Top Voter Issue: Corruption in Government

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A spate of recent national polls has identified corruption in government as being at the top of US voter concerns regarding our national government - and those concerns are not, as Trump would have us believe, about ordinary people cheating the government.  Americans are angry about government leaders lining their pockets while selling access or favors - or profiting off of insider information.    Those are the things that have Americans fuming with disgust.

Last week Fox News released the results of a poll that has started to galvanize the public around the corruption issue.   That poll found nearly 90 percent of registered US voters reported they were extremely or very concerned about government corruption, a finding which overshadowed inflation (85%), gas prices (83%), and healthcare (80%).  The Gallup Poll found that 89% of Americans believe that corrption in government is widespread, a finding just one percentage point shy of what the Fox poll revealed.

But those numbers are not about the little people trying to nickel-and-dime the system in order to get by, instead they are a reflection of Americans being fed up with the big boys getting richer by scamming the government or benefitting from their position in government.  A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos Poll discovered that 66% (two of every three) Americans believe that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself.  (That figure includes more than a third of all Republican (34%) and Republican-leaning Independents.)

Trump sees corruption in terms of little people cheating the government and taking money from his treasury through "corruption" like welfare fraud.   His answer for that problem was to announce the establishment of a tip line for each of us to rat out our friends and neighbors in exchange for a one-percent reward of money recovered.  Problem identified, problem solved - the very big brain of Donald John Trump strikes again!

Trump's tip line will be here today and gone tomorrow - and it will be hugely ineffective in the meantime. People know how he operates.   The major government corruption will not get reported - and if it does the people who make the reports will be targeted and harassed by the US Department of "Justice" - not rewarded.  The tip line won't be swamped with calls about presidential pardons being sold straight out of the Oval Office, or friends and family members of the President blatantly selling access to our nation's chief executive, or even sleazebag politicians making numerous stock trades based on information they obtained through their government service - and making those trades during hours the taxpayers were paying them to be at work!  And there will be nary a word about the presidential family selling crypto to world leaders and people who want to do business with the US government.

Few of the major scams playing out across our government will be reported on Trump's tip line because Americans instinctively know, especially under Trump, that laws are written to protect and separate the "haves" from the "have nots."

The big-time government corruption under this administration in mind-boggling, with new scandals in the headlines daily.  (Be sure to read today's news story about the former Trump lawyer who received a $50 million, 4-year deal from a billionaire who needed a Trump pardon -  a pardon which he later received.)

That's what has Americans cranked-up and complaining to pollsters, Donald.  The little guys nibbling at the edges of the welfare state are just trying to get by.  It is the filthy rich hogs at the government trough who are the real problem.   They are the the welfare queens who wallow in our national wealth while the working people  struggle to keep food on the table and gas in the car.

Sooner or later every dog has his day, and soon honest, hard-working Americans will have theirs.  That day will be Tuesday, November 3rd.

Go vote, America!  Vote!  Vote!  Vote!  (And take a friend or two with you!)