How To End Bribery In The Federal Government
Apparently it is too hard to prove, in a court of law, the bribery of our Federal Government officials and staff members. So there is probably little hope of reforming the system by toughening bribery laws.
President Obama has tried to impose rules for members of his administration from immediately upon leaving government taking a job with a company with which they dealt while in the administration. This is not enough, because it does not cover enough people and it is not a big enough deterrent.
I suggest that a law be implemented which says that any earnings a federal elected official, appointed official, or staff member gets from eventually working for a company that gained a benefit from legislation or executive or judicial rule making be taxed by the Federal Government at a rate of 90% with no deductions allowed. It could also be made a federal crime to try to disguise any such earnings so as to try to make them appear to not be earnings from such a company. There could be a separate bureau in the IRS to monitor the earnings of former federal legislators, executives, and judges.
This rule alone would cut the sweetheart deals that corporations get to such an extent that our deficit problems would practically solve themselves. Any money the Federal Government would earn from the tax would just be gravy.
By comparison to the case of the oil billionaire in Russia, Khodorkovsky, our outrage ought not be that he was prosecuted because he was a political foe of Vladimir Putin. Our outrage ought to be that friends of Putin do not get prosecuted for similar crimes. We then ought to turn our outrage on the prosecution of people in this country for being foes of the party in power or the lack of prosecution for friends of the party in power.
