In Louisiana, people don’t use the phrase “corrupt politician” because it’s redundant, at least until very recently. Since I’ve moved down here, I realize that there’s even a gruding pride in it.
Someone told me this started with Huey Long and populist politics during the Depression when the state government became the purveyor of all largesse. Barter became the accepted form of government services.
The gerrymandering scandal in Westminster Council in London is an appalling tale of desperate dealings by politicians obsessed with power. The Conservative administration led by Dame Shirley Porter used astonishing tactics to remove poor people, who were less likely to be Conservative voters, from the electorate in the borough of Westminster.
People were evicted to move them out of the borough, making them homeless in the process, and others were rehoused in different wards (council constituencies) in appalling buildings full of asbestos that should have been condemned long before.
See:
Another famous British case is that of T. Dan Smith, a Labour politician in Newcastle who sought to regenerate the area, but was eventually sentenced to jail in a corruption scandal involving the architect John Poulson who bribed city officials to get work.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/northeast/series2/tdansmith_newcastlepolitics.shtml
Also, there is Jonathan Aitken, a prominent Conservative politician, who was accused of corruption and pimping, and sold arms to Iran in contravention of export restrictions, but was eventually jailed for perjury:
All this is small beer compared to the French complicity in the Rwandan genocide. I can’t find much info, since the French don’t like to mention it. But according to the International Herald Tribune: “French soldiers trained many of Rwandan soldiers and militiamen who later carried out the genocide, did not interfere when the genocide began, and subsequently were ordered to help the killers’ leaders to escape.”
I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned the most famous broken campaign promise, George Bush, Sr’s famous “Read my lips: no new taxes”.
Even more serious, Woodrow Wilson promised not to enter World War I in the 1916 elections, only to join in the following year.
Were the allegations of ballot-box stuffing by Kennedy-supporters in 1960s ever substantiated?
Allegheny Power (gas company) here in WV is really good about dicking over their customers. Their asshole-ness knows no limits.
I miss Mike Royko.