No Tribute, No Pardon

 Many posts have addressed the president's pardon power.

A pardon industry has arisen during the Trump years.

But not all can afford to pay.

 Kenneth P. Vogel and Alan Feuer at NYT:

President Trump quietly denied nearly 6,000 clemency applications this month from people who mostly lacked political connections and had waited patiently in a queue while he awarded pardons and commutations to allies who had skipped the line.

The denials came after his administration had raised hopes that he might mark the country’s semiquincentennial by granting clemency to as many as 250 people.

That raft of clemency grants did not materialize. Instead, Mr. Trump doled out fewer than 20 pardons on July 3 to Clean Air Act scofflaws along with a political donor.

Thousands of other petitioners were left waiting.

The denials were announced inside the Justice Department in a July 14 letter from Ed Martin, the U.S. pardon attorney, to United States attorneys across the country.

The Reflecting Pool: Bureoning Algae and Peeling Paint

Previous posts have discussed federal monuments.

Sahil Kapur and Sophie Ziedalski  at NBC:

President Donald Trump’s makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations is not going according to plan.

First, the project overshot Trump’s initial cost estimate of under $2 million — and has already topped $14.6 million, according to a federal spending database.

Then, the new Trump-branded “American flag blue” color was short-lived as algae turned the pool green, causing the administration to send crews to dump hydrogen peroxide into the expansive pool to deal with the problem.

In recent days, NBC News spotted some blue paint chipping off the surface, with strips of it peeling away and floating atop the pool for visitors and passers-by to see as the busy summer tourist season in the nation’s capital gets underway.

You know who's obsessed with the Reflecting Pool? Donald J. Trump. pic.twitter.com/vqZZEC4WEa

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) June 20, 2026

The $1.7 million no-bid contract to clean the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool went to a company ultimately owned by Trump donor John J. Cafaro, who previously pleaded guilty in separate federal cases involving bribery and campaign finance violations. The company's name?… pic.twitter.com/TXBU7c7jIr

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) June 19, 2026

250

Many posts have discussed patriotism.

 Josephine Walker at Axios:

Dueling events for America's 250th birthday are creating confusion as celebrations ramp up across the U.S.

Why it matters: The disconnect made headlines last week when a group of performers withdrew from on the National Mall, prompting President Trump to step in.

Those concerts were organized by Freedom 250, a White House-established initiative. America 250, a separate, Congress-approved missive, has planned events nationwide in the run-up to Independence Day.

The intrigue: Several of the performers who canceled cited being misled about the event.Country singer Martina McBride said on Instagram that she "was assured this was a nonpartisan event that was meant to celebrate ALL 50 states. ...Yesterday things started changing and what we were told is, in fact, not what is happening."

...

Freedom 250 is planning events that reflect Trump's flair for spectacle.

That includes a UFC fight on the White House South Lawn, an IndyCar race through downtown Washington, D.C., a FIFA World Cup fan zone and the Great American State Fair — both to be held on the National Mall.

Jemar Tisby at The Bulwark:

The issue is not hosting a sporting event, it’s the one they chose and what it says.

If the White House wanted to host a sporting event commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary, they could have chosen “America’s Pastime”—baseball.

And they could have held it at a stadium dedicated to the purpose, not spent tens of millions constructing a temporary arena that may leave scars on the landscape for a long time to come.

Instead they chose cage fighting, the most visceral expression of violence for sport.

What does it mean to normalize blood sport at that address?

Whatever your personal opinion of MMA as a sport, this is a deliberate choice about what power looks like, what celebration looks like, and what America is supposed to mean.

Yet it’s not a departure from this regime’s ethos; it’s right in line with their performance of masculinity.

Profiting from Public Office

Many posts have discussed political corruption.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen at Axios:

Imagine America put these questions to a public referendum:

1. Presidents and their family members, unlike other U.S. citizens, shall be granted lifetime immunity from federal audits and criminal investigations of their past tax returns.
2. Presidents and their family members can maintain active ownership of global business empires, profiting when government decisions directly benefit those specific businesses.
3. Presidents, while in office, can maintain massive personal crypto and stock portfolios that buy and sell hundreds of millions of dollars in industries directly regulated by their own administration.

How would you vote?It's hard to imagine more than single-digit support for any of these. Yet Trump is doing all three and paving the way for future presidents to do the same. That's why precedents by presidents often matter as much as laws themselves.

Between the lines: This is more than just a Trump problem. Look at the astonishing number of lawmakers trading and making money off stocks, often with insider knowledge of looming congressional action.

Pardon Lobbying

 Many posts have addressed the president's pardon power.

A pardon industry has arisen during the Trump years.

Kenneth Vogel at NYT:

It is based in part on the proposition that paying the right person to deliver a message tailored to Mr. Trump’s politics or grievances is more important than demonstrating remorse or a low likelihood of recidivism.

A growing number of practitioners promise access in this murky enterprise, but some also may exaggerate their effectiveness to elicit payments from clients desperate to avoid incarceration. Pardon seekers routinely offer to pay as much as $1 million or more, often with bonus payments triggered by a successful outcome, according to lobbying filings and people familiar with the fees.

This transactional approach to clemency has been welcomed by white-collar offenders like those serving time at the Otisville camp, a minimum-security facility about 75 miles northwest of Manhattan.

Many of its inmates cheered Mr. Trump’s election, seeing him as a kindred spirit who shares their grievances about the unfairness of financial crime prosecutions like the one that led to his own conviction, according to four people familiar with conversations at Otisville.

Over the course of his first term and the first year of his second, Mr. Trump has granted pardons or commutations to at least nine inmates who served at Otisville’s camp or the adjacent medium-security prison. That includes two inmates who were freed after Mr. Schwartz from the minimum-security camp, which typically houses about 100 inmates.

Nursing Homes and Pay-to-Play Politics

Many posts have discussed lobbying, "shadow lobbying," "unlobbying," and "non-lobbying lobbying."

Kenneth P. Vogel and Christina Jewett at NYT:

The nursing home industry was on a roll last summer.

It had just won a 10-year moratorium on a rule initiated during President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration to require increased staffing levels in an effort to reduce neglect among residents, which had led to injuries and deadly infections.

Nonetheless, some in the industry, warning that the rule would have substantially increased costs, wanted to make it go away permanently.

So nursing home executives turned to a tool that has proved successful in getting President Trump’s attention: money.

Starting in early August, the industry began making donations that over the course of weeks would eventually total nearly $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.

Later that same month, a handful of nursing home executives who had given the biggest donations joined industry lobbyists at Mr. Trump’s golf club in suburban Washington to plead their case, according to campaign finance filings and people familiar with the meeting.

Over light lunch fare, the contingent “urged the president to formally repeal the harmful minimum staffing mandate, which would have surely forced providers throughout the country to close their doors to new residents — or possibly close their doors altogether,” Bill Weisberg, the founder and chief executive of Saber Healthcare Group, recounted in a text message to The New York Times.

Less than one month after the lunch meeting, Trump administration lawyers quietly stopped defending the pending staffing rule in court against challenges from the industry.

Complete victory came a couple of months after that, when the White House approved a full revocation. The Department of Health and Human Services announced the repeal in a statement that echoed industry talking points, which have emphasized the industry’s difficulty in hiring enough staff, especially in rural areas

Pardons for Sale

 Many posts have addressed the president's pardon power.

Kenneth P. Vogel and Susanne Craig at NYT:

In 2021, a convicted fraudster named Adriana Camberos was freed from prison when President Trump commuted her sentence.

Rather than taking advantage of that second chance, prosecutors said, Ms. Camberos returned to crime. She and her brother were convicted in 2024 in an unrelated fraud.

This week, Mr. Trump pardoned both siblings, marking the second time Mr. Trump had opened the prison gates for Ms. Camberos.

Their pardons were among a handful of clemency grants quietly issued by Mr. Trump this week.

Among the other lucky recipients: a man whose daughter had given millions to a Trump-backed super PAC, a former governor of Puerto Rico and a former F.B.I. agent — all of whom had pleaded guilty in a political corruption case.

...

Three of the recipients were scheduled to be sentenced this month in a political corruption case related to accusations that former Gov. Wanda Vázquez of Puerto Rico had accepted bribes from Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, in 2020.

In late 2024, while Mr. Herrera was facing felony bribery and other charges in the case, his daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.

In May, her father’s lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, who had served on Mr. Trump’s legal defense team, negotiated an unusually lenient deal with the Justice Department. Under the deal, which was authorized by a top Trump appointee, Mr. Herrera agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance charge, disappointing career prosecutors who had pushed for a harsher sentence.

In July, Ms. Herrera donated another $1 million to MAGA Inc. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump this week pardoned Mr. Herrera, Ms. Vázquez and Mark Rossini, a former F.B.I. agent who had worked as a consultant for Mr. Herrera. All three had pleaded guilty in August to misdemeanor campaign finance charges.

Weakening Nonprofits

Many posts have discussed the politics of philanthropy. 

Thomas B. Edsall at NYT:

In a detailed email, Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociologist at Princeton, described the administration’s evisceration of the nonprofit sector:

The entire nongovernment community (or — as we might say in tax parlance — the 501(c)(3) sector) has been threatened with a combination of loss of tax exemptions, cuts to federal funding and potential investigations.

Some statistics indicate that fully one-third of NGOS incorporated in the U.S. lost funding in the first half of 2025.

In this atmosphere, Scheppele continued,

NGOs are nervous — and some are pulling back from some of the causes that they know this administration does not support. Some NGOs have created “sister organizations” in other countries to shield resources from U.S. coercive measures (vindictive lawsuits, sudden tax-status changes) and provide an escape route if necessary.

Tracking the financial condition of nonprofit groups is difficult at best. They are only required to disclose receipts and expenditures annually in 990 reports to the I.R.S. A tax-exempt group reporting receipts and expenditures for the calendar year ending Dec. 31, 2025, does not have to file until this coming May 15. In addition, charitable organizations with 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) designations do not have to disclose donors.

 In this murky world of political dark money, Trump and Republican allies appear to have inflicted damage on the most powerful collection of pro-Democratic nonprofits, an interlocking network operating under the umbrella of Arabella Advisors that for two decades has channeled billions to liberal advocacy and get-out-the-vote groups. (I say “appear” because no documentation of current fund-raising and spending is available.)

In 2024 alone, according to I.R.S. reports, four groups aligned with Arabella — the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, Hopewell Fund and New Venture Fund — raised a total of $1.46 billion and spent $1.48 billion, largely in grants to liberal and Democratic-leaning groups.

The first clear signal that the Trump attacks were having considerable effect was a Gates Foundation announcement in June that it was halting grants to the nonprofits administered by Arabella Advisors.

Abusing the Pardon Power

 Many posts have addressed the president's pardon power.

Stephen Holmes at the Project Syndicate:

The pardon power is the only authority that the US Constitution places entirely in one person’s hands, immune from legislative override or judicial review. Alexander Hamilton, defending this arrangement in Federalist 74, understood the danger. But he wagered that shame would restrain abuse – that a president, bearing sole blame for corrupt use of the power, would hesitate where a legislature might not. “The sense of responsibility is always strongest,” Hamilton wrote, “in proportion as it is undivided.”

Hamilton was wrong. He did not anticipate a shameless president.

Hamilton’s case for the pardon was political, not moral. He barely mentioned mercy. The power’s core purpose was emergency peace-making: “in seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a welltimed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth.”

This was the rationale for Massachusetts’ offer of clemency to participants in Shays’s Rebellion, and for George Washington’s pardon of those who took part in the Whiskey Rebellion during his presidency. The pardon was an ad hoc instrument for ending conflict after rebellion was suppressed – a discretionary tool for restoring peace when peace took priority over justice.

Crucially, Hamilton insisted that clemency must remain unpredictable. “It would generally be impolitic beforehand,” he wrote, “to take any step which might hold out the prospect of impunity.” A standing promise of pardons would encourage rebellion. The power works only if potential lawbreakers cannot count on forgiveness in advance.

Trump has inverted every element of this design. He has transformed the pardon from an instrument for ending conflict into a weapon for stoking it, from an ad hoc exercise of discretion into a standing promise of impunity, from a tool of reconciliation into a system for rewarding loyalty. Hamilton envisioned a president using clemency to heal divisions after insurrection; Trump pardoned the insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, only after returning to the presidency four years later, signaling that loyalty to him guarantees impunity.

The effects are already visible in courtrooms and law offices across the US. “If I were any defendant now,” a former senior Department of Justice official told the Financial Times, and “I had the financial wherewithal or connections, my thought would be, maybe I’ll be convicted, but I very well may get a pardon as well.” Defense attorneys are reportedly advising clients that conviction need not be the end for those who meet the criteria. Hamilton’s nightmare has become litigation strategy.

 

Pardoning Supporters

Previous posts have discussed the president's pardon power.

Dan Merica and Matthew Choi at WP:

Trump began his presidency by issuing a blanket pardon to virtually all Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot defendants, but his use of the pardon power has only intensified since then. Here is an incomplete list of all the people to whom Trump has granted clemency in his first months as president:

• His most prominent allies involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani
• A former Tennessee House speaker and his top aide who had been convicted of corruption-related charges
• A retired New York police sergeant convicted of stalking and acting as an unregistered foreign agent in a Chinese government plot
• The founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering in 2023
• New York Mets great Darryl Strawberry, who pleaded guilty to a felony after he failed to report $350,000 in income from autographs, personal appearances and sales of memorabilia
• Former representative George Santos (R-New York), whose sentence for identity theft and wire fraud was commuted
• Ross Ulbricht, the founder of online drug market Silk Road who was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 on charges related to his website
• Twenty-three people who were convicted of blocking access to reproductive health clinics
• Rod Blagojevich, the disgraced former governor of Illinois who was convicted on multiple charges of corruption in 2011
• Todd and Julie Chrisley, the former stars of USA Network’s “Chrisley Knows Best,” who were found guilty of fraud and tax evasion
• Michele Fiore, a former Republican Las Vegas City Council member convicted of fraud last year for using money meant to honor a slain police officer for plastic surgery, rent and her daughter’s wedding
• Scott Jenkins, the former sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia, who was convicted of federal bribery and fraud charges in December

(You can see the complete list from the Justice Department here.)

The list highlights just how much Trump relishes one of the clearest powers of the presidency, as he grants pardons for crimes like fraud, bribery and corruption. The people granted these pardons are often Trump supporters, many of whom have close ties to the president and his movement.

“No MAGA left behind,” Ed Martin, Trump’s pardon attorney, tweeted this year following Jenkins’s pardon.

Pardon Lobbying

DANIEL BARNES and CAITLIN OPRYSKO at POLITICO:

TRUMP PARDONS BINANCE FOUNDER: President Donald Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, POLITICO’s Declan Harty reported this afternoon, confirming a scoop first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

— The pardon comes after nearly a year of effort by Zhao and Binance to lobby Trump for clemency and marks a big win for Checkmate Government Relations and its founder Ches McDowell, who was hired by Binance in September. Binance paid the firm $450,000 in the third quarter for work on policy issues related to cryptocurrencies and “executive relief,” according to a disclosure report.

— Lobbying for Zhao in his personal capacity was BakerHostetler’s Teresa Goody Guillén, a leading crypto lawyer who Trump once reportedly considered to lead the SEC. Zhao hired Goody Guillén in February to work exclusively on his pardon effort, according to disclosure reports, but she appears to have played a limited role in recent months, reporting no activity on Zhao’s behalf in the third quarter. In addition to her pardon work for Zhao, Goody Guillén is part of a BakerHostetler team lobbying on Binance’s behalf — a team that includes former U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) and former House Financial Services Committee chief counsel Kevin Edgar.

— Zhao served four months in prison last year after pleading guilty to charges that he intentionally ignored anti-money laundering laws and allowed Binance to be used by criminals looking to turn illicit crypto assets into clean cash. As part of the plea agreement, Zhao stepped down from his position as CEO of Binance and agreed to pay a $50 million fine. The company was separately fined $4 billion and has since been subject to compliance monitoring by the Justice and Treasury departments.

— Binance has an on and off history of lobbying in Washington. The company’s U.S. subsidiary, Binance.US, signed its first contracts with Ice Miller Strategies and Hogan Lovells in late 2021 and went on to spend more than $1 million on lobbying in 2022. In the first nine months of 2023, as Zhao and Binance negotiated their futures with federal prosecutors, the company spent nearly $1.2 million on lobbying.

— Following the guilty pleas, Binance’s lobbying spending plummeted to zero for the remainder of 2023. Neither Zhao nor the company reported spending a dime on lobbying in 2024. But Trump’s inauguration jolted the company’s lobbying effort back to life. So far in 2025, Binance has reported spending $860,000 on lobbyists, putting it on track to equal or beat its 2023 peak spend.

"There's a Flip Side to That Coin."

 A number of posts have discussed "Miles' Law," that is, where you stand depends on where you sit.  Attitudes toward procedures and institutions depend on whether you control them.  At Axios, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write:

Through silence or vocal support, House and Senate Republicans are backing an extraordinary set of new precedents for presidential power they may come to regret if and when Democrats seize those same powers.

Here are 10 new precedents, all set with minimal GOP dissent: 

1. Presidents can limit the classified information they share with lawmakers after bombing a foreign country without the approval of Congress.
2.  Presidents can usurp Congress's power to levy tariffs, provided they declare a national emergency.
3. Presidents can unilaterally freeze spending approved by Congress, and dismantle or fire the heads of independent agencies established by law.
4. Presidents can take control of a state's National Guard, even if the governor opposes it, and occupy the state for as long as said president wants.
5. Presidents can accept gifts from foreign nations, as large as a $200 million plane, even if it's unclear whether said president gets to keep the plane at the end of the term.
6. Presidents can actively profit from their time in office, including creating new currencies structured to allow foreign nationals to invest anonymously, benefiting said president.
7. Presidents can try to browbeat the Federal Reserve into cutting interest rates, including by floating replacements for the Fed chair before their term is up.
8. Presidents can direct the Justice Department to prosecute their political opponents and punish critics. These punishments can include stripping Secret Service protections, suing them and threatening imprisonment.
9. Presidents can punish media companies, law firms and universities that don't share their viewpoints or values.
10. Presidents can aggressively pardon supporters, including those who made large political donations as part of their bid for freedom. The strength of the case in said pardons is irrelevant.

Between the lines: Friday's Supreme Court ruling limiting nationwide injunctions — a decision widely celebrated by Republicans — underscores the risks of partisan precedent-setting.Conservatives sped to the courts to block many of President Biden's signature policies — and succeeded.

And since losing control of the Senate, Democrats have gone quiet on abolishing the filibuster. 

For decades, Democrats said that the term "states' rights" was coded racism -- until they used the term in defense of same-sex marriage.

A Strong Letter

Many posts have discussed prosecutors.

 From WP:Hagan Scotten, the lead prosecutor in Mayor Eric Adams’s federal corruption case, has quit over the Justice Department’s demand that the case be dismissed, calling any lawyer who would move in court to toss the matter a “fool” or “coward,” according to a copy of a letter obtained Friday.

BY EMAIL 

Re: United States v. Eric Adams, 24 Cr. 556 (DEH) 

Mr. Bove,

 I have received correspondence indicating that I refused your order to move to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams without prejudice, subject to certain conditions, including the express possibility of reinstatement of the indictment. That is not exactly correct. The U.S. Attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, never asked me to file such a motion, and I therefore never had an opportunity to refuse. But I am entirely in agreement with her decision not to do so, for the reasons stated in her February 12, 2025 letter to the Attorney General. 

In short, the first justification for the motion—that Damian Williams's role in the case somehow tainted a valid indictment supported by ample evidence and pursued under four different U.S. attorneys is so weak as to be transparently pretextual. The second justification is worse. No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives. 

There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake . Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative view of the new Administration. I do not share those views. I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me. Please consider this my resignation. It has been an honor to serve as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. 

Yours truly, Hagan Scotten Assistant United States Attorney Southern District of New York

Garfield on Congress

A number of posts have discussed congressional capacity, legislative productivity, and deliberation.

In April 1877, Representative (and future President) James A. Garfield wrote at The Atlantic:

And this leads me to say that now, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand those high qualities to represent them in the national legislature. Congress lives in the blaze of “that fierce light which beats against the throne.” The telegraph and the press will to-morrow morning announce at a million breakfast tables what has been said and done in Congress to-day. Now, as always, Congress represents the prevailing opinions and political aspirations of the people. The wildest delusions of paper money, the crudest theories of taxation, the passions and prejudices that find expression in the senate and house, were first believed and discussed at the firesides of the people, on the corners of the streets, and in the caucuses and conventions of political parties.

The most alarming feature of our situation is the fact that so many citizens of high character and solid judgment pay but little attention to the sources of political power, to the selection of those who shall make their laws. The clergy, the faculties of colleges, and many of the leading business men of the community never attend the township caucus, the city primaries, or the county convention; but they allow the less intelligent and the more selfish and corrupt members of the community to make the slates and “run the machine” of politics. They wait until the machine has done its work, and then, in surprise and horror at the ignorance and corruption in public office, sigh for the return of that mythical period called the “better and purer days of the republic.” It is precisely this neglect of the first steps in our political processes that has made possible the worst evils of our system. Corrupt and incompetent presidents, judges, and legislators can be removed, but when the fountains of political power are corrupted, when voters themselves become venal and elections fraudulent, there is no remedy except by awakening the public conscience and bringing to bear upon the subject the power of public opinion and the penalties of the law. The practice of buying and selling votes at our popular elections has already gained a foot-hold, though it has not gone as far as in England.

California's Corridor of Corruption

Dan Walters at CalMatters:

Campaign contributions are a semi-legal way for those who benefit from political decisions to express their gratitude, but they can backfire legally if there is some overt quid pro quo. During the Shrimpgate investigation, Capitol politicians were ensnared for demanding both campaign money and personal payoffs from undercover FBI agents seeking legislation to benefit a fictitious shrimp processing company.

So-called “behested” payments are another. Interest groups curry favor by making “contributions” to politicians’ favorite charities that sometimes employ the politicians’ relatives, as CalMatters writer Laurel Rosenhall has detailed. There are limits on direct campaign contributions, but none on behested payments. Belatedly, the Fair Political Practices Commission is promulgating new disclosure rules.

The federal indictment of Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas alleges another wrinkle in the corruption game. Ridley-Thomas, who has jumped from office to office for the last three decades, is accused of helping a University of Southern California administrator obtain hefty county contracts in return for getting his son, Sebastian, a no-cost graduate degree and a full-time faculty position.

...

Indictments of officials and political players in the small communities on the periphery of Los Angeles are so common that they scarcely raise an eyebrow. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon calls his Los Angeles County district a “corrridor of corruption.”

...

 It’s not uncommon for members of the public to declare that all politicians are crooks. They aren’t. Most are sincere and honest, whether or not one agrees with their actions.

However, there is corruption and it flourishes most often when there is no meaningful political competition, when politicians believe that they own their positions and are entitled to pieces of the action, and when the watchdogs are not watching closely enough

Comparative Corruption

From Transparency International:

The United States has received its lowest score in eight years on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released today by Transparency International, dropping two points to score 69 out of 100. The Index draws from over a dozen independent expert assessments and surveys to measure perceptions of public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories. Scores on the CPI range from zero (very corrupt) to 100 (not corrupt).

Read the report

Gary Kalman, Director of the new U.S. office of Transparency International, said the following:

“Weaknesses in our laws are being exploited by a growing list of bad actors at home and abroad. From foreign despots to terror networks, drug cartels to human traffickers, some of the world’s most destructive forces are benefitting from gaps in U.S. law. Multiple corruption scandals in the last year alone have shown that transnational corruption is often facilitated, enabled, or perpetuated by countries toward the top of the Index, including the United States. Fortunately, bipartisan legislation currently before Congress, the ILLICIT CASH Act and the Corporate Transparency Act, would go a long way toward stopping these interests from using the U.S. as a laundromat for their dirty cash.”

Corruption: International Data

From Transparency International:

The 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released today by Transparency International reveals the United States as a key country to watch in a global pattern of stagnating anti-corruption efforts and a worldwide crisis of democracy. With a score of 71, the US hasdropped four points since last year. This marks the first time since 2011 that the US falls outside of the top 20 countries on the CPI.

To view the results, visit: www.transparency.org/cpi2018

“A four point drop in the CPI score is a red flag and comes at a time when the US is experiencing threats to its system of checks and balances, as well as an erosion of ethical norms at the highest levels of power,” said Zoe Reiter, Acting Representative to the US at Transparency International. “If this trend continues, it would indicate a serious corruption problem in a country that has taken a lead on the issue globally. This is a bipartisan issue that requires a bipartisan solution.”

The 2018 CPI measures public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories, drawing on 13 expert assessments and surveys of business executives to give each country a score from zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Five of the nine sources used to compile the score for the US showed a noteworthy drop in score*. The other sources showed no improvement.