The problem of corruption in America is bigger than we acknowledge, and it’s getting worse — that’s according to our new columnist (and former journalist) Logan Davis, who will be taking a look at corruption’s spread, its consequences, and what we can do to stop it in a new biweekly column.
Trips on yachts and private planes. Tens of thousands of dollars in payments to a spouse. Private tuition for a relative. In the past two weeks, a series of bombshell reports from ProPublica have illuminated the most serious ethics scandal in the Supreme Court’s modern history.
As it turns out, giving someone lifetime tenure, wizard’s robes, and the ultimate say over the rule of law does not incentivize them towards good behavior.
But Clarence Thomas’s behavior is not an aberration. This scandal is simply the highest-profile recent example of a nationwide trend towards corruption which has gone largely unseen by the public, and ignored or excused by those in power – a trend we need to wake-up to before it costs us dearly.
As an investigator and researcher working nationwide, peeling back the layers of elected officials’ lives and the inner workings of governments at every level, my unavoidable conclusion is that the problem of corruption in America is bigger than we acknowledge, and it’s getting worse.
That’s not just my conclusion, either: in 2016, the United States ranked as the 16th least-corrupt nation on earth in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index. By 2021, we had plummeted to 27th place, behind Chile, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Uruguay, the entirety of Western Europe, and a handful of other far-flung states.
The problem is not that people are unaware of corruption – the Trump administration’s non-stop cavalcade of clownish horrors awakened many Americans to the reality of corruption in American public life, and polling in recent years has consistently shown a high level of ambient concern about political corruption – it’s that they are bad at recognizing it when they see it. While the Trump era raised people’s awareness of the presence of the problem, it left them with little better understanding of what corruption actually is, how to identify it, or what to do about it.
In the popular imagination, corruption involves smoke-filled rooms and briefcases full of hundred-dollar bills. And, indeed, that kind of corruption does exist in the United States. Take for example former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich – a man with whom I have, admittedly, had some interaction – who was arrested, tried, and convicted for attempting to sell a United States Senate seat to the highest bidder. Blago’s case so perfectly met the textbook image of corruption that he was even caught on tape by the FBI uttering the now-famous words, “I’ve got this thing, and it’s fucking golden. I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing.”
But most corruption doesn’t look like that. Most corruption isn’t even illegal.
Harvard professor and political scientist Stephen M. Walt expounded on this idea in a 2019 essay, in which he argued that “corruption isn’t confined” to the Trump White House, or “to a few bad apples,” but, rather, that “it seems to be a growing problem in all walks of life,” using examples like the 2008 financial crisis and the Boeing 737 MAX scandal.
In the 2008 crisis, a cozy relationship between regulators and regulated allowed financial institutions to take increasingly risky bets which ultimately broke the global economy, and led to an evaporation of global wealth, a spike in homelessness, and an estimated 10,000-plus suicides. None of the figures responsible for the crisis or its accompanying carnage ever saw the inside of a courtroom. In Boeing’s case, the government and the company agreed to a regulatory framework allowing Boeing to “self-regulate,” under which framework Boeing executives approved and promoted the use of an in-flight system they knew was dangerously flawed. The government’s abdication and the company’s avarice directly resulted in two plane crashes and more than 300 deaths. The one Boeing executive charged in the whole affair was almost immediately acquitted of any wrongdoing.
These are perfect examples of the kind of corruption eroding institutions nationwide: powers and privileges which were intended to be used for the common good (i.e. banking regulations, making sure planes can actually fly, etc.) were instead used to benefit specific individuals and entities at the expense of the common good, and no meaningful consequences were ever levied for the wrongdoing. People were killed. Lives were ruined. No one paid.
It is this legal kind of corruption, this normalized kind of corruption, that we need to learn to recognize and develop a knee-jerk reaction against. And it’s not limited to the federal government.
In the past week, Colorado has seen two stories that should serve to open our eyes to the presence of corruption even here, on the proverbial homefront.
Last Thursday, the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline recommended that former Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, Nathan Coats, be censured for his role in a scheme to misuse $2.75 million in public funds, potentially as part of a hush money deal. Despite the conclusion that Coats absolutely misused public funds, a censure is the strongest penalty he potentially faces, and essentially amounts to a mark in the now-retired judge’s file. Though the state auditor’s office found evidence of fraud and illegal transactions, the Denver District Attorney has already declined to press charges against anyone involved.
Then, late Saturday night as the legislative session barreled towards a close, corporate special interests managed to revive a bill from the dead and pass it. As Democratic Rep. Jennifer Parenti put it, “what we saw tonight is that a bill failed, then a sponsor immediately left the chamber to talk to special interests in the lobby, came back in, spoke to a couple colleagues and got them to ask for a reconsideration.” Despite being a violation of the Chamber’s rules, which forbid members to speak to lobbyists during Third Readings, the maneuver worked, the bill passed, and it is expected to be signed into law. There has been no public discussion of any potential consequences for anyone involved in the successful effort to break the chamber’s rules designed to limit corporate influence.
A former Chief Justice misusing millions in taxpayer dollars, and a legislative chamber violating its own rules to the benefit of the casino lobby. Both of these stories are instances of corruption, happening right here, in our state government.
In the years I have spent digging dirt for democracy, I have seen enough corruption – from perverse incentives to smoke-filled rooms – to fill volumes. And if I’m being completely honest with you, seeing those things took something from me. It took the childlike optimism which first drew me into politics 11 years ago. It robbed me of my ability to believe that electing enough of the “right people” will affect change, and filled me with the overwhelming dread which comes from knowing that the “right people” will continue being chewed up, spit out, and forever changed by corrupt systems until the systems themselves are either changed or dismantled.
But it gave me something, too. The savage disappointment of observing the rot at the heart of a system I believed in gave me clarity. It gave me an understanding of the obstacles standing between where we are now, and where I truly believe we can someday be – and there’s no way to navigate the course between here and there without understanding those obstacles.
That’s why I want to dedicate more time and effort to defining and illuminating those obstacles for others, and that’s why I am taking on a new role: columnist.
Though I am currently involved in investigations or long-running research projects in states across the country, the Colorado Times Recorder has generously given me an opportunity, and a platform, to bring some of my investigative resources back home, and to focus on investigating, analyzing, and – if need be – exposing the corrupt systems and perverse incentives bogging-down our very own state and local governments here in Colorado.
For years, the vast majority of my research has been private, and the decisions on what to do with my findings have often been out of my hands. Now, thanks to the Times Recorder, I intend to conduct public investigations, updated biweekly, into the Colorado stories I believe deserve more scrutiny.
I will file records requests and share the findings with you. I will interview insiders, outsiders, and whistleblowers, and try to identify holes in our state’s systems for transparency, accountability, and good government. I will do my best to illuminate the structural obstacles standing between where we are now, and where we want to be.
In two weeks, I will start by taking a look back at the just-concluded legislative session. I will talk to staffers and elected officials about what happened with the sudden about-face on the casino bill last weekend – and I will find out what insiders at the state Capitol think about how outside influence affects outcomes.
I don’t know what we’ll find – but I know that we’ll never find anything if we don’t start somewhere.
So let’s get started.
