Leader                                                                                                              Funds embezzeled

Mohamed Suharto     President of Indonesia, 1967–98                         US $ 15 to 35 billion
Ferdinand Marcos     President of Philippines, 1972–86                        US $ 5 to 10 billion

Mobutu Sese Seko     President of Zaire, 1965–97                                      US $ 5 billion
Sani Abacha     President of Nigeria, 1993–98                                              US $ 2 to 5 billion
Slobodan Milosevic     President of Serbia/Yugoslavia, 1989-2000     US $ 1 billion
Jean-Claude Duvalier     President of Haiti, 1971–86                                  US $ 300 to 800 million
Alberto Fujimori     President of Peru, 1990–2000                                     US $ 600 million
Pavlo Lazarenko     Prime Minister of Ukraine, 1996–97                           US $ 114 to 200 million
Arnoldo Alemán     President of Nicaragua, 1997–2002                           US $ 100 million
Joseph Estrada     President of Philippines, 1998–2001                             US $ 78 to 80 million

Examples of lawmakers who have sponsored earmarks for private companies and received campaign contributions from them and, in some cases, their lobbyists.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio
Hobson, a member of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, obtained a $2.4 million earmark last year for the Greentree Group of Beavercreek, Ohio, for a digital information sharing system. Greentree Group executives, their families and consultants have donated $43,350 to Hobson since 2000, reports The Columbus Dispatch.

Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind.
Visclosky, a member of House defense appropriations subcommittee, sponsored a $2 million earmark to 21st Century Systems last year for a virtual fence demonstration project. 21st Century has opened offices in Visclosky’s district. Its executives have contributed more than $27,000 to Visclosky in 2007-2008. The company’s Washington lobbyist is the PMA Group, a major appropriations lobbying shop whose associates have his campaign more than $45,000 in 2007-2008. The Indianapolis Star reported that Visclosky also helped Applied Global Technologies obtain a $2 million earmark for video teletraining for the military. Three Applied Global Technologies executives, including Executive Vice President Mike Garvey, each gave Visclosky a maximum $2,300 contribution.

Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan.
Tiahrt co-sponsored an $8.3 million earmark for Marine Corps UC-12 replacement aircraft built by Hawker Beechcraft Corp. in Wichita. Company executives have contributed $11,750 to Tiahrt this election cycle.

Reps. Rob Andrews, D-N.J., and Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J.
Since 2003, Andrews — and in some cases LoBiondo — sponsored $24.4 million in federal contracts to Gestalt LLC for work on speedy analyses of ships spotted at sea and teaching robots to work together. Executives of Gestalt contributed more than $14,000 to Andrews since 2002, and $2,500 to LoBiondo. Employees from Gestalt’s lobbying firm, American Defense International, delivered another $11,000 to Andrews and $5,750 to LoBiondo, reports the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill, N.J.

Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa.
Holden earmarked $3.2 million to Reading-based Fidelity Technologies for the Call for Fire Trainer, a training simulator to help “forward observers” conduct calls for fire missions. The family of its founder, Jack Gulati, has contributed $10,000-plus to Holden’s re-election campaigns over the past six years. Employees of Fidelity’s lobbying firm, PMA Group, have donated $63,225 to Holden campaigns since 2002, the Allentown Morning Call reports.

Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa.
Murphy provided a $1.6 million defense bill earmark to EDO Corp. for “smart rack” weapons release systems that let fighter pilots fire various weapons or drop bombs at separate times. EDO’s political action committee gave Murphy $10,000, the Bucks County Courier Times reports. EDO also hired the PMA Group as its lobbying firm. PMA lobbyists and their spouses have given generously to Murphy, with contributions in the current election cycle totaling $18,500.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.
Miller delivered a $1.6 million for SecuriMetrics Inc., which manufactures biometric identification devices that use iris, fingerprint and facial recognition technology. Employees of SecuriMetrics Inc. have donated $16,090 to Miller and his political action committee since 2004, the Contra Costa Times reports.

Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga.
He won a $1.6 million earmark last year for Engineering and Software Systems Solutions Inc. for advanced coating technologies. Kingston has received more than $20,000 in campaign contributions this election cycle from company executives and their wives.

Source: The Associated Press

There are several types of political corruption that occur in local government. Some are more common than others, and some are more prevalent to local governments than to larger segments of government. Local governments may be more susceptible to corruption because interactions between private individuals and officials happen at greater levels of intimacy and with more frequency at more decentralized levels. Forms of corruption pertaining to money like bribery, extortion, embezzlement, and graft are found in local government systems. Other forms of political corruption are nepotism and patronage systems. One historical example was the Black Horse Cavalry a group of New York state legislators accused of blackmailing corporations.

Bribery is the offering of something which is most often money but can also be goods or services in order to gain an unfair advantage. Common advantages can be to sway a person’s opinion, action, or decision, reduce amounts fees collected, speed up a government grants, or change outcomes of legal processes.

Extortion is threatening or inflicting harm to a person, their reputation, or their property in order to unjustly obtain money, actions, services, or other goods from that person. Blackmail is a form of extortion.

Embezzlement is the illegal taking or appropriation of money or property that has been entrusted to a person but is actually owned by another. In political terms this is called graft which is when a political office holder unlawfully uses public funds for personal purposes.

Nepotism is the practice or inclination to favor a group or person who is a relative when giving promotions, jobs, raises, and other benefits to employees. This is often based on the concept of familism which is believing that a person must always respect and favor family in all situations including those pertaining to politics and business. This leads some political officials to give privileges and positions of authority to relatives based on relationships and regardless of their actual abilities.

Patronage systems consist of the granting favors, contracts, or appointments to positions by a local public office holder or candidate for a political office in return for political support. Many times patronage is used to gain support and votes in elections or in passing legislation. Patronage systems disregard the formal rules of a local government and use personal instead of formalized channels to gain an advantage.

excerpts from: www.Wikipedia.org

Illinois’ official slogan is the “Land of Lincoln,” but an equally apt descriptor would be the “Land of Greased Palms.” The state, Cook County and its governmental seat, Chicago, have a long history of corruption by elected and appointed officials.The culture of corruption dates back to the late 19th century, when a gambling-house owner named Michael Cassius McDonald created the city’s first political machine, establishing a model in which officials would distribute contracts, jobs and social services in exchange for political support, according to a scholarly history of organized crime in Chicago by Robert Lombardo, a sociology professor and former Chicago and Cook County police officer.

Its persistence was documented in Sept. 7, 2006 by the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported that at least 79 current or former Illinois, Chicago or Cook County elected officials had been found guilty of a crime by judges, juries or their own pleas since 1972. The paper provided this tally of the tarnished: three governors, two other state officials, 15 state legislators, two congressmen, one mayor, three other city officials, 27 aldermen, 19 Cook County judges and seven other Cook County officials.

The article noted that so many aldermen had been jailed that the newspaper ran a front-page-story in 1991 when the year passed with none being indicted or convicted.

Serving time
The ranks of imprisoned pols include three former Illinois governors — George Ryan, Dan Walker and Otto Kerner Jr.

Ryan, a rare Republican in the heavily Democratic state and Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s predecessor, is serving a six-year prison sentence after being convicted in April 2006 on racketeering and fraud charges. A decade-long investigation began with the sale of driver’s licenses for bribes and led to the conviction of dozens of people who worked for Ryan when he was secretary of state and governor.

The probe began when federal investigators looking into a deadly crash in Wisconsin that killed six children uncovered a scheme in Ryan’s secretary of state’s office in which unqualified truck drivers obtained licenses through bribes. As the Associated Press reported upon his conviction: “The probe expanded over the next eight years into a wide-ranging corruption investigation that eventually reached Ryan in the governor’s office.”

Walker’s crimes were committed after he served as governor from 1973 to 1977. The Democrat and World War II and Korean War veteran was convicted of fraud related to his stewardship of the First American Savings & Loan Association of Oak Brook. News reports at the time indicated that he received more than $1 million in fraudulent loans for his business and repairs on his yacht, the “Governor’s Lady.”

The federal government later bailed out the bankrupt S&L and Walker served 18 months of a seven-year sentence in federal prison.

Kerner, a Democrat who was governor from 1961 to 1968 and later served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, was found guilty in 1973 of bribery, conspiracy, perjury and related charges for taking payoffs from a racetrack operator in exchange for choice racing dates and two expressway exits to funnel fans to the horse races.

The scandal erupted because Marge Lindheimer Everett, manager of Arlington Park and Washington Park racetracks, deducted the value of the stock she gave on her federal income tax returns under her own theory that bribery was an ordinary and necessary business expense in Illinois.

After resigning his judgeship, Kerner was sentenced to three years in federal prison and fined $50,000.

A history of graft
Chicago, with its long history as a center of vice and organized crime, has had its share of official graft.

One of the most notorious alleged recipients was never convicted of any crime.

William “Big Bill” Thompson, who served as mayor from 1915 to 1923 and again from 1927 to 1931, was the last Republican to serve as mayor of the “City of Broad Shoulders.” He returned to office the second time with the support of gangster Al Capone, pledging to clean up organized crime in the city but instead targeting reformers.

Upon his defeat in 1931 the Chicago Tribune leveled the harshest accusations against Thompson in an editorial:

“For Chicago Thompson has meant filth, corruption, obscenity, idiocy and bankruptcy,” the newspaper said. “…. He has given the city an international reputation for moronic buffoonery, barbaric crime, triumphant hoodlumism, unchecked graft, and a dejected citizenship. … He made Chicago a byword for the collapse of American civilization.”

Upon his death, two safe-deposit boxes in his name containing nearly $1.5 million in cash reportedly were discovered.

The Daley legacy
Investigations of possible mayoral misbehavior have been commonplace in recent years.

Current Mayor Richard Daley’s administration has been investigated for corruption. In a federal probe that is ongoing, Robert Sorich, Daley’s patronage chief, was convicted in 2006 for rewarding the mayor’s political allies with city jobs and promotions. Daley has not been accused of wrongdoing.

His father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, built the once-mighty machine that doled out jobs and favors in exchange for support for Democrats on Election Day. He was never charged with criminal wrongdoing, but several of his high-ranking aides were sent to prison for political patronage.

Other state officials have apparently prospered from their positions of public trust without ever facing trial.

A large cache of cash surfaced in 1971, shortly after the death of Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell, who served 30 years as a state legislator before assuming his final post.

Time magazine reported afterward that the executor of Powell’s estate, John S. Rendleman, found that the 68-year-old Powell, who never earned more than $30,000 a year during his career in public service, left behind an estate worth more than $2 million, including $800,000 crammed into shoe boxes, briefcases and strongboxes in the closet of his hotel suite in Springfield, Ill.

Congressional scandal
Criminal charges also have followed Illinois politicians to Washington.

Former Illinois Rep. Daniel Rostenkowski, who long served as the Democratic chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, pleaded guilty in 1996 to mail fraud in connection with a scheme in which he traded postal stamps for cash, padded his payroll with nonexistent workers and used his account at the House stationery shop to buy gifts. He served 15 months in prison and paid a $100,000 fine.

Rostenkowski was pardoned in 2000 by former President Bill Clinton.

More than 11,000 “earmarks,” worth nearly $15 billion in all, were slipped into legislation telling the government where to spend taxpayers’ money this year, keeping the issue at the center of Washington’s culture of money, influence and politics. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said lawmakers could not possibly know what they were approving in the hastily completed spending bill, packed with “unnecessary, wasteful, run-of-the-mill pork barrel projects” amounting to “a slush fund for the appropriators.” In a lengthy statement submitted for the Congressional Record this week, McCain warned: “It will be a long time before all of the hidden provisions in this legislation are exposed.”

Congress has asked the Justice Department to investigate Alaska GOP Rep. Don Young’s $10 million earmark for a Florida highway interchange sought by a developer who gave him campaign contributions. Former Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., is embroiled in an investigation of earmarks for clients of lobbyist Bill Lowery, a former GOP congressman, who also have been generous campaign donors to Lewis. Once limited to the most senior and powerful lawmakers, or those on the Appropriations and Transportation committees, earmarking pet projects and grants mushroomed after Republicans took over Congress in 1995.

Estimates vary, but earmarks went from more than 1,300 projects worth nearly $8 billion in 1994 to a peak of nearly 14,000 projects worth more than $27 billion in 2005, according Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group that opposes the practice.

Rep. Jim Walsh, R-N.Y., contrasts today’s earmarking culture to what existed before that. Most of the pet projects went to a small clique of spending barons headed by Appropriations chairmen like the late Rep. Jamie Whitten, D-Miss., who used to call up Cabinet officials to order up earmarks.

“We democratized it,” Walsh said. “We basically said, ‘We’re going to make this available to all the members.’”

But demand for earmarks skyrocketed, and more and more lobbying firms sought to buy in.

Democrats say they are cutting earmarks by more than 40 percent below the 2006 budget bills passed when Republicans ran Congress. As important, they say, are House and Senate reforms requiring sponsors of earmarks to disclose them. That’s made it easier for watchdog groups, reporters and the public to track the flow of lobbying influence and money. A Web site run by Taxpayers for Common Sense details earmarks, and one run by the Center for Responsive Politics tracks lobby registrations and campaign contributions.

Things may be changing. This year, freshman Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., gave back about $14,000 in contributions from people who had requested earmarks. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, told the AP that starting next year he’s going to stop asking for earmarks benefiting private companies. Few, however, expect the pay-to-play system to shut down.

“Hiring a lobbyist to try to get you an earmark is a pretty good investment, because you can get a 10-, 20-, 30-fold return without frankly all that much work,” said Anthony Nownes, a political scientist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “It’s a such a win-win situation for everybody. The legislator gets to tell his or her constituent that he or she quite literally brought home the bacon, the lobbyist gets to tell his or her client that they did the same thing, and the constituents get all the goodies.”

Like many of us, I voted for Obama expecting CHANGE in government. What has changed? Pork barrel bills? Nope, still have plenty of those. I expected him to show some level of courage and actually VETO bills that were full of favors and special interest. Why is it so  difficult to get accountability in government? They work for US and should be accountable to US. It enrages me to have massive layoffs, homes being lost and a banking sytem in a collapsed state and all our representatives in DC can do is MORE PORK BARREL SPENDING. They are so insulated, so elitist and so removed from reality and having to earn a living that I am very, very worried for our future.