An Integrity Deficit

By Steve Hynd

The new Transparency International world corruption rankings are out and as usual those two shining beacons of transformative democracy at gunpoint - Iraq and Afghanistan - come in the bottom three rankings.

But what's making the news is the assessment that the good old U.S.A. has slipped outside the top 20 of least corrupt nations to No. 22.

Nancy Boswell, president of TI in the United States, said lending practices in the subprime crisis, the disclosure of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme and rows over political funding had all rattled public faith about prevailing ethics in America.

"We're not talking about corruption in the sense of breaking the law," she said. "We're talking about a sense that the system is corrupted by these practices. There's an integrity deficit."

Various financial scandals at state and city level had encouraged the impression that the regulatory oversight was weak and that influence could be bought, she added.

Just wait until next year, when the buying of the Tea Party by big corporate money and the current foreclosures scandal get added to the rankings.

Over at FDL, Jim White points out that the mainstream doesn't particularly want to talk about this bit of news today, with the NY Times ignoring the story completely and the Washinton Post burying the lede to talk about Russia instead. Gawker has a bit of snark urging us to celebrate.

It�s party time, people. Responsible/lame people might say, �Party time? But we are all sad and worried.� That didn�t stop the rich people on the Titanic from drinking champagne and using poor people as lifeboats. Just sayin�.

Rich people are always the ones that benefit from corruption, never the poor.