Hands out — again
First, the numbers: As of April 30, 2022, Cecil Pendergrass’s campaign treasury now totals $211,283; Brian Hamman’s, $196,879. Developers and developer-related entities contributed 66% of Cecil’s total; for Brian that percentage held steady at 47%.
Recently, we came across an thoughtful piece written by Amanda Taub and published in the New York Times about corruption in Russia:
“We tend to think of corruption as a failure of morality, when a greedy person decides to benefit by steering public resources toward private gain. But while that’s not exactly untrue, it misses the most important thing: namely, that corruption is a group activity. You need bribe-payers and bribe-takers, resource-diverters and resource resellers, look-the-other-wayers and demand-a-share-of-the-takers.
When that kind of corrupt network behavior becomes widespread, it creates its own parallel system of rewards – and punishments.
‘What is different with systemic corruption is that it’s the expected behavior,” Anna Persson, political scientist at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who studies corruption. ‘These expectations make it very difficult for all individuals, actually, to stand against corruption, because it’s very costly in all different ways to resist that kind of system.”
We watch because you can’t.
Women For a Better Lee is a nonpartisan, all-volunteer political action committee working to bring accountability and transparency to our Lee County Commission and government.
WFBLPAC is not authorized by any candidate or any candidate’s committee and donations are not tax deductible. Donations to WFBLPAC can be made via http://paypal.com (our PayPal account is WFBLPAC@gmail.com).
To contact us: WFBL2022@gmail.com or Facebook.com/womenforabetterlee. WFBL’s new website, womenforabetterlee.com, is now up and running. (Almost) everything you wanted to know — and more! Please check it out and share with others. And add us to your address book so you will be sure to get all our emails. Sign up for our watchdog team and become part of the solution!