Unethical Business Practices in Contracting

On March 27, 2002, President Bush signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), Public Law No. 107-155. The BCRA contains changes to the federal campaign finance law, to include:

Many people, myself included look up to individuals in an authoritative role such as; senators, governors, and presidents. We view them as being honest and sincere. They have to be right? They do want to run the country after all. Often our thoughts are “they would never lie to us or hide things from us”, but unfortunately that’s not always the case. One of the biggest political scandals to hit the United States of America was the Watergate scandal involving our very own President Richard Nixon. This scandal caused a lot of American’s to lose trust and hope in the presidency. The scandal received its name from the Watergate apartment and office complex that was located in Washington D.C., where a burglary took place on June 17, 1972 and five men were arrested. It then came to surface that the men’s intentions were to sabotage the opposite political party, when president Nixon was notified of this he order the Central Intelligence Agency to call the FBI to stop with any further investigation, that national security was at stake. President Nixon knew that it would come back to the White House and didn’t want to risk anything, even though he was never involved with the

Watergate Scandal has been considered as one of the darkest chapters in American history. The event not only refers to unethical use of power by the public representatives but also levied great deal of attention on the mechanism of surveillance over the activities of public servants. Watergate scandal provides ethical directions not only to public servants but also provides ethical guidelines to the lawyers and media representatives as well. This incident reveals how ethical lines were crossed time and again by the politicians, legal attorneys and media for their own purposes. Ignoring the righteousness of the outcomes, events like these cause severe damage to the public's trust vested in these authorities which takes a long time to restore.

The final report revealed that corruption, organized crime, collusion, and influence peddling are widespread in Quebec's multi-billion public construction industry (Business Corruption in Canada, 2016).

Fundraising success correlates strongly with electoral success. In 2002, 95 percent of House winners raised more than their opponents. In 2004, more than 95 percent of House winners outspent their opponents. (4 “Money Is the Victor in 2002 Midterm Elections,” Center for Responsive Politics, Nov. 6, 2002. 5 “2004 Election Outcome: Money Wins,” Center for Responsive Politics, Nov. 3,

In the 2016 election cycle, over 1.4 billion dollars was given to presidential candidates (Federal Election Commission 2016a). This is more than any other presidential election cycle in history (Price 2016). Another billion dollars was given to U.S. House of Representatives candidates, and about 600 million dollars was given to U.S. Senate candidates (Federal Election Commission 2016b). The majority of this money went to funding the candidates’ campaigns. This money controlled whose ads voter’s saw on television and which candidates were able to afford to travel the country campaigning for votes. In many cases, the candidate with the most money available won their election. Most campaigns are financed in large part by a small number

The Democratic and Republican presidential nominees for 1999 raised an astounding 126 million to finance their campaigns in the primaries (Godfrey). The U.S. national political parties raised a record 107.2 million dollars in soft money contributions in 1999 (Campaign Finance Reform). During the 1995-96 elections, public citizens estimated that an astounding 150 million dollars was spent on "phony" issue ads designed to support or oppose congressional and presidential candidates (Campaign Finance Reform). This outrageous influx of money into congressional and presidential campaigns has placed a blanket of corruption and injustice over our nation’s elections. With the rise of campaign corruption, many

Bell, a city of 35,000 people, has remained to be the greatest scandal in California. For a long time, the manager of Bell City Robert Rizzo and the people he was working with exploited the governance systems and the finances of the city (McGrath 122). They used vast sums of money to pay their salaries. They also transformed the development agency of the town into a piggy bank, from where they borrowed funds in an improper way, deposited money in retirement accounts that was illegal, purchased property without accounting in and documents, approved fees and taxes that were illegal and found out a way of exempting themselves from state law. Court documents provide evidence to show that indeed, those people committed the crime of corruption.

in politics, and even individuals in administration, are destined to get “dirty hands.” The concept implicates that individuals who interact in either of these realms cannot help but engage in conduct that is either unethical or, at the very least, less than desirable. Although, many researchers acknowledge that there does exist separate meaning between the roles of political constituents and administrative staff, many believe there are also plenty of similarities. In examining the political/administrative dichotomy, researchers have found extreme overlap in some instances, which emphasizes the probability that administrative staff can also find themselves with dirty hands. Many argue that it is absolutely necessary, in some instances, for individuals to act deceptively with a lack of transparency in order to reach ultimate goals with desirable ends. These ends might include advancing the bigger goals of the organization or preventing the fall of the organization as a whole. However, the

Proposition 35 simply gives state and local government the flexibility to use private sector engineers and architects to complete long overdue highway, rail transit and other projects sooner, safely, and at $2.5 billion savings to taxpayers. Supporters of Proposition 35 highlight a few important points, including thousands of overdue highway and rail transit projects that must be completed to alleviate traffic and prepare us for the next quake. In order to complete these thousands of projects both Caltrans and private sector engineers and architects are needed to complete those projects. However, Caltrans bureaucrats stand in the way of accomplishing this by severely restricting government's ability to contract with the private sector. Proposition 35 is the answer to these problems. Proposition 35 is

While gaining support from the general public can be stimulated by countless political figures, the greatest influencer in politics continues to be money. Campaign spending is a strong determinant in voting outcomes, further denoting its overwhelming importance. Funding and spending gain importance relative to the size of the campaign; gaining support for this bill would likely cost a significant amount, as support is needed across the state. Campaigning at this capacity requires advertisements, commercials, appearances, and possibly travel, all of which demand significant funding. However, the nature of this campaign lends itself well to considerable funding, as “organizational contributors tend to support issues in the area of... tax and revenue policy” (Braunstein, 2004, 124). This unwavering support from countless contributors will provide the state legislators an opportunity to broadcast their campaign and positively market Senate Bill 325.

Judicial Selection: Part I. Reform: Are Campaign Contributions Compromising the Intendent Judiciary is an article by Adam Skaggs and You May Know the Law but I Own the Judge: Why Congress Can and Should Get Involved in State Judicial Election Reform, is an article by Jonathan Berman are the two articles are critiqued. They are both about monetary funds that are donated to campaign funds of judiciary election candidates. They both look at how large amounts of funds are donated by different entities for many different reasons. Most being for self-gain which lead to corruption in the system

Arkansas Governor Mark Darr has finally announced he will resign over an ethics scandal that has been going on over the past four years. The state of Arkansas Ethics Commission had found Governor Darr was breaking several campaign finance rules since the year 2010. These actions went against the American Society for Public Administration code of Ethics. A few of the codes that the book mentions that Governor Darr went against was: Serving the Public Interest, Respecting the constitution and the law, and Demonstrating Personal Integrity. (Geuras & Garofalo 2011)

New Jersey like many other states relies on a tax system to provide many different services to its citizens including schools, roads, public health, and safety. Correspondingly, it has to raise the money required to

The political appointees faced termination, resignation, isolation and were working to force their “management by stark terror” tactics on their employees. Ann Grouch’s hit list that was released by a congressional committee was a true violation of the Civil Service Reform Act. According to the United States Office of Government Ethics website, the laws specify that “Ethics officials should be alert for possible violations of the criminal or civil statutes or the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch. When ethics officials find evidence that an employee has violated an ethics criminal statute or regulation, they must refer that evidence to the appropriate authority for action. Depending on the circumstances and the legal authority at issue, an executive branch employee may be imprisoned, fined, demoted, or fired for violating an ethics provision.