stops in its tracks and says, this is wrong, we should allow these people freedom and equality.

JAY: Would you say if outside of the security-military-industrial complex, if you will, the rest of the majority of big capital would actually like to see a resolution of this?

HEVER: Yes, yes. And they've tried a couple times to fund their own candidates for prime minister and spent a lot of money on that. The public didn't vote for these candidates. The public wants a strong leader that can say--a sort of security person who can say--I will be a representative of your national pride, I will make sure Israel is safe, I will fight Iran, and so on. And when somebody says, if we end the occupation it's actually good for the economy, this sort of argument doesn't get--.

JAY: But if their heart was really in it--and they being these other big capitalists--I mean, they could match Sheldon Adleson and they could have their own TV stations and their own newspapers. I mean, they could really go at it. Is their heart really in it? They're doing so well the way things are.

HEVER: I think they estimate that if they do that, people will not see that, won't watch that television or will not read the newspaper. And they're right because people don't like to read that they're in the wrong, and that things have to change, and that political power has to be shared. They don't want to read that.

JAY: Alright. ... what is a model that if you could even think ten, twenty, thirty years out, if you were going to try to create a model that would be, one, sellable, not just just. I mean, you can imagine a just model, which is pretty straightforward. It's a Democratic, single secular state and everybody gets to vote and it's a modern country. But right now that's not a sellable proposition. So some people have talked a possible federated state, where you have a province or a state within a Federation which is primarily Jewish. Hebrew would be the language. You would have another one, another state, which is primarily--Arabic is the primary language, and so on, or some configuration. You must have thought about this. What might be possible?

HEVER: It's not only that I've thought about it, that this is also almost an obsession, but not just for me, but for political activists, for leftists for years.

But I want to answer you in two parts. The first part, I have to say, again I have to be very sensitive to my own position of privilege. Being an Israeli Jew and saying well, this is the solution is not going to work, and it shouldn't be, it shouldn't work. Palestinians should not get their solution from some Israeli. They have to come up with their own platform for political change. And therefore, I have to be very careful in how I answer that sort of question.

Having said that, let me tell you what voices I hear from my Palestinian friends about what they're saying. And among these voices, you can hear a lot of those ideas of a federation, a confederation, two separate states, three separate states, one democratic state, joining with Egypt. You can hear a lot of interesting ideas. But the voice that comes out the clearest in the last few years is the voice that says, we don't care about that. All of these ideas are legal demarcations, are some kind of--where you put the border here or there. That's not important. The important thing is to talk about rights, talk about how we have the right to move wherever we want, to say whatever we want, to have a government that represents us, to organize, to practice our religion, to trade freely. That's what it means to be free. And then it doesn't matter so much exactly how many borders you're going to stretch across this territory. If we're practical about it, historically Palestine is a country that was divided by the UN, but in fact there has never been a Palestinian state there. There's always been one powerful force of Israel and some areas that were temporarily held by Egypt and Jordan, and then Israel occupied these parts as well. Now we have a situation in which there's one state under Israeli domination with a population of 12 million: 49% Jews, 49% Palestinians, 2% others. And it's an apartheid state.
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JAY: What I'm getting at, ... if there's going to be rights, there's going to have to be at some point some kind of buy-in by enough Israeli Jews to go along with this, I mean, unless you think there's going to be some military defeat of the Israeli state, and it's hard to imagine that right now. Even if the American policy was to significantly shift, you still have a mass of Jewish-Israeli public opinion that is where it is. I mean, it's in not a very good place. There's got to be some kind of understanding of how that's going to be dealt with to create a model that's at least the next step.

HEVER: There's this famous British general that once said in Zimbabwe, whatever happens, we have machine guns and they don't. And they lost. So the military defeat is not so unimaginable, but, of course, it'll be further down the road. It's not going to be in the next few years.

I think the fact is that a Jewish state is not sustainable. It's a concept that doesn't fit the 21st century. It barely fits into the 20th century. It's a racist idea.
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JAY: Well, I was about to get to that, 'cause then you get to the campaign for boycotting, disinvestment, and sanctions. It's clearly having some influence. It's hurting the Israeli economy. If it was stronger, it could precipitate more self-interest in some kind of change in Israel. But don't you then still have to have--okay, then what does that look like? 'Cause if you get to a point of real rights the way you're talking about, this can't be a Jewish state anymore.

HEVER: Exactly. Yeah. It cannot be a Jewish state. It's going to be--I mean, even if there will be a separate Palestinian state according to what we call the two-state solution, then the battle will continue. The struggle for equal rights in Israel will continue, because Israel cannot be a Jewish state; it has to be a state for all its citizens, one way or another. And the way that this defeat comes, it comes very suddenly. And, of course, the model is South Africa, where one week before apartheid collapsed, 90% of white people in South Africa supported apartheid. One week after apartheid collapsed, they all say we were always against it. And the Israeli minister of justice, Tzipi Livni, just said a couple of weeks ago, in response to the BDS movement, she said, I went to South Africa and spoke to some Jewish people there about their experiences from this era of the fall of apartheid, and the main thing they told me is it came unexpectedly, it came suddenly. There is a moment in which you lose courage, you lose your faith that you can continue to repress other people forever. And that moment may not be as far as we believe. I'm hopeful.
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God's Not Dead movie quote

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