Who’s Your Daddy? (Genealogy and Corruption, American Style)
NPR (National Public Radio) News broadcast the opinion this morning that Brits are marginally less corrupt than Americans. Interesting question. Was Bonnie less corrupt than Clyde? Debate at your leisure but the story did prompt me to think of an excellent resource for tracking both U.S. and British style corruption.
Probably all the talk of lineage in the news lately but why not use the genealogy records that are gathered so obsessively to track the soft corruption of influence?
Just another data set to overlay on elected, appointed, and hired positions, lobbyists, disclosure statements, contributions, known sightings, congressional legislation and administrative regulations, etc. Could lead to a “Who’s Your Daddy?” segment on NPR where employment or contracts are questioned naming names. That would be interesting.
It also seems more likely to be effective than the “disclose your corruption” sunlight approach. Corruption is never confessed, it has to be rooted out.