Government is hard to keep accountable, but it can be done. Having conducted deep oversight investigations into federal failures for five years, tackling waste, fraud, and abuses by Justice, Defense, State, NASA, and Clinton’s White House, I learned lessons. They apply now, as Americans look for state-level accountability.
Lesson one: A garden untended becomes a weed garden, bad crushing good. If you allow an agency to go without oversight from the legislative branch, an inspector general, or an attorney general, corruption seeds and reseeds.
Lesson two: Once public corruption seeds – insider trading, self-dealing, conflicts of interest, non-competed contracts, quiet bribes, officials looking the other way as friends profit, then give donations, or as drugs get trafficked, you have cancer. The cancer of public corruption, left unchecked, quickly metastasizes.
Lesson three: The source of that cancer is most often one-party control. A single legislative session begets another and another, until repeating seasons of corruption appear – agency leaders get used to it, midlevel program directors, procurement officers, and legislators give the nod to sweetheart deals. It gets “normalized.”
Lesson four: Public corruption is not just insidious, not just an act of not caring, not just a theft of tax dollars; it is persistent. It is a cold wind under the eaves, at the door, in the windows, up through the floorboards, hard to shake, like chilblains.
Lesson five: Political leaders come and go, some imagining this is easy to stop, to reverse, that they will tell people to do it, and things will get cleaned up. Not usually. Bureaucrats and corrupt political players wait them out, hide from the inquiries, play tricks, believe they are “a law unto themselves,” and practice invisibility.
Lesson six: Sometimes these corrupt actors, midlevel agency money dealers, high-level partisans, and legislators on the take – are brought down. That happens when an investigator has full authority, makes criminal referrals, stops the waste, fraud, abuse, and rolling felonies.
As a federal investigator, empowered by Speaker Newt Gingrich to conduct congressional oversight with depositions, subpoenas, mountains of documents, and media, my time produced criminal referrals, billions in savings, retooled large chunks of the federal government, and Waco hearings to counter narcotics.
President Trump is at that in a bigger way now. He knows what so many Democrats work overtime to prevent the public from knowing: An enormous amount of public corruption pervades government, and it has to be stopped.
Lesson seven: Nothing comes easy, especially holding government actors – including high-level political actors – accountable. That said, it can be done. Persistence and unblinking resolve produce results. One-party states – like Maine – tend to breed and normalize corruption over decades. That can be stopped.
Lesson eight: Just as a federal chief executive, President Trump, gets better with time, finds, and prosecutes, a seasoned governor can force accountability if it starts early, never loses energy, focus, or resolve, and he knows how.
The modern conservative – some would say libertarian – James Bovard wrote: “To blindly trust government is to automatically vest it with excessive power…To distrust government is simply to trust humanity.” He has it right.
Bovard’s sentiments remind me of words from Thomas Jefferson, himself a tenacious budget cutter, believer in limited government, and oversight warrior.
Jefferson said it many times, in many ways, but I like this quote best. He puts a fine point on it, makes clear the reality: “When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
Central to avoiding tyranny – federal or state – is accountability, oversight, insistence that every dollar be accounted for, and leaders be honest. Too much to expect? I think not. Government is hard to keep accountable, but it must be done.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!
Every state and our National Government need this. I wonder how corrupt my own state has become. Pray for truth to triumph. The Bible says that things done in secret (darkness) will be shouted from the roof tops.
Trust and ethics would be at the foundation of government accountability. Those quotes from Thomas Jefferson and author James Bovard are very good to keep in mind on this topic ,this matter of accountability. To simplify things ,as in Mathematics, meaning to make the issue at hand understandable , is something of great importance – and you did well in doing that with writing this article Robert . I reckon that the principles of good management apply in all of this – Those being Planning, Organization, and then Coordinating those things needed, goods and or services in order to Schedule everything properly. Those procedures all need clear intelligent communication to enable good decision making ,which makes for good management. As with Navigation there is the need to constantly be alert for changes due to weather,so to the idea of corruption with government and those who disrespect the principles that are part of Accountability. In lesson two the mention of Non-Competed Contracts got my attention. There is something that under most circumstances would be a obvious indicator of things being not in balance, not being all they should be in the honesty department.So Praise for all you did before Robert to make government accountability possible. This is a matter of importance, – big time importance for all of us who care about trust and ethics.
RBC, definitely a great insight of holding any level of government accountable.
Publicly held companies and government are both audited internally as well as by external auditors. I have participated in both types of audits. As a retired CPA, the major problem that has haunted me over the years is how the audit findings are treated by the two types of entities. In the public sector, there are real consequences when negative things turn up as the result of an audit. People are fired, demoted and at times prosecuted. In the government sector, there seemed to be little or no consequence. It’s an attitude of “Just don’t get caught again” or “We’re just too overworked and can’t do it the correct way”. I’m heartened that a change is in the wind and persons in the public sector are being held more accountable as results are coming to light.
Amen!
Our ancestors came to wilderness, turned it after hard long struggle into a garden, we ‘ve allowed it to become a wilderness again, it will take a hard work and perseverance to cultivate it again. The first paragraph is right.
This is a bit off topic, however, another way to hold government—especially members of Congress—accountable is to discontinue their pay if a government shut down occurs. This applies Representatives and Senators of both parties. Perhaps that would light the fire under their backsides to do their jobs.
Making Govt accountable
Less Govt
downsize
Outsource services
Use AI
Automate
Pledge.
written in any labor contract GS1-7
IE cut waste, fraud.
800 Waste line, text, website
More public hearings seen
LESS bureaucracy
When you form a Bureaucracy to oversee a Bureaucracy you just compound the problem. One person overseeing a group of independent investigators was extremely successful. Reference Elon Musk.
I think this is a good time to purge the public assistance programs. Make everyone who is receiving any government assistance required to re-apply. You must apply in person and show proof of citizenship. This would not only purge the system but also would create thousands of clerical jobs to process these applications.
There are lots of people who have the skills to do this work. Just think of the people that this would remove from the system who are not qualified to receive these benefits.
If Trump overlooks, or turns a blindveye to any of it, he becomes complicit and involved. Then they’ll have him under their control. He, and his administration must remain vigilant since the devil is in the office next door.
The SCOTUS set the tone for operations today when they ruled that the POTUS was not liable & immunity for any actions while they were president. …WHY//////
If these people (the so called government leaders) would give up their paychecks there would be turmoil. These people need to grow the h- -l and fix the country like they ALL promised. This all has to start with the president because too many people are or will be hurt by this shutdown.
Perhaps the scribbler named Charles can explain what we should call this threatened invasion of Venezuela. It’s now been proven to not be about drugs as our own people uncovered the fact Venezuela has nothing to do with fentanyl and less to do with even cocaine than does Argentina for whom the President just purchased the reelection of his kindred blow-hard with 40 billion dollars of the peoples money. What it is about is outright theft. Look into the good friend and former co worker of Scott Bessent from back when he trained under George Soros. It seems this good friend invested heavily going short on Argentinian bonds and needed a rescue. NO PROBLEM……here is 40 billion to prop up their economy long enough for the friend to exit with the shirt on his back. Meanwhile, up in Venezuela, little Marco Rubio, the lawn boy made good, has obtained a position allowing him another try at change in that sovereign country where the President was reelected with a huge verified honest landslide. Not the 1.5% margin of victory Trump claimed as a landslide but by double digits and yep, the election was monitored by parties across the globe. Remember back in the late 2010’s, Rubio and other RINO’s attempted a previous regime change even dragging in some unknown hand picked puppet they just claimed to be the new President, the will of those stinky brown people be damned. Well, those people literally ran the dweeb out of the country where he now lives in the Miami area at taxpayer expense thankful to not have been tarred and feathered when he was given the boot.
Venezuela is all about the modern state of American ethics. We are too fat and lazy to compete so what to do?? OH RIGHT….steal the entire wealth from the Venezuelan people giving it to the likes of the scum often seen hovering behind Trump in the Oval Office. Scumbags like Peter Thiel who has openly opined we need to literally cull vast numbers of the world populace so as to make life even sweeter for billionaires such as itself.
God bless America, land of the thief.