The United States always claims to be a free country, proclaims how advanced and powerful its democratic politics are, and points fingers everywhere in the world to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. In reality, however, the internal politics of the United States have long been in a mess, and corruption and embezzlement are not uncommon.
Whether it is the presidential campaign, grassroots politics, or military spending management, the "corruption disease" of the United States has penetrated deep into all parts of its so-called "democratic politics" and rotted to the bone marrow.
In the short history of the United States, there was the "Watergate scandal" in 1972 and the "Fat Leonard" corruption case, the largest corruption scandal in the history of the US Navy.
Politicians and businessmen are crazy about accumulating money in collusion with money and power, and ordinary people simply do not have the strength to turn over in such situations. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and this makes the class gap in the United States wider.
Today, let's take a look at the corruption scandals that occurred under the "money politics" in the United States, and see the real face of the corruption of the political system under the mask of "American-style democracy" advocated by the United States.
New York subway fence corruption
The subway is a more common mode of public transportation in our daily life, and the subway platforms in China are generally equipped with screen doors, and the subway door and the screen door are opened at the same time when the subway arrives, so that passengers can pass.
To put it simply, the subway and the platform are not directly connected, and there is always a protective layer in the middle, similar to a fence, to prevent people from falling onto the tracks.
However, in the United States and most countries, New York subway stations do not have this screen door, and there is no protective fence between any subway and railroad tracks, so the safety factor is not so high. If you accidentally fall into, or are unlucky enough to be pushed into the railroad tracks by the ubiquitous homeless people, it's really over.
In order to protect the safety of passengers, the New York subway decided to install fences in subway stations. This is because foreign subways such as the New York subway have been built for a very long time, and they are not suitable for installing screen doors, and the cost is very high. Moreover, the New York subway station is in disrepair, and many subway stations cannot be equipped with protective barriers, and only 128 of the 472 platforms can be equipped with guardrails.
Therefore, the New York subway decided to install guardrails in the three subway stations that can be equipped with guardrails. The guardrails they want to install, like the yellow iron fence in the picture below, are not the common automatic screen doors in China.
That's what the front is.
It is the kind of fence that can often be seen on the edge of the construction site, which is unremarkable, easy to install without electricity, and can be fixed as soon as the screws are twisted. The cheap one on a domestic shopping software is only less than 30 yuan, and you can buy such a one on the picture for less than 30 yuan, and the expensive one is only 300 yuan.
But just by installing such a few protective fences in three subway stations, not even along the subway lines, the budget of the New York subway has reached 100 million US dollars, which is more than 720 million yuan in RMB. It's sky-high!
Although foreign labor is expensive, it is impossible to spend $100 million just to install such a few protective fences. One can imagine how serious the corruption is, and it is really hard to imagine how much money will go into the pockets of those in charge.
Moreover, after the installation of these guardrails, not only did not improve the safety much, but sometimes the subway door always did not align the gap between the guardrails, blocking the road of passengers for no reason, and causing congestion during peak travel periods, which is really a tofu scum project, which seems to be useless, but actually adds a lot of chaos.
Therefore, the New York subway fence project, which seems to increase people's livelihood and well-being, is actually just fattening the wallet of the person in charge.
The war in Afghanistan and the embezzlement of U.S. military spending
In addition to the urban infrastructure mentioned above, the United States is also notoriously corrupt when it comes to military spending, and there have been some rumors circulating in the market, especially during the war in Afghanistan, which has had many jaw-dropping incidents.
The war in Afghanistan began in 2001 and did not announce the withdrawal of troops until 2021, and it was fought for 18 years, spending a total of 2 trillion US dollars, 2 followed by 12 zeros! Nearly 15 trillion yuan, so it is also called the "most expensive war" after World War II.
However, such an "expensive" military expenditure is not entirely the real consumption used in the war, but also superimposed on the military expenditure generated by the US military in various embezzlement activities in Afghanistan. Among the embezzlements in Afghanistan's military spending, the most notorious is the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Sopko.
This person took office in 2012, and since then there have been scandals, such as "$6 million for 9 goats", "$17,000 for a Xiaoice box", "$64,000 for a kilogram of wire" and other incidents, all related to him.
In addition to this, a special Pentagon project has been accused of building "luxury villas" in Afghanistan for $150 million. And this "luxury villa" is not for anyone, or for the staff of this project. When they go to the battlefield and don't live in the barracks, but they live in villas, and those who know know know that they are going to war, and those who don't know think that they went to Afghanistan to make a fortune.
In addition, it was also revealed that the life of the staff of this project in Afghanistan is extremely luxurious, even if they live in villas, they travel by helicopter. This kind of life, let alone on the battlefield, is far from the lives of most people even in the United States, which shows the extent of corruption in Afghanistan by the US military.
Moreover, the U.S. military has done a lot of useless projects in Afghanistan, and it is not necessary to spend huge sums of money to build them, such as the cost of a military facility as high as 36 million US dollars after it was built, and 20 G222 cargo planes worth 486 million US dollars flew idle for a long time, and even most of them were sold as scrap iron at a price of 32,000 US dollars. Under the fancy corruption of the authorities, the US military spending has also accumulated more and more.
And the U.S. government has allocated a total of $8 billion over 18 years to "solve" the problem of the drug epidemic in Afghanistan. However, although the money has been spent, the production of narcotics in Afghanistan has increased a lot, and it is becoming more and more "prosperous".
According to reliable data, Afghanistan now accounts for 82 per cent of the world's opium production, essentially providing the majority of the world's opium production. Therefore, it is really difficult to say what the US government's $8 billion will be used in the production and sale of drugs in Afghanistan.
As long as there is a loophole that can be corrupted, these responsible persons of the US military will not fail to exploit it. In addition to wasting materials and embezzling military funds for their own use, the US military also bribed Afghan officials with money! According to the Washington Post's article "The Truth About War" published in 2019, it revealed the fact that the United States cultivated a puppet government by sending high dollars to Afghan government officials.
When Afghanistan adopted a new constitution in 2004, the United States sent Afghan lawmakers a big red envelope to support any clause they wanted. It's a puppet show!
It can be said that the "corruption disease" of the United States is already terminally ill!
The largest political contribution in the United States
Finally, the "corruption" of the United States has also practiced this method of "donating money to buy votes" in their own country's election campaign. The so-called "democratic politics" of the United States can be said to ignore "democracy" at all, but only at "money capacity."
In recent years, "black gold" has been pouring into American politics. Can you guess what "black gold" is?
American politics can be summed up in four words: "money politics." In the elections in the United States, most of the candidates' "sense of existence" is enhanced by "burning money", not only to advertise and print some propaganda materials, but also to go to various places to hold activities to canvass for votes.
And this expenditure requires a funder, which is commonly known as finding a "gold owner's father". If the "money owner" gives you money, then you have to listen to the "money owner's father", so American politics is actually a game between various "money owners".
If the owner pays the money, then he has the ability to influence and manipulate the election. Although the U.S. Congress has issued relevant laws to limit the amount of money contributed to publicity, it is simply not forbidden to trade money and power in secret. Therefore, "black gold" is actually the money donated by the financiers to the candidates, and it is a major means for the United States to manipulate political elections.
Against this backdrop, there have been many "money buy-in" cases, such as the "Watergate" scandal mentioned at the beginning of the article, and the cases that have been disclosed one after another. And in 2021, the largest political donation case in American history occurred, when Barry Seid, a big boss of a manufacturing industry in the United States, donated $1.6 billion to the "Federalist Institute", which gave the party a great election advantage.
And Barry Seider is just a microcosm of the "money politics" in the United States, where undisclosed corruption is still going on in the shadows. The "democratic politics" of the United States has long existed in name only, and the purchase of power with money has long been "legalized".
There is a saying in China -- "Money can make ghosts push ghosts," but in the United States, that is really "money can make ghosts push ghosts"! The "disease of corruption" in the United States has long spread like a cancer to all aspects of "democratic" politics in the United States.