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.

State of the World: In Search of Leadership

A good opinion piece on ineffectiveness of world leaders on leadership. Although, this piece is from last year's UN General Assembly, I have no doubt that this year's gathering will once again yield no concrete solutions but a lot of empty promises to improve the world.

A little search on Google or Amazon will get you millions of titles on the topic of leadership. Corporate world can't get enough of "leadership". But the one place the world needs leadership the most, it has the least leadership there.

Today's world leaders have big mouths but short on actually doing something about resolving several problems the world is suffering from. Today's leaders are more of "yes-people" / "butt-kissers" of the general population. Their words & actions are there to appease the general populations, just so they can be elected & money can be rolling in their bank accounts. Only difference between these so-called leaders is that some force their way in such a leadership role (dictators, for instance) & some hold so-called "elections" in so-called "democratic" countries.

Perhaps, then, we should blame the general populations of countries & even the whole regions. Today's leaders are essentially elected on the results of lofty campaign promises, not on the actual substance of their past achievements. General populations around the world have resorted to choosing their leaders based on physical attributes (Justin Trudeau of Canada, for instance) or how many lies a candidate can spew, as long as, those lies confirm the general population's own biases (Donald Trump, for instance, has been proven to state outlandish lies in his campaign speeches but millions of Americans still love him & ready to elect him their leader).

On top of that, leadership, nowadays, can be bought. Money has become the defining factor for a person to be leader, instead of, ethics, morals, empathy, conscientiousness, social responsibility, a strong sense of accountability for its own actions etc. These traits are sorely missing for today's world leaders. Instead today's leaders are the ideal definition of hypocrites. As the writer in his opinion piece says that they "preach that which they don’t practise, cause tensions, & create more problems than they solve." Furthermore, the secretary-general for Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, correctly accused the world leaders of hypocrisy "as they lecture about peace while being the world's largest manufacturers of arms, & how they rail against corruption while allowing corporations to use financial & tax loopholes."

The world indeed needs strong leadership to resolve its many problems, but, perhaps, it needs an educated & informed citizenry which chooses that kind of leadership in the first place.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/09/state-world-search-leadership-150927053354263.html 

Here they go again. And here I am: once again in New York as world leaders pose for photographers & deliver lofty speeches at the UN's "new year" party gathering.

Judging from the attendance, the opening of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly promises to be no less of a tedious ritual than previous years.
...

The problem as I see it as I look around: There are many world leaders, but no leadership.

Spiteful and pathetic

Instead of leading by example among the "Family of Nations", world leaders are acting like toxic in-laws. They come into town to preach that which they don’t practise, cause tensions, & create more problems than they solve.
...

Obama and Putin will talk about Syria and Ukraine, but I doubt they will listen.

Such is the poor state of affairs among the UN in-laws. Political & diplomatic expediency dictate their communication, just as narrow interests hamper their cooperation.

When they do meet, as in last week's US-China summit, much of the preparation is centred on protocol, which apparently prompts other important or meaningful issues. Greetings, toasting, & playing national anthems are as - or perhaps more - important than dealing with dying Syrians or persecuted Rohingya.

What does the G-2 stand for?

Presidents Obama and Xi seemed to have decided, out of domestic concerns, that they can't or won't do much for each other, &, therefore, ensured that their summit included all the trappings of success but without any concrete achievements.

The Washington Post reported that ... there was little or no progress to report on currency manipulation & cyber espionage, etc, let alone Asian security & world poverty. ...

All of which dampens the hopes (wrongly) pinned on the new dynamics between G-2 powers - US & China - to responsibly manage the global economy, especially following the last international financial crisis.

Alas, they proved that they couldn't even act responsibly in Southeast Asia, where they're further complicating the security & economic landscape instead of improving it.

And while the US, Russia, & China fail the test of leadership, those in their shadows are incapable of coordinating among themselves or making the leap towards more meaningful roles.

Even Europe, which is presumably more capable than the rest to act globally, has been either terribly divided or playing catch-up with the US & Russia.

When was the last time you heard of Japan, India or the UK taking an international initiative of any sort? How effective is the group of G-20 when the leading G-2 fail to lead?

Brazil, India, & Germany might seek a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, but how will that lead to better world governance?

Ever since the world moved away from bipolarity of the Cold War, it's been torn between the unipolarity of US leadership, the new bipolarity of the US & China, & multipolarity of various world powers & groupings.

In other words: The old world order is no more, but there's no new world order either.

The confusion allows all to blame all, & in the process, everyone escapes accountability for their lack of international responsibility.

Lessons in leadership

For all practical purposes, world leaders have set themselves up to be lectured like amateurs on the rights & wrongs of leadership by an unlikely mentor.

Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, lectured his audience at the UN with clarity, boldness, & conviction that is lacking in great power politics.

Among other reprimands, the pope rebuked world leaders for failing to put an end to the many conflicts in the world, particularly in the Middle East, & for putting partisan interests above real human beings ...

The pontiff even scolded the global financial institutions that subject countries to oppressive lending systems & subject people to mechanisms, which generate "greater poverty, exclusion, and dependence".

The secretary-general for Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, also accused the powerful leaders of hypocrisy as they lecture about peace while being the world's largest manufacturers of arms, & how they rail against corruption while allowing corporations to use financial & tax loopholes.
...

Yes, the world is better off when leaders act in their nations' best interests. But civilisation is best served when leaders also act in the best interest of their region & that of the community of nations.

That requires leadership.


Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.

Better the dictator you condemn than the insurgents you can't control

A good piece. Take an action after thinking it through. Otherwise, you create a mess for yourself & others. But, who will heed this warning? No one. For elections purposes, military actions will always be taken way before anyone will ever even think of starting a dialogue among opposing parties to resolve the situation.

On top of not thinking before acting (which is the lesson we adults teach to our children & then not follow them ourselves) & creating a mess for everyone else & ourselves in the Western countries, the military actions also killed & destroyed the lives of thousands of people in those lands & displaced millions. Who is going to be held accountable for that?

In corporate world, from CEO down to a lowly clerk, anyone who takes one wrong step with dire consequences (even though, that mistake might not of such a huge consequence as killing thousands or displacing millions) is severely reprimanded right away, either in the form of a demotion or being fired. But, in the politics of the West, nothing happens. Elections are won as usual & billions more are spent, as usual, on military hardware.

After all, who cares if a few Libyans, Iraqis, Yemenis, Afghanis, Syrians, Egyptians etc. are being killed or losing their families, homes, & livelihoods. It's not happening to me. Right?
(Just in case, if you didn't get it, it was sarcasm & a rhetoric question).
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/01/idUS50046168420150501

President Obama, already musing on failures during his second term, has said he regrets that the U.S. joined a coalition to intervene in Libya in 2011, ousting President Muammar Gaddafi, without an adequate plan for the post-Gaddafi society. “I think we [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this.”

It’s curious that Obama & his allies had not ordered a plan for the new Libya: They had the example of the Iraq invasion in 2003. The war was won quickly but the post-war haunts us still, in part because the war effort was not paralleled with a vigorous peace effort.
 
President George W. Bush’s speech on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 – “the United States & its allies have prevailed” – was echoed by then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s chuckle to a reporter when hearing of Gaddafi’s death, “We came, we saw, he died.” Both thought the loosening of Western military force on dictators had settled the matter: Both lived to know otherwise.
 
... The vacuum created by the fall of the tyrant yielded not democrats (or not enough), but old feuds, hatreds, divisions -- &, above all, the militants of jihadism resurgent, al Qaeda, Islamic State & others.
 
As in Iraq, Libya has known no stability since the toppling of its tyrant, Gaddafi. The first elected prime minister, Mustafa Abu Shagour, was out in a month: In 4 years, the country has had 7 prime ministers. Armed Islamist groups are allowed to flourish -- there is no reliable army to keep them down -- & now control slices of the state. A jihadist government chased the elected administration out of the capital, Tripoli, & rules there: The internationally recognized government huddles in the eastern port city of Tobruk -- which older Europeans remember as the site of one of the great battles of World War Two, the first sign that the fortunes of war might turn against the Nazis.
 
An estimated 10,000 are reckoned, conservatively, to have died in the chaos of Gaddafi’s fall. One of these was the US Ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, killed in an attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi in September 2012.
 
The message has hit home: Better the dictator you can condemn than the insurgents you cannot control (& may hate you more).
 
Shorn of any military option, the only hope is to bring the opposing parties to some kind of talks. ... Yet so full of hate & bitterness against each other are the warring groups, so convinced of their own virtue & the others’ vices, that any agreement would seem elusive -- &, if reached, fragile.
 
An Arab capital is now under jihadist control; it is also in the country closest to the borders of the EU. For two decades, we have been warned that “failed states” are a large threat to Western security: It is vividly clear that the warning was right.