Everyone is shocked, shocked, that there is corruption going on in Minnesota, what with Feeding Our Future and Somali immigrants plundering various welfare programs for fun and profit, and top Minnesota politicians posing for photos with an illegal immigrant fraudster from Somalia.
Experts agree that it would be racist not to rename the Minnesota Vikings as the Minnesota Somali Pirates.
You and I, because we are so wise, are not surprised. We understand that, not later than the Roman Empire and its “bread and circuses,” corruption has been the very soul of a government program.
Even philosophers agree. Eric Hoffer opined that every mass movement ends up as a racket.
But what intrigues me is that most every corrupt government program began as a moral crusade. Case in point, the Progressives and the “spoils system.”
Back at the Dawn of the Progressive Age in 1883 our representatives in Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act and promised a Golden Age with a civil service hired on merit instead of the corruption of the Spoils System.
With the average federal worker now earning benefits and a pension far higher than the average private sector worker, does anyone still think that the civil service system is anything other than a corrupt spoils system? Only now the jobs in the spoils system are lifetime jobs for Democrats, and Republicans need not apply, whereas in the bad old days the spoils were switched from one party in a fair and equitable manner after each election.