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Chicanery

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When it comes to politician's private lives, I do not care what they do with another consenting adult as long as they have the decency not to make it a political or an international issue, but financial chicanery is a breach of trust between an elected official and the people who put him in office. Bottom line: it's stealing.

It isn't about getting your hand caught in the cookie jar snitching a couple extra cookies when you're on a diet or borrowing your sister's favorite cashmere sweater. It is about taking money from people who already pay a more than adequate salary and provide health insurance, expense accounts, retirement, and even housing. Financial chicanery shows a lack of respect for the office and an overwhelming sense of entitlement fueled by greed.

Sleeping with an aide or some willing, wide-eyed constituent is a matter between husbands and wives and consenting adults. Stealing from the very people who put you in office is the basest and rankest form of disrespect that has far reaching repercussions that affect everyone. The deficit has to be filled somehow and it is usually the voters and taxpayers who will bear the burden of such malfeasance while services and agencies that depend on those monies end up downsizing and cutting back on vital services to cover the short fall.

Learn more about this author, J. M. Cornwell.
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