How Corrupt Are U.S. Politicians? Money in Politics, Integrity & Finance (2002)

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Charles Lewis is an investigative journalist based in Washington D.C. Lewis founded The Center for Public Integrity and several other nonprofit organizations and is currently the executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication in D.C. He was an investigative producer for ABC News and the CBS news program 60 Minutes. He left 60 Minutes in 1989 and began the Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan group which reports on political and government workings, from his home, growing it to a full-time staff of 40 people.[1] [2] When commenting on his move away from prime-time journalism, Lewis expressed his frustration that the most important issues of the day were not being reported. Lewis has given interviews for various publications and appeared in the 2003 documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave and the 2005 documentary Why We Fight and others. He has discussed the difficulties facing media in trying keeping the public informed when television, newspaper and radio outlets are owned almost entirely by a few major corporations such as Comcast, Disney, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. He was a Ferris Professor at Princeton University in 2005, a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University in the spring of 2006, and is currently a tenured professor of journalism at American University in Washington, D.C. Lewis' 2014 book is 935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lewis_%28journalist%29 If the highest echelons of the governments also take advantage from corruption or embezzlement from the state's treasury, it is sometimes referred with the neologism kleptocracy. Members of the government can take advantage of the natural resources (e.g., diamonds and oil in a few prominent cases) or state-owned productive industries. A number of corrupt governments have enriched themselves via foreign aid, which is often spent on showy buildings and armaments. A corrupt dictatorship typically results in many years of general hardship and suffering for the vast majority of citizens as civil society and the rule of law disintegrate. In addition, corrupt dictators routinely ignore economic and social problems in their quest to amass ever more wealth and power. The classic case of a corrupt, exploitive dictator often given is the regime of Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which he renamed Zaire) from 1965 to 1997. It is said that usage of the term kleptocracy gained popularity largely in response to a need to accurately describe Mobutu's regime. Another classic case is Nigeria, especially under the rule of General Sani Abacha who was de facto president of Nigeria from 1993 until his death in 1998. He is reputed to have stolen some US$3–4 billion. He and his relatives are often mentioned in Nigerian 419 letter scams claiming to offer vast fortunes for "help" in laundering his stolen "fortunes", which in reality turn out not to exist.[32] More than $400 billion was stolen from the treasury by Nigeria's leaders between 1960 and 1999.[33] More recently, articles in various financial periodicals, most notably Forbes magazine, have pointed to Fidel Castro, General Secretary of the Republic of Cuba since 1959, of likely being the beneficiary of up to $900 million, based on "his control" of state-owned companies.[34] Opponents of his regime claim that he has used money amassed through weapons sales, narcotics, international loans, and confiscation of private property to enrich himself and his political cronies who hold his dictatorship together, and that the $900 million published by Forbes is merely a portion of his assets, although that needs to be proven.[35] Measuring corruption statistically is difficult if not impossible due to the illicit nature of the transaction and imprecise definitions of corruption.[43] While "corruption" indices first appeared in 1995 with the Corruption Perceptions Index CPI, all of these metrics address different proxies for corruption, such as public perceptions of the extent of the problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption