Spotlight: Political Ethics

This was original written for a page of my website (ca. 2008) that no longer exists.

Throughout my tenure as a “God Damned Independent” at UF, and in my early days in moving to DC, I was concerned with voter apathy, and the general lack of connection between the fact of government involvement and the impact of government programs on everyday lives.

People at UF never fully realized that Student Government is not the SG of their high schools. It has well over $10 million nearly $20 million of their own tuition money, which it spends on most of the major student groups, concerts, speakers, and recreational activities on campus – including 50% funding of the Reitz Union.

This drove me to pay attention to issues of political ethics, corruption, and the general behavior of watchdog groups and the news media. After all, if voters don’t feel connected to a government, part of that is a lacking in trust and part of it is just not believing that government can matter in their daily lives.

So this is a deeply important issue to me, and why I’ve blogged about candidates like Senator Mark Begich who campaign on a strong ethics reform platforms and defeat corrupt politicians in their home states. It’s also why I grew to like Senator McCaskill, even before she became a regular Obama surrogate on cable TV.

We need to clean up Washington, and clean up UF. It’s the only way anything else can get done.

Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments, and I might add more later.