We elect people to represent us in governmental matters. We want them to serve us and to protect our interests. We want them to keep us safe.
But what we get are self-serving criminals.
Linda Schrenko was state school superintendent, with dreams of becoming governor. Schrenko is now facing a prison sentence. Schrenko faces eight years for her guilty plea.
Bill Campbell was mayor of Atlanta, a media darling, with aspirations of a cabinet post. Campbell is now facing a prison sentence. Campbell, who was convicted on tax evasion charges, has yet to be sentenced.
Mitch Skandalakis was chairman of the Fulton County Commission, and was running for Lieutenant Governor. Skandalakis served six months in a federal prison.
Sidney Dorsey was DeKalb County Sheriff, and had won a plurality in his re-election bid. Dorsey was given life in prison for orchestrating the murder of his successor, Derwin Brown.
Now, they’re all convicted felons.
Says WSB radio in Atlanta:
Corruption has been in politics since the days of the Senate in Rome. But has there been an American city that has ever had so much scandal involving four different jurisdictions, and four different chief executives?
“It’s like the perfect storm or something,” says University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock, “since it’s not part of a broad-based criminal conspiracy, where you have a bunch of criminals getting together to try and loot the treasury.”
Bullock says corruption is nothing new. Governors in Ohio and Kentucky are under indictment, and former Illinois Governor George Ryan has been convicted. But those scandals involved one administration. The scandals that hit Atlanta in the late 1990s and into 2000 were spread out among four government agencies, and four executives.
“Whether Atlanta has a particularly corrupt environment, I don’t think it does,” Bullock tells WSB. “But we certainly have it cropping up in a number of different places.”
Why? What made Atlanta in particular, and Georgia in general, ripe for such schemes? Bullock says it was the rules of the state ethics board, which, in 2000, was a reactive, rather than proactive, agency.
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Baloney. Crap. BS.
Yes, maybe the state ethics board wasn’t proactive. Maybe some rules weren’t strong enough. Maybe the other elected officials looked the other way instead of reporting crimes when them happened. Maybe no one cared because it was understood that “everyone does it”. But the blame lies squarely upon those that committed the crimes. Don’t look around for excuses. Don’t try to spread the blame to the 9 million people living in Georgia. Find those that abused their positions of power and expose their actions to the public, and then throw them in jail. Make them serve real prison sentences – and not at any of those “country club” jails. Make them manufacture license plates. Make them pay restitutions. Make them break rocks in the prison yard. Bring back the chain gangs. Bring back the the pillory. |
