ILLINOIS - Ethics Optional!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28139523/displaymode/1176/rstry/28139155/

Do corrupt officials get elected, or do good people become corrupt in office?

That is one of the many questions stemming from the news of Rod R. Blagojevich’s resent arrest. It has long been suspected that Rod had been behaving in sketchy, or less than ethical ways, but thanks to some wire tapping, warranted I believe, they got actual tape of good old Rod trying to sell President Elect Obama’s old senate seat! That, along with threatening to cancel donation grants to local hospitals and trying to get Chicago Tribune workers fired, earned him a six a.m. wake-up call from not other than the FBI.

Illinois, the whole country actually, has a long history of corrupt elected officials. That brings us back to the question, do we just happen to let corrupt people convince us they aren’t and get themselves elected? Or does the political business have a tendency to corrupt people who began as good?

I think that power corrupts. I think we take good people, elect them, and watch them slowly, through a mixture of peer pressure and fate, fall to corruption. But not everyone becomes corrupt, and not everyone that goes in is good to begin with. I do not believe that Rod Blagojevich was good to begin with, I believe he was corrupt from the start. So I think that the saying “power corrupts” can be revised to “power can corrupt”. Power has the ability to turn any good person bad, depending on the circumstances. It is dangerously easy for people to become power hungry when tempted, and that has always been the true enemy of any good government system. So is there any way to beat it? Or is it pure human nature?

And what about the original question, do we elect corrupt officials, or do they become corrupt?

Against the Grain

Watch this video on the food crisis and how the country of Malawi faced it. Its only three minutes long, and it’s worth the watch. You have to watch an advertisement in the begining though.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#27932835

What is striking about this story is not only the booming success of what used to be one of the poorest countries in the world, but how the government of Malawi decided to go against the advice of Western countries, and try something no one had done before. By giving out 5 million dollars in fertilizer, they brought in record crops, and in an amazing domino effect, boosted their economy, their long term agriculture, their education programs, and their overall well-being. You see in one part of the clip, a small business, doing well, a tell tale sign of a strong economy. And just the fact that the farmers have enough money to buy luxury food items like fruit and vegetables, is an incredible jump from what it used to be like.

This is an amazing example for countries all over the world. With a mixture of droughts, desertification, and all around soil degeneration (the gradual diminishing of soil fertility, or how well it grows crops, to a point of uselessness), this gutsy move proved to work in more ways than just agriculturally. It brought a country out from what seemed to be a long road of poverty and turmoil, and it may be able to help many more countries like Malawi. The question really is, do we need to rethink our advice to poor countries? And when our economy is doing so horribly, can learn something from the fresh young countries of the world.