USA TODAY International Edition
HOW NOT TO FIGHT CORRUPTION
Obama, just like prior U. S. presidents, keeps feeding worldwide pandemic
The Obama administration wants Americans to believe that it is fiercely anti- corruption. “I’ve been shocked by the degree to which I find corruption pandemic in the world today,” declared Secretary of State John Kerry at this month’s Anti- Corruption Summit in London.
Kerry sounded like the French detective in Casablanca who was “shocked” to discover gambling. Six years ago at the United Nations, President Obama proclaimed that the U. S. government is “leading a global effort to combat corruption.” Maybe he forgot to send Kerry the memo. Or maybe he has forgotten it himself. Obama visited highly corrupt Vietnam this week and lifted the remaining portions of a five- decades- old arms sale embargo.
Much of the teeth- gnashing at the London summit involved tax evasion. Politicians pledged to share more data on tax records and corporate ownership to help boost government revenue.
But the summit largely ignored how corruption is fueled by Western governments, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Foreign aid has long been notorious for breeding kleptocracies — governments of thieves.
CORRUPTION RATINGS In 2002, President Bush promised to reform foreign aid: “We won’t be putting money into a society which is not transparent and corrupt.” ( He probably meant corruption- free.) But U. S. aid programs — which cost more than $ 40 billion a year — continue to bankroll many of the most crooked regimes. They include Uzbekistan, Haiti and Kenya, ranked by Transparency International as highly corrupt.
Since Obama took office, the U. S. has given more than $ 60 billion in aid to Afghanistan. Pervasive corruption is a major reason why the Taliban is reconquering more of that nation each year. At Afghanistan’s premier military hospital, some wounded soldiers starved to death because they could not afford to bribe the hospital staff for food. Much of the army is practically bootless because of crooked contracts that deliver shoddy footwear that falls apart the first time soldiers wear them.
Kerry said the U. S. would help fund a Global Consortium of Civil Society and Investigative Journalists against Corruption. But on the home front, Obama’s Justice Department has launched more than twice as many federal prosecutions for Espionage Act viola- tions as all prior administrations combined. When Obama took office, the U. S. was ranked as having the 20th most free press, according to Reporters Without Borders — in the same league as Germany and Japan. By 2016, it had fallen to 41st — worse than South Africa and barely ahead of Botswana.
FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE Kerry joined foreign chieftains in calling for more transparency to fight corruption, but he forgot to notify his own State Department.
Just days before Kerry’s speech in London, State confirmed that it had “lost” all the emails of a technician who set up the private email server Hillary Clinton used to potentially illicitly keep her correspondence secret ( and to ignore federal law on classified information).
Nor have we learned the shady details behind our former secretary of State shoveling out scores of billions of dollars and special treatment to foreign governments at the same time that the Clinton Foundation collected millions of dollars from some of the beneficiaries.
Kerry boasted of U. S. government plans “to put $ 70 million into additional integrity initiative ( s) to help with local police training” to curtail “opportunity for bribery and graft.”
Unfortunately, the Obama administration will continue fueling police graft here in the USA.
The Justice Department recently resumed a widely denounced program to reward local and state law enforcement agencies for confiscating the property of hapless citizens who have been convicted of no crime. Government agencies routinely keep most of the money they confiscate, sometimes using it to pay bonuses to the lawmen who plundered private citizens. Federal law enforcement agencies used asset forfeiture programs in 2014 to seize more property from Americans than burglars stole nationwide.
Perhaps Americans should count their blessings that this particular international summit is not likely to spur a new war. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are correct that corruption is a pestilence ravaging much of the planet. But the administration’s credibility would be boosted if it had not worsened the problem at home and abroad.