The following article that I read in this morning's Houston Chronicle should be of interest to Assam netters, who passionately argued on the subject of corruption.
You will find discussion on - Is corruption dependent on culture? Or is it a part of human nature? What do you think of "DeLayed Gratification"?
Let us all know what you think of the article.
Dilip
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| Rick Casey |
A culture of corruption?
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
The reader offered a challenge:
Why didn't any Chronicle writer follow up on "an interesting and honest piece by Baltazar Garcia in Sunday's Outlook section."
Garcia lamented that Councilwoman Carol Alvarado is the third council member from the Hispanic East End involved with a public
corruption controversy.
Ben Reyes and John Castillo were charged with bribery. Reyes was convicted. Castillo's case ended with a hung jury.
"Whether you like it or not," the reader concluded, "it certainly appears that part of the culture there that (sic) accepts a wee bit of dishonesty."
I doubt that this reader is alone. More than a few folks carry the notion that certain minority cultures foster corruption.
It is somewhat amazing to hear it while the Enron trial is getting so much publicity. With evidence of white male executives pulling off hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of fraud, we hear plenty of outrage.
Learning from the Irish
But we don't hear anybody talking about how corrupt the white-guy culture is.Several years ago,
I spoke at a lunch meeting of an overwhelmingly Anglo service organization in San Antonio shortly after the bribery indictments of a handful of public officials. All but one were Hispanic. The exception was black.
"Let's face it," a member said during the question period. "The reason that we have all this corruption is because we're really part of Mexico, isn't it?"
The audience got very quiet.
"I find that question offensive," I said. "It is disrespectful to my ancestors. There's nothing these Hispanics have done that they didn't learn from my Irish-American ancestors."
'Catholics' vs. 'Protestants'
When the laughter died, I went on about corruption being a condition of human nature, not of particular cultures.But there are different kinds of corruption, and some have cultural correlations.
Forty years ago Bill Crane, a well-loved government professor of mine at St. Mary's University, lectured to our class on the subject.
Crane divided the political world, for the purpose, into "Catholics" and "Protestants." By Catholics, he meant immigrant groups and others who had not risen to maturity in the American socioeconomic power structure.
"Protestants," in his terminology, had. (By now many devout Catholics qualify, in Doc Crane's terms, as "Protestants.")
"The problem with the Catholics," he said, "is that they haven't learned the value of
delayed gratification."
They couldn't resist sticking their hands into the cookie jar while they could.
The "Protestants" understood that if they kept their noses clean while in government, they'd be able to cash in much more bountifully afterward by selling knowledge and contacts they acquired while "serving."
Today's news gives us plenty of examples of what might now be called "DeLayed gratification."
The Abramoff scandal is thick with former (white) congressional staffers, not a few of whom cashed in from access to Rep. Tom DeLay, in whose office they had served.
Some have or will be indicted, but most won't.
And you don't have to go to Washington to find the phenomenon. A couple of years ago Texans for Public Justice listed the top lobbyists in Austin.
Of the
14 who reported billings of at least $1 million during the 2003 legislative session, two were former legislators and seven were former aides to public officials. None was Spanish-surnamed.
Rusty Kelley, ex-aide to a House speaker, reported billings of between $3.1 million and $5.2 million.
Former legislator Stan Schlueter billed between
$2 million and $3.3 million.
$2 million and $3.3 million.
And consider this: The corporations and other interests who paid millions to Austin lobbyists did so as an investment, not a donation.
If they didn't get results from the investments, they wouldn't keep paying the lobbyists.
And those millions and millions of dollars of results are often at odds with the public good.
The power that flows from such sums, both in Austin and Washington, are every bit as corrupting
of government as bribery and embezzlement.
There are two differences, however.
One: It's legal.
Two: It's far more lucrative to the practitioners and far more costly to the public.
Buried in book-length bills are lobby-devised tax breaks for powerful industries and "earmarks" for well-connected firms, each costing the public many millions.
None of this suggests that the perpetrators of any of these forms of corruption are anything but a small minority of their ethnic groups.
Nor does the greater legal corruption excuse the lesser illegal corruption.
To go back to Crane's terminology, I firmly believe "Catholic" crooks should pay the price.
I'm just perturbed that the "Protestant" practitioners so often get off.
You can write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at [EMAIL PROTECTED].
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