That’s what the Nashville City Paper is calling it anyway and I tend to agree. The year 2006 revealed the corruption that’s been festering under the skin of our state’s political and economic system for quite some time –lest we forget that it wasn’t so long ago that Senator Bill Frist’s family owned HCA/Humana pulled off the biggest corporate fraud of its day without so much as one person going to jail. What was our state’s response? Why, we made him a US Senator.
Yet Bill Frist’s and his family’s scandals, although some of largest and most “high profile,” are far from being the first major ones we’ve produced. Tennesseans, as the Nashville City Paper’s review of 2006 shows, seem to have a knack for producing and attracting corrupt politicians and nefarious businessmen intent on defrauding both citizens and the state’s coffers.
In the worst of cases politicians and businessmen and women work together to fleece the citizenry robbing from programs designed to help those that are most defenseless and most in need.
As both indictments and taking a long view of history show, our state’s problem isn’t partisan one –2006’s Tennessee Waltz caught more state democrats than state republicans accepting bribes for legislative favors. It is however, a systemic one that has been fed for years by corrupt politicians, greedy corporate interests, a spineless corporate centered media that ignores state problems, and an indifferent populous.
Corruption on the level that plagues our great state can only exist when both people and the media are complicit. Here’s to hoping 2007 proves to be a wake up call for both.
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