Corruption @ MindSay

The Washington Post reported yesterday that "typical Blue Dogs receive significantly more money–about 25 percent–from the health-care and insurance sectors than other Democrats, putting them closer to Republicans in attracting industry support." Most of us could have drawn that conclusion ourselves.

When I was a college student, this catchy, derisive aphorism was often heard: Those who can do; those who can't teach. Clever claptrap and we all knew it; otherwise we wouldn't have been in college in the first place. Numerous people who have become absurdly rich doing what their professors taught them to do routinely donate huge sums to their alma maters. What better proof could there be?

A variation of this aphorism, however, may be true. Those who know teach, those who can do, and those who neither know nor can become members of Congress.

The American scandal of politicians asking for, receiving, and accepting money from special interests is too well known to be worth much mention. And although politicians routinely deny that those contributions influence their votes, everyone knows that politicians routinely lie. Emerson summed it up nicely: "What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."

If you've ever wondered why the idle rich (48 percent have net worth's estimated to be at least $1 million), attorneys with unsuccessful private practices (about 30 percent), and former shopkeepers run for seats in the Congress, one possible answer is that their votes are the only things of value that they have to sell.

Are America's failures running the country? Well they certainly haven't enacted much effective legislation in the last half-century. (09/07/31)

© 2009 John Kozy

(On June 3, 2009, I sent the following reply to Louise Radnofsky’s article, Lawmakers Bill Taxpayers For TVs, Cameras, Lexus [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124364352135868189.html?mod=googlenews_wsj].)

Dear Ms Radnofsky,

I began reading your piece, “Lawmakers Bill Taxpayers For TVs, Cameras, Lexus,”  with heightened interest, but by the end, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of disappointment. You entered a forest and ended up describing a few shrubs. But what Americans need to know is the big picture.

I may not be correct in all of the following, but this is what I have come across:

·           Every Congressman is paid at least a $174,000 salary which is automatically adjusted upward for inflation.

·           Every Congressman is entitled to a retirement plan in addition to a 401K plan and also Social Security. The retirement and 401K plans are taxpayer subsidized.

·           Every Congressman is entitled to participate in a healthcare plan which is also taxpayer subsidized.

·           And now you report that every Congressman also receives between $1.3 and 4.5 million yearly for office expenses.

Wouldn’t it be useful to the American people if they were told how much this actually costs taxpayers?

Wouldn’t it be useful to the American people if they were told just what Congressmen had to spend their $174,000+ salaries on and how much of it is just money in the bank?

You write as though the Treasury, in pure generosity, provides the office expense funds. But doesn’t the Congress, which receives the funds, legislate the fund’s existence and its amount?

I find this very odd, and you should have found it so too.

The Congress, which Constitutionally, is the principle part of the government, enacts legislation for itself which provides itself with what are essentially employee benefits. So the Congress, the government, treats its members as employees of themselves. Wouldn’t it be nice if the rest of us could do that? In doing so, the Congress provides taxpayer subsidized employee benefits to its members that it refuses to provide to the people Congressmen are supposed to represent. Isn’t the notion that an elected official is merely a hired employee somewhat odd?

Had you revealed all of this, you would have revealed, I suspect, a major scandal that would make the current British one look trivial.

I would truly love to receive a reply and later a better article, but I doubt that I’ll ever see either.  Your employer would likely prohibit you from doing it. But I can hope. (06/03/09)

Note: Ms Radnofsky never replied. (07/05/2009)

The recent arrest and subsequent release of Anwar Ibrahim, the rising star in recent Malaysia politics has grave implications for the future of democracy in Malaysia.

 

The country has concluded its general elections which have shown the ruling party of 50 years that the people are ready for a change and are fed up with the level of corruption to which our bureucrats and their political masters have descended to.

 

The urban electorate has shown that it will not stand by and watch while the country is sucked dry of its wealth through dubious government projects, awarded in secrecy, completed with utter disregard for any standards of compliance and approved without the public engineers even stepping onto the project work site.

 

People are riled at the unjust treatment meted out to civil society groups that have taken to the streets to protest ethnic, social and religious discrimination.We are perhaps one of the last places on earth where discrimation is institutionalised and entrenched by the government, with the tacit approval of the community  which it most favors.

 

The concept : I'm 66% of the population, so I deserve a bigger share of the easy pickings.You others, now known as the "nons" can take whatever is left after I'm done.

 

The reality : The smartest and best of our legal, medical, engineering and scientific minds have moved away, and continue to do so, to countries which accept them with open arms and embrace them as sons, something which our motherland fails to do. We will forever be known as foreignerrs in our own land. So why not be a "son" in a foreign land?

 

The people are facing the rising threats of inflation and a global economic slowdown, which will inevitably precipitate a slowdown in our economy and increase layoffs and terminations. We are hurtling towards a dark period without any brakes. And our wonderful leaders are too busy paying politcs to notice. "let's see....hmmmm....I did not have dinner with her, whether in paris or london.....hmmmmm......he came to see me to complain that he was sodomised....hmmmm.....anyone with any problem can come to see me at my house.....hmmmm"

 

Any more hmmmms and I will probably not stop with the crap that's been going on here. Are these people even in their right minds. How can they be so blind to the wishes of the people? How can they not see that Barisan Nasional has got no inkling as to how to weather the next economic storm that's brewing.

 

So, if they actually prove Anwar's guilty of sodomy, what next?

Will the Barisan idiots now come up with a prescription for our economic malaise? Will they now tell us how to cope with rising prices of basic food items. "Eat less rice". I want to know which idiot Minister has started to eat less rice. Which Minister has started using the fictitious public transpotation system on which we spend hundereds of millions of taxpayers money each year. A world class system..if only it existed.

 

But where have the billions poured into it gone?

 

Which Minister has even been to the wet market in recent days and can tell us with a straight face that inflation is only 5%. Everything has gone up by at least 50%. Yet, we waste time in queues in govt departments, served, if at all, by disinterested staff who only wait for payday and kill time on the days in between.

 

We waste time on highways stuck in traffic jams created by bored policemen who are instructed by equally stupid politicians who claim to have intelligence information on non-existent demonstrations. "Intelligence" here being a word that can't be used to desribe the Minister concerned.

 

A total waste of time all around. It may not be so bad if time was the only thing going to waste. Many motorists tightenming their belts to make ends meet, while being forced to drive to work without any choice in the alternative, can feel the money just being burnt while stuck in the trafiic jam. Is this fair treatment of the rakyat who are just trying to earn a living?

 

Has the goverment taken leave of its senses? Has it lost touch with reality?

 

The report on the arrest of Anwar which aws carried on www.malaysiakini.com shows that the Barisan govt has been left with very few options to retain power.

 

What other allegations could they make about Anwar? That he's an agent of the US? Not when a previous prime minister paid millions of taxpayers ringgit to meet the US president. 

 

 

That he's stashed away billions overseas? Not when the Ministers have each amassed billions which cannot be accounted for, stashed away in Jewish owned banks in neighbouring countries. The irony of it is that these guys are the biggest jew bashers, yet look who they go to when they need to escae prying eyes. Can they even look at themselves in the mirror. Can they face their God in their prayers? Or has power and money corrupted them so bad that they have sole their soul to the devil and no longer recognise their God?

 

Money is their God and Finance is their Religion. Commisiion, new perojects, keeping the NEPotism alive, giving with left hand and taking with the right. RM 625 for car owners? Goes right back into the hands of tolled highway owners; taxpayers' money taken out craftily under the guise of helping the people and send right back into the  hands of cronies.

 

We will be the citizens of a failed state if we allow this outright hoodwinking of the people by hoodlums in the govt to continue unabated. We will be citizens in a failed state, with no legal or economic rights if we stand back and do nothing. We will be beggars in our our own land if we just sit back with our hands folded and watch despondently, hpoing someone else will take one for the team.

 

My good friends, the team now comprises we, us and ourselves only.

 

HARTAL!!! 23 SEPTEMBER 2008.

 

 

 

 

Yes, boys and girls it's really really official now.

 

We are a banana republic!

 

Top leaders get involved in oil for food scandals, depriving the poor hungry Iraqi women and children of valuable resources which could be used for the purchase of food and medication. But at the same time pretending to be so holy and pious back home. Holy hypocrisy!

 

Top leaders get involved in sex and murders scandals and shamelessly deny the link, when all the evidence is pointing a particular way. "I don't know who she is..but I only met her in P---s for dinner"....."and she likes to do what I have falsely accused my political opponent of doing". Wink Wink

 

Normal protests by the general public is put down with unprovoked violence by the police; going for a walk on Sunday morning in a group of more than 5 is illegal in this country. It's an "illegal gathering."

 

Print and broadcast media is stifled and told to toe the govt line, villifying all opponents of the govt. Bloggers, who due to the inherently free nature of the internet, are able to give the public the truth they crave, are targetted for one silly reason or the other. Read : Sedition charge against our Yang Mulia.

 

Online newspapers have their offices raided. No news is credible other than that which we get on the internet through the efforts of a few brave individuals. May they prosper and may their numbers grow. My special salute to Malaysiakini at www.malaysiakini.com for their courage in keeping to the noble aims of journalism, i.e. the reporting of the unembellished truth, even in these difficult and dangerous times.

 

People are more afraid of the law enforces than they are of the thieves because, as they say, they have a licence to plunder and pillage unrestrained, whereas the thieves have to do it under the cover of darkness and with their faces covered. Govt-sponsored armed forces are are being formed, independent of the police or the military, and  being armed and  given the authority to enter any premise without a warrant. Allegedly to look for illegal foreign workers. Know who I'm talking about? So what's the role of the immigration and the police? Oh, so they're understaffed eh? Well here a hint! Why not employ more police and immigration officers rather than forming what efectively amounts to a paramilitary force?  Good!!! As we slide further down the scale of a civiled country ...to Banana Republic status!

 

The public is put in fear of attending public gatherings by the threat that the army will be brought in to control the "mobs" and patrol the streets. Army patrolling the streets? Are we in Palestine or Zimbabwe or Myanmar? Loss of faith in the police, knowing that even the "underlings of the govt" cannot now stomach the corruption and deception practised by the top leaders.

 

Poltical opponents are arrested or charged with trumped up charges for a crime which would be an impossibility to commit. A frail five-footer with a spine problem manages to overpower a strapping 23 year-old six-footer, flips him over and gives him the old shebang? Stretching the limits of credibility, init?

 

People fighting for justice in their homeland are imprisoned under preventive detentions laws, denied medical treatment and just left to die, all because they were of a different clour and they prayed to a different God. And he (you know who) would have died if the new PR govt had not made a big fuss over it. The immense loss of support the Bloody Nasty govt would face if he died sobered them up. A little....

 

A cry for fair elections is a crime in this banana republic. Again be prepared to face the wrath of the water canons, gleefully bought with our tax money ( with a massive commission thrown in, of course), to be gleefully used against us. Against women, children and old people who ask for nothing more than a right to air their views and grievances. I guess they forgot : WE'RE A BANANA REPUBLIC.

 

All we need to complete the picture is our dear dear "anak lelaki Sik----r Kutty" going around the country preaching the preservation of the purity of the race. Which race?...has he forgotten that he's a South Asian and only a first generation Malaysian? So which race is it that he's fighting to preserve the purity of ... and which bloody party was so stupid to allow the bloody south asian to lead them thinking he was one of them. Many a time this South Asian Keralite's son must have laughed to himself , thinking how he managed to gain control of a race-based party when he wasn't even a member of that particular race. And now he goes around stirring up racial propaganda all around the country..."no jail time for me, no matter that bloody drunk indian lawyer said". Get the picture?

 

The Inspector General of Police and the Attorney General having been accused of covering up evidence at a criminal trial. And the police are going to investigate!!! Kind of like asking the fox to count the chickens!!!

 

First World public transportation system in our country exists in the unilateral wet dream of some govt politician, drooling over the money to made from the award of contracts to their cronies.  

Politians treating their development funds as their very own piggy banks. Wonderful!!

 

Now the top dog says there is no problem, everthing is okay, country is peaceful. But bring on the army, just in case!!!!

 

 

The parallels that can be drawn between the two countries defy belief. Rotten and corrupt administration. The same for the electoral process. The demonisation of political opponents, at any cost to the country..so long as those in power get to remain in power!

 

Anwar's back in trouble, it appears..same old, same old.....the old dogs in power couldn't come up with any new tricks. So I guess the old adage still holds true, eh? No new tricks!!??? Old bloody dogs!!!

 

An "aide" claims to have been sodomised "several" times on several separate occassions. Why wait for there to be another "occassion"? Why not lodge a police report immediately? Enjoyed it the first couple of times but then "overcome" by guilt and shame? Sure!... Do they really think that the people are that stupid?

 

These questions beg an answer, more so by virtue of the fact that we live in Malaysia, the land where lies can become the truth and where the truth is held ransom by religious and racists zealots in power, to manipulate and sodomise the truth to the extent that the public does not know what to believe in anymore. It's deja vu for Anwar's family for sure. But I'm sure he's not going to go without a fight. This time around I think he will have more people on his side! People are not that stupid to believe the lies of those in power in Malaysia. Or the lies of their stooges!

 

The setting in of disillusionment of large parts of the general populace, who are wondering if the country is actually being governed or whether it is running on autopilot while slowly grinding to a halt, is clearly an indication of the toll that the political fighting and infighting is taking on our country and the people.

 

It's time we told these idiots to bugger off. For good. How? You tell me!