Corruption

About

"Corruption is a general concept describing any organized, interdependent system in which part of the system is either not performing duties it was originally intended to, or performing them in an improper way, to the detriment of the system's original purpose." [W]

In political contexts, corruption more specifically refers to situations where individuals who have been entrusted with positions of power on the belief that they will use said power beneficially betray that trust by using it for their own benefit.

Various types of corruption can be legal or illegal, depending on the applicable rules. Some common types:

• bribery
• extortion
• nepotism
• peddling/buying of influence, e.g. lobbying

Pages

• Bush-Cheney administration/corruption
• corruption in academia

Links

Reference

• Wikipedia
• Conservapedia: one-sentence article (as of 2008-03-02); specifically refers to the non-Lessigian variety (illegal)
• dKosopedia: no equivalent article (as of 2008-03-02), though many references
• SourceWatch: stub article and a substantial category listing (as of 2008-03-02)
• Lessig Wiki: specifically about the peddling of influence

News

• 2026-03-26 07:57 UTC [L..T] Stark reminders of Trump’s corruption and John Roberts’ betrayal of the Constitution «Events on Wednesday served as a bracing reminder of Trump’s corruption and John Roberts’ betrayal of the Constitution in fabricating presidential immunity from whole cloth. Congressional Republicans inadvertently produced a memo from special counsel Jack Smith that revealed Trump had refused to return a national defense document so sensitive that only six people in the US government had access to it. Worse, evidence obtained by Jack Smith suggested that Trump had taken the highly sensitive document after his first term to advance his business interests.»
• 2009-08-09 [L..T] How the White House's Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy «I'm a strong supporter of universal health insurance, and a fan of the Obama administration. But I'm appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying arm to buy their support.»
• 2007-12-20 [L..T] "Angry Black Man" Does GOTV «The calls were extremely highly targeted, household by household, no message ever left on an answering machine. We wanted the message heard only by people whose reaction would be "I'm not voting for Holt because he uses scary black men to call my house."»