A Rose By Any Other Name

Would smell as sweet, but corruption by any other name slips under the guard of the people. They don't even realise it is happening and if they do it is so boring that they yawn and go to sleep instead.

Ahead of everyone else as usual, the US has gone ahead and found another name for corruption. Pork. Those of us who have watched CNBC TV18 between 6:30 pm and 7:00pm last week or so would have seen a segment called Porkbusters which they are running (the 6:30 - 7:00 time is for the direct broadcast of the MSNBC program Squawk Box as it appears on TV in the US). The background to this is that the US government passed a $280 billion transportation bill - you know building/maintaining/upgrading roads and other transportation-related infrastructure. But then two hurricanes happened and now they need money for rebuilding the affected areas. The US is running massive fiscal deficits already. Where to get the money from? Suddenly everyone seems to realise that the $280 billion bill is filled with mainly useless projects with no other objective than to benefit the politicians in whose area the project is located. This is known by a specific name, viz., pork. Why pork and why not beef or fish I don't know. Anyway, Squawkbox is getting individual US Congressmen on the show and trying to shame them into giving up their portion of the federal pork. Hence the name Porkbusters.

One more background fact: one of the hurricane-affected states has requested $250 billion aid from the federal government for reconstruction.

I brought up all of that since I wanted to link this article from Washington Post which talks about this phenomenon. I think it explains how the US stays out of the corrupt countries list by refusing to call it corruption. Some excerpts:

[we], are still learning how deeply corrupt America's legislative branch has become. Most of the time, members of Congress don't accept cash bribes in unmarked envelopes. Most of the time, senators don't pay for their daughters' wedding receptions out of government slush funds. Most of the time, American politicians don't put their ill-gotten gains into numbered Swiss bank accounts or get the Mafia to launder their money. But corruption comes in many forms, and in this country it comes in the dull-sounding, unglamorous, switch-off-the-television form of infrastructure appropriations.

Then it mentions the hurrican affected state's request as follows:

They are playing by the rules of the only system for distributing federal funds that there is, and that system allocates money not according to the dictates of logic, but to the demands of politics and patronage.

And touches on the transportation bill:

Nor does this logic apply only to obvious boondoggles such as federal transportation spending, the last $286 billion tranche of which funded Virginia horse trails, Vermont snowmobile trails, a couple of "bridges to nowhere" in rural Alaska and decorative trees for a California freeway named after Ronald Reagan (a president who once vetoed a transportation bill because it contained too much pork). On the contrary, this logic applies even to things we supposedly consider important, such as homeland security. Because neither the administration nor Congress is prepared to do an honest risk assessment, and because no one dares say that there are states at almost no risk of terrorist attack, a good chunk of homeland security funding is distributed according to formulas that give minimum amounts to every state. The inevitable result: In 2004 the residents of Wyoming received, per capita, seven times more money for first responders than the residents of New York City.

One question arises: will this money end up with the people who need it most ? Or will it stay in the pockets of those who want it more? I would guess most of it would stay with the latter - the businesses and corporations. How could this happen in a form of government which is of the people, for the people, by the people?

Conclusion? Call it by its real name:

Of course, there are risks to writing about this subject. The very words involved -- "infrastructure," "funding" and "pork" -- cause readers' eyes to glaze over, and Washingtonians' eyes to roll. Government waste is, after all, as old as government itself...

...But maybe at least it is time for a change of terminology. After all, taking $200 million of public money to build a bridge, name it after yourself and get reelected isn't merely "pork." Demanding $250 billion of public money for your hurricane-damaged state -- in the hope that voters will ignore all the mistakes you made before the hurricane struck -- isn't just "waste" either. As I say, corruption comes in many forms. But whatever form it comes in, it will be easier for voters to identify if it's called by its true name.

PS: $250 billion is equal to Rs 11,25,000 crores.