didn't anyone tell you?

Back where I come from, the fly-over Midwest, public servants avoided even the appearance of impropriety. It was part of all lawyer's professional ethics in the states where I have been licensed to practice law.  Avoiding the appearance of impropriety was also the ethics of public servants.

This is not true in Berkeley or, as near as I can tell, anywhere in the country.  Now human culture seems to be driven by wealth and a drive for wealth. Even the very rich, with some exceptions, want more.

When my daughter was growing up and she would ask, even demand, things I did not want to buy her, so she would ask again and again, I would tell her she had the gimmees. Gimmee this, gimme that.  Nowadays politicans, public servants and, most corrupt of all, lobbyists all seem to have the gimmees. Gimme money for my campaign. Gimme your promise that you will order the city to give me the permits I want and, oh yes, here is your campaign donation.

Now I grew up in Chicago during the original Mayor Daly's regime.  My dad worked for the city and he dutifully volunteered as a precinct captain to deliver votes. Three of my four brothers and I all had jobs with the city. One brother still works for the city. None of us would have had those jobs if my dad had not had connections to insider city staff.

Nowadays, it seems to me, and, sadly, increasingly so, that politicians are only out for themselves and they see enabling the elite's greed for more money, more power and more privilege as a way to improve their own lot in life.

I was with a friend last night when I said, essentially, what I have just written. He intoned seriously, with no irony, "but Tree, dear, didn't anyone tell you? Democracy is dead."

Sigh.

I liked the 'Tree, dear". Last person who called me "Tree dear" was my grandma Joy. She died when I was in law school in the late seventies.