ONE-PARTY RULE LEADS TO CORRUPTION IN CALIFORNIA

Paul Krugman, the liberal Nobel Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times, thinks California is making an economic comeback. 

He attributes this mostly to the Republican party’s steady decline in the state, which left Governor Jerry Brown “free to push an agenda of tax hikes and infrastructure spending that sounds remarkably like the kind of thing California used to do before the rise of the radical right.”  

But the results of Brown’s most recent tax increases are hardly relieving economic pressures on the nearly two million Californians that remain unemployed in the Democrat-dominated state, whose numbers are growing, not declining.

The truth is that the Democrats, who totally control policies in the state by virtue of "supermajorities" in both houses of the State Legislature, are making California increasingly poorer; the Census Bureau announced last week that California has the highest poverty rate in the nation for the second year in a row. Yet despite California's dreary economic conditions, some of California's Democratic lawmakers are making themselves or their campaign committees richer in a personal sort of "economic comeback," and, in some cases, they are doing so by breaking the law.

One recent investigation into payoffs in the State Capitol has been breathtaking. Powerful liberal Democratic State Senator Ron Calderon recently had his office in the state capitol building raided by the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad. According to the FBI’s search warrant, which was obtained and released by the Al Jazeera American Network, probable cause for the raid included allegations that the Senator had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for legislative favors, including: $60,000 in bribes from an undercover FBI agent; another $28,000 in bribes from a hospital executive; and tens of thousands of dollars more in bribes paid to the State Senator’s brother through a nonprofit organization.   

Via: Breitbart

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California: Calderon Scandal A Reminder About Absolute Power

The alleged corrupt behavior of State Senator Ron Calderon has been at the center of California politics since the release by Al Jayzeera America last week of a sealed FBI agent’s affidavit detailing how Calderon supposedly pushed legislation that would benefit a particular business interest, in this case, a movie production company, in return for them “buying off” the Senator with payoffs.

“How could this happen?” — people will ask.

Obviously legislators are human beings, eh?  We are all imperfect.  So it makes sense that some will be morally lacking.  That’s really no different than any other profession.

In the ideal world, everyone would be an upstanding citizen, a Boy Scout, and always do the right thing, even when nobody is looking.

I guess one might argue that politics, as a field, has the potential to attract a higher percentage of people with questionable ethics.  What other professions are centered around money and power?

Some will and have argued that Calderon’s alleged activities create an opportunity to once again step up efforts to try and take money out of politics.  Despite the folly of this, as you will never really be able to do that – in the case of Calderon, what he supposedly has done is clearly already against the law.   So this would not be a case of someone taking advantage of a “loophole” or some other gray-area chicanery.

I will submit to you, however, that if you want to take a systemic approach to trying to stop this kind of bad behavior – the best way to do that would be to address the “power” side of the equation.

Over an extended period of time – decades upon decades – the size and scope of state government has grown to be quite vast.  The amount of tax money taken into Sacramento, and then redistributed out by the Governor and legislature is well north of $100 billion annually.

Via: California Political Review

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