Why Has Trump's Exceptional Corruption Gone Unchecked?

[Demovictory9]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/opinion/trump-corruption-drain-the-swamp.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Consider two scenarios about how Washington works. In one, a local activist decides to run for Congress. A friend hosts a fund-raiser for her at his law firm, where 10 partners each give the maximum legal individual donation, $2,800. After she wins, the host asks her to meet with a client, a constituent whose business would be affected by legislation her committee will soon vote on. She agrees to hear the company’s case against the bill. She never hears from anyone on the other side, which has no lobbyists, and she votes for an amendment that weakens the bill.

In the second, a man elected to high office directs a meeting of foreign leaders to be held at a resort he owns. He ignores subpoenas, dangles pardons to staff members to encourage them to violate the law and to former employees to discourage them from cooperating with investigations. He appoints industry lobbyists to positions where they reverse regulations affecting their former employers. (This list could go on.)

Both of these are stories of corruption. In both, the public interest is distorted by money. But are they aspects of the same story, just different corners of a single big swamp, one deeper than the other? Or are they different in kind, and not just degree?

Donald Trump’s 2016 chant “Drain the swamp,” which most often seemed to refer to the independent institutions of government, has been embraced as a metaphor across the political spectrum and in the media to refer to the pervasiveness of corruption. In this version, the undifferentiated “swamp” matters more than the gradations along the wide scale from the new member of Congress desperate for campaign funds to the raw plunder of Mr. Trump, his family and allies.



In a recent MSNBC series, “American Swamp,” for example, stories like the scenarios above are just consecutive segments. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders talk about a “rigged system” in which Trumpian corruption is only the most extreme manifestation of the distortion of democracy by wealth. Search for the phrase “Donald Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp’ but” and you’ll find dozens of mainstream articles that take seriously the idea that he actually set out to reform politics but, like naïve reformers before him, was dragged down into the fetid tide pool himself.

It’s certainly true that there’s corruption up and down American public life, and not just in campaign finance and lobbying. It also exists in think tanks, corporate governance, pharmaceutical marketing, higher education, the regulatory system, even philanthropy. The extraordinary concentration of wealth in this new Gilded Age, and the tilt of public policy in its favor, is itself evidence of corruption. It’s also true that Mr. Trump is not singular and that versions of his plunder can be found in more banal form across the spectrum of political vice — like the fact that two Republican members of Congress are under indictment.

But we shouldn’t lose sight of the profound differences between the two scenarios above, and all the little corruptions that look more like the first case than the case of President Trump. The compromised behavior of legislators who have limited choices about how to raise money is built into the way we’ve structured elections. “Good people trapped in a bad system,” my old boss, former Senator Bill Bradley, used to say, with perhaps more generosity than was merited.

The key distinction is between systems that invite or encourage corruption — such as by making legislators dependent on donors — and individual acts in which politicians or regulators choose to elevate private interests, or their own, over the public interest. Failing to acknowledge that distinction will make it difficult to build the case against the extreme and unprecedented corruption of Mr. Trump and his allies.

[msongs]

1. ask Nancy nt

[Skittles]

2. the bar has not just been lowered

it's on the ground, rolling around

Trump was held to ZERO standards during his campaign and he is being held to ZERO standards now

[smirkymonkey]

9. It is infuriating and beyond frustrating.

I just want to tear my hair out when I hear about all the bullshit that he is getting away with. Nobody holds him accountable for ANYTHING!

[RainCaster]

3. Because only half the country cares

Until the GOP cares, nothing will be done about DFT.

[Skittles]

13. can you imagine republicans ever saying

until Democrats care, nothing can be done

[LessAspin]

4. Cut off all federal contracts doing business with Trump

properties. That's what needs to be told right to Trump's face during the Presidential Debates. Then begin/continue criminal investigations into all attempts to use the office for personal gain. Just for starters.

That's what I want the Democratic Nominee to tell Trump right to his face...

Link to tweet

[StarfishSaver]

5. What exactly do you think should be done to stop him?

[smirkymonkey]

10. I can think of a few things, except they probably aren't legal.

But what he is doing isn't either. We are too nice. We need to be brutal in our fight against Fascism and that is what this is. He needs to be removed by hook or by crook. This is a matter of life and death for many people.

There has got to be a loophole that will allow us to dispose of him or at least curb his powers. I don't know what that is, but there must be some brilliant legal/political minds out there who can think of a way to cut him off at the knees, if not get rid of him entirely.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

11. indictment, imprisonment, restitution

[CentralMass]

6. Our government is a prop. It is increasingly owned and staffed by a group of oligarch's that use

the minions that they have put in place to do their bidding.

[uponit7771]

7. Impeachment process has already been started

[Skittles]

14. alrighty then

[GulfCoast66]

8. So sick of these types of OPs! So what would you suggest?

We control one house of Congress. All we can do is insure shitty laws don’t get passed. Nothing, absolutely nothing more.

The real power lies in the executive branch. Congress could take back much of that. Executive orders and emergency declarations were laws passed by Congress for seemingly good reasons.

But until we control the entire congress and the presidency we can do nothing. And even then we would be handcuffing a Democratic President. Who may well not sign a bill supporting such actions.

This stuff is complicated.

[stopdiggin]

15. the first example in the OP barely qualifies

as corruption (and perhaps doesn't qualify at all) and thus muddles the topic. Unless the legislator was clearly and knowingly voting against public interest (which the article never states) -- why shouldn't he/she give consideration to the interests and concerns of (purportedly) a constituent? I understand "pay to play" -- on the other hand, can our representatives truly represent if we build a moat around them? As the final, and most pointed, paragraph lays out -- fund raising and donors are an intended feature, not a perceived failing, of our political landscape. And public funding for elections is so far down the river by now as to seem as quaint as sock-hops and drive-in movies.