A recent press release from the White House outlines President Bush’s efforts to stop kleptocracy. Here’s a short snippet from the release:

“For too long, the culture of corruption has undercut development and good governance and bred criminality and mistrust around the world. High-level corruption by senior government officials, or kleptocracy, is a grave and corrosive abuse of power and represents the most invidious type of public corruption. It threatens our national interest and violates our values. It impedes our efforts to promote freedom and democracy, end poverty, and combat international crime and terrorism. Kleptocracy is an obstacle to democratic progress, undermines faith in government institutions, and steals prosperity from the people. Promoting transparent, accountable governance is a critical component of our freedom agenda.”

Here are the three primary objectives set to “reduce the opportunities for kleptocracies to develop and to deny safe haven to corrupt officials, those who corrupt them, and the proceeds of corrupt activity”:

• The Strategy Has As Its Foundation In The President’s Proclamation, Made In January 2004, To Generally Deny Entry Into The United States Of Persons Engaged In Or Benefiting From Corruption.
• The Strategy Advances Many Of The Objectives In The National Security Strategy By Mobilizing The International Community To Confront Large-Scale Corruption By High-Level Foreign Public Officials And Target The Fruits Of Their Ill-Gotten Gains.
• The Strategy Reaffirms The President’s Commitment To Ensure That Integrity And Transparency Triumph Over Corruption And Lawlessness Around The World, Expand The Circle Of Prosperity, And Extend America’s Transformational Democratic Values To All Free And Open Societies.

This is an excellent start, yet it is more broad and worldwide in scope. It would be nice if here at home we could start the process and become willing examples. Can you say Louisiana and Jefferson’ freezer or Bill Clinton and his library?

I was chuckling today when I received the most recent NewsMax article about Babs Streisand giving Slick Willy’s global warming charity a MILLION BUCKS! It amazes me that the media and the left are trying to use Abramhoff as a Republican-only scandal when we are privy to even tastier morsels. It’s not just the global warming craze but even the Clinton Library’s millions.

Remember these great articles:

NY Sun, Nov 22nd, 2004 - Saudis, Arabs Funneled Millions to President Clinton’s Library
LGF, Nov 22nd, 2004 - Saudis Give Millions to Clinton Library
Townhall, Mar 30th, 2002 - Saudi $ for Clinton
NewsMax, Oct 8th, 2005 - Saudis Funded Clinton After Nixing OBL Offer

Then, there’s all those last minute photo-ops between Clinton and the ALERA (Arab League of Extraordinarily Rich Anti-Semites) as Bill Clinton was trying to create his world policy legacy.

It was so disgusting to see Billy-Boy Clinton kissing-arse and basically saying, “Yass-ser, Arafat.” No wonder the Israelis have never trusted us. Recent acts (within the last 15 years) have proven that the US will throw money at the problem and take a photo-op as their badge of honor.

To think that we were continuously submitted to the Clinton Administration acts of stupidity as great feats in world diplomacy. Astounding. Connecting the dots we continue to see how 8 years of Clinton did nothing to stem the terrorism tide. His mismanagement provided tons of cash for his library, continued the status quo in the Middle East, and feeds an even deeper moral bankruptcy rivaling history’s greatest. And one primary benefactor of the world’s disdain and hate has been Israel.

We could have done better - we are now.

Our own kleptocracy has begat such a mess within our own borders. It seems to me that we need to go back to an old, tried and true, process for clean politics. If we reinstituted the stipend-based pay structure for our representatives I think we’d be making a good start. I remember some time ago Washington bemoaning the fact that without good pay we get bad representation. We continue to increase their pay and we still get bad management.

More to come …

TAGS: Fix4RSO, Milblog, Military, kudzu, Middle+East

This entry was posted on Friday, August 11th, 2006 at 13:03 and is filed under Commitment, Coriolis, Fix4RSO, WayPoint. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.