Small Beer?

The corruption which seems to be dogging city governments in California is small beer indeed when compared to the antics of Federal officials.
Even so, the breach of trust and misuse of authority for personal gain, at any level of government, strikes at the heart civic responsibility.
In San Diego it was interim mayor, Michael Zucchet and other elected officials peddling their influence at the cost of the wider community. Now, showing no remorse for their actions, those miscreants are considering legal manipulations to get out of a mess of their own making.
In San Francisco, Marcus O. Armstrong, formerly the highest-ranking technology officer in the city’s Department of Building Inspection, made a guilty plea today to public corruption charges. He admitted defrauding San Francisco taxpayers out of more than half a million dollars, and then obstructed justice after his crimes had become the subject of a federal criminal investigation.
This was followed recently by former head of the Department of Building Inspection's one- stop permit program, Augustine Fallay. Abusing his official position, Fallay is said to have lined his pockets by accepting bribes from contractors in exchange for favorable treatment in issuing building permits.
Fallay now faces a new set of 16 charges, including bribery, perjury and insurance fraud, which appear to be related to a scheme to allegedly submit a false $150,000 insurance claim after embers from a nearby fire burned the roof of his Oakland home. It appears the new charges allege Fallay sought out or accepted false bids from contractors for the repair work and then submitted them to First American Specialty Insurance.Regardless of the relative importance of the public officer or monetary values involved, corruption undermines all the fundamentals of public trust.
Certainly these activities impose a range of financial and public safety burdens on communities. More than that, they drive a sense of helpless cynicism which turns people away from their own civic responsibilities.
When far more people seek to engage their interest in trivia such as the Kate Moss scandal, at the cost of scrutiny of our governments, the gates are opened for the inherently corrupt to take over the system.
People don’t need to live and breathe politics. They do need to be aware and to express their concerns rather than shrink away from them.