I suppose corruption has always been a thing whenever humans organized in groups or sought to govern themselves. Our country has certainly had faith-shaking government corruption scandals throughout its history.
My recollection is they were exposed in time and participants were punished.
It struck me recently that we seem to have had quite a run of government scandals this century. So I spent time doing some research and, by golly, we sure have. I wrote about that.
And what jumped out, I hope, from that column was the striking fact that there were no consequences for them. They happened. They were exposed. And the culture in Washington simply skated on, free of any punishment. As if nothing crooked had happened.
There were some consequences for the mainstream media there. They have lost much of their credibility for not living up to their constitutionally protected responsibility of government watchdogs.
Then, comes a new Gallup poll that found overwhelming majorities of Americans on all sides of our politics believe there is a large amount of corruption. That's part of a broader decline of Americans' trust in government institutions. But at least there's one thing anyway that seems to unite us.
What disturbed me most about these more recent cases of corruption was the dramatic absence of consequences. Whatever your views on punishment, the lack of it for anti-social behaviors encourages more of it.
Remember the videos of looting in Minneapolis when Democrat Gov. Tim Walz declined to call in the National Guard for those "mostly peaceful" demonstrations?
That's what I discuss in this week's audio commentary, just below — the cascading consequences of no punishment for corruption. I'll be interested to read your thoughts and reactions in the Comments after you listen.
This week's Sunday column examined the shameful truths just beginning to come out now about the colossal collusion and coverups surrounding Joe Biden's decline in mental acuity while dangerously pretending to act as a competent commander in chief.
Already, initial accounts of the lies and coordinated deceits are disgusting, and no doubt more will follow as journalists reveal what they knew — and helped to cover up — about the president during his endless reign of error.
This week, Biden emerged from seclusion to share his predictable criticism of President Trump in a Chicago speech. What struck me mainly was that his remarks were maladroitly scheduled to a convention of advocates for disabled people. My colleague Susie Moore has that full account here.
This week, I've also posted a fun story that emerged accidentally during President Trump's recent Cabinet meeting. We discovered what he's regularly doing around 2:00 in the morning -- and it's not what most sleeping Americans would expect in the wee hours.
The most recent audio commentary topic was on probably President Trump's most controversial action so far — his imposition of tariffs on imports from some countries but not others, his suspension of those imports for a period of time on some countries but not others, and a startling increase in tariffs on goods from one particular trading partner.
The tariffs are especially controversial because, according to some experts, they are likely to increase prices for American consumers at a time when inflation from the previous presidency's rampant spending seemed to be finally coming under control.
It's a risky political move with midterm elections coming in just 19 months. Trump believes it's worth the risk in order to bring thousands of jobs back to the United States. I hope he's successful, and I had a simple communications suggestion to help bridge that gap.
