The company that has the most business servicing Navy ships in much of the world, owned by a Malaysian man, has been found to be massively corrupt and to have penetrated the US Navy heavily.
Several Naval officers have already pled guilty to charges related to the corruption. More than 200 officers are under investigation. The Chief of Naval Operations called about 200 admirals to a meeting in December and told them that 30 of them are under investigation. The company has a widespread network of Navy officers supplying them secret information and redirecting Navy ships as the company ordered them to, to get serviced by the company, who overcharged the Navy for the services.
Many Naval Officers received expensive gifts, lavish parties with prostitutes, and cash payments for their corrupt actions.
www.washingtonpost.com/…
There are lessons to learn here about ‘good government’. That checks and balances and oversight that costs money are part of ‘good government’.
Republicans include the costs of investigating fraud and crime in their budget-slashing for any groups who are their donors, and even some who are not.
For example, under Bush, the IRS slashed the budget for auditing the wealthy, while spending heavily on building new systems to detect the smallest errors for the working class returns.
The idea of corruption in the military spending is not new. Harry Truman came to national fame by heading the Senate’s investigation into corrupt activities in World War II spending.
It’s great that this was caught — but the massive extent and how long it’s gone on show we still are not doing well at catching this as it should be caught.
And this is under a president who is not disposed to support the corruption. For the first time I will say these nasty words: What would trump do?
Why has this scandal received so little media attention? It seems related to the larger problem of not having news organizations, but entertainment news organizations for profit.
We need to support fighting and monitoring for this sort of corruption as part of our battle for good government. This harms the public support for government.
Any organization with too much power can succumb to more corruption.
Somehow, with all the culture around ‘honor’ in the armed services and most who respect it, this is more than ‘a few bad apples’ and shows the need for better oversight.
And campaign finance reform is important to get politicians to have an interest in that better oversight.