Socialism Is For The People!

Unless, I suppose, you are one of the official benevolent overlords of the program, in which case you might as well grease your own pan.

From the Brussels Journal:

Chris Davies, a Liberal Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the North-West of the UK, is a member of the Budget Control Committee of the European Parliament. As he told BBC’s Today Programme [...], he discovered, quite by chance, that Parliament’s auditors had made a report detailing abuses on a vast scale, abuses that suggest some MEPs are simply plundering the system to enrich themselves.

Notwithstanding that he is a member of the Budget Control Committee, Mr. Davies was only allowed to see the report on condition that he signed all sorts of confidentiality agreements, read the report in a sealed “secret room”, protected by biometric locks and security guards and neither made a copy of nor took notes of the report.

So, why all the secrecy? The investigation has taken place and the report is already written. Well, maybe the secrecy has something to do with the results of the investigation itself as somewhere near $245,000 has been absconded per MEP. (Oh, and just for scale, there are 745 of them.) That is one ugly wart.

But, now that things have been wrapped up, shouldn't the common folk be entitled to see where the money earmarked for their welfare is going, and which despicable bums are gorging themselves at the public trough--particularly when the sales pitch all along has been that this wonderful union of people is, indeed, for the people and not the administrators?

Well, not so quick.

According to Hans-Gert Pöttering, president of the MEPs:

“We want reform but we cannot make this report available to the public if we want people to vote in the European elections next year.”

Right.

Hans, seriously, nothing gets voters to the booth in greater numbers than a good old pocket-lining corruption scandal, especially when the crooks ravenously cling to their jobs like blood engorged ticks would to a struggling host.

Somehow I don't think it is the number of voters that has you so concerned but rather what (or whom) the voters might actually choose in an election. That, sir, is not a very well kept secret. Oh, and is that blood on your lip?