Mark Skousen Quotes

In many countries throughout the world, corruption is rampant and any contractor to the government has to pay and often offers to pay the appropriate government officials. In the most corrupt countries like Nigeria, corruption is rife in all levels of government but is technically illegal. While in Saudi Arabia, the government has institutionalized the bribery and corruption but limited the amount to 6 percent. Corruption of this type is not only existent on government contracts but often operates for private money where government approval must be obtained. World Bank contracts for example are notorious for the percentage that must be paid to government officials despite the fact that the World Bank officially claims to be against corruption.

He and the other commissioners of both political parties were agreed that the procurement by The State Department, USAID, and especially the Defense Department which spent the most was terrible. The even had military generals in charge of billions of dollars of procurement who did not even know the procurement laws and regulations they were supposed to obey much less the skill of good procurement.

It was very common to have tax collectors take a percentage of their collections as a commission and to be able to appoint sub tax collectors who also took commissions. On top of that, most tax collectors underreported the amount that they collected and pocketed the difference. At the time, Spain was worse than most Christian nations.

Furgeson was running, with his wife as proxy, against the incumbent Texas governor who proudly announced that the state auditor had reported the state's books and budget were in balance.

Arguing against the practice of the government utilizing Social Security trust funds for general purposes:

What was remarkable was that all the Defense Department and military witnesses agreed with Lynch on this point.

He was a conservative, Republican Congressman from Georgia when he made this statement complaining about the wast of mmoney by Federal Officials and bureaucrats. The thing that made this common complaint memorable is that several years later, he was appointed by President Donald Trump as Secretary of Health and Human Services. In less than a year in the office, he was forced to resign [fired] in disgrace for wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars chartering private airplanes for himself and his staff including one where he spent $25,000 to charter a plane from Washington DC to Philadelphia -- a two hour drive in his government car, less than $100 for the Amtrak train or $10 by the Greayhound bus. The scandal that erupted was made worse by the hypocricy.

He observed that Saudi Arabia was the only oil rich country that at least modernized itself in spite of the amount wasted on corruption. Bandar’s point was that the bribes enabled the country to transform itself and without the bribes, modernization would have been impossible as in other oil counties.