Character Now a Priority
The search for moral leadership is a difficult one

Up, down and all around – every direction, our nation’s institutions and enterprises have taken on the murky color of corruption and the bitter taste of moral rot.

Corporate America is the latest manifestation of corruption. Some executives cooked the books and helped themselves to profits belonging to investors. Corporate investors and employees have been sold out by greedy executives who may be criminally responsible. Corporate leaders convicted of fraud and pillaging their corporations’ coffers should serve hard time, and some are already on the road to that fate.

The moral rot and non-accountability boiled over at the top of our national scene in the go-go ’90s, and was almost bound to carry other institutions in its path. Those corporations accused of using shady partnerships and hiding debt were caught primarily through investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission beginning in November, 2001.

The Senate investigation of Enron, the first violator uncovered, seems to have halted completely and may never resume, at least not before November’s elections. Enron’s CEO reportedly made 11 visits to the White House and sometimes to the Lincoln Bedroom during the mid-’90s. Enron executives’ warm and fuzzy relationship with influential senators has tended to shut this investigation down cold.

Cashing in on White House coffees and the Lincoln Bedroom, shaking down Buddhist nuns and monks and the principle of “no controlling legal authority” set an example. Not only did some of corporate America follow the example, but other institutions did as well.

Scandals involving the Red Cross misdirection of funds donated for 9/11 disaster relief, questions about United Way’s financial practices, manipulation of news by the media elite and, most notably, corruption in Congress have helped cultivate deep cynicism in the hearts and minds of Americans.

An Ohio congressman was recently expelled from the House of Representatives following his conviction in court of corrupt practices. Senator Robert Toricelli of New Jersey was merely “admonished” by the Senate Ethics Committee for taking a host of very expensive gifts in exchange for using his position to “help” this donor. Toricelli’s “sugar daddy donor” is serving hard time in prison, while the unrepentant Toricelli justifies his conduct by telling constituents he did nothing wrong. The former president, Bill Clinton, was found of guilty of perjury for lying in court.

A solution to today’s corporate corruption is increased oversight and enforcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Surely now, the Congress will appropriate additional SEC enforcement funding that President George W. Bush asked for a year ago. Micro-management of business by Congress and regulatory overkill are not the correct solutions. The Sarbanes bill creates another costly new bureaucracy to impose an orgy of federal regulations on all American businesses, the honest ones included. Just put the offending crooks in jail and America will be better off.

Our judicial system is another institution of ethical concern. Often, there appears to be one system for “important people,” another for everyone else. Light, inconsistent sentences and outright probation for favored individuals are regularly reported. Conversely, harsh sentences are frequently reported for much lesser crimes. Often, there is little relationship between the seriousness of the crime and the sentence meted out.

Many Americans had become inured to scandal by the time the pedophilia scandal erupted in the Roman Catholic Church in America. Corrupt behavior, whether in the religious hierarchy, corporate boardrooms, charitable institutions or the government can only exist if the people allow it. An insurrection of church members, corporate investors, charitable donors and voters is a sure-fire way to correct corrupt behavior. Rules must apply not only to the little people, but those at the top as well.

Society’s institutions are created by the people and are reflections of them. If we don’t like our mirror image, we can set about to change it. Failing that, Sodom and Gomorrah can be but a short and slippery slide away.

Pat Freibert is a former Kentucky state representative from Lexington.
editorial@lanereport.com

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