I don’t normally quibble with Jerry Burris. Generally I find him sensible and insightful. But yesterday’s column, “Perverse pleasures and legal hazards”, got to me like fingernails on a blackboard.

The column gathered several different assessments comparing corruption in the states. It was okay until the last two short paragraphs. Here’s how Jerry wrapped it up:

Now, there is a point to remember here: Politics is a brutal business. If you are on the inside, or winning side, things tend to go your way. But fall out of favor and the authorities can find any number of reasons to go after you, find a way to injure or embarrass you or otherwise put you out of play.

Keep that in mind the next time one of your favorite public officials is indicted for some high or low crime or misdemeanor. Someone is out to get him.

Notice that, in Jerry’s telling, the first phrase is in a passive voice. Good things just happen to powerful insiders, “things tend to go your way.” Life’s roulette wheel just drops the ball on your number more frequently than it does for the rest of us.

So for the powerful, good things just happen. But bad things, indictments and such, those can be blamed on sneaky enemies seeking “to injure or embarrass”. Nothing passive there.

Maybe Jerry didn’t mean it this way, but he seems to be minimizing the seriousness of charges against the formerly powerful which, he implies, should be attributed to the narrow interests of their of enemies.

In the real world, though, the powerful all too often use their power, including the public resources they control, to intimidate, punish, or destroy critics or opponents. Things “tend to go their way” because they take what they want, or what they can get away with, and sweep questions and those who ask them aside.

Perhaps its just a fact of life. Authorities tend to shy away from sensitive investigations involving powerful people, not necessarily for political reasons but because such endeavors are costly, time consuming, and difficult to pursue successfully. Willing witneses are hard to find. Evidence difficult to gather. Resources have to be allocated judiciously, and long complex investigations aimed at rumored corruption are hard to justify and sustain.

And those facts of life are the same in the news business. It’s far more economical to rely on handouts, whether press releases or private “tips”, from key players than to threaten your access to the halls of power by beginning to dig behind the facade. Daily reporters can’t afford to cross key people on their beats. Editors hate to put resources where they might not have publishable results.

And, of course, in the case of politicians, those in power are also the employers of those doing the investigations. Then can control, directly or indirectly, the course of careers, choosing who gets promoted and who gets passed over.

I can recall very vividly two different moments, in two different decades, being pulled aside by friends trying to warn me away from asking questions about the wrong people. In both cases, my initial questioning had found wrongdoing and at least potentially illegal actions that were relatively widely known but unreported.

“You’d better not go after him unless you’re going to take him down,” was the message passed on to me in each case. The underlying message was, “don’t expect a lot of company in taking this on.”

Maybe this is just a tautology. As long as you’re powerful enough, your enemies can’t touch you and “things tend to go your way”, meaning that you can get away with all kinds of corruption, even when that corruption is an open secret. But if you are caught and indicted, for whatever reasons, you’re “out of favor” and all manner of indignities may result.

Unlike Jerry, the next time one of my favorite public officials is indicted, I won’t dismiss it as the result of “someone is out to get him”, although that might be true.

But “out to get him” implies a measure of unfairness, a lack of legitimate cause. It can also be deserved, even earned. Rob a bank. Get caught. Someone was out to get you.

When one of the public officials I have known gets indicted, I want to know–Did they do it? Are they guilty? And, if so, why didn’t we go after them before? Why didn’t those who knew blow the whistle earlier? Why didn’t reporters pick up the grumbling of insiders and pursue the issues and put them before the public long before the long legal process was completed and an indictment was issued?

The issue isn’t why are people picking on our poor public officials. The issue is why our systems fail to catch and put a stop to their corrupt practices as soon as they appear.

In fact, the harsh penalties that go with criminal indictments of public officials can be blamed, in part, on the failure of normal regulatory agencies to do their jobs.

The late House Speaker Danny Kihano might not have gone to federal prison for misusing campaign funds on personal expenses if our State Campaign Spending Commission had done its job and stopped his excesses when they first appeared. They weren’t really hidden. They were there in the records. The commission might have thought it was giving him a break. In practice, they were setting him up. Former labor leader Gary Rodrigues might not be in the slammer today if others had stood up and taken issue with his dictatorial rule of the union instead of rewarding him with ever more powerful public positions, or if reporters had done more than lavish praise during his rise to power.

Jerry says we need to keep in mind that indictments can be simply explained: “Someone is out to get him.”

Maybe so. Most often, it’s justice.

That’s just my view of things early this morning.