Can someone explain to me how public servants (politicians) are becoming multi-millionaires on $100,000 salaries?
Responses:
“…aside from the insider trading, which is (insanely) legal for politicians, many of them write books (or have them ghostwritten) and take big pay days for speaking engagements. corruption is widespread but not ubiquitous.
They also take legal bribes from special interest or lobbyist. It’s just formalized and legal corruption
Companies pay them 250K for a speech as a kick back for helping out the company when in office. It’s sad.
Insider trading. They all do it, no repercussions. You and I go to jail.
Also they are purchased by special interest groups and lobbyists.
They also sell books about themselves.. idk who has the time to read those but they exist apparently
Or special interests donate to a foundation the politician owns, gives big contracts to the politicians relatives, buys real estate for relatives and probably hundreds of variations on that theme. It’s rampant and one of the big reasons it doesn’t get investigated is that so many that do the investigation are involved in similar schemes they don’t want to shine a light on it.
Special interests can buy 1,000,000 of their books. Special interests can pay them $10,000,000 on an advance for their book. Etc etc.
From the old union bosses forcing members to buy the tract written by Politician X, to more modern methods, graft has been a part of too many politicians’ lives for many decades.
No, book publishers can. If you’re arguing that money is being laundered directly through book publishers, find one example and call the FBI.
The book purchasing thing is true. Also rare.
No laundering needed. The special interest can think that the book will sell well and invest into the deal with the publisher, or a thousand other things. Giving high paying jobs to family members. Giving insider information for them to use to invest. Etc etc.
Donations can be made to campaigns and the campaigns can hire family members with big wages and their businesses given large contracts. Politicians direct government contracts to companies they own stock in, to the tune of ~$7,000,000,000. They can commit massive war crimes, open new areas to American companies and funnel the mining/energy/etc. contracts to those companies they own stock in.
Besides, yes, illegal ways of doing things that neither party will prosecute while their President is head of their party and the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the US.
It’s not exceedingly rare, most politicians who are classically published tend to get book advances at 40-50% over market with total book sale royalties falling far short of profitable for the publishers. Michelle obamas 50m advance fell 17m ahead of royalties entitlement and it’s likely that it was a gross L for them, the bush’s, clintons, trump, a surprising number of congress and the senate.
Graft is exactly the right word, as evidenced by the government definition (CAPS theirs):
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