From the New York State legislature to California’s PUC (Public Utilities Commission), politicians and powerbrokers increasingly sell their votes not for campaign funds, but for financial contributions to causes and projects that line their pockets, cement their standing in the community, and keep them employed and comfortable for life.
In exchange, the “contributors” often have government decisions, contracts, and/or discretionary spending steered their way; payoffs funded by the unsuspecting public. These arrangements immediately tilt the playing field and negate legitimate competition. This new type of corruption is easier to self-justify and harder to trace, but it’s just as corrosive and destructive as the old cash in a shoebox payoffs.
One of the most interesting revelations in a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News detailing the cozy relationship between PG&E and the PUC, the state authority supposedly regulating the utility, was just such an understanding between former PUC President Michael Peevey and PG&E executives showing “that the utility was expected to cough up money to support projects and causes that Peevey championed” in exchange for treatment with kid gloves.
While many will focus their ire on the PG&E executives who wined and dined the regulators, they were merely doing what they were hired to do; I much prefer to direct my anger at the regulators whose job it was to protect the public’s interest. These so-called watchdogs were actually paying off with limited oversight and using the public as bagmen funding unjustified rate increases.
The article went on to detail how the influential PUC employees even suggested ways that PG&E could improve their public image following the devastating gas pipeline explosion that razed a San Bruno residential neighborhood and they jokingly emailed about the terror that killed 8 and injured more than 50. Very funny. Obviously, it was the job of the PUC to determine what happened, why, and who was responsible, not to help pump up the image of those they were hired to regulate and investigate.
It has become a serious question for Americans nationwide; are our institutions now so riddled with overriding self-interest at all levels that corruption has just become part of the landscape? All societies have criminals; however, the difference between a society with criminals and a criminal society can be narrow but critically important, it’s one of expectations.
What we should expect from our politicians and public executives is for them to fulfill their sworn obligations with honor and integrity, but instead we too often get exactly the opposite. Unfortunately, the general population is regularly as guilty as the perpetrators; the culprits get away with it because we willingly turn a blind eye especially when it benefits us personally, our friends, or our families.
My philosophy is that you do not get the government you deserve, you get the one you’re willing to tolerate.