There is a lot of hoopla about Illinois governor Blagojevich trying to selling the senate seat left vacant by Obama, to the point of trying to impeach the governor. Now, I am not for selling a senate seat or for that matter selling any seat unless you are operating an airline or train or bus or a movie theater and so on. The allegation is that even though he did not succeed in going through with the thought of doing so, he allegedly conspired to sell the seat based upon wire tapping and such surveillance.
The issue is far more reaching than the senate seat in Illinois. College seats for education are being sold and so are job slots in some government organizations in some countries by unscrupulous heads and managers. The moment they find a way to make some money out of something, crooks and unscrupulous folks seem to gravitate towards such behavior.
How do you stop this? Well, there is no way of policing what happens behind closed doors in every recruitment office and every governmental agency everywhere. The voice of the conscience is a fairly powerful force. Unless this voice of the conscience is listened to by those in charge of recruiting and appointing people to certain slots, be it a college admission situation or a government job appointment situation, the situation is not likely to change.
One can take up the attitude that some police officers take. And that is as long as I don’t see you speeding or breaking any other traffic law while I am on the check post, I have finished my job and what you do behind my back, I cannot control. That is fine and alright, but that is not the spirit of this article. I had been to a social function at a school a couple of years ago, where there was a poster on a wall that said something to the effect of "character is doing the right thing when no one is looking". We need to develop good character, regardless of whether anyone is looking or not. Life is not a school exam where someone is going to give you a grade. It is a journey wherein you do things because you want to do it in a certain manner. And hopefully more of good and less or none of bad.