One of the salutary consequences of a great financial crisis is the scale and scope of frauds and corruption that gets exposed, once the books have been opened for inspection. The latter usually only happens when it comes to life that scams have ruined the government’s or a corporation’s ability to pay its bills. Nassau County, San Diego, the states of California, Mississippi, Illinois and dozens of others, plus a tidal wave of congressional and regulatory agency thieves too numerous to enumerate here highlight the steady deterioration of our democracy. Crass commercialism and crony capitalism are polluting nearly every level of U.S. government.

Patronage, pay-to-play development schemes that differ little from bribery, no-bid deals, tax write-offs and giveaways that generate no public value, outright robbery of pension and medical funds, judges that refuse to recuse themselves in matters where they have a personal interest, capture by local corporate interests – not to mention compromised police departments: All this inevitably comes to light when the public “good faith” is broken. But what to do about it? In the electoral arena, the Supreme Court has declared money is king in the Citizens United case. The decision permits corporations to contribute unlimited funds, and to do so anonymously, to campaigns reflecting their interests.



Yet despite mounting exposures of massive frauds perpetrated, for example in the financial industry, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report, charged with discovering the causes of the great financial crisis – does not spend much time on “crimes” committed; certainly not by any of the TBTF (too big to fail) crowd that received the lions share of bailout funds. Talk about creating a "moral hazard."



The founders of the United States, in accord with the ideals of the Enlightenment, envisioned the rise of “enlightened and disinterested” (Washington, Franklin, Hamilton and Jefferson) political leaders in the wake of monarchy’s demise. Critics have of course noted that the property interests of the founders, especially with respect to slaves, tarnished this ideal of disinterestedness. Nevertheless, they were enough aware of the shortsightedness of “narrow interests” to devise a robust separation of judicial, legislative and executive powers to attempt to mitigate the ability of any one interest to dominate.



Any approach to progressive democracy must re-examine the ideal of “disinterestedness” and see if it can guide us to a useful, manageable and credible program of clean government in an era where competing interests will not be vanquished soon.



Some principles



1. We all can agree in principle that a leader should not sit in judgment on a matter in which he or she has a personal interest. Yet nearly everyone has “personal” interests at stake in politics. So the closest one may come to true “disinterestedness” is the personal interest that is most in accord with personal interests of the majority of people. Lets assume for the moment that such person is earning median income: approximately $60,000 per year in the U.S. In addition that person’s income is mostly wages or salary, but also includes some income – a smaller portion (much smaller since the financial crisis) – from capital: pensions, savings, real estate, etc. To make it possible for more working people to run for office, the office salary must not be less than a livable income. Many states have small stipends which has the effect of requiring independent wealth, or a wealthy individual or corporate patron, in order to serve.



2. We can agree that those who serve the public should, again in support of disinterestedness, not be paid substantially more than those they serve. Taking median income again as our standard, public service should pay approximately 60K, with allowances for local COLA adjustments. Some may argue that labor market economics would make such servants MORE vulnerable to the blandishments of the contact sport of politics and governing. But this leads to the assertion that only the rich can be “disinterested” – a canard with at least 250 years of repeated refutations. Personal accountability of the highest order must nonetheless be an unflinching standard of any party sincere in its commitment to clean government.



3. There can be no real progress against corruption, no real accountability, where there is no transparency: where budgets, bonds, salaries, tax abatements, and contracts in the public sector are not open for inspection. But "openness" and "transparency" can be a tricky matter when considered in class terms. Most working people, especially families with both parents working, have little or no time to attend all the meetings where the real state of local finances and economics can be inspected and understood. In fact, only grass roots, neighborhood, or workplace, organization – with some new and important assists from social networking media – can allow multitudes of working people to be more directly connected to either decision making OR accountability. So – there is little or no chance of clean government without both political parties and civic organization creating sustainable and more or less permanent grass roots committees.



4. Even with greater transparency and with candidates whose interests are much more aligned to the majority of the people, every aspect of economic development, and many social, legal and moral questions as well, involve trade-offs, bargaining, winners and losers, choosing the lesser of two evils or the better of two goods. There will be no letup in the intensity, and potential dangers, of diverse conflicts of interest at stake in every public act – or failure to act. Thus a key characteristic of clean governance is the dedication of leaders to become honest brokers. In the first place that means being much better at conflict resolution, then at doing battle, although there will always be opportunities for the latter. If politics is compared to a game of baseball, our movement needs to have the best umpires! Call the balls and strikes accurately, scientifically if possible, but still evict foul play from the game. In the long run – whether a specific policy or law or initiative is voted up or down, won or lost, is less important than maturing the empowerment vehicles and forms of participation in government where millions more workers are drawn into the process.



5. Support simplification of the tax codes at all levels. Evading taxes is a permanent and lucrative avocation for the rich, the wealthy, and corporations. Tax code complexity (exceptions, exemptions, write-offs, special deals, etc) is the source of much if not most corruption. The European Value Added Tax system (basically a standard percent tax on all goods at each state of production), while being criticized for being less progressive than the ideal of the U.S. tax code, has in the end shown itself to be MORE progressive, much less subject to evasion and litigation, and much easier to understand.



6. Prosecute corruption. Few remedies improve corrupt public behavior better than punishing the worst examples. Be careful of choosing “good” and “bad” corruption. If one insists, for example, on defending a public patronage system that introduces vast inefficiencies in public services in the name of "protecting jobs," attempts to sanction other corrupt practices (that will almost always serve the rich) will become muddy and vulnerable to defeat.



The corruption of our democracy primarily by giant corporations is the democratic challenge of our time, as important and critical as other historic challenges from the revolution through the civil war, the great depression and World War II, and the civil rights era as well. The left is positioned to lead the redress of this cancer, and give itself a new birth of national strength and leverage – if we can take this evil on.

Photo by Sam Howzit, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0