One of the things I keep close by the keyboard at the shebeen here is the Spring, 2015 edition of Lapham’s Quarterly. Each issue of that fine publication is devoted to a study of one single topic down through the ages. This one is dedicated to Swindle And Fraud. Why I keep it handy should be self-explanatory.

One of the features in the issue is a passage from James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity in which a murder is being plotted. It seems appropriate to our current moment in which the incredible passel of grifters, rogues and incompetence that the president* laughingly calls a cabinet are being caught almost daily elbows deep in the public purse.

“And if we want to get away with it, we have to do it the way they do it, not the way some punk up near San Francisco does it that’s had two trials already and he’s still not free”

“Be bold?”

“Be bold. It’s the only way.”

It has been quite a 14 days for corruption in the Executive branch, obscured by the fact that it also has been quite a 14 days for incompetence in the Executive branch, and by the fact that it also has been quite a 14 days for mendacity in the Executive branch.

In no particular order, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt all have been caught socking the taxpaying public for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of personal air travel in one way or another. It’s an amazing tangle of arrogance and entitlement and, the next time anyone in this administration, or in the Republican Party, for that matter, lectures some poor person about the consequences of the culture of entitlement, remember to remind them that, caught in the midst of his smug avarice, Mnuchin refused to commit to changing his ways. From CNN:

"I can promise the American taxpayer that the only time that I will be using mil air is when there are issues either for national security or we have to get to various different things where there's no other means," he said on CBS 'This Morning.'

Yeah, you never know when a financial crisis in an unexplored quarter of the Amazon jungle will require the presence of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Maybe there’s an investment bank failing in the wilderness of Papua New Guinea that will need his attention.

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Then there’s Price, who’s left a trail of public statements about “government waste” in this very area, who magnanimously has offered to reimburse the government for a fraction of what it cost to cart his grifting bulk around the landscape. From CNN:

According to a Health and Human Services Department spokesperson, the check Price promised will cover his seat rather than the total cost of the flights, which is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. "What the Secretary has done is say that while all of this travel was approved by legal and HHS officials, the Secretary has heard the taxpayers' concerns and wants to be responsive to them," the spokesperson said. "That's why he's taking the unprecedented step of reimbursing the government for his share of the travel. Secretary Price will write a personal check to the US Treasury for $51,887.31."

Thanks, pal.

(Price, it should be recalled, had himself a little stock-market problem during his days in the House of Representatives, which the Senate waved its hand at when it confirmed him.)

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And Zinke’s case is unique as well, as The Washington Post explains.

In June, Zinke and his staffers took a four-hour flight from Las Vegas to Kalispell, Mont., aboard a private plane owned by the executives of a Wyoming oil-and-gas exploration firm, aviation and business records show. The landing in Kalispell put Zinke a short drive from his home in Whitefish, Mont., where he spent the night, documents show. The flight cost taxpayers $12,375, according to an Interior Department spokeswoman. Commercial airlines run daily flights between the two airports and charge as little as $300. The new flight details show how Zinke has mixed political gatherings and personal destinations with his taxpayer-funded work as the head of a federal agency that manages or controls the vast majority of federal land.

In other words, Zinke cut into the taxpayers for a little over 12-large to pay for his own naked conflict of interest (!).

All of this, of course, comes from more than simply a love for luxury on the part of people who’ve grown accustomed to it. It also flows from the now-nearly-genetic contempt that this particular breed of political fauna has for the very idea of self-government. Government is your alien enemy, they tell us, as they pick our pockets and destroy the political commonwealth and all of its manifestations—like, say, the national parks. Government is our alien enemy, too, they say, as they wreck the lives and nearly sink the international economy while sucking down bailout money. (Hi, Mnooch!) Government is there for them to loot and for us to hate. Why should they care? They’ve got theirs.

These really are the fcking mole people.

Update (5:02 p.m.): Well, that's one down. You can embarrass this administration* once too often. Who knew?



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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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