Bribing the Poor to Win Votes: We Could Use Some of This Kind of 'Corruption' in American Politics

By Dave Lindorff

What a devilishly sneaky guy that Jose Danial Ortega Saavedra is!

Why this president of Nicaragua, and former leader of the Sandinista rebels in their successful 1979 overthrow of U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, in order to win re-election this fall, as he appears to have done,  according to the New York Times, “shrewdly adopted policies aimed at pleasing his base of poor and working-class Nicaraguans, including supplying them with government-donated food”!

Why of all the nerve! What a crook and a scheister! Imagine catering to the needs of the poor in order to win an election. How low can a politician stoop?

Except that, wait a minute. Isn’t that what politicians are supposed to do: to adopt policies aimed at pleasing their base? Not to mention, isn’t the basic idea of government supposed to be to improve the lot of the majority, and especially of those who are society’s neediest? I mean, even rabid conservatives and supporters of unfettered capitalism at least pretend that their support of the rich and the powerful is motivated by an ideological conviction that this is the best way to improve the lot of the majority of the people? (I know, I know, they don’t really believe that, but they have to at least pretend that’s their motivation.)

Here in the US, have we have moved so far away from true democracy that we now consider it corrupt for a politician to act in the interest of the downtrodden? Are we do far gone that if a candidate helps the poor it is seen as no different than doing a favor for a wealthy campaign contributor or for a big corporation that has given the candidate a bribe?

How pathetic can American “journalism” get?

I won’t pretend to be an expert on Nicaraguan politics. It may be that Commandante Ortega, who risked his life joining and leading an insurgency against Somoza and the might of his imperialist backers in Washington,  and who for years has been dedicated to bettering the lot of the poor people of Nicaragua, has succumbed to that corruption so endemic to Latin American politics, but geez, let’s not call offering help to the poor a form of corruption!

Frankly, President Barack Obama could take a lesson from Ortega, and do something himself on behalf of the poor in America, instead of just shoveling money into the hends of the banksters, and cutting deals to let them escape regulation and investigation...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the award-winning independent online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/890