Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Is a ‘Revolving Door’ Corruption?
This post is inspired by a Gateway Pundit headline: CRIMINAL CORRUPTION: Biden’s Special Prosecutor of Trump is Corrupt and Conflicted – His Wife Produced Michelle Obama Documentary. No, this post isn’t about President Trump. I am raising a broader question: Is bringing in prior actors within one’s own party power structure writ large, corruption per se?
For several decades I worked in the national defense sector as first, a judge advocate in the Air Force, and afterward a lawyer, manager and executive for a national defense research contractor. During my career my employer, and other defense contractors, hired former government employees. The more senior these former government employees had been the more likely they were to be tapped for political appointments in several federal administrations. Some of our own contractor’s senior leadership who had not previously served in government were also tapped for political appointments.
One of my areas of emphasis as a lawyer was in the rules surrounding post-government employment. Over the years, they changed and were adjusted. Almost all of the changes were brought about by perceived workarounds of former government employees influencing decisions by their former colleagues in matters affecting their current employers. This came to be called the ‘revolving door’ as people were recycled in and out of government as administrations changed.
But the revolving door is not restricted to defense contractors. It exists whenever there is a role that an administration seeks to be carried out by (in its view) a capable (reliable) individual. If you think of political parties as a religious order the system becomes sensible. You might hire an atheist plumber, but you will not hire an atheist to instruct young novitiates. And so it is that whenever a discretionary position opens up within an administration, the person selected for the task will be a reliable member of the party in power. Hopefully, they will be capable, but of the two qualities — capability and reliability — reliability will always win out.
An argument can be made that when political operatives are making moves, reliability is capability, as the object is political. I won’t disagree. But I am also making the point that no administration (or at least rarely) appoints a capable person who they do not believe is also reliable. Thus party identity and history confers a quality of reliability to everyone, but it does not negate capability in anyone.
In the course of my career, I came to know a lot of political appointees. And these appointees served administrations of different political parties. Most of these individuals were capable and not clearly partisan — they focused on the job to be done. That may have been due to the national defense focus of most of the people I knew. Only one person who I knew and was appointed Secretary of Energy pursued an overtly progressive agenda — moving away from fossil energy. But even before he became secretary he had been promoting that agenda in his part of the organization. So his appointment was a good marriage between party politics and private preference. No matter how much I disagree with this approach as a matter of policy, I did not see this individual as “evolving” into a green nut due to political opportunity. His delusion had developed organically.
And so I come back to my opening question: Is bringing in prior actors within one’s own party power structure writ large, corruption per se? My answer is “no.” The power structure of the party has an outlook and a need. If the outlook is corrupt, then the party will look for someone to act corruptly to achieve the desired end. But if the outlook is not corrupt, then the selection of someone within the party to carry out the task, does not mean that the person so chosen is corrupt. And people who have performed tasks on behalf of the party will be the ones who perform tasks on behalf of the party in the future.
Honest belief in something untrue is not corruption. Dishonest belief in something untrue is corruption. As I have asserted before: parties are political structures in search of an ideology, not ideologies in search of a political structure. Party members picking other party members to carry out authorities they have gained through an electoral process is not, in and of itself, corrupt.
Published in General
Any dual relationship is reason for concern.
That is all DC has though
I think this is the gist of your question, Rodin. I don’t think there is necessarily a conflict. If the outlook is corrupt, what will anyone do about it? If the person has to be approved by the Senate, they can screen the person more thoroughly if they believe the outlook is corrupt. Otherwise, I guess you get what you pay for–and you should know what you’re paying for.
I think that the circumstances around this Special Prosecutor are more an instance of a conflict of interest rather than corruption. Both are in the realm of ethics concerns, but are also different (corruption is a crime). Regarding the “revolving door” generally, it is difficult to avoid — what is a retiring three-star admiral going to go do next, sell shoes? Of course not. Strict disclosure and transparency rules are our friends here.
yes. The appearance of corruption or the opportunity for corruption are fair game to outlaw.
That is a horrifying statement. Made even more horrifying by the fact that it might be true.
Lordy…
That is all that the democrat party has …
Scholars of the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Nazi Germany, etc. might disagree. The people who believed that stuff “honestly” were corrupt to their very souls. They were so corrupt that they could not recognize truth vs. falsehood or good vs. evil.
Honest belief that there is no morality distinct from utility is profoundly corrupt.
Even mild-mannered Mike Pence is greatly troubled by it.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pence-calls-appointment-special-counsel-investigate-trump-very-troubling
And my profession we avoid dual relationships because dual relationships lead to ethical problems and boundary crossings.
The trouble is in the rest of the world people don’t have that much of a problem with dual relationships. And the problem with that is due relationships tend to lead to ethical problems and boundary crossings.
Being a journalist who’s married to somebody working for a politician unfortunately generates problems.
Why is that so blurry?
An interesting post and a problem that is never going to be fully solved. We tend to hear about it more when it involves defense, but plenty of other cases are similar. There are other revolving doors with lots of money at stake. An example: The textbook publishers have long been in bed with educational bureaucrats and ideologically the results are pernicious. But, in truth, human nature being what it is, the problem would still exist even if every school in the country modeled itself on Hillsdale College and every edu publisher in the country was Regnery.
Seems like the only way that would work is if the people don’t like the direction, elect someone else and that someone can get rid of ALL of the people who disagree with the new direction. A large part of Trump’s problem is that the disagreers (disagreeables??) stayed on to thwart what he was elected to do.
And if Trump had tried to clean house, the courts likely would have said he can’t. Whereas they rarely get in the way of the Dimocrats. Especially in DC.
The only correct answer, limited government. The Founders knew it.
Note, I’m not arguing for smaller government. While a visionary like Jefferson might imagine a nation spanning the continent, it’s doubtful he could comprehend a nation of 330 million people. Let alone a society where the blessings of liberty include drag queen story hour.
Fortunately David French can imagine drag queen story hour FOR him.
I suppose one could argue that such conflicts didn’t happen when most families were single-income.
No social/criminal problem can ever be eliminated, which is why “zero tolerance” policies are so silly. Some level of tolerance for the dark side of human existence is always inevitable.
However, such problems can be reduced and, at the very least, people in positions of authority can refrain from exacerbating them.
Sadly, they have no incentive to do so if voters don’t care. Government has become so big that these sorts of conflict-of-interest issues have become too “inside baseball” for voters to pay much attention. Given a choice between a crook and a challenger with policies one dislikes, folk will choose the crook nearly every time.
The crook probably has policies they don’t like either.
Based upon this analysis would Justice Thomas be forced to retire or recuse whenever Trump comes up?
What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
That makes no sense at all, Gary. When, exactly, has a Democrat appointed Justice recused themselves for anything.
Where on Earth are you coming from?
Oh wait, I know: You hate Donald Trump and anyone who dares support him (Save your Mother)
This special counsel is Jack Smith. I read up on many of the jobs that Jack Smith has had. He does seem like a very experienced prosecutor.
Trump has probably hired some equally experienced defense attorneys who are good at defending people against charges of mishandling classified documents.
Those are informative thoughts on an important topic, Rodin.
In your conclusion, you state: Honest belief in something untrue is not corruption. Dishonest belief in something untrue is corruption. As I have asserted before: parties are political structures in search of an ideology, not ideologies in search of a political structure. Party members picking other party members to carry out authorities they have gained through an electoral process is not, in and of itself, corrupt.
Excellent thinking. And I like these words: “Honest belief in something untrue is not corruption.”
In other words, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Somewhere between 1998 and 2010 the idea of “conflict of interest” disappeared.
What was called bribery became known as “pay for play.”
Corruption at that point was legalized.
This is why education is no longer education, “free trade” is no longer free trade, and the justice system has been turned upside down.
The Federal Reserve is not Federal but private. If it reserves anything, it is the right of a group of inner-woven banking families to create per their whim the various bubbles. (As well as the timing of the collapsing of the bubbles.)
It wasn’t our imaginations that seemed to indicate how so many in the highest places in Wall Street sold their financial firms’ stock just before the economy contracted in 2008. It was the reality.
The only part of Fed Reserve policy that is changing is that BlackRock’s supercomputer entity now does the manipulations.
Election machinery and protocols now guarantee fraudulent elections.
Our many agencies, originally created to serve the public good and the public health, are now controlled by the very interests which they were supposed to oversee.
This means that industry sees to it that we in the public are regulated.
Are you ready for your 14th bio weapon jab and your fifth booster yet? I hope so, because the “health industry” will require its lackeys inside our “health agencies” to continue to regulate us, even unto our deaths.
Our Founding Fathers thought that The Fourth Estate would protect us from the various problems our nation encountered. I don’t think even Thomas Jefferson could have envisioned a world in which only six corporations would control the news for 330 million people. And that all of them served the very forces that were intent on ending the great Game Plan that Jefferson and his colleagues had designed as our free and sovereign nation.
####
The Republicans stumbled into a form of populism with Trump that is often called American nationalism. The established Party was not anticipating or ready for this so a significant divide exists, probably to cause some unpredictable adjustments and changes in direction in the next two years.
The Democrats have been gravitating towards socialism for a long time and have finally adopted that as their explicit agenda.
I prefer to think of it as “Americanism” not “American nationalism”. It was basically “You do you, I’ll do me” on a national scale. Once our seas no longer protected us against foreign powers our foreign policy had to be more engaged and sophisticated. But globalism should not be in our remit.
Textbook publishers are in the private sector, and they sell their products to the educators whom they serve.
So, I don’t think the revolving-door issue is the same thing exactly. Ford’s purpose is to make cars that serve the needs of its customers. It’s the same with most textbook publishers who sell their textbooks to government schools, whether those are state colleges and universities or kindergarten through grade 12 public schools.
Well, actually, it is the same thing. There is a deep connection there. What we read in the news media or in textbooks has been supplied by the government unless we go out of our way to find independent materials. The connection, however, isn’t illegal or improper in any way. We just need to keep it in mind at all times.
We have the freedom to seek out news media and textbooks that were not written for the government’s purposes. And we all should do so if we cherish objectivity.
And we need to always take care of the First Amendment because it is the only check and balance against government propaganda.
But of course the “free market” becomes less free when large purchasers are involved, especially large GOVERNMENT purchasers. Such as the California school systems. Textbook publishers know that their wares have to be sufficiently “Woke” for California to buy them. If they aren’t, they lose a LOT of money. So they make their textbooks to suit California requirements, and smaller states/districts can like it or lump it.
I think Texas also picks textbooks at the state level. At least that’s what I heard many years ago.
I’m against it. But that’s what you tend to get when school funding is done at the state level.
Even if it didnt start out that way, it might easily end up that way even if all school districts were “independent.” Because it costs less per unit to print a million of one textbook than a quarter-million each of 4 different books that different groups like. And thats going to be especially important to smaller buyers, as it already is today. Maybe a small school district can get a “Christian” textbook for $50, but if the California-approved book is $25 they might “have to” buy it anyway.
People who are determined to keep their small school system independent of the big nationalized one will be at an economic disadvantage in a lot more ways than that. Textbook prices are among the least of their disadvantages.
But it might be one of the things easiest to deal with. They can’t, for example, easily save money on their property taxes or something. But they might save a bundle if they buy cheaper textbooks.