Both Obama and Republican presidential candidate John McCain raked in much larger sums from AIG earlier in the year. Obama collected a total of $130,000 from AIG in 2008, while McCain accepted a total of $59,499.The above is from that notorious liberal media: ABC News. So it is clearly slanted and hideously distorted. I'm sure that getting this money didn't "buy" Obama's support.
Obviously a company as bankrupt as AIG knew that it was losing money hand over fist. After you have lost $170 billion, what's a few hundred thousand. I guess that's why the decided to blow it on political contributions that couldn't possibly buy anything from the politicians.
Here's a puzzle from the same ABC news item:
AIG executives gave more than $630,000 during the 2008 political cycle even as the company was falling apartWhy would these guys, who knew their company was going bankrupt, want to take money that was a "sure thing" (their take home pay) and give it to politicians who constantly assure them (and us) that they can't be bought?
Why not just put the money in a little pile and set fire to it and toast marshmallows over the flaming bills? According to the politicians, giving to their campaigns has no influence over them. You are wasting your money.
At least the $630,000 would give you a nice little bonfire to which you could invite your buddies and everybody would enjoy plenty of toasted marshmallows. So I'm puzzled, why the political donations rather than toasted marshmallows?
2 comments:
Corruption is only a nasty word for an every-day practise namely in politics and of course other means of making living.
I don't know why are people always surprised when thing like this comes up.
:)
Jay
Jay:
Sure, the realist in all of us says "there is nothing new under the sun" and shrug our shoulders about corruption in politics. We all know it is there.
But I've got two comments:
1) Being cynical doesn't help in a positive way. Cynicisms only value is it shields you from the disappointments in life. We all should harbour a little credulity and goodness and want to live in a better world. Aspirations make us better people.
2) The "real world" does't fit into categories. There is a spectrum of behaviour from sociopathic to doe-eyed innocent/saint. That some choose "sharp" practices makes it rougher for those who want to live in a society of laws which set limits to these practices. And some professions, maybe politics?, are more attractive to those with the cunning to play both sides of the aisle, i.e. appeal to our aspirations while crassly using people to advance their own interests. But I'm enough of an optimistic cynic to believe that not all politicians are purely in it for themselves. And I'm enough of a realist to know that we are all guilty of this behaviour from time to time.
Now I'm going to pull out a soapbox...
We need to aggressively attack corruption. Not because we believe we can root it out. But to keep it at bay.
A civil society is strong only when we feel we all have a fair chance at participating and where the rules of the game are clear and just.
The trick in having a functioning civil society is a "defense in depth" where social institutions are many and overlapping from the smallest local group to the highest level. You need "diversity" among these social groupings so they we don't all fall sway to a Pied Piper. The 1930s showed the power of national media with direct access to the local level to sweep people up in madcap nationalist movements that brough WWII. The nice thing about the Internet is that it allows more voices to emerge.
This is simply the argument for biodiversity. You need a deep ecology with many different food chains and lots of different species finding unique niches to give you a real defense in depth, to give you resiliance, and to give you the richest, fullest exploitation of the habitat.
To recognize that we have corruption, that we don't live in an ideal world is to be cynical, and to be realistic. But to realize that without ideals and aspirations, you take the oxygen out of the air and you destroy civil society. That's realistic as well.
Bottom line: we need to keep reviewing election laws to make sure that money doesn't corrupt the process. The price of democracy and a truly civil society is eternal vigilance.
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