Bribery and kickbacks have been around since the dawn of man. Nothing new here. Most of the world outside the USA operates on bribery and kickbacks as a matter of course.
In WWII, bribery and kickbacks were rampant in defense contracting - although this was almost never reported and the government made it more difficult to go after fraud to make sure that the contractors didn't get caught.
"In 1863, in response to frauds that were costing the U.S. Treasury millions of dollars and many lives, Abraham Lincoln urged Congress to pass the False Claims Act as a way of recruiting "citizen soldiers" -- including the private bar -- to combat scams against the federal government. This law was very successful, and was nicknamed the "Lincoln Law."
Corruption Fights Back
During World War II, the U.S. government rushed to sign massive military procurement contracts, and it frequently did so with little oversight or due diligence -- a situation ripe for fraud. In 1943, in the throes of the war, the False Claims Act was amended by Congress to narrow its scope by defining the "unknown to the government" clause in such a way that most of the fraud that was was excluded from FCA prosecution. In addition, opponents of anti-fraud measures managed to cut the whistleblower's share of the recovery so low that there was little incentive for someone to risk damaging their career and entering a prolonged legal battle in order to bring a False Claims Act case against a government contractor.
The world economy runs on the lubrication of bribery, kickbacks, incentives, gifts, quid pro quos, and personal extravagance at the cost of the taxpayer, shareholder, etc. - there is not much new under the sun that has changed, except maybe now you are more aware of it than you were when all this stuff was not publicized, RA.
About 95% of the US foreign aid is basically bribery - we (the USA) gives that money more or less as a quid pro quo for certain things we want - access to oil, minerals, etc. - getting cooperation on a tax treaty - getting a certain vote in the UN - or to support a particular regime in power - or to buy cooperation - or buy Boeing 787s instead of Airbus A380s.
Our miltary aid to foreign countries is basically money that goes to General Dynamics, Boeing, etc. Didja note that our new friends in Eastern Europe (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria) are now set to receive US bases in their countries and Poland just accepted delivery of its first 2 (of 4) F-16s, switching over from the MiG and Sukhoi models. Do you think they just one day decided to do that out of the wild blue yonder?
Surely RA you are not so naive as to not believe that the world runs (and always has) on bribery, kickbacks, and inducements.
Didja think that Congresscritter Ron Klink set up the ELF/EM-1x demo on the Capitol lawn out of the goodness of his heart, or because FJ and TB funneled a bunch of $2000 campaign contributions to him within a couple months of the demo?
Didja think that Vlad, Christian and Jenkins did the PR work for free?
AI
