(5 of 5)
All of this makes dispiriting reading, except that the commission believes that much can be done. It favors more laws like Florida's "Who gave it, who got it?" legislation to get campaign contributions on the record. It recommends a code of ethics to states, counties and cities and urges that boards be set up to enforce the code. All elected officials should be required to file a financial disclosure statement, listing "all assets legally and constructively owned," "all debts in excess of $1,000 and to whom owed," and, "if a partner in a law firm, a list of all clients whose annual fees exceed $2,000 or comprise 5% or more of the firm's annual business." Such disclosure "must be mandatory, periodic and accessible to the public."
Political scientists who keep an eye on such things are convinced not that there is more corruption around but that there is now more concern about it. If so, all that bad news on the front pages is in a way good news: not just proof of the wickedness in man, but of the capacity of society to respond to it. Perhaps the defense is at last catching up to the offense. The age of data banks and Xerox machines and tapes leaves many more telltale spoors: the Justice Department's budget has tripled since Nixon took of fice; 2,000 employees have been added to the FBI payroll; strike forces against organized crime are rinding a happy hunting ground in Brooklyn, Newark, Boston, Chicago and New Orleans; U.S. attorneys are making new use of immunity pledges to get lesser lawbreakers to inform on bigger ones. Lawyers report that accused politicians have become nervous about trial juries. Being an investigator or a fearless prosecutor now seems as sure a route to becoming a household word as to be chosen Vice President of the U.S. This would seem to be one of those times similar to England in 1876, when Gladstone believed: "Good ends can rarely be attained in politics without passion, and there is now, for the first time for a good many years, a righteous passion." The message is not the despairing They All Do It, but the fighting cry that too many do.