It would seem from the stream of news out there lately in newspapers, television and Internet that the United States of America is in need of independent and powerful law enforcement agencies above and beyond what exist; or much more intensive public lobbying for better government.

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It would seem from the stream of news out there lately in newspapers, television and Internet that the United States of America is in need of independent and powerful law enforcement agencies above and beyond what exist; or much more intensive public lobbying for better government.

Otherwise, existing auditors, inspector generals, bureaus, commissions or agencies need to be improved and much more independent from the markets or agencies that they are allegedly checking into. How would you know whether these oversight agencies are unbiased?

Check out their rulings on past similar complaints in their own records, some of which may be included on the Internet. Did they seem to ignore the actual facts and clear whomever they were checking upon? If so, you need to either report them, or check into activation of a consumer class legal action to challenge their improper activities.

There are, of course, federal agencies like the FBI, the CIA, NSA and the US Justice Department that are seemingly immune from regular, effective checks even though there are agencies able to check on them: the U.S. Attorney or the U.S Inspector General, both part of the Justice Department. That department too has had its failures to deal with corruption or law breakers.

Here are some of the thousands of hard headlines that show those critical unbiased investigational needs: Obama to Call for Curbs on NSA Phone Spying But Leave Bulk Data in Gov't Hands for Now (Democracy Now)

'Whitey' Bulger Trial Details FBI Corruption (ABC News)

CIA and the Culture of Corruption (Truthout.org)

Most Corrupt Agencies -- Environmental Protection Agency (http://www.mostcorrupt.com)

JPMORGAN CHASE: Another Slap on The Wrist For Wall Street (Rolling Stone)

Senator (Elizabeth) Warren Pushes on Failure to Prosecute Banks (Salon.com)

Fines and Other Security Enforcement Actions Against Insurers and Agents (insurancenewsnet.com)

Global Warming Cannot Be Ignored (Washington Post)

Corruption Around the World (Security Management.com)

While scrutinizing follow ups to stories with headlines like these, seldom does one discover that government officials or corporate officials ever get charged with the crimes they are suspected of committing. Nor do the superrich businessmen personally get punished with fines as part of the millions or billions of dollars their corporations pay from lawsuit damages; nor are corporate heads even usually cited as responsible for the illegal or unethical conduct involved in the consumer or other complaints against the firms they supervise.

It seems that one of the more recent historical developments in January 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections, has created totally unequal access and influence for the rich over the poor. Essentially, now huge campaign contributions from to top one percent of the population can buy or help buy an election and the votes of congressmen to favor legislation for small, medium and giant corporations.

Here is an example of the 2008 election buying example from Opensecrets.org. "In 93 percent of House of Representatives races and 94 percent of Senate races that had been decided by mid-day Nov. 5, the candidate who spent the most money ended up winning, according to a post-election analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The findings are based on candidates' spending through Oct. 15, as reported to the Federal Election Commission., the candidate who spent the most money ended up winning, according to a post-election analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The findings are based on candidates' spending through Oct. 15, as reported to the Federal Election Commission."

As well, the rich are regularly getting richer, more powerful and thus more influential. " Wealthy elites have co-opted political power to rig the rules of the economic game, undermining democracy and creating a world where the 85 richest people own the wealth of half of the world's population, worldwide development organization Oxfam International warns in a report published recently.   Oxfam says it is an organization " determined to change that world by mobilizing the power of people against poverty." Please see http://www.oxfam.org/en/about      

If that doesn't happen, corruption will expand, as it is now doing worldwide.

"The roots of corruption are often grounded in a country's social and cultural history, political and economic development, bureaucratic traditions and policies," says click here" " Corruption tends to thrive when institutions are weak and economic policies distort the marketplace. Corruption distorts economic and social development, by engendering wrong choices and by encouraging competition in bribery rather than in the quality and price of goods and services, and, all too often, it means that the poorest must pay for the corruption of their own officials. It is a fact that if corruption is not reined in, it will proliferate."

Sometimes it seems like the only way to get government agencies influenced by powerful corporations their just deserts is for consumers and citizens to get together and organize burglaries into agency offices so they can obtain documentation of illegal corporate or government skullduggery.

You laugh! Sounds extreme doesn't it? Yet that is exactly what a group of U.S. citizens did to the FBI in 1971 during the controversial reign of its former director, J. Edgar Hoover.   They were the Edward Snowdens of their time. Like Snowden, who blew the whistle on overwhelming government surveillance of domestic and foreign communications on telephones and the Internet, this unique citizen group took amazing actions that threatened their own federal prosecution. But, unlike Snowden, working for NSA, they were never discovered before the criminal statute of limitations on their burglary lapsed.

Snowden, however, fled to Russia, and still, if captured could face trial on serious charges including espionage. He is being called a Russian spy by several leading US legislators even though the FBI has indicated it has no such evidence. If it wasn't for Snowden, there would be no push for reform of NSA's massive violations of people's privacy round the world.

That earlier unique antiwar and FBI whistleblowers group, according to a recent New York Times article by Mark Mazzetti, decided that anti-Vietnam War demonstrations were not enough to expose government weaknesses related to that war totaling 4 million in casualties. So a group of eight activists, led by Professor William C. Davidson of Haverford College, decided to break into the FBI office in Media, Pa. They spent weeks planning the burglary and eventually broke into the office and obtained a huge store of documents implicating the FBI in illegally spying on political groups. Then, they began leaking them to the press over a lengthy period of time. Their exploits are in a book written by Betty Medsger, a former reporter for The Washington Post,  

Here are our American leaders telling and advising governments all over the world what they can do and not do, and yet they often don't know how to handle the very issues the United States is advising them about: global warming, sound fiscal controls, governmental corruption, internal and honest leadership and how to operate their economy and businesses.

Just look at the so called enforcement actions in this country. Banks and powerful Wall Street stock firms are investigated by federal agencies and a few are determined to be guilty of illegal manipulations of loans and stocks. What happens? Again, they are fined millions and billions of dollars. Who pays for that? In some cases, the corporations lower their taxes as a result of the fines and in others their consumers pay. Certainly, it seems, corporate leaders seldom pay.

Once again corporate greed, desires for even more money and selfishness controls! Global warming is due to pollutants from fossil fuels burning to create electricity, heat and transportation worldwide. So for decades, the United States and countries worldwide have been creating an increasingly dangerous and unhealthy soil, air and water by failing to control and regulate huge gas, oil and other corporations producing it.

Not only is the air deadly in some cities in China, where people on the streets have to wear masks, but the water is so polluted there, here and elsewhere that drinking supplies are non-existent in some areas.

Huge icebergs in the arctic region are causing flooding along coastal areas. Weather everywhere has become dangerous or even deadly through extreme tornadoes, hurricanes and hot and cold spells. Leadership here seems absent as state and federal governments and the business community fail to influence the creation of effective alternate sources of energy.

Again, where is the effective leadership for agencies responsible to enforce environmental controls? Energy and chemical companies seem to be over-riding government environmental protection agencies most of the time.

Meanwhile, what ever happened to the "Fourth Estate," the media, whose responsibility is supposed to be not only to inform the public about the state of the country and the world, but to expose corruption within both the governments and the corporations?

For over four and a half decades as a news reporter and investigator, I have watched the media in this country decline as reporters and editors nationwide are laid off. I quote my very own November 2006 story in Truthout.org:

"If some doomsday industry analysts are to be believed, newspapers are laid out and stacked neatly inside their own future death warehouses, not only in the United States, but worldwide.

Hosts of editors, reporters and readers are angry just listening to and repeatedly reading what they consider "excuses" to increase profits while eroding probing enterprise journalism. Those committed to public service news and investigative reporting believe grave industry profits to be manipulative, shallow or misleading. In fact, the very rationale for saving newspapers - cost cutting, layoffs and buyouts - is thought to have created circulation and profit drop-offs, and to foster the very predictions of a dark, deadly fiscal whirlpool. The bigger the staff and cost cuts, the more advertisers and readers are scared away, indeed creating loss of disgusted readers and lesser profits.

As newspaper size shrinks, experienced reporters and editors are replaced by relative greenhorns. Then, the comparative evidence in daily published reporting shows a wide variety of in-depth stories and features morphing into larger sensational headlines, bigger photos, news graphics and repetitious bad news dominated by politics, crime and war."

These news media shrinking details continue today, raising the question: How much longer will it be before the news one reads becomes simply propaganda driven by whom: the big rich corporate operators intent upon promoting their businesses inside a willing media.

Authors Website: http://www.birdscrittersbutterflies.webs.com/

Authors Bio:
Thomas D. Williams, a freelance writer, worked at The Hartford Courant for almost 40 years before retiring in November 2005 to become an investigative freelancer on Internet news sites. He has written a unique nature book, The Spirits of Birds, Bears, Butterflies and All Those Other Wild Creatures. It's summaries, photos and videos are posted on the Internet at http://www.birdscrittersbutterflies.webs.com/

After graduating from Middlebury College in 1962, he became a military intelligence officer specializing in investigating North Korean border crossers and in working on secret and top secret security clearances for government employees in Washington, D.C.

Throughout his career at the Courant, he has been a town reporter, a night police reporter, a state desk reporter, a state and federal court reporter and an investigative team reporter. He has been a supervisor of state reporters assigned to investigative work.

Williams has worked on countless investigations of governmental and business corruption. His earliest inquiries involved the exploitation of immigrants by high priced lawyers using U.S. Congressmen to obtain private immigration bills; and the exorbitant fees charged by lawyers friendly with a Hartford Probate Judge, eventually leading to the state's first impeachment inquiry of the judge. Still other of Williams' inquiries included an expose of Bridgeport Superior Court judge appointing and hiring his friends and relatives for court jobs; an extensive three week two-reporter car surveillance of the state's tax collector who was loafing on state time; misspending of state and federal grants and logging funds by Schaghticoke leaders on the Kent reservation; significant pollution of potential drinking water supplies by Kaman Aerospace; monopoly trash contractors overcharging customers; contract manipulations for companies with political influence at the Mid-Connecticut trash-to-energy plant and the banking bill voting records of legislators with bank interests.

In the past 15 years, he has worked extensively on investigative stories involving so called mysterious Persian Gulf War illnesses haunting U.S. and allied troops, the hazards of depleted uranium munitions and on articles controversies over the safety and legality of the military's mandatory anthrax vaccine.

Throughout his career, Dennie has received numerous local, state and national journalism awards, primarily for investigative reporting.

After retiring from The Courant in November 2005, Williams began freelancing for several Connecticut papers including The Connecticut Law Tribune and for Truthout.org and The Public Record http://pubrecord.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1, both in depth and investigative reporting news sites.