The Right to Steal

Our latest project, The Daily Juice, aims at presenting a daily feed of scandal summaries from around the world.
Monitoring scandal and reducing results to bight sized chunks tends to leave your reporter with a dazed look after a few days.
There seem to be a couple of strains of public and corporate corruption.
The first usually generate a sad shake of the head, they are typically just greedy, bumbling fools making taking advantage of opportunities of office.
Like the recent story about the Florida charity worker’s son, who took over when his mother fell ill then helped himself to children’s charity funds - Good Causes.
There are bucket loads of these greedy, weak souls who simply can’t resist the easy pickings that come with their responsibilities.

The bigger concern is the relatively large number of powerful characters who seem to see their corrupt activities not as wrong, but as their right! For these, often well-off to begin with, greedy bastards, election or appointment to an ‘office of opportunity’ is a god given license to help themselves.
For sheer self-righteous arrogance there is nothing as sickening as a top politician or executive under investigation or trial for corrupt practices.
That society would even see their base theft as an issue seems to bring out the most indignant responses from these paragons. We, the hidden victims, are regarded as scum for even questioning the rights of the mighty to plunder our recourses.
When faced with hard evidence of illegality, these cretins will put on their very best indignant displays. The fact is, most do not see their actions, theft, influence buying, bribery or whatever, as a crime. It is just the way you get things done.
Worst of all are those who will look a judge in the eye and calmly claim, ‘it is my right!’
The current Australian wheat cheats drama is a prime example - Gag hard to swallow.
There is a growing cast in this local production of the infamous Oil for Food scandal. Players include leading corporate figures, top politicians and public servants and diplomats.
Nearly everyone involved in this scandal shares that common ‘bemused’, ‘what is the big fuss, anyway’ attitude. That most could easily pass a lie detector test doesn’t testify to their cheating abilities, but to the fact that they truly believe they are justified in their actions.
The Howard government, the one which enacted legislation outlawing bribery and corruption in international trade, have even been self righteous to the point of gagging Senators from quizzing public servants on the scandal.
It is very much a case of two laws, one for the powerful, and the other for the rest of us. And what makes this marvelous system possible is the easy acquiescence of the voting public.
The voters don’t really give much credence to the corruption issues. True, here in Canada the Liberal government was just dumped. But don’t believe for a moment it was a reaction to scandal. Voters were simply tired of the old government.
That attitude, in itself, is a recipe for more corruption and scandal, and its an attitude common around the globe.